Sunset Rising

I hadn’t thought too much about Reyes until now. I wondered if he had seen the wedding. Of course he had. The entire Dome saw it. I tried to imagine what it must have looked like on television. Could he tell the wedding was a sham? Or did he think that I betrayed him? I tried to remember how much Summer knew before we were separated. She would have told Reyes that I went with Leisel, but then I never returned to the Pit. It must have been a shock to see me on television standing where Leisel should’ve been beside Jack Ke

I heard Jack get off the sofa and come into the bedroom. How long had we been in the apartment? An hour? More? I sank lower on the floor, hoping he wouldn’t see me. No luck. He walked around the bed and sat on the floor next to me.

“We have about thirty minutes of privacy,” he said.

“I don’t understand. What happens in thirty minutes?” I asked.

Jack held up a pocket-sized computer tablet. “I was eight years old the first time I hacked into the mainframe. There are hidden cameras everywhere, even in this room. Usually they’re not turned on in private homes, but I’m guessing they’ve turned on mine now. Anyway, I learned a long time ago how to super-impose a different feed over what the camera was supposed to be recording. That’s how I got us to Leisel’s apartment this morning without being caught. Right now, if anyone is watching or listening, they’ll see us as we were thirty minutes ago, not as we are now. Privacy.”

“Why do we need privacy?”

“Because I want to know if you’re in on this with Leisel or not.”

His clear blue eyes that I had once thought beautiful seemed cold and calculating. I had a sudden urge to lean forward and claw those eyes out. “The only reason I’m facing certain death is because I got caught between two crazy bourge bent on destroying each other. And you want to know if this is my fault?” My anger was so intense that I didn’t care who he was or whether he had any power left.

“I’m sorry.” He roughly pulled a hand through his hair. “If you weren’t in on it with her, then you have every reason to be upset.” He studied me with his blue eyes, and I leaned farther back against the wall, hoping to somehow evade them. I didn’t trust him. “I want you to know that I’ve never lied to you. Your presence in all of this was… unexpected. I completely misread Leisel. I thought I had her under control.”

“What? Had her under control? That’s not exactly a declaration of love.”

“I never loved Leisel,” he said matter-of-factly.

“So she was right? You were just marrying her so you could become president?”

“Yeah, I was.” Jack laughed. “But it sounds so seedy when you say it.”

“Were you the one that gave her the bruise? Did you lock her in the closet after I left?” I’d been thinking it was Leisel who betrayed Jack, but now…

“No!” Jack shook his head. “I didn’t touch her. I honestly don’t know who did that to her. I just want you to know Leisel is the one who betrayed you, not me. I think she pla

“I’m confused. Why do you care if I believe you betrayed me or not? Why are you so intent on making sure I know Leisel is the guilty one? You’re not exactly i

“I don’t know. Last confession? Unfortunately neither one of us has much longer to live.” He finally dropped his gaze and looked at my hand resting in my lap. I still had on the ring. It looked shiny against the white dress. A sad look came over his face. “I’m guilty of a lot of things, but being a traitor isn’t one of them. The true traitor is Damien Holt.”

“What does President Holt have to do with this? I thought this was between you and Leisel.” I instantly regretted my question. I really didn’t care. Whatever issues there were between Jack and the president were for them to sort out. I was already dealing with the backlash of getting caught between two bourge. I had learned my lesson.

“When Leisel told you I wanted change in the Dome, she wasn’t lying. I talked about it with her a little to see how she would react, but she doesn’t know the entire story. You see, my family heads up a secret organization called Liberty. Our goal is to restore democracy to our government.”

“Restore it? But we have a democratic government.”

“No, we don’t. Holt and his buddies have revised our history so much that most people don’t know the truth. But the Ke

“What truth? What evidence?” My curiosity was aroused despite my desire to stay out of bourge politics. But if I was going to be executed because of a secret organization trying to take control of the Dome, I wanted to at least know who they were.

“Where do I begin? Well… probably at the begi

I couldn’t remember ever hearing about a President Taylor, except for the article I had read in one of Jack’s magazines. The Holts had always held the presidency in the Dome.

“So the Holt family wasn’t in line for the presidency?”

Jack shifted, bringing one of his legs within touching distance of me. I bent my knees and hugged them close to my chest, steering clear of any contact. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Actually, in a democratic government there’s no such thing as being in line for the presidency. In a democracy, the people choose a leader through an election process and, once elected, the leader is expected to represent the people. But the Holts don’t operate that way. What we have under the Holt regime is a dictatorship, which gets passed along from generation to generation through the males in that family.”

“How did General Holt become president then? Was he elected?”

“No. My family has evidence that implicates Edward Holt in the murder of President Taylor and her husband.” He smiled at my look of surprise. There had never been a female president in the Dome. “Vice President Ke

“That caused a huge rift between President Taylor and General Holt. His callous behaviour bothered Taylor so much that she started looking into Holt’s military career, and during her investigation she discovered that Holt had betrayed her. It’s complicated, but I’ll try to explain. In order to launch missiles, two people were required to enter secret codes into a computer that controlled the warheads. It was a safety precaution to make sure that a bomb was never launched accidentally. The two people who held those codes were President Taylor, the leader of our nation, and General Edward Holt, the leader of our military. President Taylor reluctantly agreed to launch the warheads after General Holt informed her that both Russia and Korea had launched theirs at us. But General Holt had lied to her. No one had launched. When she punched in her secret code and activated the missiles, she started World War Three. Countries sent their missiles in retaliation against us, not as an offensive strike. Our Allies launched in our defense, their enemies launched in their defense… and on and on it went until the earth was devastated by a global nuclear war.