I lay on my back for a moment, trying to breathe. The whiplash made me feel like I was choking. We'd made sure to bend our knees when we fell, but the aftershock and the speedy tumble forward had left me motionless.
My legs ached, though I didn't think they were broken. Shards of glass poked into my flesh from various spots. My vision was spotted with the blood from a stinging cut above my right eye.
A few classmates were screaming above us. Why won't the air go into my lungs? I needed to breathe. All that noise. Someone was yelling.
Suddenly, I was hauled to my feet. Everything spun around me. I gripped one of the strong arms for balance. The air finally started to reach my lungs. I breathed heavily, focusing on the owner of the arms that were holding me up.
"Thanks," I breathed. I stood up straighter, trying to put the pain out of my mind.
"Don't thank me yet," Xavier said. "We gotta go." He dropped his hold on my arms and grabbed my hand, pulling me into a run.
The Takers were storming out of the building. Within a minute or two, Ariana found us. We ran away from the building in a random direction. Adrenaline took care of the pain. A couple other kids were running as well, but in the opposite direction. Seemed we weren't the only ones the Takers were targeting.
I looked back, hair flying over my shoulder. We hadn't lost the Takers. Xavier sent a spiral of fire propelling at them, which they scrambled to dodge. It wasn't enough to stop them entirely. We raced into the woods that bordered the school campus. They were still coming.
"They're catching up!" Ariana breathed heavily as we ran. The Takers' boots crunched on the ground behind us, closer and closer. I forced myself to pick up pace, but it wasn't going to be enough.
"Xavier, you have to...set fire," I said.
"What?" He gave me an incredulous look. "That'll kill us."
"The alternative is dying anyway. Just light the trees behind us," I panted. "It's the only...way we'll...outrun them."
Xavier took a breath and shot Ariana and me a wry smile. "You guys should run," he said. "I'll catch up." That was a good idea. Not all of us could withstand the intense heat of a forest fire. Ariana and I gave a quick agreement. "Here goes nothing."
I couldn't help but look over my shoulder as we ran. Xavier blanketed the trees behind us with a wave of flames. Then another. And another, until the back line of trees was ablaze. Soon, we were trying to outrun the flames instead of the Takers.
I forced my feet to keep moving forward as my lungs starved in the smoke-filled forest. Thin beams of sun peeked through a gap in the trees. We had to keep going. Almost there.
The forest's smoky entrapment finally ended what seemed like an eternity later. My knees buckled under me, hitting the cool grass. I doubled over, coughing and fighting for oxygen. Ariana heaved loudly to my side. Xavier stood against a tree, bent over slightly, trying to catch his breath too by the sounds of it. The heat hadn't taken much of a toll on him, but his coughs were as intense as ours. The smoke must have filled his lungs just the same.
"We can't...stop," I wheezed. We all knew it was true. The Takers could be onto us any second.
I stumbled onto my feet, still coughing and struggling for air. I took one wobbly step forward, beyond dizzy. Still, I took another step.
"I can't," Ariana said. Her eyes were wide with terror. She gasped for air.
"Yes," Xavier said firmly, "you can."
"Just...have to calm down," I said, the coughing almost faded.
She nodded, tears blinking out of her eyes. She managed to take in a deep breath. Granted, she coughed it right back out, but it was the start she needed. Not long after that, she was able to stand.
We trudged along at as fast a pace as we could, the energy to run sucked right out of us. I opened my eyes wider and breathed a sigh of relief as my eyes landed on a closed-in parking lot, as good of a cover as we could have hoped for.
"Guys," I nodded towards the lot. "Down here." We scanned for any nearby Takers that would see us. None had made it to the other side of the forest yet. We could get into the lot unseen.
We crept inside, quietly weaving in between the blue Solar-Cars. The pickup truck we found seemed like nothing short of a miracle. We didn't usually see many vehicles bigger than a basic mini-car in this area. We made our way around the truck to hide behind it. Ariana and I sat against the back wheel, and Xavier leaned against the front.
There, we took a breather. My whole body hurt, and I was bleeding here and there from the glass stuck in my skin. Some shards had been ripped out as we ran. Those spots bled the most. There were also the burns from stray flames that had leapt onto my skin and eaten holes in my clothes.
But none of that could compete with the smoke inhalation. It felt like smoke was swimming in my lungs, up and up, pushing out the oxygen I needed. I tried to hold in the coughing fits that tickled with more and more force at my throat. They were inevitable. Ariana was in no better shape, and Xavier would have gotten the worst of the smoke since he'd been at centre of the fire. I had no right to complain.
The peace of our hiding spot allowed us to begin breathing normally and ease some of the glass shards out of our skin.
"We'll check in the lot," a lady's voice said only minutes later. "You guys keep looking around the perimeter. Maybe they died in their stupid little fire." She sounded hopeful.
The door clicked open, its sound resonating throughout the lot. I tensed all over, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. We were sitting ducks. They were going to catch us.
I'm gonna try something, I thought to my friends. And it's probably really stupid, so I'm sorry. I ignored their mental protests. You won't miss the cue.
I crept from car to car, out of the Takers' sight. I needed to be close if I had a chance at reaching all of them. I looked over and saw the lady and two men searching in between cars.
Get ready, I told my friends.
And then, I screamed in the Taker's minds as loud as I could. They doubled over, clutching their heads. It was working! But with the loud volume I had to transmit, I couldn't focus on much else. Hopefully my friends had taken their cue to run out of the lot. I had to believe they had. I couldn't keep this up much longer, and I still needed to get out.
I started towards the exit, but I had to run right past the Takers. I dashed past the men,their faces scrunched up in pain. I sprinted past the woman, but her hand snaked around my wrist, jerking me backwards. I stared at her, horrified, my focus broken. She straightened up, as did the others, and I tried everything to twist out of her grasp. It was no use.
The Taker lady had a vicious smile on her face as the men came up behind her. I couldn't beat them, even without their weapons. It had been a stupid idea.
"Where are your friends?" she asked, her voice honeyed. "They left without you, huh?"
I was silent, fighting to keep any emotion from crossing my face.
"Nobody would blame you if you ratted them out," she coaxed.
I gave her no response.
Her grip tightened around my wrist until I couldn't help but cry out from the sudden pain. She laughed. My face heated with anger, and I almost expected the smoke from earlier to fume out of my ears.
She curled her polished fingers around my face, squeezing. Her next words came in the form of a hiss. "Tell me where they've gone, or we can do this the hard way." She removed the hand from my face and pulled out a sleek, buzzing rod.
I spat on her cheek.
The Taker's rod slammed into my side, and I dropped to the ground convulsing. I couldn't see through the black spots in my vision, but I heard one of the men cry out. His bubbling skin sizzled.
Footsteps ran towards me. It had to be my friends. My convulsions started to fade, but I wasn't strong enough to read anyone's mind and figure out what was happening. The next thing I heard was the click of a gun. My friends' footsteps ceased.
"Just stop right there," a man said.
I turned my head to the side. I could see well enough now, and there was a Taker man waving his gun between my friends. The lady's feet were planted in front of me. Almost by instinct, unsure what it would accomplish, I grabbed her ankle, gripping tightly as anger pulsed through me. She began to crumble away before my eyes.
I let out a small yelp and released her. In a matter of seconds, she'd become a pile of ash and armour.
Confused and scared, I didn't have time to waste if we had a chance of getting out. I would freak out later. With shaky fingers, I grabbed the gun buried in the ash. I lifted it up and aimed at the last man. I squeezed the trigger. Ke-choom! The gun dropped to the floor, silent due to the intense ringing in my ears.
The Taker stared at his bleeding abdomen. His gun clattered to the floor. He clutched his stomach and fell against the wall, where he stayed. I had gained most of my strength back and stood. I strode over to him, my anger returning.
"We could have helped you." I looked him up and down. "But you murdered the only person who could have healed you. And who knows, maybe they'll find you, and you'll get help in time. But whatever happens, you deserve it."
I turned on my heels, trying to keep my head held high as I stalked out of the lot. My friends followed, silent. When we were outside, and the Takers out of sight, the force of what I'd just done smashed into me like a giant wave.
So, I ran. My sneakers pounded against the concrete, and my friends called out to me. I kept running. I didn't care how much pain I was in. I ran in through a mulch-filled path.
I finally stopped on a rocky ledge.
Sinking down, I pulled my knees to my chest. Sobs racked my body, fast and panicked. The tears flew from my eyes and stained my shirt more and more every second. I'd killed two people. I hadn't had to kill the man. It was cold-blooded.
I'd thought avenging Damion and my parents would help me, but I was wrong. They wouldn't want me to become this.
And my friends... They shouldn't have had to watch me do that.
Everything was a blur of eyelashes and tears, but suddenly I could feel an arm around me. I knew who it was without having to look up. I leaned into Xavier's embrace, burying my face in the fabric of his shirt.
"Hey." He rubbed a hand up and down my arm. "It's gonna be alright."
"How can you say that?" Even if I hadn't shot the man, a lady had turned to ash under my fingers. What part of that was alright? I didn't even know how it happened. What if I accidentally did that to one of my friends?
"I just know," he said. Would they be safer without me? "I need you to trust me on this one."
What if trusting got him or Ariana hurt? Or worse? I couldn't live with myself if that happened. They were all I had left. Would they be safer without me?
"What...what I did, Xavier," I said quietly, the fear in my voice obvious.
"We wouldn't be alive if you hadn't."
"That man." I forced the words out through my tears. "He...I didn't have to."
"He could still be alive," Xavier said. "Ari is bandaging him up with strips of his shirt. I think you hit low enough on his stomach that it won't kill him."
I sniffed. I tried to wipe the tears from my face, but they just kept coming anyway. "You think so?" I asked.
"Yeah," he answered. "Yeah, I do."
But I hadn't thought about that when I shot the man. I would have killed him. "And...and that woman," I said, shaking my head. "I don't even know what happened... What if..."
"Whatever that was, it saved us," Xavier said. He looked at me, earnestly. "That's all that matters."
I had protected them. And, it wasn't like I'd ever hurt anybody I cared about before. Maybe he had a point. "I just..." I drifted off, unsure of what to say. I looked down. "I don't know. I'm scared."
"I never hurt you when my ability was first starting and all out of control, did I?" he asked.
"Well, no," I said, wiping at my eyes again. "I guess not." He'd never burned us, though my couch had taken a small hit.
"There you go then." He gave me a small smile, meant to comfort. It did a little. "Don't worry."
"I'm sorry," I said, looking back up at him. Sorry for running off. Sorry for trying to take care of things myself. Sorry that I was a murderer.
"You're already forgiven," he said, still with that small smile.
Why was he being so nice to me? I didn't deserve it.
Then, he stood up abruptly. "Crap-Ari's there all alone. We have to get back." He offered me his hand.
I took it and jumped up beside him. "Thank you."
We half-jogged,half-tripped our way back to the parking lot. Though we kept an eye out for other Takers, they were nowhere to be seen. My breathing was still a little ragged, probably from the electrocution wand. Every step seemed to bring fresh pain. I said nothing though. I deserved worse.
We were there in only a few minutes. I thanked the universe that the man was alive. His hazel eyes widened when he saw me. He shifted nervously.
"I took his weapons. They're just over there." Ariana pointed to a corner a few feet away. There was a pistol, those strange glowing handcuffs, and an electrocution rod. "His backup will probably start suspecting something's up soon. We need to get going."
I nodded. How is she just going on like nothing happened? Maybe she just really didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to say either. All of this was so different, so much worse, than anything I'd seen in war history simulations.
"I don't know how far we can walk without them spotting us," Xavier said.
"Is there anywhere close we can hide?" I asked, though I didn't like the idea of staying anywhere nearby. I wanted to get far, far away, where they couldn't find us.
Xavier walked over to the weapon pile and grabbed the gun and the wand. He went to the nearest car window, then hesitated. "We have to get as far as possible," he said. "No way we'll make it more than a block walking." He took a deep breath and smashed the car window.
As the alarm blared, he unlocked the door and looked over at us. "Well, come on."
He left the gun on the ground. It might have offered us a little protection, but we weren't willing to risk somebody seeing it. Besides that, I was already struggling to keep the bile from rising up my throat after shooting somebody. I couldn't stand the thought of carrying around the weapon I'd done it with.
Ariana and I ran to the car. The government would compensate the owners so they could get to work, but I still hated this-stealing. But what choice did we have?I hated the thought of my friends dying more, and if those people caught us, Ariana and Xavier would. Stealing this car was the only way we could survive. And I'd already done far worse today.
"How do you even steal one of these?" I asked. Ariana grabbed the front seat, and I sat in the middle of the back. "Don't you have to be within a distance of the keys?"
Xavier jammed the rod in to the charging outlet and pressed down the button for all the automatic driving options. The car soundlessly came to life, and the alarm stopped.
"Manual override?" the monotone voice of the car system asked.
"Yes," Xavier said. If anyone knew about stealing cars, it would be him. His mother had worked in E-Car repair.
Backing out of the driveway was a slow and careful process. We didn't want to set off any more alarms. Once out of the parking lot, we sped off down the road. Xavier was impressively not horrible at driving. Even most adults couldn't drive manually; everything was automated.
When we made it to the highway, Ariana let out a breath that I first thought was relief.
"What's wrong?" Xavier asked her. "We made it."
She sniffled. "A few weeks ago, I was worried about, like, failing math class. How can something not be wrong?" Her words were so true they hurt.
A few weeks ago, I'd been playing games on the VirtReel with my mom, dad, and brother. I was working on art projects with my friends. I was thinking about what career path I would take. Now, I was just hoping we would have somewhere safe to sleep.
"I guess." The sniffling stopped. "We just...gotta try and make things right again."
"We'll figure it out," Xavier said.
We decided to go as far as possible. These Takers obviously weren't giving up on finding us, and no doubt they'd be on our trail soon. Going to the next city just wouldn't be enough. We drove for hours. I was barely able to stay awake. I didn't know how Xavier was managing to drive for so long.
We only stopped when it got dark, not wanting the battery to get too low. Without constant solar energy, that would happen quickly. Only people with work permits had car batteries with a long life. Instead of imposing a curfew, the government said they reduced battery life to help make things safer at night. At least we would have the benefit of empty roads.
Xavier parked to the side of a back road, in the hopes that nobody would notice us.
"I'll stay watch," I offered. "You guys should sleep."
I couldn't. Closing my eyes started a slideshow of all the bad things that had happened over the last couple weeks. Now the scene in the parking lot had been added. The crumbling of a woman to ash in my hands. The gun going off, the bullet retreating into a man's abdomen on my command.
"I can do it," Xavier said.
Ariana was already snoring softly in the passenger's seat.
"No," I shook my head. "You've been driving all night. It's fine."
"Alright," he said. "But wake me up if you're tired."
"Sure." I didn't plan on waking him up.
There was an On-The-Go store just ahead of where we'd parked. I hadn't noticed it at first, due to the dark, but over the first two hours of my watch, I couldn't stop staring at it. When was the last time I'd eaten? Breakfast that morning? We would need food. I glanced at my sleeping friends. I'd be able to see the car from the store. They could always call out to me if they woke up. My stomach growled.
Did I have any cred-sticks in my pockets? I could buy some food without drawing attention to us, and we could be gone by morning.
"Dammit," I muttered, coming up empty on the cred-sticks. What were we going to do for food? I was already hungry, and we would only get hungrier.
Sharp fear coursed through me. I'd never even had to think about going hungry before. Sure, I'd heard of people not getting as much food as they needed in poor areas, but what if we actually grew hungry enough to kill us?The image of the three of us slowly starving to death in some dark alley made my decision for me.
I scooted over to the door and pushed it open. I slipped out of the car, closing the door as quietly as I could manage. Using the darkness as my cover, I walked over to the store and peered inside the window. There was one person inside.
I put on my best not-suspicious face and eased the door open. I made my way to the checkout and smiled.
"Hi," I said.
The guy at the cash register looked about twenty at most. He couldn't be the brightest either because only the academically inept got stuck as cashiers.This had to work, or I had no idea what we were going to eat. "Um, I was wondering if there's a bathroom here I could use?"
He barely looked up."There's the employees' bathroom." He gestured to the back with his thumb and begrudgingly got himself out from behind the counter."I'll show you where it is."
"Great," I said."Thanks."
When he had his back turned, I plucked a few protein bars off the shelves. I tucked them under my shirt, secure against my back in the waistband of my pants.
"Well, uh, here weare." He pointed to the employee bathroom. "I'll just be at the counter."
"Okay." I gave him as convincing a smile as I could muster. "Thanks again."
I hung out near the bathroom for a few minutes, flushed the toilet for believability, flashed a grateful smile at the cashier on the way out, and went back to the car. I got in and put the bars on the seat next to me.
Xavier stirred awake, then turned back to me, trying to open his eyes. "Where'd you go?" His words were sleepy and clumped together.
"Got protein bars," I said. "Want one?"
"Yeah." Xavier yawned. I couldn't help but mimic it. He sat up straighter. I handed him a bar and unwrapped my own. "Not complaining, but how'd you get these?" His voice was more alert now, if still drowsy.
"I didn't have any creds," I said. I looked at the store, and Xavier followed my gaze. "I had to take them. We needed something to keep us going... Just until we figure something else out."
"Thanks," he said, chewing on the bar.
"We should leave as soon as it's light so he doesn't see the car parked here," I said.
"Yeah."
I crumpled up the wrapper and tossed it to the car floor. I yawned again, leaning back against the seat. It became harder to open my eyes again each time Iblinked.
"Why don't you sleep for a bit?" Xavier suggested.
"No," I protested."You drove."
"You got tasered," he said. "Sleep."
But I was already drifting off.
~
When I woke up, we were on the road again. Xavier and Ariana were talking, and other cars whirred beside ours on the highway.
"Hey," Ariana said when she noticed I was awake. "We're almost to Greenville."
"That's where we were thinking of stopping," Xavier said.
"We figured it's far enough, and somebody is gonna notice sooner or later we're too young to drive. Last thing we want is to get pulled over."
"Sure," I said."Sounds alright." From what I knew about Greenville, it was a lotlike Brampton, only worse. The jobs were of even lower value, andthere were only a couple schools because nobody could really afford to have kids.
"We just need to find somewhere we can, like, stay and stuff," Ariana said. "Maybe we could find a way to get an apartment or something. It's that or keep hiding out in this thing."
"Maybe we can talk to a landlord? See if they'll let us stay in an empty apartment?" Iasked.
"That's a good idea,"Ariana said. "Even if they just let us stay for, like, a little bit for free, and then we'll find a way to start getting creds."
"What can we tell them though?" Xavier asked. "We can't say what really happened."
They can't know we're fifteen. They wouldn't give us somewhere to stay. They'd call Child Placement, and the Takers would find us.
"It has to be something that makes us sound old enough to rent," I said, taking another few seconds to think. "We could say we worked in Services, and our jobs got shut down."
"That could work,"Ariana said. Xavier nodded.
"Yeah," he said. "We can just say the landlord kicked us out because we couldn'tpay."
Whoever we found probably wouldn't let us stay, no matter what story we spun, but wehad to try it. We couldn't sleep in the streets, like people too far gone with D.R.D. We'd probably be found by police, who might turn usover to the Takers.
There were plenty of apartment buildings in Greenville. We picked the one that looked most run-down, in the hopes that they'd be less likely to turn us away. It took almost fifteen minutes of roaming the halls before we found the superintendent's office. I knocked on the door, and we waited only a few seconds before it opened.
An older man's face greeted us. He looked to be in his sixties and had a large, roundnose. "Hello," he said, looking a little suspicious, probably because of how beaten up we looked. "Can I help you?"
"Yeah, um, we just really need a place to stay. Our work shut down, and we were sharing an apartment. We couldn't pay in time, so the landlord kicked us out." I spoke very sweetly, smiling at him. "We're looking for jobs, and we'll pay you back after we get them. But we just need a place to sleep for a few days until we can get some money. Is there any way that you could just let us stay in an empty room until then?"
The government didn't pay as much attention to housing in the Service areas. People moved around a lot more, whether it was from moving for a job or being kicked out for not paying the rent. As long as the landlords were meeting their quotas and there were no reports of trouble in the buildings, it was unlikely the government would bother screening who lived there.
"Where did youwork?" he asked, looking at us carefully. "You look a bit rich to work around here."
Crap. I hadn't even thought about our designs. My friends looked like they were also trying to hide their panic. We didn't look flawed enough to work in Services. But then, Ariana seemed perfectly designed, but she had personality "flaws" that had made her parents treat her poorly.
"They got the looks part of our designs right," I said, dropping my expression. "But they messed up on the thinking and learning stuff." I tried to think of more, in case he would ask. Please believe this. My heart started beating faster. "We can't even go home. Our dads were so mad. They say we're embarrassing."
Before he even spoke, his compassionate expression told me that we could stay. "There is one empty room, not much in it," he said. "But you'll start paying in a couple weeks or you're out, understand?"
"Thanks, we understand." Ariana made herself sound choked up. It probably wasn't hard. We didn't talk about when our parents had been taken, but there was a certain heaviness in the air that followed us. "Thank you. So much. We'll be totally quiet, no issues at all."
"You're welcome,"the man said. He placed a keycard in my palm. "Room number thirty-three."
"We'll pay as soon as we get some creds," Xavier said. "Thanks again."
"Good luck, kids."
We went straight to the room, having seen it on our way to the superintendent's. I swiped the card to get us in and heard the door lock behind us with a beep. There was a counter a few feet in front of us, which lead into the narrow, galley kitchen. Ariana dumped the two leftover meal bars onthe counter.
The place wasn't bad. There was no furniture, and it was a little dusty. It was also a major improvement from the stolen car we'd ditched a few blocks down. Xavier looked around at our new space. Ariana ran straight for the small bathroom towards the back of the apartment.
Once Ariana was done in the bathroom, and we'd gotten a look at the place, we all stayed in the living room together.
"I'll keep watch and stuff," Ariana said, later that night.
"You sure?" I said."I don't mind."
"Yeah," she said."You did last night."
"How about we do half-shifts?" Xavier asked. "Switch out every few hours?"
"Sure," Arianasaid. "Who'll I wake up?"
"Xavier's had the least sleep," I said. "So it should be me."
"Sure," Xaviersaid. "But we should rotate the shifts every night."
"Sounds good," I said.
I went over and made sure the door had locked behind us. The light was red, but I shook the door a bit to make sure it wouldn't open. It stayed shut, and Irelaxed a little.
Ariana took position sitting in the corner of the room, facing the door, while Xavier and I tried to make ourselves comfortable on the cold floor. My arms were far too boney, but they would have to do as a pillow.
"Night," I whispered into the dark.
"Night," my friends replied.
I turned onto my back and stared at the ceiling, watching every shadow carefully to make sure nothing moved. Was it even safe to sleep? The Takers could comeat any moment, and I might not wake up fast enough.
What if the door's not locked? I'd double-checked it, but what if it wasn't? They could just walk right in.
Stop it. You're being stupid. The door was locked. But what if something broke, and it unlocked? It was irrational-I'd checked it less than a couple minutes ago-but still. I turned over onto my side and shut my eyes, determined to put the thought out of my head.
What if I don't check that it's locked, and they get in and take Ariana and Xavierwhile I'm sleeping? They would be gone, and it would be my fault because I didn't want to double-check.
I lasted maybe twenty minutes before I broke down and got up.
"What're you doing?"Ariana asked, keeping her voice low.
"Nothing," I said, seeing that the lock was red. I went back to my spot on the floor. "Never mind."
Checking had provided some relief, but the same doubts were still creeping into my mind. I had to get up a few more times, checking the windows too, before finally falling asleep.
~
Ms. Cage, Damion, Ariana, Xavier, and I were sitting at the white table in my backyard. There was a beautiful sunset projected behind us, different shades of pink and orange mixing together to form a serene evening. There were steamed vegetables, chicken, and fruit in abundance on the table. We were celebrating the New Year. My mother was reading the traditionalstory of Mozaan's creation, which was read every New Year. A hologram projected from her holo-watch displayed pictures of the events and the words she read.
"And," shesaid, her expression warm and happy as it always seemed to be, "our first Prime Minister, Adia Mozaan, devised the solution to save humanity. The best of the human race was chosen to be saved on the last piece of healthy Earth, and it was named Mozaan after her."
I looked around at everyone else, smiling at their happy expressions.
"The government set out to ensure that such destruction never happened again and carefully watched over everybody to make sure we stayed safe."
I bit into a strawberry, my mouth filling with sweetness.
The taste of the fruit turned rotten, and the sunset vanished. The sky darkened. Bulky figure burst through our backyard with large black guns drawn. The food was decaying, and the rancid smell filled my nose. The sky was getting darker and darker, but nobody at the table noticed.
"They helped direct us into safe, productive behaviour," my mother continued, that same smile still on her face.
A beam of lightcame from one of the guns, striking Ms. Cage in the head. I tried to move, but I couldn't.
"Guys, run!" I was screaming, tears flying from my eyes as I struggled to move. "Get out of here!" But nobody could hear me. They shot my father and Damion, who slumped in their chairs across the table. "No!"
My mom was still reading. "Allocating jobs so everybody would contribute to a bettersociety."
"Mom!" I screamed at her, desperate for her to see me. "You have to run!"
The intruders shot Ariana and Xavier. Ariana fell open-eyed against my shoulder. The blood from her head poured down my neck. I tried to cup her wound to stop the bleeding as I sobbed hysterically.
"They saved us from ourselves," my mom said, still with that awful happiness. A beam hit her, and she went limp in her chair.