Trust to the Lion

I woke with a jolt, my body snapping up from the mattress and my hands curled into white knuckled fists filled with the sheets. Gasping and panting I shuddered, shaking my head to banish the nightmare memory. Swinging myself from bed, I voiced my want for the windows to open. The computer gave a soft whirl as it obeyed and the thick sheets of steel that had blocked all of the morning light shuddered and groaned its way up into the wall above. I grimaced as the bright shine made it’s way onto my face and turned away shuffling into my bathroom to get ready for the morning.

The messaging system let out a loud bing when I walked back out of the bathroom. Hair still dripping and half dressed I strode over to the system and after a moment of glaring at name on the bright little screen, I scrubbed at my wet hair and ordered it to answer. The screen shifted to the wall and blew up to fill the empty slate with the empty image of a room. I could hear someone moving around, shouts for breakfast and the sharp slightly annoyed call for a moment.

“Garret.” I snapped at the screen and heard the scrambling of the man hurrying to the desktop he had.

A man, in his late twenties, appeared on screen looking frazzled. Garret Jones was a former agent in the Purge department and was promoted to a desk position no more than a month back. He was built large, around six-two and hundred-and-ninety-four pounds, he was packed with muscle. A desk job didn’t fit him well. His eyebrows raised and his brown eyes widened slightly in surprise of my state of dress. Garret ran a hand through the lengthy strands of his dark hair, it wasn’t pulled back in a tie yet which meant he hadn’t had a meeting this morning, and he sighed at me.

“Keller, what are you wearing?”

“A distinct lack of clothing, Garret. You know better than to call for me before noon.”

“For Gods sake-” He stopped and groaned rubbing his hands over his face, “just get dressed while I talk, Keller.”

I shrugged at the look he gave me and rummaged through my drawers for clothing. I could see him looking at me from the corner of my eye and took in the frustrated expression on his face. Garret and I had a tentative relationship, in other words neither of us liked the other when we first met and were partnered anyway. I assume he’s still mad because I shot him rather close to the groin area.

“There’s been a new sighting of the Others in the Outskirts about ten of them running around in those streets. They’re getting ballsy, Keller, traveling father into the city and walking around in public. They need to be contained, the higher ups are throwing a fit that we haven’t beaten them into submission yet and we need to now. Or it’ll be a bullet in our heads, Keller.”

I looked up at Garret from the shirt I was holding. He looked tired, the lines he had barely had a year ago creased his eyes. The Others were a group of what the government calls mongrels. They have a disease dubbed Red-eye, no one was given a lot of information on them and when Garret and I were thrown out into the field we encountered one not far from where I’m living. She was seven years old, her name was Lea and I shot her in the back of the head.

“Keller, I know you have problems with this department and with the Councils decisions. You are going to have to put that aside, there is no choice here. Go with the others and terminate the problem, that’s an order.”

“You should have a problem with it too, Garret, or did you forget everything that we’ve done?”

“We do it for our people, Alice. We do what we do for the greater good. I haven’t forgotten but maybe you should.”

The screen clicked off and left me with the image of Garret’s disapproving scowl. I scowled back at the empty space and snatched my jacket off of the rickety desk chair. Shrugging it on, I grabbed my gun from the desk drawer I’d put it in and shoved it in my waist band as I contemplated the ways to kill Garret and his stupid orders.

It had been years since I’d believed in what the Council was ordering us to do but I didn’t have much of a choice. I’d been put into the program when I was seven years old, my mother had made the decision and filed the paper work. It was me or my brother or sister and well I was disposable where they were not.

Three years back on my admission into The Department and my partnering with Garret, I had known only the minimum and then came the day that we found Lea. I was sixteen the first time I killed an Other, the youngest person to ever graduate from the program and the youngest official to be put into the field. I didn’t eat for weeks after that but I still did my job, even if I didn’t believe in it.

It was my moral code verses the lives of my family, I chose them the way they hadn’t chosen me. I wasn’t under any impressions that there would be leniency for a sympathizer so I sucked it up. I sucked it up and put my gun to so many heads that I’m sure if some kind of hell exists, I’ll be going to it. Snatching up my keys and ordering the shutters down again, I slammed the door of the apartment behind me as I headed out to put more red on my ledger.