Freedom/Hate (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 1)

by Kyle Andrews

  Libby pulled away again. She told him, “You're lying to me. Again. I spoke with the woman in there. It's a simple application. A day or two, and she's approved for treatment.”

  “'Approved for treatment' isn't the same thing as being treated. My aunt was approved for treatment too, and she died three months later without a drop of medicine in her body.”

  Libby shook her head and turned to walk away. She was done listening.

  “You saw the waiting room, Lib. All those people were scheduled to see a doctor today and you know as well as I do, most of them aren't getting in. They tell you what you want to hear, but it's just not the way their world works.”

  “Goodbye, Justin.”

  She was done talking to him. She was done dealing with Justin and Uly, and she was done listening to whatever crazy ideas they had about the world. In the end, it didn't matter what they told her or what she wanted to believe. None of that would do her or her mother any good. When it came down to it and she had to decide whether to put her faith in them or the system that had been established to take care of people, she had to put her faith in the system. It was her only hope.

  That meant that Uly and Justin were liars. They were criminals. They were terrorists and monsters, and everything else that the news said about Freedom.

  As she walked toward the sidewalk, Libby saw a police car speed by. It was followed by a HAND vehicle, which was considerably more intimidating, with thicker tires and an armored body.

  When she left the alley and turned the corner, she saw those cars and more like them parked in front of the hospital. At that point, she stopped thinking entirely and found herself moving toward the hospital. In her gut, she knew that there was no more keeping secrets or deciding who the liars were. Her world was taking a sharp turn, whether she wanted it to or not.

  The doors to the hospital opened and several police officers walked out. Behind them, a HAND officer was pulling Uly by the arm, toward one of the vehicles. He was scared. Libby couldn't remember ever seeing Uly scared before. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

  The closer he got to the HAND vehicle, the more panicked Uly looked.

  Justin grabbed Libby from behind and held her, preventing her from moving any closer. They both stood there, among dozens of other people, watching Uly be taken away.

  Just before being put into the vehicle, Uly's fear reached a breaking point. He started to struggle with the officers. Libby could see the terror in his eyes as they met hers, for just a moment. Then the terror faded. In his expression, Libby could see a range of emotions. Fear, of course. But also remorse, toward her more than anything else. Everything else melted away and for a fraction of a second, Libby saw a wave of contentment wash over him. The corner of his mouth twitched up.

  Her heart tightened.

  Then, Uly turned to the crowd and closed his eyes as he screamed, “It's in our blood!”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, Uly's head exploded into a cloud of blood.

  19

  After Libby heard the gunshot, every sound in the world ceased to exist for her, save for the sound of her own heartbeat. The chaos that ensued all seemed to happen in bursts, between those beats.

  Boom-boom.

  Uly's lifeless body didn't just fall to the ground. First, its knees bent and it fell to them. Its arms dangled by its side. What remained of its head fell back.

  Boom-boom.

  A woman on the street screamed and turned into her husband's arms, burying her face so that she wouldn't have to look anymore. But the damage had been done. Nobody on that street would be able to erase the memory from their minds. Least of all, Libby.

  Boom-boom.

  Uly's body fell onto its back. It's legs were tucked beneath it. Blood was pooling around what used to be his head.

  Boom-boom.

  Libby exhaled a breath that she'd taken while her cousin was still alive. Some of the people around her started to flee in terror. Others tried to get a closer look. More sirens were approaching.

  Officers from inside the hospital started to make their way out. Zuxu followed a plain-clothes HAND officer through the door. It looked like they had been talking to each other.

  Libby stared at Zuxu as people rushed past her. She couldn't take her eyes off of the woman. Some deep-down part of her was wondering what happened inside the hospital to cause all of this, and what Zuxu had to do with it. But that part of her was muffled by the shock of what she'd just seen. No complex thought was making its way through the haze.

  Was that it? Was that how Uly's life ended? As officers surrounded his body—that empty, lifeless shell—Libby's mind went back to her childhood. The sound of Uly's laugh when he was just a little boy. The way he could run down the sidewalk faster than any other kid they knew. His football games. His paintball trophies. His face on the day his father died, with tear-filled eyes and a mouth that hung open just slightly. Years flew past her. Every voice in the crowd around her turned into Uly's voice, repeating things he had told her in the past. Every face that rushed past turned into all of the different stages of his face.

  Years of eating and breathing and thinking, all for this? This one, stupid moment that didn't even make sense. With one bang, Uly was gone. Now the thing that wore his clothes didn't even register in her mind as the person that she'd grown up with. Whatever made him Uly was gone.

  “I'll come back when you're gone.”

  Now the voice in her head was her own, repeating the last words that she would ever say to her cousin. She was angry with him and Justin, but she had to remind herself of that fact, because in that moment all she could think about was the boy who wiped a handful of peanut butter on her head when she was six.

  Someone was pulling on her arm. She didn't want to move, but she didn't have the will to fight back. Before she could come back to her senses, she was once again in the alley with Justin, staring at the words 'WE ARE FREEDOM' on the wall.

  She couldn't move, but Justin could. He was pacing back and forth in front of her like an animal in a cage. His hands were on his head and he was making a sound, somewhere between a cry and a growl.

  “Mom,” Libby said, under her breath. She couldn't remember the last time she'd referred to Amanda as 'Mom' but she was now.

  She turned her head toward the hospital. People were still rushing past the entrance to the alley.

  Libby turned back to Justin and said, “I have to go tell Mom that... What do I tell her? I can't tell her what happened. I don't know what to tell her.”

  Justin stopped pacing and put his back against one of the walls. He slid down, until he was sitting on the ground, and buried his head in his hands.

  Libby wanted to walk back to the hospital and find her mother. She needed to explain everything that happened, but the will to do it wasn't there. Instead, she went to Justin and sat beside him.

  She didn't know what she expected Justin to do. They weren't exactly friends anymore, and for all she knew, he and Uly were both terrorists. She sat next to him because she couldn't be alone. Even if her best option was someone she didn't want to trust, she couldn't be alone.

  When she sat on the ground beside Justin, he put an arm around her and pulled her head close to his. He held her there, and she could hear him crying. The sound broke her, and she started to cry with him, wrapping her arms around him and holding on for dear life.

  How long they remained that way, Libby didn't know. Time meant nothing as her mind and body tried to accept what had happened. Slowly, it began to feel as though she were coming back to herself, and Justin seemed to be coming around as well.

  “How did they know?” she heard Justin ask in a whisper, to himself. “How did they know? How did they know?”

  He raised his head and looked toward the street before turning to Libby and telling her, “It doesn't make sense.”

  He pulled himself to his feet and took a few steps toward the other side of the alley. When he was standing under the spray p
ainted words, he turned to look down at her and once again asked, “How did they know? What happened in there?”

  This time, he was asking her.

  Libby got to her feet and wiped the tears away from her face, feeling a surge of anger at the fact that this horrible moment was boiling down to their involvement in Hate.

  Libby looked Justin squarely in the eyes and said, “If you want to accuse me of turning him in, just say it.”

  “It comes back to this,” Justin sighed, shaking his head. He then went to Libby and took her head in his hands so that she had no choice but to look him in the eyes as he insisted, “I trust you. I believe in you. Now, can you stop pretending that we're enemies and help me figure out what the hell happened?”

  She pulled away from him and pushed him back, saying, “Obviously, they found out about him. They knew what he was, and any person on the street would say that he had it coming. None of them will think twice about it.”

  “Will you?” Justin asked. “Do you think he had it coming?”

  Her instinct was to say that yes, he did have it coming. No matter what Uly did, he allied himself with a group of extremists and murderers, so he deserved what he got.

  But another part of her knew Uly. He was protective. He was annoying. He was a royal pain in the ass most of the time. Yet, even after learning everything else about him, Libby couldn't think of him as anything truly bad.

  Feelings conflicted with intelligence. There was no easy answer. So, Libby simply said, “I have to get in there. I need to see Amanda.”

  She started to walk away from him, but he grabbed her shoulder once again and pulled her back, saying, “You can't.”

  Libby pulled herself free and pushed Justin back as hard as she could. He nearly fell over as she told him, “I am sick of you pulling me around like I'm your own little toy or something. I don't need you telling me what I can and cannot do.”

  “We don't know what happened in there. We don't know what set them off and we don't know how it will blow back on you.”

  “I'm not in your stupid group! I don't have anything to hide.”

  “Do they know that? Are you sure that they'll give you the chance to explain yourself. Or will they wait until you're in detention before they start asking questions?”

  “You're paranoid. You're sick and delusional. None of this would be happening if the two of you had one ounce of sense in those thick, stupid heads of yours.”

  Even as the words were coming out of her mouth, Libby regretted referring to Uly's head. The image of his death flashed in front of her once again and it nearly made her sick.

  After swallowing hard, she said, “My mother is in there. Whatever is happening to the rest of the world, she is sick and alone.”

  “Don't they have someone who takes care of people like her?” Justin asked, with an accusatory tone to his voice.

  She wanted to tell him that it wasn't anyone else's responsibility to be there for her mother, but she already knew what he would say to that. He would say that you can't always trust the system. As though she could trust anyone at that point.

  “I will not be dragged into your insanity,” she told him.

  “I'm trying to save your life.”

  “There's people for that.”

  Libby walked away from Justin, wondering if he would grab her and pull her back once again. She was prepared to fight and scream if she had to.

  She reached the end of the alley without any trouble, and stepped onto the sidewalk that led back to the hospital. She saw the crowd, still gathered and buzzing about the excitement. She heard some of the people talking about the heroic officer who took down a member of Hate. A teenager was describing the event in gory detail to his friends, reenacting certain parts in exaggerated slow-motion.

  The hospital doors that she'd left through were blocked by HAND officers. Their vehicles were still waiting outside, lights flashing. Police officers kept the crowd from getting too close. News trucks were beginning to arrive on the scene.

  On the ground, Libby could see the pool of Uly's blood being hosed away by a hospital employee while HAND officers observed and talked amongst themselves.

  The body was on a gurney, being rolled toward an ambulance that was parked near the street. Libby couldn't see the body itself. All she could see was the plastic bag that it had been zipped into. It reminded her of the garbage bags that were piling up on the sidewalk in front of her building.

  One of the HAND officers was gesturing toward the crowd as he spoke to a police officer, showing the officer something on a small tablet. The police officer was nodding along and then looked out at the crowd.

  As his eyes moved in Libby's direction, she ducked behind a tall man and kept her head down. In that moment, she realized that something wasn't right. For all her talk about marching into the hospital and not having anything to hide, she didn't want them to see her. She was scared about what might happen if they did.

  Turning back to the alley and going with Justin was not an option. She needed to be sure that nobody suspected her of being a member of his group, and running off with him would not help her cause. She needed to find someplace else to go, and someone that she could trust to help her fix this problem. Whatever cause Uly died for, she was not willing to sacrifice her own life for it.

  Libby watched the crowd, waiting for her chance to make a move. She watched the groups of people that were walking past her, and the cars that drove by. She made sure to not be seen by the officers near the hospital. Then, when the coast was clear, Libby ducked her head and followed a group of strangers closely enough to be mistaken for one of them. After that, she did her best to vanish into the night.

  20

  A year earlier, Collin had been dating a girl named Liz. She was what some people liked to call a 'firecracker', usually because that was how she referred to herself. And it was true. Liz was high energy, unpredictable and impulsive. She was also beautiful, insightful, poetic, and completely aware of how easily she could wrap Collin around her finger.

  She was his opposite. He was always so careful and didn't like to make waves. He kept himself in a box, and Liz was the one person who somehow managed to pull him out of that safe zone. She was the one who told him that he needed to be more than just an observer in Freedom. He needed to be strong. He needed to take some sort of action, or else his involvement was a waste of time. If he wasn't going to be a part of the solution, he might as well have gone to his assignment meeting and gotten on with his boring, federally-approved life.

  He took her advice and became a book runner. He always liked words and stories. He wondered how many works of literature existed in the world beyond the border, just waiting to be explored. He wondered what the original founding documents of America looked like. All he had ever seen were doctored fragments of reproductions, filtered through the government machine. Sure, there were scribblings of what people remembered, and maybe a few copies had survived the paper drives decades earlier, but he had never seen one in person. He'd never read the words as they were meant to be read.

  Liz thought that he was lame for making his life's dream revolve around reading centuries-old paperwork, but she seemed to enjoy seeing him out there on the streets, taking risks and helping the cause.

  She was gone now, and the reasons for her leaving were many and varied. She and Collin weren't meant to last, but her mark on his life would never go away. She'd worked her way into his head, and part of her would always be there.

  As Collin sat in the apartment, watching Sophia inspect the work that he had done that day and giving him slight nods of approval for each task, his mind wandered back to Liz. Her smile. The sound of her laugh. The way she pushed him.

  She had to be laughing her ass off, watching his story play out on the news. 'Collin Powers, the murderous monster of Hate.' It sounded like the title of a musical.

  One of the last things that Liz said to Collin before she left was that crazy people never think they're crazy, j
ust like stupid people never think they're stupid. But if enough people are telling you that you're crazy, you'd be stupid to not at least consider the possibility.

  So, there he was, considering the possibility. Not that he was crazy, but the possibility that he was a monster. It wasn't until he saw his family on TV that he felt the full force of the possibility. Was he fighting for justice, or was he fighting for the extremist ideals that the press reported on? Was he a revolutionary, or a terrorist?

  He had to at least ask the question. He had to explore the possibility. And finally, he decided that his sister was a fool. He was being hunted because he was transporting books. He was running from HAND because he didn't want to accept the life that the authorities had decided to give him.

  Terrorists attack in an attempt to force others to comply with their beliefs. They kill those who disagree. They celebrate murder. That's not what Collin was doing. He was fighting for the right of the people to disagree with the government, with him, and with whoever else they wanted to disagree with. He was fighting against a government that killed anyone who disagreed, and celebrated their murder. They were the terrorists, forcing fear down the throat of every man, woman and child.

  Question asked. Question answered. But nobody ever said that the righteous battle would be without its wounds. As Collin went into the bathroom to wash up before dinner, he stared at his own eyes in the mirror, and in them he saw reflections of the men he had killed. He washed his hands, but couldn't get rid of the feeling that they were still dirty. He washed them again and again, until he'd used up half of Sophia's soap.

  Why did he care? If he hadn't killed those men, they would have killed him. They would have celebrated his death over drinks that night. There was no good reason why he should feel guilty over winning a fight that they started. Yet, his hands still felt dirty. Maybe they always would.