by Kyle Andrews
“Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock!”
“Your time is running out. More importantly, his time is running out. And what will you say to the world if this happens? How will you twist this event into a tale of my corruption? How will you try to make yourselves into the heroes of this piece, when I am willing to release a murderer into your custody?”
Half of the crowd stopped chanting and began to cheer for their glorious and heroic mayor. Finally, Libby could see the man who was standing at the top of the steps. He was wearing a black suit, with a white shirt. He smiled at the crowd, and the surrounding lights reflected off of his smile, a brighter shade of white than the shirt he wore.
He was speaking to her. She could end this. How could she possibly make excuses for letting Collin die?
“Let's bring him out, shall we?” asked the Mayor.
Two HAND officers pulled Collin Powers from the building. He was gagged now, so that he couldn't speak to the crowd, but he looked out across the sea of people, and stood tall.
Libby could have sworn that he even nodded a hello to the people, and she almost smiled at the thought.
The crowd's chanting grew louder and more angry by the second. People threw things at Collin, accidentally hitting the Mayor and HAND officers in the process.
Libby wondered if maybe a couple of those hits had been Freedom members, just seizing the opportunity. What other chance would they get to strike the Mayor?
The Mayor looked at the crowd and put a hand over his eyes, to shield them from the bright lights. He asked into the microphone, “Is Libby Jacobs here?”
The crowd was cheering and screaming and chanting. People were looking around for Libby. Some saw her, with no idea what she looked like, and no way to know that she was the girl that the Mayor was so desperate to get his hands on.
“No?” the Mayor sighed. “Oh well. I tried.”
He turned toward the HAND officers who were holding Collin, and waved his hand, telling them to bring Collin closer to him. They obeyed, and the Mayor reached into his coat pocket. From that pocket, he retrieved a pair of protective glasses, which he put on.
She could end this.
“Collin Powers,” the Mayor began. “In accordance with the beliefs of your own people, you stand before this court today, facing charges of treason, murder and trafficking in hostile content. Do you understand the charges as I have read them to you?”
Collin tried to speak, but his words were muffled by the gag.
The Mayor nodded and said, “You understand them? Great. Now, do you have anything to say in your defense? Perhaps an apology to the people of this city? Or maybe you'd like to renounce your terrorist ways?”
Collin turned his back to the crowd and made a gesture with his hands that Libby couldn't quite make out from where she was standing.
Once again, there were cheers and chants, but the Mayor eventually managed to calm them enough for him to speak and be heard.
“Since you have no defense to present at this time, we shall take this matter straight to the jury. Jury, in the case of Collin Powers versus humanity, how do you find?”
He turned toward the crowd and raised his arms into the air, calling for their feedback. The bloodthirsty people were more than happy to oblige, calling for Collin's death.
Her heart was pounding faster than ever before. She could end this right then and there, if only she could move.
“I believe they found you guilty,” the Mayor said to Collin. “You're hereby sentenced to die. Now, on your knees.”
A HAND officer grabbed Collin by the shoulders and kicked the back of his leg, causing Collin to fall to his knees.
“Officer, draw your gun,” the Mayor ordered, adjusting the safety glasses on his face, and taking a step back.
Collin had to be wondering where his people were. Why weren't they helping him? But they couldn't. Nobody could do a thing to stop this, except Libby. But she was useless; frozen by fear.
The second HAND officer pulled his handgun from its holster.
In that moment, Libby accepted reality. She was a coward. All those people back at the Garden were right about her. Collin Powers would die, because the one person who could save him was too scared to try. And there would be no excuses this time. It would be her fault. Nobody else was making this decision.
Just then, a loud screech sang above the crowd's cheers. A firework exploded in the air, casting a red light upon the crowd.
The Mayor turned toward the firework and smiled for a moment. His teeth were glowing red under its light. Then the smile faded as a realization struck him.
Near the front steps, four loud explosions ripped through the air. The crowd's cheers of joy turned to screams of terror. People started to turn and attempted to run, but the crowd was too thick. There was nowhere to go.
Three more explosions to her left. Three to her right. Smoke was pouring into the air and drifting across the entire area. Libby could no longer see the Mayor or Collin Powers.
At first she didn't know what was happening, but it didn't take long for her to realize that Freedom had been there all along. More than Justin, and whoever had come with him. Freedom members had come from all across the city, wading into the crowd of hateful men and women who wanted to watch Collin suffer. They bided their time, coordinating with each other in ways that Libby had probably seen but never noticed. They were all around her now, and they had come to fight.
48
Collin saw the firework go off above the crowd, and he thought that it was just one more person celebrating his execution. It didn't matter to him, really. He'd been tortured for the past month, so a little bit of death might be a nice change of pace. Peace and quiet at last. And if some people wanted to cheer as he was killed, what did he care? He wouldn't be the one living in that world anymore. If this was what they wanted, he was willing to give it to them. One more step toward the fire for them, and he was just fine with letting them burn.
But then he saw the look in the Mayor's eyes. Something was not going according to plan. Of course fireworks were illegal, but that had never stopped people from setting them off every now and then. Collin may have never thought twice about it if he hadn't seen the Mayor's reaction. It was fear.
Then the other explosions went off. At first, Collin thought that this was the sound of the HAND officer's gun going off. He didn't feel a bullet, but he hadn't felt a lot of things lately, so he thought that was it. He thought that he was dead.
Then the smoke began to rise, and he saw the HAND officer's gun. It wasn't aimed at Collin. It was aimed toward the crowd as the officer tried to get a sense of what was happening around him.
As the smoke began to rise, the HAND officers tried to find a target to aim for, but they couldn't see any. More officers poured out of the building. The Mayor tried to move off of the stage, dropping his stupid looking safety glasses along the way, but he couldn't see, and nobody could see him either.
Collin threw all of his weight into the Mayor, and they both fell onto the steps of the HAND building. The Mayor was screaming and flailing his hands around, trying to defend himself.
Gunshots went off behind Collin. He didn't know who they were firing at, but it wasn't him. Then, Collin felt a hand on his shoulder. Someone grabbed is arm and pulled him to his feet. Someone else cut the shackles on his arms and legs, and he heard a woman's voice say, “Come with me.”
He couldn't see the woman clearly. His eyes were watering because of the smoke. He could barely breathe because his nose was running, and his mouth still had the gag in it. He turned and saw a HAND officer on the ground, bleeding out of three bullet wounds.
Around him, chaos had broken out. The crowd was rioting. People were fighting, and Collin couldn't even tell which of them were loyalists and which were Freedom. He doubted that they could tell either.
The woman led Collin off of the steps. He saw someone coming up behind him on his left. He turned to fight off his attacker, and noticed that the man was wea
ring civilian clothes and carrying a gun. A Secret Service agent?
Collin almost panicked until he saw the man shoot one of the HAND officers who was running toward them. The man was Freedom. And he was armed. That rarely happened.
As he followed the woman through the crowd, Collin saw people racing toward him, waving signs and trying to attack, but there were others who stood in their way.
When one man managed to slip through and came close to striking Collin with a glass bottle, Collin grabbed the chain that was still dangling from his right wrist and swung it toward the man, smacking him across the face with it. The man fell to the ground, screaming. His glass bottle shattered next to him.
He started clawing at the gag, desperate to take a deep breath. He had barely moved in a month and running was not easy for him. His limbs ached. His sewn up wounds stung and throbbed beneath his clothes. The thick smoke smelled like chalk. It was making him cough, but the gag would not come off. It was strapped around his head, and he couldn't even see how to loosen that strap.
Because his eyes were watering, Collin tripped and fell onto his side. He feared that the people who had come to save him would leave him behind, or that the crowd would trample him. He didn't even know if anyone could see him, because he couldn't see them anymore. There was nothing in that moment, aside from chaos and doubt. Whatever chance he had to survive was slipping away from him.
Then two people grabbed each of his arms and pulled him back to his feet. They kept running until they reached the side of the building, where a van was waiting for them. It was just a blur to Collin, but one of the men who was running with him yelled, “Get in!” and pushed Collin toward the van.
He did as he was told.
Once he was inside, the van door slid shut and the vehicle started to move. It took his eyes several seconds to adjust to to the darkness inside of the van. Once they did, he realized that he was inside of a HAND vehicle.
He might have gasped if he were physically capable of it. Since he wasn't, he just kept clawing at the gag in his mouth and the strap that was holding it on. Eventually, someone behind him grabbed the strap and loosened it.
“Here,” she said, and the gag fell off.
Collin sucked in as much air as he possibly could. He coughed and gagged, but finally managed to speak the words, “What's happening.”
“We're Freedom,” the woman told him, stating the obvious.
Collin looked trough the window at the chaos that was unfolding outside. Fires were burning. Men and women were beating each other—some with makeshift weapons, and some with their bare hands. Gunshots were going off. Sirens were blaring.
“Since when does Freedom do things like this?” Collin asked, turning to look at the women.
Part of him was hoping that it was Liz, but it wasn't. He did know her though. She was the girl that he'd been sent to meet that night on the highway. The one who was late.
The woman smiled at him and said, “It started with an idea.”
49
Libby was standing in the center of pure chaos. People were screaming out of terror now, rather than a thirst for blood. When their own lives were on the line, violence was somehow less funny.
She was knocked to the ground and her glasses fell off. She didn't need them to see, so she could have gotten up and hurried away from the riot as quickly as possible, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she needed those glasses. They were her mask. If someone saw her without them, she could be caught.
She fumbled around on the ground, trying to reach her glasses. People kicked her and stepped on her hand. One girl who couldn't have been more than twelve years old fell hard, not too far from where Libby was. The girl was being knocked around just as much as Libby, but she was smaller and less capable of defending herself.
The girl screamed and covered her head with her arms, but nobody stopped to take care of her. Nobody cared that they were hurting a child. They just wanted to save themselves or hurt someone else.
Libby forgot about her glasses and made her way over to that girl, staying low and moving around people as they rushed by her. When she reached the girl, she put her arm around her shoulder and started to pull her up.
“You can't stay here,” Libby told her.
The girl was too scared to talk. She was too scared to even move. She just stood there with her arms over her face. She would have been knocked over all over again if Libby hadn't placed herself in front of the girl.
When one man tried to push her over, Libby pushed back. The man stumbled into another man and both went down. The crowd ran right over them, kicking and stomping.
“You need to run!” Libby screamed at the girl, but the girl did not reply.
Libby grabbed the girl's arms and pulled them away from her face. The girl's eyes were red and puffy. Her nose was bleeding. The kid had no business being at the HAND building in the first place, but who was going to stop her? Her parents?
Holding the girl's arms firmly, Libby looked her in the eyes and said, “Do you want to die?”
The girl finally replied to her, but only by shaking her head.
“Good. Neither do I. Which means that we need to get out of here. Will you come with me?” she asked the girl, who nodded in response. “Good.”
Libby stood up and looked around. She was in the center of the crowd. Smoke was drifting toward her, but was nowhere near as thick as it would have been if she'd stayed on the outer edge of the crowd.
She coughed as the smoke burned her lungs, and looked for someplace to take the girl, where they would be safe until this was all over. But there was nowhere to go. Fights were breaking out all around them. Libby knew that some of those people were Freedom. They were her allies, but she didn't know who was who. She couldn't trust anyone to help her.
The crowd was moving away from the HAND building, but the violence did not die as they left. From where she was standing, Libby could hear windows being smashed, and store alarms going off.
Police and HAND sirens were sounding in every direction, but nobody seemed to care. They continued to push and fight and scream. The madness was quickly turning into a full-blown riot.
She turned back to the girl, just in time to see a man with a sign running toward them. Realizing that the sign was going to smack the girl in the face, Libby placed herself between the girl and the man. The sign struck Libby's arm, ripping her shirt and soaking it with blood. It hurt, but Libby didn't have time to think of that. She needed to get moving, even if she didn't know where she was going.
Still holding onto the girl, Libby prepared to move off to the side as soon as she could find a clear path through the crowd, which seemed to be growing thicker by the moment. There was a fountain and a wall, not too far away. If she could just get around that wall, maybe she could escape the flood of people. All she needed to do was find someplace where she and the girl could get away from the chaos, just until it was clear enough to make a run for it.
As she searched for her opportunity to move, Libby couldn't help but take in the scene around her. The violence. The madness. This was what war looked like, she supposed. But the people weren't fighting their oppressors. They were fighting each other. There was no need for the authorities to step in and open fire when the citizens were taking care of the situation all by themselves.
This was not the way it should be done.
She had waited long enough. Finally accepting that there would be no clear path, Libby started to move toward the wall, holding the girl's hand tightly as she forced her way through the mob. Something had changed inside of her. She wanted to scream. She wanted to fight. She was more angry than she had ever been, and she wanted to focus that anger where it belonged.
She wanted to climb the wall and look out across the crowd. She wanted to stand tall and declare who she was.
'I am Libby Jacobs!' she would scream to the people, if only she could. 'I am the one they want. I am the one who has caused so much fear in the hearts of the people who h
old us down, because I hold inside me the key to lifting us up. The thoughts and ideas that this country was founded on. The philosophies which carried it through centuries of growth and prosperity. The ability for people like you to think for yourselves and take charge of your own lives.
'The laws of this oppressive government are only valid as long as the people are willing to abide by them. They are not the true power in this nation. We the people are the true power of this nation! We are the masters of our own destiny! We must stand together against those who would try to take our rights from us. We must work together to reclaim what has been stolen. We must wage this war, not on each other, but on them!'
That was what Libby wanted to scream into the night. She wanted to declare herself a soldier in the ongoing fight against tyranny. She wasn't the little girl that she once was. She could no longer depend on anyone else to save her if she wasn't willing to save herself. This was her life and her rights that were at stake. She was the only one who could fight for them, and she wanted to declare this truth to the masses, as loud as she possibly could.
“Libby!” a voice called from her left side. It was a familiar voice. A voice that she'd wanted to hear for weeks.
When Libby turned, she saw Sim standing on the top of the wall. He was looking down at her with pain and confusion in his eyes. She was relieved to see him.
Then his focus went off of her. His eyes went to someone else in the crowd. He stared at that person for a moment or two before his eyes drifted back to hers. Now his eyes were filled with remorse. He stood there, frozen, offering her nothing else.
Libby turned toward the person whom Sim had looked at. She saw a man in the crowd, moving toward her. He was tall and muscular. His hair was cut short. His face was neatly shaved. And he was holding a gun in his hand.
