Page 111 of Anarchy Chained: Alpha Thomas

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - THOMAS

“Are you ready?” Uzi screams the words at the top of his lungs. We’re in a large warehouse in the Merchant District. All around us are hundreds of people dressed in black holding up baseball bats and tire irons. They scream back, waving their clubs in the air, nothing but confirmation in their echoing replies. Yes, they’re ready.

Sullivan and I have retreated to his safe place. The place he’s been hiding for fifteen years. The place I put him.

I’m sorry, I say.

Don’t worry about it, he says back. If you hadn’t put me here, we’d have nowhere to hide. We’d be dead in all ways but one. But we’ve still got a chance, Thomas. We’re not out of this game yet.

He’s right. If he didn’t have this little compartment we could retreat to, we’d be slaves. Stuck here in our own mind, watching Cyan and Uzi make us do… well… What do you think they’re gonna do?

I think we’re about to find out.

“In exactly thirty minutes,” Uzi yells. The whole place goes quiet to hear his instructions. “Every Sky and Spy device in this city will start a protocol. Courtesy of Alpha Thomas and friends.”

Shit, Sullivan says.

Fuck, I reply. They’re gonna use our own tech to get what they want.

Can’t Sheila stop it?

No, I say. It’s all automated until the program stops running.

So it’ll work like we planned?

But before I can explain the finer details of what Lincoln and Sheila have set up, Uzi explains his side of things.

“In thirty minutes, every device in Cathedral City will start flashing. And you, my friends, will be the first to experience what revolution really means.”

Tell me you didn’t use Lincoln’s flashing lights to reprogram people.

We did. Well, he did. Asshole. I told Case to keep him under control and now look, all that shit he did last year is what’s finally gonna bring us down.

“Now the Alphas,” Uzi continues, “thought they’d use this little scheme to open eyes and make people see the truth. But we’re not Alphas, are we?”

“No!” his minions scream.

“We’re Prodigy!” he yells.

“Prodigy!” they scream.

How? Sullivan asks. How the hell did all these people come out of Prodigy when you blew it up fifteen years ago?

I never saw it coming, I realize. I remember the flyers all over the city. I remember the news articles. The parents, desperately seeking their missing children.

All those missing kids didn’t go missing. They became part of the Prodigy program.

Sullivan is silent. What can he say? We missed it. We all missed it. Prodigy was never gone. It was here, right under our noses, this whole time.

“And we’ve got the Red Robber on our side!” Uzi continues.

Ecstatic, raving cheers at that little revelation. Hundreds of people are shouting and screaming as…

Fuck. Sullivan and I think it at the same time.

You have got to be kidding me, I say.

Randy Shits walks out and joins us at the front of the warehouse. Smirking at me like he’s the most evil genius on the planet. He’s dressed in black from head to toe, just like everyone else except Uzi and me. Motherfucker even has a goddamned logo splashed across his chest. A red anarchy symbol outlined in blue.