Chapter 4 Cold-Blooded Killer
Cold-Blooded Killer
The unauthorized termination of a comrade-in-arms shall be prosecuted as fratricidal treason and carry a mandatory sentence of death.
In the days after I met Lucas Scott, Devon detected my disquiet. “What’s wrong?” he asked at least five times.
“I just miss Tekqua,” I finally responded, and he didn’t ask again after that.
Adam, however, continued to eye me with interest. “Something bothering you, Soph?”
I smiled in that sarcastic way that always got him laughing. “Just the usual death and destruction.”
He grinned. “Come to the meetup tonight.”
Oh, jeez.
Adam’s whole schtick revolved around camaraderie.
Playing the class clown lured in friends like lemmings to a cliff, despite that he was also a formidable soldier.
Without fail, he believed that togetherness and acceptance were what made us different from the NAO, and he fostered those ideals through fellowship.
What’s the point of dying if you don’t like the people you’re doing it for? he’d say.
I used to love his weekly meetups, but it’d been many months since I’d attended. It was fun, once upon a time. When fun still existed.
“Eh. Thanks, Adam, but I’d rather not.” I slipped away before he could pursue it further.
I headed back toward the sleeping wing, planning to hide in my room, but froze as my gaze caught the light reflected on the metal sheet covering the window.
Already surrounded by thick, forested land, the museum we called headquarters had natural protections.
With the metal shrouding each window and the underground corridors we used to come and go, the building had every appearance of abandonment.
If the Hunters knew where we were, they certainly never hinted at it.
These metal sheets, though…
I stepped closer, my finger trailing over the rivets.
After leaving that dusty church behind, my parents and I arrive at headquarters to a flurry of activity.
Theo is whisked away on official business as soon as we enter the building, and a woman named Tekqua escorts us to our quarters.
She has dark skin and darker hair pulled into two Dutch braids.
Her lashes are long and natural, and her smile sets me instantly at ease.
After she shows us to our room, she promptly returns to her work riveting metal sheets to the windows.
Once my parents are settled, I seek her out.
“Hey!” she says when she notices my interest.
“Can I help?” I ask, pointing at the pile of metal sheets.
“Sure, girl! Get that drill there.”
She points at a power tool that doesn’t want to fit in my hand. I hold it at an awkward angle, and she chuckles at my difficulty. “They’re made for man hands.”
I nod to the others working on the windows. “Where did the metal come from?”
“We stole them from Lowe’s.”
I fake a gasp. “Stolen, you say? I am scandalized.”
Her laugh is hearty. “Come on. I’ll show you how to do it.”
With the first few, I’m slow and clumsy, but I swiftly get the hang of it. I help her close off multiple windows before we move to the museum café, where the glass panes rise from floor to ceiling, at least twenty feet high. Several others brainstorm a solution for these while the two of us chat.
She’s the easiest person I’ve ever talked to.
“I wound up here by luck,” she says. “After the Capitol Hill Massacre, I wasn’t sure where to go, but I’d heard some whispers that people were gathering nearby, and here I am.”
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
“Few weeks. We went on a few raids trying to get supplies, but the Hunters are everywhere. It’s like they can’t wait to claim their first kill.”
I shudder.
“Yeah,” she says, clocking that reaction. “Unified News says they have it well in hand, but—”
“What a bunch of liars,” I say.
“I know.” She picks up a rivet. “We’ll have more intel once we get organized. Now that General Harrison’s here, things will start moving. I heard they’re planning an assembly tonight.”
I almost chuckle at Theo’s new title. “I guess we’ll learn more tonight then.”
She grins. “I can’t wait…”
I returned to myself with a start, my finger still brushing one of the rivets, now rusty with the passage of time. A sharp ache lanced through my chest, but I shrugged off the tears that wanted to spill. Instead, I fled to my room to hide.
Once I was safely ensconced inside, I pressed my fist to my mouth to keep from screaming in frustration at my fraying emotions.
Every nerve was stretched so tight that they threatened to snap entirely.
What was I even doing with my life, agreeing to be Lucas Scott’s contact?
Was my sanity worth this? Could one spy really change the course of this war? Could I truly save Tekqua?
The longing for her friendly face ripped through my thoughts. I had to save her, but where to look? Where to start?
According to the deceptive propaganda, the NAO’s army continued to advance into Canada for the Security Restoration Campaign, and their godforsaken NSF had the domestic conflicts well in hand.
In reality, most of the West was still embroiled in hostilities.
Some parts of the country existed in normalcy, yes, but the Hunters hadn’t made as much headway against the Defiance as they touted.
Their true deception, however, was how they dealt with prisoners.
The Articles of the Defiance—our constitution of sorts—stipulated humane and fair treatment of our POWs.
The NAO held itself to no such standards.
They claimed that captured Defiants were reassimilated, but in actuality, the NAO labeled them traitors to the Commander.
Unable to deport those they no longer considered citizens, the NAO had built camps to detain us.
The Stability bloc had been a migrant detention facility, but they filled it instead with traitors sent to starve and work off their crimes like cattle.
They labored in arms warehouses, building weapons and ammunition for the NAO’s war efforts.
Worse, the younger women were imprisoned in the House of the Rising Sun, a genteel honorific for the correctional houses the NAO declared would reinstate a traditional family values system.
Slave brothels, Theo called them.
I hated the idea of it, but I assumed Tekqua had been sent to the House. She was in a brothel. I was certain of it.
The idea made me sick. Escapees from both the House and the Stability bloc seemed to have transformed into wraiths—starved, unsmiling, their mental health in tatters—and I didn’t want that for Tekqua.
But prisoners unfit for either of these places were put to death, and the thought of her death was like fingers of ice gripping my throat.
Still, I knew what she would have chosen.
Death before slavery.
I had to get her back.
If Lucas’s information was to be believed, the Hunters planned to raid one of our larger safe houses—an apartment building off Yorktown Avenue packed full of refugees awaiting transport to Canada.
The Hunters’ primary goal was neutralization of the opposition, but they also kept us from smuggling people out of the country.
If the Hunters infiltrated that building, the people inside would face terrible fates.
Theo’s best squads spent days relocating the families inside that building and setting traps for the Hunters. On the night of the raid, I was called for field medic duty along with a handful of others, including my shift-mate, Liliana.
She and I weren’t the best of friends, but we served all our medic shifts together.
She was a quiet, competent woman with black hair she always pinned in a topknot.
It was enviable, really, how easily her hair submitted to her orders.
Mine had no such inclinations. It wanted to be wild and free, much like the Defiance.
With our medic bags slung over our shoulders and our red cross bands tied tight around our arms, we set out under a blanket of stars for the building Lucas Scott claimed would be overrun by Hunters in just a few hours.
Fuel had been practically nonexistent for the past couple of years, so we traveled on electric ATVs over time-roughened streets to the square that had once housed trendy shops and upscale restaurants.
Inside the apartments, soldiers lay in wait. A sniper lurked in the building across the street—not that he had many rounds to shoot. In the beginning, gunfire had been the soundtrack of our lives, but as time wore on and materials grew scarce, so did ammunition.
Then came the Comprehensive National Firearms Regulation Directive.
It was established last year, when countrywide civil protests against the NAO had grown especially violent and deadly.
The NAO peddled the radical idea that escalating gun violence was a threat to national security and domestic tranquility.
They instituted a moratorium on the possession, distribution, and use of firearms and explosives.
The Gunlock Law, they called it.
“Effective immediately,” Brandon Sikes from Unified News had read on air, “the right to possess, carry, transport or discharge firearms or other explosive weaponry is hereby limited to active-duty personnel of the Unified States Armed Forces. Unauthorized possession or use of firearms shall be considered an act of domestic terrorism and constitute a capital felony offense, subject to life imprisonment or death.”
Clips had followed of calm citizens handing over their weapons with smiles. Tranquil neighborhoods with children playing scrolled over the screen. The golden sunlight streaming overhead bestowed a sense of peace.
If only…
What really happened in the weeks following that edict was not peaceful. The right to bear arms wasn’t a catchphrase or a passing fancy to the people of the US. It was a governing principle. A staple with which they were raised. A fundamental right.
Revoking it did not go well for Haynes.