THEY — Chapter 21 — Planning
This is chapter 21 of my book “THEY”. If you are finding it for the first time, please begin with Chapter 1 (or check the INDEX )! When you’re done, check out more of my stories on my MEDIUM profile: Caralynn Scott — Medium
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CHAPTER 21 — Planning
“How long do you think we have?” Digit looked at Navlin with eyes that spoke emphatically with both worry and hope. “Months? Weeks? Days? We need to act quickly to get them out of there safely.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Navlin spat back with more furor than they intended. The politician paused and rethought their approach. “Sorry, Digit. We have hours, perhaps a few days at most before they begin to take the group of them, and we had best have our plan in place before they start making them disappear…” their sentence trailed off as Navlin could not find the strength to continue. All of their resolve was being channeled into completing the task at hand. “What is the word from our contact at the facility?”
“We have received a status report from them,” Napthal chimed in, “but it largely updates us on the status of each of the ‘guests’. There is not a lot of information regarding the plan.
“Schedules have been adjusted and we know we have team members in the right places. The wild cards are the white coats who we know we can’t trust. Getting them out of the way is the difficulty. If one of them catches on to what we are doing, the whole plan will fail, and we’ll damage our organization as well.”
Navlin reclined in the stiff wooden chair and surveyed the team. They were all good at what they did, and they knew the plan they had conceived together was a good one. Still, there were so many pieces that had to fall into place for it all to work, and there was still a lot of work to do to reach the end goal. Nothing was guaranteed.
Stage one was already being implemented and Navlin hoped that it was working. They were relatively sure it would be fully activated by the time Jennic was removed from the population of the facility — something they knew was an eventual certainty.
“What about Aklavar?” Navlin asked Diggar, who was monitoring the news feeds and correlating what they heard with the information they were receiving via the network. There were massive discrepancies between the two, and those discrepancies could be tied back to the regional leader, but only if one knew exactly what they were looking for. To the casual observer, Aklavar was as altruistic as a saint and as self-deprecating as a sacrificial lamb.
“They are their usual slippery self,” Diggar contributed, “but they don’t seem to have any idea what is happening. So far, they seem to be operating as normal — that is, continuing to be duplicitous and single minded.”
By some miracle, Digit and Digger had managed to get a camera into the regional governor’s office space and created a protected feed that they were able to monitor from the confines of their bunker. Even now they were able to see the images of the room on a corner monitor. The governor sat at their desk reviewing reports on their tabletop holographic display, their angular face sharply focussed on their task. Their grin stretched across their face, baring a morbidly creepy resemblance to a smiling cadaver. Navlin was not sure which they were more disturbed by — their visage, or their cunning mind.
Navlin had encountered Aklavar in person several times. Their duties having taken them to conferences where both had work in common. They had even spoken once or twice about municipal policy. Navlin did not know for certain if Aklavar was aware that their child was being held, though they often wondered how Aklavar might view the facilities. Would they be honest with their own policies which used the place as a means to eliminate an element of society they saw as undesirable? Or would they actually see them the way they portrayed them to the public — as healing facilities? Navlin was pretty sure it would be the former, though Aklavar might have been deluding themselves as much as everyone else.
“Is stage two ready yet?” Navlin inquired.
“Not yet.” Napthil chimed in. “The children may have to improvise on their own for a bit. It will be much more difficult to influence what happens in the Camps, though the same can be said for the Enfo’s and Aklavar. He has no more insight into what happens there than we do.”
“And stage three?”
“We are making progress on that. There are a lot of moving parts there, and it will require us to prepare our offspring through stage 2. If we cannot influence them, we may simply have delayed their inevitable extinction. But we are more than hopeful that we can pull this off.”
Navlin looked around the room. He had not known this crew for very long, but in the time, they had been together they had accomplished a great deal. History would either paint them as dangerous insurrectionists, or liberators. Frankly Navlin would rather be forgotten by history as long as their children were safe.
They breathed in deeply and let out a long and satisfying sigh of relief. “Win or loose, this is going to be epic. And no matter how much of the plan we actually accomplish, Acklavar is going to shit his pants.”
