The Insurrection

Chapter Six

"Fear does not stop death. It stops life." ~ Vi Keeland

"One more move, and you will be shot," a voice threatens. We freeze and slowly turn around. Tall with broad shoulders and dark skin in a suit that matched the ones we just took right now is what meets us.

The person narrows his eyes on us and when they land on mine, he blinks.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" He asks.

Taika and Leon look at me as I say with false bravado, "I could ask you the same thing."

He starts laughing and turns slightly and that is when I catch it, a sliver of the mulberry locket that we each took from the safe and are currently wearing. Without thinking about it, I start pulling the locket out of my shirt.

Taika gasps and Leon looks like he wants to kill me, but this is the only way we will get out of here without a bullet through our skulls.

As soon as the man sees the locket he sobers up, "Where did you get that from, boy?" He questions in a low, grave voice.

I take a deep breath and go with my gut, "I am Alan Gunner, son of Gerald and Kyra Gunner, brother of Alexander Gunner," I announce.

The man gives me a long look, finally nods, and lowers his gun. My shoulders sag in relief. Without saying a word, the man heads to the boxes of equipment and grabs four eyeglasses, and hands one to each of us.

"Your brother gave you away," he tells us.

"No, he did not come with us," I started saying.

The man cocks his head to look at me and says, "Then he must have followed you here."

After a moment, "Follow me," he says to the rest of us.

"What if we do not?" Leon challenges.

He looks at Leon, "You either follow me, or I will have to kill you because you have now seen me," he says without hesitation.

"What kind of horror show is this," Taika mumbles under her breath so that only Leon and I hear.

All three look at me, "Why should we trust you?" I ask.

He sighs as if this is all annoying him, "One, because I did not shoot you yet, and two because your brother is waiting for you all outside," he says.

"But we do not even know who you are," Taika says.

He looks at her and says, "Oh my apologies, I am Mr. the-only-reason-you-are-still-alive because about five other Liberators are waiting for my signal right now on whether or not to lower their weapons. That is all you need to know."

I look at Taika and Leon and say, "We have to go with him, he already has Alex outside."

"I have a bad feeling about this," Leon says.

Taika scoffs, "When do you not?"

"Oh really, so what ab-"

"Stop your bickering for once and decide what we are going to do." I whisper-yell

"If I die, my ghost will haunt you both for the rest of your lives," Leon says.

"Are you all done here?" The man asks impatiently.

"Yes," I replied.

We follow him outside and I spot Alex in between two burly men, his eyes darting back and forth, afraid.

"Alex," I say as he runs up to me and says, "I am sorry, I didn't mean to get you guys caught, I am sorry," he starts to sniffle.

"It is okay buddy; we are going to be fine. Right now, I need you to do what I do and be quiet, can you do that for me?"

"Yeah," he mumbles into my shirt.

I look at the Liberator who watches us with a sad look on his face before he turns around and begins walking to the five other Liberators. He looks back at us and says, "Alright, get in the tank."

We look around but do not see anything besides the Liberators and the deserted neighborhood street.

Leon narrows his eyes and asks, "What tank?"

The man looks back at us and says, "Put on your glasses for God's sake, I gave them to you for a damn reason."

"Someone is grumpy today," Taika mutters to us.

The man lifts an eyebrow, "Problem, princess?"

She does not answer him as we put our glasses on and a tank appears directly in front of us.

"Invisibility technology," Leon murmurs in awe, "I thought only UniFed has access to those."

We pile in, Leon on my left, Alex on my right, and Taika adjacent to us.

"Why does everybody call me princess," Taika scoffs quietly.

"Because you act like one," Leon says.

"What is that supposed to mean?" She whispers angrily.

"Both of you need to shut it," I say.

This could go either way. We could have just walked right into a trap that UniFed set up, or we could have just found the remaining Liberators. I hope it is the latter although that sounds too optimistic. I think of everything that has led us to this point. The World and all that we have done to it. In the past, it would have been labeled as social issues and climate change.

The World was physically falling apart and leaders turned a blind eye to it all, not believing in the science, or that someday earth would be inhabitable. And at first, there were just a couple of injustices here and there that could be solved in the future, that we were supposedly working together to fix. Except we never did, we let them grow and grow until we could not stop them. We let the corrupt leaders of the World drive a wedge between us humans until Society collapsed, and they were no longer called social problems. They were not called anything, because those issues started becoming the norm. Illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, child abuse and labor, alcoholism and drug abuse, women and violence, gender inequality, religious intolerance, human trafficking, and murder. We got so used to it happening that it is not even a big deal anymore.

You see all these horrible things happening daily in every corner and people would think, oh it is just another day in the World. How did we get to this point? How did we get to the point where we are so insensible to each other? So inhumane? More importantly, okay with it all. The Liberators hoped to change that, and they failed. We hope to change that and there is a slim chance that we will succeed, but at least it is something. Maybe the Liberators were wrong in keeping themselves a secret, maybe People of the World need a voice.

We can be that voice.

The tank finally stops and one by one we get out. Looking around, the streets look vaguely familiar. It resembled one of the places that Leon had looked into through the surveillance cameras. Only the footage did not show a massive building almost as big as UniFed's House. I take off my glasses, and the building disappears.

The Liberators' headquarters is invisible. And hiding right underneath UniFed's nose.

"Come on, do not be shy. After all, this is where you will be staying for a while now," the Liberator who will not give us his name calls out to us.

We start following him inside, Alex and I in the front, Taika and Leon behind us, and the rest of the Liberators around us caging us in.

I wonder what we got ourselves into.