Chapter 21
Adam bolted upright, a scream on his lips and his eyes wide.
A nightmare. He never had nightmares. He never dreamed, really. Nothing that he could actually recollect in the morning. This time, however, the dream had been so vivid, so overpowering that the recollection of it caused him to shudder as he swung his legs out of the bed and onto the icy floor.
Placing his head in his hands, he closed his eyes. It had seemed so real.
He was standing in a richly furnished room in a building that seemed to be trying to reach the sky. In his hand was a golden staff, with a white pearl set in its crown. Huge windows surrounded him, and dim light seemed to filter into the room from somewhere. The light cast long, dark shadows across the floor beneath him. Impossibly, the floor on which the shadows seemed to writhe was made of glass, allowing him to stare down at the city far below.
A city in flames.
Muted flashes, explosions, sparked and gleamed in streets that teemed with people... people he knew, faces he recognized. And they were dying – dying in horrific ways as the city seethed, wrapped in fire and blood.
One shadow seemed to detach itself from the other shadows, crawling across the glass floor and rising up to become something that vaguely resembled a man. He felt terror as it approached, but found himself unable to move.
“All this,” the shadow hissed.
Below him the bloody battle raged. He knew that he had caused it, somehow, that it was his fault. He felt the burden of the deaths below weigh down upon his shoulders, crushing him to his knees. He wept as the screams from below began to reach him, the sound like a fork scraped across a ceramic plate.
He stared up at the shadow that loomed above him. As he knelt there, the shadow seemed to grow larger, stronger. He tore his gaze away and stared back down at the carnage far below. The men and women seemed to be staring up at him, grinning as they died. Expecting something of him. Their demanding eyes seemed to pierce him like a hundred thousand knives. He flinched from their gaze, but suddenly he realized that they weren’t staring at him. They were staring at the staff he held. He stared at it, and the pearl seemed to take on an inner radiance, gleaming in the dimly lit room. As he looked, he noticed the shadow that had whispered in his ear seem to shrink away.
He pounced, the golden staff slamming into the shadowy figure, and he heard the screams below change into triumphant cries. The shadow screamed and lashed out, knocking him backwards into the glass of the tall building. He felt the glass crack, but he pushed himself away, attacking again.
His second strike caused the shadow to stagger, but it kicked out at him, again slamming him into the already fractured window. He felt it give way beneath him, shattering outwards in a spray of glass. He felt his balance waver.
He teetered there, on the edge of the precipice, and two figures raced into the room. They were familiar, but he couldn’t see them clearly. He heard the shadow laugh in triumph as he lost his footing and began to fall. He heard the people beneath him howl in dismay.
In desperation, he threw the glowing staff towards the familiar figures who had entered the room. He knew one of them had to catch it, and before he dropped from sight he could see that one of them did... but he couldn’t tell if it was the right one. He screamed out a name, the name of the one he meant to take up the staff, but he couldn’t tell if they had heard him.
He began to plummet toward the earth, no longer able to tell if the cries below were of terror or triumph. As he fell, he saw in the distance another Citizone, also burning. Then the ground rushed up to meet him...
His heart continued to pound in his chest for several more minutes, and he realized he was trembling like a startled bird. Shivering, he rose to his feet and tried to shake the last remnants of the dream away.
It was still late. Dawn was still well over an hour away. The cold air chilled the sweat on his skin, a thousand tiny knives on his flesh. He shook his head and staggered into the kitchen. He leaned against the counter and poured himself a glass of water. His hand shook as he drank it.
He wasn’t used to having nightmares.
He wandered back into the living room and knelt down on the icy floor. Closing his eyes, he steadied his breathing and tried to center himself, trying to relax. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised that he’d begun to have nightmares. It had been only a few weeks since the day he had first spoken that forbidden word to Casey; only a few weeks, but things had grown so fast since then. The people had been more receptive than he could possibly have imagined. It was terrifying.
While the first shots had yet to be fired, he had begun a war. There was no other word for it.
It had, he reflected, been remarkably easy.
The fact that it had been so easy had disturbed him, initially. He had questioned whether it was somehow a trap. The idea that it could be an elaborate hoax designed to lure out those who sought to overthrow the government had left him examining every last detail of what had happened, looking for any slip, any clues that they had become careless.
He’d found nothing.
He’d begun by questioning the providential nature of his being transferred to the one job that could have provided him access to the DZ. Sanitation was the only governmental organization available to regular citizens which allowed certain employees into the Disreputable Zone – the Zone where the vast majority of malcontents were transferred. Before he’d started working there, he’d assumed that it would be a goldmine of potential reactionaries, of people who wanted change. It had taken only a couple of visits to the DZ to realize that he’d barely glimpsed the potential of the people trapped there. If there was a single place in all of Calzone which was a tinderbox of suppressed rage, a kettle on the verge of boiling over, it was the DZ. He’d seen hopelessness in the eyes of the people he had worked with, seen them scurry away before the gaze of CPs, but that sense of hopelessness had paled before the haunted, desperate looks he’d seen in the DZ.
He thought back to that first morning, after he’d been guided to Sanitation by Casey. Angie had seen him coming, and had performed her role with absolute perfection. Her face had paled, she had stammered something to the other guard at the desk, and had cringed as he had walked towards them. The second guard had stared at Angie for a moment, and then glanced at Adam, who smiled at him with a thin trace of drool at the corner of his mouth. Angie had shuddered in revulsion.
He smiled as he remembered the conversation.
*
“Hiya,” Adam had grinned. “Case says I got to work here. Oh, hi pretty lady! You showed me around yesterday.”
“Hold up, there,” the second guard had said firmly, stepping between Angie and him. “You talk to me, not to her.”
“But...”
“Angie, call Greg down here,” the guard had said softly.
“I... I don’t want to bring management into this, Paul. I’m sure he’s really harmless. I just...” she twitched when Adam glanced stupidly at her, his eyes vacant. “People like that...”
“Just do it, Ang,” Paul had said gently. “You shouldn’t have to work with people you aren’t comfortable around. This guy won’t care.”
Angie had nodded reluctantly, and tapped the desk communicator. There had been a brief discussion, which Adam had ignored, pretending instead to be fascinated by his reflection in the polished floor. He’d even got down on his knees and pressed his nose to the stone. Paul had watched him, shaking his head before turning to Angie and whispering, “I can’t believe They don’t just...” he had drawn his thumb across his throat.
Greg, the supervisor, had arrived a few minutes later to see Adam playing ‘pat-a-cake’ with his reflection in the shiny polished stone. Angie was standing as far away from him as she could, and Paul standing, arms crossed, glowering down at the Simple playing on the floor.
“What’s the issue?” the supervisor had asked, glancing between Angie and Adam.
Angie had shuddered prettily. “I’m sorry, Greg. I didn’t want to say anything, but Paul insisted.” She had glanced at Adam. He had looked up at her, then, knowing that with a single word she could expose him. He had grinned at her stupidly. She had looked away again. “I... I have a problem dealing with... people like him.”
Greg had looked at her with compassion, and then had nodded. “I can’t transfer him,” he’d told her. “I have specific orders. But a position just opened up in the City Centre... I don’t really want to lose you, especially not for someone like that, but I can put your name forward for the job.”
Angie’s eyes widened. That had been far more than they could have possibly hoped for. “You’d do that for me?” she had whispered. “Oh, Greg... thank you.”
The supervisor had nodded, then turned to Paul. “Take this guy down to inter-Zonal. He’s scheduled to do manual clean-up.” He stared at Adam for a moment, his eyes filled with disgust. “Tell them to send him into the DZ. Maybe he’ll piss someone in there off enough that he won’t come back.”
Paul had grunted and pulled Adam up roughly. “Come on, moron. Let’s go.”
Adam had followed the guard, shuffling along and making faces in the steel doors of the elevators. The guard had refused to even look at him as they descended to the bottom floor. When the doors swished open, he dragged Adam to the reception desk and gave them the supervisor’s instructions. The desk clerk had frowned, but nodded. “The DZ? I guess he won’t do any worse there than anywhere else. I’ll print off a pass.”
And so, half an hour later, Adam had found himself wandering around the DZ with a garbage bag and a trash spike. The extra-Zonal pass he wore pinned to his grey coveralls gave him unlimited daytime access to any Zone, including the DZ.
*
No one Adam had ever spoken to had ever been to the DZ. People who the government sent into the Disreputable Zone didn’t come out, and the place was shrouded in myth. Stories abounded about what the DZ was like, but the reality of it was like a slap in the face.
While Adam had long since come to believe that the people in Calzone were slaves who just couldn’t see their chains, the DZ made the conditions within the city proper look absolutely idyllic.
The buildings were old, run-down warehouses that no one had cared for in decades. Holes in the roofs had been covered with corrugated tin, and doors that didn’t close properly had been strung up on old hinges by rusting chicken wire. The streets, if you could call them that, were little more than muddy paths between buildings. A few children, too young to work, clung to haggard-looking women with haunted eyes, loitering near doorways. Invariably the women flinched away when he looked in their direction. Every child he saw had wide eyes and distended bellies. Their clothing was tattered, little more than rags, and none of them had shoes, despite the snow that lingered amidst the mud of the streets. The men and women he saw walking between buildings were gaunt, skeletal. He had seen pictures of people in conditions like this in the books his grandfather had left behind: pictures from the middle of the twentieth century, from the prison camps in Germany at the end of the Second World War.
One group of men, dressed in orange coveralls and chained at the feet, had shuffled along behind an armed CP. They had appeared healthier than most of the others in the DZ; Adam assumed they were a work crew of some sort. None of them looked up at him as they were led past, their eyes staring dully at the feet of the man in front of them.
Adam had spent most of the first few days walking around the DZ, getting a feel for the numbers of people and the overall situation. He had expected to find greater supervision, but the zonestreet cameras that seemed to populate nearly every the street of the Citizone were virtually non-existent in the DZ. The only concession to security that he could see was the bunker at the exit from the DZ to the outlying countryside. It was well fortified, with heavy machine guns, and was manned by several bored looking CPs. They hadn’t even glanced up at him as he wandered past, spearing bits of trash. Even the Zone gate into the Citizone, which Adam had expected to be heavily defended, was minimally guarded. Two CPs sat in the guard station, staring at a flat-screen monitor. A third stood outside, obviously bored, staring at what appeared to be a handheld device of some kind. On the first day, the CP outside of the guard station had glanced at Adam’s extra-Zonal pass briefly before waving him in. He hadn’t even bothered to look up at Adam. After the first day, the guard hadn’t even bothered to look at the pass, he just waved Adam through.
It had been incredibly easy to light the spark in the DZ. The challenge had been in keeping it from exploding into flames too soon.
He had waited until the second day before he approached one of the gaunt figures haunting the streets. He had shuffled forward, spearing bits of trash that littered the streets. The man, likely in his early forties, had glanced up at him with blank eyes. Adam had walked up beside him, careful not to look at him directly. “Soon,” he had whispered, and walked away.
The man had been waiting for him the next day. He had angled his way across the street and dropped a piece of paper in Adam’s path. Adam had speared the paper on his stick. The man muttered, “Answer!” softly, and had kept on walking.
Still not certain of the level of observation in the DZ, Adam had continued collecting garbage on his collection stick. When he cleared the stick into the garbage bag he dragged around, he had palmed the note and stuffed it discretely into his pocket. He had fought the urge to look at it immediately, and waited until he had gotten back to his apartment to glance at it.
It had been a three word plea, scribbled in what appeared to be charcoal on a torn corner of paper with an obviously shaky hand. The holes in the page showed that it had likely been written on an arm or someone’s back. It had read simply, “Please, help us.”
Adam’s response had been swift. The following morning, he dropped a note in front of the gaunt figure which simply stated, “We will try”. Again he had whispered, “Soon,” as he wandered past.
The next note was just as brief. It read “Rt. 3 Crn. Fr. Blg.”
On his next trip into the DZ, he had walked three blocks past where he had picked up the last two notes and had turned right. In front of one of the decrepit warehouses, was a bent old man. He sat, his back against the wall of the building, staring ahead blankly. The film over his eyes said he was blind, but he glanced up as Adam approached. “Who are you?” he had asked in a weak voice. He trembled as he asked the question, obviously terrified.
“A friend,” Adam had replied. “Perhaps one of many.”
“What do you want?” the blind man had murmured.
Adam had paused. There were so many ways to answer that question. At last he said, “Something more.”
The blind man had gestured discreetly to the door beside him, and Adam stepped across the threshold. He could not afford to be there long, but the entire process spoke of some kind of organization.
The old warehouse was completely empty of people, though there were hundreds of bunk beds crammed together. Each bunk had signs that they were in use. It must have taken a significant amount of planning to have everyone who called that place home to be elsewhere. Adam looked around the dimly lit building, and a flash of light caught his eye from the bunk in the corner to his immediate right. He walked quietly over to find two people, an older man and a much younger boy, no more than fourteen, sitting on the bunk. The older man stared up at Adam myopically, obviously too near-sighted to make out anything other than vague details. The younger man stared at Adam with hungry eyes.
“You will help us,” the older man had said in a raspy voice. It was not a question.
Adam had stared at the older man for a long time, unable to speak. While the old man couldn’t see Adam’s face, Adam could see his. He knew it almost as well as he knew his own, though he hadn’t seen it since he was fourteen and They had dragged this man away, leaving Adam alone with the corpse of the woman who had betrayed them both.
It was his father.
Adam glanced over at the boy, a boy no more than fourteen... a boy with the same piercing blue eyes as his own. It was like looking into a mirror.
“You will help us?” his father repeated, his tone becoming pleading, suddenly afraid.
Adam cleared his throat. “I will,” he had whispered, finally.
“And the people? The people in the city?” the old man asked, hope springing into his tone.
“We will try,” Adam told him, steadying himself. He took a deep breath. He had to remain focused. “It must be carefully co-ordinated. The time approaches, but it isn’t here yet. What kind of support do we have here?”
The old man had grinned. “I have dreamed of this day,” he whispered. “We will support you. All of us.”
Adam had nodded to himself. “I can’t stay,” he said suddenly. “I don’t know what surveillance there is, but I don’t want to risk being noticed. I will return tomorrow. I need to know your numbers, your physical condition, skills... everything.”
The old man nodded. “We will have details. My son, Jason,” he gestured to the boy standing by the bunk, “will gather the information.”
Adam had glanced over at the boy, Jason, who was staring at him, his eyes wide. He’d noticed the resemblance. Adam met Jason’s eyes and gently shook his head. His half-brother had nodded in silent understanding. Their father couldn’t know about him. Not yet. It would complicate things.
“This is not a game,” Adam had whispered softly, his words directed at his half-brother. “Too many of us have waited too long to take any kinds of risks. Nothing must appear any different. Too much depends on it.”
“Of course,” his father had agreed. He’d paused and stared up at Adam, squinting. “What do we call you?”
Adam had hesitated. He wanted desperately to tell the old man who he was, but he knew that too much depended on the next few weeks. He had lived the last fifteen years believing his father was dead. He could keep up the pretense for a little while longer. “Call me Alpha,” he’d said softly, using the name he and Casey had chosen for him when dealing with strangers. “Now I have to go. Jason, meet me on the street tomorrow with the number of men or women who are strong enough to fight. Give me the number and walk away. Drop a note, like today, about where I can meet you next.”
And so it had begun in the DZ. The number was larger than he could have hoped for, and the organization was incredible. The people in the DZ didn’t have the same degree of fear as the people in the Citizone. They had grown beyond fear. There were no informers in the DZ. The government had stopped trying to infiltrate it nearly a decade before, when all of their informers began turning up dead. While the DZ could speak freely, they were kept in a state of constant starvation. It made them easier to control.
Adam learned a great deal about the DZ in the next few weeks. The most important thing he had learned, however, was that they were desperate. They were so desperate, he had realized, that they were willing to do whatever it took to be free.
Come to think of it, he mused as he knelt on the floor of his apartment, it wasn’t that different from the people in the Citizone.
The Citizone was primed to explode. Like the DZ, it had taken only a couple of words.
Casey had done his research. Within a couple of days of their first meeting, he had a list of every person in Zone 7 who had lost at least one parent or sibling as a result of the Purges.
It had been a long list.
He had approached one of the guys in the Yards who was on the list. Unfortunately, he’d spoken with them man early in the morning. By the time Adam had ambled into the Yard that afternoon, looking for Casey, the atmosphere of the Yards was electric. Everyone was whispering. Casey had seen him coming, and had intercepted him at the gate.
“You aren’t going to believe this, Adam!” he whispered excitedly. “Everyone, even Dan, is on board. They’re on the verge of charging into the City Centre...”
Adam had stared at him in shock. “It’s too soon,” he had whispered. “Acting now will ruin everything.”
Casey had swallowed hard. “Then you’re going to have to talk to them,” he said at last.
“Now?” Adam had demanded, incredulous.
Nodding, Casey had grabbed him by the elbow and led him to a stack of crates around which every one of the workers had gathered.
Many of the men had glanced at him as Casey led him forward, their faces cold as they recognized him. He could hear a few of them mutter under their breath about ‘the idiot’ being back.
Casey raised his hands, and a silence fell across the crowd. “This,” he announced, “is Alpha!”
The silence grew hostile as they stared at him, uncertain of what to make of this betrayal. Adam sighed. He hadn’t wanted to have to do this. Not like this. Still, he had to either act or risk losing them.
“Do you really think that everything is always what it seems?” Adam had demanded loudly, his voice slamming into the cavernous silence like a sledge hammer. “Do you really believe that just because a man says nothing that he thinks nothing?”
The tenor of the silence had shifted abruptly. Eyes, which had been hostile only a moment before, stared at him in shock. A murmur ran through the assembled crowd as Adam scrambled onto the stack of crates. “I am Alpha,” he admitted, his voice suddenly barely audible to the gathered audience. He waited for the second round of stunned murmurs to die down before he continued. “For twenty years I have stood back, waiting, listening. I have remained silent because it was not yet time to speak. I have been patient, as you must be now.
“For twenty years I have watched from the periphery, and do you know what I have seen? I have seen a people cowed. I have seen families torn apart: fathers dragged away in the dead of night; mothers raped in front of their own children and left to die; children left to pick up the pieces of their lives after they have had everything stolen from them.
“I have seen fear in the eyes of people who shouldn’t need to be afraid. People who have been so terrified of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person that they have decided instead to say nothing to anyone.
“I have seen us, all of us, accept that we are defeated.”
He paused, collecting them. Every eye was riveted on him, staring at him, hanging on his every word. They were ready.
“But we aren’t defeated,” he said at last, his voice calm. “We have just been waiting for the time to strike.”
He felt the energy rise with that statement, saw the crowd inch forward. Their eyes were hungry, eager. They expected him to say that it was time.
“But it is not yet time,” he announced.
There was a soft grumble that spread through the crowd. He let it last for a moment, let them feel that discontent.
“How long have you been waiting for something, not really knowing that it was this? Ten years? Twenty? I have been waiting my entire life. And I am willing to wait a little longer. Do you know why?”
There was a stony silence. These people, so placid and terrified only hours before, stared at him in muted anger, but they listened.
“I am willing to wait a little longer because I know that if we strike now, as this tiny group of men and women gathered here, we are doomed to fail. This is not something that can be rushed, not something which we can do without the help of others like us.”
He had paused, staring out at the faces of the men and women before him, seeking for the right words, the right ideas. At last he had sighed. “Would you risk this chance at freedom recklessly? Every one of you that stands here before me today has stood witness to the savagery to which our government has, time and again, resorted when questioned or challenged. Make no mistake: if we act too soon, that savagery will be directed at us before we are able to react to it.
“But every one of you must know one or two more who must feel the same as you do, others who have been too afraid to speak, too afraid to stand up to Them on their own. Every one of you knows one or two others who harbour the same fears, the same doubts, as you have. And every one of those one or two know one or two others. If in a single day, one word can bring all of you together, risking death – for that is what you are doing by standing here – if in a single day we can accomplish this much, what can we accomplish in a week or a month?
“But we cannot rush into this! Collectively, we have all lost so much that I know it feels as though we have nothing left to lose, but there is one thing which remains... one thing which we cannot afford to threaten by ill-timed action: the future. It may not be my future, or your future, but it is the future of our children and grandchildren we risk by action before we are completely prepared.
“The greatest strength we have is the ability to work together. When we stand alone, we are weak, we are afraid, and we are timid. When we stand together, we become strong, we become brave, and we become decisive. I am asking you now to work together, with me. There is hope for us, but only if we are united in a common goal.”
He had cleared his throat and glanced over at Casey, who was nodding agreement. Even more importantly, he noticed that Casey wasn’t the only one. Throughout the crowd, people were looking at him with eyes that showed more than the animalistic anger of a few moments before. They were thinking.
“The choice I see before us is a choice between liberty and slavery. Slavery is something we have known, and the taste of it is bitter on my tongue. For twenty years or more we have endured the chains of our oppressors, marched beneath their whips. But liberty... liberty is a dream; it is a dream I have had since I first discovered the invisible chains that have ensnared us.
“But liberty has a price,” Adam warned them. “It is not something that will simply be given to us for the asking. History – the history that most of you never learned because the books that taught it were collected during the Book Drives – history tells us that liberty is never given to people willingly. They have to fight, they have to bleed, and sometimes they have to die to achieve it. History is riddled with examples of governments who no longer cared about the will or welfare of the people. In almost every example, people have tried to reason with those governments; when that failed, they tried to escape from under the tyranny of their oppressors. Finally, when all other avenues have failed, the people invariably have been forced to overthrow their government by force.
“In every case where such a course was taken, it was accomplished because the people worked together with a single goal. And just as important,” he added, his voice dropping until it could only barely be heard. “It always begins as a whisper.
“I know you want to shout, to cry out, to scream that you want something else. But They won’t listen. They will hear what They want to hear, and They will see what They want to see. They won’t see a group of people demanding justice. They will only see the need for tighter security, the need to root out those who would threaten their way of life. The louder we scream, the harsher the reaction we will face.
“It must begin as a whisper. As long as we whisper now, we will survive to shout later... when we have enough voices that our shouts will deafen Them, confuse Them... destroy Them.”
He hadn’t been certain they would listen to him, but they had. As he had climbed down from the crates, people had swarmed around him, asking the same question: “When?”
He had given them the same answer he had given the people in the DZ. “Soon.”
He’d placed Casey in charge of organizing the workers into groups of ten. Each group of ten had been tasked with collecting names of two types of people: those who should be contacted, and those who were considered suspect. The lists of suspect people were short, and almost everyone had similar names. The other list, the list of possible supporters, had been massive.
Casey had taken the job seriously. He knew he’d almost ruined the opportunity, that it had been salvaged through good fortune more than anything else. Consequently, he’d taken precautions. He’d developed what could only be described as a complex communication network. The group from the Yard became the first of a pyramid structure, each group of ten isolated from the others. Within each group was a leader, who brought information directly to Casey. When any member of the group found ten or more supporters, he became a leader of his own group, but still reported up the chain. No one in any group knew the names of people in any other group, in case someone was exposed. No one outside of the Yard was to ever be told the identity of Casey or Adam, but everyone learned about Alpha.
He had become a legend.
He’d been stunned by the numbers. What had stunned him even more was when he began receiving reports from groups that had developed within other Zones. Within the first week, Zone 8 had been firmly committed. No one was obvious about it, and everyone was incredibly careful, especially on Counsel Days, but the tension within the Zone was palpable to anyone who was looking for it. By the end of the third week, he’d gotten confirmed reports of almost universal support from every Zone but 6 and 7. Those Zones were where the majority of the CPs and their families lived, and it had been determined that approaching anyone in that Zone was too risky. Any uprising from there would have to be spontaneous. As for the City Centre, well, the Citizons and Magistrates resided in the City Center. There would be no support coming from there.
Adam opened his eyes. Light had begun to creep into the room, heralding the dawn. It got light earlier every day, now. Spring had officially arrived. He rose from where he had been kneeling and walked back into the kitchen. Summons came later on Counsel Days, but even so he knew that he needed to get ready. He reached into the tiny bread-box and pulled out the remnants of his weekly ration of bread. Scraping off the mold, he nibbled at the edges. It was likely going to be the last easy meal for a while.
Walking over to the wardrobe, he glanced at the poster hanging there, at the rebel with no cause. He wondered, briefly, as he dressed whether his grandfather would be proud of him.
It was the appointed day.
He, Casey, and Angie had considered this carefully. While he had been responsible for the DZ, and Casey had run security and organization for the Zones, Angie had used her new position in the City Center to run reconnaissance on the situation there. What she had uncovered had been instrumental to their plans.
They hadn’t known much about City Center. No unauthorized personnel had been granted access to the City Center in over a decade. Only Citizoneprotects and other security agents, Magistrates, Citizons, and the Commandant-General of the Militia, were permitted within the Center. Angie’s placement there had given Adam a far better grasp of what they were dealing with.
The Zones acted like the spokes of a wheel. The City Center was the hub. It wasn’t densely populated, but it was well protected. Each of the Zones had a single access point, guarded by a heavy machine gun nest. Within the City Center, the principle target, from what Angie could determine, was the Capitol Building, which contained the Council Chambers as well as the Communication Center.
The City Council, which was composed of each of the eight Citizons as well as all thirty-two magistrates and the Commandant-General, was always in secure session on Counsel Days; They met from eight in the morning until just after four in the afternoon. They had standing orders not to be disturbed, under any circumstances, during these closed sessions. While Adam suspected that a full-scale uprising would be sufficient reason for disturbing the session, he also suspected that the CPs would underestimate the scale of the activities. He was counting on that to delay the response by the CPs. Even more, he was counting on the fact that the Commandant-General would be at the Council, which would mean that the Militia could not be mobilized until he was informed of the situation. If things went well, that delay would mean that the Citizons and the Commandant-General would not be informed of events until they were well underway.
The first goal would be to obtain access to weapons, particularly in Zone 8, which had the only access point to the DZ. Fortunately, the Militia Armory was located in that Zone, and several of the members of the Militia had been enlisted by Casey’s lieutenants. They would obtain access to the Armory. To facilitate this, and to obtain extra-Zonal access, a distraction needed to be made, drawing CP attention within Zone 8 from what was actually happening. That was Adam’s responsibility. Several others had volunteered, but Adam had insisted on taking the duty. He had begun this. He wouldn’t sit back and let others do anything that he wasn’t willing to do himself. He would cast the first stone.
He walked over to the door and glanced back at the tiny apartment. Closing his eyes for a moment, he took a deep breath and opened the door.
It was time to stop whispering.
A nightmare. He never had nightmares. He never dreamed, really. Nothing that he could actually recollect in the morning. This time, however, the dream had been so vivid, so overpowering that the recollection of it caused him to shudder as he swung his legs out of the bed and onto the icy floor.
Placing his head in his hands, he closed his eyes. It had seemed so real.
He was standing in a richly furnished room in a building that seemed to be trying to reach the sky. In his hand was a golden staff, with a white pearl set in its crown. Huge windows surrounded him, and dim light seemed to filter into the room from somewhere. The light cast long, dark shadows across the floor beneath him. Impossibly, the floor on which the shadows seemed to writhe was made of glass, allowing him to stare down at the city far below.
A city in flames.
Muted flashes, explosions, sparked and gleamed in streets that teemed with people... people he knew, faces he recognized. And they were dying – dying in horrific ways as the city seethed, wrapped in fire and blood.
One shadow seemed to detach itself from the other shadows, crawling across the glass floor and rising up to become something that vaguely resembled a man. He felt terror as it approached, but found himself unable to move.
“All this,” the shadow hissed.
Below him the bloody battle raged. He knew that he had caused it, somehow, that it was his fault. He felt the burden of the deaths below weigh down upon his shoulders, crushing him to his knees. He wept as the screams from below began to reach him, the sound like a fork scraped across a ceramic plate.
He stared up at the shadow that loomed above him. As he knelt there, the shadow seemed to grow larger, stronger. He tore his gaze away and stared back down at the carnage far below. The men and women seemed to be staring up at him, grinning as they died. Expecting something of him. Their demanding eyes seemed to pierce him like a hundred thousand knives. He flinched from their gaze, but suddenly he realized that they weren’t staring at him. They were staring at the staff he held. He stared at it, and the pearl seemed to take on an inner radiance, gleaming in the dimly lit room. As he looked, he noticed the shadow that had whispered in his ear seem to shrink away.
He pounced, the golden staff slamming into the shadowy figure, and he heard the screams below change into triumphant cries. The shadow screamed and lashed out, knocking him backwards into the glass of the tall building. He felt the glass crack, but he pushed himself away, attacking again.
His second strike caused the shadow to stagger, but it kicked out at him, again slamming him into the already fractured window. He felt it give way beneath him, shattering outwards in a spray of glass. He felt his balance waver.
He teetered there, on the edge of the precipice, and two figures raced into the room. They were familiar, but he couldn’t see them clearly. He heard the shadow laugh in triumph as he lost his footing and began to fall. He heard the people beneath him howl in dismay.
In desperation, he threw the glowing staff towards the familiar figures who had entered the room. He knew one of them had to catch it, and before he dropped from sight he could see that one of them did... but he couldn’t tell if it was the right one. He screamed out a name, the name of the one he meant to take up the staff, but he couldn’t tell if they had heard him.
He began to plummet toward the earth, no longer able to tell if the cries below were of terror or triumph. As he fell, he saw in the distance another Citizone, also burning. Then the ground rushed up to meet him...
His heart continued to pound in his chest for several more minutes, and he realized he was trembling like a startled bird. Shivering, he rose to his feet and tried to shake the last remnants of the dream away.
It was still late. Dawn was still well over an hour away. The cold air chilled the sweat on his skin, a thousand tiny knives on his flesh. He shook his head and staggered into the kitchen. He leaned against the counter and poured himself a glass of water. His hand shook as he drank it.
He wasn’t used to having nightmares.
He wandered back into the living room and knelt down on the icy floor. Closing his eyes, he steadied his breathing and tried to center himself, trying to relax. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised that he’d begun to have nightmares. It had been only a few weeks since the day he had first spoken that forbidden word to Casey; only a few weeks, but things had grown so fast since then. The people had been more receptive than he could possibly have imagined. It was terrifying.
While the first shots had yet to be fired, he had begun a war. There was no other word for it.
It had, he reflected, been remarkably easy.
The fact that it had been so easy had disturbed him, initially. He had questioned whether it was somehow a trap. The idea that it could be an elaborate hoax designed to lure out those who sought to overthrow the government had left him examining every last detail of what had happened, looking for any slip, any clues that they had become careless.
He’d found nothing.
He’d begun by questioning the providential nature of his being transferred to the one job that could have provided him access to the DZ. Sanitation was the only governmental organization available to regular citizens which allowed certain employees into the Disreputable Zone – the Zone where the vast majority of malcontents were transferred. Before he’d started working there, he’d assumed that it would be a goldmine of potential reactionaries, of people who wanted change. It had taken only a couple of visits to the DZ to realize that he’d barely glimpsed the potential of the people trapped there. If there was a single place in all of Calzone which was a tinderbox of suppressed rage, a kettle on the verge of boiling over, it was the DZ. He’d seen hopelessness in the eyes of the people he had worked with, seen them scurry away before the gaze of CPs, but that sense of hopelessness had paled before the haunted, desperate looks he’d seen in the DZ.
He thought back to that first morning, after he’d been guided to Sanitation by Casey. Angie had seen him coming, and had performed her role with absolute perfection. Her face had paled, she had stammered something to the other guard at the desk, and had cringed as he had walked towards them. The second guard had stared at Angie for a moment, and then glanced at Adam, who smiled at him with a thin trace of drool at the corner of his mouth. Angie had shuddered in revulsion.
He smiled as he remembered the conversation.
*
“Hiya,” Adam had grinned. “Case says I got to work here. Oh, hi pretty lady! You showed me around yesterday.”
“Hold up, there,” the second guard had said firmly, stepping between Angie and him. “You talk to me, not to her.”
“But...”
“Angie, call Greg down here,” the guard had said softly.
“I... I don’t want to bring management into this, Paul. I’m sure he’s really harmless. I just...” she twitched when Adam glanced stupidly at her, his eyes vacant. “People like that...”
“Just do it, Ang,” Paul had said gently. “You shouldn’t have to work with people you aren’t comfortable around. This guy won’t care.”
Angie had nodded reluctantly, and tapped the desk communicator. There had been a brief discussion, which Adam had ignored, pretending instead to be fascinated by his reflection in the polished floor. He’d even got down on his knees and pressed his nose to the stone. Paul had watched him, shaking his head before turning to Angie and whispering, “I can’t believe They don’t just...” he had drawn his thumb across his throat.
Greg, the supervisor, had arrived a few minutes later to see Adam playing ‘pat-a-cake’ with his reflection in the shiny polished stone. Angie was standing as far away from him as she could, and Paul standing, arms crossed, glowering down at the Simple playing on the floor.
“What’s the issue?” the supervisor had asked, glancing between Angie and Adam.
Angie had shuddered prettily. “I’m sorry, Greg. I didn’t want to say anything, but Paul insisted.” She had glanced at Adam. He had looked up at her, then, knowing that with a single word she could expose him. He had grinned at her stupidly. She had looked away again. “I... I have a problem dealing with... people like him.”
Greg had looked at her with compassion, and then had nodded. “I can’t transfer him,” he’d told her. “I have specific orders. But a position just opened up in the City Centre... I don’t really want to lose you, especially not for someone like that, but I can put your name forward for the job.”
Angie’s eyes widened. That had been far more than they could have possibly hoped for. “You’d do that for me?” she had whispered. “Oh, Greg... thank you.”
The supervisor had nodded, then turned to Paul. “Take this guy down to inter-Zonal. He’s scheduled to do manual clean-up.” He stared at Adam for a moment, his eyes filled with disgust. “Tell them to send him into the DZ. Maybe he’ll piss someone in there off enough that he won’t come back.”
Paul had grunted and pulled Adam up roughly. “Come on, moron. Let’s go.”
Adam had followed the guard, shuffling along and making faces in the steel doors of the elevators. The guard had refused to even look at him as they descended to the bottom floor. When the doors swished open, he dragged Adam to the reception desk and gave them the supervisor’s instructions. The desk clerk had frowned, but nodded. “The DZ? I guess he won’t do any worse there than anywhere else. I’ll print off a pass.”
And so, half an hour later, Adam had found himself wandering around the DZ with a garbage bag and a trash spike. The extra-Zonal pass he wore pinned to his grey coveralls gave him unlimited daytime access to any Zone, including the DZ.
*
No one Adam had ever spoken to had ever been to the DZ. People who the government sent into the Disreputable Zone didn’t come out, and the place was shrouded in myth. Stories abounded about what the DZ was like, but the reality of it was like a slap in the face.
While Adam had long since come to believe that the people in Calzone were slaves who just couldn’t see their chains, the DZ made the conditions within the city proper look absolutely idyllic.
The buildings were old, run-down warehouses that no one had cared for in decades. Holes in the roofs had been covered with corrugated tin, and doors that didn’t close properly had been strung up on old hinges by rusting chicken wire. The streets, if you could call them that, were little more than muddy paths between buildings. A few children, too young to work, clung to haggard-looking women with haunted eyes, loitering near doorways. Invariably the women flinched away when he looked in their direction. Every child he saw had wide eyes and distended bellies. Their clothing was tattered, little more than rags, and none of them had shoes, despite the snow that lingered amidst the mud of the streets. The men and women he saw walking between buildings were gaunt, skeletal. He had seen pictures of people in conditions like this in the books his grandfather had left behind: pictures from the middle of the twentieth century, from the prison camps in Germany at the end of the Second World War.
One group of men, dressed in orange coveralls and chained at the feet, had shuffled along behind an armed CP. They had appeared healthier than most of the others in the DZ; Adam assumed they were a work crew of some sort. None of them looked up at him as they were led past, their eyes staring dully at the feet of the man in front of them.
Adam had spent most of the first few days walking around the DZ, getting a feel for the numbers of people and the overall situation. He had expected to find greater supervision, but the zonestreet cameras that seemed to populate nearly every the street of the Citizone were virtually non-existent in the DZ. The only concession to security that he could see was the bunker at the exit from the DZ to the outlying countryside. It was well fortified, with heavy machine guns, and was manned by several bored looking CPs. They hadn’t even glanced up at him as he wandered past, spearing bits of trash. Even the Zone gate into the Citizone, which Adam had expected to be heavily defended, was minimally guarded. Two CPs sat in the guard station, staring at a flat-screen monitor. A third stood outside, obviously bored, staring at what appeared to be a handheld device of some kind. On the first day, the CP outside of the guard station had glanced at Adam’s extra-Zonal pass briefly before waving him in. He hadn’t even bothered to look up at Adam. After the first day, the guard hadn’t even bothered to look at the pass, he just waved Adam through.
It had been incredibly easy to light the spark in the DZ. The challenge had been in keeping it from exploding into flames too soon.
He had waited until the second day before he approached one of the gaunt figures haunting the streets. He had shuffled forward, spearing bits of trash that littered the streets. The man, likely in his early forties, had glanced up at him with blank eyes. Adam had walked up beside him, careful not to look at him directly. “Soon,” he had whispered, and walked away.
The man had been waiting for him the next day. He had angled his way across the street and dropped a piece of paper in Adam’s path. Adam had speared the paper on his stick. The man muttered, “Answer!” softly, and had kept on walking.
Still not certain of the level of observation in the DZ, Adam had continued collecting garbage on his collection stick. When he cleared the stick into the garbage bag he dragged around, he had palmed the note and stuffed it discretely into his pocket. He had fought the urge to look at it immediately, and waited until he had gotten back to his apartment to glance at it.
It had been a three word plea, scribbled in what appeared to be charcoal on a torn corner of paper with an obviously shaky hand. The holes in the page showed that it had likely been written on an arm or someone’s back. It had read simply, “Please, help us.”
Adam’s response had been swift. The following morning, he dropped a note in front of the gaunt figure which simply stated, “We will try”. Again he had whispered, “Soon,” as he wandered past.
The next note was just as brief. It read “Rt. 3 Crn. Fr. Blg.”
On his next trip into the DZ, he had walked three blocks past where he had picked up the last two notes and had turned right. In front of one of the decrepit warehouses, was a bent old man. He sat, his back against the wall of the building, staring ahead blankly. The film over his eyes said he was blind, but he glanced up as Adam approached. “Who are you?” he had asked in a weak voice. He trembled as he asked the question, obviously terrified.
“A friend,” Adam had replied. “Perhaps one of many.”
“What do you want?” the blind man had murmured.
Adam had paused. There were so many ways to answer that question. At last he said, “Something more.”
The blind man had gestured discreetly to the door beside him, and Adam stepped across the threshold. He could not afford to be there long, but the entire process spoke of some kind of organization.
The old warehouse was completely empty of people, though there were hundreds of bunk beds crammed together. Each bunk had signs that they were in use. It must have taken a significant amount of planning to have everyone who called that place home to be elsewhere. Adam looked around the dimly lit building, and a flash of light caught his eye from the bunk in the corner to his immediate right. He walked quietly over to find two people, an older man and a much younger boy, no more than fourteen, sitting on the bunk. The older man stared up at Adam myopically, obviously too near-sighted to make out anything other than vague details. The younger man stared at Adam with hungry eyes.
“You will help us,” the older man had said in a raspy voice. It was not a question.
Adam had stared at the older man for a long time, unable to speak. While the old man couldn’t see Adam’s face, Adam could see his. He knew it almost as well as he knew his own, though he hadn’t seen it since he was fourteen and They had dragged this man away, leaving Adam alone with the corpse of the woman who had betrayed them both.
It was his father.
Adam glanced over at the boy, a boy no more than fourteen... a boy with the same piercing blue eyes as his own. It was like looking into a mirror.
“You will help us?” his father repeated, his tone becoming pleading, suddenly afraid.
Adam cleared his throat. “I will,” he had whispered, finally.
“And the people? The people in the city?” the old man asked, hope springing into his tone.
“We will try,” Adam told him, steadying himself. He took a deep breath. He had to remain focused. “It must be carefully co-ordinated. The time approaches, but it isn’t here yet. What kind of support do we have here?”
The old man had grinned. “I have dreamed of this day,” he whispered. “We will support you. All of us.”
Adam had nodded to himself. “I can’t stay,” he said suddenly. “I don’t know what surveillance there is, but I don’t want to risk being noticed. I will return tomorrow. I need to know your numbers, your physical condition, skills... everything.”
The old man nodded. “We will have details. My son, Jason,” he gestured to the boy standing by the bunk, “will gather the information.”
Adam had glanced over at the boy, Jason, who was staring at him, his eyes wide. He’d noticed the resemblance. Adam met Jason’s eyes and gently shook his head. His half-brother had nodded in silent understanding. Their father couldn’t know about him. Not yet. It would complicate things.
“This is not a game,” Adam had whispered softly, his words directed at his half-brother. “Too many of us have waited too long to take any kinds of risks. Nothing must appear any different. Too much depends on it.”
“Of course,” his father had agreed. He’d paused and stared up at Adam, squinting. “What do we call you?”
Adam had hesitated. He wanted desperately to tell the old man who he was, but he knew that too much depended on the next few weeks. He had lived the last fifteen years believing his father was dead. He could keep up the pretense for a little while longer. “Call me Alpha,” he’d said softly, using the name he and Casey had chosen for him when dealing with strangers. “Now I have to go. Jason, meet me on the street tomorrow with the number of men or women who are strong enough to fight. Give me the number and walk away. Drop a note, like today, about where I can meet you next.”
And so it had begun in the DZ. The number was larger than he could have hoped for, and the organization was incredible. The people in the DZ didn’t have the same degree of fear as the people in the Citizone. They had grown beyond fear. There were no informers in the DZ. The government had stopped trying to infiltrate it nearly a decade before, when all of their informers began turning up dead. While the DZ could speak freely, they were kept in a state of constant starvation. It made them easier to control.
Adam learned a great deal about the DZ in the next few weeks. The most important thing he had learned, however, was that they were desperate. They were so desperate, he had realized, that they were willing to do whatever it took to be free.
Come to think of it, he mused as he knelt on the floor of his apartment, it wasn’t that different from the people in the Citizone.
The Citizone was primed to explode. Like the DZ, it had taken only a couple of words.
Casey had done his research. Within a couple of days of their first meeting, he had a list of every person in Zone 7 who had lost at least one parent or sibling as a result of the Purges.
It had been a long list.
He had approached one of the guys in the Yards who was on the list. Unfortunately, he’d spoken with them man early in the morning. By the time Adam had ambled into the Yard that afternoon, looking for Casey, the atmosphere of the Yards was electric. Everyone was whispering. Casey had seen him coming, and had intercepted him at the gate.
“You aren’t going to believe this, Adam!” he whispered excitedly. “Everyone, even Dan, is on board. They’re on the verge of charging into the City Centre...”
Adam had stared at him in shock. “It’s too soon,” he had whispered. “Acting now will ruin everything.”
Casey had swallowed hard. “Then you’re going to have to talk to them,” he said at last.
“Now?” Adam had demanded, incredulous.
Nodding, Casey had grabbed him by the elbow and led him to a stack of crates around which every one of the workers had gathered.
Many of the men had glanced at him as Casey led him forward, their faces cold as they recognized him. He could hear a few of them mutter under their breath about ‘the idiot’ being back.
Casey raised his hands, and a silence fell across the crowd. “This,” he announced, “is Alpha!”
The silence grew hostile as they stared at him, uncertain of what to make of this betrayal. Adam sighed. He hadn’t wanted to have to do this. Not like this. Still, he had to either act or risk losing them.
“Do you really think that everything is always what it seems?” Adam had demanded loudly, his voice slamming into the cavernous silence like a sledge hammer. “Do you really believe that just because a man says nothing that he thinks nothing?”
The tenor of the silence had shifted abruptly. Eyes, which had been hostile only a moment before, stared at him in shock. A murmur ran through the assembled crowd as Adam scrambled onto the stack of crates. “I am Alpha,” he admitted, his voice suddenly barely audible to the gathered audience. He waited for the second round of stunned murmurs to die down before he continued. “For twenty years I have stood back, waiting, listening. I have remained silent because it was not yet time to speak. I have been patient, as you must be now.
“For twenty years I have watched from the periphery, and do you know what I have seen? I have seen a people cowed. I have seen families torn apart: fathers dragged away in the dead of night; mothers raped in front of their own children and left to die; children left to pick up the pieces of their lives after they have had everything stolen from them.
“I have seen fear in the eyes of people who shouldn’t need to be afraid. People who have been so terrified of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person that they have decided instead to say nothing to anyone.
“I have seen us, all of us, accept that we are defeated.”
He paused, collecting them. Every eye was riveted on him, staring at him, hanging on his every word. They were ready.
“But we aren’t defeated,” he said at last, his voice calm. “We have just been waiting for the time to strike.”
He felt the energy rise with that statement, saw the crowd inch forward. Their eyes were hungry, eager. They expected him to say that it was time.
“But it is not yet time,” he announced.
There was a soft grumble that spread through the crowd. He let it last for a moment, let them feel that discontent.
“How long have you been waiting for something, not really knowing that it was this? Ten years? Twenty? I have been waiting my entire life. And I am willing to wait a little longer. Do you know why?”
There was a stony silence. These people, so placid and terrified only hours before, stared at him in muted anger, but they listened.
“I am willing to wait a little longer because I know that if we strike now, as this tiny group of men and women gathered here, we are doomed to fail. This is not something that can be rushed, not something which we can do without the help of others like us.”
He had paused, staring out at the faces of the men and women before him, seeking for the right words, the right ideas. At last he had sighed. “Would you risk this chance at freedom recklessly? Every one of you that stands here before me today has stood witness to the savagery to which our government has, time and again, resorted when questioned or challenged. Make no mistake: if we act too soon, that savagery will be directed at us before we are able to react to it.
“But every one of you must know one or two more who must feel the same as you do, others who have been too afraid to speak, too afraid to stand up to Them on their own. Every one of you knows one or two others who harbour the same fears, the same doubts, as you have. And every one of those one or two know one or two others. If in a single day, one word can bring all of you together, risking death – for that is what you are doing by standing here – if in a single day we can accomplish this much, what can we accomplish in a week or a month?
“But we cannot rush into this! Collectively, we have all lost so much that I know it feels as though we have nothing left to lose, but there is one thing which remains... one thing which we cannot afford to threaten by ill-timed action: the future. It may not be my future, or your future, but it is the future of our children and grandchildren we risk by action before we are completely prepared.
“The greatest strength we have is the ability to work together. When we stand alone, we are weak, we are afraid, and we are timid. When we stand together, we become strong, we become brave, and we become decisive. I am asking you now to work together, with me. There is hope for us, but only if we are united in a common goal.”
He had cleared his throat and glanced over at Casey, who was nodding agreement. Even more importantly, he noticed that Casey wasn’t the only one. Throughout the crowd, people were looking at him with eyes that showed more than the animalistic anger of a few moments before. They were thinking.
“The choice I see before us is a choice between liberty and slavery. Slavery is something we have known, and the taste of it is bitter on my tongue. For twenty years or more we have endured the chains of our oppressors, marched beneath their whips. But liberty... liberty is a dream; it is a dream I have had since I first discovered the invisible chains that have ensnared us.
“But liberty has a price,” Adam warned them. “It is not something that will simply be given to us for the asking. History – the history that most of you never learned because the books that taught it were collected during the Book Drives – history tells us that liberty is never given to people willingly. They have to fight, they have to bleed, and sometimes they have to die to achieve it. History is riddled with examples of governments who no longer cared about the will or welfare of the people. In almost every example, people have tried to reason with those governments; when that failed, they tried to escape from under the tyranny of their oppressors. Finally, when all other avenues have failed, the people invariably have been forced to overthrow their government by force.
“In every case where such a course was taken, it was accomplished because the people worked together with a single goal. And just as important,” he added, his voice dropping until it could only barely be heard. “It always begins as a whisper.
“I know you want to shout, to cry out, to scream that you want something else. But They won’t listen. They will hear what They want to hear, and They will see what They want to see. They won’t see a group of people demanding justice. They will only see the need for tighter security, the need to root out those who would threaten their way of life. The louder we scream, the harsher the reaction we will face.
“It must begin as a whisper. As long as we whisper now, we will survive to shout later... when we have enough voices that our shouts will deafen Them, confuse Them... destroy Them.”
He hadn’t been certain they would listen to him, but they had. As he had climbed down from the crates, people had swarmed around him, asking the same question: “When?”
He had given them the same answer he had given the people in the DZ. “Soon.”
He’d placed Casey in charge of organizing the workers into groups of ten. Each group of ten had been tasked with collecting names of two types of people: those who should be contacted, and those who were considered suspect. The lists of suspect people were short, and almost everyone had similar names. The other list, the list of possible supporters, had been massive.
Casey had taken the job seriously. He knew he’d almost ruined the opportunity, that it had been salvaged through good fortune more than anything else. Consequently, he’d taken precautions. He’d developed what could only be described as a complex communication network. The group from the Yard became the first of a pyramid structure, each group of ten isolated from the others. Within each group was a leader, who brought information directly to Casey. When any member of the group found ten or more supporters, he became a leader of his own group, but still reported up the chain. No one in any group knew the names of people in any other group, in case someone was exposed. No one outside of the Yard was to ever be told the identity of Casey or Adam, but everyone learned about Alpha.
He had become a legend.
He’d been stunned by the numbers. What had stunned him even more was when he began receiving reports from groups that had developed within other Zones. Within the first week, Zone 8 had been firmly committed. No one was obvious about it, and everyone was incredibly careful, especially on Counsel Days, but the tension within the Zone was palpable to anyone who was looking for it. By the end of the third week, he’d gotten confirmed reports of almost universal support from every Zone but 6 and 7. Those Zones were where the majority of the CPs and their families lived, and it had been determined that approaching anyone in that Zone was too risky. Any uprising from there would have to be spontaneous. As for the City Centre, well, the Citizons and Magistrates resided in the City Center. There would be no support coming from there.
Adam opened his eyes. Light had begun to creep into the room, heralding the dawn. It got light earlier every day, now. Spring had officially arrived. He rose from where he had been kneeling and walked back into the kitchen. Summons came later on Counsel Days, but even so he knew that he needed to get ready. He reached into the tiny bread-box and pulled out the remnants of his weekly ration of bread. Scraping off the mold, he nibbled at the edges. It was likely going to be the last easy meal for a while.
Walking over to the wardrobe, he glanced at the poster hanging there, at the rebel with no cause. He wondered, briefly, as he dressed whether his grandfather would be proud of him.
It was the appointed day.
He, Casey, and Angie had considered this carefully. While he had been responsible for the DZ, and Casey had run security and organization for the Zones, Angie had used her new position in the City Center to run reconnaissance on the situation there. What she had uncovered had been instrumental to their plans.
They hadn’t known much about City Center. No unauthorized personnel had been granted access to the City Center in over a decade. Only Citizoneprotects and other security agents, Magistrates, Citizons, and the Commandant-General of the Militia, were permitted within the Center. Angie’s placement there had given Adam a far better grasp of what they were dealing with.
The Zones acted like the spokes of a wheel. The City Center was the hub. It wasn’t densely populated, but it was well protected. Each of the Zones had a single access point, guarded by a heavy machine gun nest. Within the City Center, the principle target, from what Angie could determine, was the Capitol Building, which contained the Council Chambers as well as the Communication Center.
The City Council, which was composed of each of the eight Citizons as well as all thirty-two magistrates and the Commandant-General, was always in secure session on Counsel Days; They met from eight in the morning until just after four in the afternoon. They had standing orders not to be disturbed, under any circumstances, during these closed sessions. While Adam suspected that a full-scale uprising would be sufficient reason for disturbing the session, he also suspected that the CPs would underestimate the scale of the activities. He was counting on that to delay the response by the CPs. Even more, he was counting on the fact that the Commandant-General would be at the Council, which would mean that the Militia could not be mobilized until he was informed of the situation. If things went well, that delay would mean that the Citizons and the Commandant-General would not be informed of events until they were well underway.
The first goal would be to obtain access to weapons, particularly in Zone 8, which had the only access point to the DZ. Fortunately, the Militia Armory was located in that Zone, and several of the members of the Militia had been enlisted by Casey’s lieutenants. They would obtain access to the Armory. To facilitate this, and to obtain extra-Zonal access, a distraction needed to be made, drawing CP attention within Zone 8 from what was actually happening. That was Adam’s responsibility. Several others had volunteered, but Adam had insisted on taking the duty. He had begun this. He wouldn’t sit back and let others do anything that he wasn’t willing to do himself. He would cast the first stone.
He walked over to the door and glanced back at the tiny apartment. Closing his eyes for a moment, he took a deep breath and opened the door.
It was time to stop whispering.