Would Roth really shelter here?
“Sir, do I have your order to move in?” I hear an anxious Guard shout over the crushing winds.
Right as Ava and I charge into the room, Alexander whips around, his crisp navy-blue uniform striking against his wall of twenty camouflaged soldiers, all dressed for combat.
Does he think he’s sending them to the Gulf Coast? Right into an approaching hurricane?
“You’ve always lacked vision, but I see you’re completely blind!” Ava yells, throwing her hands up toward the screens. “This is a trap!”
“No, Ava, this is it!” Owen fires off somewhere near the control panel. “The bastard’s finally in our crosshairs!”
Alexander’s beady eyes catch mine, and I can feel the hate that radiates off him as the distance between us closes. It’s a burning rancor that seeks to cut me down and make me disappear, like I let his son disappear.
“Remove them from this room, now!” Alexander snaps.
Two soldiers break from the line and barrel toward us. Their bulletproof vests bear the rebellion’s yellow slash, from hip to heart, but the batons in their hands speak a different story. Are these Guards loyal to the Common, or do they serve only Alexander?
Or is one of them the governor’s gunman that I’ve been waiting for these last three weeks?
The pistol in Ava’s hand tells me she’s asking herself the same questions.
“Looks like we’re going to have ourselves a little rumble,” Kano yells, not even trying to conceal his delight.
“Alexander, call off your henchmen!” Owen shouts, standing on the balls of his feet like he’s in the grip of an inward duel: move to our aid—to Ava’s—or remain at the control panel. “Texas made or not, this drone has a lifespan of about twenty seconds in these winds before it’s ocean litter!”
Four more strides would have told me just how far the Guards were planning to go to remove us from this room, but a stentorian shout erupts from the elevator door. “Stand down, soldiers!”
Emery.
The two soldiers go rigid, their bodies jerking to attention. I sprint past them for the screen—I have to be the first to see; Theo, are you really in there? Throwing a cursory glance behind me, I spot Emery standing beside the general, chest heaving, jaw and fists clenched. Clearly, she wasn’t told of this mission either.
“Move in!” Alexander shouts, undercutting Emery’s order for all soldiers to stand down.
In a surprising move, Owen disobeys Emery and slaps a button on the panel. The shaky drone footage suddenly displays on every screen throughout the room, encircling us. I swallow my panic at what I might see—or not see—inside the dilapidated house. I grip Ava’s shoulder and watch the search drone dive, as agile and quick as a bird of prey.
“Just in time; knew you’d make it,” Owen greets us as we reach him. His smile beams like a five-hundred-watt bulb. “Heat sensors show ten bodies in there.”
But a shadow crosses my sister’s face. She glares at Alexander, who paces the shellacked concrete floor, his trembling hands pulling at his tangled hair.
“This doesn’t feel right,” Ava presses.
The UAV swoops to the far side of the ruined structure, where an entire wall is missing, most likely ripped off in a previous storm. The rainfall batters against the drone’s lens in sheets, making it near impossible to discern any detail beyond the ten distorted shapes of bright yellow.
“Clarity Mode, dammit!” Alexander commands, and the blurred images instantly snap into focus. He stifles a cry.
It’s like jolting awake from a hazy bad dream, only to see the nightmare clear in front of me.
Ten bodies, aligned in a straight row along the edge of the exposed room, sit cuffed to metal poles, the savage waves of the Gulf thrashing against their knees. How long before the water is above their necks? All wear identical yellow prison uniforms, a single word in black on their chests: “COMMONERS.”
“What is this?” Alexander cries out, hurling the Guard who pilots the drone from his seat.
“This is a setup,” Ava says, a hollow despair softening her usual edge. “The governor was never there.”
“Theo!” I shout over the shrieking gale. “Do you see Theo in there?”
Alexander’s long, pale fingers frantically stab at the control panel, driving the drone forward, but the man-made machine is no match for nature. The raging winds and rain keep whipping the UAV left and right. And I can’t see their faces!
“Enable face recognition!” Alexander screams, his voice cracking in desperation.
“UNABLE TO IDENTIFY” scrolls across the screens.
Stupidly, I stand very still, squinting my eyes, like this will do any good to stabilize the jerky spasmodic footage and focus the line of captives. The longer I look, the more my stomach lurches, bile burning the back of my throat.
Please don’t let me see him.
Yet still I search for the beacon of Theo’s golden-brown hair. The identifiable curve of his athletic shoulders. His characteristic fighting spirit, pulling against his zip-ties.
But all I can make out are flashes of the white gags tied around the sopping wet faces of the Common members, a lone purple star stamped over their lips.
“All Commoners will be exterminated,” Emery reads slowly aloud, somehow deciphering the jumbled text scrawled on the back wall. “The future belongs to Loyalists. Long live the governors.”
Just then the drone loses the battle with the storm and starts spinning downward, plunging into the roiling sea. The screens cut to black. The room falls into a dead stillness, the audio from the drone lost.
“Son of a Glut!” Owen screams, shattering the quiet. He winces at his use of the offensive curse. “Sorry. Son of a goddamn governor!”
Alexander grips his metal chair and slams it onto the floor. It doesn’t break, so he picks it up again, but Emery stops him with a lift of her hand.
I sprint for Alexander, seizing him by his rumpled lapels, forcing him to look at me. “You can send your soldiers,” I plead. “There’s still time! You can save them. Him.”
Theo.
Were you in that house?
The bags under Alexander’s bleary eyes are as black as his stare. “It’s all your fault,” he utters, slapping down my hands. His words sting more than his touch.
Ramming past me, Alexander drags himself from the room, his flock of Guards remaining where they stand at attention.
Ava grabs Emery by the shoulders, her face hard and inscrutable, the Goodwin way. “Please,” she whispers.
But we both already know the answer.
“We can’t risk more lives,” Emery says flatly. “The Common members will drown long before our Guard could reach them. I’m sorry.”
“So we just let them die?” I exclaim, unable to accept this truth. I blink and see Theo’s lifeless body buried beneath the sea.
No, I tell myself. He wasn’t there.
“The Loyalists led us to that scene with the aim to make us feel helpless,” Emery tells the room. “It was a mistake. The more they take from us, the stronger we will become.”
I want to believe that.
I need to. Because looking around the control room now, I can’t stop my mind from thinking about how many more of us will be taken before this all ends.