"What?" I bark, Nia's face morphs into a pained look.
"I really shouldn't be telling you this." I glare, daring her to stop there. "Cara had a son." She pauses. I lay my hands down on the table, listening. "Mercy and Cooper aren't her and Danny's only kids." I look around, observing the room while I think. The many faces span from confusion to hope to aprehension.
"So you're saying little miss perfect one and two managed to hide their first born?"
"Well Sort of. Yes." She confirms, and I snort.
"Why in the world would they ever do that?"
"Because Goliath was different. They didn't hide him the first fifteen years of his life, but one day they were hiding a present for him right before his sixteenth birthday, and they found something. A rebel pamphlet. Turns out he was involved in this. All of this was before Mercy was born. I doubt the poor girl even knows she has an older brother. After the incident, they locked him away and made him go to therapy.
I love Cara and Danny like sisters, but even I can't deny that their actions only made things worse. Isolation was the exact opposite of what Goliath needed, and therapy only made him feel like a freak. Eventually they couldn't take it anymore and they pulled a few strings to get him assigned early." I cover my mouth, gasping. Murmurs wash over the room. Nia pauses, taking a deep breath. "They thought it'd make things easier, if he had a Sapphire looking after him and bonding with him, but then Goliath wasn't announced as assigned to the Diamonds and they knew something was majorly wrong. After months of searching, we finally found something. A pattern.
We'd gotten desperate, and in a last ditch effort to find Goliath, we cross referenced people with his type of... issues, with who dissapeared. Almost everyone that dissapeared on their assignment day had a connection to the rebel cause. Their parents, a sibling, a friend, a lover, etc. We rigged up a fake identity and sent Danny's Sapphire, Peter, through. After a few tries and many different identities, he got sent to a secret city full of the missing people. It turns out that the Retircas are generally made up of those of the Alkina that have the most liberal mind sets.
Those who have experienced the greatest hurt or felt the greatest compassion. Those who need healing, even. It didn't make much sense to me until I realized that whoever set up the assignment system had probably not purposfully recruited a bunch of rebels and freedom fighters, but just been looking to make the ruling class a compassionate one. One that would fight for the people. The algorithym doesn't say anything about political views. It simply just looks for the most intense emotionally driven responses to the questions. Some of the more violent of the responses are sent to the Sapphires, the rest are sent to the Retirca. It's a system meant to prevent rebellion. Lots of good it did them with us." She chuckles, and I grin back.
"Now here's the most puzzling part of this. When Peter got extracted, he had completely forgotten about the Alkina. Nobody there remembers it. They lead their lives, wage war, they have their own countries and continent, islands, everything. The whole shebang. They don't rule the Alkina like we thought they do. They're prisoners. In fact their society only just recently figured out they have us above them. They always just assumed that they were the only humans anywhere. We have an entire world living and breathing right under our noses. Quite literally." Everyone in the room sits still.
"This is bullshit. Your saying that we're literally fighting the system? Like the literal computer system? Not the Diamonds or Sapphires or Retircas, but the fucking computer system that's kept this giant trash heap afloat the last who knows how many hundreds of years? What kind of bullshit it that. And you never even though to tell us this before? Really? Nia. You've been here for what is it, years now? And you've just been letting us plan a fucking rebellion over the wrong damn thing? What the fuck, Nia."
"Shut it, Zenith." I snap, massaging my temple. "Look, I get that her withholding this information was a shitty thing to do, but frankly it doesn't change anything. The computer may be taking away those of us who cause trouble and protest, but it's not making the Diamonds refuse to help the other classes. It can't force us to do anything we don't want to do or wouldn't do on our own, and frankly, this rebellion's goal has not changed. We just now have extra information we did not previously possess. This is a good thing. We have something we can use to wake people up and make them not treat eachother like shit anymore. This is a good thing, guys."
"I think you're over estimating how good the people of the Alkina are, Charlie. Just hoping they all realize the error of their ways after we tell them there's an entire society of people who dissagree with them living under us isn't going to get us anywhere. Just hoping doesn't do anything. We need action, Charlie."
"Rebellions are built on hope, Zenith. Haven't you heard?" I glare, snarking back.
"Fine. Okay, ignoring that huge hole in your plan, what are we going to do about the Retirca?"
"What do you mean?"
"We can't just leave them down there."
"They seem to be doing fine on their own."
"That's not the point."
"But it is. We're dealing with our own shit up here, if they can't figure out their shit on their own, that's fine by me."
"But isn't that exactly the attitude we're fighting?"671Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQCKaZ0K2f2
"Jesus Zenith. One problem at a time please. What do you even expect me to do about those people? They don't even remember the Alkina. They wage wars and have their own idea on how life should be. Things are complicated enough as it is. How do we even reintroduce how many hundreds of people back into the Alkina?"671Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8mpTESWtjI
"That's easy. We don't. We just leave them in the Hylyns." Nia speaks up. Zenith glares at her but I put a hand up, silencing him.
"The Hylyns?" I inquire.
"That's where they are. See, the Retirca live under the Alkina in the place they call the Hylyns. They're extremely farther back in terms of technological innovation compared to us. Reintroducing them to the Alkina wouldn't work. Plus, we already have a population problem." I nod, pointedly looking over at Zenith.671Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdrcKTSLaJ3
"My sister might be down their, Charlie. Please." I sigh, softening.671Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2VERSa07HY
"Fine. We'll discuss it after we find out how to make this a safe place to come back to, Zenith. Now tell us about this Hylyns." Zenith solemly agrees and Nia stands, going over to the front of the table.671Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9nMAvEYCVk
"We looked into the records and apparently it wasn't always like this. Origonally, there was a ruling family on the Alkina. The Bilykras. They were killed off, though, in a revolution over a thousand years ago, and as punishment, the Diamonds and Sapphires overthrew the usurpers and sent them underground, to the Hylyns. They made sure that those who would have been assigned to that class would end up there too, as to prevent another catastrophe. The missing class was called the Retircas. They were just below the Bilykras, one of the first classes ever to grace the Alkina. The Hylyns is a prison, in essence, and those who live there are starting to figure it out."
"So wait, back to the bombings, how exactly are the Retirca responsible if they live hundreds of feet below us?"
"As I said, they've started to figure out where they are. They've been sending up teams for reconnaissance for years. There's a small amount of them who have managed to reconstruct the flying machines of years past and gather bombs we use for demolition here. While they aren't able to bring any of this back with them to the Hylyns due to the size of the tunnels, we suspect they either have found a place to hide these weapons or somehow gotten someone to agree to hide these things for them. Long story short, they're trying to convince us that we're attacking eachother."
"And again I ask, why in the Alkina would they do that?"
"They want us to bomb eachother back to the stone age so they can take over the Alkina."
ns 15.158.61.18da2
