Chapter 5: Chapter 4: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn

June 21st 2038/ Cheektowaga, NY

“I guess we can move again,” I whisper to myself as I slowly sit up on my bed. I check the time and it’s been like 18 hours since I flopped in this bed after escaping from the projects. I also see the long list of missed calls from Onyeka, Terrance, and Julissa. I would answer to let them know I was alright but I’m not feeling very verbal right now.

I still have the image of that man in my head—laying on the ground with smoke coming from his chest. I remember the screams of the other people there, cops included. Who would create a weapon like that...nevermind I already know the answer.

Sigh I should call the others over to talk about things.

******

I open the door and next thing I know Onyeka is shoving a candy bar in my face. Terrance waits in the doorway with a mix of a smile and grimace on his face.

“I brought your favorites, some Oh Henry’s” Onyeka says as she lets go of me while pushing me back to let herself into the apartment. She plops down on my raggedy grey couch and starts pulling stuff out of a paper bag.

“I also brought you some ginger ale and those nasty ass frozen chicken pot pies your brain insists on inflicting on you,” she quickly blurts out. I love her so much. Only a best friend will remember your safe foods and bring them over just in case.

Terrance follows her to the couch, leaving his wheelchair next to the front door.

“I know it was hard to see someone die like that, especially right after what happened to us downtown.” Terrance says this in the softest voice I’ve ever heard from him. Doesn’t suit him, but I appreciate the effort.

Onyeka offended punches his arm lightly. “You not supposed to do that man! You don’t immediately bring up the traumatizing thing,” she scolds him squinting at him.

He lightly shoves back at her and says, “Why beat around the bush? At least she wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger and put dude on the ground.”

Something about that sentence sets me right off.

“There was no trigger! The motherfucker just held his hand out and poof! A fucking fireball!” I scream at Terrance. I continue my rant while breaking into tears. “I can’t let go of this shit. What do we do with something like that!? I keep thinking over and over that there’s no telling what they will do with that stuff. I know we need to fight back before it’s too late but like….how!?” I pace hard back and forth through my living room while saying all of this, fingers flapping against my palms.

“I’m...ummm I’m sorry” Terrance says softly to me. He's not a big emotion person but he tries.

“If it helps, I’m scared too. Y’all know my past, but I ain't never seen nothing like that before. Cops already out here full on buggin’. All y'all little protest shit for sure ain't enough no more.” Terrance lets out a big sigh as he leans back on the couch with a look of frustration on his face.

“Yea I’m scared too y’all.” Onyeka adds in. “I’m worried about our families. Like what if they ever come looking for us and those DHIS dudes show up at our people's house?"

I wipe away the tears from my face and think about my own family. My parents were involved in Black Lives Matter back in the day and they saw the rise of the Patriotic Front and all the pro-police laws. They lost alot of friends and family during those years. I wanna do something, but what if I just end up as another person they’ve lost. What if trying to do something about this gets them killed like Onyeka is worried about.

While I’m dealing with my little moral crisis, our HUDs all get alerted. Simultaneously double blinking to open the alert we see that it’s from the head of DHIS, David Emerson What does this motherfucker have to say. I bet it’s about that resident they killed. He promptly begins:

“Yesterday a man in Buffalo, NY was killed by a DHIS officer after they attempted to ‘unarrest’ detained individuals. Our DHIS officers were on the scene because local PD was tipped off that the individual who committed the terrorist attack on the 19th was in the area. I must remind all of you that US federal law states that interfering with DHIS business or attempting to assault a DHIS officer is a capital offense and our officers are authorized to protect themselves when endangered. We were tracking down an immensely dangerous individual and our officers were afraid for their lives from the group that formed at the Donovan Homes. While our officers followed protocol for this kind of situation, we do want to publicly give our condolences to the individual’s family and are already in contact with them.

Since I spoke yesterday there have been questions about the weapon that our officer ended up using to defend themselves. Some have called this technology ‘magic’ but it is nothing of the sort. It is an experimental technology known as Quantum Entanglement Induction and it allows our officers to manipulate heat energy. Being that we are dealing with a threat that can create earthquakes we’ve decided to deploy this technology early. We are not taking questions about how the tech works at this time because it is still classified but know that the world is safer with our QEI Operators in the field. God Bless the United States of America.”

The feed closes and we just stare at each other in silence for a minute. I think we all know what each other is thinking.

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Onyeka breaks the silence.

“Do you have any recordings of the officer using the weapon?” she asks.

“Wait! Oh shit! Yeah I think I forgot to turn off the camera when I was talking to y'all!” I begin to frantically search my HUD and lo and behold there’s a 10 minute clip of everything.

“Ok we got them on video killing someone and wearing the device. But they already admitted to both. What can we do with that?" I ask her while thinking through things.

Terrance adds, "for the record I don’t think y'all should be fucking with any of this. BUT if we gonna then like Amina said the video is useless. What we would need is to prove straight up that either one of their guys did the thing yesterday or that the device they used can also cause earthquakes.”

Oh wow...I don't know if I like where this is going. I let out a big sigh and lean forward on my hands.

“So you're saying that we'll need to either find a leaked document, a snitch, or get our hands on one of those devices.” I say this knowing how wild it sounds.

“So basically we’re fucked then,” Onyeka says with a sigh.

“Yup,” Terrance adds.

No. We can't be done. This isn't gonna go away and nobody but us knows there's something wrong and fucked up happening. My hand shakes cause I know what I'm thinking about doing I'm not prepared for. But maybe if we're careful we can pull it off.

“We have to do it!" I blurt out.

“Have to do what? Expose ourselves and definitely get hunted down by the government for it? Nah you buggin'," Terrance scrunches his whole face at me as I say this.

“Ok listen. We all know something messed up is happening and nobody else has all the pieces. I gotta say something or else who knows what they'll do next.” I clench my fist as I say this.

“Yeah Terrance, we can’t just do nothing,” Onyeka adds. "On the other hand Mina, we can't just put ourselves out there like that. What if we spoke up anonymously?”

“Nobody will believe it,” Terrance swiftly replies.

“And they won't believe me even with the video. We need the device itself.” I add.

Again we stare at each other for a minute not sure what to do next.

“I’ll say it. I’m down. If we’re already going into magic fascism I’d rather get in a big fuck you before I get fireballed.” Terrance says.

“Of course you’d be that fatalistic.” Onyeka says as she rolls her eyes. “Anyways, I’m in too. I would never let y’all do this on y’all own.”

I stare at them for a second in disbelief. They really about it. I let out a big whew.

“I love yall. I’m not sure how exactly how we'll do this but we can't just wash our hands of all this. A bunch of us activist folks have a back channel group we’ve organize for talking about issues that might involve some illegality. I think if we present what's happening to them they might know how to get it done.” 

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