Terminal (Terminal trilogy #1)

22: Try hard

Right down to Hell I went, and straight for The Blues and The Banes. It was about one PM, luckily- the place was deserted, save for a group at the back. A vaguely familiar group. They were crowded at and around one booth, with Blake in the very back, writing something on a piece of paper.

I ran up and moved a woman aside so I could talk to him. "Blake! I was hoping you'd be here. Come on, I'm done my debts. It's time we get going." Not to Earth, not until tomorrow's midnight would it be safe for him to go there. But somewhere else in Hell. Maybe I'd take him to Heaven.

"What?" The group fell silent. Blake looked at me stunned. "I'm... busy right now?" He said. He gestured to the papers he had lain out, full of notes and pictures.

"A-Alright," I said, stepping back and letting the group reform.

"Alexander gets back today from his stint on Earth- and with the chaos erupting post... this morning, there is no other time but now. Like, this is our time." A girl with white dreads and a bright red cap was trying to prove a point to an older woman, perhaps the leader, but she kept glancing back towards me cautiously.

"They'll hit us quick. You know what they did to Roy when they found him? You know what they're doing now?" Another one of them- another rebel- said. "We have only eighty members scattered throughout the city, and there's no guarantee how many will be willing to fight. We have so few weapons." She shook her head. "The time is not today."

"The time will never be today if you think of it like that," Blake joined in. "We can't overpower them- this needs to be a social thing. Make a stand, get martyred maybe. Be the voice of the people, and the people will come around to it eventually."

"Dude, we just need to run up there and take control," The first rebel, with the red hat said, "You know that's how Alexander did it? Just ran in during a time of turmoil and declared himself in charge. I guess the government just ran with it."

"That's stupid. No way that works."

"But it did work!"

"Excuse me," I said, "Are you trying to overthrow the government?"

"We're a rebel group. It's what we do," Pepper said. I had noticed her there, with her blinding green hair, but she'd be rather nonchalant the whole conversation. "Of course we're trying to start a rebellion."

"Don't do that."

"What did you think I was doing?" Blake asked me.

"This. But I figured it was a game more than anything. You can't seriously plan to meddle with Hell's hierarchy, right?"

"It's... what I've been doing for the last few days. You're the one who keeps running away and doing God knows what- No offense, but I have responsibilities to attend to. Please let me finish them."

"What? What are you doing, taking notes? Isn't that a bad idea for a group whose existence is illegal?"

"I'm taking notes, but also, you know, ideas. We don't really have a name. I think we need one."

"No, that's a stupid idea." I watched Blake shuffle through his papers, evidently needing textual evidence for his next point.

"So, The Few are... The F.E.W., right? A big, powerful acronym-"

"One of the worst acronyms I've seen in my life-"

"Thank you, so if they're The Few, we could be... The Rest, maybe? It's a work in progress."

"So this is what you leave me for," I said, "What does it stand for then?"

"Excuse me?"

"The Few is an acronym for the three departments of government in Hell. So what does the R E S T stand for?"