Chapter 7: Chapter 6: Choice is a Privilege

June 23nd 2038/ Buffalo, NY 

BEEEEEEEPPPPPPPP! 

I jump hard at the sound, making me fall out of my chair. My heart races as I try and pick myself off the floor of the preservation lab. I look over at the machine that was beeping, an industrial document scanner, with scorn. As I slap the button to turn off the device and sit myself back in my chair. Whenever I hear a long beep, I tense up and panic. It's been days and I’m still tripping. I can’t keep it together when a machine beeps, but I’m supposed to commit a heist and expose the government’s false flag operation. It ain’t like I can go to a therapist about my obvious PTSD so…sigh…anyways. 

I stand up to place the newspaper that I was scanning back in the drawer that I took it out of. Before I do I look down at the picture. It’s DHIS officers posing for a photo on the day their agency was commissioned by the federal government. Little did folks know that for years after that, thousands of oppressed people would be arrested or killed under the pretense of enforcing “democratic order”.   

I double tap my HUD to check the time and realize it’s actually 9pm!  

“Ah! Fuck me!” I yell out to myself. Gotta get to the meeting!  

“HUD, call Terrance.” 

“Yo Amina! You done yet with your archive shit?” 

“I’m not, but it won’t stop me from coming through.” I reply dryly. He knows I’ve been behind since the whole terrorist attack thing.  

“Ya ya I know. I’m just fucking with you, but seriously tho Rome been blowing up my phone wondering when we’re gonna head out.” 

“I mean did you tell him that I have a job I need to finish?” 

“I could have, but regardless we really should get him looped in before anything else happens. Anyways have you talked to Onyeka recently?” 

“Nah I got you and no I haven’t talked to her since this morning. I know she’s supposed to be stopping by a thing at the Holding Center for the protest detainees. Anyways I’m bout to pack up and leave. I’ll see you in a min.” 

“Aight be safe getting over to the park alright? There seems to be more patrols out here tonight than normal.” 

“Gotcha.” I wonder why he’s in such a rush. I mean I know why we should be in a rush, but he’s being weird. Whatever, let me finish this crap.  

*** 

As I walk into the darkness of Delaware Park I see a glint of metal coming from behind a tree and Terrance coming into view giving me a wave. I can see why he chose this spot, cause from the street you can’t see anything in the park because it’s so large but you also can’t quite see the street either cause you’re standing in the middle of a big set of tree shadows. It also helps that Delaware Park is surrounded by upper class White neighborhoods meaning there’s no cop patrols round these parts.  

As I give Terrance a hug I straighten up and notice Rome and Onyeka aren’t here. I look at Terrance and say “Bruh where are they especially Rome since he was complaining.”  

“Nah he hit me up right before you got here saying he’s about to be here. He’s been mad impatient tonight. Ha! Hopefully its not a set up.” He starts laughing to himself paying no attention to the scowl that’s coming across my face. 

I punch his arm and say, “um what the fuck T!? Why would you joke about that? Look at what’s going on. You don’t think there’s a chance that something like that could happen?” 

Terrance’s smile softens a bit as he swallows a laugh saying, “nah I was here when Rome joined the gang, he wouldn’t do that to me. I trust him almost as much as I do you. But it would be funny if it went down like that.” 

Without softening my scowl I scoff and say, “clearly being in the streets fucked up your sense of humor. Dying is not something to joke about.” 

He gives me a ‘whatever’ face, “listen I know how fragile life is and how we rarely get to choose how we go out. Might at well joke about it since you don’t really have control over—Aw fuck!!!” 

Terrance’s eyes squint as a look of disgust comes over his face and he looks past me into the darkness of the park. I turn my head to see what he’s looking at, two figures walking towards us. One is Rome with his head full of red locs wearing a black hoodie and sweats, and the other is someone I’ve never seen before wearing a white tee and green tight jeans wearing a heavy scowl across his light brown face. 

“Yea aw fuck Terrance!” the guy mockingly says as they fully come into view. Rome is walking beside him looking embarrassed. Clearly this wasn’t planned, and I start fidgeting my middle finger as I feel my heart bumping in my chest.   

Terrance sighs hard as he comes closer to the three of us. He looks the new guy in the face and says dismissively, “get it off your chest Duce so we can get on with it.”  

“The fuck you mean ‘get it off my chest’!?” Duce exclaims as he throws his hands up. “You out here talmbout you out and shit but gonna come back to the gang and try and recruit my niggas to help you with whatever the fuck you doing behind my back! How the fuck you think that’s gonna go over!?” He huffs and walks up towards Terrance. Rome and I both glance at each other worryingly. 

“First of all, back up. You’re barely taller than me while I’m sitting in this chair so you ain’t scaring nobody. Second of all—” He stops talking for a second to swing his head towards Rome. “I told you to not let this motherfucker know about what we were doing for this exact reason. I asked for ONE thing man!” 

Rome steps forward looking kind of offended, “listen I didn’t tell him shit, he walked into to room while we were talking and heard me…” He stops talking for a min thinking about what he just said. I start to snicker as Duce and Terrance both scowl at Rome. “Ok listen yea I technically fucked up or whatever butttttt really you can’t leave him out of this thing…which I assume you’re about to tell us about. I’m just saying.” 

“Ughhh!” Terrance responds as he turns back to Duce who’s still standing over him. “Listen I didn’t want to tell you because one, I knew your ass wouldn’t wanna do it, and two, the less people involved the better if shit goes left.” 

Duce rolls his eyes, “nah don’t play that shit with me. You stay line stepping “checking in” on people even though you say you out. I know you an OG, and I respect that, but you can’t just do whatever the fuck you wanna. Anyways what y’all planning?” 

I should probably tell him what’s going on, right? I step forward between Duce and Terrance.  

“Y’all let’s take it down a notch ok?” I turn to Duce, trying for an disarming smile. “Listen, you don’t know what’s going on. You know about DHIS’ new weapon that got everyone mad right? Well we was at Juneteenth terror attack and we saw the terrorist using the same weapon that those DHIS officers have now. We’re trying to get our hands on one of the weapons hence this meeting.” 

Duce squints his face and leans into me, “so you’re trying to get their shit so you can…start a war or something? Hell no! I’m good. You wannabe revolutionaries can take that shit somewhere else. None of my niggas gonna be helping with this shit. Cops get new guns all the time and I’m not seeing how this is special enough to risk getting the death penalty. Also, I refuse to clean up Terrance’s shit again.” 

As Terrance’s face turns to some combo of anger and sadness, Duce turns to walk away. Before I could say anything to try and convince him to stay, Rome steps in his way. He puts his hand on his shoulder. 

“Bruh, idk why you all pissy with Terrance, but you know he’s not a bullshiter and wouldn’t have asked me to help them if it wasn’t important.” Rome looks at Duce waiting for him to change his mind. 

Damn, I’m going to have to show them the thing. “Hey guys,” I say. “Come here and look at this video.” 

I pull up the video from Ferry and cast it to their HUDs. As they watch, I look over at Terrance whose been silent since Duce made that comment about cleaning up his messes. He’s staring off into space a little with the same look on his face. I want to say something but I’m gonna leave that for another time.  

As the video finishes and I disconnect the casting, Rome and Duce looks at me with their mouths hanging a bit open.  

“Um what the fuck was that?” Duce asks.  

Terrance shakes his head and comes towards us, jumping in to answer. “It’s the shit that’s gonna make sure none of us can walk the streets free ever again. You get it now right? That thing at the waterfront was not the seismic wave terror bomb bullshit the government is feeding people. It was their own shit. Handheld weapons of mass destruction.” 

Rome sigh and says, “I’m in. Sorry Duce, I gotta help them with this. Ain’t no way we can just let this shit ride.” 

Duce looks at Rome, Terrance, and I—I assume complementing whether he should risk his life with us or not. He sucks his teeth and shakes his head once and looks at me.  

“Yo what’s your name? And where you from?” he asks. 

I internally scoff. “Glad you finally asked after being in a rage for the past 5 minutes. I’m Amina. And yeah I’m from CV too, not that it matters here.” 

“You sound too bougie to be from Cheektowaga. But really, what you gonna do with this weapon anyways?” Yea this guy is a dick and I really wish I could kick him in his.  

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“Stop being an ass and get to the actual point you wanna make,” Terrance interjects. 

“Fuck you, I was getting there.” He turns back to me. “Amina, I’ll let the rest the gang help, on one condition.” He says while furrowing his brows. 

“What?” I ask back dryly, waiting for the bullshit. 

“You let me get the design for the weapon. I’m not risking my life to be left empty handed. We gotta eat too.” Duce tilts his head down waiting on me to answer. 

The idea of providing gang members with futuristic weapons is…questionable. But then again, I one, asked for their help, and two, am good friends with one of their former members. So what moral high ground do I have here exactly? Its like not like anyone should be trusting my ass with this tech by default either.  

Only a few seconds pass by as I stare at Duce thinking of how to respond when I feel a tug on my arm. Terrance spins me around and pulls me away from Rome and Duce. 

“Let me talk to her right quick ok?” Terrance cheekily says to Duce. Duce scoffs and turns away from us.  

“Yea Amina ummm fuck no.” Terrance says to me under his breath. 

“I mean what choice do we have? We can’t do this on our own,” I mutter back to him. 

“We’ll find some other way ok? Listen I know why you might be trying to suppress your stereotypical ideas about gang members but in his case it’s very very true hence why I didn’t want him involved. Also, some personal shit.” 

“Yeah we’re gonna have to talk about that later.” 

“Yeah yeah, but seriously you see how emotional he is. Motherfucker is trigger happy and insecure about everything. Giving him the ability to shoot fireballs is a bad fucking idea. I would say we take him up on it and then kill him once we get what we need, but I know you’ll say…” 

“NO fucking way! Yes, yes we are not assassinating people.” 

“Well what are you gonna do if DHIS catches up to us? Just lay down and die?” 

“That’s self-defense though…” 

“And so is this. Do you want that blood on your hands? Actually, have you even thought about all the death that’s gonna come from us doing this even if we didn’t involve dickbag over there? I should have stopped y’all from even thinki-“ 

“Fuck you, ok! I don’t need you trying to babysit me, ok. I’m perfectly capable of dealing with the consequences of my actions and making my own moral judgement. I hope you’re on this shtick because I’m autistic cause you’ve never talked down to me like this and we’re not gonna start now. And anyways once again we don’t really have a choice do we?” 

“I’m not trying to talk down to you Mina. But don’t bullshit, we always had the choice to do nothing and we can still walk away. You’ll just feel like a bad activist if you didn’t-” 

Just as he says that I see Onyeka run out of the darkness to where we are panting.  

“Who the fuck is this now!?” Duce yells. 

“It’s one of our friends, calm the fuck down.” Terrance snaps back. 

She stops in-between all of us catching her breath. 

“Y’all! Listen. DHIS fireballed a bunch of folks just a little while ago. The community was protesting at the holding center where all the Juneteenth folks are still being detained demanding their release and they fucking fireballed the crowd talking about they tried to breach the entrance. I’m just lucky I got there late or that could have been me.” She starts breaking down crying. Terrance grab her shoulder while the rest of the group looks on in low intensity horror at what they’re hearing. I just stare with a blank face. I understand intellectually how bad this is but the emotions just aren’t triggering for me. 

Rome steps up and ask, “how many?” 

Onyeka looks at him, wiping tears from her eyes and says “I don’t know because the news is being blocked from getting anywhere near the scene. Only reason why I know anything is cause I was nearby when shit went left. Folks running away from the scene said they saw the fireballs and that’s it. It’s just like what happened at Juneteenth and Ferry.” 

I turn on my HUD to see if I can catch a headline. First thing I see on boot is a zone warning…for the entire county. 

DHIS issued 10pm curfew has been extended indefinitely in Erie County until further notice.  

I turn to Terrance and shake my head slowly, “T, yea we really don’t have a choice anymore.”  

Onyeka looks at Rome and Duce, and then to Terrance and I and asks, “so what’s the plan?” 

“Well I told your peoples that our gang would help only if y’all share that tech with us after the fact,” Duce says.  

Onyeka looks at Terrance and I and I think she see the disapproval on our faces for the idea. Without reacting to our faces, she clears her throat, wipes her eye, and turns back to Duce. 

“DHIS is literally fireballing anyone who looks at them wrongly. Do you think you’ll be safer with that tech in your hands? It’ll just make you a target and you’ll never get more than one chance to use it before they find out someone else has it and hunt you down like a slave. Also, you are not the only gang we can call on to help with this. I have no problem convincing Amina and Terrance to walk away. We can find other people who aren’t just in it for themselves when all of our lives are at stake. You’re going to help us protect the hood so you still have people sell to and you’re gonna do it for free. It’s cool if you don’t, but don’t try and get in our way then. Terrance isn’t the only person who got niggas out in these streets.” Onyeka lets a snide smile crawl across her face as she tilts her head a little bit. Terrance and I look on tripping a bit.  

Duce visibly pissed retorts, “Who are you threatening? I should shoot all three of y’all on principle.” Given what we’ve seen from him tonight, I kinda believe he’d actually try to.  

Onyeka takes a step towards him. “Listen, ain’t nobody scared of you. We both know if you shoot me Terrance will drop you before you get another one off. Like I said you’re going to help us because it’s the right thing to do.” 

I look at the poker face on Onyeka’s face and I remember how back in high school she used to drag people for filth on the regular. I’ve always chalked it up to her being the daughter of a lawyer. Her mom did not play, whew.  

Duce sighs and relaxes his stance. “Yea yea, I’m in but you’re going to involve me in all of the planning. I’m letting y’all do anything that puts us at unnecessary risk. Like I said I don’t want this shit to blowback on me…I mean us.” The rest of us look at each other with a sense of relief.  

Onyeka hold out her hand, “It’s a deal!” Duce reluctantly shakes. 

“So ummm how exactly are we going to do this then? Specifically, what about the police drones that are always follow them around?” Rome interjects.  

We all look at each other confused cause none of us are hackers and I certainly have not thought about how hard it would be to rob someone who has a whole flying camera pointed at them.  

Onyeka puts up her hand like we’re in a classroom and say, “Well I think I can solve that problem for us. I know some guys who can help us with the drones.” 

“You’re a chef. How you know someone who can hack police drones,” Terrance asks with a confused look on his face. Honestly, I wanna know myself. 

“I have my ways,” Onyeka says in a prissy voice. I guess she does hun. 

So now we have two gang members, a chef, and two disabled people plotting to expose a government plot. No way this can go wrong.

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