‘Send.’
Titus stood on one side, holding his hand to the touch screen. Thorne was on the other, and for a moment, everyone seemed frozen. Then Zelda looked over her shoulder and met Kaiden’s eyes.
“You should do it,” she said.
“I guess, uh, this is it, then? Huh?” Kaiden asked. He stepped up to the button and in one smooth movement, pressed his thumb to it. It depressed with a soft click. A moment later, a message appeared in his vision.
**Full System Alert! Full System Alert!**
This is a Warden Corps All-Frequencies Broadcast.
Players of Nova Online:
The Party has been lying to you.
The Party has been abusing its power.
You’ve suspected it for a long time, but anyone who brings it up is silenced. Silenced, like our friend, Fred Bernstein.
He was killed for his work uncovering evidence of the Party’s abuse of power. In his memory, we send you this file. It’s his life’s work: an extensive database chronicling the Party’s crimes.
If you’re tired of living in fear, then now is the time to take action.
We won’t tell you what to do with this information. The truth should speak for itself. All you have to do is listen.
- Kaiden, Zelda, Titus, and Thorne
>> Download file?
**End Full System Alert**
Epilogue
It was seven o’clock in the evening on a warm summer’s night when Kaiden Moore sat down at his desk. Outside, the cicadas were singing and a cool breeze slipped through his cracked window, bringing with it the smell of the woods; of earth and pine, and just a tinge of damp. Just enough to send his thoughts back to those last few days in what had once been their home sweet swamp bunker.
It hadn’t taken long for Bernstein’s database to saturate through every level of media. A day to go viral online. A week to dominate the newsfeeds. Two weeks and it’d flooded into every home, every head, every mind. There’d been no escaping the database. It had been all anyone was talking about.
The injustices of the Party had been laid bare to the people, and then the people had passed judgment. There’d been protests, of course. In some areas they’d turned to violence as the Party had fought to subdue them. But in most areas, there’d been no such resistance.
Kaiden had seen it himself. Thorne had always said it, but he’d never quite believed it – not until he saw it himself. The Party hadn’t been rotten to the core. The majority of it had been made up of honest people. Just people doing their best to earn a salary and live their lives. When the news came out, when they’d learned what had really been happening, there was no other option: they’d turned on those responsible and the Party had collapsed. From within and from without. Kaiden had never expected it to go so swiftly, but then again, he’d never expected a lot of what had happened in the past year.
In the chaos that’d followed, some of the higher-ups had tried to hang on to power. But they hadn’t lasted long. Then there’d been others who, like Werner, had fled. Some, like Moran, had simply disappeared. An unfortunate reality of the chaos of the transition. The Party had fallen to pieces, and in the mess that followed there was no time for a coordinated effort to arrest those responsible for its injustices. But they hadn’t been forgotten.
It’d taken some time, but when things had finally settled down – when the country had achieved a semblance of stability and a transitional, democratic government had begun to emerge – one of its first actions had been to begin the investigation to track down Werner, and Moran, and everyone else who’d been in their inner circle.
Thorne had insisted Kaiden and the others stay with her at the bunker until things had truly settled down, and until the official word had come down that they were all unanimously cleared of the crimes the Party had accused them of. The charges had been dropped and their records cleared. In the eyes of the law, they’d once again become ordinary citizens. Or something like that.
Kaiden leaned back in his computer chair and smiled at the memory. Not because of what they’d been offered, but because of what they’d chosen to do with it.
After the world learned their story, their futures had looked set for fame and fortune. But they’d turned it down. They’d each asked to be spared the spotlight, declined the interviews and book deals. After all, they hadn’t been heroes. They hadn’t been rebels. They’d just been people who, when given the opportunity, had done what was right. They’d been ordinary citizens in extraordinary circumstances, they’d insisted. But if one thing was certain now it was that they would never be ‘ordinary citizens’ ever again. Especially not in Nova Online.
By the time NextGen had brought the full – and Party warden-free – game back online, Kaiden, Titus, Zelda, and Thorne had become legends. They’d also never logged on to those accounts again.
Kaiden had seen the rumors, of course. They’d run rampant. Hardly a week had gone by without someone claiming to have seen them in a far corner of Nova. Battling against a voidspawn army all on their own, or picked up just on the edge of a scanner’s range, flying the Veritas II off into uncharted space. But those were just rumors, and he knew better than anyone that they weren’t true.
To the outside world, it seemed as if their accounts had simply disappeared. Or, Kaiden thought, perhaps some suspected that something else had happened. That the accounts had quietly been turned into trophies and sold for a hefty sum each to a well-meaning if slightly odd collector.
Out of game, their stories were a bit harder to keep secret.
Titus had gone back to his family to help
