The Future Chosen [was Anti-Dynasty/Extraordinary]

Broken Chapter 1

In the future, maybe, Maria Lourdes and Andres Miguel will be their nation's best and most influential leaders. Marrying another politician is against the law, but why should it matter? Today they're just college kids who want to be together.

They'll deal with the rest of it tomorrow.

***

What we know is that it works. There has always been reason to doubt those who have power, money, fame, or all of the above. MML has not kept power, money, and fame away from those who may abuse it, but we know what it has done—it has restored our trust in those who serve us. The cost to their families is too great. The choices they make and the possibilities they sacrifice to pursue this path cannot be easy, and shouldn't ever be. Choosing this life requires not only the means to do so, but the purity of intention, and the stamina to overcome the hurdles. We will not find better candidates by lowering the score requirements, allowing privately educated entrants, or by amending the law in any way. Give an inch, and we let in doubt. We erode what MML has given us: faith in public servants. That is, no one can deny, too precious.

We are against any amendments to the Mayo-Matias Law. Change it, and we destroy our republic as we know it. We are not broken; we do not need fixing.

It started, again, on the day she almost died.

Four people dead, five injured, in what would be eventually called the Rose Bridge Situation. (Because death in the single digits was merely a "situation.")

Lourdes was at Rose Bridge Elementary School that day because she was Deputy Chair of the Youth Commission of the Republic of Isla, and an event such as the Merit Awards for Young Writers did not deserve an appearance from the Chair himself. She was needed onstage to hand out awards, hug children, be seen with local officials. It was an honor to have been there, even if it could have been the last thing she ever did.

Those should have been her last words. If she had been death number five that day, those words would have made her a hero, a martyr, a legend.

But just as she shook hands with Rose Bridge's principal, she saw a face in the crowd. One she hadn't seen this close in...what was it...three years? He was every bit as handsome as he looked on the news. And more, even more, because part of his magic was the way his eyes locked with hers, and closed off the entire world. The camera was never able to capture that.

Seeing him there--here--nearly knocked her off her feet, and she was already wearing the most uncomfortable green shoes she had ever stuck her feet into.

It figured that even now, after the diploma, the medals, the presidential citation of excellence, the effing toned waist and arms, the shiny hair, all the work put into getting Maria Lourdes Riorosa the Second into her physical and intellectual peak, it all crumbled to pieces in a minute. Half a minute. Ten seconds.

Should she say hello? Should she ignore him? Wait for him to say hello first? Pretend she didn't see him? Ask him about the campaign, the job, the beautiful girlfriend?

She worried about this and a dozen other things, as she smiled and shook hands with school officials. She worried about her hat, that it was making her head sweat in this weather. Her dress, she should have thought more about the dress she threw on this morning, because it was probably the same one from the last event she went to that was broadcast nationally, and he would have already seen her in it. After a while she had lost track of the green dresses. She was always in green.

When the shots were fired, she turned to his place in the audience immediately. He was already out of his chair, his eyes on her, yelling at her to get down. Get the fuck down. And she did go down all right, because she had taken something on the left side of her body, possibly the rib or the arm, and a split second later her bodyguard Rufus, reliable up until this moment, had already knocked her to the ground and was applying pressure to her wound.

In the moments between her realizing what had happened, and the panic and pain completely disabling her, she managed to grab Rufus's sleeve and pull herself up to his ear.

"Tell Andres I love him," she said. "Tell him that these years without him have been horrible, and I'm glad I'm dying now before this went on any longer."

So, yeah. Good thing she lived, because those last words were just pathetic.

***

Lourdes drifted in and out in the next few days. She was aware of the operation, the hospitalization, the eventual transfer. She witnessed snippets of conversation in her drugged state, conversations involving her mother, her father, her father's chief strategist (also her boyfriend's dad), her boyfriend Santiago. She learned to nod when asked if she was all right. She opened her mouth when something was put to her lips. Nothing tasted good though, not even water, which seemed to take on a horrid texture as it went down her throat. One time, she was awake long enough to see her mother give her a look of something—not concern...

"Nobody can see her like this," Agnes Riorosa said. "Make sure she's sent to Callemara as soon as we can arrange it."

Callemara, the island retreat where people of a certain status went to recuperate. Very private.

Agnes had been talking to Santiago.

"I won't be able to stay with her," he said. "There's that merger I told you about. I have to be on top of that..."

"No one will need to be there with her. We have people. Nothing about our lives will stop."

Thanks, Mom, Lourdes thought sarcastically. For once she was glad for the haze of medication; it at least kept her face intact. I really feel how much you care for me.

"My family can recommend a personal nurse who will attend to her," Santiago offered. "They know people."

How generous, Lourdes told him, but her eyes barely moved. I'm so happy you're concerned enough about my well-being to send the help.

"That's all we need. She'd want us to keep the campaign going," Agnes said.

Of course. Lourdes imagined the smile she would have to pull out from the depths of her intestines to match that statement, if she actually had to say it in real life. It hurt just thinking about it.

"We're agreed, then," Santiago said. "I'll arrange for her transport."

Lourdesfelt relieved. And she had a feeling they were feeling the same thing, fordifferent reasons.