Camille sat down and put her head between her legs, whispering, “My own child, my own child.”
Confusion dominated the room. Grant’s voice, thick with anger, rose above the crowd.
“Judith, come down here immediately. Guards, detain Denis.”
Quickly, everything flipped like a coin. Denis was a prisoner, Judith was the hero, and I was still pinned in the corner. The clock above my head ticked. He had five more minutes. I held my breath and waited for the door to open downstairs.
Grant swung his legs on the edge of the bed like a child. Bright lights bounced off the metallic surroundings and made his sweaty skin shine. When the door finally opened, he jumped down and I sensed the power he felt as his legs supported him. He drew strength from the ground as if it were electric as he strode towards Judith’s tiny figure. He eyed the pills and his daughter suspiciously. She talked fast, her head bobbing up and down, and her eyes welling and spilling over with false tears. She moved to hug him and, after a moment of rigidness, he wrapped his arms around her and patted her honey-colored head gently. He swallowed the pills without water while still in her embrace and then turned to the crowd, who were all almost leaning on the glass as they tried to read the situation.
Grant strode proudly over to the mic and flicked the switch. The intercom vibrated with his energy and fury. “Judith has relayed a plot to assassinate me in which she was an unwilling pawn.” My heart rattled in denial. “She has come to my aid and has proved her worth in my eyes. Denis, on the other hand, has proved wanting at every turn since he came to me, and perhaps that is why he has now reached this depth of deception and depravity. Working with a rebel to murder his own father is despicable and unforgiveable.” Grant shook his head and swiped his forehead. “I have no choice but to disown him and sentence him to death along with the rebel.” He didn’t even look at me. He had won. I could be swept down the garbage chute now.
Denis managed to yell, “She’s lying!” as they dragged him away.
Judith took a step back from her father as he began to address the crowd above. His head tilted upwards, his expression glinting all kinds of sharp angles and cuts.
“Friends. See what is possible.” His leg wobbled, and his foot dropped flat when he stepped towards the window. He straightened it. “See what our great society can achieve with the right motivation.” He cringed inwards and coughed, a blue drip appearing at his nostril. “I am healed…” He stumbled. “I am…” One knee collapsed, and he reached down with his strong arms to pull it back up. But as he leaned down, his other knee buckled.
Camille whispered, “Wyatt,” and reached her arm out towards him. He fell forward, bracing himself with his hands. His legs were once again useless. He rolled to sitting and grabbed at them, pinched them, shaking his head.
The guests breathed in one collective breath and held it.
“No,” he wheezed. Another cough sprayed blue liquid down the front of his gown. I retreated deeper into my seat, the second hand pounding over my head.
In the corner, leaning against the door, Judith smirked. No one saw her but me. Then she rushed to him.
“Daddy!” she screamed. Her voice was over the top, her screams strangled and full of huffs and gasps as she sobbed hysterically.
The mic was still on and we heard every word.
“What’s happening?” he rasped, his voice weak, desperate, as he sat staring at his hopeless legs.
Judith kneeled down. “I don’t know, Daddy. They should work. Unless she gave me fake ones.” She pointed up at me and I shrank back, the events leading up to this moment sifting through my mind and landing in a neat and ordered stack.
I gave Judith four pills. She took two to give to Gwen and I watched her flush the other two down the toilet. Initially, when she rushed to Grant’s aid, I thought she had somehow kept the pills I’d given her. I was wrong. All she’d done was give Grant fake pills. The only possible reason—to get Denis out of the picture so that she would be named Grant’s successor.
Grant was incapable of doubting her in his last minutes. She held his head and stroked his hair as his fingers swelled and turned blue. I watched in sickening horror as it eventually tracked up his veins and across his face.
The last thing he said was, “See it through.”
His head fell to his chest, the whites of his eyes bright blue. I recoiled and shuddered, my fingers finding the bumps in the carpet and counting them one by one. Judith threw her head up and wailed. The whitecoats crowded around Grant, suddenly pushed to action by her siren-like voice. Camille shed silent tears as they grabbed his body and dumped it on the table, attempting to resuscitate him. But when blue liquid started pouring from his mouth, eyes, and ears as they pumped his chest, they jumped away, pulling a kicking and screaming Judith with them.
Camille let out a dry, withered moan and shriveled like a blade of grass scorched by the sun.
The whitecoats exited the room screaming, “Biohazard!” One of the techs hit a red button, and the alarm drowned out Judith’s howling.
The guards left me and ushered the guests out of the viewing room. I stared down at Grant’s lifeless body. He cried tears of blue. He had one moment of pure joy and then he was gone. Maybe that’s all you can hope for.
Maybe I shouldn’t care.
One arm hung limply off the table, his nails and finger bulbous like frogs’ feet from the pressure of the blue trying to escape anyway it could. A guard grabbed my shoulders and pulled me away from the glass, lifting my trembling body and carrying me to the lift. Grant was abandoned, broken and bleeding like he had left so many of his citizens. A picture he would have flipped like the page of a book without a second thought.
Superior Grant was dead.
And in his place was an evil, unhinged teenager who had fooled us all.
ROSA
Maybe I can’t learn. Maybe my brain is set in concrete now and there’s no undoing it. But then, maybe I was never going to get out of this.
At least I tried.
The rain whipped up by spinning chopper blades gave me hope I shouldn’t have. Gwen, escorted by two rough guards, the wind and sleet pelting their harried faces, gave me strength I shouldn’t have. A swollen, beaten face that I barely recognized as Denis brought me crashing back down to earth.
A small man clutching a metal suitcase to his chest scuttled past me and hopped into the waiting chopper.
Before I could comprehend what was happening, we were forced into the chopper, our harnesses were secured, and we lifted off the ground.
I passed a look to Gwen, who shrugged, but had a slight squish to her expression. It was too loud to speak with the chopper blades, the wind and rain slapping the sides and streaming in the open door. Denis appeared completely baffled. Everything he’d carefully planned was left in the shrinking mud below.
A guard strapped to a thick, nylon line stumbled towards the door and closed it, shutting out some of the noise.
The little man rested his chin on his case and gazed out of the window at the lightening dark and the glow of floodlights getting smaller and smaller. “Well, this is exciting isn’t it?”
No one answered.
It was close to dawn when we lifted off and now a sunrise lathered in blood reds and failing purples spread before us like a flapping, silk scarf over the land. I counted eight soldiers plus the pilot strapped to the sides of the craft. All inwardly focused, sunrise washing their cheeks in color as they avoided our eyes.