The Secret Citizen (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 3)

by Kyle Andrews

  “No, but it should,” Mig responded, leaning her back against the nearest wall and looking toward the door. “Regardless of whether or not it helps, you didn't send anyone out there today. I did.”

  “Great. Guess I don't have to worry about that anymore,” he responded dryly.

  “Guess you don't.”

  Collin and Mig both stood there, staring at the door, waiting for the last four delivery people to return to the Campus. Around them, the celebration continued.

  23

  “Ammo, come,” Justin ordered, still standing in the doorway. He'd been standing there for a while now, watching the dog sleep and wondering whether or not it was really necessary to get him out of that room.

  When someone dies, nobody ever really thinks about sitting the dog down and explaining the way things are. Even if they did, a dog probably wouldn't understand the words. But they understood death. They felt it. When someone they loved died near them, dogs could show a great deal of emotion.

  But Ammo didn't know. To him, Libby was still alive. She was still coming back to that room. To him, everything had a chance of working out for the best.

  “Ammo, let's go,” Justin urged, slapping his leg this time.

  The dog didn't move.

  Why would Ammo care so much about Libby anyway? He was Justin's dog, not hers. He was supposed to follow Justin around and take care of him, not Libby. Yet from the first night that the dog met Libby, he seemed smitten with her.

  Justin didn't want to have to go into that room. It felt like a violation, if not to Libby's privacy then to the privacy of the other people who shared that room—though they hadn't been back there since Libby first joined the Garden. Either they didn't want to be around her, or they'd been ordered to give Libby her space. Either way, Justin wasn't even sure who those roommates were. All he knew was that the room wasn't his and he had no business being in there.

  “Ammo, c'mon!” Justin demanded, taking on a much more severe tone. He was starting to get angry with the dog.

  Ammo opened his eyes and lifted his head. He looked at Justin, as though wondering what the rush was, and then he dropped his head back down onto Libby's pillow and rubbed the side of his face into it, getting good and comfortable. Then, with a sigh, the dog closed his eyes again and started to drift off to sleep.

  Justin looked down at the ground. Half of his foot was hanging over the threshold and even that felt like it was too far. But what choice did he have?

  He moved into the room slowly, as though he was going to disturb someone or break something and get into trouble for it. He could practically hear Libby screaming at him—the memory of so many outbursts that she'd had when she first found out about his involvement in Freedom. She hated him for a while, but he liked to believe that she didn't feel that way in the end.

  The end. He still couldn't believe that he was thinking in those terms. After spending so many years building relationships, not only with Libby but with Uly as well, to think of all of those arguments and all of the smiles as everything he would ever have of those people... It didn't make sense to him. How could that be it? There was no resolution. There was no meaning to everything that they'd gone through. It was over and all Justin could think about were the things that never happened.

  He didn't want to dwell. He had to put it behind him. He had to accept the way things were, whether he liked them or not, and he had to move on with his life. What was left of it.

  When he reached the side of the bed, he reached out and put his hand on Ammo's side. The dog lifted his head and looked at Justin, expecting something from him. He then rolled over, exposing his belly.

  Justin couldn't help but grin as he rubbed Ammo's belly. When he was done, he sat on the side of the bed and Ammo moved a little bit closer, forcing his head under Justin's arm and demanding attention, which Justin was more than willing to give him.

  For the first time in days, something felt normal to Justin. This dog who had no idea what was going on around him was the same goofy, lovable beast that he'd always been. His world was still in one piece.

  Justin leaned down and wrapped his arm around the dog, and Ammo rested his chin on Justin's shoulder, leaning into the hug just as he always did.

  When he was finally ready to end the hug, Justin pulled back and put his nose right in front of Ammo's as he said, “I love you.”

  For some reason, those words caught in Justin's throat and by the time they made it past his lips, his eyes were tearing up.

  Ammo responded by licking Justin, right on the mouth.

  Something about that action felt as though Ammo was trying to comfort Justin. Even if he didn't know about Libby, he could always sense when something was wrong with a person and he always did his best to make them feel better. It was probably why he had spent time with Libby in the first place.

  Justin rubbed Ammo's head and gave him a quick kiss on the snout before standing up and saying, “Let's get out of here. C'mon, boy.”

  He waited for Ammo to get off of the bed, but Ammo didn't budge.

  “Ammo, come.”

  Still, Ammo didn't move. He just dropped his head back onto the pillow and looked at Justin, challenging him to do something about it.

  “Come!” Justin repeated, in a tone that he had rarely used since he first trained the dog.

  But Ammo had no intention of going with Justin. He wanted to continue waiting for Libby to return and when he set his mind to something, it was almost impossible to change it.

  Justin walked back to Ammo and put his face right in front of the dog's. He said, “You're my dog, Ammo. Mine. That means you come when I tell you to come!”

  He grabbed Ammo by the collar and pulled, expecting Ammo to finally get to his feet and follow, but the dog didn't give in. Justin pulled as hard as he could without strangling Ammo, and still the dog would not move. So, Justin stuck his hand under the dog. He intended to pick Ammo up and carry him out of the room if he had to.

  His effort was met with a deep, throaty growl.

  Ammo was not a dangerous dog. He would never attack anything, aside from a bowl of food. But he was stubborn as hell and he was not about to let Justin force him to go anywhere that he didn't want to go.

  Acting on instinct alone, Justin backed off when he heard the growl. He looked at Ammo with a blend of surprise and anger. This dog was supposed to be his best friend. His loyal companion. But he wasn't loyal to anyone but himself. He was waiting for a dead girl to come home and he was too stupid to realize that it wasn't going to happen.

  “Fine,” Justin said, as though he and the dog had been having a verbal argument this entire time. “If you want to stay here, stay here. I don't care what you do anymore.”

  If this had been a fight between the two of them, Ammo had won. This was a sad and pathetic truth, but Justin didn't have the will to put up with any of this anymore. He was tired of fighting unwinnable battles. He was tired of spinning his wheels and getting nowhere. He was tired of every force in the world working against him, and he wasn't going to deal with it anymore. So, he walked out of the room and left Ammo exactly where he was.

  24

  Rose left the Garden with plenty of time to spare. With her gun tucked into her belt and hidden beneath a long jacket, she felt secure. She felt like she wasn't at the whim of the world for the first time in her life. It would have been foolish to believe that she was in control of anything, but just having the gun reminded her that she wasn't playing the game anymore. She felt like she was truly fighting in a war now.

  When she walked down the street, she didn't try to blend in. She stood tall and made eye contact with people. She was taking in the world around her—in her mind, maybe even patrolling those streets. Looking for trouble. Capable of handling it.

  She wasn't reckless though. She knew that she couldn't go around shooting people for giving her a dirty look. She knew that she had to be careful of what she said and did in public. Outwardly, nothing really changed. Inside was w
here things were different. A switch had been flipped. Freedom wasn't just a club to hang out with anymore. It wasn't a movement. It was a rebellion. It was a stand against the authorities, and it was gaining more and more support by the day. That feeling inside of her wasn't cockiness or foolish arrogance. It was something that had been forbidden until now: Pride.

  She slipped down an alley, where a small and rundown old car was being stashed. Why people chose to park their cars off of the main streets, she would never know. They probably assumed that they were keeping them safe, but all they were really doing was keeping them away from the street cameras and the eyes of the general public.

  Starting the car was easy. The days of high-tech cars with on-board computers and anti-theft technology had long since ended. The few cars that people could afford to own needed to be easily maintained, with parts that could be swapped out with scraps found in the junkyard. The good news for Rose was that this made the cars incredibly easy to borrow. The bad news was that most of them handled like crap. After swiping a HAND vehicle or two, she'd been spoiled. Going back to the average car was almost physically painful.

  Though the streets were full of more people than cars, it took Rose a while to get to the spot where she was supposed to meet her contact from the other base. The public buses were slow but plentiful at that time of the evening, as people were trying to get home in time for dinner.

  She stopped the car a few blocks away from the meeting spot under the bridge, making the rest of the trip on foot. By the time she reached the location, her contact was already waiting. A young woman with red hair, dressed in mostly black, but with a white scarf tied around her neck and a messenger bag slung over her shoulder.

  “Nice scarf,” Rose told the woman.

  “Don't you think it brings out the color of my eyes?” the woman joked. “Y'know, the white parts.”

  “I assume you have the information that I'm supposed to pick up?”

  “I do. And more,” the woman told Rose, her smile growing into an excited grin. “I'm Tracy, by the way.”

  “I thought we weren't supposed to give names. 'Keep things separate' and all of that.”

  Tracy nodded and shrugged, saying “Never really worked for me.”

  Still, Rose kept her information to herself.

  Tracy reached into her bag, and even though they were on the same side, Rose prepared herself to duck out of the way and grab her gun, should the need arise.

  “I come in peace. I swear,” Tracy said, pulling several sheets of paper out of the bag and handing them to Rose. It was some sort of newsletter.

  “What is this?” Rose asked.

  “The new voice of Freedom. Tell your bosses that Collin Powers is safe and secure. We have him, and he has a lot to say to the powers that be.”

  Rose skimmed over the papers and asked, “This is the story of the woman on the news?”

  “The true story. Not the made up crap.”

  Rose's heart skipped a beat as she looked back to Tracy and asked, “Is this for real?”

  “Cross my heart and hope that piece of crap mayor of ours dies.”

  Rose thought for a moment, trying to figure out whether or not it would be a smart idea to do what she was about to do. Deciding that it could be a trap and she could very well be screwing herself, she decided to do it anyway.

  “My name's Rose,” she said. “And if you want the know the truth about another story they've been spinning on the news, I have one for you.”

  “What's that?”

  “I killed Croy Fisker.”

  Tracy furrowed her brow and replied, “I thought that he was killed by racist racists, devoted to racism.”

  “He was killed by the gun that I have tucked into my belt right now.”

  “I don't have a pen or paper, but I'm listening. I can pass the story along to my editor,” Tracy said and then smiled at her use of newspaper lingo.

  Rose started to tell Tracy the story about her night at the HAND building, watching the chaos unfold. Grabbing the gun. Seeing Libby's body being ogled by the authorities.

  When she got to that part, she must have sounded different somehow, because Tracy asked, “You knew her?”

  “She was my friend.”

  “The chip?”

  “The what?”

  “The one inside of her, with the books and stuff. Did you guys recover it?”

  “There was no chip. It was in her blood. Encrypted in her DNA somehow. The street out front of the HAND building was covered in it.”

  Tracy was silent. Either she was afraid that anything she said to Rose could be offensive to a person who just lost their friend, or she was rendered speechless by the far-fetched notion of storing documents and data inside human DNA.

  As Rose was preparing to continue with her story and explain exactly what happened to Croy Fisker, she heard a noise overhead. It was like the hum of a bee, but not quite. She looked upward to figure out what the noise was, and at first Tracy didn't seem to know what she was doing. After a second, Tracy looked up as well.

  “Airplane?” Tracy asked.

  “I don't know,” Rose replied.

  Planes were rare. Nobody traveled anymore, except for VIPs. There weren't many airplanes in the sky, so when there was one overhead, people noticed. But this sound didn't sit well with Rose. It sounded wrong somehow.

  That's when she spotted it, coming through a cloud. Smaller than what she was used to. Thinner. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at, but the word finally came to her.

  “Drone,” she said under her breath.

  “Shit,” Tracy said under hers.

  This was not a surveillance drone. Those were reserved for less cluttered areas. Most of the city security needs were dealt with by HAND and their street cameras. Drones were too imposing. They sent the wrong message to the citizens, because they were used primarily for one reason. To destroy.

  As Rose watched, the drone flew overhead toward its intended target, and try as she might, there was no escaping the realization that it was headed straight toward the Garden.

  25

  Justin meant to find Aaron and discuss everything that happened on the night of Libby's death, but he was distracted by what he saw on the TV screens as he passed by them. The news report showed an elderly man lying dead in the street. No blurred out images. No cutting away to spare the audience the sight of a bloody corpse.

  “Seventy-seven year old Aiden Criswell was apparently caught in possession of hostile content, which has been circulating the streets since earlier this afternoon. When confronted, Criswell is reported to have charged toward a police officer, forcing the officer to use deadly force,” said a female reporter's voice as the body of Aiden Criswell was shown on the screen.

  The image changed to video of a rattled middle-aged woman with wide, panic-stricken eyes as she said, “He was yelling, like a madman. Calling people names. Telling them to get away from him. And nobody could calm him down.”

  The broadcast cut back to the studio where a young blond woman was reading the news into the camera. She said, “Reports of hostile content have been rising steadily for just over a week now, with the terrorist group, Hate attempting to spread their propaganda to the masses and poison relations between the citizens and the authorities. HAND officials are warning citizens to stay away from anyone who tries to pass out strange fliers on the streets, saying that tests are currently underway to determine whether or not those fliers have been treated with biological weapons.

  “In unrelated news,” the anchor said, turning to look into a new camera, “Beta Winston and a gathering of his followers have established a memorial for two victims of last week's Hate-related violence. Croy Fisker and Sophia Talbot were killed in the midst of that violence, and Winston has vowed to fight such senseless killings in the future.”

  “For Sophia Talbot!” Beta Winston shouted, standing in front of a shrine in the alley where Croy Fisker was killed, surrounded by devoted follower
s who bowed their heads and nodded along with whatever he said. “An elder of this community. A woman of honor. Of loyalty. A woman who had faith in the power of government outreach and who neighbors say fought effortlessly to keep the menace of Hate out of her neighborhood. For Sophia, the loyal and loving citizen whose long life was cut short by senseless violence and terrorism. For Sophia, the mother figure for all of the folks in this community, we vow to fight Hate!”

  The crowd let out a cheer of support.

  Beta continued, “We vow to deny the evil spread of lies and misdirection by the menace!”

  Another cheer.

  “We vow to rid this community of the plague of Hate!”

  Another cheer.

  Justin watched the effort that was going into this news broadcast and he knew that something wasn't right. For a week, they'd been focusing on the poor slain child, Croy Fisker. They had been showing pictures of him that had to be at least five years old, in the hopes of making him more sympathetic. They'd put their entire press machine behind the Croy Fisker message, and now they were breezing past his story and focusing on some random old lady who was killed around the same time? Why?

  “Justin,” Aaron said as he approached. When he was close enough to have a private conversation without drawing too much attention, he asked, “How are you holding up?”

  “Right as rain. Who is Sophia Talbot?” Justin replied.

  “One of us. She hasn't been in for years, but she was a Garden member for a long time.”

  Aaron put a hand on Justin's shoulder and started to lead him away from the TVs and the crowd of people around them.

  “And they killed her,” Justin asked.

  “Yeah. She harbored Collin Powers when he was running.”

  Justin nodded, absorbing the new information. He turned to Aaron and asked, “Have you scanned Libby's blood yet?”

  Opening the door to the stairwell which led to the basement, Aaron replied, “Simon's working on the scanner. The tracker was built into the processor. He's having a hard time disabling it without destroying the whole thing.”