Episode Twenty-Two: Deaths

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"War has a polarizing effect. People who you used to consider family turn against you. It's a whole new world once fighting breaks out."

-Declan Kunkle

ESTHER

As soon as the Rotmo fighters are out of the courtroom, Petra citizens rise up from their hiding places between the seats and run out after them. The World Alliance people must live like this all the time, ready to fight at any moment, since they're at the epicenter of our new world. All the Petra citizens, even Penelope, reveal their concealed weapons and are immediately after the kidnappers now that we aren't backed into a corner.

Daniel stands up to run out with them, but Isla holds his shoulders and pulls him back down. "Let them handle it," she tells him.

"What just happened?" Declan asks, his voice cracking in shock.

"We have to help," Daniel insists, leaping up and racing to the back of the court room.

Isla groans. "Dammit."

She chases after him, and with her, Beatrice, Todd, Declan, and my mom run too.

"Stay here, Esther," Mom orders me, and this time, I listen.

The truth is, I'm too terrified not to listen. Gunfire—a relatively unfamiliar sound to me from my mostly sheltered childhood in Hicksmon—echoes from the caverned hallways beyond the courtroom and I can hear commands from whoever is in charge on either side, even from behind the heavy wooden doors. I'm not the only person who still cowers between the rows of the courtroom seats, and others aren't handling this as well as I am. I hear sniffs and muffled crying from some, while others are mumbling curses under their breaths. I have to stay calm, though. Just in case the situation changes. In case my family needs me. I have to be brave.

The sounds of fighting on the other side of the door become louder. I peek my head over the bench backs to watch the door, my heart pounding in my ears. The sounds swell and crescendo, until the sounds stop as quickly as my heart. The entire room is frozen in anticipation.

The door behind us that leads to the judge's chamber bursts open with Rotmo fighters, who swarm those of us still left inside the court. A Rotmo fighter with a female figure comes up to me. She's wearing black jeans, a long-sleeved black shirt, a black bandana over her mouth, and a black brimmed cap. Her dark hair is pulled back so that it hangs down her back, and her doe-like brown eyes stand out more than anything. I'd recognize this person anywhere. It's Kayleigh, already dressed in her new group's uniform. She grabs my arm and yanks me off the floor, dragging me with her toward the judge's chamber.

"You can cut the act, Kay, I know it's you," I say.

"Hurry," she says, her voice muffled behind the bandana, but there's something else in her voice too. Fear. "We have to get out. Now."

"Why?" I ask, but she never answers. I only get my answer once we are through the judge's chamber and back into a hallway in the World Alliance headquarters that Rotmo has cleared out. Only the fog of explosives and the bodies of those killed in the fight remain in the hall. Kay pulls me forcefully through the hall toward a lit exit where the other Rotmo fighters are exiting as well, and now I see why. Not far from where we are running is a familiar face, open-eyed on the floor. She's dead.

I scream, and once the air is out of my lungs, I find it suddenly impossible to breathe. I pant, trying desperately to catch my breath, and somehow screams still come out of my body, though I'm no longer in control of them.

The body left on the floor belongs to my mom, Eleanor.

"Shut her up," someone orders Kay.

She tries to muffle me by putting her hand over my mouth, but I'm not longer in my body and somehow, neither are my screams. They echo through the entire hall, as if being announced through loudspeakers.

"Shut her up," a man orders more aggressively now.

"I'm trying," Kay yells as we exit into the daylight.

Then I'm hit over the head. The screams stop. My vision stops. My whole word stops, just as I am dragged onto a truck and driven away.

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