GOLDEN REBEL HEART

Chapter 1

Pradesh, India. Year 2020. The snow by the side of the gravel road is slowly beginning to melt under the fiery rays of the winter sun. A blonde tall girl sits by the window of a rusty and smelly bus, looking out at the endless woods beneath the crooked street. The folk music coming from the radio is enough to distract her from the little monkey sitting on the seat across hers, its little paws playing with a pearl necklace.

"Young girl," the man beside her speaks for the very first time, making the blonde woman turn around and face him. His eyes are delineated by wrinkles, the color of his skin is dark and his expression is neutral. He looks exhausted. "Passport," he says, nodding his head towards the blonde girl. Taylor takes out the visa from the pocket of her jeans and silently hands it to the man. He glances at it quickly, looking almost uninterested, and slips a bill between its pages before giving it back to its owner. Taylor puts it back inside her pocket, confused, but before she could thank his sweet gesture, the bus comes to a halt and she hears loud voices coming from outside.

"What is happening?" she asks, but the very same man lifts one of his hands and motions her to shut up. Taylor glances outside the window, spotting at least three men wearing the same black and red uniform. They're armed, and for one second Taylor fears the worst.

Three months ago, she got the news that her mother was involved in a car crash and unfortunately died. When the police reached out to her, they told Taylor that they had found a note in one of her mother's pockets. Taylor had thanked them for their service, and once alone in the loneliness of her New York City apartment, she had found the courage to open and read it. On the wrinkled paper, the ink that was staring back at her portrayed one simple wish: her mother was asking her to take her back to her real home, the home where she grew up and loved and fought: Pradesh. She was asking her to take her ashes to the temple where Taylor's sister resided in. It was a simple wish, one that would cost her just a plane ticket and a week off work, but it had left an undeniable mark on Taylor's heart. A bloody and devastating civil war had begun ten years prior, and Taylor knew that it had started because of her father, a driven and determined man who only wanted what was best for his people. In 2010, he gave birth to a rebel movement, called the Golden Path, and within a few months, hundreds of people had started to believe in his words of wisdom. From what she knew, at that time, there had been bad blood between her father and the King of Pradesh, Pagan Min, whose dry sense of humor drove her father crazy. Each battle earned him more and more followers, supporters, more people who would die in order to get a little taste of freedom. However, with each battle, more innocent lives left this world for nothing, and what was once a winning rebel movement, it quickly became a failure. Everything turned down hill when its original leader fearlessly died on a mission, it being the conquest of one of the most important outposts. After her father's death, the Golden Path lost some of its persistence while Pagan Min reclaimed what was his. The dictator left the rebels with only a city, Banapur, and within two years reconquered the outposts that were once under their control. Taylor didn't know more than that, and nothing was said on the internet about this civil war in India. She wasn't even aware of the real reason why her father had started all of this. Was it a personal problem? Or was he just tired of Pagan Min's tyranny?

The loud and incessant voices outside bring her back to earth, as the driver of the bus is forced to get off the vehicle and talk to one of the soldiers. She attentively watches the scene, the man in the uniform not believing one thing that comes out of the driver's mouth as he harshly pushes him against the bus, aiming the tip of his weapon at his chest.

Unexpectedly, a woman and a man, who were crouched on the seats behind Taylor's, quickly get off the bus, holding their rifles close to their chests. The colors of their clothes were different: they don a light blue uniform marked with a golden logo on the back, combat boots and a yellow bandana. Taylor presumes they are the Golden Path soldiers.