Fragile Bonds

by Adelaide Walsh

  I shoved my hand under Elias’s arm and hauled him to standing, then bullied him across the hallway to the maintenance door nestled between the other two rooms. I tore open the door and pulled him inside.

  “We need to move now, Elias. Can you run?” I spoke slow, evened out my breathing, and stared into his eyes just like you’re supposed to do with trauma victims. He nodded, the movement awkward and jerky, as he told me that he thought he could. I took off up the stairs as quickly as my legs would carry me, I could hear Elias trailing along behind. We skipped the second floor and barreled out of the door to the third. This level had several smaller rooms, lots of doors, and, more importantly, I had a feeling this was the right place to be for the next few minutes. There were people here, too. About ten of them had collected in the hallway, all with looks of lost uncertainty on their faces. The sounds of the disaster happening downstairs were muted to a series of sporadic thuds and the patterned grunts of an automatic weapon.

  “There’s been an attack. We need to hide,” I announced to the startled group. “We need a room we can barricade. No windows. Heavy door. Do any of you work here at the convention center?”

  A mousy girl with a mass of frizzy, toffee brown hair tied in a high ponytail took a step forward. She had to be a changeling—her movements fluid, almost like she didn’t have quite as many bones as the rest of us. Probably from one of the river packs. I could tell by her eyes. I could always tell.

  “I do,” she said. And I could see her pull herself together before my eyes. She was going to be a survivor. “There’s a sound booth down there,” she pointed at a short hallway to the right. “It’s got a locking door.”

  I nudged Elias toward the rest of the group and helped the survivor-girl corral the group of humans and changelings down the hallway and into one of the rooms. The door to the little recording studio was heavy, a strong metal core layered with soundproof padding on the inside. Exactly the type of door that would stop a bullet. I knew we’d need a door like that. I never knew how I knew this stuff, I just did. I’d stopped questioning that knowing a long time ago and learned to simply roll with it. I’d been a conflict-zone journalist for nine years and here I was, still alive. I’d say whatever the ‘knowing’ was...it worked.

  Just as I was pulling that heavy barrier closed behind me, I heard the metal door of the stairway we’d taken not sixty seconds ago, crash open. The lock made a quiet hissing sound as it slid into place. I didn’t wait to start calling out orders.

  “Shut the lights off. Stack the chairs, desks, whatever you can find in front of the door. Then get on the floor and stay quiet.”

  Twenty seconds later, all twelve of us were plastered against the walls of that tomb of a room, holding our breath as someone outside wrenched the handle of the door and then smashed something into it, hard, when it didn’t give. There was a pause, then a semi-muted roar as someone fired at the door. The onslaught lasted a few seconds, but when you’re sitting, unarmed, in a room with no exits waiting for your would-be assassin to lose interest, a few seconds can stretch on, and on, and on.

  Eventually the shots at the door stopped and our little safe room went silent. Long minutes ticked by, none of us knowing if we were safe yet. None of us sure that the lock on the door would hold if the shooter came back. When I looked over at Elias—his face barely visible in the eerie green glow of the LEDs on the soundboard panel—I could see his eyes were rimmed in tears. He was less of a man than I’d originally thought. More of a boy really. Couldn’t be much older than his early twenties. My heart ached for him, for all of these people, but I knew we’d make it out of here alive.

  It was two more long hours—as counted off by the digital clock on the soundboard in the center of the room—before a police officer beat on the door, announcing himself as a first responder. The people in the room with me cried out in collective relief, but I made them wait. I refused to let anyone get near the door until I’d shouted through the door demanding the officer’s badge number. I scrabbled through the sound booth and found a paper and pen to write down the number and then called the precinct with my cell to verify the officer’s ID. Only then did I give the go ahead for the people in the room to start shifting the furniture away from the door.

  The remains of the attack was like a bullet wound on its own. The convention center lay in ruins around us as we walked to the exit. Revolutions, no matter how quiet, no matter how skillfully executed, tend to be bloody. I didn’t know what exactly distracted the shooter from continuing his assault on the door of that sound booth, maybe it was just simply the fact that he couldn’t get past the lock, but whatever the reason, I was alive because of it. And I was thankful. In that moment, seeing the damage, seeing the bodies on the floor, my heart hurt for Colombia for the first time in all my years on this earth.

  ***

  My mother’s voice dragged me back to the present as she shakily recited a Hail Mary, eyes never leaving the horror happening on the small TV screen. I couldn’t really fault her for asking the mother of Christ for help in this moment. The prayer seemed apt and it shook me to my core to realize how much all our lives had just changed.

  The shooters I ran away from at that press conference cleared the convention center, leaving twenty-four people dead, taking anyone still alive with a title, hostage. The Snake that followed us up the stairs that day left me and the eleven people I’d taken into that sound booth alive, but Dariel’s people had taken my city, my country, my home, and thrust my people into a miasma of fear. And he’d done it all under a banner that promised to wipe out corruption and return control of the rainforest to those who would keep it safe.

  I didn’t care how noble his ‘mission’ sounded. I didn’t care that he was a changeling and no one believed a shifter would ever move against our precious forest. I didn’t care that members of his camp touted him as a savior akin to a God. I knew, deep in the heart of me, that Dariel Abreo was a snake in more than just genetics. I could see it in his eyes—the man was evil—and I refused to let him burn my country.

  Chapter 3

  In the next moment, my phone rang and Isla, the sweet, gentle soul that she was—why she hung with me was a mystery—gave me a last squeeze before sliding out of my arms and over to my mother.

  When I answered the phone, it was my boss, Emmanuel—Editor in Chief at KHG, the largest newsgroup in the country where I had worked for seven years as a journalist—who revealed himself as the unlikely source of hope I needed right then.

  “Adriana, where are you?” he asked, his voice oddly sedate despite the fact that he’d no doubt just watched the same nightmare I had.

  “At my mom’s, watching the presidential address. Where do you need me?” I was already shoving my keys, my camera, and my press badge into my bag. I would take any distraction I could get right now. Anything to make me feel like I was doing something in reaction to this tragedy.

  “I…” he hesitated. Something he wasn’t prone to do. “The file you gave me, the eight missing people—”

  “It’s thirteen now,” I interrupted. He had to know that every minute he dragged his feet on this decision he was putting more people in danger.

  He was silent for a long second. “You really think it’s him?”

  “I know it is, Emmanuel. If this isn’t proof, I don’t know what is.”

  “It’s not proof, Adriana. You know it's not proof. I don’t want this to be happening either, but we can’t just go calling out conspiracy theories based on nothing more than an uncomfortable coincidence.” He was being deliberately vague, and I could tell from the tenor of his voice that he was nervous. “I can’t do this over the phone,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “can you get to the office?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there in thirty.” I stabbed at the end call button on my phone and bolted to the door, promising Isla and my mom that I’d be back soon. Whatever had Emmanuel spooked did not bode well for me. When the biggest news network on the continent was too scared to inv
estigate the leadership, we were all in very, very big trouble.

  Emmanuel was waiting for me in the sweltering summer heat of ‘the office’ – a grungy, nondescript apartment building acting as a safe house (failing to keep out any of the damp rainforest heat gripping Colombia this time of year) in Puente Aranda that had been set up for occasions exactly like this. We’d come up with the code-name years ago when I first started taking on international assignments. At the time, I’d been worried about attracting unwanted attention in the field and then being followed back to the skyscraper of an actual office building I worked at. I hadn’t even considered we’d need it someday to avoid villains from within the company. The building was owned by some wealthy American ‘friend’ and no matter how much digging you did, you’d never be able to trace it back to KHG. Trust me. I’d tried, and I was pretty good at these things if I do say so. I was giving myself a little mental gold star as I let myself in through the iron gate, white paint flaked off every rung. This part of Bogotá wasn’t exactly safe, but I’d never been scared to walk the streets of my city. I could take care of myself, had done so in far more dangerous scenarios. But tonight, the air felt different. I wasn’t sure if it was due to the darkened streets—this area obviously in the midst of one of the random power failures having plagued the city since the invasion—or the note of hopelessness here. A reek of resignation. I was worried for my people. And not just the humans who made up the majority of Bogotá’s population. The changelings that called Colombia and the rainforest home were under just as much threat, if not more, from Dariel.

  My boss was an attractive man, in a very classically Latino sort of way, but he’d never appealed to me. Emmanual just barely matched my 5 foot 8 inches in height and he gave off the air of a man fully mired in the world of politics and civilized subterfuge. Frankly, the man was faker than a Ken doll. He’d tell anybody anything they wanted to hear if it meant more access, more funding or more power on his part. Despite that two-faced persona though, he was a journalist at heart. He cared about the truth, and deep down, he cared about people. That’s why I’d been able to work for him for so many years.

  “So,” I drawled as I approached him and shook his extended hand. “What’s got you suspicious of the phones?” I’d left mine in the car. It was far easier than most people realized to turn a cell phone into a perfectly concealed listening device.

  “You saw what happened today.” He looked like he’d wanted to say more, but kept his mouth shut.

  “Yes, I did see my country get handed over to a murderer. And I think that particular highlight of the day is all the evidence that needs to be served up in support of my findings.”

  “Oh bullshit.” He threw his hands up as though he’d completely lost the final handle on his patience. “What you gave me wasn’t findings. It was a list and a fucking conspiracy theory.”

  “You know I’m right, Emmanuel. You know it. Get me the clearance to dig into Orcana’s files and I’ll serve up irrefutable proof that Justice has known about the abductions for months and that Dariel was paying the bastard’s people to keep quiet and feed him names.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest in open defiance. “Are you crazy? I can’t get you into the fucking president’s personal—”

  “Former.”

  “What?” He asked, the dim light of the dated and dirty living room throwing the lines on his face into severe contrast. The effect made him look older, tired, or maybe that was just a side-effect of his job as head of the largest news group in the country.

  “Former,” I repeated. “He’s the former president, now.”

  If a heated glance could actually burn, I’d have been ash.

  “You need to pull your head out of your self-righteous ass, Adriana. Do you really think I would do that even if I could, which, by the way, I can’t.”

  We’d been here before. What felt like every time I asked for clearance into a government entity. “If you can't get me clearance, I’ll go in myself.”

  His face flushed a deep red. “Don’t be stupid. There are eyes in KHG. You know we’re being watched. We’re the biggest risk a new regime has in this part of the world. They’ve killed everyone who has refuted Dariel’s right to control this country. They’ll come after you in a heartbeat.”

  “I’m willing to take that risk. Dariel has systematically introduced oppression on the humans in every country he has come into. I will not let that man run a genocide on my people, Emmanuel. If you’re asking me to stand down because you’re scared for your own neck, I need to remind you that there are twenty-five million people in this country who are about to be crushed under oppression.”

  “You can’t do this, Adriana. There are just some things that are too big for you to take on!” He took a step forward, a hand on his hip, the other scraping through his curly ebony hair.

  “Do you honestly not see what is happening, Emmanuel? He’s setting up an empire of snakes. There is not a single human or a changeling of any other kind in his organization. There hasn’t ever been! What are you going to do when they show up at your door and charge you with the crime of simply being ‘other’?”

  He had to see it. He had to know what was coming, but he stood his ground. “He’s a changeling, Adriana. Changelings don’t commit genocide. Changelings protect their home! He’s just doing what he has to do to keep us all safe now that the Luz Mala are gone.”

  I felt like the earth fell away under my feet. There was too much to take in all at once.

  “You sound like a propaganda poster. Been drinking the Kool-Aid at snake picnics, Emmanuel? There is no way the Luz Mala protections are gone.”

  Not changeling, not human, something entirely other, the Luz Mala have protected the Amazon and most of Latin America for nearly four hundred years. It was simply unimaginable that they’d stopped. The rumor of their abdication had to be fear mongering by the snakes. Emmanuel was just regurgitating the lies they’d fed him. Right?

  He let out a long, resigned sigh. “Adriana, you have to drop this search. Please, I’m begging you. I’ve covered for you up to now, but it’s not in my hands anymore.”

  “Covered for me?” I asked with a gasp. “What are you saying, Emmanuel?”

  His eyes flicked around the room and I suddenly felt naked. Exposed.

  “You can’t be saying this stuff at KHG.” He chewed his lip, obviously coming to a decision. “It’s not safe. I’m reassigning you. As of thirty-six hours ago you’re officially covering a changeling territorial conflict on the US-Canadian border. As far as anyone else knows, you’re not investigating the missing persons case. You’re not blaming anything on the Snakes. You’re not even in the country. You need to keep your head down, Adriana.”

  I felt like I was going to throw up. Apparently, Emmanuel didn’t care about people at all. Apparently, I’d been working for a fucking cog in the machine working to hand the rain forest over to a dictator. Anger boiled in my veins.

  “Are you fucking kidding me! You expect me to hide? To just let this go?” I couldn’t breathe properly. “These are people’s lives we’re talking about here! My people’s lives!”

  Emmanuel crossed his arms over his chest, adopting some kind of misguided air of authority. “You’ve always been so caught up in your ideals, Adriana. You just miss the big picture. You’re so strong, you could have been a leader, so much more than a journalist. But the fact is, you’re not strong enough to protect the Amazon on your own. And you are alone now, Adriana. We all need to look out for ourselves right now, and I can’t keep you safe anymore.”

  I was disgusted. What did we expect to happen if we were all such weak, spineless creatures? “You’re prepared to sell out your people for a promise of safety, is that what’s happening here?”

  Apparently, it was. Emmanuel tried to explain to me, but there was too much he couldn’t say. The Snakes had gotten to him. Scared him badly enough to turn traitor on his country. I listened to him for as long as I could stomach and
then I left.

  At least the bastard had bought me some time. By reassigning me, nobody would come looking while I did what I had to next. Probably. I just had to figure out what, exactly, it was that I had to do.

  Chapter 4

  It turned out that I didn’t have to work very hard to find my next move. It found me. After leaving Emmanuel to rot under the weight of his conscience, I made a beeline for home. The streets were eerily empty, and it took me half the usual time to cross the city and get back to my gorgeous flat in Chicó. I spent so much time traveling for work, sleeping in shit hotels rooms—when I wasn’t roughing it on a cot in a war zone—I had set my apartment up as my own little refuge. I’d worked so hard to make my home a perfect place of peace and tranquility and every single time I came home, I felt an incandescent joy at what I’d built for myself. That joy was snuffed out the instant I walked through the lobby of my building.

  Standing next to the main elevator was one of the most capable—and classically beautiful people I’d ever met. Jada Ortega, or whatever her last name was now, had been as jaded as they come when we first met at KHG seven years ago. And although I was happy to see my friend, her presence here could only signal another tragedy.