“Did I? But don’t you remember, Freya? He left you,” Victor said in a light, airy manner.
“No, he didn’t. You took him. He was my one true love, and you took him away for no reason.” She nearly spat as she spoke the words.
“Oh, one true love.” Victor sighed. “How do you suppose it was that he was your one true love, Freya?”
She stammered for a moment, not sure where he was taking this but feeling nearly defeated already.
“We were matched,” she said simply.
“Oh, a match. Well, isn’t that nice.” He put his head on his hands and batted his eyelashes. “You weren’t a match. You can’t be. There’s no such thing.”
“Everything you say is a lie,” Freya shot back at him.
“Not everything, Freya, but the matching system is. We have found that when you tell people they are a match, they start to act like one. It is amazing what the power of suggestion mixed with eager teenage raging hormones will do. We used to only couple people who reproduced, but there were too many people left behind, they started to cause problems. So then we decided to couple everyone. We simply chose two people who were moving into adult living at the same time. Simple mathematics is how people get paired. There were a lot of complaints in the beginning, and then one of our psychologists came up with a brilliant plan. Tell everyone that we did testing, and we have found their perfect mate. Poof! Most couples are suddenly really happy.”
He looked at Freya seriously for a moment.
“I really overestimated you. I thought you knew; I thought you worked it out on your own. When you first met Colin and hated him, I thought you were too clever to fall in love with him. But then you did, and I just chalked it up to hormones and feeling like you had no other options. Hmmm, but you fell for it, and yet you think you are clever enough to run the State?” He smirked.
“How did you become this way? You started off just like me once. Now you are pure evil,” she said.
Victor began to laugh again. This time his laughter didn’t make her feel angry; it made her feel weaker. There was so much that was truly over her head.
“I was never a lowly commoner like yourself. I never worked on these grounds.” He had a disgusted look on his face. “Again, Freya, you have always been a very good girl, but not too bright. I only said that, so you would want to be on the Council.”
“Why? Why make me a Council member if I am so pathetic?” She slightly lowered the gun.
Victor laughed again, and the sound made the tears pour down even harder.
“A Council member? You think that is a real thing, do you?” He laughed again. “It’s just a distraction, a carrot, if you will. We find if we have a carrot to dangle in front of the good little children, we tell them how good they have been, and so we want them to help out. We need them to take responsibility for the well-being of the State. It has proven to make all of the gullible children want to be that much better, and to tell us if they see or hear anything that goes against the State. We tell them how important they are, but they have to keep it a secret. We can’t have them go around blabbing to everyone, after all; then they would find out that nearly half of the population is on this so-called Council.”
“Fine, but I am a part of five people who are in the running for head of State, and even if I am not selected, I will hold almost as much power. How could that have happened if I was so simple?”
“You were placed in the running, because I wanted it to be so. The high Council needs to be filled with puppets who are easy to control.” He paused. “There are far more than five of you, by the way. Again, we just say that to make you feel important. Why else do you think it is we don’t let anyone be seen?”
Freya felt as if she wanted to crawl into a dark corner and never come out again. She was so humiliated, so beaten down. Colin, the Council, even her affections toward Victor and everyone in the State house: it was all a lie.
What am I even doing here? I’m no killer; I’m not even significant, she thought. Her trembling, aching arms finally dropped to her sides; her shoulder slumped. She didn’t know whether she was about to be arrested, or whether Victor would just shoot her. She hoped he would just shoot her and end her suffering.
“See there—you are no killer. If you were, you would have done it the moment you walked in that door.”
He picked up his tablet again and gestured to it.
“Do you still want to be head of State, Freya? Do you?” he said in a voice one would use when speaking to a child. “All you have to do is say so. I just have to put your name into this little box right here. Then I can head off and enjoy my retirement. I have needed to choose from the candidates my replacement. I’m not getting any younger, you know. Here, I will even type it in. Look, now you just have to tell me that you want it.” He paused. “No, let me rephrase that. You have to tell me you think you are good enough. Just tell me that you are smart enough, strong enough, that you are capable of running the State and taking care of all of the people within. Just say let it be so, if you can.”
Freya’s knees trembled; her entire core was frazzled. She gulped hard and swallowed back the taste of acid. He was right about one thing: the rebellion had chosen the wrong person. There were so many better-suited choices than her to do this job. She could have snuck them in and given them her gun. Why hadn’t she pushed for it to be someone else? Lewis should have done it, and now it would be too late.
“I’m waiting, Freya,” he said. “You can’t even say four simple words. One simple phrase that would change the fate of the nation, and you can’t say it! How could an imbecilic little girl like you run the State? You can hardly even speak for yourself. To be a leader, you have to do what is necessary, whatever the cost! If you were worthy, you would have walked in here and pulled the trigger straight off, but you are too weak. You can hardly care for yourself. You fell to pieces when Colin left. You have no spine!” he said with so much force a little train of spittle hung from the side of his lip.
The monitor then began to flash and turned on.
“Oh look. We have an update on the spacecraft.” He watched the screen as though she was not even there, let alone armed.
The updates on the spacecraft were common; it wasn’t something Freya paid much attention to. Everyone on the ship was in hibernation sleeping chambers, but the State still liked to show video feed from inside the ship that was taken before it was launched into space.
Working in the gardens saved her from having to watch most of the broadcasts. It was not just that Colin was on the ship; it was the propaganda in the videos that was so thick it could almost make her gag. A radio frequency was sent from the ship to communicate its location, to let them all know it was still on track. It was the fact the State added those old videos that bothered her so much.
The announcements were brief, and the usual propaganda showing the inside of the ship started to play. The camera stopped on a set of chambers, and even through the fogged glass, Freya could see it was Colin and Ida.
“These two lovebirds right here want to be the parents of the first child born on the new world. Will they be the first? Who knows? The competition is rather heavy among the young couples in this crew,” said the announcer.
Her heart nearly stopped. The combination of seeing Colin’s face, along with them using him in their propaganda video, nearly made her retch.
She took a deep breath and refocused. Freya’s insides tightened; her arms rose swiftly and accurately. Without a single thought, her muscles responded in the way they were trained to respond as she squeezed the trigger, and shot Victor square between the eyes.
“Let it be so,” she said to his now limp, lifeless body, and walked swiftly over to his desk, retrieving the tablet out of his limp hands and hit Send.
She exited out of the screen, put the tablet down on his desk beside him, and wiped down the tablet of any fingerprints. Her body and mind were both completely numb.
For the first time in her life,
her mind was silent. Her movement and actions were a series of motions produced by her subconscious. She then wiped the gun down of her fingerprints and placed it on the desk beside Victor’s body. Her eyes scanned around the room. It was time to leave; she was finished.
As she turned around, Lewis was suddenly behind her.
“Dammit, Freya!” He struck her across the temple, and everything went black.
Chapter 11
The lights were bright, too bright for sleeping. Freya tried to open her eyes but was struck by a blinding pain. She pressed her hands against her eyes, trying to block out the light. Her mind started to focus; she came to and the first thing she realized was that her hands were not bound.
Did I actually just get away with murder? While rubbing her eyes, a slight sensation of pain registered in her hand, as she discovered it now contained an IV in it. She wanted to open her eyes, but it was just too much work.
“She’s awake,” called a female voice.
“Freya, you are in a clinic.” Chastity placed a soft hand on her arm.
“Do you remember what happened?” asked the other female voice—a familiar voice, although she could not place it.
Of course she remembered what happened. She went into Victor’s office, shot him, and then Lewis attacked her. She knew this, but she didn’t know whether they knew the facts or not. It would be best to see what they knew first before speaking.
“No. What happened? Why do my eyes hurt?” There was no need to pretend to be groggy; it came naturally even though her memory was clear.
“I’m so sorry, Freya.” Chastity slipped onto the bed beside her. “There was an attack on the State house. Victor is dead.”
“An attack?”
“Yes. A disgruntled member of the military came into the State house through the access in your apartment. He struck you, took your gun, and walked right into Victor’s office and killed him,” the familiar female voice explained. “Don’t worry, Freya. We got him.”
“Got him?” she asked, not wanting to hear the answer she already knew.
“I’m so sorry,” Chastity said again, rubbing her arms. “It was Lewis. He confessed.”
“Yes, he did,” the other female cut in. “He admitted he had been plotting this for quite some time. He knew he finally had the opportunity when you moved back into the State house. He seduced you so that he could gain information about Victor’s schedule and habits, and then took his opportunity. He was waiting for you in your apartment when you walked in.”
Freya couldn’t hold back the tears. It simply wasn’t possible. Lewis probably heard the shot and then came in to clean up her mess. If they thought he was waiting in her apartment, he had probably dragged her unconscious body in there. He had done it; he had sacrificed himself for her, just as he said he would.
“Nobody blames you, Freya,” Chastity said. “You couldn’t have known. He fooled everyone. He used your past mission together as a ruse, and you are not the only person who bought it.”
“How could this happen? He’s been in the military most of his life.”
“He turned against the State many years ago. He hid it from everyone. No one suspected him,” the female voice said.
Freya was dying to know whether he was alive or dead, but knew she shouldn’t ask. Checking into his well-being after he had just supposedly attacked her and killed Victor may look too suspicious.
“I can’t go back to that apartment,” Freya said. “I need a different one. I can’t go back there.”
“You won’t have to. You can have a new apartment,” Chastity said. “But let’s not worry about that now. You need to rest up and heal. He hit you pretty hard. You can have more pain medication now, and rest.” Chastity waved over to a nurse, who attended to Freya’s IV right away. Her vision fogged over, and she was asleep again only moments later.
When she woke up in a haze, the IV had been removed. She tried to sit up, but as soon as she tried, dizziness struck her. A nurse was immediately by her side. She started to force her eyes open, shining a light and looking into her eyes. The nurse asked a few questions about how she was feeling—checking for pain, dizziness, or nausea. She then placed a cold pack on her head. It hurt and felt soothing at the same time.
Freya could tell even from how little the nurse had spoken, she was not the person who had been there with Chastity earlier. There would be no purpose in asking this nurse questions; she most likely didn’t know anything.
She was given a box of the cherry-flavored medication and went back to sleep. The next time she woke up, the bright lights no longer shone over her. Chastity was by her side again, and when she looked around, she saw a normal independent living apartment.
“The nurse said you are recovering well, so we had you moved back to the State house.” She lightly stroked Freya’s hair. “Do you think you are up to taking a shower?”
“Do I smell that bad?” Freya replied.
“No.” Chastity laughed. “But you look terrible.”
“Since when do I have to doll myself up for you, Chastity?”
“You don’t, but the Council is waiting to speak to you.”
Chastity helped guide her to a sitting position, and then steadied her not-so-stable body as she walked to the shower. There was a dressing on her head that she helped her to remove, under which Freya saw a cut with three stitches sitting on top of a large bump. Even touching the bandages shot pain down her cheek and up in her scalp.
She had to hand it to Lewis: he made it look convincing. She struggled to wash her hair in the shower; touching the right side of her head hurt. It was not an efficient job, but it was all she was capable of at that moment.
The dizziness was passing, and her legs felt a little more stable. She couldn’t pull her hair up. It almost felt as though her hair itself was hurting as she combed out the tangles. Chastity waited for her at the door, fresh pressed uniform in hand. Even though her legs were much steadier now, Chastity led her with a firm grip to what used to be Victor’s office.
Freya closed her eyes right before she walked in, expecting to see a horrible scene, or at least have some flashback or emotional reaction. When she opened her eyes, there was nothing. The office had been cleaned; there was no trace of any foul play—it was just an office, and it looked like it always had. She sat down, and Chastity turned on the monitor.
“Good evening, Freya,” said a female voice from the monitor. Freya speculated it was the same woman who had dropped in on her in the clinic. “We hope you are recovering well. Your presence has been missed greatly.”
“Thank you. I am still in pain, but the room has stopped spinning.”
“We have an urgent matter we need to discuss with you, Freya,” said a male voice.
Freya gulped. Had they really bought Lewis’s story?
“First of all, other than for the purposes of this meeting, you will be detained in your living quarters.”
Her heart nearly stopped beating. They must know!
“Anyone who has inquired into your whereabouts has been informed that you had come down with a rather nasty illness, and you were temporarily moved into a clinic. You will remain in your living quarters until your head has healed. We can’t have people in the State house see that you were attacked. The official story they are now being told is that your health is improving, but you are on bed rest, as directed from your doctor. All members of the State house who have inquired into Victor’s whereabouts have been told he was called out on a special project.”
“No one knows he is dead?” she blurted, unable to control her surprise. Her entire body loosened up, a small amount, but it was still a very noticeable sensation. If they were hiding her injury, then she was not being arrested. So they really did buy Lewis’s story.
“No, just yourself and Chastity. We find letting people know that the head of State has been assassinated will only give hope and fuel to the rebellion. He will be away on a special project until we are prepared to announce that he
has died of natural causes.”
“How long do we wait?” she asked.
“Until that rather nasty gash on your head has healed. We wouldn’t want to start any speculations. You will also need to remain out of sight until that time.”
“I don’t understand. What does my injury have to do with anything?”
“We can’t very well put you on camera looking like that as our new head of State.”
“What?”
“Congratulations are in order. You are the new head of State, Freya,” another voice said. “Victor cast his vote moments before the attack, and the Council was unanimous. Once you have healed, we will announce Victor’s death and show you to the world.”
Freya felt as though it was her turn to speak, but something impeded her speech. A ball of dry air had gotten stuck in her throat. It was only a moment later that the tears started to pour freely down her face, and then her body was racked with sobs.
The State Series Box Set Page 61
