Freedom/Hate (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 1) Read online

  “Don't think. Just pull.”

  The gun went off in his hand, and the third police officer slumped to the ground. Collin didn't want to know whether he was dead or not. He already felt sick enough. Had these been HAND officers, he would undoubtedly be dead. HAND officers were cold, highly trained soldiers. The police force was made up of men just as loyal to the authorities, but who weren't capable of HAND-level action. They were just as bad. They were the people who took innocent men, women and children to prisons. They were bad people. They were the enemy. They were trying to kill him. Collin reminded himself of these facts, repeating them in his head over and over again. He was doing everything he could think of to keep himself from falling apart at the thought of mortally wounding another human being.

  As he tried to catch his breath, Collin suddenly became aware of the officer on top of him. The officer was breathing steadily, moving his arms and legs, but only weakly.

  Collin stood, still holding onto the blanket that covered that officer's head.

  “I didn't want to do this,” he said, to himself as much as the officer. “You made me. You did this.”

  It was war. He shouldn't be trying to convince himself of anything. He was attacked and he fought back. He won.

  He won.

  How?

  It didn't make any sense. He wasn't a trained soldier. He wasn't used to combat and gun fights.

  There wasn't enough time for him to think about his victory. In the distance, he could hear HAND sirens approaching. They couldn't have been far away. Either end of the alley could mean the end of him.

  Collin struck the officer that he was holding onto with the butt of his gun. The first time he did it, the officer groaned but remained conscious. It took two more blows to knock the officer out. Each time he hit the man, Collin hoped that he wasn't going to kill him. He knew that he would be kidding himself if he thought that he wasn't capable of killing. For all he knew, he was a killer already. But he had to hope anyway. He couldn't allow himself to be okay with this.

  The sirens were getting closer. His wounded arm felt as though it was on fire. He wanted to run, but he didn't know where to go. With each second that passed, he became more convinced that there was no way out of this situation. They were going to catch up to him. He was going to die.

  7

  Collin's heart was pounding in his chest. Each time he took a breath, it felt as though someone had their hand inside of his body, twisting and pulling on everything inside of him. There was a part of him that wanted to stand in that alley and cry, but he didn't do that. He had to pull himself together. There had to be a way out for him, and he needed to find it. Breaking down wouldn't help anything.

  He put his head back and took a deep breath, trying to think of a plan. His eyes moved from window to window, expecting to find someone looking back at him. He didn't see anyone, but he knew that there were people inside of that building. He knew that they must have heard the gunshots. They would be on their phones already.

  At one end of the alley, a police car was still parked. Its lights weren't flashing. Its siren wasn't turned on. But the presence of that car was screaming at Collin just as loudly as any siren could have. They were coming.

  Neither end of the alley was appealing. Collin would have preferred to climb the wall, break into that building and make his way to the roof, rather than return to the streets.

  As a child, he spent time on the roof of his building, looking at the roof of the building beside it and wondering whether he could jump across. He thought that if he built up enough speed and jumped at just the right moment, he could do it. It would have been the thrill of a lifetime, but he wasn't the type of kid who jumped across rooftops. He was the kid who dreamed of doing it, but talked himself out of it because he knew better.

  Those rooftops were only a couple of feet apart. He could have made that jump easily as a kid, just like he could have jumped across the rooftops now. But then what? After he had wasted time climbing to the roof and crossing over to every building within reach, he would eventually have to make his way down again. Then he would be on the street, undoubtedly surrounded by HAND officers who had taken their sweet time getting there, while he was plodding up and down stairs all night.

  No, there was no going up. If Collin wanted any chance of escape, he would have to do it the normal way. And he was going to have to work up the nerve to get on with it before more officers arrived with more guns.

  He turned and looked at the police car that was parked at the far end of the alley. Between him and that car, three limp bodies were spread across the pavement. He didn't want to walk past them and look at what he had done in the name of saving himself. He also didn't think that that end of the alley would provide the best route of escape.

  He took deep breaths and tried to think rationally. He imagined the officer who had been driving that car, calling in his location before stepping out to approach Collin. While the police would surely figure out that there were two ends to the alley and eventually try to block off both sides, he thought that they were more likely to approach the side with the car first. That meant that the best chance of escape would be to go back the way he came.

  Did it make sense? He couldn't tell anymore. Nothing made sense and there was no good answer to any of his questions. It was a choice between bad rationalization and flipping a coin. He'd never owned a coin in his life, so that option was ruled out pretty quickly.

  Every muscle in his body was tense as he took his first step toward the end of the alley. As his foot touched the ground, part of him expected sirens and spotlights. He could feel drones and satellites tracking him from above, guiding HAND officers to his location. As that thought hung heavy in his head, Collin was overcome by a need to run. He took off as quickly as he could and left the alley behind. As soon as he hit the sidewalk, he could hear the sirens of HAND vehicles approaching. He looked around for somewhere to go, but his attention was quickly grabbed by the people that surrounded him.

  He locked eyes with one older woman whose eyes widened at the sight of him. Her mouth opened as though to scream, but no sound came from it. She knew who he was, and she was terrified of him. It was the first time in his life that anyone had ever looked at him as though he were a murderer.

  Another woman stopped nearby, pointing at him and muttering, “Ohh! Hey. Hey!”

  More people were starting to notice him. More eyes were on him. The feeling was worse than the thought of drones or satellites, because he could see these people. He could tell what they were thinking. He was a monster to them.

  Collin wanted to stop and explain himself. He wanted to tell those people that he wasn't a murderer or a terrorist, he was just a man who liked books. They didn't have to fear him. They didn't have to hate him. But trying to explain himself to those people would be as useful as explaining himself to a bench. They wouldn't hear what he had to say. They would only hear the voices of newscasters, telling them what they believed before they had a chance to think about it for themselves.

  The sirens were getting closer. Collin started to move again, pushing his way past those people who believed that he was a terrorist, yet did surprisingly little to stop him from escaping.

  He ran across the street, never slowing down to look for cars speeding toward him. Never looking back at the people who could point HAND in his direction. He ran as fast as he could, for as long as he could, down alleys and streets that were beginning to clear out as curfew approached. His lungs were burning. His muscles ached. By the time he stopped running, he didn't know where he was anymore. All he knew was that he had to keep moving, because no matter how far he went, there would always be someone to chase him.

  The alley he found himself in was too narrow for a car to enter. If HAND wanted to follow, they would have to go around or pursue him on foot. He would have to start moving again soon, but he needed to take a moment to catch his breath.

  His wounded arm was throbbing. It felt like the skin had been
peeled off entirely and all that remained were raw nerves. Carefully, Collin pulled the arm out of his jacket's sleeve and looked at the wound.

  It was a scratch; a scratch that hurt like crazy, but it wasn't even bleeding anymore. His jacket had sustained more damage than his flesh. If such a small wound had caused him that much discomfort, what would it feel like to be tortured? How long could he last before telling the authorities everything that he knew about Freedom?

  Pulling his jacket back on, Collin tried to think about what it would mean for Freedom if he did talk. How much did he know? How many people could he get killed? Fortunately, he wasn't very important to the cause. Aside from the location of one base and some basic understanding of how they traded books and fake Civvies, he didn't know much.

  As that thought occurred to him, a shock went through Collin's system. He was no longer focusing on the pain he felt in his arm. Instead, his attention went to the thing that he didn't feel. He held his breath as he put a hand inside his jacket and confirmed what he had feared. The envelope that he'd been given by the girl on the highway was gone. An envelope full of blank Civvies. The hopes of dozens of Freedom members to walk down the street without fearing a checkpoint. He'd lost them. He had failed his people.

  His first instinct was to turn around and retrace his steps. He had those Civvies when he woke up that morning. He must have dropped them during his fight with the police officers. Or maybe when he was running through the streets. But which streets? Which alleys? He had been so determined to keep moving that he hadn't even kept track of where he was through all of it.

  His heart was pounding even harder in his chest now. He was no longer simply scared for his life. He was crushed by the realization that even if he did make it home in one piece, he had condemned all of those other people to lives spent hidden in basements or looking over their shoulders.

  He wanted to turn back and make this right, but there was no going back. The Civvies were gone. His only choice was to keep moving and hope that he wouldn't make matters worse for his people by being captured.

  As he approached the end of the alley and looked at the street beyond, Collin was still trying to regain his bearings. It was dark. Two of the street lights were out, and there were only a few people walking down the sidewalk.

  The street was more rundown than most. Entire chunks of the pavement were missing. Storefronts along the sidewalk were boarded up. On the far side of the street, Collin saw the entrance to a subway station. It was closed off by construction tape, but that could be easily bypassed.

  Closing his eyes, Collin tried to think. He wasn't familiar with the street he was on, but he knew most of the subway lines. If he could figure out which line this was, maybe he could start to plan his route instead of just running blindly into the night.

  Over the decades, the authorities had tried to sell the citizens the idea of revitalizing their nation. In other parts of the country, that meant construction of entirely new buildings. But where Collin lived, it was usually just about covering crumbling walls with new facades, hiding the damage that still remained with shiny, modern designs.

  As years passed, the damage began to show through. The walls of some subway stations began to crumble. Pipes burst, leaving moldy messes that stood waiting to be cleaned up and repaired.

  In his mind, he ran through the different lines that he knew to be closed. He opened his eyes and looked around at the street he was on and thought about the direction he had come from. It took him a moment or two, but he eventually figured out where he was. The downside of this was that he realized that he was on the wrong side of town. His safe house was miles away and in order to reach it, he would have to travel in the wrong direction. It wasn't an option. He needed to keep moving forward, until he could escape the HAND officers who were on his tail. Backtracking would have been counterproductive to say the least.

  The subway tunnel was his best chance of escape. Once he moved beneath the streets, the drones and satellites would have a harder time tracking him. The only question was, what would he find down there?

  Once again keeping his head low and trying to remain unnoticed, Collin walked out of the alley. He walked slowly and directly toward the entrance of the subway station, to avoid drawing attention to himself. He didn't stop to see if anyone recognized him. It didn't really matter if they did at this point.

  He reached the entrance and lifted the tape. He stepped under it and looked down at the stairs in front of him. He was waiting to see some sign of what he could expect below, but all he saw was darkness.

  Walking slowly, he moved down the stairs, trying not to lose his footing as he struggled to see from one step to the next.

  As he walked into the darkness, the sounds of the city above began to fade. The smell of the subway station struck his nose so abruptly that he nearly gagged on it. It was the smell of mold and garbage, mixed with the scent of humans who hadn't bathed in quite some time.

  Deeper he went and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Collin realized that it was not pitch black down there. There was a faint flicker coming from within the station, from a fire burning somewhere below. He heard coughing and whispering. People were down there.

  Freedom had bases all over the city. Those bases were filled with people who wanted nothing to do with the authorities or the lives that they had been assigned to. Those people had dropped out of society and created something new for themselves. But those bases would not be as open as an abandoned subway station. Freedom hid where they would not be easily found.

  Those who hid in the open were criminals, drug addicts and sometimes mentally ill people who couldn't find treatment at one of the local hospitals. They would most likely have no desire to turn Collin in, but they could pose a threat to him just the same. As he pressed on, Collin wished that he still had the gun that he had used on the police officers in the alley. He didn't remember dropping it, but he must have, because it was no longer in his hand.

  At the base of the stairs, there was a gate. It had been closed and locked by whichever city official was in charge of such things, but that gate had been broken for quite some time. Now it was a twisted, rusted mess that did nothing more than slow Collin down as he squeezed past it.

  Once he was past that gate, the station spread out before him. Several fires were burning in trash cans around the station, and shadowy figures were standing around them. The walls had fallen apart in areas, leaving chunks of plaster and cement spread across the ground.

  There were a few makeshift tents, constructed in an attempt to salvage some amount of privacy, but for the most part, people were scattered across the place. They slept wherever they could find room to collapse.

  Collin expected all eyes to be on him as he stood there, trying to figure out where to go next, but as far as he could tell, nobody cared that he was there. It was a nice change of pace.

  A groan echoed through the station. Collin couldn't tell where it came from or whether it was a good groan or a bad groan. Nobody else cared enough to raise an eyebrow. This gave him hope. If he moved quietly enough, perhaps he could make his way through the station without attracting attention. Maybe he could get out of there without having to worry. Down there in the dark, Collin felt invisible and it was a relief—but a short-lived one.

  “Collin Powers,” came a voice from somewhere to Collin's right. It wasn't a powerful, booming voice. It was nearly a whisper.

  He turned to find the source of this voice, but he saw nobody looking at him or coming toward him.

  The whispers continued. All around him, people were carrying on hushed conversations. He could hear bits and pieces of words coming from every direction. He wondered how many of them were talking about him. Did they know he was there? Or were they just talking about what they had seen on TV?

  “No.”

  “Dead.”

  “C'mon, baby.”

  The whispers carried on. Somewhere in the subway station, a woman laughed. The sound echoed through
the place, like ten different women surrounding Collin and finding him very amusing.

  If they knew who he was, they would be doing something about it by now. He was sure of it. They couldn't have known, but that didn't mean that they wouldn't eventually figure it out.

  There was a loud bang that caused Collin to jump. It took him a second to realize that it wasn't the sound of a gun going off. Someone had dropped something. He was fine. He just needed to get moving.

  He started to walk again, slowly. He could still hope that his presence would go unnoticed, but he had a long way to go. There were a lot of people standing between him and the train tracks.

  Somewhere in the distance, someone started to bang a pipe on the ground, keeping time as they whistled a soft tune that carried through the station. The sound blended with the whispers and the pounding of Collin's own heart.

  When he was halfway to the tracks, Collin began to think that he might make it out of that place without anyone noticing him. If he could do that, there would be nobody to answer questions or point HAND officers in his direction once he was gone. If he could get out of that place, he could disappear. It was within his reach now. He could almost taste it—along with taste of rotting filth that had clung to the back of his throat since the moment he stepped foot in that place.

  As soon as that glimmer of hope began to grow in his mind, Collin felt a hand on his shoulder. It squeezed tight and pulled him backward, forcing him to stop walking.

  “You're a celebrity,” came a voice from behind him. It was soft, betraying no emotion or motive.

  Collin didn't want to turn around. When he was a child, he believed that if he pulled his covers over his face, the monster under his bed wouldn't be able to see him. There was a small part of his brain that now felt the same way. If he didn't turn around, maybe the person speaking to him would go away.

  Of course, this was a completely irrational thought. Refusing to face your enemy resulted in being stabbed in the back more often than it resulted in being left alone. Collin swallowed hard and then turned. If he was going to be stabbed, he'd rather face it head-on.