To Be Free Read online

  Sydney Alykxander Walker

  To Be Free

  By Sydney Alykxander Walker

  Copyright 2013 Sydney Alykxander Walker

  Smashwords Edition

  Table of Contents

  Liars and Thieves

  The Proud and the Damned

  I Now Pronounce you...

  May the Odds be Ever in your Favour

  A Two-Way Mirror Only Reflects the Image you Project

  Like Shadows Haunting your Every Step

  To Be Vulnerable

  Close your Eyes and be Damned by what you See

  Don’t forget, You’ll Never be Forgiven

  If We Had the Courage to Admit Our Sins

  Carry On, Brave Little Soldier

  Don’t Go Spoiling the Ending, Now

  I Wish I May, I Wish I Might

  Don’t Forget, You’ll Never be Free

  For Sydney,

  Whose enthusiasm continues to drive me onwards.

  "Rejoice despite the fact this world will hurt you;

  Rejoice despite the fact this world will kill you;

  Rejoice despite the fact this world will tear you to shreds;

  Rejoice because you're trying your best."

  Andrew Jackson Jihad

  There was so much pain in the gesture. His lips formed a smile as our eyes met and there was no joy; those eyes that never ceased to startle me, the colour of the sky and the sea on a stormy night, were clouded with hopelessness and those tears shone as they crept down his pale cheeks. In the firelight, the man looked broken.

  His lips parted as he licked them nervously, as if afraid of what would soon come, and my name left them the way one would whisper a prayer to God for salvation. Even though, in this world, there is only pain and betrayal.

  "Quinn," the man pled, his eyes narrowing with his agony and his brow creasing, creating lines in an otherwise ageless face. He turned to face me, his hands twitching at his sides with some unfulfilled desire. "I'm sorry, I can't keep fighting this. I can't - not with the truth of what they've done, what they've created."

  I reached for him; even though I knew he'd never let me comfort him. We're equals in the eyes of the world, and yet we're standing a mile away with a chasm yawning between us, its endless depths promising pain and certain death and its one swaying bridge threatening to collapse with one false move...

  ...and I'm already halfway across and dangerously close to falling.

  No, that's a lie. I've already fallen, and the man sitting by my side after waking from the nightmares that haunt him, his past made real in his dreams, knows it all too well and hates himself for it.

  In this world, you can only hate yourself for the very life you've been given. For surviving.

  "...and for everything she's done."

  We all have things we're not proud of. Some of us have cheated on our Chosen; others have lied, stolen and murdered. Still, some have died by another's hand for who they are and what they believe in, civil wars fought over deities and morality. Wars waged over the threats posed to the church, to protect a book they've been paraphrasing that's been written thirty-five hundred years ago; threatening a government or a monarch, and being persecuted.

  Some of us... all we've done is love. Love and want to be accepted, and have had to die for it. For being different, for being a survivor.

  Because you have to damn us all for the scars burned into our flesh at birth over the very thing we cannot hope to control.

  The year is 2092, and my story begins in the small town of Catchford, California. It begins on a cloudy morning, at the hand of the Vigils come to reap the lambs of God to appease the demons that have come to Earth at Lucifer's whim, to reap the souls of the damned.

  My name is Quinn Terry, and I am a Runner.

  Liars and Thieves

  QUINN

  You'd presume that humans would be above this kind of thing by now, given our shaky history. We've successfully mapped out Mars and NASA is going to launch its first mission to colonize the planet, introducing water and plant life once more; we have supercomputers ready for us at the push of a button; and all it cost was our very souls.

  I'm not talking about selling it to Satan for technological conquests or anything - I mean the dangerous kind. The kind that I'm looking at right now.

  As everyone should know, a human is far more dangerous than any demon.

  The Vigils are lined up and down the block, hands clasped behind their backs and looking almost like the right hand men of God that they proclaim to be. Their white uniforms shine with the gleam of silver and gold stitching and accents, weapons sitting casually around their zero-G belts and the blue lights running along their combat boots. Everyone in the neighbourhood - our neighbours and any living human with a pulse for around a mile - stands on the sidewalk while they stand on the yellow lines separating the two halves, our right hands fisted over our hearts and clearly showing the ID bands around our wrists that have the same blue LEDs dancing along the surface. Our left hands are fisted behind our backs.

  As a citizen of the New Order of the Church of Christ, we swear our undying loyalty to Him and the Pope, God's living representative on Earth. We shall abide by the Order's laws or face judgement by the Lord, and kneel before Him in shame. We shall not conduct ourselves in any manner that is unbecoming, we shall not question the Order and its rule, and we shall in no manner associate with a Runner. We shall not hide or protect an Unnatural, and should we suspect one to be a Survivor, we shall not hesitate to warn the Council and terminate the corrupt.

  The Oath is almost deafening when it's recited by around a hundred people at the same time, so loud that it makes my ears ring even as I, too, recite it. My mother and father stand to my right, as proud as ever for their country and the cause - because who could outwardly protest against a cult that's taken over the United States when dissent means you die? Humans want to survive by nature, so we comply even if it sets our teeth on edge - and my little sister, only five, clings to my left leg because she's allowed. She doesn't have to recite it yet, she's not due to start school before the fall, so for a little longer her mind is her own.

  For a little longer, she can remain untouched by the hand of God.

  The Vigils step forward, the HUD of their helmets that distort the upper half of their heads beeping and displaying our information as it scans our features and identifies us. They step up to the parents first, one per family, and begin the questionnaire.

  Annie holds on tightly as the man moves on to my mother, and I carefully place my left hand on her shoulder and squeeze it reassuringly. She looks up at me with those large brown eyes that run in our family, innocent doe eyes finding mine, and a sadness unlike any I've ever seen on a child's face graces her doll-like features.

  "Quinny?" she questions, her worry plain as day. I look away from the horizon, breaking one fundamental law, to reassure my little sister - because it's always been my job to protect her innocence, to reassure her in the dead of night, and I'll take the punishment if it means she'll be relieved for a little bit.

  "It's going to be okay, Annie," I whisper, smiling softly. She nods after a moment, still unconvinced - she's always hated these monthly exams where they test us, just to see if we haven't somehow survived the initial screening. "I promise it'll be okay - we'll go get some ice cream afterwards, alright? Down on Richford Street, at the parlour. Then, if you want, we can go look for him again in the park."

  "Really?" Her face lights up at the words, her hazel eyes filling with tears. "We can go look for Fluffernutter?"

  "We'll look for him until we find him or until it gets dark, okay?" I swear, and she nods vigorously.

  Poor girl still hasn't understood that that one cat she's adored so much from t
he litter our neighbour’s cat had two years back is dead. She searches for him in the afternoons in the backyard, calling his name and leaving cat food on the porch at night that attracts strays and raccoons more than dead cats.

  I don't have the heart to explain it to her that he's never coming back.

  My vision explodes with the strike to my jaw, making me stagger out of line and stumble onto the grass behind me. I look up, Annie having run to hide from the Vigil behind our parents, and look to the man in white standing with his baton still poised from the strike. Taking a deep breath, I stand to my feet and step back in line, keeping my anger in check and saluting once more.

  "Identification," the man snaps, irritated, and I rattle off the series of numbers and letters that mean absolutely nothing to me. A jet soars by overhead while I do so, temporarily blotting out the sun's harsh gaze on this cloudy day promising a killer storm later. "Name and information."

  "My name is Quinn Terry, son of James and Thea Terry. I'm a twenty-two year old man in the southern district of Catchford, California, and a student at Pulse University, studying in the field of Literature," I state, and in the brief silence I hear a small beep from the HUD of the man's headgear.

  "Voice match confirmed. Please extend your left hand," he commands, and after I do so he lifts a small white needle big enough for a small incision, kind of similar to the IV needles you get at the hospital, and presses it to the inside of my wrist. I wince, but hold steady.

  Then, things go wrong.

  I see the red light flashing in the HUD even though it's usually sort of hard to do so, and his expression changes in the blink of an eye - his eyes narrow and his lips tighten into a line, his free hand reaching for the pistol at his belt. My blood turns to ice and I feel a chill race through my body, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

  No, no that's impossible, my mind is screaming. For Christ's sake it was one time, one errant thought and one errant action before I shoved them away! I destroyed every single piece of it, I'm clean.

  That, and how fucking twisted it is that it's happened after Meredith announced that I was to be a father. That I tried so hard to hide the growing emotions, the thoughts that I can't have and still call myself a free man.

  "On your knees, Survivor," he hisses, spitting the word as if it's a curse and levelling the gun to my forehead. I see my mother hold her hands up to her lips and gasp audibly, and my father turns Annie away from the sight.

  I tremble as I do as he asks, kneeling on the sidewalk and feeling the cold touch of the gun whisper on my skin. He brings his hand to where his ear would be under the headgear and notifies the Council and the men on-site to cart any Survivors away - the chances of finding a Survivor late in the game, after ten years of age, is slim as it is.

  "This has to be some mistake!" My mom shouts, and two of the Vigils that come to help take me away hold her back from charging at him. "Quinn is a married man, for Christ's sake!"

  One of them slaps her across the face for her words, and my father bristles.

  "He's expecting a child in eight month's time, he's not a carrier!" She shrieks as they pull me up and press the electrified handcuffs against my wrists, binding me. I hang my head in shame, because I somehow knew I could've never suppressed that part of me no matter what I tried. No matter how many girls I shared a bed with and no matter if I chose a Partner.

  Your blood can never lie.

  "It's okay, mom," I whisper, and force myself to look up at her and give her a smile. She freezes when our eyes lock, and I try to smile more genuinely - it doesn't even reach my eyes. "Really. It's... not a new development, but please don't tell that to Meredith. Just... tell her I'm sorry I couldn't be the man she was looking for."

  She looks at me, stricken, and I turn my eyes away because it hurts to hold that pained gaze. I can't meet my father's eyes or hers, as I know I've let them down. No parent wants to hear that their child has bypassed the original screening - that has a 99.5% chance of catching any Unnaturals, and those who survive usually get caught before their teens, turning it into a 0.01% survival rate into adulthood. If you pass that screening and become a legal adult on your own, chances are you become a Runner.

  It's either that or get caught, and those who get taken in are never heard from again. They disappear, their ID is wiped off the face of the planet and given to a new citizen - be they immigrants or newborns - and no one ever speaks of them again.

  I've seen it happen before. Some guy in the college I was going to at the time got caught during a surprise screening in the middle of lunch, and a Vigil spent the better part of an hour telling us witnesses that it was better we forgot what happened today, and forgot the young man going by the name of Sebastian Jaeger - an exchange student from Germany who wasn't well known and was hardly missed.

  By God, I couldn't hold Annie's gaze even if it saved my life. She's not stupid - she knows what this is.

  The Council will investigate my family; pay extra close attention to my parents and my relatives, screening them regularly - once a week, maybe two - for a while to see if they can't find the source, the roots of the genes. It might take months before they get off their case, by which point I don't know where I'll be.

  All I know is that - as they manhandle me into the nondescript van with barred windows and steel benches, a guard sitting at the front regarding me gruffly, an M-16 gripped in his hands and the barrel aimed right for my skull. The lights travel up and down its dark chrome length, pulsing with energy - I'll be dead. The eyes of those who've lived around me for years and who don't know me regard me suspiciously, scorn and distaste from the men and women brainwashed into believing this is the right thing to do.

  To cull their own kind over the basis of the past, over the political wars that have been waged over a petty topic, over something that should've been rightfully theirs.

  Freedom. Equality.

  Finally, the doors are snapped shut once the monthly screening is completed and barred, the guard's eyes never leaving my head as I sit on the bench as far away from him as possible in the small space. My hands are pooled between my knees, the handcuffs stinging with the charge of electricity as I hang my head. The familiar mop of black hair trails just shy of my eyes I keep downcast, and I breathe as steadily as I can while the truck lurches off into a fate unknown to me.

  Taking me with it, however unwilling I may be.

  After all, it's my own damn fault for thinking I could push those feelings away, bury them so deep into my heart that my blood would lie. I had four years to Run, to leave behind America in favour of Canada, Mexico, or even Europe. Instead, I tried to settle and have a family as if the rest of this Godforsaken country would give me that privilege just because I'm human.

  They've never had to fight for their rights. Those born as white cisgendered men who've never felt the bitter anger of their rights removed, who've gone to church and prayed at the pews for the world to see the light, for God to reward them for their sins and punish the world for its virtues.

  If I want those same rights, I have to fight for them.

  The Proud and the Damned

  NINE

  At first I think he's dead; the young man they drag in at half past eight - or is it a quarter after three in the morning? My internal clock's getting worse and worse these days, and it has nothing to do with being a man in captivity - doesn't fight, instead choosing to keep his head down and let them manhandle him into the block next to mine. The kid they had there last week never came back from the initial exam, so I'm glad he got out, however morbid the thought of escape from the facility actually is.

  There's only one way to escape the facility, and that's through your own death - and you can't do it yourself; you have to die at the hands of the monsters disguised as men, and if you're useful to them, that could take years.

  We're specimens, not humans. We lost our freedom the moment we got caught - be it at five, seventeen, twelve or thirty. The survival rate of a Survivor past thei
r twenties is almost none, and completely eradicates itself when you reach the thirties. As you age, your blood screams it stronger and louder than ever, and the screenings catch wind of it the moment a drop is introduced. If you're a Runner, they just shoot you on sight and drag your comatose body to the nearest facility, where testing commences.

  Most don't make it past the first, though. It kills anyone who doesn't have the gifts they seek.

  Our holding cells are quite literally cages, about six and a half feet long and wide, and nearly seven feet high. The steel bars are as thick as my arms and blue lights run along the bars, reminding us that they are, in fact, supercharged and ready to stun us if we try to escape. It doesn't do anything if you touch them through some fabric, so leaning against them isn't a problem.

  They're lined up side by side, leaving us a gorgeous view of the testing rooms just across the hall through the one-way windows they've installed. I made the mistake of looking once, and by God it still haunts my nightmares.

  They throw him into Ten's old cell, and the black-haired man groans slightly, lifting himself onto his hands and knees before raising his head and looking around. The Vigils watch the man as he sits up, their expressionless faces partially hidden by the headgear still on their heads, turning them from regular citizens to nondescript soldiers with the power to destroy us.

  "You will be seen to shortly," one says offhandedly, turning his back to the rows of cells and walking back the way he's come. His companion gives me a stern look as he passes by my cell, where I sit with my right shoulder against the western bars and smirk at him, arms crossed.

  "As for you, Nine, I hope you're ready 'cause they're cooking a hell of a storm in there for you," the second hisses, and I recognize the sneer - the Vigil I've given hell to ever since I've come here.