Chapter 4: Behind Faction Walls
I have dropped Chapters 1,2,3, and now 4 from my novel, The Herd! Enjoy!
This is Chapter 4 of my book, The Herd.
If you missed the earlier chapters, you can catch up on Chapters 1, 2, and 3 right here on this blog. And if you’d like to own the book, you can grab a copy from your favorite retailer via my website.
You can also listen to the audio version of this chapter, just a heads-up, it does include some strong language.
But hey, this dystopia might just feel a little better than the one some of us are living through.
Enjoy the ride.
I had a flashback to the moment when I woke up in a hospital bed after my family was burned alive. But this time, I know I’m not in a hospital bed.
“We need to get to a hospital,” says the male voice holding up my body.
Pain throbs through my body as if someone took a hammer and smashed my muscles. Half of my body is held up by the stranger, while my legs still feel the cold ground beneath them.
I try to speak, but all I can let out is a groan.
“Relax.” I realize the voice is familiar, but I can't lift my head to see who it is. “I am going to get you out of here.”
Then everything goes black again.
***
The next time I wake up, I’m in a bed, but it isn’t a hospital.
I look at my hands—no more blood. I’m wearing a shirt I don’t recognize. Footsteps approach, and my heart races, fearful of who’s coming.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” says Emre. I look up to see him speaking to me. “We don’t have much time. A day has already gone by. How are you feeling?”
“Where am I?” I ask, feeling a bit disoriented by his familiar face.
“This is my apartment. I brought you back here after finding your body on the ground outside of Riverside Academy. The cab driver...” He pauses. “He didn’t make it.”
“How did you know I was at the school?” I ask.
“I didn’t. I guess we must have been chasing the same tip,” he replies.
Then I remember Michelle Robinson at the massage parlor and the principal I was supposed to meet. I need to get back to the station to show my team what I have.
“Where is my bag? I need to get going.” It takes all my strength to raise my body and turn my head to look around the room.
“I didn’t see a bag,” Emre replies. “Actually, I was going to take you to the hospital when I realized that what may have happened was no accident.”
My body shudders as I remember the sound of multiple gunshots, the wet sprinkle of blood and brains all over me, and the crash. But I have no idea who tried to kill me. Did Michelle call someone to tell them to kill me? Did they trace me through the photo online? Who took my things? Did I fall into a trap?
“No, it was no accident,” I say softly.
“Look.” Emre sits on the edge of the bed and gently raises my head so our eyes are interlocked. His hazel eyes seem to pierce through mine. “I’ve been watching you, and it’s no secret that you’re smart. I can help you, but you have to help me too. I think if we put what we have together, we can create a story for the station.”
“And I can help you through the next two parts of this exam,” he continues. “I’ve taken this test twice before, and I know what it takes to get through it.”
“Why should I trust you?” I narrow my eyes at him and move his hand away from my face. “You’re not on my team, and in the end, only one of us will be chosen.”
“So why not make it one of us? I saved your life, didn’t I?” Emre replies, shifting to the rickety chair beside the bed. “Plus, I can tell you from experience that it’s almost impossible to get through this on your own. And I don’t want to point out the obvious, but right now you need me more than I need you.”
“If I’m so useless, then why do you need me? Why trust me?” I snap back.
“‘Need’ is the wrong word,” Emre replies calmly. “I don’t need you. But I do trust you. I’ve been watching you for a while, and you’re different from the other... drones at the station.”
“Drones?” I repeat quizzically.
“Yes, drones. Those who move, breathe, and live for Station 7,” Emre’s tone turns dark. “It may not be official, but Station 7 is the largest, most powerful faction there is. They make or break faction leaders, can drive the public to revolt, and do a bunch of other crazy shit.”
“You’re talking crazy.” I shake my head at him.
“And most people working in Station 7 worship it, assuming they’re doing God’s work or something,” he continues.
“And you don’t?” I interrupt. “Think you’re doing good work, I mean?”
“We live in a time where ‘good’ is arbitrary,” Emre replies. “If ‘good’ means helping one of the most powerful entities in the city consolidate power and influence over the people, then sure. We’re doing good work.”
“What do you mean?” I reply. He really sounds crazy to me.
“Look, I enjoy the work Station 7 does just as much as the next guy. If there are faction leaders taking money from foreign governments to deceive the public, then we should expose those fuckers,” he says. “But you need to pay attention to the patterns. I guess it would be hard for someone who’s only a contractor to see...”
“Excuse me?” I give him a sharp look. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he says.
Emre explains that Station 7 has friends and enemies. The stories station leadership chooses to pursue—and the ones they don’t—are not by accident. By breaking up faith in faction leaders, the station builds faith in itself. If we check the history, many of the big investigative stories we produced on leadership were about people who lobbied against the station or ideas the station leadership opposed.
He believes that though many of the station leaders began as journalists with strictly editorial missions, that changed some time ago. Now, many of them take on the role of reformers. They’re no longer satisfied with just telling what is; they want to shape what could be.
“You know why I want to be the news director?” Emre’s eyes lock onto mine intensely. A smile—or a smirk—creeps onto his face. His broad shoulders hunch over me in the bed. “Because that’s the only way I can make this story public. It’s time someone checked the largest power in the country.”
My mind races. I’m scared and want to shrink. For years, I’ve worked with an idea of what I thought was the truth. It centered me. It gave me purpose. I don’t want to throw a monkey wrench into that vision.
“Y-you’re a liar,” I yell, hating that my voice stammers. “How do you think you know all this?”
Emre gets up and pulls a projector and a laptop out of the closet. He connects both devices with a black cord and plugs in the projector. The computer’s interface becomes visible against the white wall, shown through the light emanating from the projector.
“I’ve been following this for almost two years now,” he says. “Remember Brian Reynolds?”
Emre pulls up his picture on the screen.
“The former Opes faction policy advisor?” I ask.
“Yes,” Emre replies. “As you know, Opes believes in trying to achieve pure capitalism—almost anarchy of sorts. So when Station 7 reported that Reynolds was giving contracts to family members, he was forced to resign. Great story, right?”
“Respectable,” I reply.
“Well, what people didn’t know was that Station 7 employees—those going through tests like us—found several members of Opes leadership doing the same thing Reynolds did. Fortunately for them, they voted in favor of legislation to increase the information war budget,” he continues.
Emre scrolls through documents on the screen like he’s giving a million-dollar presentation at a company meeting. Each document tracks how different leaders who favored changes like increases to the information war budget, food and resource supply pipelines that included the station, and maintaining media and internet connections that didn’t censor the station received favorable coverage. Meanwhile, others were brought down by one scandal or another.
Additionally, he shows documents proving that many who weren’t brought down by scandals engaged in similar or worse crimes that were never revealed.
“I tracked this most closely during the last test I took,” Emre says, pulling up another document onto the screen. “One of our teammates found multiple faction leaders in the Patriots plotting to attack Latus, the liberals, for their goods like they did nine years ago. Latus isn’t as strong as it was before, but they’ve been trying to rebuild their faction.”
When Emre says this, I feel my heart stop. I don’t want him to continue.
“But this time, the Patriots want to wipe Latus out,” he says, his eyes blazing with an intensity I’ve never seen before. “A girl named Lynn got hold of the plans and shared them with me before she turned them in for a story. Only the money laundering portion of the documents was published, taking down two faction leaders. There were at least ten involved! The story was much larger, and they knew it! Lynn never got the other parts of the Aptitude test, and later, she disappeared!”
Eight other Patriot leaders planned to attack my old faction again—and they got away with it? They never found the girl? My mind races.
“What do you mean she disappeared?” I ask, desperate for an answer.
“Exactly that,” Emre says, his eyes dropping to the floor. “I hadn’t seen or heard from her since the test. It’s impossible to understand how someone could just disappear like that. Maybe she left for her own good, or maybe something worse happened. The truth is, I don’t know.”
“What do you get from exposing all of this?” I ask. “You could be the next one to disappear—or me! No one cares about two people disappearing in a world like this! Why are you doing all of this?”
Emre is silent for a moment. I can almost feel the tension in the air between us.
“Right now, you’re freaked out because you’re beginning to realize you’ve been living a lie,” he says. “I’ve known that feeling for four years now. Two years ago, I decided I couldn’t live like that anymore. Ignorance is fucking bliss, but I don’t have that luxury anymore. The truth taunts me to do the right thing, Feonix.”
“That’s all fine and noble until you’re dead,” I reply with a sneer.
“But Feonix, what exactly are you living for anyway?” he asks, looking straight at me.
There’s silence, as if I could answer such a question. I think of my family, my promise to my uncle, and my need to learn if there was anything else behind my family’s murder. I’m fulfilling promises. But do I even know what I’m getting myself into? I have no one. A sick feeling creeps up inside me. The mystery—what was my dad working on? What did he know? Was he one of the leaders seeking to stand up to the station? Could the station somehow be connected to my family’s death?
Without faith in Station 7’s work, I feel like I have no purpose. I want tears to come to my eyes, but the emptiness I feel in this moment is a pain I know tears won’t relieve. My mind teeters on the edge of consciousness, where some people choose death, and others choose madness. Right now, I don’t know how those who reach that edge bring themselves back to stability again.
“Emre, I cannot do this,” I say, dropping my head into my hands in shame. “This mission seems like something worth pursuing, but I’m not the right person for it.”
“Look, I know it’s a lot to take in right now, but I want you to think about it,” he says, brushing my hair out of my eyes. “When I look into your eyes, I see a determination I don’t see in others. I don’t know what drives you, but you operate with direction and purpose. You move like something greater than just the station’s goals drives you.”
“And here I was thinking your looks meant something totally different,” I say, smirking up at him, trying to pull myself out of the hole I’ve sunken into.
“Trust me, this wasn’t exactly the first scenario I imagined us in—with you in my bed, I mean,” he says, smiling back at me and starting to gather his things.
I narrow my eyes at him and lose the smirk.
“Hey, it’s not my fault that the perfect person for this mission also happens to be the most beautiful,” he says, not looking at me as he puts the projector back into the closet.
I don’t know how to respond. How did we go from talking about a mission that could kill us both to flirting like this?
Then he starts toward the door.
“Emre, where are you going?” I yell after him.
“To sleep. We have to get back to the station first thing in the morning if either of us wants a chance at winning,” he replies from the hallway.
“You don’t have to do that,” I yell back.
“Don’t have to do what?” he replies.
“Sleep,” I say hesitantly, “on the couch.”
What am I doing? I think. I can’t believe I just invited him to share a bed with me. But the memory of my family’s loss, and maybe my purpose, leaves me feeling so empty and alone. I’m not sure I believe or even care about Emre’s mission, but I don’t want to be alone at this moment. And I know he doesn’t either.
“There’s only one bed,” he says, poking his head through the doorway, confirming he understands what I’m suggesting.
“I know,” I offer him a weak smile and attempt to make space for him beside me.
I can see him studying me.
“Look, I’m not suggesting...” I pause. “I’m not suggesting anything will happen. Just, I don’t want to be alone.”
My own admission of vulnerability surprises me. But it’s true. I’ve spent so much of my life alone. I miss trusting people. I miss hugs.
He steps into the room with a smirk on his face. I smile back. He dives into the sheets next to me and starts laughing.
“Hey!” I yell. “Don’t break the bed! This is the only one you have!”
I hit him with a pillow and chuckle. It almost doesn’t sound like me. I haven’t laughed in so long. He turns around and leans over me in the bed.
“Maybe I was wrong about one thing, Feonix,” he says, scanning my eyes. His face is so close to mine, I can feel the warmth of his breath on my lips. I see my chest moving up and down as the intensity of our breathing increases.
“I’m scared,” he continues. “Because I don’t think I can do this mission on my own. I said I didn’t need you, that ‘need’ was the wrong word, but I was wrong. I do need you.”
My body shudders at the thought of the mission again. Somehow, in the course of this day, I’ve gone from needing no one—living independently for years—to needing him too. And with my motivation for living mostly destroyed in a matter of hours, I know I need him and this mission to pull myself away from the edge of insanity. But I still can’t bring myself to say it.
I look back into his eyes towering over mine.
At that, Emre leans in, and I kiss his lips. He kisses me back. Then I pull myself out from under him. Emre hesitates, not sure what to do at that moment.
“Good night, Emre,” I say, turning away from him.
“Uhhh... good night,” he replies, slowly turning the other way.
I can still feel the warmth of his back against mine. That’s what I need. I listen carefully as the pace of our breathing slows down.
I’m sure I wouldn’t have been the first Station 7 worker he’s slept with if I had gone through with it, just like he wouldn’t have been my first. Something about station workers living and working side by side every day seems to breed an environment where casual intercourse is normal. But being with Emre feels different. There’s nothing casual about how desperate we both feel at this moment, and I pray I’ve made the right decision.
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