Chapter 11: Chapter 10: Retreat?

June 26th 2038/ Cheektowaga, NY

As we all walk into the abandoned warehouse, I take one more look at the sky for any SafetyAI drones. Satisfied that we weren’t being followed I pull the rusted door closed, shutting out the sound of drone propellers and police sirens. The sudden silence gives me permission to finally let go. I sit down on the dusty floor and look around at everyone else. Similarly, everyone else has laid down on the closes patch of floor or decrepit machinery. I’m so tired. 

We sit in silence for a few minutes, but it doesn’t feel like silence to me. Over and over I think about what we just went through...what I did. Having the chance to really think about what just went down I wanna scream. I feel my chest heaving and my heart skipping beats. I’m probably gonna shutdown. Shit I’m kinda praying for it at this point cause the world needs to go away. As my eyes begin to close, still sitting up, I lose track of the world.  

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“Amina!” I hear someone call, my eyes barely opening.  

As I look up, eyes still blurry, I see Onyeka looking down at me concerned. 

“Are you ok? I just called you like three times, and you didn’t respond” She asks concernedly.  

I want to respond with words, but they’re too much. I just give a thumbs up to her. 

I see Onyeka and Terrance exchange a look. They’ve seen me go non-verbal before, so they know what’s happening. Onyeka sits down next to me and puts her arm around me.  

Duce looks at me with confusion.  

“What’s her deal?” he asks confusingly. 

“She’s going through a shutdown. It's an autistic thing,” Terrance replies, devoid of his usual contempt for Duce. 

“Wait she’s autistic?” Duce’s voice filled with the familiar disbelief from people when they find out I’m autistic. 

“It doesn’t matter right now. She just needs some time to recover ok,” Onyeka retorts as she squeezes me.    

“Sorry, ok. I’ll move on to the obvious question then. Who snitched?” Duce glares at us as if he’s seriously expecting someone to confess being a traitor. 

“It's obvious that the device had a tracker on it,” Terrance calmly retorts.   

“Yeah, it could have but it could have also been those hackers selling us out,” Duce replies. I don’t think he really believes that,  

“It wasn’t them,” Onyeka adds looking a bit annoyed.  

“I mean do we know for sure?” Terrance asks. 

“Trust me, they couldn’t afford to expose themselves even if they were trying to double deal,” she says. I would wonder what she really means by that, but I honestly don’t even care.  

“I don’t trust you, that’s the point,” Duce says. Onyeka replies with an annoyed look.  

“Listen, it doesn’t matter how we got here. We need focus on figuring out what to do next,” Terrance says as he dismissively waves at everyone. “Instead of complaining maybe we can start by seeing the lay of the land on the convenient devices that are attached to all of our heads.” The sarcasm in Terrance’s voice is palatable. I’d laugh if I was able to talk. 

“Good idea!” Rome pipes up. He turns on his HUD and asks for the local news. After about 30 seconds his face starts to lose some of its color making his face contrast even more against his red locs. He looks over at me with his mouth open.  

“What’s wrong Rome?” Duce asks. Rome ignores Duce’s question and continues to look at me. 

“Turn on your HUD Amina,” he says softly.   

“HUD show the news” I whisper. As the screen boots up, I see a Breaking News banner with the live video already playing.  

“We just got done listening to local DHIS commanders address the news about today’s incident. They have informed us that they’ve tracked down a suspect in the Buffalo Waterfront terrorist attack that happened one week ago. The suspect name is Amina Fernandes of Cheektowaga, NY. In their attempt to arrest the suspect, she used a still unknown weapon on arresting officers. 11 officers, including 5 DHIS agents, were killed at the scene with many more causalities. DHIS and the Governor's office have jointly declared a state of emergency instituting a stay-at-home order for everyone in Erie County. All residents must stay home until the suspect is in custody or otherwise incapacitated. We are also told that there were others at the residence where they attempted to make the arrest. Those individuals are also being sought by police in connection with both today’s attack and the Waterfront one. 

I aggressively swipe away the feed. I feel my eyes clouding up with tears.  

“What happened Amina!? Rome what the hell happened!?” Onyeka yells as I begin to unconsolably scream and fall into her arms. 

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“They are pinning the Waterfront attack on her. Somehow, they named Amina, but not the rest of us.” Rome looks down at me with a sad face.  

Terrance and Duce both pop up at Rome’s reply. 

“Wait how the fuck they know who she was?!” Duce yells in the growing chaos. 

“Because the cop fucker took off his hood as he was walking out. I tried to shoot him but couldn’t get the shot.” Terrance yells back at Duce with a distinct sense of disappointment in his voice.  

“Oh my god. They’re trying to use her as a scapegoat,” Onyeka gasps. 

As she says this, I remember what Jump Suit said about the attack. He said nobody in his unit could have been involved in the Waterfront attack. Somehow the analytical part of my brain figuring out what’s going on is helping to rein in my cascading emotions. 

Wiping away my tears, I sit up. All I can do is whisper still, but it's better than nothing.  

“They think I did it because they legit don’t have any real leads. We did all of this because we were sure that the government committed that attack as a false flag or something. Now that I’ve killed a bunch of cops and we know that our theory is wrong...we have nothing.” I look down at the ground after saying this, more unsure what to say or do next. 

Terrance turns to me, eyebrows furrowed. “There’s nothing else we can do then. We can’t come forward since they aren’t lying about anything. Eventually they’ll figure out that we were at the protest and some of the few people who left before being detained by the police. Unless we find who really did it, we’re screwed. But even then, we’ve still committed so many crimes that it won’t matter.” 

“Yea T we know. What are you really trying to say?” Onyeka asks. 

His eyebrows furrow more. “She gotta go into hiding. We played our hand and lost. There’s nothing else any of us can do. At least she has a way to protect herself. We’ll find some way to get her out of here.”  

“I agree,” Rome says with Duce nodding in agreement. 

“Wait! Nah y’all we can’t do that,” Onyeka interjects. “Yea our original plan is fucked but people are still struggling against the occupation. This won’t end if Amina disappears. Those weapons will still be out there.” She looks down at me with my head on her shoulder.  

“Amina, you’re my friend and I don’t want you in danger, but you’re also literally the only one with any power to fight back against DHIS and their weapons.” Onyeka eyes start to well up as she says this. I can see how difficult this is for her.  

“You’re not wrong,” Terrance replies. “But without a plan she’ll just get herself killed and fuck that shit.” 

“You mean she’ll get us killed,” Duce adds. 

“He’s not wrong. I’m onboard fighting the pigs as much as anyone, but I still think hiding until we at least have a plan is the best thing to do right now.” Rome looks at me apologetically.  

I let out a deep sigh as everyone looks at me, I guess expecting me to decide something. I stand up from the floor again. 

“I don’t know what to do. I’ve always been willing to take risks for the greater good, but I don’t know about this. Onyeka you’re asking me to become a superhero and fight the US government. Terrance, you’re asking me to abandon everyone after I brought this hell onto our community. I don’t know what to do, but all I care about for now is not making things worse.” 

“I feel you. We can’t decide for you, but you know we’d follow you into the pits of hell whatever you decide. We in this together” Terrance looks at the others looking for a cosign. Everyone, even Duce nods in agreement after rolling his eyes. 

“Well, if we in this together, we’ll decide together,” I whisper back to them. I’m not willing to risk other people’s lives more than I already have. No more kneejerk reactions or decisions from this one.  

“I think for now we can all agree that regardless of what we do next that we need to lay low and gather more info. Onyeka, I don’t wanna ask, but can you contact you hacker buddies to do another job for us?” I look at Onyeka apologetically as I say this. 

“I can’t make any guarantees, but I can drop them a message and see what they can do.” The unease on her face is obvious. I don’t know her backstory with them, but I hope this isn’t gonna create another problem for us. 

“Well, it’s settled then,” Duce says as he claps his hands and stand up ready to leave. 

“Where are you going? We gotta wait for her people to get back to us.” Rome looks up at Duce confused. 

“Ohhhhh! My bad. My head is all over the place. Y’all really got me out here on the run tho,” Duce says back as he sits down again. 

As Onyeka types out the message to her friends and the others try to relax, I look down at the inducer still tied to my forearm. Such a small thing causes so much suffering and chaos. And now it’s up to me to decide what I’m going to do with this thing. It feels weird weighing risks when we’ve already risked it all just to get to this point. Not to mention we still don’t know the truth about the incident that started this all. Whatever we do, I feel like I’m going in completely unprepared. But I guess that’s something that has always been the case for folks trying to change things. I look up through the building’s skylight as the bright summer sun beams in and then close my eyes. 

“Ancestors protect us,” I whisper to myself. 

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