I slept a lot for the next couple weeks. My parents had found a doctor who sympathized with our cause, and he declared that although it would take a while for me to heal, the physical damage would not be lasting.
He couldn’t say the same about the psychological damage. I often woke up screaming, terrified that I was living a dream instead of reality. Most times the dreams took me back to the water. When I was finally strong enough to stand and take showers, I couldn’t bear to put my face in the steady stream. The first time I tried to, I had a panic attack and couldn’t turn off the water, which eventually overflowed into the rest of the bathroom, which then alerted my mother that something was wrong.
They moved me to their second spare bedroom, next to the one the boys took turns in while I recovered. It was almost not worth the effort, since Emma climbed into bed with me every night anyways.
My parents were true to their word about wanting to help. By the time I was walking around and getting my own food, they’d found 15 separate colleagues that agreed that the travesties committed under the FF system needed to be fixed.
Finally, our dissent group was starting to look like a revolution.
The boys wasted no time while I was healing to get revenge on Bluff. Luke had sent fourteen pictures of himself in various model poses to his office, all of which accompanied by dirty limericks and his full name and old social security number. He’d even gotten four of our collected Outlier friends to do similar taunts.
Julie joined in the fun by drawing insulting caricatures of the Senator and sending a copy to the local paper. Emma and Daniel Shauf were working on an ode for him.
My heart swelled with pride as I watched people using their individual talents that Bluff and those like him found useless for such mayhem. Decklan and Luke, on one of the rare occasions they got along, made an untraceable website where Julie and the other resident artist Michaela Findle sold paintings and sketches of a non-insulting nature and Thurman Smallwood sold photography from his travels to New Diego after we’d made contact with him.
While I was still on bed rest, I wrote poem after poem, finally compiling so many that they started selling anthologies on the website as well. 30% of the money made went to the creator, while the other 70% went into financing our no longer humble revolution.
Of course, we had a ways to go. Although we’d been making splashes all across the country, we hadn’t yet managed to acquire the proof we needed to sway the undecided. It went without saying that I was going on the first trip we could make to one of the scrapping locations, so as I worked to get back into shape, I helped them plan.
Our Jonesboro contact, Laurie Thomson, had originally been from Colorado. Because the location I was used to going to was too closely watched, we decided to aim for Laurie’s location.
There were a couple things that we needed to cover, so this trip was going to be a lot bigger than the road trip I’d taken with Luke and Decklan. After much deliberation, we finalized our travel list.
Julie, Decklan, Luke, Jon, Andy, Laurie, and I would take two cars up to Colorado. The only reason we were able to include all the boys from the apartment was that while they were all at my bedside the day after my rescue, Bluff had ransacked their house trying to find me. Their house was no longer safe, and if they were seen, they would be arrested on the spot. I didn’t even want to imagine what kinds of awful things Bluff would do to them if they were caught.
Once we reached the scrapping location, Jon, Andy, and Laurie would follow the bus to the work camp, the place that the American people expected their failed children to be. The rest of us would stay behind to get pictures of the gas chamber and follow the mysterious third bus.
As it turned out, my parent’s house was the perfect location to hold revolution meetings. They were known for being social, so the amount of people coming and going wasn’t suspicious. They were also well known for not showing public sympathy after I failed the test. They were the perfect cover for our activities.
It took me almost a month to regain most of my strength after my encounter with Bluff. Even then, I walked with a limp and a cringe. We planned on making our drive to the scrapping post in a week, as the facility would be used again around that time and we needed the events in action. There was something I had to do first, however.
Although my parents hadn’t realized it yet, Emma’s room was starting to become something of an armory. Since she never slept there, they didn’t often visit it. There were no guns; they were too difficult to acquire, but there was plenty of dynamite and homemade time bombs, courtesy of mostly Luke.
A few days before we left, I took four of the time bombs and set off for my box. As a last minute addition to my pack, I grabbed one of the spray paint bottles from Julie.
I’d put together the location of where Bluff had kept me from bits of information they tried to keep me from learning. Probably they wanted to keep me from doing just this. But I didn’t care. I needed this closure, and Bluff needed a message clearer than mocking pictures.
Once the grey prison came into view, I was wary. But there were no cameras; I assumed Bluff didn’t want his actions recorded, even by himself.
There was no lock on the door, but I anticipated the two guards right inside it. Neither expected me, as I was moving quietly and efficiently. Luke had been teaching me, while I recovered, how to defend myself. I used a quick hit to the center top of their heads to knock them out, and then winced as I dragged them outside the facility. I didn’t want blood on my hands, not even from these men who aided in torture.
Although part of me just wanted to ignite the place and be done with it, my rational brain told me that there wouldn’t be men guarding if the prison was empty.
The rational part of my brain was correct. I found a young woman curled in the corner of my -our?- box, shuddering as the cool air came in through the window and passed over her ill-dressed body.
“Hello?†I whispered, not wanting to frighten her. She didn’t look like she’d been here long, taking her relatively small amount of bruises into account. I guessed this was her second or third day.
She jolted awake immediately. “Who are you? What do you want?†She pressed herself against the far wall.
“My name is Meg. I’m here to rescue you. Can you walk?†She watched me, untrusting. I sighed and reached into my pack, ignoring her flinch of fear. “Look. I’m going to destroy this place. If you don’t want to be destroyed with it, I suggest you follow me.†Without waiting for a reaction, I set the bomb for ten minutes and placed it on the ground. The young woman squeaked and ran to me, surprising me with a tight embrace.
“Thank you. Thank you so much.†Her voice was hoarse. I handed her my canteen as I carefully placed bombs in both the wet and dry torture rooms, and then put on near the entrance for good measure.
I managed to convince the woman, who told me her name was Lacy, to drag the guards further from what would soon become a blast zone. Neither of us recognized the men, so we did not have personal quarrels with them.
We waited in silence for the bombs to take their toll; it was quite a sight. The prison wasn’t far enough buried for the cement not to be shot up into the air. Once the fourth and final explosion went off, I ran back to the ruins and found the largest slate of still standing wall. Lacy made anxious noises behind me, but I had to finish what I’d started. With a shaking hand, I drew the spray paint from my pack.
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength. -Arnold Schwarzeneggerâ€
