Battle Scars

Chapter 35: Africa's Key

Chapter thirty five: Africa's Key
"Hey Mitch, smiled Preston, as he walked over to us. Mitch stared at him in amazement.
"I watched them kill you!" He said softly.
"That wasn't me," explained Preston gently. "My country guessed what The Soviet was up to, and found me a lookalike, just incase. Apparently I'm too valuable, and..." He shrugged. "They wouldn't let me go. And now my lookalike is dead. I'm sorry Mitch, but we couldn't tell you."
"What was his real name?" I asked.
"Lionel," replied Preston. "He's forever my hero now. When this rebellion is over and we can recreate our world to be a better place, somehow I'm going to make everybody know about his sacrifice for me, because he deserves it." We were all silent for a few moments.
"Damn..." Said Mitch, jokingly. "I wish they'd found me a lookalike too." Then he looked at me. "But then the lookalike would probably be dating you instead of me."
"Probably," I laughed. Mitch turned back to look at Preston.
"I thought you'd been drugged or something!" He exclaimed. "No wonder you were acting so strangely." Preston and Jerome burst out laughing at this. Mitch went to get up from the floor of the hovercraft, but Jerome stopped him.
"You've got a bullet in your leg, you're not going anywhere for a while. You too Abby, both of you can just heal up until we get to Canada."
"Fine," I said. "But not on the floor. Can we at least go somewhere else?"
"Yeah, we can," replied Jerome. "Preston has the ointment from Asia. We can treat the bullet wounds somewhere else." We went into the lounge of the extravagant Soviet hovercraft, and Preston produced a strange, yellow tube, similar to the one Mitch and I had used to heal ourselves in the arena.
"I thought that stuff was from The Soviet," I said. "Didn't we use that in the arena?"
"You don't think The Soviet produces their own medicine, do ya?" Chuckled Preston. "They import everything from the rest of the world, since they're too lazy to do anything themselves."
Mitch was still looking at Preston in amazement, and I laughed at him. He nudged me playfully.
"I can't believe it's you," he said in wonder. Preston laughed a little.
"It's really me, I promise," he laughed.
"Well, I guess this is a good thing, but even I didn't know the full extent of this rebellion," he said.
"Hey Abby, what do you have around your neck?" Asked Jerome, curiously.
"It's my dagger that I got from Africa in the arena, I kept it," I replied, unsheathing it.
"Oh!" Exclaimed Mitch, suddenly. "I kept meaning to tell you about that, Abby."
"What?" I asked, confused.
"The dagger," he repeated, taking it in his hands. "Did you know that each country involved in the rebellion so far, which is most of them, have their own rebellion symbol? You see how this dagger is shaped like a key? That's the African symbol."
"No wonder you were studying it so much in the arena," I chuckled, taking it back from him and examining it myself. "That's really cool! I guess they were trying to encourage me, but they never realised I wasn't yet a player in the rebellion."
"The people watching the games knew Mitch was watching you then," commented Jerome, thoughtfully. "Maybe it was a message to him as well."
"How many countries are in the rebellion so far?" I asked.
"Canada, Australia, Columbia, America, Africa, Asia, England and Arabia," listed off Preston. "So that leaves India and Europe that we still have to reach out to. But we're just starting to gain control of communications and transport, so it shouldn't be too hard to get to them."
"And then it's go time," smiled Mitch.
"How long has this been in planning?" I asked, out of curiosity.
"For decades, my family has been working on underground communication lines to begin a rebellion," explained Mitch. "That's how they were killed - The Soviets found one of the domes and blew it up whilst they were working on it. Luckily The Soviets didn't realise that it wasn't the only communications dome, and people have continued to work on it. And I loved what they were doing, and what their vision was for the world, so I followed their dream for them and continued it myself. And now I'm the leader of the entire revolution."
"Speaking of which, there's a lot of people who want to speak to you about a lot of things," smiled Preston. "You've been gone for too long, we need to get everything back on track now that you're here again."
"I've missed it," nodded Mitch. He looked at me. "Are you ready to help?"
"Of course," I grinned.