by C. A. Gray
When I opened my eyes again, I blushed under the intensity of the Potentate’s stare. “That keeps happening,” I mumbled.
“Your brain is having a hard time reorienting itself now that you’re no longer brainwashed,” he told me, taking my elbow again. “That’s all.”
He led me into the banquet hall. I was surprised to find it completely empty—but we passed through the hall and into an intimate sitting room set for two. A candelabra flickered candlelight on the side of the table. Tasteful arrangements of flowers adorned the serving tables. I noticed my slippers sinking into the fabric beneath me, and saw thick brocaded carpet. The walls were painted a rich color in the brown family that I could not identify in the candlelight. They offset the small collection of oil paintings on the walls perfectly.
The Potentate pulled out my chair for me. As I sank into it, I felt his fingers slide down my lower back and linger there for a minute. His touch revolted me in a visceral kind of way. For half a second, I considered turning around and slapping him.
This is the Potentate! I reminded myself. What’s the matter with you?
I started to feel my chest constrict again.
Servants brought us fresh bread and fancy hor d’oevres which they identified for us as things like bacon wrapped mussels and seared steak lettuce cups. I grabbed for my sparkling glass of champagne greedily, hoping for something to take the edge off my nerves.
“Slow down, my dear,” laughed the Potentate. “It’s meant to be sipped, not gulped.”
I swallowed, and I felt the warmth of the alcohol hit me.
“Sir,” I began, “may I ask—”
He cut me off with a magnanimous wave of his hand. “To you I am Ben, Kate.”
I felt myself blush again. I didn’t understand why he looked at me like that. He was the Potentate, the ruler of the greatest nation in the world, and at least twice my age, yet he looked at me like… I didn’t even dare to think it. I had to be wrong.
I rushed on, forcing myself to call him by his utterly inappropriate first name. “Ben, what happened to my family? My parents, Charlie, my fiancé Will. Where are they?”
The Potentate sighed, and did not answer me right away, his expression all sympathy. I felt as if a stone sank my stomach all the way to my feet.
“What happened to them?” I demanded.
“I’m afraid your parents, and Charlie and Will, were all brainwashed by Jackson MacNamera. It led them to do very rash things. It… lead to their deaths.”
“What?” I whispered. I tried to feel shock, but all I felt was confusion. I vaguely recalled hugging my parents goodbye in the broadcasting studio. Charlie left right as Jackson told him to… but I couldn’t recall anything beyond that. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “They’re all dead?” I asked again, incredulous.
The Potentate nodded, his lips pursed in regret. “Yes, my pet. I am sorry to tell you—all of them have died on the run, because of MacNamera.”
But Will wasn’t even in the broadcast studio, I remembered. He wasn’t in Beckenshire either, when the bombs fell.
The bombs? I started at my own thought. What bombs?
In response to my own question, I saw a flash in my mind of Beckenshire, leveled to the ground, but couldn’t remember where I’d seen it. I knew the memory carried with it a strong emotion, and I could almost remember why, but not quite…
I pictured Jackson’s face, just before the agents burst in on us in the broadcasting studio. I tried to feel hatred for him—he’d killed my fiancé and my whole family! But the last memory of I had of him was through the rear window of the sedan as I drove away, and he’d looked so… tortured…
My blood felt ice-cold again, and my chest began to constrict.
“Excuse me,” I muttered, pushing my chair back. The Potentate dismissed me as I fled from the room.
I ran into the banquet hall, startling several servants who leapt out of my way as they brought our next courses into the sitting room. I’d hoped to find a secluded spot where I could just be alone, but I didn’t know the palace well enough yet. Heedless of the stares, I crouched down into a squat right next to the drapes in the middle of the banquet hall, pressing my forehead to my knees.
Breathe, Kate! I commanded myself. I counted my breaths in and out, focusing on the feeling of my slippers sinking into the carpet and the burn of my thigh muscles as they held my weight in that position. I heard the clatter of dishes, felt the stares and heard the whispers of the servants.
Just let them come and go, said a voice in my head, calm and self-assured. Let it wash over you—acknowledge their presence as a fact, but don’t let it mean anything.
I felt myself return to my body, calmer, at least for the moment.
My family is dead. Will is dead. It’s Jackson’s fault.
I tried on the words, to see how they felt, but they still didn’t feel right. They didn’t feel like truth.
What is truth? I wondered. Is there even such a thing?
I returned to the sitting room, pulling out my chair and forcing a smile.
“I am sorry, sir—I mean, Ben. I just needed to collect myself.”
“Of course you did, my dear. It’s a lot to take in.”
I took another swig of champagne, and forced a bite of my herb and bitter greens salad before I ventured, “Jackson… hasn’t been killed too. Has he?”
The Potentate seemed to weigh his answer. At last he said, “No, not yet.”
“But you have him in custody?”
He chewed slowly, swallowing before he answered, “We do.”
“I’d like to see him.”
The Potentate shook his head, with a sad smile. “I will grant you anything that is in my power to give, and that is good for you, my dear. But I do not think that would be wise. Not yet.”
“I need to see him,” I insisted. “I have to speak with him.” I wasn’t exactly sure why this was so important—I just knew somehow that Jackson would have the answers I needed.
But then again, maybe I only thought that because I was still under his influence.
“Maybe someday,” Ben replied, “when I am confident that MacNamera no longer has any mind control over you. But now, it is much too soon.”
I sighed, looking at my napkin. Then I asked, “Where is he being held?”
Ben smiled at me, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “You think I forget your history as a subversive child, Miss Brandeis,” he scolded me, shaking his head. “Rest assured that when the time is right, I will allow you to speak with your former captor—under controlled conditions, when he cannot harm you anymore. But for now, you must believe me that I have your best interests at heart. You do believe that, don’t you, Kate?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. But he waited for an answer.
“Yes,” I lied at last.
That night I woke in a cold sweat. I’d dreamt of Jackson.
Chapter 4: Will
“It’s in here,” called Alec from the next room. He meant the net screen, I knew. This house wasn’t abandoned—Pensington was a busier part of the Republic, and I was too impatient to search carefully for an abandoned home. We just made sure that the owners had left for work for the day. That would have to be good enough.
I didn’t think I’d still be able to access the control center database anymore anyway. Terry, the colleague I’d worked with briefly whose credentials I intended to use to access the portal, would certainly have changed his password by now. How long had it been since I’d left the government’s employment and found my way to the caves? Surely a month? Weeks at least. The time started to blur together. I knew Terry and the rest of the team changed their passwords every few weeks, and not all at the same time, either. I further knew that when Jean tried to hack in the last time with no credentials at all, she tripped off a new government internal security trigger, and the next thing the hunters knew, the caves were destroyed.
But the co
ntrol center database was the only idea I had to find Kate. So here we were.
I followed Alec’s voice into what must’ve been a study: elegant by Republic standards, with peeling wallpaper stained yellow from years of sunlight coming through the windows. Jean followed behind me, and I sat down and powered up the net screen. I typed in Terry’s credentials and password.
DENIED.
“Damn,” I muttered.
“Do you know him well enough to guess what he might’ve changed it to?” asked Alec.
“We don’t choose those kinds of passwords for this very reason,” I told him. I paused, pounding the desk with my fist in frustration. “Too easy to guess. They’re always just a random combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols.”
“Why don’t you try your own credentials?” Jean asked tentatively.
I snorted. “As if they weren’t disabled the day I disappeared!”
“Worth a try, though, right?” she pressed. “Because if they weren’t disabled, yours is the only password which wouldn’t have changed. You weren’t there to change it.”
“But Voltolini knows I’m a traitor—” I told her, even as I typed in my own credentials and hit enter.
Voila. The government intranet.
“They’re a bunch of freaking idiots,” I murmured, amazed.
Jean smiled. “Maybe it just never occurred to them you’d try something so obvious.”
I searched Kathryn Brandeis in the database. There it was, most recent activity on top. There was a gap of a month and a half—it’s been that long? I wondered. But the first entry after the long gap was Greensborough Broadcasting Center.
Jean, reading over my shoulder, murmured, “She did the broadcast in Greensborough.”
I nodded but didn’t comment—that didn’t help us anymore, as predicted. Two data points showed her there, so she’d been in Greensborough for at least two hours. But then it abruptly changed, only five hours ago: to Law, the capitol.
“How did she get from Greensborough to Law in under two hours?” murmured Alec. “Even by bullet train, there should be some transit…”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but there’s only one thing in Law that she could be headed to.” I looked at them both. “The palace.”
“So much for that,” Alec muttered.
“What do you mean, so much for that?” I demanded. “We’re going!”
Alec rolled his eyes at me. “Oh, right. And when we get there, then what? We go in with guns blazing and tell them to give us Kate, or else?”
“Maybe!” I shot back. “I don't know, we’ll figure it out on the way. But I’m not just gonna sit here and let them execute her!"
“I don't think he intends to execute her,” said Jean, her voice several registers below Alec’s and mine. Ever the peacekeeper. “Not as long as he thinks he can use her.”
My eyes flashed at Jean. “Use her?”
“For his cause, I mean.” Jean blushed. “Alec is right. I know you want to help Kate, but I think we have to wait until she's not at the palace anymore to have a chance.”
“Besides,” Alec added, “we're supposed to meet up with the others in Friedrichsburg in a day and a half. We’ll miss them if we go to the palace, and we can't help Kate there anyway.”
I snarled at him. “If it were Maggie in the palace right now—?”
“Would you stop throwing her in my face?” Alec shot back.
“Well if it were, is there even a chance in hell we'd be having this conversation?”
Alec huffed and flushed, and finally caught hold of himself. “Yes. We would be,” he spat at last. “Only I’d be the one wanting to go, and you’d be the one trying to talk sense into me. Because going to the palace is suicidal, and it would be, no matter who was there!”
“But you’d go, whether anybody came with you to help or not. Wouldn’t you?”
He glowered at me for a long moment, but then finally he sighed. I knew that was my victory.
“Fine,” he growled. “But I swear, if I die for that spoiled little princess of yours,” he jabbed his finger in my face, “I’m going to be your personal poltergeist!”
We left the house with the net screen, piling into the stolen car. Jean spread the map out on the backseat, calling directions to Alec. I was supposed to be helping her, but instead I was transfixed by the phenomena taking place on the sidewalks.
Ordinarily on a weekday in a busy city like Pensington, the sidewalks would be full of walkers and bikers going about their business. The streets would have some cars, though not a ton, since only the wealthiest citizens had cars. All of that was still the case, and yet… the people stood still, instead of moving like they had somewhere to be. One woman stared at the sky with a glazed look on her face. Two young girls sat in the middle of the sidewalk, their arms wrapped around their knees as if they were trying to protect themselves. Clusters of older people spoke to one another with earnest expressions. One or two people sat curled up in the middle of the sidewalk, crying.
“Are you guys seeing this?” I asked the other two at last.
“What?” Alec snapped, turning left onto a side street leading to the interstate per Jean’s instructions.
“We broke the repeater what, an hour ago?” I pointed out the window. “Look at these people. It’s working already. The signals aren’t getting through!”
Alec glanced out the window and back at the road several times, his gaze lingering longer each time. Jean sniffled, like she was crying.
“We’re doing it,” she choked. “We’re actually making a difference!” She pressed her face against the glass. “Pull over, we have to talk to them!”
“No we don’t,” I insisted. “Keep going, Alec.”
“What if that was you?” Jean demanded. “Look how lost they are! They need some answers. Wouldn’t you want answers in their shoes?”
“I was in their shoes only weeks ago, and I found the answers for myself! They’ll figure it out too. Go to the palace, Alec!”
But Alec slowed down and rolled down his window, calling to an elderly man, “Sir! Excuse me, sir?”
As if in a daze, the old man looked at him, his blue eyes watery and filled with despair.
“You look like you’ve just woken up from a nightmare,” Alec told him. “Are you all right?”
The old man opened his mouth, trembling.
“Son, I’ve seen… lots of things in my life,” he said. “But this…” He shook his head, and gestured to the world around him with his hand. Then his watery eyes sharpened on Alec. “You do see what I see, don’t you?”
“Yes sir,” said Alec gravely. “The world started looking different about an hour ago, didn’t it?”
“I… reckon it was about an hour,” the old man acknowledged after a pause. “I thought that young lady’s broadcast was awful strange… until now.”
“Kate was telling the truth,” I told him.
The old man leaned down, peering at me through Alec’s window. “Yes, I suppose she must have been…”
“You need to fight,” Alec declared. “You’ve been lied to ever since Voltolini took power, and you need to fight!”
The man blinked at him about five times. “Do I look like I’m in any condition to do that?”
“Maybe not you alone, but you’ve got a mouth, don’t you? Friends, family… everyone who’s waking up needs to band together! Hold on a minute…” With this, Alec guided the car to a curb and killed the engine.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “We’re going to the palace!”
“Look,” Alec whirled on me. “We have seventy-nine repeaters left to break in the Republic, right? But there’s only three of us, and now we’re off on a suicide mission to rescue a girl I don’t even like! But look around, Will—it’s working. I’ve never seen so many sheep suddenly wake up before! They’re confused and they’re looking for an explanation and a mission. If you don’
t want to break the rest of the repeaters yourself, fine. But someone’s got to!”
“So you want to give the maps over to perfect strangers?” I retorted. “How long do you think it would take for those to fall directly into agent hands?”
Instead of answering me, Alec got out of the car and marched over to my side. I got out too, and he stepped right up in my face. “No, you’re right, you idiot. I don’t want to give the maps to perfect strangers. What I want is to stay here long enough to leverage what’s happening, and give these people answers and a purpose! This is what the hunters have been wanting to do for years: to actually have this chance, right here, right now! We have it, and I’m not gonna waste it!”
Before I could take a swing at him, I felt Jean’s hand on my shoulder.
“Alec is right,” she murmured soothingly. “I know you still love Kate, but this is bigger than any one of us. We need help.”
The old man stood on the curb beside our car, watching this conversation. While Jean restrained me with her gentle hand, Alec glared at me before turning his back and crawling up on to the hood of the stolen vehicle, and then onto the roof. The metal dented under his feet.
“Anyone looking for answers of what’s happening to you right now,” Alec shouted to the confused people all around us, “Gather round!”
Chapter 5: Kate
It was two pm. I tossed aside the fourth romance novel that day from a stack the Potentate—I mean, Ben—had sent up via Ingrid: some cheesy pre-Republic thing with a shirtless man on the cover, all greased up to make his muscles stand out. It was about a Duke of something-or-other and a kitchen maid… some kind of Cinderella story. Maybe it would have been good, if I could concentrate on that sort of thing. But my thoughts were too restless even for distraction.
The days were excruciatingly long. I stared out the window of what had become my bedroom in the last week, overlooking a lush garden which by now I had thoroughly explored. But I could only take so many afternoon walks by myself, and Ingrid was as stiff and cold as ever. A couple of other servants would come to check on me and insist on walking with me from time to time, but I found their smalltalk intolerable, and their awkward silence even worse. As much as I despised the constant solitude, alone with my thoughts, I had to admit I still preferred solitude to lousy company.
