Chapter 15
“Have a seat.” Gus motioned to the chair in front of him, and Grey sat. Gus looked around the office, confirmed that no one else was there, and then stood to close the door.
The mole took a moment to click off a couple of switches, then reached under his desk to find something. “Whoa!” Grey cocked his head but didn’t say anything. “Careful there, boy, don’t knock into that desk!” As soon as he said it, Gus, slammed against his desk as hard as he could, then waited a moment. Finally, he sat down and folded his hands on top of it.
“Um, what are you doing?”
“I’m afraid you bumped into my desk and broke my intercom system,” Gus said. “And that’s a shame, because now I have no way of recording this conversation or letting anyone else listen in on it. Please be more careful next time.”
Understanding, Grey nodded slowly. He started to ask why the mole wanted privacy, but something in him told him to just wait a moment. The mole watched him for a long moment, then slowly opened a drawer.
He rummaged around for a moment, stopped to glance around the office yet again, and finally produced a small photo.
“That,” he said, sliding it across the desk, “is your mother. That was back when the first of the Bachmanns came to power.”
Grey grabbed for the photo. In it, he saw his mother as a teenager, only a bit older than he was at the moment. She had a big smile on her face, a wrench in her hand, and was standing with several friends. Grey looked at the faces next to her a little closer.
“Wait,” he said, pointing. “Is that you?”
Gus blushed just a little and looked down. “I had a big crush on her. You’ll have to forgive me. She was something. Beautiful, smart, caring. She helped everyone. No one more than my family.”
“What happened?”
“Well, when the original president took over the state, she ordered that all shifters be detained. No one took animal form for almost a year for fear that they would be arrested on sight. Now, what that president didn’t know was that she was friends with several female shifters, your mother included.”
“My mom knew President Evelyn Bachmann?”
Gus nodded. “She knew her very well. Your mother’s family had raised her just down the street. Back then, the Bachmanns weren’t nearly as wealthy as they are now. Evelyn had just loved your mother, doted on her every moment. But as she rose to power, she turned on shifters first, convincing the humans that we were dangerous and that only she and her family could protect them.”
“What did my mother do?”
“She was one of the first to suggest that shifters offer to work for humans. It was meant to be a gesture of friendship. Even as a very young woman, she understood that it was difficult to hate the shifter who babysat your children or helped you grow a little food. It worked. At least, it did for a while.”
“My family,” Gus continued, “was the first to be offered a chance to work directly with the Bachmann family. My father was so proud. He had one of the first messenger jobs. Then this office was created, and he was asked to run it. Now I handle everything and take care of him.”
Gus smiled, but Grey had a hard time seeing any happiness in that smile. “What happened? Why did the shifters and the humans separate?”
“The change got worse. The climate got hotter, the food all got harder to grow, the water started to dry up. We went from having big, beautiful rivers to just little trickles that threatened to disappear at any moment. Before the big well-digging machines came around, humans and shifters alike were reduced to drinking mud.
“Despite our hard work, the shifters were made into a symbol of negative change, a horrible future. No matter what we did, the humans and the Bachmanns pushed us away and kept us at arm’s length. President Evelyn passed a decree that any shifter could be made to work for free at a human’s command and that pay could only be earned at the palace or from other shifters. That threw everyone into poverty. Your family was spared as mine was, but most shifters weren’t so lucky.”
The two new friends sat quietly for a moment, thinking about a past that would never be fully recovered. Finally, Grey asked “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because,” Grey said, putting his soft, fleshy hand over Grey’s hard and rough one, “I want you know that you come from brave and resolute shifters. You have social change in your blood. I see the way Harper looks at you. Be brave for her. The two of you could really do something.”
Grey sat back in his chair, exhausted. He could picture his mother standing over him, one hand on his shoulder and smiling the way she always had when she’d needed to be brave. Gus reached under his desk and felt around for a moment, then clicked on a switch.
“Well, Grey, you have your instructions. Keep your head down, say as little as possible, and just keep doing your job. I trust you can handle that?”
“Of course. Thanks, Gus.” He made sure to speak clearly and with enthusiasm so that anyone listening would feel confident that everything was clicking along. He stood and walked out of the office, leaving Gus behind.
As Grey walked, he saw security guards ducking and running through the halls. Several LEOs with massive, black guns crossed his path. He stopped moving and listened to what they were saying, but they spoke in so much secret code and so many acronyms that he was unable to gather any details.
He saw a fellow flier across the hall from him started to walk towards her, but was stopped by yet another group of gun-toting officers. He quickly ran across before another group could appear.
“Hey,” he said quietly, “what’s going on?”
She grabbed his arm. “It’s the compound. All the shifters who had to work today went crazy and started attacking the humans in charge. The president has ordered an attack.”
“No!” He started to run after the soldiers, but the woman grabbed him and held him with a surprising force.
“You can’t go,” she told him. “You have to stay here. It’s the only way you’ll survive.”
“But my dad!”
She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I don’t know what to tell you.” She turned to watch the soldiers drive away down the mountain, then wiped a tear from her cheek. “I had better get going.”
“No, wait!” Grey grabbed at her, but she shook him off and clicked away on her high heels. Grey stood in the empty hallway and listened to the sound of motors roaring down and away toward his home. He knew he could shift and fly over to the compound, but the sight of watching his only remaining family be killed stopped him. What could he do? If he fought them, he would be murdered as well.
He thought of his mother and her attempts to make peace. He thought of Harper and Gus. He looked to the exit full of security checks and then back to the doors leading to Bachmann’s offices. “I’m so sorry, Dad,” he thought and walked through Bachmann’s massive, granite doors.
***THE END***