Chapter 343: They Have to Pay
"You didn’t have to come, you know," I said.
We’d already left the secured perimeter behind us, the familiar sounds of the community fading at our backs as we moved west into quieter, emptier streets.
"Didn’t have much of a choice in the matter," Maribel replied, eyes moving across the street ahead.
"Really?" I glanced at her. "You strike me as someone who could tell Marlon no if she really wanted to."
She wasn’t the type to just fall in line. That much I’d figured out about her early on. She had her own opinions, her own edges, and she wasn’t shy about either. If she’d wanted to plant her feet and refuse, I was reasonably confident she could have managed it without much difficulty.
But she hadn’t. And this wasn’t the first time I’d noticed her defer to Marlon specifically.
Maribel caught the implication in what I’d said without me needing to spell it out. She went quiet for a moment, something shifting in her expression into more serious.
"He saved my life," she said. "When Atlantic City got overwhelmed, when everything fell apart all at once." She didn’t add anything to it, didn’t frame it or explain it further.
"I see," I said, and left it at that.
It was obvious there was more to it than those few words covered, there always is with something like that but her face had done something I rarely saw on Maribel, something quieter almost sad, and I wasn’t going to push into it. Some things you just let people carry the way they need to carry them.
We walked in silence for a few steps before she shifted the subject.
"Why didn’t you bring any of your group with you?" She asked.
"Sydney, Christopher and Cindy already headed out earlier on their own thing," I said. "And Rachel, I’d rather she stays back to keep an eye on Rebecca and Daisy."
I would say I wanted Rachel to be there since Kunta was up there and she was the eldest and could handle things in case.
There was also Ivy of course.
The thought came in quietly and stuck there. Since Mei’s kidnapping, I barely was able to speak and see her.
I mean, in that aspect like me I knew she was rather the introvert type but it seemed different than that.
Was something going on with her?
I hadn’t actually seen her today. When had I last properly seen her?
I needed to talk to her. If something was eating at her, if it was about Mei, about my decision not to hand over Lucy, then I owed her a conversation, not silence. Especially if she was sitting alone somewhere quietly furious at me and I was just letting it fester.
I added it to the growing list of things I was carrying around in my head and kept walking.
"How did your group all end up together?" Maribel asked beside me then. "Same school or something?"
"Not exactly. I’m from a different school entirely. Christopher, Cindy, Mei, Rebecca and Daisy all went to Lexington Charter. And Rachel—" I smiled slightly. "You probably already know, but she’s Rebecca’s older sister."
Maribel’s brow shifted. "Lexington Charter... that sounds familiar actually."
"Private school. One of those serious, old-money institutions," I said. "They might not lead with it, but Christopher and the others come from significant families. The kind with weight behind their names."
"I had a feeling," she said, nodding slowly. "What about the other one, the dark-haired one?"
I smiled a little at how she said it. She clearly had limited patience for Sydney’s particular brand of unpredictable energy, and it showed in the careful way she avoided using her name.
"That’s Sydney," I said. "She was a year ahead of me at my school. We got out together when everything started."
"Wasn’t Emily from your school too?" Maribel asked.
"Yeah," I nodded. "I left her there with another group while I went to check on my mother, to see if she was still alive." I heard myself trail off as the memory of my mother surfaced back painfully.
I stopped the thought where it was.
"Sorry," Maribel said, without making it into anything more than that.
"Don’t be," I said, shaking my head. "I’m not the only one who lost people that day. Not even close."
"No," she agreed quietly. "None of us are."
"What about you?" I said, shifting the conversation. "You should’ve been in college around now, right? How old are you?"
"Asking a woman her age is taboo," she said immediately.
I glanced at her sideways. She didn’t look like someone who’d spent much time being precious about things like that, but alright.
She shrugged a second later anyway.
"Twenty-two. And yes, I was in college."
"Were you there when Atlantic City got hit?" I asked.
"No. Thank God, no." Something moved briefly behind her eyes. "I never saw any of my classmates again after everything started. I don’t think many of them made it. Everything happened so fast, there was barely any warning, barely any time to process what was even occurring before it had already happened." She paused. "One day things were normal. Then they just weren’t, and they never were again."
"Yeah," I said. "We were sold out. That’s the only honest way to say it. Handed over for the comfort of whoever had enough money and connections to buy themselves a way out."
"I still can’t fully wrap my head around the fact that people actually did that," Maribel said, angrily. "Where do you think they even are right now? These people who made that deal?"
The VIPs. The ones who’d somehow known, or been told what was coming. Who’d sat across a table from something not human and signed whatever they needed to sign to keep breathing. They would have had time to prepare. Resources. Infrastructure.
"Could be anywhere," I said. "Honestly, if I had to guess, they secured themselves a whole city somewhere and they’re living in it. Quietly. Behind walls thick enough that none of this touches them."
Maribel stared at me. "Here? In America?"
"I wouldn’t even be slightly surprised if the right people are sitting somewhere comfortable right now having a perfectly normal morning," I said. "Sipping coffee. Waiting for it all to blow over."
"I think most of America fell," Maribel said slowly, thinking it through. "But yeah, bunkers, maybe. Or a fortified city somewhere off the map. Somewhere the rest of us would never think to look."
"Possibly," I agreed.
"That’s—" She stopped. Started again. "That’s so much worse, actually. That they thought that far ahead for themselves and said nothing. Did nothing. Just pulled the door shut behind them and left everyone else to figure it out."
"I feel it too," I said. "But sometimes I find myself wondering, and I know how this sounds, whether they had any real choice in it."
She turned to look at me sharply. "You cannot be serious."
"I mean it as a real question, not a defense," I said, holding up a hand. "If someone put it to you directly, your life, your family’s lives, or tell the world and die for it, I’m not sure the answer is as clean as we want it to be."
"That’s not the dilemma they were actually facing and you know it," Maribel said. "These weren’t ordinary people with nothing to lose. These were people with platforms and power and the ability to at least warn someone. They could have done something. Anything. Even an anonymous tip. They chose not to." Her voice was hard and certain. "That’s not a difficult situation they were backed into. That’s a choice they made with full awareness."
"You’re right," I said. "Yeah. You’re right."
And she was. Whatever philosophical corner I’d been turning toward, she’d cut it off cleanly and correctly. There was no framing that made what they did forgivable.
We walked in silence for a moment.
"If you came face to face with one of them," I said, "what would you do?"
Maribel blinked, pulled out of her thoughts. "What?"
"Just, if you saw one of them. One of the people who made that deal. What would you actually do?"
She was quiet, considering it rather than reaching for a quick answer.
"I’d want to hit them," she said finally. "Slap them, punch them, make them feel at least something for what they let happen." A pause.
"What about killing them?" I asked.
Maribel was surprised hearing my words.
"I don’t know," she answered after a while. "It depends."
"Even knowing how many people died because of what they did?" I asked. "Indirectly, sure, but the chain runs straight back to them."
She looked at me carefully. "Do you want to kill them?"
"What I want," I said, and I felt the words settle somewhere deep and certain as I said them, "is for the people responsible for all of this to actually pay for it. The Starakians. The ones who caused this All of it." I felt my hands close at my sides without entirely meaning to. "I’m serious about this, Maribel. I can’t picture building any kind of real life, a family, a future, any of it ,while they’re still out there holding this planet. While they’re still hunting people like me." I looked ahead. "Earth isn’t even the first world they’ve done this to. This isn’t some isolated event, it’s a pattern. A genocide they’ve been running across God knows how many worlds and how many years, and nobody has made them stop. Nobody has made them answer for any of it." My voice dropped slightly. "Someone has to. It has to be stopped. And they have to pay, not just for us, but for every world that came before ours and every one that would come after if nothing changes."
Maribel didn’t say anything for a moment.
"I’m with you on that," she said.
I looked at her.
"But even though you may be stronger than ordinary people, you can’t take down an entire civilization which is also much superior to Earth’s," she added.
"Yeah..." I nodded biting my lips. "I know."
