Black Dove (Watty Awards 2012)

Chapter Eight

            I smell the sickly sweet smell of limes on his breath…and resist the urge to vomit.

            “I saw something…something that could be great! But it needed my guidance…my direction. Those lost lives are a waste, believe me, I know, but it is for the greatest good of all. Eternal peace and prosperity. An end to poverty.”

            “Why are you telling me this?” I demand, feeling braver now the button hasn’t been pressed again.

            “Because you are going to help me, child. Amazing, no? One day, you’re an insignificant little girl, crying over her brother. The next, you get the honor of helping me. On the path to rebuild this world.”

            “The world you destroyed!”

            “I am to rebuild it…better. Ever so much better. And you are to help me.” A chill settles deep in my bones. What did he have in mind?

            “Oh child…you could be so much more than the poor little refugee from the Central-South Camp. You could be a voice.”

            “I’m not anyone!”

            “Want to bet, sweetheart?” He says with a grin. He flicks on the television, and I realize it is playing the news.

            The same fresh faced reporter I had seen…yesterday, or however long ago that was…is speaking. ‘And now, new evidence has come to light of the real reason the Peace Treaty was signed. One girl seemed to tug at the heartstrings of the world…and when she went missing it was seen as the proverbial last straw’. A picture flashes up on screen…and I do a double take. This can’t be true. That picture is of me! ‘After she was killed, an official from the UPP admitted that she was only sixteen years old, not seventeen, as was what went down on her form. He says he let her in because she was in love with one of the soldiers, Kane Shorlen, who went missing during the same battle. Paul Willison, a sergeant in the battalion and a key Peace Treaty advocate, lost his daughter--Zoe Willison--as well. This curious case seems to have driven everyone one of the population to strive for peace.’

            What? Zoe Willison…Paul Willison…Sarge? And my confused hypothesis is confirmed when Sarge’s face flashes up on screen. I had not seen that one coming.

            I realize Trident has turned the television off, and I see myself reflected in the glossy screen. I am lying in some sort  of railed chair, and a mass of wires and cords crisscross over my legs, all attaching into something behind my head, that I am supposing keeps me immobilized. I take a shaky breath.

            “What’s going on?”

            “We need you. You are now a face of peace…someone who could stir the populace to settle down, be ‘normal’ again. No. I can’t let all the years of planning, the work, the effort, go to waste on one pretty little face. So I had an idea. We have your friends now, we took them from the flimsy bunker too…after we destroyed the town with mustard gas. We even have your little sweetheart.”

            I think my heart skips a beat. Kane. They have him. “Let him go, he’s done nothing to you.”

            “But we need him too, peanut. You’re going to kill him.” Trident says, as if explaining the obvious.

            “Of course I won’t!” I say angrily. He must be insane. He has to be. Why else would he think I would do something for him?

            “But think carefully. We have them all. Essalie Navaree. Alyssa Naveree. Darran Scole.” I perk up. They didn’t mention Zoe, and I hope that means that she somehow escaped. He continues, “And they are being…attended to….as we speak.” He puts a screen right in my face, and whispers something to it, probably some sort of activation code. Immediately, bloodcurdling screams erupt from the sound device. I feel lightheaded, and try not to throw up. Essie’s screams.