Author Games: Age of Rebellion

Task Two - The Citizen - Males

DISTRICT TWO - Peter Steele

I couldn't help but be struck with the irony of the situation as Briar's body disappeared in flames. Her bravery, surely the thing that earned her spot in the Squad, was the reason she died. Bravery turned into recklessness, and now she was dead, in whatever afterlife existed for us denizens of Hell. At least I hadn't killed my District Partner this time.

"Help!" A strangled voice called from the distance, just outside the Square we had fought to keep. My head immediately turned to the street the voice was coming from, a street that led straight to Capitol territory. Almost as quickly, my finger wrapped around the trigger of my gun. One loud, injured citizen could mean hundreds of Peacekeepers finding where we were camping.

The twenty of us who remained glanced at each other silently. The threat posed by the one, seemingly harmless, citizen was obvious to us all. "We need to take care of this." Vibbius said, only vocalizing what the majority of us were already thinking.

“There are a ton of options.” Enoch started, evident he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to see, but still wanted to talk. “We could rescue him, pretend to rescue him...”

“How exactly would you pretend to rescue someone?” Iliana asked, remaining professional despite her arm, still in a sling from yesterday's battle.

“First you'd rescue them.” Enoch said, seemingly having put more thought into how to pretend to rescue someone than what we should do with the mysterious citizen. “Then, once we get back to the camp, we would kill them. Cannibalism is always an option.”

“You know,” Canary said, finally turning her attention away from braiding her hair. “As stupid as that idea sounds, it might be the best option for us.”

“I was joking about the cannibalism.” Enoch interrupted.

Canary rolled her eyes in response. “But seriously, we can go out and rescue him to quiet him down, and then figure out the best case scenario from there: killing him, having him join the squad, not eating his flesh.”

"Or we could just kill him outright." I suggested.

"Of course that's what you'd say." Canary replied, rolling her eyes once again. "You're a Career. Just kill everything that moves and you'll be fine."

"At least I can kill someone." I snapped in response. "And besides, I'm only saying we should kill him because we have to. All the citizens should be in their bunkers, so anyone left out isn't a civilian. He's of no use to us, and he'll only get us killed if we wait around any longer."

In the distance, the man's cries were growing ever louder. His once-clear calls for help had turned to desperate screams and sobs. It was only a matter of time before he drew unwanted attention to the Square, or died. Although I was perfectly fine with the latter, plenty of bystanders had to die in a war, Canary would never let me live it down if he died because we couldn't make up our minds.

"Alright," Vibbius declared, his voice cutting through the man's cries and our bickering. "Let's take it to a vote. Anyone who thinks we should kill the man, raise your hand."

I raised my hand, as did several other members of the Squad: Auriel, Iliana, Thorn, Amelia, Alana. Still, it was obvious that the grand majority had sided with Canary.

"Let's get together a rescue group then." Enoch said, clasping his hands together. "We'll need a scout, several fighters, someone who has experience with cooking human flesh..."

Enoch quickly got a group together, and set out to find the Capitol citizen. Iliana had to join the group since she was the only one intimately familiar with all the backstreets in the Capitol, and Enoch led the scouting group as efficiently as Vibbius led the Squad as a whole. The rest of us sat in a circle, huddled around the still-burning bodies of our comrades to keep warm.