Johanna Mason & The Rebel

Chapter 15 - Paralyzed

"You have no way out. Your spirit is almost commendable if it wasn't so misplaced. Drop your weapon and get down on your knees, boy. This will be your final warning."

The commander said as he nodded to his men to keep aim. Rorke wasn't intimidated by him. He looked at the commander, presumably a man from District 2, and saw right through him.

"You talk to me as if you are the man making all the decisions, but you're not. The real decisions, the ones that matter, are made by someone who doesn't even consider you to be anything but a slave doing his bidding."

Rorke commented as he dropped the weapon on the ground, but he did not get down on his knees. He couldn't shoot his way out of this, so either he would be shot dead, or the fall would kill him, but he was not going to let them keep him alive only for him to live on his knees.

"On your knees."

The commander repeated.

"It's better to live on your feet than to die on your knees..."

Rorke started. He had read that somewhere, but he had never understood what it truly meant until now. Now he knew what it meant, his current predicament was an exact symbol of that saying, and he was either going to live or die by it.

"...save your bullets, commander."

Rorke commented, but as he said it, the commander himself surprised Rorke and fired at him, causing Rorke stumble backwards and start rolling down the hill. Rorke hadn't exactly constructed a plan for what to do next, but now he had to roll with it. He could only hope that he didn't hit something that would knock him over a long period of time, or worse, break something that incapacitated him.

The rolling came to a brutal halt. Rorke was knocked out as he hit a tree-stem at the bottom of the decline. The peacekeepers and the commander stepped had been standing by the edge of the hill and watched as Rorke had rolled down. The hill they stood on could almost be classified as a dive, which was why the commander was certain Rorke would be dead. Shooting him was just to make sure.

"Sir, should we bring his body to make an example?"

One of the peacekeepers asked the commander. The commander shook his head after a while.

"We killed three of his friends in front of the entire District. We have made our point for now. At least we will be able to report of four less radicals in District 7."

He answered.

"We need to make sure we watch the treelines from now on. I will make a request for extra guards in the upcoming time. These tendencies aren't going to quiet down just yet. And we need to make sure Ms. Mason stays in her place. The President has got special plans for her and her kind."

The commanding officer said before all of them left the site.

She gave Marshall a few more minutes after arriving before she had to go and look for him. She was nervous because she knew he had trouble on his tail. He was injured, more than when she had left him yesterday, so she knew he had been out and about again. This stupid, selfish, idiot version of a man was someone she had grown to care about, and not knowing where he was and how he was, was slowly turning her into a hot mess.

She followed the paths through the woods that she suspected Rorke would take to stay off the peacekeepers' radar. There were more and more peacekeepers around her as she approached the more populated areas of work. The machines were going loud, peacekeepers were shouting at people to work faster, and the security seemed to be a lot tighter than before. There were more of the peacekeepers now than she remembered. She didn't dare go much farther at one point.

She slid down one of the tree-stems, praying, by some miracle, that Rorke was out there coming to her. The more peacekeepers she saw around her, the more she almost started to doubt it. There was no way he could just hide in the crowd anymore. His face was a specific one that they were looking for. She could only hope that he was being even smarter than before. That he was somehow still on his way to her, just needing a few more minutes of her faith.

She sighed deeply to herself, trying to collect herself when she heard sounds that were not by the machines. Despite how loud the saws could be in the lumberyard, she recognized the sounds of gunshots. Every worker turned their heads in the general directions of those sounds...and they were not from the city-center, where she knew Rorke wasn't...it was from further in the woods.

"No...no, no, no..."

She murmured to herself, not realizing how she was exposing herself. She tried to drop down once she realized, but a group of peacekeepers had already seen her. She was however too paralyzed to move.

"Hey!"

One of the peacekeepers yelled. Johanna was still facing the direction of where she had heard those shots. She didn't give them any attention.

"Johanna Mason!"

She was almost startled when she heard her name once more. One of the peacekeepers even grabbed her arm. She fought to keep her tears at bay as she jerked her arm out of his grasp.

"I heard you!"

She snapped at him before she started moving back where she came from. People had caught sight of her but had been forced back to work by other guards. Johanna slowly started making her way back where she came from and was followed until she got back to her house.

Behind the front-door she finally fell to the floor. Every part of her body wanted to scream, and cry, but she refused to give into it. She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of hearing her in pain once more.