The Event

41.

"You can't do this!" Alexandrea screams as she backs into a corner while more guards wander into the room, glares set on her face. "I'm the chosen one!"

Kayne holds me closer, stepping back with me as they close in on her, explosions still shaking the building as battles are still being fought in these once sacred halls.

"You're still the chosen one," Caspen says, raising his gun. "The one we've chosen, together, with our own minds. We've chosen you to be the one to die."

"No!" She screeches so loud I wince from the pain in my ears. She's pressing into the wall as if she believes some divine destiny is going to help her burrow through it and escape what she's got coming to her. "No! You are my people! We can't let them win."

"There never should have been a fight to begin with!" Caspen argues with her, the other guards nodding behind him. "Despite what you believe, you are not a god. You don't get to pick and choose who is more worthy of life than someone else. This is all of our lives. Theirs and ours."

"This was wrong from the start." Kayne says. "Wrong from the moment you decided to kill off an entire planet of our people, so that you could live."

"No, it was the only way! It was the right thing!" She shouts back, her eyes crazed like a caged animal.

"If it had been the right thing, you and the other leaders wouldn't have needed to create these." Kayne pushes the device KaRayna made him out of his neck. "You knew it was wrong and that there was no way you'd ever get all of the people to agree to a mass killing of our own ancestors, so these little things were created to keep us docile and agreeable and make sure that our will to fight back against your wrong doing was silenced so that we could be used as mindless drones to murder our own people." His voice is low and angry. "Isn't that right?"

"It isn't like I did this all alone!" She snaps. "This was a group effort by all of the world leaders to protect and preserve you all! We did what was necessary to ensure our survival! Survival is the most important thing, and I gave that to you all."

"This isn't surviving." A man at the back says. "This wasn't real, not any of it. The only person living was you. You made the rest of us into nothing that felt nothing. That's not living. But you didn't care."

"No! I didn't and I don't!" She shouts back at him. "Survival was achieved this way, so it was the right decision and you all are trying to ruin it all. You're trying to ensure your own deaths!"

"Survival stops being the most important thing at the cost of our humanity." Kayne says. "We were killing our own people to live. You were forcing us to murder our own kind so that a select few could continue to live. You're not more important than the rest of us."

"Yes I am!" She screams. "I don't care who has to die or who has to kill them as long as I live!"

"It's too bad you feel that way." Caspen says and I turn to see the smile on his face. "Now everyone will see you for what you are though." The men at the door part and I see the camera on the shoulder of the middle man who was blocked before. "Everyone knows how you feel now."

It gets quiet and I can hear her voice echoing in the distance as Caspen moves to the monitors set up on the desk and turns their screens to face us where we can see Alexandrea's face on them all. Caspen presses a button on the keyboard and her hateful words are shouted all over again.

"Everyone is seeing this." He says. "Across the country, every single person." He tells her. "Along with messages from Jorah and I, two of the most trusted Mundi. We've already gotten over half of the staff here onto our sides and they're out their fighting for a cause they believe in, not a senseless demand from the whims of one woman who thinks she can play god."

"How long do you think it'll take before everyone here is own our side, the side of a united people? How long do you think it'll take for all you've worked for to finally be destroyed once and for all?" Kayne asks.

Her face is red as she stares across the room at herself on the screens. "This...you can't..." Her words are broken and shaky. "This won't work, it can't, this..."

"This is over." Kayne says.

I turn my face into his chest as the sound of the gun firing fills the room.

It's over.

She's dead, the Mundi are in full revolt, and we've pulled off a win.

Only it isn't all of us.

"Rowan!" I hear Tommy shouting from the hallway and then I'm turning to collapse into his arms. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Rowan." He says over me, holding my head against his shoulder as I cry. I have to let it go. I can't hold it all in any longer. I can't be strong another second.

Behind me I hear Caspen and Kayne giving out orders about shutting down the last of the fight here and readying our forces to take out the returning teams when they get here if they refuse to hear them out, but all I can think of is my brother. My dead brother.

After a few minutes I'm surrounded.

Kayne, Jorah, Matty, Quint, Kaylin, Tommy, everyone left from our group is around me, holding me as I mourn the loss of the last thing I had left in this world from before it all ended.

Hours pass, battles are won, and allies are gained.

By sunrise the special teams that had been sent out to murder us were back without their devices in their necks. They dropped their weapons at the door and pledged their allegiance to this fight. The fight for humanity.

As night falls again on another day, my tears have run dry and my body is exhausted from all it has been through in these past few months. I can barely move as I sit in a chair in one of the many spare rooms with all of the other survivors of my group and Quint's. Kate and Tonya sit to the side, playing with the children while Dani is set up in the bed with Matty at her side and Grams at her feet.

Kayne walks in with Jorah, KaRayna and Caspen, each of them looking equally as ragged as I feel, but there is a set to their expressions that makes me perk up. Something is up.

"Is it really all over?" Matty asks, brushing hair away from Dani's forehead.

"This part is," Caspen nods.

"But there is still much to be done." Jorah adds. "Every country has their own leader just like Alexandrea, and until we have enlightened everyone on the planet, and released them from the holds of their leaders, this can't be done."

"How will we do that?" Tommy asks.

They look around at us, our bodies bruised and pushed past the point of tolerance already.

"It..." Kayne starts then stalls. "We don't do it all together." He says and my eyes widen. "You all have given too much to continue this fight. It's up to us now to gather the Mundi and the freed exiters so that we can fight against the other countries and bring them to our side too."

Caspen nods. "It would be too much to ask you to come with us and fight this battle that never should have included you to begin with."

"You're leaving us behind?" I gasp, my eyes on Kayne.

"No." He shakes his head. "Not entirely." His eyes lock on mine. "You all will stay here, where it's safe while we take our armies to free the other countries."

"And then you'll come back?" I ask, my stomach turning with nerves. I don't want to lose him too.

He looks away and then down. "Actually, we've got something to tell you all about that."