The Insurrection

Chapter Six

"No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future" ~ Umar Ibn Al-Khattab

"Zahra and I left UniFed's house from this door," I drew a circle with my finger in the air and it automatically showed up on the projected light screen in front of us. "And we ran to our rendezvous point where Leon was, over here." I drew a big X. "The only people we interacted with were the man who checked our tickets on the way in, and a WorldKeeper who stopped us on our way to the ventilation room where we planted the bug. We told him we were just looking for the restrooms, he bought it."

I motion for Taika to continue, she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before opening them again. She begins talking, her voice shaky at first and then leveling out the longer she speaks as determination paints her face with confidence I haven't seen since Day Zero.

"Tau and I sealed eight of the ten doors of UniFed's House. We ran into my father, the Finnish Chief, in this hallway," she drew a line. "The interaction lasted about five minutes before shots were fired on both sides. I left them and ran out to our rendezvous point to tell Leon to detonate the bug."

Someone in the room scoffed and muttered underneath his breath, "What happened to 'leave no one behind?'"

Taika flinches and hurt crosses her face but it's Zahra who responds protectively, "If she hadn't gotten out of there, Leon would have never known to pull the trigger, more Chiefs would have managed to escape, and we would all either still be in prison or dead." She doesn't stop there, "And if we're going to go there and talk about not leaving anyone behind, Zhong, then maybe we should revisit what happened on the last Liberator mission. In case your memory is failing you right now, we all ran for our lives. If you won't hold yourself to the same standards you hold others to, then you have no place here among us."

Chaos. Pure chaos erupted after that. Arguments and blaming and anger, lots and lots of anger. But underneath all that was pain. So much pain it was suffocating. I look for dad's face and see the same pain and anguish written all over it too. I look at Leon and Taika beside me and they both shrug, leaving it up to me to deal with it. Raising my shoulders, I bang my hand on the table once, twice, three times.

The room starts to quiet down. "Oh I'm sorry, did I interrupt your finger-pointing and blaming session? Did you forget yourselves? Did you forget what you are fighting for? We are up against the rulers of this World, the ones who control the very air we breathe. Of course, we're going to get hurt, we're going to lose our loved ones, and we're going to put everything on the line only to lose it all. But what we're not going to do is lose ourselves. There is a lot of pain in this room right now, but do you really think that blaming your brothers and sisters beside you, standing by you in this room is going to make it hurt less? The answer is no. So direct your pain and anger to UniFed, to our cause. We cannot be divided right now, not when we are so close to something, and not ever. Look around this room, look at all the people who stood by you when no one else did. The people who welcomed you with open arms and provided you and your families with a safe haven that shielded you from the rest of the World. The people who not only fight for themselves but fight for you too. We don't just fight for ourselves, we fight for each other."

Once I see that my words had their desired effect, I signal for Leon to take my place. He shakes his head slightly with a small smile, "Well, Alan, you make it really hard to go after that. Whatever I say is going to fall on deaf ears at this point." Laughter peppers the room and I am grateful for Leon lighting up the situation before starting, "Once Taika came out running I pulled the trigger for the bug. The bug is a molecular burner that is disguised as a bug. It essentially turns everything within a half a mile radius into dust, including humans. Right after UniFed's House crumbled to the ground, the American Chief found us and took us in, and you know the rest. When we came back here, I looked into some records and found more information. There were two unlocked doors, which forty-seven Chiefs managed to escape from. That means we got one hundred and fifty-three Chiefs to turn to dust." Light cheers go around the room. "Additionally, there have been protests and riots erupting everywhere you could possibly imagine. We are isolated from everyone right now, but on the outside, Citizens of the World are fighting."

I am too stunned to move. In a way, we did succeed. Sure, we didn't manage to get all of UniFed, but we got a good chunk of them. And we finally got people of the World to raise their voices and fight back too. For so long, we have all been living in the shadows as shells of ourselves. Always too scared to fight for our humanity. But we did it, and we are not alone in this fight. We are finally united, as one People, one World.