KILL THE MESSENGER

Two men stood in the middle of a sandlot.

One of them, an old man, was forced down on his knees, his eyes were filled with fear and tears. The man standing next to him in a blinding, all-white uniform and helmet, kept a cold, straight face. He was a Soldier, no doubt, only they have had any ounce of humanity stripped from their DNA. The Soldier pulled out a gun specially made for execution, it was colored as black as the blood that ran through him. As he wrapped his thin, pale, long fingers around the handle and trigger, the old man heard the soft sounds of fingers on metal and jumped.

Anyone could have heard his sobs, they were enough to shatter your heart and break your soul. The old man was caught spreading Rebellion “propaganda”, and everyone knows the consequences of what happens when you’re caught. The Soldier firmly pressed the opening of the gun on the victim's head, and he only began to cry harder. The Soldier waited for the order of the General as the old man mumbled his final prayer. The General called the order and the crowd made sure to close their eyes. The gun went off, splattering blood on the Soldier’s uniform and the tan sand he stood on. I had had enough, I turned off my TV and threw my remote at it. Tears welled up in my eyes, I was sick of seeing executions filmed and having to be forced to watch it.

The entire world was sick of it, but it’s not like we had much of a choice. Unless, we wanted to be taken and tortured to the brink of death. I stared into the tiny camera of my TV, hoping the scumbags could see me. I cursed in that direction, but I knew that when they’d hear me they’d only give me a chuckle and dismiss me. I wiped the tears from my eyes using the sleeve of my brown hooded leather jacket. I stared down at the metallic floor of my room, strands of my massive, curly, dark brown hair falling in front of my vision.

I gagged at the sight of the dull grey floorboards and walls I gawked at my whole life. I felt like the inside of my mind was turning that color. I clawed at my blue sheets on my bed, I tried to resist the urge to create a tear in them. After calming down, I decided that sulking in my room would get nothing done, and decided to head out. Finishing my work was the most important thing to throw all of my energy into. I kneeled down next to my bed and stretched my arm under it. I felt the top of my box and quickly pulled it out. Inside were personal documents, my dad’s research journal, and papers with decrypted writing from my dad’s journal. His journal was my work, uncovering all of his secrets was important to me. After a couple of months of reading, absorbing, and writing out all of his plans and research, I came to the conclusion that the journal was the key to the Government’s weaknesses.

I smiled to myself at that thought and shoved my notes into the book and walked to my door. I pressed the touchpad beside it and watched as the same metallic coloring of the hallway revealed itself. The other doors across from me and next to me stayed shut, also colored that infuriating silver. I stepped outside and quickly made my way towards the elevator at the end of the hallway. I stopped by my mom’s room, and pressed the keypad next to the door to see if she was still there. No response. I checked my Transmission Watch and found no missed calls from my mom either. I shrugged it off and assumed she probably went down for lunch.

I set my feet on the pad in front of the elevator door and watched as a bright blue light shone beneath me. It opened, and once inside I pressed the button that would take me to the first floor, where the library, cafeteria, and other recreations for us civilians were. As the elevator went down, I could heard the tortured screams or whispers of the maniacs who stayed on those floor. Sometimes I’d allow myself to listen, just to see what was going on through their minds. Half the time it was gibberish and the other half of the time they were throwing around insults as to how stupid the rest of us were. There’d be days where I’d hear something in between the madness, it was unintelligible, but sounded like someone was trying to tell me about something important.

I shook my head and let their voices spill out, I wasn't in any mood to analyze what they had to say. The elevator came to an abrupt stop and the doors slid open. I lazily walked out and almost immediately my eyes caught the attention of everyone’s shoes. The girl’s wore grey flats whereas the boys wore grey boots. I looked down at my long, dark brown combat boots already accepting my fate of being stared at. In fact, as I strided towards the library one woman stopped me.

“Where are your new shoes?”

I gritted my teeth together and politely answered, “I don’t have a pair.”

“You have to get them, it’s apart of the new uniform!” The woman urged.

“I don’t want a new pair of shoes, but thank you for telling me anyways.” I quickly made my way into the library, leaving the stunned and offended woman outside. I am not one to be so choppy when I speak to someone, but the level of brainwashing with the majority of these people is too much to deal with at time. I sucked in a deep breath and headed towards the Educational Section. Of course, every book was about all of the Government leaders and people who helped them. It was outlawed to have any piece of literature from before 2140.

During that time, World War III took place and lasted a painful fifteen years. Millions of lives were lost, smuggling took place, governments fell, and people were split up. It was now 2182, in the second “Golden Era”, where we rebuild and make the world a better place. Better place my ass, the people who came to power managed to make it worse than ever before. I chuckled at the thought, despite the fact it really wasn’t a laughing matter.

I skimmed through a whole two rows of books, all colored white or grey, better known as bland and more bland. Looking at the row behind me, I finally found the previous book on codes and ciphers I used for my dad’s journal. I smiled to myself, a bit dumbfounded at my own eagerness. That smile quickly faded when I realized I forgot a pen and had to go ask the librarian, Mrs. Iracundior, for one. The stuck up old croon hated people and also hated whenever anyone disturbed her. Her hair was an unnatural grey and white, I assumed it had gone that way early due to the stress and hatred the witch harbored. Mrs. Iracundior followed every rule and wore the exact same clothes everyday, a grey sweater and long skirt. She was never changing, and I for one found that a bad thing. I braced myself for her scolding as I strided up to the middle desk.

“Excuse me?” I politely whispered. I saw her perk up, but instead of answering, she returned to reading her book.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to disturb-"

"If you didn't mean to, you wouldn't have" she snapped.

"I'd like to borrow a pen, do you have one?" I asked, ignoring her little outburst.

Mrs. Iracundior grimaced and rolled her eyes at me. She snatched a pen from the desk next to her and shoved it into my chest.

"There, now go away" she hissed, dismissing me.

"Thanks..." I mumbled and sped walk the other direction. A couple feet in front of me I noticed a table that was empty and decided to sit there. I took out all of my decrypted notes as well as the other one's I was still working on. I opened my dad's journal to where I had left my bookmark and skimmed the page I had read more than one hundred times before.

"July 12th, 2154

The cameras around New York make life here difficult. Because of my work, I always feel paranoid a Soldier will come up to me, knowing what I do and who I work with, and execute me without warning. I've put my full trust in-"

The name seemed to be blotted out, it was illegible. I knew there were three main Rebel leaders, but I wasn’t sure which one worked with my dad.

"He has been good to me, he has promised to protect me and everyone else working with us as well as the citizens. Today, I work on encrypting the rest of the coordinates of attack and riddles he has given for the Government to work out. His way of doing things is strange, his puzzles and plans seemed childish and stupid. But I suppose that's the whole point, he wants the Government to feel mocked and be made a fool. While working on this, I am also doing experiments with the deadly viruses that seem to have stricken the population. Some are weapons of war, others are age old sickness, and others are new and uncharted territory. I believe I am close to a breakthrough with Red plague, a terrifying virus that if left incubating in a host for long, will make them bleed out of every orifice."

I cringed at the thought of witnessing someone with that. I stopped there and decided to turn the page where he wrote the encrypted material. I pulled out the paper I was working on previously, opened the code and cipher book, and began. I observed my dad was rather fond of the Caesar cipher, Baconian cipher, Straddle cipher, alchemist numbers, and a code I presumed he came up with. To me, it seems like he left the unimportant information in easy to crack ciphers, and the important information the hardest to crack. As frustrating as it was, I still wrote down everything, even if it was trivial. I had finished decoding a set of coordinates, 41.8781° N, 87.6298° W.

I stood up and grabbed my paper with me as I ran towards the giant atlas the library kept in the middle of the room. As I flipped through the pages, I stopped at a map of America and traced the coordinates as accurately as I could. It landed me in Chicago, Illinois. I pressed my lips together and scratched my head, why on earth there? Were there Rebels my dad and his boss wanted to get into contact with? Was that their next place of attack?

I went back at my table and jotted down the location above the coordinates in my messy cursive. I only then noticed how similar my writing was to my dad's, his cursive was a tad bit neater, but still close to mine. I organized all of my notes into a neat pile, by the page that corresponded with the journal. I began to decipher what the next set of symbols. I’ve had my dad’s journal for years, but never really gathered up the courage to read it until a couple months ago. I had stolen from my mom’s room as a child, and of course she noticed, but let me keep it. Ever since the incident happened with my dad, I didn’t dare look into the direction of where I had placed the book. I hated it so much, I took an small, old box, shoved it in there, and left it under my bed.

After digging it up years later, I discovered my dad’s life before her developed Mania. For some strange reason, reading made me feel closer to him, not the sicko behind bars, but him. I finished translating another set of codes, and it was another set of coordinates. I continued my routine of keeping up to go to the atlas, writing down the city, and translating the codes. After two hours, I had two pages decoded. The first page only had coordinates to big cities in America, and the second page had a written plan of attack.

Hit Chicago’s most important Government Facilities at 1800 hours

Hit New Orleans’ most important Government Facilities at 1900 hours

Both will be out for training exercises at specified times, TNT will go off as planned.

Protests should be in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, and Portland

Another name was blotted out.

Someone and I will go straight to D.C. and take on Congress at 2000 hours.

My dad and his boss executed an attack with dynamite? I asked myself. I sat back and thought about how many people they must have killed in order to go through with these plans. And for what? My dad’s boss was long dead and my dad now suffers from the Mania virus. Was losing all of those lives really worth it? Everytime I decoded something new in his journal, it started to make more and more sense. I was scared that upon deciphering more, the violence would only get worse. As much as I resented my dad, it was almost impossible for me to look at him as a monster no matter what he did. Perhaps I was faulted at that, I was always weak whenever it came to those close to me.

I checked my watch again and still found no Transmissions or calls from my mom. I frowned and sat up in my chair. My mom always calls to check in on me, and the fact she wasn’t was strange. I collected my things, making sure to safely tuck my notes and journal into my jacket. I looked around the library and didn’t find her there. I checked both the cafeteria and the gym and still found no sign of her. After exiting the gym, I saw a average sized figure with dark skin, dark brown, wild curly hair, wearing a body tight, grey jumpsuit.

“Mom?” I called out.

The person slightly turned my way, but ignored my call and headed towards the elevator. A crowd already walked between me and her, and I began shoving people out of the way. By the time I reached the elevator, it had already closed taking the person up. I looked at the screen at the top, and saw that she was going to my floor. I didn’t want to wait, so I found the stairs next to the gym and scrambled up them. With heaving breaths by the time I got up, I ran after the person. She entered my mom’s room, and I quickly followed her in.

“Mom, why are you-”

I stopped myself when I looked around my mom’s room and didn’t find her in there. I tore off the bed sheets, looked in the closet, I looked everywhere.

“What?” I whispered to myself.

I quickly backed out the room only to run into a tall person wearing a white uniform. When I turned around I found two Soldiers and a grey haired General giving me a very snarky smile.

“Thank you, Mrs. Collins” the General said in a gruff, almost seductive voice. “You were fantastic bait.”

A woman popped out from behind one of the Soldiers, it was the woman I chased up here. They let her go, and when they did, she made a run for it.

“Miss Bridget Asters” the General cooed. “I need to have a word with you.”