AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We’re not coming out of anywhere, you bastard,” hissed Malieka. “Your System is ours. We are in every inch of those servers.”
The Governor’s expression sank for a second, but then, he laughed again.
“You think you won?” he chuckled. “You foolish vermin, you think you can scare me like this? I know how the System works! It is only controlled by the Core, and I am the Core! The fact that you are in it doesn’t change anything! I am the man in charge! Even Prometheus cannot stop my doing! Every single new system that is implemented has to be validated by the Core’s citizens, and you have no say in this! Their SINs are not corrupted, all it takes is one vote, and all of you will be kicked out, the System will be reset, and all that hard work of yours will have been for nothing! I will be the only one left! I was elected by the Core’s citizens! I rule over all of the Core, and as soon as I tell them, you all will be hunted down like the criminals you are!”
“Yeah, you know, I wouldn’t be so sure about that, old man,” chuckled Greed.
The windows displaying the hackers all disappeared, one after the other, freeing the windows and were now just blank. The Governor frowned, staring around the disappearing tabs, completely lost, until one of the window panels changed. Instead of becoming a window, this one was showing a surveillance camera of this very room. Eden glanced that way too. They could both see the Governor’s stunned expression, visibly unable to understand. Still, he kept staring, and the nervousness was clear in his eyes. The old man wasn’t gloating anymore. Another window was replaced with his face again, another angle this time. One by one, all the panels were gradually replaced by live footage of the room’s surveillance cameras, showing him from different angles. The only window that remained was the one with Nebty in it, staring down at him as if she wanted to watch this until the very end.
“This one’s for the Edge, you piece of shit,” she groaned.
“You... So what if you hacked the cameras in this room?!” he shouted. “You can’t do anything to me!”
“Oh, we didn’t hack those cameras,” chuckled Nebty, relishing in his panic. “Pan gave us access to them. We wouldn’t have just gone through all that trouble for the sake of seeing your ugly face!”
“W-what...”
“On the way here, I asked Pan to record everything happening in this room in real-time,” said Eden, “and then, he gave the Edge access to all the cameras here. So they could broadcast everything.”
“B-broadcast...”
The Governor’s face sunk, bit by bit. He kept turning around to see his own shocked face, plastered in high quality on every panel of the walls. The sheer panic could be seen on each screen, the truth suddenly dawning on him. Then, one panel changed. Instead of a large version of the live footage of the room, one could see a blonde woman, standing in her living room with a shocked expression, her hands covering her mouth. The background showed the sparkling white furniture and green plants of a house in the Core as if they needed extra confirmation as to who that woman was. Right next to her, the panel changed, splitting in two to show more houses, one with a family seated around their table and their baffled expressions riveted toward him. The other one was a middle-aged couple on their couch with a similar shocked expression.
One by one, all the windows changed, splitting into dozens of squares, all live footage of his citizens’ homes, with those people staring in his direction with utter shock on their faces. There wasn’t a single person not staring at their screens with faces of disgust or horror. Some were even crying already.
“N-no,” the Governor muttered. “No, no...”
“It’s too late,” said Eden. “They heard and saw everything. …No more lies, no more secrets, Governor.”
“What... What have you done?!” screamed the Governor, furious.
“What should have been done long ago,” declared Eden. “Showing the truth to your citizens. The kind of rotten old man they are all voting for and hiding behind.”
The Governor kept spinning around, his eyes wide open and staring at all the screens in shock and disbelief. Whether he believed it or not, it was far too late. Eden glanced around too. All of the citizens on the screen looked so shocked, there was no way they hadn’t heard and seen it all. The cameras corrupted by the Edge were zooming in on the Governor’s furious and shocked face, following his every step. They had never shown Eden at all, so even now, the citizens had no idea what she looked like, they had most likely only heard her voice. Eden took a deep breath, calming down a little. This was it. Pandora’s box was now wide open, and the citizens of the Core were exposed to the truth. Not only that, but while they stood in this tower, the rest of the Edge was working hard to restore what was shown from the streets and establish the truth, not the modified images. Eden watched the shock in every one of those people’s eyes. With relief, she saw fear, anger, shock, disgust, and even sadness. Many of them were rendered speechless or crying. It was one brutal awakening for sure, after the decades they had all spent thinking only good things happened in this tower, and thinking of the Suburbs as only a zone for criminals... Yet, their leader had just exposed his own crimes, including the murder of countless children, and their own unborn babies. Perhaps that explained why some couples or middle-aged people looked more shocked than others.
“I-it’s... It’s a lie!” he shouted. “They are lying! Th-they modified my voice! I-I didn’t...”
“It’s going to be hard to get out of that one, Governor,” said Nebty. “We’re not done here.”
The screens showing the Governor changed to images of the ravaged Suburbs this time. Eden realized those shots were most likely taken from the Overcrafts or bots they had hacked; it wasn’t like surveillance cameras, but recorded images, the time stamps proving they were from less than two hours ago. The Edge didn’t have anything to hide, and they truly showed everything: the blown-up buildings, the bodies scattered around the streets. The Core’s destroyed robots, those who fired against them in the previous fight. Then, they showed the worst part: the Hell Bomb detonating in the south. Eden forced herself to watch too, the brutal end of the Dragon and the Eagle. It was just a large flash on the screen, followed by a cloud of thick, dark smog. And then, as the wind gently blew away the darkened air, they saw it: the void left by the Hell Bomb, with only blasted buildings, and sinister shadows, like silhouettes burnt on the ground. There were no bodies left, but one could easily see where they had stood, just seconds before their horrible end. It was so terrible, just to imagine that someone’s whole body could literally be blasted until there was nothing left.
“...You did this,” hissed Eden, glaring at the Governor. “You did this without even batting an eye.”
“N-no, it’s fake! It’s fake!”
“Your citizens can just go out of their houses to see if it’s real or not,” she retorted. “All it takes is for them to go outside, into their streets, and see for themselves. We brought the fight to your turf, and they will see for themselves that their screens were showing nothing but lies, like everything else you’ve ever shown them!”
“Stop it!” he shouted. “Stop it! …I will hunt you all down! I’ll eradicate the Suburbs! You are nothing but vermin that’s been surviving on our backs all this time! You don’t get a say in this! The Core doesn’t need people like you, we were showing mercy to let you live off our scraps for this long! How dare you do this?!”
His anger got him shouting, sweating, and panicking. He was stumbling around, his eyes going in every direction as if he couldn’t decide which screen was the least worst to watch. Nebty and the rest of the Edge were leaving them no time to think at all. Bit by bit, they were showing absolutely everything about the destruction and death going on. The screens were now split into dozens of separate windows, showing either reality or the Core’s citizens still shocked by what they were discovering. From time to time, someone would run out of the frame, and Eden guessed they were following her advice of going out to see for themselves.
“...You!”
As if he had regained his senses, the Governor’s eyes suddenly went back to her, filled with anger. He lifted a finger in Eden’s direction, slowly stepping away, toward his desk.
“This is all your doing. This is all your fault! I showed mercy already, but your wretched father had to betray me, and you had to pursue his madness even further! You and your brother should have never been allowed to live! All because I was lenient! You’re what happens when a single mistake gets out!”
“I’m what happens when one of your citizens has their own free will, you old bastard,” hissed Eden. “Father knew about all the wrongdoings you were desperate to hide, and he tried to get the truth out too. Every single person who found out about this refused to follow you any longer, didn’t they?! You’re just a cunning, selfish, lying, old scoundrel!”
