by K. Weikel
Chapter 30
Quill looks down at the piece of paper he had found in his breast pocket the night he gave his speech about the new ID policy. He sits in his quiet, still office, wrapping up for the night. It’s not a large office, although it’s the largest office available. He has a white desk placed at the back with a black chair, much like the courtroom, and pale walls all around him, photos of the past Leaders hanging on the wall. They all wear the same mask, but their bodies are all different. Names are plastered beneath their images, all different and not one of them even close to the same. One day Quill will be up there as well, but not anytime soon. His first choice has disappeared on him, probably involved in this new revolt that is trying to break through the surface. His search starts tomorrow, and he’s dreading looking over all of the paperwork involved over the other children he had chosen long ago.
The officers still haven’t found any of the Maskless rebels, or they would have reported it to him by now. He can’t lose control of his city now. He’ll be wiped out and someone else will take his place—someone much harsher and much older. Someone like the Leader of the State.
The Face. That’s what they call their leader. Whoever he is, Quill is confident he won’t be hard to find. It’s the process of taking him captive and arresting him and his group that’s the difficult part. They would all be beheaded or deported to another country, where they can be taken care of through harsher punishments. Until then, all he can do is sit and wait for news. It makes him a bit antsy, but he doesn’t mind not getting involved just yet. He has many things to look over and many more cases to solve.
The only other problem is this small piece of paper boggling his mind. He can’t seem to focus with questions twisting about his brain like snow in a blizzard. What does it mean? Why are these words written that way, in that order?
Alone, she will come. Only one will stay.
How did the small paper get into his pocket? For a moment, he tells himself it’s just a prank a black mask is pulling, and he believes it. He believes that it’s all a prank, that it’s all a joke. But fear and doubt sink in slowly as he realizes something will happen to him. He might die. He might lose all of his power. All of the power he is unwilling to give up.
The door to his office bursts open and a cop comes through, huffing and puffing as she leans against the doorframe.
“Sir! Sir, we have an emergency!” She cries, stepping into the office. Quill stands up suddenly, slipping the paper back into his breast pocket.
“Show me.”
“Out here!” She cries and he walks out first. She shuts the door behind him as he walks into the center of the city hall building. The entire room is empty, the entire facility is vacated, and the dome above Quill makes his footsteps echo back down to him.
He turns around to look back at the woman, but she’s gone.
What the…?
The lights go out and he stands in pure blackness. He hears the clicking of shoes echo off of the wall, but he can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from. He feels blind. He feels threatened.
“Whoever you are, you could get in serious trouble for doing this to me!” Quill shouts.
A laugh echoes around him, bouncing off of the walls and the ceiling he knows is above him. He strains his eyes to see in the dark, but it’s no use. There is no light anywhere in the building. There’s nothing to help him see.
“And what punishment would that be?” A voice answers. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Quill spins around.
“Death.”
“Ha!” The voice says. “I’ve already faced it. Multiple times.”
The lights come back on and a girl stands at the front doors. Her mask is half black and half white, mended together with shiny silver staples, and her messy brown hair falls over her shoulders. The mask is almost an exact replica of the one that hangs in the courtroom.
“Hello again, Quill,” the voice says, and he can finally pinpoint it.
“Becca Reed?” He asks. “What are you doing?”
She chuckles and walks up to him. She’s the exact same height as he is, but that doesn’t scare him any. The thing that scares him is that there may be more people waiting for him to make the wrong move. There may be people waiting to shoot him dead.
“I’m ready,” she says, placing her hands on her hips.
“For what?” Quill asks, growing frustrated.
“To take my spot as the Leader of the Clans.” She holds her hand out expectantly. “Can’t you see? I have both of them on my face. So give me your mask. It’s time for you to step down.”
“Becca Reed, you need to stop and think. The rebellion has brainwashed you. They have put thoughts into your head—”
“They haven’t done anything!” Becca shouts. Quill is startled by her sudden outburst. She never yelled at anybody while she was growing up. Then again, she never did to anyone what she did in court to him.
She composes herself and takes a few steps back.
“Fine. Then I’ll force you to give it to me.”
Her arm whips behind her back and she pulls a gun on Quill, turning her head to the side to perfectly line up the shot. “Give it to me.”
“You can’t shoot anyone, Becca,” Quill says, raising his hands up a bit.
“Oh, but I have. Might have been accidental, but I have.”
“Oh, well that’s unfortunate.”
“Like you have any room to talk,” Becca spits. “You manipulate people for a living. You can’t be head of both sides! Doing so means you’re a part of the Dark Clan, because you lie and cheat and kill people and—”
“Oh, Becca,” Quill says, a smile reflecting the one on his mask forming behind his mask. “If only you knew the half of it.”
In one moment of Becca’s hesitation, Quill disarms her and points the gun back around at her chest, cocking it and steadying his hands.
Becca jumps back, surprised. This wasn’t part of her plan. He’s supposed to be dead by now. He’s supposed to be on the floor, bleeding. She’s supposed to have the mask. She’s supposed to…
Panic blossoms inside of her and she swallows. Her arms float up past her head and she sways nervously on her feet.
“There are hundreds of people out there, waiting for a speech from you that Belle had spread a rumor about tonight,” she says as she smirks at the name Belle, keeping her unseen eyes trained on Quill. “Half of them are now a part of the Maskless, and they’re all led by me.”
“So you’re the Face?” Quill chuckles. “I would have never guessed, Becca Reed.”
“What can I say?” She says, shrugging. “Apparently I’m not easy to kill.”
She spins around and darts to the side, just as a bullet shatters a glass door. Becca hears some gasps from the audience as the shards clatter to the ground. She swings the door open and hears another bullet whirr beside her ear. The crowd is large, larger than normal because it’s so unexpected.
And it will be unexpected.
“People of this city!” Becca cries out as Quill comes out into the night, keeping the gun pointed to her. The whispers and voices bouncing between the buildings lining the large street leading to the city hall building quiet and Becca continues. “Look at my mask. What do you see? Black. White. Both. Together. Good can’t exist if there is no bad, and the same goes with bad. No one is perfect, no matter how much the society tells you you are because you obey all of the rules and you get to die without a mask! It’s all just a complex way to control us!”
“Shut up!” Quill shouts to Becca, a lock of brown hair slipping through the crack between his mask and the dark fabric that covers the rest of his head.
Becca tears her eyes away from Quill and looks back at the audience. “We all have regrets, we all screw up, and we all wish we were perfect. But we’re not. I thought long and hard about this, and I have a lot of time to sit and think, since I’m never in town anymore and I’m always runn
ing. And if you’re wondering, I’m always running because I’m the Face of the Maskless.”
The crowd bursts out in chatter and cheers, and Becca tries to silence them again, feeling the pressure of Quills gun on her shoulder blades, although it sits a good ten feet away from her. Her forehead begins to sweat and she feels the confident her slip into place once again.
“My name is Becca Reed, and I am Maskless.”
Becca rips off the mask, the two-toned ribbons fraying apart from each other, and the crowd falls silent as they look upon her face.
“No!” Quill shouts, gaining ground to her. “You will not take my people away from me! They are my people, and I will not go down without a fight. They know what’s right and they know what’s wrong—that’s the way we were all raised. The way we should all live! What she’s doing is wrong,” He says to the people, still holding the gun to her. “It is punishable by death to reveal yourself in the way that she has, going against the government, killing two men, and whatever other horrible crimes she has committed. She is blinded by the wrongs she has done and she wants to drag you all down with it.”
“No, I don’t!” Becca argues. “I’ve seen what it’s like to be Maskless, to have a face, not a mask. No one pities you because of your regrets that show in your faces, and no one tells you that you have to decorate your face because you need to be identifiable, because you look like everyone else and they need to put a name to you, no one kills you because of the color face you have, and no one is good or bad because that’s what is expected of them. We even have different skin colors! Did you know that? I didn’t! And they’re not black and white like our masks. There are so many others, and no one is placed in one category or the other. We are all the same, and no one is left out, segregated, or ignored.”
“Stop!” Quill screeches.
“No! I will not! Not until everyone here is Maskless, not until everyone knows what it’s like. Not until you are brought down. Until all of this is brought down.”
There’s a searing pain in Becca’s leg and the crowd reacts as she drops to the ground, blood pouring from the side of her calf.
“Get back up and shut up, or the next one will be through your heart.”
Becca struggles to get up, trying to hide the pain on her face. She can’t let them see that he’s hurt her. She can’t let them see that he’s weakening her. Her will is stronger than her flesh, and she won’t. Give. In.
“I will not stop until everyone here chooses a side. If they choose you, then I will go quietly and receive my punishment. If they choose me, you have to take off your mask and hand it to me. Are you feeling cocky enough to accept, oh great Leader of the Clans, Quill Henson?”
Becca hears him chuckle, the laugh bubbling up from a deep spot in his throat.
“Deal,” he says, not moving the aim of the gun from her torso. “This ought to be fun.”
“People, look inside your hearts. Do you really want to hide everything from everyone forever? Do you want to keep hiding behind a mask until the day you keel over, and for every day after that, rotting in your grave? I know that I don’t, and I don’t want to be treated as a white mask or a black mask, but as a person, as a human being. This man has kept the tradition going for however long he’s been in office, and the many Leaders of the Clans before him too. It’s been too long. It’s time for change.
“So now is your time to pick. Take off your masks if you agree with me and become one of the Maskless. Take them off and change the world with me.”
No one moves. No one takes off the masks. No one says a word. They stare. They stare and look back and forth from her to Quill. Are they afraid? Do they want everything to stay the same forever? Has she lost?
Quill chuckles and shakes his head. “I hope you like walking. Because your death is waiting for you at the end of the tightrope you’re walking on.”
Becca moves her eyes from the crowd and looks at him, the fear growing inside of her. She nods.
“So now is the time…” She says quieter, less confident. “To choose tradition, to choose Quill… And not to change anything, to stay in your ways and never grow as a human being, to never have your voice heard or your face seen, to be another mask in the sea of plastic and ceramic and whatever else these masks are made of…” Her eyes fall upon Eduard, who has elbowed his way to the front. He takes off his mask and his blue eyes are filled with fear and tears. “Or to choose change. To choose me.”
“Becca!” Eduard screams.
Pain. It ripples everywhere, and she feels warmth spread throughout her body as the world tips around her. She feels her knees hit the ground, numbness taking over as the world falls sideways and her eyes lay on Eduard’s face for the last time before they close.
Banshee stands off to the side, his gun smoking and his mask blending in with the night.
Chapter 31
Quill Henson dreams of the girl, the girl who died that day. The girl who will never be a problem again, and the girl he had wanted to choose to be the next Leader of the Clans. He dreams of that night over and over. The people, the shouts, the blood, the boy that ran up the steps to kneel at her side, Banshee… How did things get so out of control?
The good news is, for Quill, is that everyone returned back to normal. They buried the body and people soon forgot about Becca Reed. She’s a whisper to the wind long forgotten.
He wakes with a start, something in his dream startling him. His room is twice as large as anyone else’s in the city because he is the Leader of the Clans, and there seems to be something wrong. Everything is lighter than normal. It’s not supposed to be this light yet.
He feels a breeze on his face. His face? But his mask…
He reaches up to touch skin.
Something creaks above him. He looks up to see his mask on someone else in the rafters above his bed.
It drops to the floor, a figure cloaked in black slowly standing up before him. He sits straight in bed, his blood running cold.
“Help!” He cries.
The figure with his mask shakes its head and points to the window above his bed. It’s open.
He looks back to where the figure was.
It’s gone.
In its place is a mask. Its colors are strange in the moonlight as Quill slowly gets out of bed, his feet touching the white carpet of the Light Clan’s living quarters. He reaches for it and lifts it up so he can see.
The colors are dark on the front, and sparkles in different places as the pale moonlight slips through the open window. The mask looks partially melted, and as he turns it over, he realizes there is enough light to read the words written in red on the white paint.
I know Becca Reed
. . .
Hiding
Behind
A
Mask
Look for the next book,
Hiding
Behind
A
Name
By K. Weikel
About the Author
K. Weikel has written many stories in the short eighteen years she’s been alive. She used to read to her classmates in third or fourth grade, writing a new chapter every day just for that reason. The first actual book she ever wrote, and finished, was the Haunted Mansion, when she was about eight years old.
K. Weikel is attending college right now and getting her basics out of the way.
