S4, E9 | When Dawn Arrives

“Do you wanna handle this one, or should I?” Julia asks aloud, standing with her arms crossed just beside the chancellor, who peers through the window to the room ahead of her with displeased eyes. “Leaders don’t fight their own battles often enough” Jaime responds, leaning her chin in the doctor’s direction just slightly as her eyes keep to the figure behind the table she’ll soon occupy, “I’ll handle this one myself.”

Aware of where this discussion ultimately leads, the chancellor’s ally begins stepping back, retreating the way she’d arrived to allow the woman a moment of silence. “I’m heading back off to the hospital” Julia remarks, turning her back toward the woman as she departs for other duties, “let me know if you need me.”

Without a reply, Jaime’s eyes remain forward, pressing through the transparent, bulletproof panel that separates her from the impending conflict. Letting out a deep sigh as if to accept what needs to be done, the chancellor moves for the door and pulls it open, walking into the room with an undisturbed pace as she takes her seat, letting the entrance shut behind herself.

Still without a word, Jaime lays herself on the chair and looks to her subject in utter silence, the look of displeasure she wears both clear and recognisable. With another long, deep breath, the chancellor parts her lips and keeps her voice low, asking just one question without certainty over the answer. “Do you know who I am?” the woman in control inquires, her hands folded atop her lap as she waits for the voice across from her to reply, remaining composed as best she can.

“Yes” Carly responds, a cut over her bottom lip and right eyebrow worn and untreated, her eyes steady and unwavering, “you’re the chancellor.” With a subtle nod, Jaime confirms the woman’s assessment, bowing her head for a moment as the next question looms over her mind. “Do you know why you’re here?” the Republic’s frontwoman wonders aloud, her eyes still taken toward the coupled hands that sit below her chin, that answer much more difficult to come by than the first.

“No” Carly voices honestly, wearing the wounds of a trip toward the seat she occupies that can be described as anything other than ‘cooperative’. Nodding her head, Jaime takes a moment before lifting her chin up, disheartened by having to take part in the conversation that she serves as the second party to.

Still in silence, Jaime looks to her hands once more before uncoupling them, letting her wrists lay atop her thighs as she prepares herself to speak. “I can take a guess, though” Carly interjects, watching the chancellor’s eyebrows lift as the dialogue she struggles to come across is filled in by her suspect. “Please do” the woman replies weakly, opening the floor for her captive to fill in the gaps the Republic’s leader struggles to.

Lowering her chin slightly, Carly’s eyes keep on Jaime’s with absolute refusal to leave, her words carrying a harsh weight and stoic emotion. “You know that I’m working with the peacekeepers and now you’re trying to get rid of us” the imprisoned, youthful veteran responds, not an ounce of surprise carried in the chancellor’s visage, “you’re in here to see if I’ll cooperate with you. And- if I can’t- you’ll choose how to deal with me.”

Bowing her head for a third time, Jaime’s demeanour answers Carly’s wonderment halfway, an open-end not yet tied up still left to be addressed. “How close am I?” the servant to the Republic’s cause inquires, waiting for her commander in chief to present her discovery with a stamp of approval.

“Not that far off” Jaime answers, able to respond in a timely manner as she glances up once again, “-but still a few errors to be corrected.” Unphased and accepting of the situation at hand, Carly shrugs her shoulders and quickly lifts her voice through the air, raising the first question that comes to mind, “correct them then.” Obviously not desiring the responsibility of partaking in the second end of the conversation, the chancellor nods her head and reaches toward her foot.

“I already know how I’m going to deal with you” Jaime replies, removing from her leather boot the same revolver she’d tempted fate with so often before, a gesture that slowly humbles the woman across from her. With a noticeable sigh, Carly settles into her seat and pulls the palms she’d pressed against the table onto her lap, realising what is soon to await her for the crimes of picking the wrong side.

“But it’s not your cooperation I want” Jaime continues, her end of the explanation not yet settled, “-it’s your word.” Furrowing her eyebrows, the dread-filled horror that Carly hosts is hidden deep down, the devastated western half of a former great nation she’d traversed having turned her core to one of solid steel. “You may not be able to save yourself, but what you say might be able to save other people” the chancellor confesses, letting the empty weapon sit between them as she leans back.

Without a word momentarily, Carly stares at the weapon intently before matching the posture of the person that she sits across from, leaning back in her seat with each wrist laying atop her thighs. “Why would I want to do that?” the young woman wonders aloud, challenging the thought her chancellor had presented her with, “the world that you’re building isn’t any better than the one that went down with the catalyst. What makes you think death is a worse option of the two?”

“Because they’ve got a baby on the way” Jaime responds almost immediately, the honesty of her reply prompting Carly’s curious squint to widen to a more natural state of concern. As her bottom lip pulls away from the one that sits above it, the battle-hardened young woman’s chin lifts a slight amount as she realises what the chancellor is getting at, the brief recognition immediately changing her attitude.

“Chevy and Kayla don’t deserve that” Carly replies, leaning forward slightly as the facial expression her opposing personality wears presents a similar belief. “Then don’t sentence them to it” Jaime replies, leaning forward as her confrontational, mentality-challenging demeanour takes over, controlling the situation at hand and shifting the narrative to her every desire.

“M- ME!?” Carly bellows out in offence, pulling back into her seat as her hand presses against her chest, “I’m sorry, when the fuck did I make the decision that they might need to die, huh?” Shaking her head, Jaime presents the woman with a smirk of discontent as she refuses the dialogue she’s being presented with. “Don’t sit there and think that I like having to do this, ‘cause I really don’t” the chancellor retorts, only to have her manipulative twist turned right back around toward herself.

“You say that as if there isn’t aren’t blood stains right under my chair as we speak” Carly replies, refusing to let the chancellor get away with writing her actions off as anything other than wanted. “You’ve shot a man in cold blood. You’ve cut our rations to keep us from getting too out of line, and you’ve demonised us to everyone you can” the woman continues to proclaim, “call it whatever you want, but you know exactly what you’re doing. You’ve got the choice not to, but you don’t take it.”

“And how about you?” Jaime interjects, refusing to speak toward any of her opposition’s remarks in favour of presenting her own. “You know exactly what they did to me- what they did to Jordan. You knew exactly what kind of people you were getting into bed with” the chancellor remarks, cut off just the same as she’d cut her contemporary short, the scolding woman’s remarks cutting through the fearless Republic’s leader like a knife.

“Yeah, I did- people that could see through your bullshit” Carly replies, nodding her head as the expression of discontent across the chancellor’s face begins turning sour. “You chose to make us the enemy, you chose to starve us out, you chose to do whatever made that bloodstain under my seat- you chose it all” she continues, fighting through the walls of defence Jaime had erected in search of driving toward the root of the issue, “like it or hate it- you’ve got to live with it.”

“I don’t like what I’ve done, but I wasn’t left with any choice” Jaime argues back, her offence thwarted as she finds herself on the defensive, the points she wields brushed off by the woman she’s become the target of questioning to. “Say whatever you need to make yourself feel like everything you’ve done is justified, but that won’t change that it isn’t” Carly retorts, “maybe killing Ryan was justified, but nothing else was. You made those calls because they benefited you- end of story.”

Falling silent once more, Jaime seethes in her chair as a few moments pass, the weapon that she’d left on the table now reclaimed- its chamber filled with just a single bullet. “Were Chevy and Kayla part of the peacekeepers?” the chancellor wonders aloud, spinning the cylinder and slamming it shut with the base of her hand, eyes having followed the one bullet all the way up to the point where it had been situated in place.

“They sat in on a few meetings to figure out what it was we believed in” Carly replies honestly, placing her palms against the table once more whilst staring the chancellor directly in the eyes, “whether or not they eventually came around to the truth is something I don’t know about.” Whilst her nostrils flare, Jaime’s quiet rage begins to settle as she holds the weapon’s barrel toward the ceiling, waiting for the moment in which she’d gotten enough out of her subject to redirect its aim.

“What is that exactly?” Jaime replies, curious to the woman’s statement and the messaging behind it, “what is the truth?” Shaking her head to the side just once, Carly’s eyes never once leave the chancellor’s own, not even as the firearm she wields begins to rattle as if to suggest her time were close to running out. Remaining silent, the young woman rests her back further into the seat, sliding her hands off the table and tucking them within each other, crossing her arms against her chest.

“What is it that you people believe?” Jaime asks for a second time, letting the question settle as her subject lets her expression smoothen, steadying as she prepares for whatever soon awaits her. “That all you care about is power, and you’d be willing to do anything to keep it” Carly replies, crossing one leg over the other as the chancellor sizes her up, “you’re willing to lie, you’re willing to kill, and you’re willing to let us suffer just to get an ounce of leverage- case and point.”

“Is that what you think of me?” Jaime wonders back, curious to know the answer that her foe seems hesitant to provide, “if they don’t think I’m able to lead them, that’s the prerogative. But what is it that you think?” Knowing a response to be the only way to set the line of questioning aside, Carly makes her choice to not prolong that confrontation any further than it’s already come, choosing to die with dignity and honesty as opposed to going out succumbing to the parasite across from her.

“I think you’re a broken little girl from a broken little home that never got a chance to live” Carly replies, again honestly. “A loving family turned into a waking nightmare, and only when you caught lightning in a bottle did you have the chance to wake up- but you chose to stay asleep” she proceeds, “bought a mansion, but kept living in that broken home ‘cause it was all you ever knew. Needed support when nothing was there to hold you up, but went looking for a shoulder to cry on.”

Squinting her eyes as her expression begins to tighten, Jaime allows the woman across from her to continue speaking, mostly out of not wishing to interrupt- though a small part of her wants to keep listening. “When the world went to shit, you went chasing after the people you knew weren’t too far gone. You found some people to trust, and now you’ve fallen so hard that you need me to convince you that they’re still on your side” Carly proceeds, her words not missing a beat.

“And now it’s all gone” she concludes, stomping out the trip down a twisted memory lane that the chancellor took a slight amount of peace out of travelling once more. “The broken home is whole again, you doubt the people that never doubted you before, and there’s no more shoulder to cry on” Carly finishes, watching the sour expression on Jaime’s face loosen into one of sorrow, her face falling, “and now that broken little girl is looking for something to make herself whole again.”

For the fourth and final time, Jaime looks to the ground in response to Carly, letting the thoughts that cloud her mind be influenced by the remarks her resilient counterpart makes. “Maybe you won’t know until after all of this power has come and gone, but if I had one question to ask you, it’d be this-” the woman on death’s doorstep inquires, prompting the chancellor to look her in the eyes, “-if you’re looking for something to complete you again, why do we have to suffer for it?”

Pressing her lips together, Jaime thinks quietly to herself for a moment before Carly’s voice interrupts, calling for the day to be done with. “Come on, let’s just get this over with” the woman says through gritted teeth, trying to hold back tears in an effort to go out on her own terms, motioning the tips of her fingers at the chancellor to take aim.

Pressing the soft part of her lip between her teeth, Jaime looks back to the weapon in her hand for a moment before slowly lowering it toward Carly’s face, the young woman’s eyes closing to spare herself the sight of watching it all come to a head. Letting go of a sigh, the chancellor’s finger moves to the trigger with the girl’s words still moving through her mind, bouncing from one part of her conscience to the next as the questions and doubts come over herself instead.

After a few seconds, the chancellor returns from the room with the weapon still in hand, slowly closing the door behind herself as she re-enters the dungeon’s corridor. Reupholstering her weapon within the lip of her leather boot, Jaime stares at the wall ahead for a brief moment before turning for city hall, punching the nearest window on her way off as a second voice whispers from further down the hall.

“We still have the numbers, but we might not for long” Julia speaks softly into her end of a cell, hidden within one of the interrogation offices as she watches the chancellor depart, “if not now, I don’t think we’re ever gonna get a better chance than this.” Listening into the other end of the line, a confident look of preparedness comes over the doctor’s expression, her plan rolling into effect precisely as desired. “Get ready for a revolution” she remarks, ending the call with a proud smile.

= 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 =

Sat in complete silence, Kennedy rests within her mother’s arms, cradled close to the woman’s heart as the street lights that illuminate the backseat they sit upon pass by beneath the dark night. “Did Chris know?” Alex asks aloud, calling out to the people that occupy the front seat, making as much of an effort to piece together the story as they do.

“Not from what we could tell” Chevy answers, cautiously turning through the backroads that lead out from Lancaster, his sights joining that of his passengers- returning to the Republic. “I don’t think he did” Kennedy speaks out with a softer voice, still suffering the shock of having witnessed what she had.

“If what he’s saying about his sister is true, I wouldn’t be surprised if he really was kept in the dark about a ton of stuff” Kayla adds on, her left hand reaching into the backseat and gently rubbing Kennedy’s knee for comfort. “Yeah, well that just makes me question him more” Chevy admits, traversing the hills that lead through the back of the Republic before slowing down to join a line of cars patiently awaiting permission to cross into the rear channel of the young nation.

“I’m not questioning anything until we get Jaime out of trouble” Kayla retorts, pressing the sole of her foot against the glove compartment as her head sinks into the seat, “as much of a problem as Chris is, he’s far less of an issue than his sister is.” With her declaration made, the car goes silent for the proceeding few moments, waiting out the moments that pass once they’re granted re-entry to the Republic, the road ahead taken toward the Morris hillside home.

“We’ve got company” Chevy announces, pulling onto the final street before the group’s destination, only to find a litany of vehicles- both armoured and otherwise- parked along each side of the street. “Stop the car” Kayla orders, the words giving her husband his marching orders whilst her attention turns to those in the backseat, “the two of you need to get out now.”

“Why?” Kennedy inquires, pulling herself out of her mother’s arms as the pregnant woman explains herself. “I don’t know what’s in that house, but I’m not about to start blindly trusting it” Kayla explains, unbuckling both her own seatbelt and her husband’s, “take the truck and get somewhere safe. You’ll know when that is.”

Opening her door, Kayla climbs out of the vehicle as Alex and Chevy are soon to follow, Kennedy’s reluctance immediately provided. “Then you should come with us!” the young girl remarks, not wishing to leave her beloved second family to enter danger on their own. “We will- soon” the mother-to-be replies, getting to one knee and placing her hand on the teenage survivor’s shoulder whilst her husband approaches, “until then, we’ve gotta take care of something first.”

“We’ll be safe, Ken” Chevy adds in, trying to quell any fear the young girl has that this interaction will be the final one they share, the girl’s doubts slowly subsiding enough to give into the couple’s request. “Do you promise?” Kennedy asks back, looking to the man to double down on his remarks. Lifting his pinky, Chevy drops to a knee beside his wife and lets the girl embrace it with her own, “I pinky promise.”

Though uncomfortable with it, Kennedy quickly tries to make peace with the call she doesn’t wish to make, accepting the terms that have been laid out for her before joining Alex in the vehicle’s front seat. “Don’t let anyone stop you, don’t let anyone question you, and don’t trust anything someone in a uniform says, got it?” Chevy asks of the woman that climbs behind the wheel, her nod followed by one request.

“Just stay safe” Alex pleads, a request that the couple doesn’t take lightly. “We’ll do what we can, don’t you worry” Chevy responds, joining his wife in giving Kennedy a second nod before shutting the passenger door, letting the truck turn back the way it came and drive off into the night, allowing the pair room for what’s ahead to come to blows.

With the front door in their sight, Chevy and Kayla turn down the walkway and step through the hillside mansion’s entrance, the sight they’d expected to find left waiting for them entirely as planned. Sat upon her couch with three glasses of wine atop the table, Jaime watches their arrival whilst surrounded by her security detail, the layout exactly as had been described to them.

In silence, Jaime looks to the couple without an expression, the blank look on her face concealing the feelings of betrayal and horror she expects the couple to leave her with. Though certain they know what is bound to unfold, Chevy and Kayla are taken aback by the almost unresponsive display the chancellor responds to them with, not a word paid to them upon entry.

“Hold on, this doesn’t add up” Kayla mutters beneath her breath, looking at the control the woman has over her subordinates without certainty, “where’s Julia?” In silence, Chevy reads the chancellor’s visage whilst his wife comes to her line of questioning, only to realise that something is off from what it had been described to them as, the scene of revolutionary triumph over the Morris administration at the doctor’s command not provided to them as anticipated.

“Something’s wrong” Chevy remarks to himself, the doubts that he and his wife share answered to by the woman that slowly makes her way off the couch for them, her well-known revolver held within the grasp of her right hand. “Yeah, it is” Jaime replies, scowling at the couple in a manner curious to the expecting parents, thrown off by what they see before themselves, “I’m joined by a pair of traitors. That’s what’s wrong.”

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Gasping for breath as he wipes the sweat-stained collar of his shirt over his moist face, Chris returns to the hospital through its rear entry and climbs the first flight of stairs he can find, one step taken after another on his way to the office he’d last seen under different circumstances. With a squeal, the stairwell door presents the doctor passage through his desired level, the buttoned up shirt he’d tied the sleeves of around his waist now discarded on his way through the halls.

“Fellow revolutionaries, please make your way through the downstairs lobby” Julia’s voice remarks, speaking through the building’s P.A system with a pleasing tone, “fellow revolutionaries to the lobby please.” Too exhausted to pay much mind to the request, Chris carries onward, hurrying for his office with little thought as to what’s bound to unfold.

Through the door he’d missed the touch of, Chris re-enters his quiet chambers, immediately making for his desk before coming to an abrupt stop, finding the office he walks into already occupied by his sister. “It’s a bit late for a run, don’t you think?” Julia asks aloud, leaning back in her brother’s seat with the handset resting face-down atop the desk, a look of intense disappointment carried in her eyes.

“I got a bit caught up” Chris replies, struggling to catch his breath whilst his sister remains unmoved, both arms crossed atop her lap with each elbow resting on the armrests. “A bit caught up? A bit caught up in what?” Julia wonders aloud, waiting for an answer that she refuses to allow leave her brothers lips, cutting him off by doubling down on her previous question, “caught up in something like blabbing our plan to perhaps the only people closer to Jaime than you and I, perhaps?”

Squinting in confusion, Chris tilts his head toward one side as his angry sister rises from the leather seat, continuing to scold the man for his betrayal of the plan. “Corner her at the house, walk her to city hall and have her ‘peacefully’ forfeit power in front of a live audience. Yeah, remember that?” Julia continues, the line of questioning not making much progress toward her exhausted sibling, “well, maybe you remember me telling you that, since it was my plan- not yours.”

“How did you know about that?” Chris asks, his curiosity quickly brushed aside as his irate sister continues barking down at him from a metaphorical pillar she’d manufactured to stand taller than him. “The better question is how you could be such a spineless pansy to break so fuckin’ fast!” Julia responds, shoving her hand into the man’s chest and pushing him against the office door, “I’ve been busting my ass to make sure this goes off without a hitch, and it’s my own brother that blows it up!”

“They put a gun on me, Julia!” Chris shouts back, spit flying from his lip as his face gets closer to his sister’s own, the veins in his neck popping as his voice grows louder. “Not throw away all the shit I’ve worked my ass off for!” his sister barks back, hitting at his every nerve without missing a beat, “for fuck’s sake! For a dude who spent every night burying his face in a book, you’re one dumb little cocksucker, ain’t you!?”

With an intense smile, Chris shakes his head in the woman’s face and steps past her, walking for his desk as he speaks back. “I’m no more stupid than you are with this little plan of yours” the man replies, drawing the woman’s ire as she turns with him, keeping her eyes on his every move, “you’re the stupid bitch that thinks she can overthrow the fucking chancellor. You’ve wasted all this time getting close to a woman just to stab her in the back and take what she’s built. Pathetic.”

“Oh please, I’m doing everyone a favour” Julia replies, one knee arched outward ahead of the other as her finger points toward the ground, “you know damn well that girl hasn’t been the same since we killed her fiance.”

“You can’t be stupid enough to think that justifies everythi-” Chris immediately shouts back, cutting himself short as he falls silent, looking to his sibling in confusion for a moment before switching his tone, “wait- what?” Squinting his eyes and scrunching his face, the man nudges his head forward as he watches his sister’s visage begin to fall, her tongue licking the middle of her bottom lip as her eyes drift to the side.

Shaking her head, Julia’s sights eventually refocus on her brother as a smirk comes over her face, a laugh hidden beneath her breath. “He only got shot in the chest” the woman murmurs, her bright teeth peering through her lips as she nears breaking out into full blown laughter, “he may have come out of that coma with brain damage, but he would’ve at least come out of it!”

His confused stare turning into one of dread, Chris’ head pulls back as his expression tightens into a look of horror, one eye squinting harder than the other, “what did you do?” Unable to hold her amusement any further, Julia chuckles as her eyes roll and her hand dips into the pocket of her coat, removing a syringe that she tosses toward the ground just beside her brother’s seat.

Passing his glance between the woman and the needle beside his feet, Chris reaches for the syringe and listens to his sister’s confession, one she can’t provide without revelling in her own success. “I could’ve taken down a rhino with that amount of oxycodone” Julia proclaims, watching her brother’s horrified expression drift in her direction, just the one look on his face enough to admit regret for every decision he’d made since the catalyst took over the world.

“No, no- this has gone too far” Chris mutters, his eyes darting from one side of the room to the next as he collapses further into his seat, overcome with a flurry of realisation toward what he’d allowed to take place. “This has gone- way, way too far” he continues, pushing himself out of the chair as his sister regains her composure, watching the man react to everything that has and still will take place.

“Oh calm down you fucking idiot” Julia commands, watching her brother set his sights upon her as he considers how to respond, “we’re almost finished.” In vehement refusal, Chris shakes his head at the woman’s declaration, realising what time is of the essence and making his call to action as he reaches for the drawer nearest to his leg. Reaching into the empty slot, the doctor reacts curiously to what’s inside, or rather what’s not.

“One step ahead of you, bro” Julia remarks, lifting her brother’s pistol from her side and aiming the barrel at his chest, watching his confused reaction meet her. “Get out from that desk, walk through that door, and join me with the rest of the peacekeepers while we march to the city hall” the woman commands, laying out her request without any doubt that the man will follow willingly.

To the girl’s surprise, Chris’ head only continues to shake as a smile of his own comes on, the refusal to capitulate any further than he already has sparking new life as he leaves behind what he was, setting forward a new leaf. “This isn’t happening anymore” the man remarks, watching Julia’s eyebrows furrow as she finds herself challenged, the doctor across from her taking the headset she’d left face-down on his desk into his hand, “Jaime shouldn’t be chancellor, but neither should you.”

Reaching for the number pad as he lifts the phone to his ear, Chris listens to the hammer pull back on the weapon his sister wields, her warning made resoundingly clear. “I’ve come too far to let you ruin this for me, Chris” Julia declares, steadying her aim at the man’s chest as he pauses his effort, watching her reaction and waiting for her to finish the thought, “you’re either gonna put that phone down, or I’m gonna put you down.”

Met with his choices, Chris pulls his head back for a moment and looks into his sister’s eyes, watching the frenzy that hides behind her pupils as the options are left for him to select from. With the tilt of his head, the doctor’s steady hand keeps a hold of the phone as Julia’s posture remains unchanging, the gleam in his eyes preceding his decision.

“You wouldn’t even on your worst day” Chris replies, making his call before lifting the phone to his ear, reaching the tip of his finger to the number ‘2’ button before halted at the sound of a single gunshot. Struck before the opportunity could present itself, the doctor stumbles backward into his seat, his hand pressing against the bullet wound that had pierced his chest from the weapon his own sister wields, a second shot ringing past his ear and through the window just behind him.

Wincing as the second shot fires off, Chris leans against his desk as he looks toward Julia in shock, the lengths she’s willing to travel in order to maintain her grasp on control exceeding even the boundaries he’d assumed. “I tried” the woman remarks, meeting the man’s eyes before firing a third shot, this striking just a few inches above the man’s heart as he’s propelled back, stumbling away from his desk and toward the shattered window, nothing left to catch him.

His fall too great, Chris stumbles through the shards of glass that remain intact and plummets through the window, returning to earth without a sound before his fall is interrupted by a loud thud, one great enough for his sister to hear from the centre of his office. Letting go of a deep breath, Julia lowers her weapon and returns it to her waistband, putting her actions in the past as she makes for the phone her brother had dropped, lifting it to her mouth and speaking.

“If you’re not dedicated to this revolution- start changing your tune” Julia demands, the altercation broadcast through the building’s loudspeaker in its entirety, “-‘cause I’m not fucking around.”

Slamming the phone back to its receiver, Julia rounds the desk and makes for the exit, leaving a wake of devastation behind as she ventures onto the final stage of her hostile takeover, the fat trimmed from interfering with her assuming control of the Republic she’d been crucial in kickstarting.

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Wasting little time in standing her ground, Kayla takes the firearm from Chevy’s hip and directs the barrel toward Blake, who stands just a few metres away from the chancellor. “Drop the fucking gun!” Willy exclaims, removing his own weapon and taking aim at the woman’s husband as Jaime makes her attempt at regaining control of the situation. “For god’s sake, don’t give them a reason to shoot” the home’s owner remarks, warning the couple that stands before them, “you’ve done enough.”

As the only person unarmed, Chevy takes the conversation’s centre stage, lifting both hands into the air until Jaime’s declaration catches his ear, striking him as odd. “We’ve done-? WE’VE done enough?” the man inquires, looking the woman in the eyes as his head tilts, a smile coming over his face in disbelief, “wait, we’re the traitors!?”

Caught off guard, Kayla looks toward her husband with as much confusion as he continues speaking, the unchanged expression on Jaime’s face insinuating that he’s come to the correct conclusion. “If you’re a peacekeeper, you’re the enemy” Jaime replies, doubling down on her remarks despite the awestruck reaction from those that stand before her at gunpoint.

“Wha-!? Haha! Holy shit, have you lost your fucking mind!?” Chevy exclaims with unrivalled animation, catching himself in a sea of laughter whilst the rest of the room watches on, “you’re funnelling goods to the peacekeepers as we speak, and WE’RE the traitors?” Shaking her head, Jaime tucks her hands into her pockets and looks to the man with curiosity, “what are you talking about?” she asks unimpressed, joining the rest of the room in not seeing what’s funny.

“Well for someone that’s so against a tiny little political group, you seem to be tickled pink at handing them rations under the table!” Chevy remarks, immediately kept from speaking further as a loud voice cuts him off. “Shut your mouth!” Blake orders, taking aim with his weapon and holding it in the man’s direction whilst the chancellor searches for a clearer picture.

“I haven’t been handing them anything, Chevy” the woman replies, the man’s doubt immediately called into question. “Then why send them down to the pub to negotiate for volunteer work for a fair split of the rations? What could you possibly-?” Chevy asks aloud, again cut off by the man whose claim provoked such a volatile response. “I said ‘shut the fuck up’!” Blake barks, prompting the chancellor’s eyes to take toward his direction in confusion.

“Let him speak, Blake” Jaime commands gently, turning back to face the couple before finding surprise in the man’s reply. “No!” the woman’s detail replies, immediately drawing her wide eyes back in his direction as she calls his reply into question. “Excuse me?” the chancellor queries, looking to the side of the man’s face as his visage scrunches, realising who he’d just refused and the mistake that such a response had been.

“Shit” Chevy murmurs, regaining Jaime’s attention just as he does the rest of the room’s, a realisation as strong as Blake’s was now coming over himself, “you have no idea what’s happening, do you?” Calling the question out to his longtime friend, the father-to-be looks the chancellor in the eyes as their focus centres upon each other in the moment of curiosity, her puzzlement continuing to present itself.

“Ms. Morris, don’t listen to him” the head of her security detail requests, keeping the aim of his weapon on Chevy as the chancellor redirects her attention to him. “Blake, shut the fuck up” Jaime replies, watching the man’s eyes press together in regret before her attention recentres upon the man, a squint paid in his direction to request further explanation.

“How else do you think Blake knew we were sitting in on peacekeeper meetings?” Chevy asks aloud, “how do you think he could’ve told you if he hadn’t been there himself?” Shaking her head, Jaime keeps an open mind as she replies through a confused look, “he didn’t, Julia did” the chancellor replies, watching her bewildered expression become mirrored in the man across from her.

“Julia, how did-? How did Julia know?” the man wonders aloud, uncertain how that pieces together before Willy keeps an answer from being provided. “Ms. Morris, they need to be taken into custody” the second in Blake’s command remarks, prompting Jaime to respond with a display of her own. From her boot, Jaime takes her revolver into the young man’s direction, holding it at his head whilst the rest of the room looks on in surprise.

“If another person interrupts Chevy, I’m gonna put a bullet through Willy’s head- and that’s final” Jaime declares, laying down her authority as the instinctive piece of her heart that trusts those she’s branded as a traitor presents itself. “Wait, no- This had nothing to do with you” Chevy mutters beneath his breath, though loud enough for all named participants in the confrontation to hear, “you’ve got no idea what’s happening here.”

“Then stop dancing around the fucking topic and start telling me what I’m missing” Jaime replies, putting her foot down and refusing to give up ground. “You’re missing the fact that you’re surrounded by traitors, and they’re not us” Chevy replies, his words prompting those with guns aimed at the couple to begin worrying about the restriction that the chancellor has placed upon them, refusing the opportunity to cut the man off from spilling the beans on their collective operation.

“Chris told us about what was supposed to happen here. This was the night your little combat friends here were gonna throw you out of power” Chevy explains, his words continuing to make an attempt at breaking through the chancellor’s walls, “Julia was gonna show up, take you into custody, and march to city hall with the peacekeepers she had working as volunteers for the-”

Pausing mid-sentence, Chevy’s lapse in response draws the urge from the woman across from him, her burning desire to know what he was getting at eating away. “They’re working for Julia” the man realises, looking Blake in the eyes as his visage begins to sour, pointing a finger in the man’s direction, “they offered them food, got them to work as volunteers so Julia could use them as a militia to overcome you.”

Squinting her eyes, Jaime looks hard into Chevy’s face, listening to the conclusions he makes whilst keeping a look on Blake from out of the corner of her eye. “The peacekeepers are working for your detail, your detail’s working for Julia, and Julia’s coming to usurp you as chancellor” the man continues, running down the list like a set of bullet points whilst the chancellor latches onto his every word, “and it was all supposed to happen tonight.”

“Bullshit” Willy remarks, losing care over what happens to him now that the can of beans has begun to spill, the bullet he’d been warned would come for him still kept within Jaime’s chamber. “Really? If all of you are here ‘cause Julia told you we were with the peacekeepers, then why isn’t Julia here?” Chevy retorts, passing a glance through the room toward the large group of armed security that lines the mansion, “if all of you were here for us, why bring so much backup?”

“You can’t be trusted and we needed to come prepared” Blake answers, immediately sparking the doubt from Chevy’s mind. “Really? ‘Cause as far as I’m concerned, there’s no one Jaime’s ever been able to trust more than us!” the man barks back, looking the woman in the eyes as his hands fall to each side, one foot placed in front of the other as he slowly approaches the Republic’s chancellor.

“No one else brought a group out to the mountains of Colorado to help her broker a deal with Lancaster. No one else was there by her side when Jordan went down” Chevy remarks, looking the woman in the eyes as he utters every word, watching her doubt begin to slowly lower with each example he lists.

“We made sure Kennedy was safe on that first night. We risked acid rain to keep Eli from putting a knife in her chest. We risked everything to keep Jordan safe from gunfire once the sanctuary went down in flames” Chevy continues, “and I don’t remember seeing any of you at Jordan’s bedside when he passed, but I sure as hell remember being there myself.”

As her eyes turn emotional, Jaime’s guard begins to lower as her wield on the firearm begins to lessen, lowering from Willy as her firearm-holding hand begins to shake. “She had no reason to trust us when we first met, but she did” Chevy continues, finally closing the distance between himself and the chancellor, who now stands just before him, staring up into his eyes as he speaks, “and unlike too many others, we have never betrayed her.”

“You joined the peacekeepers- that was your betrayal” Blake responds, both his weapon and Willy’s still held in Chevy’s face, which turns toward the man upon the calling of him. “We sat in on meetings to understand what it was that they felt was best for the Republic. Anyone arguing that it’s useless to try and understand the point your opponent is coming from is stupid” the man replies, redirecting his focus toward the chancellor as he makes his point, “but our loyalty never wavered. Not once.”

“I’m getting sick of this” Willy proclaims, beginning to draw more ire from the chancellor than the supposed traitors to her cause now do, a side-glance taken in the young man’s direction from his immediate superior. “Jaime, look at me” Chevy requests, pulling the woman’s attention away from the aggravating militant and back toward himself, “we’ve always been there for you and your family. Knowing the peacekeepers on more than a first name basis has never changed our trust in you.”

With a deep breath, the chancellor continues looking the man in the eyes as he proceeds to speak, her conscience weighing heavy as the moment to make the call of a lifetime draws near. “Julia- if not already there- is en-route to city hall as we speak. If you trusted her, you made the wrong call” Chevy explains, taking a single step back before slowly spreading his arms out by each side, “-putting that aside, we’re telling you that we still trust you to make the right one.”

Backing up far enough to rejoin his wife’s side, Chevy leaves the call up for the woman to decide whilst the mother to his child finishes his thought. “So-” Kayla remarks, keeping her aim steady on Blake as the security detail and its many armed supporters watch on, waiting for the scenario to resolve itself in one direction or another, “-tell us that you trust us, too.”

With eyes furrowed, Jaime lowers her weapon from Willy’s direction and pulls her sights away from the couple that stand before her, passing a look toward the many armoured militants that line her home in patient expectation. From the wine rack on one side of her home to the blank wall that conceals her garage on the other, the chancellor takes in the sights of her home from clarity before she can make her call, a look back at the humbling truth she’d been presented with bringing her to earth.

Pressing her lips together, Jaime glances back to the empty wall as she steps away from Blake’s side, slowly approaching Chevy and Kayla with the weapon still held at her side. One foot in front of the other, the chancellor walks into the visual embrace of those she’d spent each day of the new world with as the call she makes settles with her, those that she stands before left waiting for a result.

Passing a look at the open door that stands behind both her subjects in question, Jaime sets her sights on Chevy before lowering her eyes toward Kayla, a single glance at her slight baby bump bring a smile upon the chancellor’s face. With one final sigh, the woman’s eyes refocus upon the expecting mother as her free hand rests upon the woman’s shoulder, a nod of approval given.

“I trust you” Jaime replies, immediately pushing Kayla into Chevy and thrusting them through the open doorway, her revolver centring upon the blank wall across from her wine rack whilst the trigger is pulled. Crashing onto the front lawn with the couple, the chancellor’s weapon discharges a bullet directly through the drywall and into the hefty propane tanker just beyond it, lighting her mansion ablaze in a fiery explosion she just narrowly avoids being caught in.

Soaring into the heavens, a massive ball of flames lights the ground for a brief moment as if it were the sun itself, those unfortunate enough to find themselves caught within the luxury hillside property left without a hope of escaping the initial eruption. Held tight within her husband’s arms, Kayla feels Jaime climb off the pair and assist them back to their feet, trying to aid them in breaking out before the moment proves to have passed.

Hidden within their armoured vehicles, backup security emerges from just beside the home, weapons drawn and military garb adorned to protect from any counterattack has seemingly spelled the end for the fellow militants caught within the initial blaze. “On the ground! On the fucking ground!” one man exclaims, catching the chancellor by surprise as she stands out in front of the expecting couple, sticking her neck out for them just as they had so many times before.

Without a second thought, the men Jaime had employed to serve her now throw her to the ground and lock her in cuffs, treating Chevy and Kayla with similar hostility as the couple are proven to be correct, the plot to bring her down truly unfolding as described. With a few blades of grass sticking to her lip, the chancellor is pulled to her feet and dragged to the nearest car, left to watch on as her friends are treated similarly, no chances taken as her administration appears to crumble.

Looking to the flames shoot out from her home, Jaime watches a few armoured men hurry through her front door with terrible wounds, their status the least of her worries. Setting forth down the road, the chancellor’s lips part to mutter the word “fuck” beneath her breath, the gravity of what’s unfolding only now beginning to settle in, her administrative title becoming less suitable with each second that passes- a new era seemingly on the horizon for the Angelino Republic.

== Dire ==