The Hunted

Need an Army

I surrendered my weapons to Servant Hope, who put them in the safe in his office along with the rebel's weapons. The rebels were sprawled out on the pews and the floor at the front of the church. A blond haired boy—no, man. He was about nineteen—stood in front of them, his arms crossed over his chest. A tattoo ran up the side of his neck and along the left side of his face, making him look fiercer than he probably was.

"I thought you'd be bigger," he said, his eyes running over me. I paused a few feet away from him, Derek behind me as Caleb and Adams talked in a low voice to two of the rebels off to my right.

"I thought you'd be older," I replied. He snorted, a hint of a smile on his face as he walked down the alter steps and towards me. I swallowed hard, forcing myself to keep eye contact with him and to not let him get under my skin.

"My name's Dillon. I'm the leader of this ragtag group," he said, holding out his hand to me. Reluctantly, I placed my own hand in his, giving it a firm shake. "Your brother says that you should be a valuable asset for us."

"An asset for what?" I questioned even though I was sure I knew what the answer would be.

"We're going to take back our country," he replied. I nodded, glancing over my shoulder to Derek. He leaned against a pew, shrugging. "My cousin doesn't think we can do it on our own."

"No, I just said that I wasn't sure if you had enough recruits yet who knew what to expect from the Elders," Derek said. I took a step back so I could see both of them.

"Wait, what?"

"You didn't tell her?" Dillon asked, laughing. "Oh, Derek, you should have filled her in on details like that."

"It wasn't exactly the thing I was worried about," Derek replied drily. I stared at him, shaking my head slowly. More and more secrets. "I told you they were trustworthy."

I turned away from him, not trusting myself to speak to him. Perhaps they were trustworthy, but I was starting to wonder if he was someone I could trust.

"Well, we are small in numbers," Dillon said cautiously. "I mean, we can't exactly go and recruit openly on the streets. That'd kill our numbers quickly. Literally. We are growing, though, and having people like yourself and Derek and Adams and Caleb is a step in the right direction. We're hoping that once people realize that you two were set up, then we'll grow even more."

"It won't work," I told him. "It doesn't matter how many people you recruit to join you. The people in this city and in this country are terrified of what will happen to them if they rise up against the Elders. You'll never get the numbers that you need."

He shrugged. "Then I guess we'll die trying. We can't just sit by and expect everything to be okay. Nothing is going to change for the better. They're just going to keep imposing new rules and restrictions on us until we aren't even able to leave our homes. What kind of a life is that? Do you really want to live that way?"

No, I didn't, but I wasn't about to tell him that. I had been trained since I started school that I had an important job. I was an important asset of the government and to the people of our country. It was hard to cast those teachings to the side after having them drilled into me for as long as I could remember. I didn't agree with the Elders or the government. I despised them for deciding what my life was going to be like before I was even able to comprehend what an Officer of Justice did.

That didn't mean that I was willing to take unnecessary risks, though. I knew as well as Caleb, Adams, and Derek how powerful the Elders and the Guardians were. If it weren't because of how many trained fighters they had at their command, it was because of the fear that they were able to cast into the citizens of our country.