To Be Free

To Be Free

By Sydney Alykxander Walker

Copyright 2013 Sydney Alykxander
Walker

Smashwords Edition

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 the 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."