“This is it,” the woman at the checkout says; she has a milk carton in her hand. “It’s that news story I was telling you about.”
The lady at the checkout stops what she is doing and turns up the volume on the television to the right of her.
It’s playing the news, and the volume is turned up way past normal. It’s loud enough that the woman in front of me has stopped digging for her loyalty card. Everyone in the immediate vicinity has gone still.
The view pans across the Council building. There is a crowd gathered there.
Placards bob above their heads. GO HOME. DRAIG FOR DRAIG. NO MORE MAINLAND. HUMANS OUT. One of them, painted in big angry red letters, reads OUR ISLAND. OUR RULES. THIS IS NOT YOUR HOME.
My stomach drops.
What the heck?
Really?
A reporter is on the screen now; she’s wearing a suit and holding a microphone. The camera shifts so she’s framed against the mass of shifters behind her.
They’re chanting, “Humans go! Humans go!” over and over.
The reporter leans in toward the mic, voice raised to be heard over them.
“…now into its third hour, and as you can see behind me, the numbers have only grown. What started this morning as a gathering of maybe fifty shifters is now estimated at several hundred. The protesters are demanding, among other things, the immediate cessation of the Tributes program, the withdrawal of all Mainland humans from Draig soil, and a full independent inquiry into what they are calling decades of medical manipulation. Council officials have so far declined to comment. I’m going to try to speak with one of the organizers.”
The camera swings. The reporter picks her way up the steps toward an older male shifter. He’s holding a megaphone at his side. The camera zooms in on him.
“Sir, I’m with Draig Live. Can you tell our viewers what your message is today?”
He stares at the camera, looking animated.
“Our message is simple. We want the humans out. Every last one of them. This is not their island, and it never was. For too long, we’ve been told that they’re here to help. Now we know what they’ve been doing to us, and we want them gone. Every last one. We want them to go back home to the Mainland, where they belong. If the Council won’t do it, we will.”
“Sir, are you calling for violence?”
“I’m calling for our island back and whatever it takes to make it happen.”
So violence, then.
What the hell?!
The camera holds on his face for a beat too long, then cuts back to the reporter, who looks shaken.
“There you have it. Strong words from one of the lead organizers. The mood here is… Well, it’s tense. We’ll continue to bring you updates as this develops. It’s clear that?—”
“I told you it was insane,” the lady at the counter says.
“You weren’t wrong,” the cashier answers as she starts scanning the rest of the groceries. Nobody in the line is talking. Somebody further back clicks their tongue.
I look over at Ridge, and he is frowning heavily.
I spend almost all of my waking hours trying to keep shifters alive. I’ve dedicated my life to Draig.
I understand why they’re angry. I get it completely. I mean, the news about the vaccinations broke wide open a week or two ago. It’s still raw. The Mainland government did a terrible thing. We’ve been in disbelief over the whole thing. What happened was unforgivable. I have zero defense, but I had nothing to do with it, just like most humans on this island. I’m willing to betthat most humans on the Mainland had no idea…that they are still clueless about what is really going on.
“They’re right, if you ask me,” a male voice rumbles behind me. “About time somebody said it.”
I turn.
The shifter behind me is almost as big as Ridge, and he looks pissed off. I can’t blame him.
