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The mob was growing by the moment. It wasn’t just the kids from the jail, the ones who’d faced off at the club. Others seemed to have joined along the way and, once again, it seemed to be an us versus them mindset.
Loyalists stood in front of the governor’s mansion, outside the gates and looking out at the street. It was as if they’d appointed themselves as his guards, his soldiers to fight this battle. The Separatists shouted at them, hurled rocks and who knows what else.
“This isn’t going to end well,” Vi muttered, clutching my hand. She hadn’t separated from me since we’d left the jail. Her nearness and the way she laced her fingers through mine was all the reassurance I needed that I was doing the right thing.
“They need a leader.” I turned to her and traced her face with my finger. “That’s you. You’re more of a leader than I’ll ever be. You and Carter, you need to try to make them see reason.”
Carter scoffed behind me. “I tried at the club and nobody listened.”
Vi’s jaw tightened as her eyes narrowed with determination. “Then we try harder.”
She gave my hand a squeeze and released it to stride into the crowd. How brave was this woman I loved so much?
The words welled up in my throat, burned at it, like a wild thing that needed to burst free of its cage. But she was already out of earshot and anything I said would have been drowned out by the yelling around us. Carter followed her, leaving me alone with Anna.
I turned to her and edged closer, not wanting to get separated from yet another familiar face.
“It’s not going to work.” Anna’s voice had taken on a hard edge I’d never heard and when our arms touched, her body was rigid. “They... this... It won’t work, Kira. He will never step down, never release his hold on the city. The only way to win is to go along with him.”
I closed my eyes and it was like a switch had been flipped. The noise faded and I saw the past several weeks in a riot of blazing color that bled through onto the backs of my eyelids.
Me at the club for the first time. Vi offering me a handful of paper towels to wipe my face. The way she spoke and moved. When she led me to the top of the old capitol building to see beyond the wall. Lying beneath the stars, entwined in a way that I’d never dreamed possible.
And I knew what Anna said was right, but only for her. It wasn’t good enough for me. I opened my eyes and turned to her.
It was time to say goodbye.
“Anna, I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember. You’ve been my best friend, but you have to go now.” I took both her hands in mine and squeezed them, the desperate need to cry burning at the corners of my eyes. “Unlike you, I can’t go along to get along. Not anymore. Not when that means losing Vi. She’s everything to me.”
Anna’s expression crumpled, a tear streaking down her cheek. “What about your parents?”
I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “Take care of them for me. You’re the only person who can. Go to Trevor, now. He’ll protect you, but let someone else take the fall for this.”
She stared at me another moment longer and then pulled me into a tight hug, her entire body shaking against mine.
“I love you too, Kira.” The words were throttled by emotion, barely audible, and it was all I could do to keep my own tears in check. Anna released me, turned, and ran down the street. I had to trust that she knew where to go and what to do, just like she always had.
This was her fight, but in a different way. In a different place.
I heard glass shattering and whipped around to face the crowd again. The Separatists had surged forward and a rock must have hit a nearby car or the mansion window. The drone of nearing engines made me spin once more.
Guardsmen had to be coming to break this up, to bring all of us back to jail. I couldn’t let it happen again and, even though I knew it was inevitable. Every time I’d been faced with a crowd like this, I’d hung at the edges, unwilling to endanger myself. That had to change tonight.
I shoved past anyone in my way until I reached the front line of the surging group of Separatists. Vi and Carter were several feet away from me, trying their best to reason with both sides. Carter had pulled his gun and he held it facing the sky, as if he wanted to avoid accidentally harming anyone.
I glanced to my right and saw a black car with the windows smashed out of it. The vehicle stood between me and Vi, and appeared to be unoccupied. With both groups drawing together like magnets and vehicles nearing, I gave into instinct and scrambled on top of the car.
“Stop!” I cried out, turning to face the clashing tide of Loyalists and Separatists, and bracing my feet wide apart on the roof of the car. “Just stop! None of you are going to win tonight!”
Even though people continued to jostle and yell, the noise died down and most of them turned toward me.
“Do you need to be reminded that the governor threatened to recondition us all for what happened earlier tonight? None of you are special! None of us are better than the other! The governor reviles all of us equally! We’d all be dead people walking if not for what Vi and Carter did for us at the jail!”
I left Anna’s name out of it. She was long gone by now, I hoped, taking her place at Trevor’s side and continuing her work with him.
Blinding lights illuminated the throng as the guardsmen’s transports arrived, trucks with open beds full of armed soldiers dressed in riot gear. Would they kill us all or haul us back to jail?
“They are the enemy!” I yelled louder, pointing at the guardsmen. “Not the Loyalist or Separatist standing across the way, but the people who created and enforce that divide between us! If Governor Ellery was going to punish us together, then he’s already acknowledged the truth! We are the same!”
The guardsmen jumped out of their trucks and lined up along the street, rifles clutched in their gloved hands. I sucked in a breath and turned to face them. If death was coming, I couldn’t change that. But maybe I could leave something that mattered behind. They had to hear my words as much as anyone here.
“The governor is the enemy. He’s not here to listen to us or anyone else. If you want to be listened to, then the first thing you need to do is open up to each other, because we’re stronger together and our voices are louder when we raise them as one.”
I waited for the guardsmen to make a move. To take me out first. I was the easiest, most visible target, even there in the night. Their trucks’ headlights made it bright as day. Even the crowd had gone still, Carter’s gun still pointed at the air and Vi’s eyes wide as she edged closer to me.
“Insurrection, as you know, is a crime.” The governor’s voice boomed from the trucks, perhaps through a loudspeaker. They must have found a way to connect him, to communicate with us. I wasn’t sure why he would address us instead of simply telling the guardsmen to arrest or kill us. Maybe he liked to put on a bit of a show or maybe there was a point to what he was about to say.
When I slid my glance to Vi, who’d made it to the vehicle’s side, she looked up at me and shrugged. Despite that, she still looked tense, ready to pull me down and get out of there if she could.
“All I want is peace, but I can see that our commonwealth won’t know it as long as you are within it. So I offer you a choice.”
Why would the governor give us any choice? Why...
I thought about the news, the things I’d seen on there. Protests framed as nothing more than a small, splinter group that posed a threat to our way of life. But this was so much larger and had surely caught the attention of most of the city. The mass of people had grown exponentially from the jailed group to a mob that spilled over onto the street. He’d have to order us all arrested or killed, and maybe, just maybe, we’d forced the governor to make a strategic choice.
Kill us all and there’d be no covering it up. Angry parents and more citizens would revolt, and even the governor couldn’t stop an entire city, no matter how powerful he seemed.
Arrest us all and there’d be no containing such a large number of prisoners. They couldn’t expedite the reconditioning process, either. It needed three months for it to take. Until then, we’d all live on the Commonwealth’s dime, a drain on resources.
“You may depart the Commonwealth with no repercussions,” he announced, “but you must go now. This will be my one act of mercy for those who feel our way of life is unjust. You may go in peace, but if you remain after dawn, you and your families will face the consequences.”
I sucked in a breath and looked down at Vi. Leave the city together? Give my parents the chance to carry on with their lives without fear? It seemed too good to be true.
Vi’s gaze went to my shoe and then back to my face, and my chest clenched.
The note from my mother.
She wanted me to go, to live free of this place. It was that or die, and I couldn’t in good conscience condemn my parents to the same fate. Better they mourn the loss of the daughter who lived than the daughter who didn’t.
Slowly, with an exhale, I lowered myself from the roof of the car and joined Vi in the street. She took my hand and nodded.
At least we were going together.
IT WASN’T UNTIL WE were past the wall, far from the armed contingent of guardsmen who’d escorted us to the enormous, locking gate, that I drew breath.
We’d handed over our white cards, one by one, the pieces of plastic that contained everything about our Commonwealth identities. The piece of our lives that defined us, relinquished at the gate.
I’d never seen the gate for myself and I’d just as soon forget it once we’d passed through. It was a monstrous thing, taller and wider than three doors placed side by side. Once we’d exited to the other side, I kept waiting for the rhythmic sound of automatic gunfire, for a sudden burst of pain before the peace of death.
But the governor was true to his word and we walked onward, away from the towering wall where so many things that mattered to me stayed held captive. I stopped and glanced back, my heart racing. Even though we hadn’t gone far, the city seemed like some distant, strange thing, the gray wall wrapping around it like a bleak ribbon.
“Are you okay?” Vi asked, her voice shaky.
“I think so. I just hope he meant what he said, that he wouldn’t punish our families for the insurrection.”
“I hope so, too.” She squeezed my hand. “I’m sure Anna and Trevor will do what they can to make sure he keeps those promises.”
That had to be good enough, so we carried on, walking into the boundless night. I didn’t have a watch or any way to keep track of the time that passed. A few people had glow lights, but not enough for me to see if all of us were still together or not. Vi’s hand was the only sure thing as the lights of the Commonwealth fell further and further behind us.
It wasn’t until we stopped to rest that I saw an orange glow on the indistinct horizon. Then a pair of lights approaching. Then others. Maybe the bearers were people in our own group, but the closer they got, the more I heard a murmur of surprise growing all around us. The words passed on were too quiet for me to hear until the lights approached us.
“Vi?” The soft, tremulous voice belonged to a woman with long black hair contained in a thick braid.
The hand holding mine tensed and then I felt Vi’s entire body jerk forward when another voice asked, “Six?”
“Mom, Dad!” She threw herself into their arms with a sob and I looked into the blue-violet eyes of the man holding the glow light before he closed them and turned his face toward his wife and daughter.
I backed a few steps away from them and looked at the other lights circling us. People, bringing our straggling group back together, offering water, food, and answering questions. Someone said they’d be sure to wait until daybreak to look for anyone who might have gotten separated from us. Another person said that word had already been passed along to other settlements.
Settlements? What did they mean?
I folded my legs beneath myself and sat to wait. All around me, there were reunions and chatter, and someone handed me a bottle full of water. When the first rays of the sun finally silvered the sky, I saw that the land around us was greener than I’d anticipated. Not the curated green of the Commonwealth lawns, but with a touch of brown. Sparse trees dotted the landscape. So, not a total wasteland. Not the way they would have us believe from childhood.
A hand extended toward me and I looked up into Vi’s shining face.
“We made it,” she said, clasping my wrist. “We all did.”
“Is this what it’s like, getting the kids back to their families?” I asked, letting her tug me to my feet.
“Better.” She turned back to the people who’d held her for so long and gestured at me. “Mom, Dad, this is Kira Neville. Kira, these are my parents.”
Her parents? The father she was sure was dead, the mother exiled from the Commonwealth for so many years?
“I heard they were alive last time I worked on an Operation Reunion mission. That’s why I stayed outside the city for so long, to see if I could get a message to them,” Vi explained.
That was amazing and I didn’t know how to respond to that. How could I even start?
Her father saved me the trouble by offering his hand. “You’re Audrey Ellery’s daughter.”
“I am.” I cringed inwardly. Would that be a strike against me?
“Is she still working for the Separatist cause?”
“My... my mother?” My mouth dropped open at the revelation. How she’d wanted me to go. To leave the city. Not out of fear for herself and my father, but because it was the chance she’d either never gotten or never taken. My voice came out reedy and whisper-thin. “Yes, I think she is.”
“Good for her. I know it must have been hard, leaving her behind, but maybe you’ll go back for them one day. Just like we knew we would be with Vi again. Once we get settled, we’ll talk. For now, everyone needs to rest. We aren’t far from the first base camp. We’ve got enough resources for all of the refugees to get proper meals, water, and sleep.”
Refugees?
Right. That’s what we were now. I wasn’t Kira Neville, daughter of the head diplomat anymore. The identity I’d had in the Commonwealth no longer mattered.
The way Vi and her parents looked at each other with so much love made my chest squeeze. They were right. Maybe I’d go back for my family someday.
For now, I had to see the truth for myself, the truth about life beyond the wall, outside a corrupt commonwealth, and live my own personal truth with the woman who’d helped me find it. I had to navigate a new world, but I didn’t have to do it alone.
“Oh, Vi,” I said, reaching out to slide my palm against hers. “I...”
“Shh.” She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and lifted her gaze to mine. “I love you, Kira, and I don’t have to be afraid to say that to you here.”
I shivered, despite the heat of the coming day and her touch. “I love you too, Vi.”
“Come on. Those fires are waiting for us.” She pulled me in for an embrace and I couldn’t help but give in to the tears at last. They weren’t for what I’d lost so much as for what I’d found.
When my body finally stopped shaking, I drew back, scrubbed the back of my arm across my eyes, and nodded. Vi took my hand and her parents led the way.
Together, we walked. Toward freedom, toward hope, toward the fires that burned for us.