Rise Against the Faultless (19 page)

I rubbed my eyes and looked
again, I was a good long way away, I could have mistaken him for someone else,
but at second glance I was sure. Was Dale leading them into this attack? Not
one part of me believed that he was doing this willingly. I looked at his face,
to see any sign of distress, but I did not detect it. We had to be sure not to
be spotted by Oren, but more importantly, we had to get back to the Training
Compound to warn the others. My mind was reeling from the revelation, but I had
to keep rolling. “Everyone, to your stations.”

The crowd dispersed in an excited
frenzy. I tried to push through to follow Dale, but I couldn’t get anywhere.
Shane grabbed my arm, “You’ll never be able to catch up with him right now.
Besides this is the worst possible place to do it, Raily. You’d be dead in a
second. The best chance you have of getting him back and getting him to one of
those safe houses is by isolating him at the Compound. I know you don’t want to
hear this, but he’s on their side right now. Whatever means they’re using to
control him is working. That means that he could resist you as well.”

“So what do I do? Let him march
to his death because they’ve got some kind of mind control over him?” He stood
there looking at me. I knew he was right. “You’re right,” I said, “we’ll get
back before they do and I’ll find him then. I’ll do a detox on him. I know the
effects of the drug they’re using can run out of his system after several
hours. We’ll detox him, we’ll restrain him if we have to, until he’s himself
again.”

We had no trouble getting back
to the bikes. Even the guards had dispersed. It was obvious that they had no
intention of getting back to this camp. Before getting on the bikes, I stopped
Shane, “Shane, I have to tell you something, I should have told you this from
the beginning.”

“Rai, don’t,” Lo chimed in.

“He deserves to know,” I told
her.

“Whatever it is, let it wait
until tomorrow. We have business to take care of right now,” he said and before
I could say anything back, he hopped on his bike and took off.

“There might not be a
tomorrow,” I said to myself.

As if the universe heard my
dark thought, it answered me. I heard a bullet go whizzing by my head. I turned
to see a guard running at us and taking aim at Lo. She didn’t see him. I pulled
out my scorpion and let one of the small barbed stingers fly in the direction
of the guard. Before he even saw it coming the stinger flew through his chest.
I pulled back on the weapon to retrieve the stinger and it flew right back to
me making its way through his body once more. His eyes went wide as blood
started to pour from him. Jubal saw the entire thing. The guard dropped and by
the appearance of him, he was dead before he hit the ground.

It was the first person I’d
ever killed. All that I knew is that if I wouldn’t have killed him, he would
have killed Lo. I couldn’t allow myself time to process this. I couldn’t worry
about anyone finding him either, as we were about to be in a full on battle
with the Defectors anyway, “Let’s get out of here I said to Lo and Jubal.”

We pushed the bikes faster than
we ever had before. We had no idea how quickly the Defectors would get back to
the Training Compound or what time that they planned to strike. I had to figure
out a way to intercept Dale without getting him killed. What if Shane was right
and he didn’t
want
to come with me because of the drugs? None of us
bothered to stop and change out of our suits, we were going to need them.

“Lo, go and get Cyril and tell her
they’re coming and to gather the others. Shane and I are going to warn Terra
and Frank. Meet us out at the turbines.”

Shane and I went straight to
Terra’s office. By some stroke of luck she was actually there, working. We
burst through the door and by the looks on our faces she could tell that
something was desperately wrong.

“We need to talk,” I said and
glanced down at the button she’d used before to scramble any signals that would
be spying on our conversation.

She reached down and pressed
it, “Ok, what’s wrong?”

“We found their camp, and
Dale.”

“That’s great.”

“That’s not all. They won’t be
at that camp for long because they’re coming here, to attack. They’re on their
way now, they could be here any minute.”

“We knew it was going to happen
sooner or later, but we’d just hoped for later,” it was the most worried I’d
ever seen Terra.

“There are too many to number,
but we have an advantage. They don’t realize that we know it’s coming. The real
problem is that there are people, lots of innocent people, here who have no
idea that they exist, and they will get caught in the crossfire. Gather all
that you can and meet us at the turbines as quickly as possible. And, Terra, if
you have anyone here that you care about, hide them now.”

She nodded, “You, too.”

“I should tell my mother. She
could help,” Shane said.

“Raily, you didn’t tell him?
Are you kidding me?”

“Shane, you can’t tell your
mother. Look, what I was trying to tell you before was...”

“We’re out of time, go!” Terra
pushed the button and we had to leave.

He just stood looking at me and
I shook my head. I had to warn Adrian and I knew just where to find him. When I
got back to my room, Adrian was outside the door, pacing back and forth,
pulling at his hair.

“Rai! You scared me to death!
Come on,” he grabbed my hand and started pulling me back to my room when I
stopped him. That’s when Adrian noticed Shane.

“We’re not going in there,” I
told him.

“We have to. It’s nearly five,”
he pleaded with me, “and you need to get back to your room, too,” he directed
at Shane.

“No, come with us.” I could
tell Adrian was frustrated but he went along with us anyway.

“This is a terrible plan,” he
mumbled.

            I thought of Ari. I was angry with him, but that
didn’t mean I wanted him to get caught in a war. He, however probably knew of
this attack a long time ago and had failed to mention it to me when I spoke
with him not twenty four hours ago.

When I got out to the wind
turbines I was met with a huge surprise. There was at least two hundred people
there already with more filing in by the second. I wasn’t sure who had the
bigger draw, Terra or Cyril, but I didn’t care at the moment. I found Cyril and
asked her to go find Glyn immediately and bring her back to me. Lo and Jubal
were already there. While Jubal filled Adrian in on what was about to happen, I
started strategizing with Shane and Lo.

            “Seeing as how we’re outnumbered, our best bet
is to keep this place locked down for as long as possible. There are five
points around the Training Compound that would be weak spots for the Defectors
to gain entrance,” I started.

            “Actually, there are seven,” Terra joined our
group.

            “Thank you for coming, Terra,” I gave her an
appreciative smile, “What we have to keep in mind is that the majority of these
people are under a chemical mind control and will do
anything
. The more
complicated thing to keep in mind is that many of them are innocents, simply
tools for a greater evil. We have to minimize deaths. Anyone who surrenders is
under our protection. No one, and I mean no one touches Dale Stone.”

“We need to split up into 8
groups. One group at each post and then another to protect those that are here
in case there is an infiltration. They want to take over this compound, and
hopefully that means gaining new recruits rather than just slaughtering
everyone here. There will be a few high profile targets, Shane and Terra, that
includes you, so be careful.”

“Adrian, there are about to be
about a thousand alarms going off at this Compound, any way that you could
contain that would be great.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Terra, take a group and round
up as many initiates as you can. Take them to the weapons holding area, it’s
the most secure place that could house that many people. I don’t care what you
have to tell them to get them there, just do it without causing a stir. When
you get done, head up the group to the east.”

We divided those who were in
Combat up with the rest and evenly spaced them out among the groups. Jubal
refused to leave Lo’s side, so they both headed up the group to the West. Dione
and four others volunteered to lead the others, so Shane and I took the group
that we thought would be the most likely entry point.  There had been no sign
of Oren yet, but we’d put out the warning that he was not to be trusted.
Everyone except Shane knew about Ann, and I knew I had to tell him.

“Shane, it’s time you knew.” Lo
looked at me but didn’t say anything, “There is someone at this Compound who is
the leader of the Defectors. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you before, but you
deserve to know before this thing goes down. It’s Ann. You are fighting against
your mother.”

Shane looked away from me, “You
knew this entire time and didn’t think that was something I should be aware of!
That’s why you said I couldn’t tell her! This is unbelievable!” I couldn’t tell
which part was more unbelievable to him, that she was the head of the Defectors
or that I’d kept it from him, “I need to talk to her Raily, I can turn this
around, she’ll listen to me.”

“No, absolutely not. You tell
her and she will warn them and they will change their strategy. Their ignorance
is the one bit of leverage we have right now.”

He let out an angry yell, “How
could you put me in this position?”

“I’m sorry.”

“This doesn’t change how I
feel, I will still fight beside you, but I cannot fight against my own mother.
I have to protect her, too.”

“I understand. Now let’s go.”

We got to our station. I kept
my eye on Shane so that he would keep his word and not tell Ann about our
counter attack, and he did. He stayed right by my side the entire time. It was
just after 6 am now and the sun was starting to peek over the trees. Our group
was stationed past the dormitories where there was an open field. Intruders
would be able to skirt the woods and stay hidden but still have a clear path to
get in. I had spotters stationed every hundred yards looking for any signs of
someone coming. By now, there would be a large group protecting all of those
who were bunkered down in the weapons holding area. With all the adrenaline
rushing through my body right now I would expect there to be chaos all around
me. But there wasn’t. No one was running around, screaming and shouting. It was
eerily quiet. The gravity of what was about to happen weighed heavily on me.

Terra had obviously done a
beautiful job of rounding everyone up because there weren’t any stragglers
wandering around or people trying to escape the compound. Whatever Terra had
done or said had worked and worked quickly.

Then someone came up to me that
I recognized as one of Dione’s friends, he was out of breath and panted out,
“There’s been a sighting. They’ve arrived. There are only about thirty of them,
they haven’t seen us.”

“That’s too small of a group,
it’s a diversion. Tell Dione to disperse most of his group to the others. No
one is coming in that way. They’re about to do something drastic, so tell the
ones that do remain there to get back, keep an eye on them, and be careful. Do
not fire on them. You,” I grabbed the closest person I could, “go to the
control center, tell Adrian to let a local alarm sound after they’ve created
their diversion. We still can’t let them know that we’re prepared.”

I knew that they would make
their move as soon as their diversion was created, so their attack was going to
happen quickly. I grabbed a pair of binoculars and scanned the field and tree
line. I saw nothing. I looked to my line of spotters for a signal that they’d
seen something, but none had. We still had a small window of time before the
attack.

Just then Cyril came running up
with Glyn in tow, “I found her chatting up some boy.”

“Not just a boy,” Glyn shot
Cyril a look, “it was my friend from Science. He told me that the form of the
drug that the Defectors are using on their army would likely not be out of
their system for a full forty eight hours. Until then, they would be at the mercy
of their captors.”

“There is no way we’ll be able
to hold them off that long.”

“I know, he said there is
something that could help weaken its effects, but I doubt they’ll accept a
needle stick from their enemies at this point, and besides, we don’t have it
prepared. Ari said it would take at least...”

I felt the blood drain out of
my face, “Wait! Did you say Ari?”

“Yes, my friend’s name is Ari.”

I looked to Shane and back at
Glyn, “Did you tell Ari what was happening?”

“Yes, you said I could bring
him in… Did I do something wrong?”

“When!”

“Just now, right after I told
him about the drugs, not three minutes ago.”

I took off at a full sprint. I
had to intercept Ari before he told Ann. She would relay the message to the
Defectors, who would change their strategy and surely annihilate us. I took one
of the shuttles to the skyscraper that I had visited on that first day here
that had the waterfall in it. Every morning before training, Ann worked in her
office, which was at the very top of this skyscraper. I walked in, and
everything seemed to be business as usual. I only had enough time to get to Ann
before the Defectors attacked, because after that alarm was triggered, this
place would be locked down. I boarded an elevator with just one other woman,
only a few years older than I.

After the doors closed I
started speaking to her, “I’m an initiate, so I only get to visit as high as
the tenth floor.”

She smiled at me and said, “I
remember being there. When I was an initiate here, I wanted to visit the higher
floors so badly, now I have clearance.  You’ll get to one day.” She said it so
sweetly that I felt bad about what I did next.

I grabbed the small gun with a
silencer out of the back of my holster and held it to her back, “I’ll get to go
up there today. Top floor please.”

She looked extremely scared,
swiped her card that allowed her to the top floor and then entered a code. The
elevator quickly sped to the top. Right before the doors opened I knocked her
out with the hilt of my gun. I caught her before her head hit the ground. I
glanced out in the hall, and no one was there, so I drug her into a nearby
closet. That should buy me a little time.

I kept rounding corners and
dodging other people looking for Ann’s office, when I spotted it. It had to
take up at least a quarter of the floor. There were two guards outside the
entrance, pacing back and forth in the hall. I wondered if they were always
there, or if Ann had them especially for today. I could use my gun, but Ann
would probably hear it. I hid behind the corner and waited until the one
farthest from me wasn’t looking. When the other one wandered close enough to me
I quickly jumped up from behind him and snapped his neck. He fell to in a
crumpled heap on the ground. The other heard it and turned around with his gun
drawn, but not fast enough. Before he had it raised, I had already released a
barb from my scorpion. It went through his chest twice before returning to me.
Their PID’s would go off any minute with an alert for medical attention, so I
wasted no time in going right through Ann’s door and closing it behind me.

“Well, Raily, you are quite the
thespian,” her voice was cold and too calm for the moment, “I suppose my guards
don’t have a heartbeat to speak of anymore.”

I turned and drew my scorpion
at the same time, but when I looked up she was standing behind Ari, “Rai, stop,
please.” He said standing between us, protecting her. Just behind both of them
in the middle of the room was a large wall made of glass resembling a fish bowl
that went floor to ceiling, revealing the five story waterfall below.

I didn’t put it back in its
holster but I did lower it, “You don’t know who she is, Ari.”

“Yes, I do, and she’s trying to
change things, for the better.”

I shook my head, “Oh she’ll
bring about change alright. How could you? You let them take Dale!”

“It was for his own good, they
don’t hurt any of the kids, Raily, they’re protecting them!”

I stopped for a moment and then
a wonderful thought hit me, “I see now, Ann, you’ve injected him too, haven’t
you? It all makes sense. Of course he’ll blindly do your bidding and swallow
whatever lies you decide to feed him. Get out of my way Ari!”

Ann let out a strange chuckle,
“My dear, you are too much like your mother.  And you were my first choice in
leading the Defectors, we would have taken you years ago, if it weren’t for
your ability to overcome our little wonder drug. However, we received a gift
just a few short years later. A viable candidate that not only shared your
beautiful knack for leadership and strategy, but was also susceptible to our
chemical influence. I suppose I can accredit that to his father.  In the past,
people would have overlooked a child prodigy with a propensity for warfare, but
not now. Some of the human mind’s most innovative and impressive feats are
accomplished before the nineteenth year of life.”

“So you didn’t take Dale out of
spite, but because he was a prodigy.”

“I’m surprised you think so
lowly of me, Raily, my actions are strictly to fill my purpose, the fact that
the one child we needed was the bastard son of my husband was a happy
coincidence, one that I won’t deny did bring me joy. And you are quite wrong
about your other sibling. You see, in the beginning almost all of them need the
drug, to do what needs to be done, but some, like Ari here, never do. And
eventually, most don’t need it anymore at all, because the things that they do
changes them and they start seeing things through my eyes. You can’t stop my
vision, my progress, Raily, but you can join it.”

“Ari, get out of my way!”

“She’s trying to do the right
thing, Rai! Dale’s fine, look!” Ari pointed to a side door that opened and my
little brother stepped out of, looking years older.

“Dale!” I started to go to him
but Ann stopped me, “how did you get here?”

“Don’t take another step,
Raily.” She grabbed Ari and held a gun to his back, “put down your weapons.”

“What are you doing?” he asked
her.

I looked at him and laid my
scorpion down on the ground. Dale was staring at me with indifference, trying
to figure out the situation, he must still be on the drug.

“I know you have another gun,
please get rid of it. Dale, please come stand beside me.” Dale obeyed.

I took the gun out of its
holster from my back and put it on the ground as well.  Ann motioned for Ari to
go retrieve them, which he did and then resumed his position beside Ann. Just
then, I heard the explosion that had to be the diversion we were waiting for.
It was starting. I then heard the local alarm that Adrian set. Hopefully, he’d
kept it local and none of the rest of the government knew what was going on. It
wouldn’t be long now before the compound was attacked.

Shane came barreling through
the door not two seconds later. He looked at me, then his mother, “I had to see
it for myself. So it’s true then? You’re behind all this?”

“You could be too, Shane. A
part of this revolution. This is history, you can forget yesterday because
things will never be the same. We never have to live by their rules again.”

“And the children and families
whose lives you’ve ruined, what about them?”

“They were a small sacrifice. A
means to an end. It was necessary and I’d do it all over again if it got the
job done.”

 “Just like Farris?”

All of Ann’s pomp and pageantry
were gone. Her true self was standing in front of us. We could see it just as
clearly as we could her skeleton if her skin were peeled away. She didn’t have
to hide anymore. “Farris was a sickly child, nothing more than a nuisance. I
thought that you’d at least be useful in some sense eventually, but I can see
that the truth is, in fact, the opposite.” I saw Ari’s face change at this.
Finally, the truth about his long time idol dawning on his face. The fact that
he’d been an integral part in her carefully laid scheme turned his face into
stone. “I’ve changed my mind, Raily. I want you to take your gun back and shoot
Shane between the eyes.”

“No.”

“Do it now, Raily, or I will
kill your brother right before your eyes.”

Shane stood stone faced, “Do
it, Raily,” he said calmly, “she will kill him. Do it.”

“You were never going to
protect Dale,” I heard Ari say so quietly that I almost missed it before he
swung around, my gun in hand. The shot he fired at her missed its target and shattered
the glass wall behind Ann because Ann’s shot landed in his chest first.

“Noooo!” I heard the scream
come from my own mouth. I landed beside Ari and held both of my hands to the
wound that was pouring blood just below his sternum. I knew the wound was
fatal. I wanted to tell him that he would be fine and that we would get him
help, but he knew well enough what that shot meant. His breaths were quick and
shallow.

“I’m so sorry, Rai,” he said
through ragged breaths.

“Don’t. You didn’t know,” I
said through tears.

“I’m so sorry. I would never
have done this if I’d known.”

“I know that.”

“Don’t tell Mom and Dad, ok?”

“I won’t. I promise. I love
you, Ari.” Ari’s eyes glossed over and I knew he was gone.

I looked up at Ann and she
sneered, “Don’t even think about it. Losing both brothers in one day would be a
real shame. That one outlived his usefulness, unlike this one,” she said as she
aimed the gun at Dale. I closed Ari’s eyes shut. Then I spotted a shard of
glass beside Ari’s head that was the size of my hand. I put my hand on it as if
bracing myself to stand up and when I rose up I grabbed it and tucked it into
my sleeve.

There was now someone beating
on Ann’s office door. Shane must have locked it behind him. The local alarms
had everyone in a frenzy. I could hear shouts from the forty floors below us
through the broken glass wall that was only feet away from Ann, Dale and
myself. All hell had broken loose, and I was staring at the devil.

I thought back to something
Shane had said to me, ‘
You have to be strong for them... They have to see
you being strong.
’ Well, right now, Ann needed to see me being weak. That’s
what she wanted to see, that’s what she had to believe. “When will it be enough
for you? What are you willing to pay for this? How many lives have to be lost?”
I was sobbing. I let her believe she’d won. All I needed was a distraction,
“What do I need to do to make it stop? I’ll do anything. You’ve won. You’ve
killed my brother in cold blood. You watched your own son die when you could
have saved him.”

“Saved him? Ha! Why would I
have saved that little wretch when I’m the one who killed him? I knew he
wouldn’t be able to survive that little test.” That was it. This was the
distraction I needed because at this revelation, Shane raised his gun to kill
his own mother, but she had the jump on him. Hers was already raised at Dale.
She swung her arm in Shane’s direction and that’s when I took my chance. I leapt
forward to her and wrapped my left arm around her head and grabbed the back of
her hair. With my right hand I took the large piece of glass nuzzled in my
shirt sleeve and pulled it tightly to the back of her neck. I looked her dead
in the eyes and with one swift motion, I pulled with both arms, one jerking her
head to the side and with the other I dug into her skin as deeply as I could,
severing her spinal cord. She was instantly paralyzed. The wild look in her
eyes, now replaced by hollowness, she fell back, her lifeless body went over
the shattered glass wall, and down the forty stories. She landed in the pool at
the bottom of the waterfall, clouds of her own blood swimming around her.