It was a lot to think about. The Rebellion being allied with Alicastair Henson, the #5 Royal. Us being able to get ourselves and our hands on internal intel that was being passed along from the hands of the Officials to the Authorities with ease with the blackmail of just one Elite. It was almost as if they were letting us get the information. It was too easy to let us have it-- there must have been some more challenges than this...
"Hey."
Just in the middle of my thought, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see the shorter female with long blonde hair.
"I'm Kira. Chief of Internal Affairs."
She reached out her hand to shake mine, and I did the same. When she smiled, her teeth seemed to have an everlasting white that shone right through me.
"I'm Laura. I got here yesterday."
"Welcome to Erik's Housing. Make yourself at home."
She turned around to show me around a bit more, while I saw some stares coming from Clark and Lucas. I could feel their glares seeming to shoot right through the back of my head as I walked off with Kira.
"Eh. Don't mind the people you can feel staring at you right now. They'll go away soon enough."
After being lead back down into the first floor of the building, and into the Planning Room, she grabbed a stack of papers that was over in the corner of the room. Almost as if weaved throughout them, were large blue pieces of paper-- they must be the blueprints of the area that she was willing to show me.
"These are all of the articles on each building we own, as well as the building models updated as of currently. We also store them on a personal hard drive which is kept in a safe lock in Mr. Copwin's office."
Kira went through and flipped through all of the pages faster than I could blink before stopping on one rather large photo of a sign over the top saying: "Welcome to the Company." I watched for the first time as I saw Kira smile, but something that was genuine.
"Was that your first house?"
She turned and looked at me, a longing look in her eyes seeming to hope that time had stopped or had gone in reverse. After looking down at her shoes for a while, she sighed for a minute.
"It was-- or at least I wanted it to be."
I tilted my head to the side a bit.
"What do you mean? Usually when you get assigned you stay until you either get transferred or killed."
She continued to examine the floor as she spoke about the past with her family and her house.
"I lived in a private estate with Keeneth and his family for the first 20 years. It was a blast. We had a retired Shiki come by and teach us everything that we'd learn in a normal function house, and we'd play and pretend that we were in an actual Function house, while Keeneth would pretend to be in his usual Induction House. It lasted for a while like that while Erik took over the fundings and hid us properly until we were found out by an Official who was snooping around the quarters. He'd just shown up at the house-- and decided that we all needed to leave. Of course, he'd never gotten to see anyone inside, so he just ordered us to all leave or he would inform the Authorities that something else was going on. We were worried and--"
I placed my hand on her shoulder to comfort her, the floor beneath her now wet with her tears. The sobbing was uncontrollable coming from her, and it was like she had been pent up forever-- unable to tell this to anyone.
"Why didn't you say anything?"
She looked at me with red eyes, still blurred by her tears. Her brows furrowed into a frown, and then she placed her face back down into her hands.
"I didn't want people to think differently of me."
Then it made me realize. The entire reason why she wasn't able to tell anyone was because everyone else was having such a hard time going through the Function House, the Induction House, the Bidding, all of the comments that were thrown at you. It built you up as a character. But how she was built up was different. She came from pure survival on the run from the System, the Officials, the Authorities, and the Elites. She was the kind of toughness that the Shiki were trying to get out of all of the Objects during the Function House before the Biddings.
"Why don't you show me some of what you do now? I've heard you got more leads than that husband of yours you call 'Blueberry…'"
She giggled and took a few shuddery breaths before looking up from her palms.
"Oh, him… well what I do actually supports his work. I'm the Chief of Internal Affairs, so what I do is to inform him of the status of all of his superiors. With him being the Head of Internal Affairs, we kind of go hand in hand. Every time he's got a problem with someone in his department, he sends that person or group of people over to me, and I deal with them."
At this point, a smile had crept across her face and her giggles got more intense.
"What do you mean… deal with them…"
She then shot her eyes up to me and stopped laughing, finally getting serious. I noticed that her hands had begun rumiging through the papers on the desk once more to find something unknown.
"It's this."
She held up the familiar picture of a warehouse that I remembered ever so clearly. It was the same one that was used by the Authorities to do the Abductions ever since 5 years ago. They had stopped because of some Royal buying out the sector.
"We take them to this warehouse— I'm sure you're familiar with it. We've got the whole torture setup just for looks, but once they actually get seated and strapped in, we just play a film. This film in the Rebellion's terms is also known as the Official's and Authoritarian Fails."
She proceeded in explaining how the film went on, and how it basically exposed the secrets of the System, the Officials, the Authorities, as well as the Elites being blackmailed by low-class objects. Once people had seen it, it was plenty for them to trust the Rebellion. Not only that, but even having a video like that and being able to do the things they do only added on to the effects of the their power. Most of the people that came and went to that warehouse probably had no other choice than to submit.
"Wanna see something else cool?"
I nodded to see her gleam and move in a rush to find another folder. Papers were sent flying as she went in search of the folder through a rather large stack of unsorted paper. Suddenly, her hand shot up holding a bright blue folder.
"This is Erik's personal collection—"
She giggled as she continued to read the contents of the folder, almost falling over in excitement. At this point, I was a bit worried as to what I might see.
"Day 01: This Rebellion thing might actually work. We've got over 500 people on board with us right now, as well as one Royal that is funding us."
I stopped smiling and thought for a moment. A ROYAL? What kind of crazy shit was happening in the early ages of the Rebellion?! I paused as I continued to listen— no wonder she was so excited to read this…
"I'm going to skip to Year 30, Day 5 where things get really saucy. Year 30, Day 05: We've started recruiting straight from the Function Houses now. We hired an older Object that was retired from being with the Elites and serving the Royals for over 20 years, and no she's on our side. I saw her yesterday— she's beautiful."
"Wait stop— Erik fell in LOVE?!"
"Yeah, and what's more, she was the assassin who trained here, and managed to kill the 5,000 Officials to make that statement over 20 years ago. Afte she died, she left a note saying that she did that because she loved Erik. She of course never mentioned the Rebellion— considering if the Officials or any of the Authorities got a hand of it. That's why there was a huge screw up in the company years later because some of the Authorities found out and somehow thought he knew Jenna."
This was so much to take in. I placed my hand on my head and backed up a little bit.
"So what you're saying is— not only was Jenna the one who caused the Great Kill, but Erik was kind of the whole driving force behind it? And how in the hell is Erik still alive right now?!"
She smirked at me, seeming to get where I was coming from.
"This is where his part in blackmailing the Elites came in really good handy. You've heard about the black mail of the 50 Elites, but what you haven't heard of is the part where he actually trained 20 of them. Erik somehow managed to con himself into the System and be an instructor for an entire year and teach a class of 20 Elites during selections."
My mouth seemed to be pried open at this, and I could only stare blankly off into space. There was so much that Erik had already against the System that he might as well take over.
"Since Erik already has it all, then why doesn't he take over now?"
"Because he doesn't have the people. You see, the people coming out of the Function House right now are actually the hardest ones to deal with. They have the strongest opinion of the System, being that they've taken the Shiki's words to heart, and they haven't seen much yet. It's only fair they think that way. That's why his next step is to change the Shiki and the Function House process. We've been working on ways to make it work, but so far no ways have made it seem the same without teaching them the older material. This is partially where you come in."
"I mean, I know quite a lot about how the Function House works, maybe I could figure something out."
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