Rebel Nation Read Free

job!”
    Still no bell. How long had it been?
    James kept his eyes on the girl’s red X. It was the same color as Jane’s old high-top sneakers, the pair Clover wore nearly every day, as if by doing so she could hold on to part of the mother she never knew.
    No. This convict was a killer, no matter what she said her father deserved. She was not Clover. She was a monster, and it was his job to slay monsters when they ended up in his Kill Room. If the door didn’t open, and the warden didn’t give her pardon, then she was guilty. Beyond even the shadow of a doubt.
    That was the system, and he believed in it even if he’d been temporarily blinded when it came to his son.
    Christian shifted in his seat. “What do you think he did to her?”
    â€œShut up!” Mason said.
    â€œBut what if he—”
    â€œNo.”
    The bell finally rang and all five of them set their guns, responding like Pavlov’s dogs.
    â€œI don’t like this,” Christian said, even though his gun was at the ready.
    â€œI swear to God, you’re next if you don’t stop,” Mason said.
    â€œShe’s a kid,” Ross said. “Maybe Christian is right.”
    â€œDo your damn job.”
    â€œBut don’t you ever wonder?”
    â€œWill you both just shut it!” James had never heard any of his crew bicker like this. Not about the morality of their work, anyway, and certainly not seconds before firing their weapons.
    The girl still looked at his window. Her breaths came fast, her chest heaving now that only one bell stood between her and her death. “Please,” she said. Cole made a soft noise next to James.
    James didn’t realize that he was holding his breath and waiting for the Kill Room door to open again until he was forced to exhale. The door didn’t budge.
    A girl ran with me today.
    Clover loved to run. Running was her only real peace. And suddenly, James remembered her coming home from school when she was no more than eight or nine, excited to tell him that a girl had run with her that day.
    No. James steadied his gun and tried to will the damned bell to ring.
Absolutely not.
    His beautiful, odd girl. They said she had autism. Not that their label mattered. She was brilliant and different, and attracted bullies like ants to honey. She needed her mother, but Jane had died with seeping open sores all over her body less than two weeks after Clover was born. Died the day a doctor knocked on their door with a syringe filled with salvation in the form of the suppressant.
    The cure came too late. James had already eased her pain, when being brave enough to endure it would have saved her life. No time-traveling justice system sixteen years ago, though, so he made amends the only way he knew how.
    The bell rang and James squeezed the trigger before he could think anymore.
    â€œYou can’t leave my sister alone with him!”
    The girl’s words, screamed as though she thought volume might save her, echoed around the Gun Room after the noise of James’s lone shot died away. No blood bloomed over the red X on her chest.
    â€œChrist, James,” Cole said. “Christ.”
    â€œFire!” James looked at Cole, and then at the other men. “What’s the matter with you? Fire!”
    â€œHold your fire!” A rough, deep voice boomed from the floor of the Kill Room up to the Gun Room. “I said, hold your fire!”
    â€œThe bell rang.” The guards came back into the Kill Room, this time to release the girl. The warden already stood beside her. James turned to Christian. “You heard the bell!”
    Christian looked like he might faint. He didn’t acknowledge James at all. None of the other men said anything. Only James still held his rifle.
    The girl’s red X gleamed in the saunalike heat of the Kill Room. Sweat and tears plastered ragged strands of strawberry blond hair to her round cheeks.
    â€œI have a little