S4, E8 | A Death of Innocence

Flooded with light, the box truck’s inner compartment is opened for the overseers of Lancaster to enter, shaking the vehicle as they each climb in, one after the other. “Hurry up and let’s get this over with before dinner- I wanna go home” one of the men remarks, helping one of his two colleagues pull the first body off the accumulated pile with an eagerness to finish his duties accordingly.

In the same moment, Chris walks through the halls of the hospital with his doctor’s coat on, still performing his duties in spite of his voice serving as the people’s informant. Unassuming of any misdeed, the man steps around a corner and ventures toward his office, disposing of his clipboard in a nearby tray mounted upon the wall. Keeping his distance, Chevy follows closely behind with a hand tucked into his left pocket, matching each step of the man ahead with one of his own.

In the clear momentarily, Kennedy peers her head above another body, finding the truck bed clear of the undermanned staff as they venture toward a large building closeby. With a brief struggle, the girl takes her opportunity to capitalise on Lancaster’s oversight, climbing over the litter of people and quickly hopping down from her ride. Surrounded by little more than a few rundown homes and sand pathways, the teenage voyager’s eyes take toward the men’s direction.

Letting his coat fall from the top of his shoulders, Chris folds the long, white cover over his right arm and turns the next corner, a sigh of relief coming over him as a familiar hallway nears. Quiet and imposing, Chevy continues to keep on the man’s trail, refusing to let him break too far ahead from sight. Tying his longer hair into a ponytail, the stalking father-to-be watches the man step through the doorway to his office, prompting a smile to emerge across the looming shadow’s face.

With nothing more to latch her attention onto, Kennedy follows the trio’s progression onward, eventually nearing a bush to crouch behind. With a slow breeze, the hair on her neck raises as it’s kissed by mother nature herself, passing the time between the worker’s departure and re-arrival. All beside each other, the workers return to the truck and pass the bush without question, freeing their unnoticed hitchhiker to finish her venture toward the monolith just ahead.

Closing the door behind himself, Chris hangs his jacket on the nearest hanger and begins for his desk, immediately coming to a stop upon finding his chair occupied. “Kayla?” the doctor inquires, not needing a moment to identify the person patiently awaiting his arrival, her arms crossed against her chest as she leans into his seat. “What are you doing here?” he inquires, only for his mind to venture toward a different line of thought the moment his door opens for a second time.

Through the doorway, Kennedy enters the behemoth of a shack to the sight of a grizzly scene, an empty entry foyer splattered with pools of blood- both dry and fresh- waiting for her advancement onward. Glancing around her immediate vicinity for only a moment, the girl’s eyes take toward a roughed-up closet in the corner of the room with a few holes in it, the perfect opportunity presented to buy herself time. Climbing within, Kennedy glues her eyes toward her entrance as she shuts the door.

His back turned to the doctor, Chevy slowly revolves around toward his befuddled centre of focus. From the man’s chair, Kayla rounds his desk before pulling a firearm from around her back. “What’s going on!?” Chris asks in a panic, turning away from the man as he looks for the woman, only for the room to begin spinning as the back of the third party’s hand hits him across the face.

“Argh!” a woman screams from the next room over, the sounds of torture and torment catching Kennedy’s ear like the call of her name as the trio she’d evaded earlier return with three new packages. Just as they had before, the men depart yet again, freeing the intrusive girl to progress further into the building despite what she overhears leaving her little desire to do so. Stepping out from cover, the girl’s eyes peer into the next room and widen with what she finds.

Crashing into the wall and falling to the ground before he can regain his awareness, Chris holds the side of his face that now stings with a bright red handprint courtesy of his male visitor. “You’re either going to talk, or we’re going to kill you” Kayla warns, loading a clip into her pistol before taking aim at the doctor’s horrified expression, incapable of understanding the motivations of those that stand over him.

“I didn’t do anything!” a woman shouts at her assailant, who simply laughs before lashing her over the back with his leather belt once more, another yelp of anguish pulled from the restrained prisoner. Gripping the doorframe tightly, Kennedy gazes at a plethora of individual, manual machines that line a massive warehouse floor, each operated by a fleet of bound, near-nude and heavily wounded prisoners that silently plead for mercy.

“Please, please! I don’t know what’s happening!” Chris worriedly exclaims, pressing his back as far into the wall as it can manage as the woman’s firearm steadies its aim. “You’re gonna answer our questions, that’s what’s happening” Chevy replies, making the situation as clear as he can muster the ability to, “if you lie, we’ll kill you. If we don’t believe you, we’ll kill you. And if you try to kill us, you’ll have to make sure you get the job done quick.”

“Okay! I get it!” a black woman wails, her back presenting sores and open wounds from the hide of her keeper’s belt. Without a word, the uniformed black patrolman punishes her speech, striking her with the waistband accessory once more to the same, familiar response. Only able to muster a smile, the man watches the woman drop to a knee and silently cry, finally understanding that her work amidst silence is the only salvation to her ongoing strife.

“Where was Cody going with that truck earlier?” Chevy inquires, looking the doctor in the eyes as his wife stands overhead, keeping her aim as unbroken as their determination to set after their dearest dependent is. “It was going back to Lancaster! Of course it was going back to Lancaster!” Chris replies, immediately pressing his eyes shut as his body tenses, reacting to the barrel of the weapon Kayla presses against his forehead.

“It’s a big ole’ group effort!” a man exclaims from just beyond the building’s entrance, signalling the return of the group Kennedy’s back is turned toward. As her time diminishes, the young woman’s mind calls back to previous moments of patience and stealth, bringing to mind the couple that helped free her a place in the truck before jumping into action. Sprinting into the cesspool of pain and despair, the girl hurries toward the nearest column and presses her back to it- unnoticed.

“P- p- people!” Chris stutters, both hands continuing to be raised toward those that hold his fate in the palm of their hands. “People? You plastic wrapped people?” Chevy says with an expression fully-encompassed by confusion, “why?” With little else to do than tell the truth, the doctor confesses to his agreements. “Because he needs labour to keep things running!” the doctor replies, a slight irritation in himself shown through the visage he wears, “we’re the ones that supply him with it!”

Her heart pounding as her chest heaves from the fear that trifles over her, Kennedy presses her eyes shut as a set of footsteps approach her position, closing in with an anxious step. Without a word, the men that venture toward the foyer in which she’d hurried out from just moments prior step across the foundational pillar, advancing past the young girl without a second thought as they step out to meet the men bringing in their newest delivery.

“And what happens to the people that are on that truck?” Chevy demands to know, raising the question for the doctor to answer. “They’re the people he puts to work!” Chris replies, continuing to pass a glance between the man standing over him and the woman playing with his life at stake. “Fuck” Chevy grunts through his teeth, rolling his eyes as he looks to the far side of the room from over his shoulder, “Kennedy’s on that fucking truck.”

As her breathing eases, Kennedy glances around the corner and toward the rest of the room, setting her sights on those that stand over the enslaved workers with hopes of keeping count. “Urgh!” one of the armed overseers exclaims, colliding with the floor as a cluster of his workers watch on closeby. Breaking free from his restraints, a man rips his hands free from the machine he’s attached to and lunges toward the man on the ground, those that surround yet unsure of what’s unfolding.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen” Chevy remarks, taking the weapon from his wife’s hand and pulling Chris up by the collar of his shirt, the barrel of the weapon he wields pressed against the man’s lower back. “You’re gonna lead us to the quietest part of the hospital, out to the back lot and into your car” Kayla explains, tossing the white jacket over the doctor’s shoulders as her husband holds him hostage, “you make a sound and he’ll put two rounds in your back, understood?”

Taking a hold on the overseer’s holstered firearm, the imprisoned worker fires two shots into the patrolman strolling along the catwalk above, clearing the ground of any armed watchers just overhead. “Put it down!” a second guard exclaims from closeby before he, too, is struck with a pair of bullets. Though weak and tired, frail and fragile, the restraint-freed worker wraps his arm around the fallen overseer’s neck and pulls him close, holding the firearm to the side of the man’s head.

With unrivalled composure, Chevy and Kayla march through the halls with the doctor’s best attempt at acting natural put forward, the gun that presses against his back beneath the cover of his jacket making it difficult to keep composed. Through the halls, Chris ventures toward the quiet, desolate and abandoned sector with his sights following the bright red exit signs. “I swear, I wouldn’t have let him go if I knew Kennedy was on the truck” he vows, something the couple doubts.

“Nobody move! I’ll shoot!” the prisoner exclaims, his tone familiar to those he’d been attached to the machine alongside, but not anyone else. “Clayton, stop! They’ll kill you, man!” one of his fellow entrapped workers pleads, the request falling upon the fragile, desperate man’s deaf ears. Knowing the danger that looms overhead, Kennedy remains still against the column in hopes of not escalating tensions, only to watch a second display unfold just a few metres away from her.

Through the exit, Chris leads the couple toward his vehicle at the back of the lot, not bothering to plead for his safety with hopes that his actions would ensure it. “The times were desperate, and we had to make moves” the man remarks, admitting to the things that have come to haunt his conscience whilst he’s still alive to do so, neither Chevy, nor Kayla too interested in the words he provides.

Burning his wrists against his own set of restraints, a man just ahead of Kennedy hurries toward a patrolman whilst plunging the head of a screwdriver into the back of his neck. Unable to intervene as the altercation dips below the sights of the armed overseers, those that surround the facility with the goal of maintaining order find themselves helpless to stop what appears to slowly unfold. Emerging from cover, the prisoner takes the automatic rifle from his victim toward the entrance.

“Julia said we needed to have leverage. I didn’t agree with how she went about it, but it was working!” Chris explains, unlocking the doors to his car before they’re snatched from his possession by the pregnant woman beside him. “If I said anything, it would screw everything up and my sister and I would pay for it” the doctor proceeds, ducking his head as Chevy leads him into the backseat, keeping the weapon on him as Kayla gets behind the wheel, “I couldn’t do that to her.”

Knowing well enough to get out from crossfire, Kennedy leaps out from behind the concrete column and ducks below the first machine she can find the sight of. With the pull of a trigger, bullets begin to tear through the building’s entrance as a litany of workers- both those on the clock and those unloading their newest shipment- meet their demise at the hands of the second released captive.

“What else haven’t you been telling us?” Chevy asks half-heartedly, intending for the remark to be met as a poorly-timed joke before his eyes lock onto those of the doctor beside him, the guilty expression presenting the expecting father with a surprised reply. In silence, the man looks to the doctor with a shocked expression whilst his wife tears out of the parking spot and speeds toward the exit, passing a blue sedan parked just beside the front gates.

“Shhh!” Kennedy hisses to the woman above her, pressing a finger against her lip as the second enslaved workhorse sprints from cover and closes off the facility’s entry whilst a sea of shrieks and screams emerge from all directions of the warehouse. “Little girl, you need to get out of here now!” the woman above hisses, only to be met with a second call to silence from the teenage hideout whilst the scene unfolds.

“What the fuck is this?” Julia whispers, rolling down the window to her stationary blue sedan as her brother’s car rips through the exit, her eyes having watched the entire scene unfold. Just as the question leaves her lips, the phone in her pocket begins to vibrate repeatedly, calling her attention to the soul that beckons for her answer.

Peaking around the corner, Kennedy watches an onslaught unfold right before her eyes as the sea of patrolmen are met with a coordinated attack from those equally freed from their binds. Whilst some bleed out or suffer from their unexpected attacks, many patrolmen remain upright and unharmed by the initial outburst, their contemporaries unable to say the same for the most part.

Lowering her eyebrows, Julia reads the initials on the phone’s overhead display before opening the phone, the speaker pressing against the side of her ear as she remains silent. “Clark?” Chevy’s voice calls aloud, immediately prompting the overwatching doctor’s eyes to widen, a moment being spent to register the voice she hears call a number she wouldn’t have anticipated being afforded to it.

“Put your guns down and give up!” Clayton exclaims toward those responsible for the brutality that had been inflicted upon them, their suffering yet to cease just as the gunfire does. “Argh!” the leading figure in the revolt exclaims, struck in the shoulder with a single gunshot before he pulls the trigger he wields, executing the hostage he’d taken. The fight only just beginning, a standoff ensues as the wounded revolutionary drops to the ground behind the cover of his fellow captives.

“Clark, there’s something going on with Jaime and you guys. You need to get out of that bar right now” Chevy quips, still met with silence from the other end he believes to belong to the peacekeeper’s speaker. “Hello?” he calls out, waiting for a reply that refuses to be given as the call is ended from the other line of the speaker’s phone. Closing the flip device, Julia presses the phone against her chest as her eyes take toward the tire tracks her brother’s car had left behind.

= Dire is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and the entity of Pacer1 Media from the start of Season 1 onwards =

With her arms crossed and back pressed against the wall furthest from the two-way mirror, Jaime listens to the conversation unfolding in front of her in silence, not interjecting herself into what she spectates over. “I’m not telling you anything” a woman inside the interrogation room the chancellor stands before remarks, joining her brothers and sisters in remaining silent, refusing to capitulate to the forces she stands in opposition of.

Unbeknownst to the Republic’s leader, a set of feet quietly approach her from the far end of the corridor she stands alone in, his head bowing whilst his ears take only to the words he can hear being spoken from behind the glass. “All of you are sick. Depraved. None of you represent the people” the imprisoned woman continues, met with silence from the armed man that sits facing her, “you’re no better than Django. And now that you’ve got the NDF around everywhere- that proves it.”

“So... what?” the man across from her replies, curious to the answer, “are you insisting that you’re the ‘pro-people’ movement?” Coming to the awareness of company joining her, Jaime passes a glance at the man that nears her, paying him little mind whilst the conversation unfolds before her. “Why are you here?” the chancellor inquires, her arms kept crossed against her chest as Wade slowly draws near, eventually taking the open spot just beside the woman to occupy.

“I was told something less than defendable was happening down here” Wade answers, fitting the top halves of his fingers into each pocket whilst joining the woman in pressing his back to the wall. “What Hitler-esque shit are you having me write off, Ms. Morris?” the man continues, opening the field for an answer to be supplied, only to be left waiting just as the chancellor does. “Something I hope doesn’t have to happen here” Jaime answers, continuing to watch the discourse ahead.

“You’re killing us. You’re starving us out and driving us mad- but it won’t work” the embattled figure of the peacekeeper movement remarks, smiling at her interrogator as her head shakes, “we’re stronger than you.” Letting a sigh leave through her nose, Jaime’s visible discontent is made clear to the man beside her, who looks down toward her face out of the corner of his eyes quietly, waiting for the unfolding situation ahead to play out.

“And that’s what you’re running with?” the questioning man within the room inquires, squinting as his head bows subtly, “you’re not going to cooperate?” With an impassioned vigour, the woman’s head juts forward as her lips arch, sending a wad of spit flying from her mouth and into the face of the person that sits ahead. Pressing her eyelids shut, Jaime tilts her head back and looks toward the ceiling as a second question is finally prompted of the NDF leader to ask.

“What am I waiting for?” Wade queries, watching the chancellor’s eyes open and head reposition herself to stare ahead, the silence she answers him with all he’ll be offered for a reply. Dragging the legs of his chair against the ground, the less-affable gentleman in the room wipes the loogie from the side of his face and rounds the table, approaching the woman with a pent up anger that he allows the simmer before it finally boils over the edge. 

With a brief windup, the man’s hand swings down upon the woman’s face with an awe striking force, nearly colliding with enough power to knock the woman onto the verge of unconsciousness. “If you try forcing them to comply, they’ll just play you until the chance to turn against you shows up” Jaime replies, closing her eyes once more to abstain from witnessing the attack coming into existence ahead, simply listening to each grunt and strike follow one after another.

Grimacing at the merciless attack Jaime’s administration progresses with, Wade remains silent in the face of villainous acts he’s become familiar enough with over time, though the outward nature of what he sees before him is unlike much of the same he’d witnessed in the past. “They have to decide to cooperate. Those are the only people it’s possible to trust” the chancellor continues, parting her eyes to look at the man she speaks to, “anyone who doesn’t realise that is a fool.”

Continuing to deal blows well after the woman is rendered unconscious, the guard continues to swing away with equal force to that of his first blow, the intent far greater than severely wounding his victim. “How many so far?” Wade inquires, refusing to add emphasis to the question, though what he’s referring to is not needed. “Sixty four so far” Jaime responds, watching the guard cease his assault before pressing his fingers to the woman’s neck, checking for a pulse.

With a deep breath, the man lets his hand fall from her chin and begin retreating for the door as the chancellor speaks up, correcting herself, “sixty five.”

Curling his lip, Wade watches the man toss a jacket over his shoulder and step out of the walled-in room, gently closing the door behind himself and bowing to the superiors that stand outside, politely gesturing to them as if he hadn’t just beaten a woman to death seconds prior. “How could you live like this?” the NDF spokesman asks aloud, looking to the chancellor as if curious toward her desensitisation toward such a malicious practise.

“That sounds like a really big voice coming from someone who stood by and watched while the government turned the rain to acid and killed half of civilisation” Jaime responds, turning her head to look the answer-less man in the eyes, his grimace presenting itself as his head bows. “I do what needs to be done. I live like this because it’s the only possible way to live anymore” the chancellor replies, justifying her actions as if such a task were possible, “there’s nothing without order.”

“-And there are other ways of maintaining it” Wade responds, adding onto the woman’s statement without being met with reluctance. “I’m not perfect, I’ve never claimed to be and I never will. Yes, I watched my colleagues set the world on course for this. But even I draw a line somewhere” the man continues, only met with the woman’s confrontational stare the moment he mentions such a line, one that sparks an argumentative flare deep within the Republic’s chancellor.

“Draw that line with me and I’ll gut you like a fat bitch, you nutless cocksucker” Jaime immediately warns, her tone never wavering from the low, confident and composed growl of a leader refusing to relinquish any inch of the power she’s obtained. “I’m telling you this right now because I want you to see it coming when it happens- I’m going to stab you in the front one day” the chancellor explains, her intentions made resoundingly clear.

“Thanks for getting the other half of the city back up and running- I really appreciate it” Jaime persists, pulling out the phone that rings on her hip, “-but there will come a day when I no longer need you. When that day comes, I’ll butcher you while everyone watches. And when I do so, it won’t be in the name of the NDF, it’ll be for my Republic.”

Deeply dissatisfied and angered, Wade snarls as the woman presses the phone against her ear, answering the call that comes in from the other end whilst her superior stands over her, made to look inferior in her demeanour and cadence. With widening eyes, the chancellor brushes shoulders with the NDF frontman and returns for her office on the floors above, prepared to answer the call to action she’s received.

“No, don’t chase after them” Jaime replies, hair bouncing off her shoulders as she walks intently for the nearest set of stairs, “I have a better idea.”

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Running a dry rag over his countertop, Cody tends to the upkeep of his small shop on the foremost corner past Lancaster’s entrance, its front gates recently aided by the installation of armed guards. “I’ll be with you in just a second” the man calls out the moment a bell from over his storefront’s entrance rings aloud, able to be heard over the sound of 50’s rock and roll through the speaker of his radio.

Met with silence, Cody carries on with his business, discarding the rag before taking a cardboard box of sweets to the shelves situated just behind his serving bar, propping one up after another as his patrons patiently await his attention to settle upon them. “It’s a pretty nice day outside, ain’t it?” the store owner remarks, passing a glance at the front door before shaking his head, speaking to those he’s still yet to provide service to, “I don’t know how many more we’ve got this year.”

With the final few treats set up for the afternoon, Cody breaks down the box and turns around to face his customer with a smile, “so, what can I do you fo-?” His voice stopped in its tracks, the man’s eyes fall upon the sight of three people- the faces of whom all familiar to him- whilst one sits on the edge of a meeting with his maker.

“We know everything, Cody” Chevy remarks, beginning the conversation with civility and honesty, not wanting the man to claim assumptions that lying will do him any good. Whilst her husband holds the barrel of his gun against the side of Chris’ head, Kayla lays her attention solely on the man, making sure to speak clearly as she follows up her soulmate’s words.

“The people you drove off with- and what you do with them- we know everything” she proceeds, immediately watching the beady eyes of Lancaster’s owner dart in her direction, his body rigid and frozen stiff as his mind is unable to process the gravity of what’s happening quicker than his panic can settle in.

“We know about the slave labour, where the warehouse is, what you give the Avallone’s in return- I mean it when I say ‘we know everything’, Cody” Kayla continues, watching the expression of acceptance settle in over the off guard-caught man as he realises there are no lies left to tell. “I want you to listen very carefully to me, because we’re not interested in wasting time we don’t have” the woman proceeds, refusing to pull punches she doesn’t have the luxury of wasting.

With his lip quivering, Cody glances back toward Chris in hopes for guidance, only for the aversion of his eyes to be set aside by the foremost woman, who immediately regains his attention. “Eyes up here, buddy- there’s no one that can help you” Kayla warns, aiming her finger in the man’s face and pulling his sights back toward herself, “you’re gonna take us there, call off your men, and let your people free or else-”

Cut off by the sudden rumbling of the ground, Kayla grabs onto the counter for support as the building shakes, caught in the vicinity of an earth-shaking eruption not too far off. Also knocked off his feet, Chevy stumbles to the side and crashes into a set of shelves whilst Chris maintains enough balance to grab onto a concrete pillar. The wave only momentary, a pause comes over the four inhabitants of the shop as curiosity gets the better of them, their prior conflict soon returning.

Pressed against his counter, Cody watches Kayla regain her balance as Chevy collides with the ground, the firearm released from his hand on his way down. With the opportunity presented to him in the least deniable way possible, the store owner reluctantly reaches into a compartment just a few short centimetres below his waist. “I’m sorry about this” the man remarks, pulling out a twelve-gauge shotgun as Kayla’s eyes widen, recognising that her leverage had eroded within an instant.

With his finger reaching for the trigger, Cody aims the weapon at the poor soul closest to him, Kayla’s sights set on the barrel that now stands before her face as a bullet is fired, ripping through the air and removing the weapon from her head. “Argh!” Lancaster’s overseer groans, pulling his firearm back as he stumbles back into the wall of sweets, the wounded cries he bellows silencing once a second shot rings out, the first bullet having pierced his chest whilst the second takes his heart.

The shotgun falling from his hands, Cody drops dead behind the cover of his storefront countertop, the moments he’d anticipated using to take the lives of two immediate threats instead used to take his final breaths. In the following aftermath, the air begins to quiet as a tense moment of calmness overcomes the room, only dying off once Chevy climbs to his feet, stepping on the goods he’d knocked over on his way to the ground.

“Chevy!” Kayla shouts, still bracing for combat as if the threat hadn’t already been dealt with, warning her husband of the threat that still looms, making him privy to what stands beside him. With the same weapon he’d threatened to take the doctor’s life with, Chevy watches Chris press his back against the pillar he’d reached out for support from, the pistol now splitting its aim between either member of the couple and the hostage they’d taken with them into Lancaster.

“Woah, woah!” Chris exclaims, creating distance between himself and the couple, his secondhand held high in a display of surrender, not wanting to create more strife than there already is. “I’m not gonna hurt you!” the man continues to plead, departing the centre of the room to allow the couple to regroup, Chevy taking stand at the forefront whilst using his body to shield Kayla from further threat, “I’m not gonna hurt you” he reiterates.

Standing in front of his wife whilst centring the barrel of Chris’ weapon upon himself, Chevy stands silently, not knowing for certain what is still to come as his hostage stands by, waiting for the room to fall calm before making any further remarks. As a few seconds pass, the doctor lowers his knee to the ground and rests the weapon on the floor, continuing to plead his case.

“I’ve made too many bad calls already” Chris confesses, pulling his finger out from the trigger guard and backing away, letting the expecting father reclaim his weapon without a fight, “I just wanted to make a good one for once.” With both hands raised, the doctor continues to step back, opening the floor for Chevy to cautiously approach the weapon, picking it up slowly before aiming it in the hostage’s direction, though not on his person.

After a few seconds spent in silence, the two men connect eyes with each other’s and read into their opposition’s demeanour, yet to make any calls of their own as Kayla steps out from her husband’s protection. Moving for the exit, the woman leaves the men to continue their stare down, neither choosing to make their move on the other, nor wanting to. 

Still without a response, Chevy begins stepping back, moving to rejoin his wife outside without ushering Chris along, allowing the man to do as he pleases as he’s cut free from the leash the Harrison couple had held him to. “It shouldn’t be that far away” Kayla remarks, standing in the middle of a newly-paved road with her sights on the distant skyline, following the trail of black smoke and raging flames toward the middle of the mostly-vacant, untraveled-roads of Lancaster.

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“You’re all surrounded!” Clayton exclaims, putting pressure on the bullet’s exit wound as tensions continue to flare, his proclamation not one that the armed militia he’s overwatched by cares too much over. “And you’re outgunned!” one of the brutal patrolmen shouts, standing beside a small group of well-restrained, poorly-fed, horribly-mistreated workers he holds beneath the weight of each lashing.

“Face it, you dirty cunt! You’re not getting out of here!” the overseer proceeds to exclaim, unable to see the grin he earns from the wounded revolutionary, who reaches for the waistband of his underwear. “If we’re not getting out of here, neither are you!” Clayton proclaims, pulling a small, wooden stick from his boxers and striking its sulphur tip against the rusty bench he sits against.

Her eyebrows furrowing, Kennedy listens to the man’s declarations and the many screams of horror and triumph that surround her, left to think of nothing less than the worst case scenario. Propelling himself off the ground as his bleeding worsens, Clayton makes his last stand and flicks the match toward a group of glass beakers, the tiny flame making contact with a bottle of nail polish remover whilst bullets begin flying once more.

Struck three times, each in the centre of his chest, Clayton topples back and drops his weapon, falling to the ground to bleed out amidst a sea of horror and frenzy. Triggered by the death of their leader, those the man led in a fight for their freedom begin to take action with what’s at their disposal, firing at and attacking the men and women that watched over their suffering without interference or compassion.

“Help me cut loose!” the woman that stands over Kennedy pleads, prompting the girl’s head to poke up before those that surround her propose the same request, begging for the teenager to free them before an ear-piercing gust of wind wafts through the air, an effect of the nail polish remover catching fire and bursting into flames, immediately beginning to fill the room with smoke.

Having ducked below the tables for cover once more, Kennedy is soon hurried into action, her sights set on the way she came to break free whilst the fighting ensues.. In every direction, malnourished prisoners fight the well-maintained bodies that Lancaster employed to watch over their every move, whilst in the background, worker after worker rip themselves from the shackles to their labour and either join in the fight or hurry for a way out.

Scrambling toward the way she came, Kennedy bursts through the door and makes for the front of the building, only to find a sea of vehicles already swarming the vicinity, her only feasible escape option thwarted by the backup each overseer had already called in. Forced to retreat back into the war zone, the teen girl stands in the doorway as the bloodshed ensues, a mad dash taking place in her every direction as time begins to slow for her, allowing a moment of planning to come over her.

Looking at the layout of the warehouse, Kennedy’s eyes take from one direction to the next with hopes of uncovering a way out of the increasingly smoke-filled room, her search thwarted only by a pair of faces she instantly recognises from the crowd. Losing sight of everything that unfolds around her, the girl’s motivation for a quick escape soon turns toward reunion and she sprints back into the scene of chaos, hurrying past those that reach out to her for aid and over the bodies of the fallen.

Hearing the bullets fly in every direction, Kennedy races through the devastation like a woman on a mission, hurrying to the back of the warehouse at a speed she’d never reached before with an eagerness to protect. Failing to stop in time, the girl slams into a table as her tiny legs fight for stay upright, her hip crashing into the workbench as her hands fumble around the restraints tied around her mother’s hands.

“Kennedy!?” Alex proclaims, her face badly bruised and sliced up as if the inflicting point of an initiation. Paying no mind to her mother’s remarks, nor the gunfire and blood-curdling screams in her every direction, Kennedy shuts the sounds of war from her mind as she slowly untangles her mother’s restraints, freeing the woman to return to the open world before turning toward Amelia’s binds.

“Kennedy, stop!” Alex exclaims, using her free hands to tug at her daughter’s shoulders, trying to hold her back from freeing her friend without luck, Kennedy’s refusal to leave Amelia behind made clear in her resilience. “Kennedy, we have to go!” her mother proclaims, her voice the only thing her youngest daughter can hear as the fixated girl’s eyes remain steadily-placed upon her friend’s binds.

Finally pushed to her breaking point, the teen’s voice calls out to the woman her back is turned toward as her sights lift for what was meant to be just a single moment. “We’re not leaving her be-!” Kennedy declares, shouting over the sounds of chaos that fire around her before falling silent, failing to finish her sentence before her wide eyes freeze, her mouth hanging open as her hands immediately cease their attempt to provoke freedom.

Knelt before her, Amelia hangs as low to the ground as her binds will allow her, not an ounce of life still held in her body, which sits before her friend riddled with bullet wounds. In utter shock, Kennedy looks at her friend’s body without the ability to look away, the final thread she’d untied allowing the rest of the restraint to undo itself, freeing the girl’s hands to let the rest of her body drop.

No longer afforded time, Kennedy’s shoulder slowly begins to lessen its resistance, giving into her mother’s pull as she’s ripped away from the scene. In a dazed trance, the youngest Morris offspring is guided by her matriarch through the smoke-filled maze of blood and destruction, unaware of the true peril that looms overhead. Led by a trail of polish remover, the flames begin leading to a propane tank that fuels the building they stand in, its existence more of a threat now than ever before.

Following a trail of her equally-freed contemporaries, Alex leads her daughter through a backroom and into the open field that soon eats the worst of the impending disaster. Without a second to hesitate, the flames finally meet their final destination, setting alight to the propane tank and allowing it to combust, sending a shockwave powerful enough to knock each of the newly-freed workers off their feet, and sending off an explosion that kills those within instantly.

Still too in shock to process the blast that had struck her, Kennedy falls into her mother’s arms, the woman who’d nurtured her now wrapping her tightly within her grasp. Hitting the floor first, Alex rolls over Kennedy and covers her from whatever fallout may soon come, refusing to let the horrors that had confronted her scar the girl she’s sworn to protect any further than it already has.

Within seconds, the initial quake ceases, the only sound emanating from the soaring flames that rise high into the late-afternoon sky. Not quite peace, but a sombre sense of serenity soon comes over those fortunate enough to have escaped with their lives, the mother and daughter responsible for their own daring escape no different as a wave of cars soon roll in.

Without clearance from Lancaster’s overseer, the armed members of the Lancaster patrol and their NDF affiliates roll to a stop a short distance from the burning remnants of the warehouse, aware of what massive attention will soon befall the very place they occupy. Simply satisfied with having kept her daughter from a similar fate to the girl she’d spent the last few days being brutalised alongside, Alex holds Kennedy’s head against her shoulder and keeps her close, never wishing to let go.

== Dire ==