Madam President ✓

35. And So It Begins

January 21st,2021
  4:11 am

She tossed and turned in her sleep too, the nightmares hitting her all at once. She was finally thinking about how wrong the whole thing could have gone. If she hadn't gotten her mother to the cafeteria in time they could both be dead. If she had accidentally misplaced some of the rubble while she was crawling out of it herself, it could have crushed her to death. She didn't know how she wanted to go but she knew that wasn't it.

  The dream she was stuck in at the moment was the most mild. She was lying on top of one of the metal tables with her head covered as an explosion hit, sending her and it crashing through two stories down the the ground floor. She received a large splinter in her shoulder and a scratch on her forehead from a floorboard but that was it. When she looked to the left at her neighbor, the cafeteria attendant- she pumped her fists in the air, triumphant. The attendants eyes were lifeless, but then she had a thought. If this woman who wasn't too far away was dead, how was her mother who was standing right beside her?

  She knew they had to have been separated when the rubble fell. She tried not to think about it but it lingered at the back of her mind- what if this has backfired?

  She proceeded ahead as planned, grunting as she removed her hands from the top of her head. Her clothes were covered in beans and yet she smelled like onions and dust.

  She had more important things to worry about.

  She squeezed her upper half through a hole and an EMT immediately rushed to her aide.

  "Is there anybody else down there?" She yelled over the noise and chaos all around them. "Anybody?"

  "No one alive." She said as she got pulled up. Wood panels and shattered concrete ripped the side of her shirt. She told the EMT the truth, just not all of it. She didn't question her any further and insisted on helping her to an ambulance, where she fussed over the small scratch.

  She watched as FBI and secret service and CIA and police vehicles pulled in. Nobody would suspect the Seventeen year old daughter of a freshman congresswoman, not the smartest among them and certainly not the ones who'd just graduated and had no field experience, who would be able to tell their grandchildren the first case they worked on was when the capital building of the United States was reduced to nothing. She felt a momentary sense of pride and smiled in her sleep. Nobody had ever accomplished what she had.

  Then she felt somebody physically pulling on her arm and snapped out of it. Was there an assassination attempt? Was one of America's enemies threatening to bomb the White House?

  She looked around the dark room which still contained the possessions and decorations of President Lowe's 14 year old daughter and saw exactly twelve members of the secret service.

  "Katie Elizabeth Clark...."

  The agent didn't have to finish his sentence for her to know she'd been caught.