Chapter twenty - black
Hey, you know about three chapters ago I said that there were probably going to be about ten more chapters of this? Which would mean that there would be about seven more from here?
Well, it turns out that I can’t do simple maths for shit. The scene that I thought would take about five chapters to reach took about one, and the scene itself, which I was anticipating would take up about two hundred words, took up about two thousand.
I don’t do the writing. The writing does the writing. I just sit at my laptop and stare at the screen, thinking, what the hell even is this shit?
I have absolutely NO IDEA how many more chapters there are gonna be. It could be three, it could be fifteen. So. It’s gonna be a little random.
SORRY!
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I wasn’t sure exactly how Bob had acquired the large collection of firearms and knives he was distributing between us, but I was rather pleased with the weapons. What was going through our minds now was what exactly we were going to use on the president.
“I want to see him bleed,” Bob said. “A knife’s the way to go.”
“We might not be in close range,” Ray said, frowning a little.
“Who cares? I was a pretty decent shot anyway, and now with these superpower things, I’ll be able to throw to anywhere I want from a bloody mile off.”
“Okay, granted, you’re a good shot with a knife,” Mikey said, “but I think we should shoot him. Right in his neck.”
“Payback,” Gerard said in a low voice. “Right in the fucking neck… yeah. I want to watch him choke on his own blood. Just like her.”
“Guys,” I said worriedly. “I think we’re getting a little too violent here. Gerard, just shoot the guy, okay? His death will satisfy you enough, whether you get him in the throat or the balls or the brain. Right?”
“Right… Balls, huh?”
“Just decide in your head.”
“Right.”
“Now,” Bob said. “The plan is to sneak up in twos–”
“But there’s five of us,” Ray interrupted.
“I can split a boulder with my foot and I basically have x-ray vision,” Bob said in a slightly irritated tone. “Shut up. I count as two.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“Anyway. The plan. We’ll sneak up in twos, each pair getting to the main office through a different entrance. Gee, Frank, you’ll go first. Main door. Try and get the job done. I’ll come up next, probably through the window or some shit and finish off Steel if you mess up. Ray and Mikes, you’ll come and pick up the pieces. Sound good?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Got it,” Gerard nodded.
“Then after that,” Bob continued, “one of us will come back down here and call up everyone else and we’ll fuck up the council and trash the place.”
“So eloquently put, Bob,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Right then. Shall we?” I extended a hand to Gerard and he took it, linking our arms together.
Gerard smiled. “Let’s go kill the president.”
----
For such a ridiculously huge escapade, we’d done surprisingly little preparation. But this operation didn’t need complicated floor plans of the tower or lasers to burn down locked doors. The whole Candidus building had so little security, it was easy.
Since blacks could legally be killed on sight had no access to firearms while white guards did, the council felt it unnecessary to employ pointless security. No one ever expected a white to attack.
Whites could rather easily access weapons, but the average white citizen believed in the council and wouldn’t even think of attacking – out of fear as well as out of faith. Of course, I wasn’t the average white. I didn’t give a flying fuck how many guns the president was hiding under his desk. We were going to kill him.
We didn’t really have anything that made us the perfect people for the job. We just had a very angry boy with superpowers, two awkward fourteen year olds who had no idea how to kill a man (but certainly had the capability to), and of course, two weird, slightly gay kids, one with nothing but a single little baby to fight for, and the other with everything in the world. I was fighting for Gerard, for Rose too, but also for everyone else. I wanted everyone here who hadn’t been born into the privileged life I had to gain the rights to education, a life free of discrimination and abuse, and to live in a better world.
If I did end up dying in the process of trying to make the world a better place, at least I would die knowing that I made some sort of small difference. Well. Probably not, but at least I would have tried.
Better than nothing, right?
----
Everything went down quite simply. Gerard and I climbed the hundred stone stairs up the tower, opened the door to President Steel’s office, and shot him.
Except it didn’t go anywhere near as well as it sounded. Gerard turned out to be a terrible shot and missed six times. We were both out of breath from all the stairs and we ended up being horribly uncoordinated trying to fight off the two guards that had appeared to get rid of us.
Once the guards had their arms around our throats, the president starting laughing. Not even evil laughter. Just normal laughter, like you would laugh if your friend had just told a really good joke. That’s what made it so sick. It wasn’t like on TV at all. It was just creepy.
“I’m sorry,” the president said, holding back laughter, “but were you seriously under the impression that two teens with no particular talents whatsoever could take down an entire government?”
Gerard twisted and struggled in the guard’s grip, refusing to answer. I kept my mouth shut.
“Or do you have backup coming? Your super-friend, maybe? Because we can take care of him, too.”
“You fucker,” Gerard spat.
The smile slipped off Steel’s face. “Whatever,” he said indifferently, shrugging. “Kill them.”
The guards pulled out a gun each and aimed both at our heads. There was a click and the gun shifted slightly against my temple as the guard cocked it.
Gerard looked more frightened than I’d ever seen anyone, trembling and on the verge of tears. I linked his shaking fingers with mine. “Gee, it’s okay,” I said. “We tried, right?”
He shook his head and sighed shakily. He felt like it wasn’t enough. And so did I, but there was nothing more we could do now. We were done for.
A spark of hope flickered up inside me when the back door was kicked open and Bob appeared, but the hope was shot down along with Bob with a small dart gun. Bob grimaced and pulled the sharp little dart from his neck. He looked very angry for a moment, and the guard’s gun faltered against my head, dropping down to my chest so that he could switch his target to Bob if necessary.
“What the hell?” Bob said, flicking the dart to the ground.
“It’s an anti-serum,” Steel said. “Reverses the effects of that temperamental stuff we tried on you.”
Bob suddenly looked a bit faint, and I was just going to yell to him to fucking run away when the president pulled a gun from his back pocket and shot Bob in the chest, a bored expression on his face.
“You fucking bastard!” Gerard screamed as Bob’s face filled with shock and he clutched at his heart and collapsed. Gerard tried to escape the iron grip of the soldier to go and help, but the guard was too strong. “Heartless bastard,” Gerard cried.
Steel shrugged. “What are you gonna do?”
“I’ll kill you,” I spat.
“No, you won’t. Guards, fire.”
The sound of the gunfire split the air and split my ears. The pain didn’t come for about a second, and then it was so intense I couldn’t breathe, tearing me apart from inside my chest and spreading like fire through my whole body. But this was nothing. This was nothing, because then I saw Gerard, sobbing and clawing at his chest as if he could scratch out his heart and stop the pain, and everything I was feeling was multiplied by about a thousand.
“Gerard,” I said desperately. The guards let go of us and we dropped to the floor, and I scrambled towards him. “Gee.”
“Frank,” he choked, clutching feebly at my hand.
The blood was spreading over his whole chest, like a monster, taking over his entire body. I knew the monster was consuming me too, but I didn’t care. I just cared about Gerard.
He was struggling to breathe, but he still wasted effort trying to curl up beside me. He buried his face in my neck, sobbing, and I held his hand tightly, trying to pretend the pain wasn’t there so I could stroke his hair and try to comfort him.
“Frank, we’re going to die,” Gerard whispered hoarsely, frightened.
“Yeah,” I said back, my voice breaking. “Oh, well.”
“Frank,” Gerard said again, squeezing my hand tighter. Everything was getting kind of blurry and spotty and I may have closed my eyes. “Frank, stay awake,” Gerard sad weakly. “I need– I need to talk to you.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
“Can’t it wait till later?” I asked. I may have also been slightly delirious from the blood loss.
“There is no later,” Gerard said, trying to stop crying so he could breathe normally.
“Okay. What?”
“I–” He couldn’t seem to speak anymore, he was just sobbing and gasping, dropping my hand and clutching at his chest.
“Gee,” I croaked. I was getting more and more tired by the moment. “You’re gonna have to tell me now, because in about thirty seconds I think I’m going to die.”
Gerard just shook his head and wrapped his arms around me as best he could, burying his face in my chest and crying into my shirt.
Well. Comparing this to other possible ways to die, this certainly did seem pretty alright. With Gerard. I just wished he wasn’t dying too.
I squeezed my eyes shut and held Gerard tightly. He pressed a tired kiss to my cheek. “Love you,” he whispered. “I love you, Frank.” Then he settled in my arms. “That was what I wanted to tell you…” His voice faded, and then everything was patchy and cold.
Colour exploded behind my eyelids, and agony exploded in my chest. I felt like I was screaming, but no sound came out.
This lasted for about three seconds.
Then, everything went black, and I was fairly sure I had died.
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Disgusting (Frerard)
Fanfiction"There's a reason we are white and pure, and they are black and dirty. There's a reason they stain our skin. That we are shamed if others see those stains. They're bad people, Frank. They're disgusting."
