Angels Mark (The Serena Wilcox Dystopian Trilogy Book 1)

Angels Mark Chapter 23

23

President Ann Kinji greeted Serena and Tom with a hug, which both accepted as easily as if the hug was from a neighbor, like it was an everyday occurrence to be hugged by the President.

“So happy to see the pair of you alive, well, and standing in front of me.”

“Thank you,” both of them murmured.

“With Paul in custody, Clyde dead, and Bryce out of the way, you won’t have any more trouble. Which is why I think you should ditch the Meadows name,” she said, with a sly wink.

Serena blushed.

“Of course I knew all about you. You couldn’t have gotten so close to me otherwise. I know that you set your own house on fire, so that you’d be presumed dead. I know that Paul’s Off-grid group gave you a new identity, and kept you successfully off the grid until William’s camp came along.”

“This is the part when the Scooby-doo gang tells the criminals who was wearing the monster mask,” said Serena.

“Oh, I don’t see you as a monster, not even of the Scooby-doo variety. You protected your family. I only wish that you and Karyn had shared that e-mail from Farideh with more than just the FBI, since our own government was not to be trusted, but of course you wouldn’t have known that,” said Ann, frowning, letting her words settle for a few seconds. “How could anyone have known such a thing? But now that we do, knowing that we could have taken a different course, one that would have saved many lives, or maybe even avoided the Big War altogether -- it’s so hard to fathom. It was better when we didn’t know. And yet, the truth shall set us free.”

“It will feel good to be free,” said Serena.

“Freedom is something we still have, yes. Thank God for that, agree?” said Ann.

“I’m sorry about the presidents,” said Tom. “I didn’t know it was a bomb until it was too late.”

“I know, it wasn’t your fault. Really, it was mine. I’m the one who suggested you could take Paul, going against my agents’ wishes. I should have had him searched and cleared first, especially since I knew he was emotionally unstable. And he was a nut job before he was unstable. Extreme lapse in judgment on my part,” said Ann.

“What’s going to happen now?” asked Serena. “Will the records be buried?”

Ann’s eyebrows shot up with surprise. “Of the most deadly, most massive cover-up in the history of the world? Why on Earth would we do that? Of course we respect the sanctity of human life – this is no doubt a great tragedy to be preparing for two presidential funerals, but we cannot hide from the truth. It’s been buried for too long and it will not be buried with them. Their reputations and ours will have to suffer – the world needs to know what really happened.”

“I admire that,” said Serena.

“This opens the door to new dialog, dialog that I believe America has needed to hear for a long time. Whether or not people will be open to what I have to say, I don’t know. I’m sure to find out come voting time, which is right around the corner.”

“You have our vote,” said Tom.

Ann smiled. “And you have mine. That’s one reason I called you in here. First, I want to thank you for all of your help.”

“We didn’t do much,” said Tom.

“It seemed like we stayed one step behind your team the whole time,” said Serena.

“You were in the thick of it all, you just benefitted from resources in high places. You’d have been able to deduce things for yourself, maybe more slowly, but you’d have done it,” said Ann.