Delusional Read online

  “Woah, it’s okay.” He laughed and put up a hand. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m not who you think I am.” He outstretched his hand, and although his warm brown eyes and wavy, long gray hair seemed trustworthy enough, I knew that there was more than just skin hiding beneath his well-manicured beard.

  “If you think I’m shaking that hand, then you’re crazy.” I backed up, yet still held my chin high, wanting him to know that I would not back down to his demands unless forced to.

  “Dulce, I’m not a part of the government.” He motioned his hand to the walls as if I could see through them. “None of us are. My name is Jacob Lloyd, and I’m the leader of the White Knights. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  I stood there silently for a moment, debating whether to actually shake his hand, but instead I sat down and sighed, my head suddenly spinning as everything from last night started to come back. The fire, the explosions, the bodies, the blood, and the total destruction. The image of my bare, corroded skin that consisted of rotted, charred flesh and even bone in some parts flashed through my mind and caused me to want to vomit.

  “You are very lucky you survived.” He must have noticed the disgusted look on my face as I played through all the memories haunting my mind. “We were able remove all the shards of metal that had lodged themselves in your body, restored your left lung, which collapsed, repaired all organ damage, and managed to print an exact copy of your skin using your DNA and placed it back on your body. It was practically a miracle that we were able to get to you in time. Just a few more seconds of you in those flames and you would have died. I still can’t believe that you were the only one.”

  “I was the only one?” My tone came out angrier than I had meant to, even though it was just a mask for the sadness and terror that had just hit me in one colossal wave. “There’s no way, there had to be more. There were over a hundred of us there. Maybe you just didn’t get to them in time, maybe they are still out there.”

  “Besides you, the bodies of everyone there were already dead.” He paused, stepping closer to put a hand on my shoulder, which was tense and unmoving. “I’m so sorry.” There were tears in his eyes, and I didn’t know how to react because even I wasn’t crying. I saved my tears for late at night when I was all alone and surrounded in the darkness, so that I could trick myself into thinking that the whimpering coming from my throat was that of the sorrow of another person.

  “How do you know that? Carlos can’t be dead! He can’t be.” I pressed him, my facial expression not giving up a bit. I still couldn’t tell whether this man was really Jacob Lloyd, who showed up at Camp Camel just a few days before the attack, or whether he was a government agent lookalike of Jacob that was just saying everyone was dead to torture me.

  “We had a team of about a dozen White Knight Recon soldiers search the premises and check the entire camp for any signs of life and take a blood sample for DNA from everybody across the ground. We had known that it would be nearly impossible to evacuate Camp Camel before the government came, and we knew that if we flew in a minute after the military dropped the first bombs, we would be able to ensure our helicopter blended in with the government ones amid all the smoke. That’s when the soldiers with their fire-resistant gear dropped down into the flames, and one of them found you, but you were the only one.”

  “Well, thank you.” I lay down on the bed, my body loosening up as I realized how he knew my name from connecting my DNA to my profile from one of the government databases, and also realized that since they had taken DNA samples, he would never be a member of the government—if he were, they would have just left the bodies to rot on the ground and be seen by all onlookers as a warning of what their power could do to you. “Thank you so much for saving me.” I paused, knowing that in one of those moments the normal, courteous thing would be to embrace him and show him my appreciation for saving my life, but instead I stayed lying down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Every life is worth any risk possible at this point. With under five thousand free birds left in this country, it won’t be long before President Ash forever wipes out people like me and you.”

  “He’s very adept at that—killing people. I still can’t believe that I’m the only that made it out alive. I feel like maybe someone else deserved to. Why did I have to be the only one?”

  “Stop it with that silly talk. You deserve to be here, alive, just as much as anyone, and the way you managed to fight through those flames for the time that you did is a true testament to your own strength. But I will say that you might not be the only one left. There were actually some bodies missing from Camp Camel that were in our database as having resided there.”

  “One of them must be Ethan, right?” I sat up, now at full attention, excitement pulsing through me at the slight chance that not everything in my past had been reduced to ash.

  “Yes.” His eyebrows arched, glancing at me inquisitively. “How did you know that?”

  “Well, Ethan was kicked out of Camp Camel days earlier; if not, he would have been killed.”

  “Are you serious?” Jacob ran a hand through his hair, an expression of distress in his wide eyes. I could tell that when he envisioned the camps that his organization oversaw that he envisioned a peaceful, happy place where people sang songs around campfires and played card games. He had no idea that every day we were all playing a game with the devil, passing by time with any escape we could find, convinced that our lives would never be anything more than confined to the top of a desert mountain. But I always knew there was more; I always knew I could get out. I just didn’t think it would take everyone dying in the process.

  “Yeah, I mean he told you about him killing John. The camp found his body and had gotten super mad at him, so they were gonna put him on trial and kill him as punishment, but he decided to leave before the shit hit the fan, which you can’t really blame him for.”

  “Oh wow.” By the way Jacob narrowed his eyes at me, I could tell that Ethan must have lied to him. There was a sort of subdued shock in the way that he opened his mouth and then quickly closed it. Just as I was about to break his silence by sharing with him their plan to go to the Grand Canyon National Village, he spoke up with a glassy film coating his eyes. “I thought John was still alive. I thought that he made it. We couldn’t find his body either, but that explains it. Shit, I told him to protect…”

  His voice cut off abruptly as he stepped back, a hesitant look in his eyes as he tried to refrain himself from telling me too much. “It’s all okay.” He tried to comfort me, but it did no use. There was something about him that seemed so calm and in control, that seeing him even a bit worried made me scared that the government was going to come and take me away and there was nothing I could do about it. “I just came to the camp to say that I had to cut off all communications because of the impending attack from the government, and I needed Justin to know so that he could save as much people as he could, but I knew it would be nearly impossible anyways.”

  “Wait, Ethan knew about the attack?”

  “Well, yes. I told him. He definitely knew about it.”

  “You’re kidding. That son of a bitch.” If Ethan were in front of me, I would have punched him in his face and probably spit at him for good measure, although there was nothing I could do to make up for the fact that he willingly let dozens of people die. He let Carlos die. “You have to tell me, what were the names of the other people that escaped? There’s no way that anyone could have escaped that explosive shit show without knowing about it ahead of time. I still don’t know how I survived, that was like part luck, part skill, and mostly I don’t even know, to be honest.”

  “I don’t know if you know them, but the two other missing bodies were Hunter Lee and Natalie Parker.” He choked up on his last words, his face suddenly growing emotional. “It can’t be confirmed that they are still living, but that’s the hope, that’s the hope.”

  “You’re kidding me.” All the shock, excitement, joy, and a
nger I was capable of feeling flooded my brain and made my thoughts disperse into the web of my mind. Part of me felt happier than I had felt in years that they could still be alive, and that I could still get a piece back of my broken life, while the other part of me felt devastated and betrayed that no one ever warned me that I was about to die. And that very lack of a warning resulted in my brother, Carlos, being torn away from me for good. I’ll never forgive them. “I knew them.”

  “Do you know where they might be?” There was a pressing urgency to his tone. “Did they mention anything about where they might be headed?”

  “I had no clue that Camp Camel was being raided—no clue at all. But I don’t know if they were still planning on going, but their plan before everything quite literally blew up was to go to the Grand Canyon National Village to help Danielle Walker.”

  “Danielle,” Jacob’s eyes widened and there was suddenly an airy tone to his voice. “She knows… goddamit. So, when do you think they would be going there? Could they be headed there already?”

  “I guess so. I wouldn’t know, in all honesty.” I paused, a weird feeling building in my stomach at the determined look in his eyes and frantic way in which his hands shifted. “I’m sorry, but what time is it, and where am I?”

  “It’s midafternoon, and after last night we had our medical team perform some operations along with a team of robots on the helicopter, and we landed in the late hours of the night in Point Reyes National Seashore, in California, which is where you are right now.”

  “Sorry, but Point Reyes means nothing to me, and California is practically a country within itself, so that’s not very helpful.”

  “O-Oh, my bad.” He started to stumble over his words, clearly a bit shaken by my less than respectful response, but I didn’t care. “We are in the San Francisco area, at the headquarters for the White Knights, which is located in protected federal land. In fact, are you good to stand up and walk around? I can take you for a little tour of the area if you want, as we talk about some important things.”

  “Yeah.” I grunted a bit as I stood up, my knees—which had always been bad since an injury involving a skateboard, a rope, and my brother Carlos—cracking.

  “Good, good.” He led me out the door and into a bright hallway that was covered in the same gray and rustic finishing that the room was. “I’d like to say, again, that I’m so so sorry about what happened, and I’m beyond happy that we were able to save you.”

  “Look, don’t worry about it. Don’t be sorry, please, it’s not your fault.” I sped up a bit so that my short legs could keep up with his long, graceful strides. “I had been expecting that to happen since the day I got there. We lived in a state of grief and anxiety for a while; we all knew it was going to happen, and now that it’s all over, I don’t know what to do.”

  “It’s not all over, I can assure you that. In fact, there is more hope now than ever before.” He smiled, and there was something about the way his lips parted, and the way his warm voice soothed my ears, that made me want to believe him.

  “You really think so?”

  “Well, I can assure you of this: we will be getting your friends back, no matter what it takes. And maybe even this country back too.” His voice now echoed out into the large room, and everyone in it instantly turned towards us. I tried aimlessly glancing up at the industrial lights hanging from the ceiling in between rows of skylights that showed off the wispy clouds above, but by the time I stared back forward, everyone was still fixated on us. It took me a minute to figure out that they were all really looking at me, and I tried awkwardly smiling and waving, until a bunch of shouting voices bombarded me.

  I couldn’t even decipher any words from the cacophony of sound that was released from the mouths of everyone in the room at once.

  “This is Dulce.” Jacob made sure that his loud, commanding voice rose above the noise of the people seated around rustic wooden tables and couches in the massive room. “She is our newest recruit to the White Knights, and I hope you all make her feel as welcome as possible as she adjusts.”

  The chattering of the voices all but seized to a halt, Jacob suspiciously eyeing two men in suits at the opposite end of the room. The whole room seemed to nod in agreement, and I couldn’t tell whether their complicity was forced out of fear or just sheer manipulation.

  The holograph projected across the far wall of the compound had its audio suddenly turned up to a high volume, the government-mandated news station reporting on a massive hurricane hitting Miami, which was expected to cause hundreds of billions of dollars in structural damage. Hearing the monotonous voice of the reporter droning on about how fast the recovery time had been for East Coast cities in the wake of increasing hurricanes due to President Ash’s recently expanded National Guard was a depressing way to be welcomed back to the real world. I almost forgot about all that messed-up crap. Countless visions of all the propaganda the government would dispel to the population flooded my mind as all the lies regarding the economy and war with China haunted my mind. It is weird to finally be in the real world, after weeks with no outside interaction, and no information regarding anything but the bullshit happenings of a camp that was bound to be destroyed since day one.

  I didn’t even want to think about all the horrors I missed out on. I didn’t want to know the struggles of the rest of the world; it would only make me feel worse about my own.

  “Come outside,” Jacob motioned his hand forward as the glass door swung open and a blast of crisp, moist air hit my skin. “It will be quieter out here.”

  My bare feet rubbed against the coarse concrete that surrounded the building in a large pavilion with another seating area. I stepped outside, marveling at the patch of pine trees that shielded part of the compound from view.

  “I don’t know how to say this,” he kept walking forward into the light green grass that adorned the rolling hills and mountains in the distance, refusing to make eye contact with me. “No one else knows this, but I’m gonna have to tell everyone soon, and I feel that you should know now. Camp Camel was the first of all of our camps to be bombed, and since you are the lone survivor for right now, you deserve to know why it happened.”

  He paused, taking a short breath in, and I almost moved my hand to hurry him along, the impatience inside me hitting a new level. This man is the leader of a rebel organization. He must know everything about the government. He must know all the answers that have kept me up at night.

  “Protocol 00 was a program that I helped to design. The government had secretly been working on it for decades, but extra funding under President Ash helped to push the project to completion—a project meant to be a mind-control computer that would mind-control all of the country using the nanobots in all our brains due to the water supply and air being infected with them.”

  “You must be kidding with me,” I cut in, almost laughing to instantly dismiss the notion that such science fiction lunacy was possible in the real world. “There’s no way that’s possible. No way.”

  “Oh, you have no idea what they are capable of.” His eyes grew wide as a sudden chill enveloped his tone. “If they want, they could control every one of your thoughts, actions, replace and delete your memories, and send you constant hallucinations. It’s all made possible through them manipulating interactions between the neurons in our brains, and literally shaping at will the world within our own minds.”

  “Well, shit.” I sat down in the middle of the grass, losing the will to walk any further out into the empty fields, and instead desiring to be in control of my environment. “So that’s why they want to kill us.” Everything clicked in my mind. Although I supposed it was impossible to tell if your own mind was being controlled, I figured it would be impossible for a man as egotistical as President Ash to let people think about killing him and ending his stupid regime almost every day. But it didn’t surprise me for a man as careless and grandiose as him that hundreds of thousands of people would slip through the cracks of his wrath
.

  “Exactly.” He sighed, sitting down next to me, a look of regret surfacing in his eyes as he stared up at the wispy clouds that danced across the sky. “They see all the ‘free birds,’ as we dubbed them, to be dangerous to the political order. For a while he let all of you guys live harmlessly in remote camps that we set up all across the country to try and protect some of the last free minds in America, but now he even wants to wipe out those camps too.”

  “So, we are all screwed, basically.”

  “No, no, don’t worry. We can take control back. Protocol 00 is nothing but a computer program. All we need to do is hack into and corrupt their servers, and after we shut their servers down, we have already designed a software that can prevent it from ever mind-controlling someone again. In fact, you have that software in you right now.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “Raxodone pills, or more commonly called simply ‘the blue pill.’ When you took that, it prevented the government from mind-controlling you. You probably took it just days before Protocol 00 was enacted.”

  “Damn, yeah, you’re right.” I felt a wave of shock course through me, and it had a weird effect of both energizing me and urging me to fall asleep, where I could check out from the world for a few hours, days, or maybe even weeks and try and process the last whirlwind of a day. “My parents both said they didn’t know why, but that we had to take it cause it would prevent us from getting some infectious disease or something. No one really knew why, or what was up. We just figured it was a pill, it couldn’t hurt that much. But then it ended up killing our friends, family, and practically everyone I have ever known or loved. We were so stupid. I would have preferred being mind-controlled over this crap; it would have been so much better than this, so much better.”

  “Don’t think like that.” The harshness to his tone made me look right at him and stop tearing up blades of grass. He had an expression of such intense sorrow at the core of his eyes that I almost felt myself give in to my internal pressure to cry. “Nothing is worse than losing yourself—nothing. Be thankful you have that, because if we aren’t careful, there soon might be none left besides the ultra-rich who would rather everyone be sedated and homeless than risk their lifestyles being threatened. That’s why we have to save everyone we can at all costs. You all might be the last hope we have at mounting any sort of resistance.”