Allowing her brothers to rule her life, Kari had lived only to react against them, letting others do her thinking for her, and shape who she was. She’d been lazy, going along with the role she’d picked up, without ever thinking for herself, following blindly where they led, rather than picking her own path.
On deeper thought, that was the core of what was wrong with this world.
Demanding that everyone conform or be cast out, the Apostle had taken their freedom, and their need to think for themselves. Those that went along with it, without complaint or question, must have already been looking for someone else to do their thinking for them.
What dark end was the Apostle exploiting the people toward? How was all of this conformity foolishness connected to Cain, and why? There were too many questions and Kari had enough with her own problems to give them more than a passing thought.
“It’s not your fault,” Michael said, looming over her “He’ll escape, or we’ll rescue him. It’ll all work out. We’ll get through it. The lucky bastard is probably having the time of his life right now!”
Managing to sound jealous, Michael flashed her a mischievous grin.
“You can feel it when he’s hurt,” Kari said dully, her mind in somewhat of a
stupor after finding that her entire life was built on a faulty foundation. “Are they hurting him?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Michael sighed. “I don’t know. I know he’s not dead, but that’s about it.”
“Looks like things are dying down a bit,” Keir dropped through the trapdoor in the ceiling that was well hidden behind the counter of his shop. “They’ve moved the search elsewhere in the city. You’re safe for now.”
“What is this place,” Michael asked, gesturing to the large hidden chamber.
“It used to be a storeroom,” Keir said, looking around at the room, “I stumbled on it a year after I bought the place. We hide nonconformists and have our secret resistance meetings down here. That ladder leads to the alley behind the shop, and the one over there leads to the tunnelway under the street.”
“So you fight the Apostle from your basement,” Michael asked, “how many
people do you have?”
“Thousands. When the Apostle arrived I knew what was in store for us. I already watched him destroy one world, and I’m not going to stand by and let it happen again. I already got my second chance. I don’t think I’ll get a third. I’ve been gathering supporters since I saw him here.”
“So,” Michael asked, “can you explain what’s going on here to us?”
As Keir began running through everything about conformity again, Kari found it hard to care. She was too angry, depressed, and lost in her need to find a purpose in life, to care. Slumping against the wall, her head made a hollow thud, which caused the two men to look at her with concern.
“Is she all right,” Keir asked.
“She’s fine,” Michael said. “She’s just moping about Jonathan.”
Kneeling beside her, Keir looked her in the eye.
“You shouldn’t worry about your brother. There are laws against torture and
execution here. The worst he has to look forward to is some unfriendly questioning by an interrogator with bad breath, and the awful prison food. We’ve planned a resistance strike on the Citadel, where all nonconformists are held before trial, for tomorrow night so we’ll rescue him them. Even if he’s moved to another facility, or the uprising goes badly, all they’ll do to him if he’s found guilty is toss him out of the city, and you can round him up then.”
Eyeing him, Kari didn’t know how to put the thoughts running through her head
into words. Neither of them understood. It wasn’t that she’d failed, it was that her failure had shown her that there was nothing beneath the thin veneer of responsibility she’d been hiding behind. Maybe if they were women she could better express what she was feeling. Men never understood, but her adopted sister Mera always had, even when she couldn’t quite put things into words. She wished Mera were here now. She’d always known exactly what to do.
Frowning for a second, Keir pointed to his head about where her ears would be.
“Didn’t you two have, you know, weird ears like animals?”
“Illusion,” Kari wished he’d go away and let her think. She had far more
important things to be doing. “They’re still there. You just can’t see them. Here, give me your hand.”
Taking his hand, she brought it up to touch one of her foxlike ears. Gasping as his hand pressed into the illusion, he would see his fingers disappearing into it before his very eyes.
“Heretics aren’t welcome in a lotta places,” Michael explained. “It makes for far less hassle just to hide the bits that make us stand out.”
Nodding, Keir looked back at Kari.
“We’ll get him back. You’ll see. Cheer up.”
“Excuse me,” Michael pushed Keir aside. Pulling back his hand, he slapped Kari across the face. “Grow up, sis! You can’t control everything. There was nothing you could have done so just snap out of it already.”
“You hit me,” Kari said, gingerly probing the stinging patch on her cheek.
“And I’ll do it again if you don’t stop moping around and acting like an idiot,”
Michael said. “No one blames you but yourself, so stop being an idiot and start thinking about how we’re going to help get Jonathan back.”
He was right of course. Jonathan was still in trouble, and it was her responsibility to get him out of it. Her personal crisis could wait for later.
“If people hate all this stupid conformity stuff so much,” Michael said when Kari sat up and stopped looking so pathetic. “Why don’t they just leave? I sure would.”
“That’s the problem, really,” taking a deep breath, Keir it out slowly. “Most people don’t really care. It’s only a mild inconvenience until someone you love is taken.
It’s easier to do as you’re told than to think for yourself. So long as someone else makes the decisions, most people are happy to follow blindly.”
“Pathetic,” Michael muttered.
“Quite,” Keir agreed.
“What about the resistance,” Kari asked.
“I started gathering other people who don’t like being told how to live their lives.
We started small, but now we have nearly thirty thousand members. Many of them have lost friends, family, lovers, and children to the outcast slums.”
“And you’re the leader,” Michael asked.
“That’s right,” Keir nodded, “we’ve been infiltrating the government for years, making way for taking control back from the Apostle. Tomorrow is the day we take our lives back.”
“How, exactly,” Michael asked.
“There will be a meeting here of the senior leaders of the resistance later tonight.
You’ll hear all the details then, but the gist of it is that all of the security men in the Citadel are ours, as well as all of the janitors, custodians, low level office workers, and other such. Once the Citadel is under our control, we can open the gates and let the outcasts in. In the confusion we’ll seize control of the government and capture the Apostle, beheading the beast. Our men will then restore order and we’ll go about restructuring the government to the way it was before.”
“With you at the head,” Michael asked.
“Oh no,” Keir said with a wide grin. “I may have been born a prince, but I’m just a simple silversmith these days. That’s good enough for me. When this is all over I plan to come back to my shop and continue my work.”