The Darkside War Read Free Page A

Conglomeration. I’ve seen the propaganda. Five different species allied against the Accordance.” Hopefully Stephan was meeting with my parents right now, trying to think of ways to stop all this. My heart hammered against the back of my throat, and it wasn’t just because I’d been zapped. Every­thing settled onto me like a horrifying weight, trapping me in my chair. You knew the Accordance rule from on high. But then you encountered their boot on your throat, and it was suddenly too real.
    â€œAgainst us all,” Stafford corrected me. “The Accordance protects us. Anything that hurts recruitment, risks lives. Our lives. And your family, Mr. Hart, has risked many. However, recruitment is voluntary. The Accordance understands the value of good public relations. I think I can help you make a case to Accordance judges that executing a minor would be a horrible PR decision on their part.”
    â€œBut not my parents?” I whispered.
    â€œJust you. I’m sorry.” Stafford’s lawyerly mask slipped for a moment. I fought to keep seated and still, not wanting another muscle-clenching explosion of electricity to leap through my body.
    I slumped farther down into my chair. “The only reason I won’t die is because they don’t want the bad PR.”
    â€œThe war out there is real,” Stafford said. “Even if it hasn’t come to our world yet. If we’re lucky, it won’t. The Accordance needs fighters. From everyone it protects. We stand together under the Accordance umbrella, or we’ll fall to something far worse. So they are being very careful here.”
    I couldn’t imagine something worse than the Accordance. Something that destroyed cities from orbit and marched through the ruins in black power armor, ferreting out the remaining resistance with overwhelming force.
    But there was apparently something out in the universe that made the rulers of the Accordance, the squid-like Arvani, shit their tanks. Even if no one on Earth had ever seen it.
    And now my parents were going to die because of it.
    â€œMy father thought peaceful resistance would work,” I told Stafford. “My parents saw what happened during the occupation; they thought this was a better path.”
    â€œThe Accordance is ruled by aliens, not humans,” Stafford said. “The Arvani and the Pcholem do not tolerate dissent, violent or peaceful. And the other species have less power within the Accordance. Your father should have known this; he was jailed for his inability to follow guidelines when teaching Indigenous Mythology.”
    Indigenous Mythology. My dad taught History 101 at NYU before I’d been born. He still insisted on carrying the old pre-occupation textbooks, big paper-printed monstrosities, around with us as we moved from house to house.
    I blinked my eyes several times and looked away. I was so angry with them right now. Angry for spending my childhood never staying in one place. Angry because they always felt there was a higher purpose in their lives, a purpose far higher than anything I could ever mean to them.
    What was a child compared to the past glory of humanity that had once ruled itself ? I knew my place in the world. In my parent’s world.
    This was their fault, I thought angrily. They’d chosen this. It certainly wasn’t my fault. Fuck, I was still hungry because of their choices. Even if I got out of this room, all I had was a hot, smelly tent in Yonkers with its moldy history books to go back to.
    I clenched my fists.
    They’d stolen themselves away from me a long time ago. So why did this hurt so badly?
    I clenched my jaw.
    â€œOur tentacled rulers want good PR,” I said softly. They needed the fight to fade away. They needed to hobble the protestors. They needed to kneecap the leaders of the movement.
    They needed to kneecap my parents.
    Death was one way. “There’s another,” I said.
    â€œHuh?”