Traveling the Distance Between Right & Wrong

Chapter Three

Vivian rushed to be at the headquarters building. She had put everything together so quickly that she almost forgot to shield her face with her mask. A recipe waiting for disaster. She had put it on at the last minute, along with the sheer bit of sanity she had left.

Her heels clicked angrily up the stairs. She did not feel like taking the elevator this time. She practically ran down the hallway in a mad dash to make the meeting. She rushed into the meeting room and threw her belongings onto the table with such rage that everyone quieted down. Her items crushed holograms on the table and static crackling filled the room. Adin turned them off. She glared at him from the other end of the table. Her, normally silky, pony-tail stood with frizz, and her outfit was wrinkled and disformed in her mad dash of chaos to make it here.

"Vivian!" Adin's voice thundered, "Have you no self-control?" He stood on the other side of the room. He had been conducting the meeting on the new rebellion. They had almost finished their plans before Vivian had interrupted them.

Vivian turned to face him. Her eyes pierced the crowd like daggers. "How dare you start a meeting without me! I will have none of it! You should all be killed, you insufferable swine," Her words seethed with anger.

Everyone but Adin bowed their heads. Everyone averted their eyes from the powerful woman, even Blagden showed the slightest hint of fear. No one wanted to cross her, not even on her good days. Vivian had killed off dozens of innocent people purely to show what happened to traitors. Most people had not questioned her since.

"Vivian we had the right to-" Adin's words were cut off by Vivian's shouting.

"The right? I am the head of this government, and I can end it just as fast as it started! I would kill every single one of you in an instant. Do not look for mercy in my eyes, you will find none Adin," The coldness in Vivian's voice seemed to drop the temperature of the room itself.

Adin finally backed down Vivian, "You can finish the meeting if you like. I feel it will be the only thing to calm your temper." Adin sat down at the table. He managed to keep his cool, even with Vivian's tantrum.

Vivian gave him a stern stare before taking her rightful place at the front of the table. Part of her hated the way Adin made her out to be childish. She had built this operation from the ground up. She had planned everything out. She was the reason they were all here. Adin took too much of the credit.

Vivian arranged her things and brought up the holograms and data, "Is this correct, 1,534 in the rebellion so far?"

"Yes, but we could easily bomb them. One fly through and they're all dead," Blagden spoke up from the table. His tablet in front of him showed the predicted numbers and statistics of the potential battle.

"That's what we planned to do," Adin looked up to Vivian. "We would have no casualties that way, and we all agreed upon it."

"Since when did we care about casualties?" Vivian scoffed at Adin's words. "Have you gone soft?"

"No Vivian, but it seemed like the quickest way out. Why are we even discussing this? We should be starting phase two and discussing that instead. We're going to fall behind the schedule." Adin questioned Vivian, although deep down he knew the answer.

"No!" She hissed with such anger it caught everyone off guard again. She looked around the room and realized her mistake. She should have not shown so much emotion over this one rebellion. It was out of character and out of place. The council would question her sudden show of emotion.

She tried to fix her mistake, "That's not what we're doing. I do not care if every one of you useless flies agreed. We're doing a personal attack. I want ground soldiers, and I want to lead it. We will give them a taste of real blood and of real torture," She answered him. Her voice got lower than before, "There will be no arguments. Get everything ready, we're leaving tonight. Meeting dismissed."