To whom it may concern,
My name is Charles Eastman. I was the consultant at your birth and I am wholly responsible for your demotion to the Flawed.
Hannah dropped the letter on her bed and took a sharp intake of breath. It was as if ice had begun to flow through her veins. She didn't want to read on, but she knew she had to. With a shaky hand, she tentatively picked it up as if it were a red-hot poker about to burn her and continued.
I trust this letter finds you well? Understandably, you will be feeling a little confused as to the intent of this letter. No doubt, the last few weeks will have been tough on you and I apologise from the outset for any hurt my actions have caused you.
Because you are reading this letter, it means firstly, that I am no longer, and I truly hope that it is by my own hand and not by another's. Secondly, it also means that you are the one deemed to be the most likely to succeed. I wish you well in your endeavours. The road ahead will not be an easy one to travel and please don't for one-minute feel that I don't understand the burden I am placing on you. With this letter I hope to explain to you my actions, deeds and words so that you have a clearer picture of why.
Before I tell you why, I need you to understand my motivation. What drove me to do what I did, for in that explanation, I hope will come for you an understanding and I hope from you some sympathy.
I first met Michael Briggs in my role as doctor when I had to declare his sister legally dead. I was the one who switched off her life support machine. This was during the uprisings ten years ago. Briggs had been on active duty at the front line when he learned that his much- loved parents had been viciously attacked and killed by rebel fighters. This wasn't a planned assault it turns out, but a rogue, opportunistic group of men who decided to use the chaos of the day to further their own ends. Briggs' younger sister was taken from the home and brutally assaulted. Those evil men did unspeakable things to that young girl and left her irreparably broken. Sadly, there was nothing we could do for her and Briggs reluctantly accepted our diagnosis. I remember so clearly the look on his face as I turned off the machines. I think for a moment he considered me as bad as the men who had put her in hospital in the first place.
After a few weeks, Briggs turned up at the hospital and thanked me for the care I had given his sister. We kept in touch, and I often saw him visiting his injured men. The battles at the time were fierce and many lives were lost on either side.
Over time we became friends and when his leave and my shifts allowed, we would spend time together. Briggs and I were very different people, yet we shared a love of good wine and good music. Our friendship grew, but at the same time so did the bitterness of his heart. I was fortunate to see the acceptable side of Briggs' nature. The rebels were not so fortunate. Hardened by the loss of his loved ones, he became reckless in his pursuit of vengeance. He countered the brutality the rebels had shown and threw it straight back at them ten-fold.
I worried for my friend, I worried that this obsession in righting the wrongs done to his family was slowly twisting his mind. Anyway, unbeknown to Briggs, I had begun a relationship with a young woman. Her name was Cecily and she was a high rated, Flawed. I first met Cecily when I visited a Flawed neighbourhood to do some SPR appraisals and basic general practice. I'd set up office in the assembly hall of a local school. Cecily was my twentieth evaluation of the day and I was becoming tired and jaded to all the suffering I was seeing. The world there seemed so drab, so grey, that is until Cecily walked into my room. I felt I had come home from a far-off land, the minute I saw her face. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen and I swear, I loved her in an instant. Were it not for her lack of sight I am sure she would have scored very highly, but Cecily was blind and had been so since birth resulting in an SPR of 72.
Cecily's attitude to life was one of hope. In a way she was one of the luckiest Flawed. She didn't see the grey, the indifference, and the flaws. She used her heart not her eyes to see life and lived every second as if it were her last. I pursued Cecily, making her clear of my feelings that very first meeting. She had up until that point led a very sheltered life, her father was very overprotective and she hadn't ever worked. I persuaded them that she could be of service to me at the SPR reviews, making drinks, holding crying babies, holding the hands of worried people and she blossomed in the role. No one could resist being touched by her goodness. Within a few weeks Cecily returned my affections and there after we began a love affair. My heart sung for the first time in my life, I had true purpose and the colours in me changed. I began to see the cruelty of our society. The more time I spent with the Cecily and the Flawed the angrier I became at the situation. Indeed my work began to suffer, I could no longer conduct SPR reviews demoting people and stripping them a life's basic needs. I began to falsify data, I misdirected operational funds for the purpose of charity and all because of my precious, sightless Cecily.
During this time Briggs and I were having regular contact both social and through work. I tried many times to broach the subject of Cecily, but as I grew deeper in love, he grew deeper in hate. Michael now felt that he was on a mission to cleanse our society of the Flawed. His zealous hatred, terrified me and I began to pull away. Cecily and I didn't talk of the future, it was a subject that terrified us but I knew, if pushed I would give it all up for her. One cold December day, I'd trudged three miles in thick snow to reach the office. When I reached the door I found Cecily sheltering in the porch. Her brother Adam had escorted her there. She was chilled to the bone and looked frail. I picked her up and carried her to the examination bed as she cried quietly to herself. I begged her to tell me what was wrong, what had happened, desperate to help? It was at that point she announced she was pregnant.
The revelation shocked me but what happened next nearly knocked me to the floor. Cecily begged me for an abortion! She was willing to go through all of that just to save my neck knowing what the repercussions would be if it got out that the good doctor had impregnated a Flawed. I rushed to the sink and violently threw up. I wish I could say I didn't briefly entertain the idea; it would have certainly been the easier option, but too be totally honest, a bigger part of me was delighted that Cecily was going to have my baby. My body purged of all food and doubt, I returned to her side and told her that under no circumstances would I do such a thing to our unborn baby and that she was not to visit to anyone else either. I told her I loved her and that the three of us would be together forever. .
For the next few weeks I started to plan our escape. I sold all I could to raise funds without raising suspicion. I investigated alternative places to live around the country and decided on a rural area in the north. We would have to live a frugal, low profile life, but the sacrifices we would make would be worth it. Seventeen weeks into her pregnancy, and starting to show, Cecily came to visit me at the office. Unfortunately her arrival coincided with a visit from Briggs. Michael and I were sat having a coffee discussing the mounting troop losses and ways we could expedite better medical support on the front line when Cecily, not expecting anyone but me to be there burst into the room.
"Charlie, I swear this child of yours is eating enough for ten babes. I am utterly ravenous."
She didn't need to see to know that we weren't alone. Briggs stared at her, his mouth open in shock, his eyes wide in disgust.
"You have knocked that up!" he shouted at me. "Have you no self-control man,"
His eyes then stared at me.
"Oh, good god man, don't tell me you are in love?"
Rage exploded in me. I was no longer in control of my actions as I stalked over to him and punched him hard in the face. I sent him flying into a table and he landed in a heap. As the realisation dawned on me as to what I had just done my anger fled and was replaced by fear.
"You will regret that, Eastman, I promise," he said coldly, as he left the room.
I rushed to Cecily's side and her. We realised we had to make our escape that night. I doubted Briggs would do anything before the next day. His face was bleeding and bruised, and there was no way he would admit to anyone that he had just been knocked out by a doctor. I took Cecily home, kissed her and gently patted her stomach and the child held within. I returned to my home packed up my belongings. I couldn't wait to get away and start our new life. I would demote myself and become a Flawed and that idea filled me with sense of freedom and joy.
That evening, I drove with my emergency light above my car to avoid getting stopped by the curfew guards. The car was packed with everything we would need. Two streets away from Cecily's house I was stopped by a line of guards and told I couldn't proceed further due to an incident. I just knew, I can't tell you how, but I just knew it involved Cecily and Briggs. I ran through back yards, over walls and finally reached a line of guards silently circling the house. I spied Briggs at the front of a command vehicle about to talk on a loud speaker. I ran over to him and demanded he stop this nonsense and that I was sorry for hitting him. I told him I loved her and that we were leaving together to raise the child.
"This has nothing to do with you and that whore," he said to me, viciously. "This has everything to do with me and the scum who raped and killed my sister."
"Adam" I said shocked. "Her brother did that? I am so sorry Briggs, but please let me go in and get Cecily out. If he is indeed capable of such brutality I want her away from him as fast as possible. Please Michael, please," I begged him and I honestly think that he was about to relent.
However, matters began to spiral out of control as a shot rang out from the house, the sound of the bullets hitting the very command vehicle I was stood against. I suppose the following events probably took just a few minutes but for me it was as if I was suspended in time. Briggs' men shot back, peppering the side of the house, the wooden cladding splintered away, glass imploded. The screams inside were barely discernible above the noise of the weaponry, yet those inside still shot back over, and over again. Briggs walked backwards away from me and whispered into his handset. He looked at me and in that split second I knew. I ran forward screaming for Cecily as the guards fired mortar shells at the house. Not one neat explosion, but blasts over and over again. I was thrown to the floor and lost consciousness for a time. Slowly with my ears temporarily deafened, I awoke to find the remains of a burnt-out house, charred beyond recognition.
Hannah stopped reading. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her heart ached for Charles, Cecily and the baby. She should have hated this man for all what he had put her through, but all she felt was sorrow and a deeper understanding of him.
I walked away from the scene ready to end my own life. I wished at that point nothing more than to be lying dead in the twisted wreckage of that house. As I stumbled to remain upright Briggs came over to me. No words of apology, no words of sympathy.
"We have just done you a favour, Eastman. You might not realise that now, but later, trust me you will. These are dirty, dangerous beasts and if I could eradicate each and every one from this world, I would." This wasn't Briggs talking anymore; these were the words of a mad man.
I knew then that nothing I could say would make this man see sense. His desire for vengeance would now fuel mine. Thoughts of taking my life left me. I knew I had to end this. To end this dehumanisation of people and ultimately to end him. I walked away from him intent on making him suffer and it is you my dear reader whom I put my faith in to help.
My plan wasn't one thrown up overnight, but one slowly concocted over the days and weeks to come, while Briggs was heralded for his actions that fateful night. Cecily's father it turned out was one of the leaders of the rebels and almost overnight the insurgency ended. They had decapitated the head and the body quickly succumbed. Looking back, if I had chosen to look beyond my love for Cecily I might have seen something in her family's covert actions and behaviours, but love blinded us to the world around us.
I knew I could not single-handedly start an uprising. My position was now insecure, Briggs watched me like a hawk and I had to very quickly resume a normal life in order to avoid suspicion. He left me alone, no further action taken as he'd already punished me enough, in his eyes. I requested a transfer to the hospital and began work in the embryology department. I was responsible for fertilising the eggs of the Top-5, screening and removing faulty genes so that the babies born would be of the 'optimum quality'. I was good at it and slowly gained favour in the upper echelons of medicine. I also started to oversee deliveries and SPR appraisals at birth. As Briggs climbed the ranks, I did too.
One day I put my plan into action. I used samples of his sperm, which for every male over the age of twenty was stored, catalogued and screened to identify key donors. I then used it to fertilise the eggs of twenty women, your birth mother included. These embryos showed great promise. His sperm was exceptionally potent and each of the mother's eggs was of the highest grade possible. At birth I then demoted all of the twenty babies, knowing full well that this lie would be discovered. You are probably asking why, how could this start an uprising. My idea is quite simple really. You dear reader have a unique perspective. You are one of the only people who knows how hard life is as a Flawed and yet I am in no doubt that upon discovery you will be spirited away back to the live amongst the privileged. You will be given the opportunity, the voice, and the audience to change opinion. It won't happen overnight but trust me you could quite possibly end this injustice and make a fairer world for all.
Then again, you might just like your new life, you might be glad that you are away from such ill treatment and will burn this letter knowing that you are not obliged to pay heed to it at all. At the end of the day if all I have achieved is to give you a choice then I will be satisfied. I have shown you an alternate life and I am leaving it to you to decide what happens next. As for why I chose Briggs' sperm. Well I afraid to say that whilst his sperm was of the highest quality, my motivations are far less noble than you think. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to learn what is like to be controlled, to have no say in your life, to watch something that is intrinsically yours ripped away from you.
I will end this letter now. Do what you will with this information. You, out of the twenty have been selected by friends of mine interested in the same outcomes. All of them have been irreparably scarred by our society. You will have all the support you need if you choose this path, If not they will leave you alone. They, above all else know what you potentially risk and are unwilling to help if you are unsure. So do not take your decision lightly.
Finally, I imagine you are wondering what is it you will be able to do. That I can't say, but remember words and deeds are the weapons open to you and if used wisely can create more damage than any amount of artillery ever could.
Be safe, choose wisely.
Charles Eastman
Hannah exhaled so violently she wondered if she had even taken a breath this whole time. Her large bedroom, suddenly seemed small and getting smaller. She began to breathe too quickly, too shallowly and she became lightheaded.
She dropped the letter on her bed, and rushed over to the window, which she wide open.
A cool breeze whipped inside, blowing her curtains about. She heard the letter flutter into the floor.
"Shane," she whispered to nobody and nothing, "what should I do?"
An owl hooted in the nearby tree making her jump. She laughed at her own fright and the stupidity of her question. He was dead, he couldn't hear her. This was a decision she would have to make by herself. As her anxiety attack began to ease, her head became clearer and she knew that she'd already made up her mind and had done on the day they killed Shane in cold blood. She knew she would do whatever it would take to bring down Briggs, her real father she now knew, she just needed find a way to do it.