Blood Rights (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 2) Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Find Freedom/Hate Online

  Copyright

  1

  “Speak,” said the voice over the speaker. It was a cool, calm voice. The voice of someone who had nothing to fear.

  Collin had never actually seen the man to whom he was talking. He hadn't seen many people at all since being locked up in the HAND facility. How long he had been there was a mystery. There were no windows. There was no night or day. There were no weekends. There were simply rounds of interrogation.

  “Speak,” the voice said again, urging Collin to give up his friends and allies in Freedom. But what was his incentive? What did he have to lose anymore?

  To call that place a 'prison' would have been like calling a reprogramming camp a 'school.' Collin was not being held in a cell, behind metal bars. He was not being allowed lawn privileges or visiting the cafeteria. All that existed to him anymore was the one room that he had been locked in since he first awoke in custody.

  It was a cold room, with clean white walls and floor. In the center was a stainless steel table, onto which Collin was strapped. There were bright lights overhead, keeping him from seeing the ceiling. There could have been windows up there, allowing people to watch him like a fish in a bowl, or there could have been cameras. He wasn't really sure. He didn't really care. The end result was the same.

  He couldn't feel his arms or legs at the moment. Everything below his neck was numb. This was the most pleasant part of his time in that place, but he knew that it wouldn't last.

  There were devices attached to Collin's spine, blocking nerve impulses before they could reach his brain. The devices were controlled from another room, by people that Collin couldn't see. People who would never have to look into the eyes of the man on the table. Maybe even people who would never have to listen to his screams. For all he knew, the people who operated those devices worked in a cubicle on the other side of town, and commands were called in to them.

  Somehow, that idea seemed less disgusting than the thought of low-ranking grunts, watching the fish bowl and pushing whatever button their master told them to push.

  When the button was pushed, all sensation returned to Collin's body and he could feel everything that they had done to him. They could control his pain like the volume of an old stereo, and when the mystery man decided to take a break, they would normally leave that pain on a low hum. They didn't want Collin to forget it for one moment. Even when they allowed him to go numb, he knew that it was only a matter of time before they would turn the dial. There could be no rest.

  What was the great offense that led Collin to this point? What crime did he commit that warranted imprisonment and torture? He dared to ask the most basic and simple question of all: Why?

  Why should he be forced to follow leaders who live in cushy mansions, thousands of miles away while he and everyone around him were forced to live in squalor? Why should he accept whatever life they chose for him, rather than decide for himself what he would do and where he would live? Why should he be forced to keep his mouth shut and offer no opinion when the politicians were making decisions about the world he lived in? It was a world which those politicians only ever saw through the lens of a camera.

  Collin believed in Freedom. Both the concept itself and the organization which used the word as their name. He believed in the idea that all men were created equal. It was something that he once saw written in faded spray paint on a broken wall, when he was a kid. His mother quickly pulled him away from that wall and rushed him home, but the phrase stuck in Collin's mind.

  'All men are created equal.'

  So simple. Such a clean and obvious statement, and yet it was never to be spoken out loud. The people in Washington spoke of liberty for the people. They talked about equality for all, providing education and medical care to everyone who needed it. They spoke of keeping the streets safe for everyone. Funny part was, they never walked those streets themselves. They never rode the buses. They never went to the same schools or hospitals. Politicians were born into a different class, when classes were no longer supposed to exist. They were elite. They grew up in big homes, with plenty of food. They had money and jewels, which they used to buy foreign technology, education and healthcare.

  The dirty little secret of their so-called liberty was that there was no equality. There was no chance for a common man or woman from Collin's city to work their way up to that level. There was no way for them to run for office, so that they could represent the people who they lived with and knew.

  The politicians represented Collin's people, yet held them at arm's length as though they were a smelly gym sock.

  Collin's beliefs were deeply rooted to be sure, but to look at his actions over the years, one would have to laugh at the level of attention he was being given. He wasn't a soldier in a war against the authorities. The sad truth was, there was no war against the authorities. Freedom was a quiet rebellion, full of men and women who grumbled and moaned, but rarely made an effort to change their world. Collin was no different. He was a book runner. He carried hostile content from one Freedom cell to another, meeting their people in dark alleys or on empty roads. He was guilty of giving fairy tales to children and stories of rebellion to their parents. Sometimes he even carried a bootlegged Bible, so he was obviously a threat to the human race and must be stopped at all cost.

  “Speak,” the voice said once again. Collin wasn't sure if this was some sort of new strategy, or if the man had simply run out of threats.

  Somewhere, a button was pushed or a dial was turned, and pain started to pulse through every limb. At first it was minor pain. It was a reminder that his body was broken and cut into pieces, and that the true nature of the pain could be thrust upon him at any moment.

  Collin clenched his jaw and closed his eyes, but he did not say a word to the man. He would do everything in his power to keep himself from screaming, because even that much would be giving his interrogators what they wanted.

  The pain increased. Collin's legs felt as though they were broken in
several places. He couldn't remember when they had been injured, or how, but they hurt like hell.

  His captors had burned the skin, from his thighs up to his stomach. Though the white scrubs that they put Collin in hid the burns from him, they felt severe. Possibly infected.

  There seemed to be a vest of some sort over his chest, strapped on tightly, holding metal rods in place beneath his clean white scrubs. The rods were driven deep into his body, making it hard for him to breathe, even when he couldn't feel the pain.

  His arms were spread at his sides and strapped to extensions of the table. They were sliced open, with spreaders holding the wounds open, exposing the muscles beneath. Unfortunately, Collin could see this much, and it left no doubt in his mind that the pain he felt was not an illusion. It was not created by the devices on his spine. It was not a trick to make him believe that he was torn apart when his body was in fact whole. The abuses he suffered were real. The only question was, would it get worse?

  “Speak,” the man said again.

  The dial on Collin's pain was turned up and he could feel a groan growing inside of him. Had the pain been constant, perhaps he would have adjusted. Maybe he could train his mind to ignore it. Maybe he could pass out. But the fact that it came and went as his captors pleased kept the pain sharp and unexpected, no matter how many times he had felt it before.

  “You have not felt the full extent of your pain, Mr. Powers. I would hate to have to unleash that pain upon you,” the man said.

  Collin kept his eyes closed and tried his best to picture himself someplace else. This was a game that he used to play with his ex girlfriend, Liz. They would lie on their backs, staring at the ceiling, picturing themselves in some other place, in some other time. They would imagine better lives for themselves, allowing the truth of the world to melt away.

  It wasn't working this time. Every time he tried to imagine himself on a beach, they would turn the dial or push their button, and the pain would grow. If he hadn't yet felt the true extent of this pain, he truly hoped that he never would. But whatever they did to him, he would not reveal the location of his friends and allies. He would not give his interrogator anything that would bring such pain down upon those he loved.

  That was the mistake HAND made. They showed Collin what would happen to Freedom members if they were captured. Now, no matter how bad the pain became, Collin just pictured Liz or Sophia suffering in the same way. His pain was preferable to theirs. No matter what his interrogator did to him, there would always be a way of making his suffering worse, and Collin was the one holding that button.

  2

  “Are you going to speak?” Justin asked Libby as he sat at the foot of her bed.

  He stared at her, waiting for a response, but she wasn't sure what she would say. She'd been locked up in the Garden for a month, without access to the outside world. Aside from some aggressive boredom which led to the questionable cutting of her own hair, there was nothing for her to talk about.

  The Garden was an old hospital that Freedom had turned into one of their bases of operation. From the outside, it looked as worn down and abandoned as all of the buildings that surrounded it. But inside, there was life. People lived there and learned there. They grew food and treated the sick. There was a whole community inside that one building, but Libby mostly just kept to herself.

  She shared a room with three other girls, but they only appeared at night, on the rare occasions when they appeared at all. During the day, Libby could sit on her bed and stare at her ceiling, wondering how she had gotten into this mess and what it all meant.

  “Are you mad at me?” Justin asked, and followed it up with a cough.

  “You're still coughing?” she asked, trying to find something of little importance for them to talk about.

  “Can't shake the cough, but the rest of it's gone. Seems like everyone in school's had the flu at some point. Some of them pretty bad.”

  “I'm not mad at you,” she told him. “I'm mad at life. I have been poked with needles, had hair samples taken, and spit onto more swabs than I can count. There's nothing to find. I was wrong. It was a mistake to bring me here.”

  “Then why was Uly killed? It doesn't make sense. He had that test and something happened. There was no other way they'd know about his being a member of Freedom. No other reason for them to kill him.”

  “I don't know what you want me to say. We've looked. If there was something in his blood, it's not in mine.”

  “Or we're not looking in the right place,” Justin suggested. “I was talking to Aaron before I came in here. They think it has something to do with that profiling machine you told us about. Mapping your DNA, or whatever it does. We don't have that kind of technology. It's not even in wide use yet.”

  “So we'll just walk into the hospital, have them scan me and then I can have my head blown off just like Uly. Sounds like a plan.”

  Justin smiled and told her, “You've been getting more sarcastic since you stopped taking the supplements.”

  “I feel everything now,” Libby replied, standing up and walking around the room. Looking at bland walls and bland furniture. “I feel bored. I feel cramped. I feel angry. I need to do something.”

  “They could use help with the crops.”

  “I sucked at gardening in school. The last thing I need is to be forced into doing it here. Isn't the whole point of this place to get away from their programming?”

  “It is.”

  “Then I need to do something else. I need to get out of here.”

  “You can't just walk down the street. If one camera sees you...”

  “I know. But I have loose ends that I need to tie up.”

  “You can't see Sim.”

  “I can trust him.”

  “We can't.”

  “And what about Amanda? Have you found her yet?”

  Libby looked at Justin, waiting for him to give her an answer about her mother. The last time she saw Amanda, she was in the hospital, just diagnosed with cancer and applying for treatment. Since then, their apartment was blown up and Libby hadn't been able to leave the Garden to look for her. For all she knew, Amanda was dead already.

  Justin looked toward the ground and Libby knew that it wasn't good news. At first, she thought that Amanda really was dead and her breath caught in her throat.

  Seeing her reaction, Justin put a hand up and told her, “I just haven't found her.”

  “I need to get out of here. I can't hide forever.”

  “You're not hiding. You're keeping yourself out of HAND's reach. That's important.”

  “Why?”

  Justin didn't answer her. He just looked away and gave her more of his trademark silence. He had saved her life on more than one occasion already, but when he wasn't fighting or running away, he tended to put on an act, pretending that he was weak and shy. It was getting old.

  “Everyone talks about how I've been spared the HAND prison and reprogramming, but I'm not sure what the difference is anymore. You or them, I'm still being locked away and told what to think and do.”

  Justin walked to the other side of the room and remained quiet, staring at the wall and putting his hands on his head. The way he was breathing, Libby knew that he was having a conversation with himself; arguing with himself.

  When he turned around again, he looked as though he were annoyed with her. As much as this made Libby want to argue even more, she had to appreciate that he was showing some real emotion.

  “Let's be clear,” he told her. “You lock yourself away. You stay in this room, never talking to anyone. Never trying to be a part of this community. It's not the people out there who are keeping you shut in. They're the ones who are keeping you safe, and you might show a little bit of gratitude for it. We sacrificed someone so that you could be here.”

  “And nobody lets me forget it. They look at me like I killed Collin Powers myself, only I never had a say in this. I never had a say about anything in my entire life.”

  “
Exactly! You're whining about it, but you're not comprehending it!”

  “Whining?” Libby snapped, standing up and walking to Justin. She wanted to punch him in the face, but she held back. Instead, she stood so close to him that he had to pull back as she said, “I watched my cousin get killed right in front of my eyes. Have you ever watched someone from your family get murdered right in front of you? Have you ever seen their heads explode right in front of you?”

  “No.”

  “I watched my home burn. Everything I knew and every comfort I had in the world literally went up in smoke. Did that ever happen to you?”

  “No.”

  “Amanda... My mother is out there dying. Alone. Homeless. With no idea what happened to me, and nobody around to help her deal with what happened to Uly, and I can't do anything to help her. Ever happen to you?”

  “No.”

  “I've been cut off from my boyfriend. The only person that I trust completely. I've been chased down by the government. I've been locked in this ancient ruin of a building for a month, and I'm not even taking the anti-depressants that the government's been slipping me for my entire life anymore.”

  She turned and walked back to the bed and sat down. She took a deep breath and sighed, “Ever happen to you?”

  Justin walked to Libby and sat down beside her. She thought that he was going to try to put an arm around her, but he didn't. He just stared at the door for a few seconds before saying, “The part about the anti-depressants happened to me. And I did tag along with you while you were running from the government.”

  Libby started laughing, though she wasn't quite sure why. Her situation was anything but funny, but she couldn't help it. Her moods had been all over the place since she stopped taking the supplements. At the same time, she felt more focused. The world seemed more real to her, even if that reality was terrifying.

  “You know what helps? Hardcore drugs. Like, a lot of them,” Justin told her.

  “Have some heroin, do you?”

  “Not on me.”

  “You are joking, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Never know these days.”

  They were apparently done fighting with each other and back to being... Well, whatever they were. Not exactly friends. She still resented being lied to for so long. She felt stupid and she blamed him for that. But Justin was probably the closest thing that she had to family at the moment.