《Freedom》

¤

The entire room shakes. Porcelain dolls and empty picture frames shatter against the floor. The heap of stuffed animals scatter, tumbling into Tujo's back. A bookshelf falls, rattling the beaded lampshade on the bedside table. The holographic projector titters to life and an explosion of color, rosy pinks, warm, eggy yellows, pale, springtime greens, hover in the center of the room. Calming piano music floods our ears, as more things crash and crumble around us.

I throw my arms protectively over my neck. A small square box clips Quint in the forehead. Blood trickles down over his eye. The mattress springs inward, as if catching a dozen or so baseballs at top speed. When it stops moving, so does the room.

Marava's already got her hands on Quint, tending his wound, fawning over him like he's on his deathbed. He smiles at her frantic movements and the way she's ripped the sleeve of her uniform to lap up the blood. "Thanks, Mars," he says, stroking her cheek.

She nods, and it's all she can do to keep the tears at bay.

Tujo slowly peels himself off his sister. "You okay?"

Rima nods. "Yeah." She rolls her shoulders and plucks up the teddy bear Tujo had made his punching bag. "Seems Teddy wanted his revenge."

Tujo cracks a smile. "Guess so, though Mr. Bear needs to go to the gym. I hardly felt anything." He straightens up and slaps a bicep.

Rima chuckles and squeezes the stuffed animal into her chest. "I think I'll keep him," she says softly. "Call him Joey."

Tujo coughs and turns away. The tips of his ears turn pink.

"Sin?" The large boy looks down at me. "You okay?"

He brushes some broken ceramic off his shoulders. "Seem so."

I nod and turn my attention to Nol. "How bout you guys?" I include Snitch in my query though he's the last person on my mind. If it weren't for all his crying and screaming, I'd have forgotten he was in the room. Even Sin leaves more of an impression.

Nol tosses his head back and shakes it to get the hair out of his eyes. He looks like a dog, one who's drying themselves off after a refreshing dip in the lake, or kiddie pool. His eyes, bright and vibrant latch onto mine. "I'm good. You?"

"Still intact," I say. His gaze makes my blood boil. That strange feeling constricts inside my chest again.

Nol smiles. "Glad to hear it."

"Are you, now?" I raise an eyebrow.

Nol gets to his feet, turns, and helps Snitch stand. The entire front of his shirt is soaked with tears or sweat, or some combination of both. Nol looks at me over the shoulder, while Snitch latches onto his arm, his eyes wide in disbelief. The way he acted you think we'd all just survived a nuclear bomb. Still, I wasn't expecting the explosion to be...quite so intense.

"Quint's not the only one who'd have been sad if you died." Nol's voice rips me from my own thoughts and back to the present. Through the hologram, which now projects an image of a starry night outstretched over a field of gently swaying grasses, Nol smirks.

"Yeah well," I clear my throat. "At least people would miss me."

"And the implication is--"

"That there are some people that wouldn't be missed."

He raises both eyebrows. "Like--"

"Mars," I say without giving it a thought. She hisses, but her predatory grunts and growls have become so frequent now, they're little more than background noise, like an overlaid laugh track, one that's a mere click away from being muted.

Nol nods. "And no one else?"

I shake my head. "Nope. I'm sure you'll be missed," I say. That wipes the smile from his face. Despite how he likes to seem, Nol's not all to smooth when it comes to women. He might as well stick to prescription pills. "By all those men whose dicks you have yet to suck for your Monday Blues."

Nol flushes, and even his freckles turn pink.

Tujo breaks into laughter. "That's not who he wanted to miss him--"

Rima smacks him, though she can't hide the smile playing on her lips. One by one, each of us begins to laugh. Marava included. Finally, Nol joins in. Snitch stops sniveling long enough to give a lazy half-smile.

Our laughter fills the space, where seconds ago, we'd all been cowering, screaming, fearful of the room crashing down on us, entombing us forever in the place we'd called home. With each stiff chuckle, a little more of our dread is wicked away. Maybe we'll be okay. Maybe we'll get through everything--

Snitch topples over. A piece of metal juts from his back.

"Holy shit," Tujo says.

Nol kneels, places his hand around the wound. Blood oozes over his fingertips. Petals of red blossom on the fabric of Snitch's shirt.

"I don't feel so good," he says.

Nol nods. "It'll be okay, Christian."

Snitch reaches up, pats Nol on the cheek. "Liar," he says.

A knock sounds from behind the door. "We're through. Time to leave." The voice sounds feminine, but not hard. Bored. Keran.

Sin makes to move the mattress. I scramble to help him. It's mostly him that wrestles the mattress free, but I pretend like I've contributed. He tosses it onto the box spring. The other side is shredded by bits of concrete. There's a hole in the door.

Keran peeks her head through it. "Good thing the Commander thought of the mattress, or some of you would be dead." She looks disappointed that a few of us hadn't been lying motionless on the floor.

I hurry over to her. "Keran." She frowns at the sound of her name coming out of my mouth. "It's Snitch, he's wounded."

She sighs and motions for Sin to open the door. It's jammed pretty tightly in the frame, but with a push of his shoulder, Sin gets it open. Keran walks through, pistol in hand.

All the blood's gone from Snitch's face, but as Keran approaches him, he finds a reserve, just enough to color his cheeks. He backs away from her, though Nol's still trying to staunch the bleeding.

"Hey there, three-toes," Keran says, looming over him. "Calm down," she raises her hands up, points the gun toward the ceiling. "I'm not here to hurt you." She leans over him, which forces her to get to her tiptoes. She might be part of a terrorist organization but she's still young, probably no older than Nol.

As soon as her eyes land on Snitch's wound, she frowns and turns away.

"Is it bad?" I ask.

She nods. "Pierced one of his kidneys."

"You can survive with only one," Tujo interjects. Rima shakes her head.

"Yeah, you can," Keran spits back. "But we've got nothing to stop the internal bleeding."

"No emergency kits?"

Keran shakes her head. "None that we'd be willing to use on him."

I grab her arm. "Enough--"

"I'm not joking," she says, shrugging off my touch. "It's the truth. Those kits are hard to come by. We use them on Titav only. Snitch isn't one of us."

Nol's face has gone as stark as my cell wall. He'd called Snitch, Cris. He was someone to Nol. "What about the infirmary? We could get supplies there, stitch him up, get him--"

"Transport's outside. The Titav's not risking more lives for him. If you go back in to help him, we take the Chemist and leave."

"And what if Nol doesn't go with you?"

Her eyes narrow. "If he doesn't go on his own, we'll use force." She raises the gun, brushes the barrel along my side.

I shove my hand into my pocket and coil my fingers around the activation key. "I'll activate the DER. Roast your commander-in-chief."

Keran chuckles. Unlike the laughter we'd just shared, hers is hollow, cold, lifeless. "You kill Della, and you've got no one protecting you from the rest of us. Most of the Collective don't like the idea of rescuing Councilmen-in-training. Would rather see you burn, or buried under rubble."

Fingers encase my wrist. "Nol?"

He gets up and I see now, that Snitch has stopped moving. He's paler, his eyes glazed over.

"What--"

A piece of metal hangs from Nol's other hand. Blood drips from its jagged tip onto the ground. The pool of blood on Snitch's back is double, triple in size. There's no rise and fall to his chest, no wheezing, wet breaths. Nol's fingers tighten around the shard. It'd probably been a picture frame before it'd killed Snitch.

Keran puts her gun away and claps. The sound echoes in the room. "There, looks like the Chemist solved our problem." She moves toward the door. "Everyone out. We leave in ten, with or without you."

One by one everyone files out, following Keran into the main room. I linger behind with Nol, staring at Snitch's corpse.

"Why'd you--"

The piece of metal clatters to the floor. "It was faster this way. Probably passed out from blood loss, didn't even feel it as it happened."

His movements are lifeless, perfunctory. Nol's on auto-pilot, moving because he knows he has to. The green and blue of his eyes have muddled together, the gemstone-like quality clouded by his grief. Who was he to you, I want to ask. But, taking a cue from Tujo, I bite my tongue, swallow back the words that'd only make the situation worse.

As Nol walks toward the door, the hologram in the center of the room changes. Bright city lights shine down on bustling streets where people in luxurious peacoats and fancy smocks shuffle to their next important meeting or business lunch. The music's changed to match the image, from breezy, whimsical flute and piano, to silky saxophone. The fringe of the hologram, a picture of an enormous glass skyscraper, haloed by bright red neons and the FUA Dove, distorts as Nol's shoulder goes through it.

Nol turns, his face colored by fury and slams a fist into the wall where the projector's recessed. The bulb that forms the images shatter. The city-scape flickers, before crumbling around Nol. Blood trails down his knuckles.

"Let's go, Ten." He doesn't look back at me.

I gulp, take one last look at Snitch and the ID card laying beside his lab coat pocket. Christian Fenderson. I reach down, feel the laminated plastic, trace a fingertip over Snitch's face - his round cheeks, weak chin, big buggish blue eyes. He'd orchestrated Nol's escape and died for it. Why?

I stuff the ID card into my pocket beside the DEC activation key, get up and hurry to catch up with the others. We'd left one man behind; there was no need to leave anyone else.

¤

Rubble crunches underneath my feet, and each jagged piece stabs me through the thin sole of my slippers. Soft shoes were given to us so we wouldn't scuff up the nice, marble floors - they weren't meant for terrain like this. Smoke veils most of the carnage, but it isn't thick enough to choke on. Shapes and colors still reach me through the haze. The sink, where Sin had been standing, where he'd lifted a fork with every intention of driving it into that Titav prick's skull, now sits on a toppled sofa, beside a heap of rubble that looks awfully like the table Della had slammed me against.

Most of the wood's no more than splinters, felled by large chunks of flying concrete. Forks stick out of the wall, beside empty picture frames and abstract art prints. There's grooves in the drywall, pockmarks from shrapnel probably. A burst pipe gushes water; it meanders over cinder blocks, slats of drywall, shoe caddies, and knocked over bookshelves, a man-made river that feeds a growing lagoon in the center of the rug. Two masked Titav soldiers rush past me, rocks and particle board carried in their arms.

Keran flanks an opening in the wall, where past the copper pipes and sparking wiring, there lays a patch of smooth blacktop. I blink. Running the perimeter is the fence, chainlink, topped with chicken wire. When I lean I can make out two towers which should be, according to protocol, patrolled by Dove Militia. No one in black garb stalks across the nests, long-range sniper rifles scanning the grounds for signs of intruders or hopeful escapees. Della doesn't strike me as someone who overlooks the details, so I'm guessing she saw to it that those towers became, and remained, empty.

My thoughts must have called her forth because the Titav Commander steps out from another room, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She's changed out of her regal, white Dove militia garb, abandoned the mask and breathing device, in favor of something more comfortable yet just as deadly. She sports dark green camouflage, shirt and pants, a thinner, Kevlar vest, brown, with a slew of pockets, and a tactical belt slung low over her hips.

She's left her rifle in favor of her pistol, which remains snug in its thigh holster. The DEC leaves faint traces of blue behind each of Della's movements involving that arm. Her hair's slicked back, tucked behind her ears. Water drips down her face. She must have come from the bathroom, taken a few seconds to clean up. She's missed some dirt near her hairline. A smear of dust runs along her square jawline.

When she sees me, she points to the wreckage. "Like what you see?"

"How'd you take down the tower guards?"

She makes for me, her steps lighter having traded in her tactical boots for lace-up combats. "Drone strikes," she says. "At dawn. Had a few of my guys dress up as guards, make sure our movements went unnoticed until we could hack into the Network."

"When you pay for the best," I say, looking around for the others. They're nowhere in sight. "You get the best."