The Whistleblowing Couriers

CHAPTER TWELVE - "LIBERTÉ!"

Red, white, and blue.

The American flag lay tattered on the eagle emblem adorning the blood-speckled carpet.

A woman had her knees on the eagle's shield, with her interlocked hands behind her head. Despite blood dripping from a multitude of gashes and scars, her gaze was steely and determined.

A smartly dressed man held a gun to her head.

"Any last words Noor?"

"None."

He chuckled. "May I ask why?" The gun pressed further into her black hair.

"Because, Mr. President, these are not my last words."

Click.

Blackness.

Noor groaned as she forced her eyes open.

"Fuck..."

She breathed her words, trying to make sense that now her mind, too, was wasting away with hallucinations alongside her food-ridden body. Noor grimly chuckled as she realized the source of her delusion was from the early days of The Peoples' Communiqués, when Eqbal proposed a madcap plan to conduct a citizen's arrest of the President. Her stomach gurgled, and yet she had no appetite. Her body was in flux, her mind stuck in a paradox between survival and resistance.

The steel door to her cell unexpectedly opened. As Noor sat up on her stopgap bed, a gang of armed guards menacingly stood in her entrance. One of the peace officers motioned with her automatic weapon for Noor to stand up and exit her SHU.

Noor, keeping Yahola's wounded body in mind, complied with the nonverbal order. As she walked towards the officers, she forced herself to walk commandingly and maintain a rebellious expression. Despite her weakened body, Noor knew it was imperative to mentally believe that she could, that she would, still resist.

The COs stepped away from the entrance, with the same officer now indicating that Noor should join a puzzling phenomenon. As she stepped into the hallway, she saw that all the SHUs were open, with countless panicked guards commanding innumerable dissidents to form a line leading towards a steel door. There was complete silence as the prisoners shuffled along towards an unknown destination. Noor, the only insurgent not wearing an orange jumpsuit, joined the queue and pondered where they all were being led. She looked for Yahola, but Noor distressingly could not locate her comrade.

The steel exit was opened, revealing blinding sunlight. The shackled inmates shielded their eyes from the first rays of natural light they had seen since being imprisoned. While the peace officers menacingly aimed their firearms at the detainees, Noor's eyes painfully adjusted to make out a white concrete court in front of the twelve prisoners that stood ahead of her.

It was when Noor could make out the blue, cloudless sky that she heard the first salvo. Like the other still standing dissidents, she was startled by the gunshots. By the time Noor's feet touched the concrete, she had heard round after round of bullet bursts, and there were no more internees standing in front of her.

Noor was the lone revolutionary on the smeared slab. There were fourteen executioners standing in a row in front of her. Their weapons would be aimed at the figure tied to a bloody post on the other side of the court. A commanding officer held a blindfold and watched as two other soldiers dragged away a bullet-riddled body. Noor looked up from the grisly scene to see an American flag fluttering over the carnage. She was surprised to see it not flying at half-mast, and, then, realized with a start that it was Independence Day.

Noor therefore gave a blood-curdling smile to the commander. She defiantly shook her head at the proffered blindfold and walked proudly to her last post. Two soldiers tied Noor to her stake.

The commander ordered her firing squad to raise their weapons.

Noor unflinchingly stared at the firearms aimed at her body. She thought of Assia. She thought of Kartar. She thought of Petra. She thought of her comrades of the Continental Army and The Peoples' Communiqués. Noor thought of Yahola.

The commander uttered an order. Guns opened fire.

Noor Swaminadhan shouted, "Liberty!"

Red, white, and blue.