The Beautiful People

"Toss me a few more," I said with a shrug.

He shook his head.

"You're our main covert soldier. I need you for what you know, not what you can handle. All that crap in your head is enough for you to worry about. I didn't really like your part in today's little craps shoot, but I couldn't trust anyone else to not get caught." He shook his head and smiled. "Listen to me I sound like an old woman. Worry, worry, worry."

I smiled and leaned my back against the wall of the vandalized clothes dryers in this old laundrette.

"Not like any of us are going to get out of this alive anyway, right?" he asked, still grinning at me. His hand was rubbing at his knee where I had extracted a bullet sixteen weeks ago. "What I need from you right now is a way to make phase three go off without a hitch."

"I've been trying to think about that. The bomb is too big to just walk in carrying it. And they check any and all packages, no matter the size." I sighed. My thoughts began flipping pages in my mind to alternatives. The many illegal books on history, I had been gathering since we began our little resistance, had given me a dozen ways to try and pull off something like this. It had been done before successfully, so it could be done again.

But then technology changes had made some of those historical ideas no long possible. Or safe.

I was about to give him a possibly workable idea and see what he thought, when I saw Morgan coming back towards us.

With someone draped over his shoulder!

"What the fuck?" I stood up straighter, and moving to the door began to scan the streets for anyone passing by. Seeing no one, I urged him to hurry. I caught only a glimpse of nearly white blonde hair and a slim featured face as he walked past me.

A very bloody face. A Perfect face.

"Would you look what I caught." He crowed. "A little mourning dove out for a stroll." He dumped the person off his shoulder like a sack of laundry. "I've always wanted to get me a piece of one of them. I get to go first in her tight...gagk!"

THUD!

The sound of a church bell ringing could not have compared to the sound of Morgan's head as I sent him face first into the top of a metal laundry-folding table. Bolted to the floor, and too heavy to steal, I swear his face left a sizable dent.

"ARES!" Toliver shouted as he surged to his feet.

When he moved to plant himself between the bleeding Morgan and myself, I shoved him into the dryers. Grabbing Morgan by his jacket, I dragged the stunned and dazed man into the filthy bathroom. Out of sight of the street. He was just coherent enough to try and take a swing at me, but I caught his hand and used his own momentum to direct that hand into the cast iron sink. You could hear the bones when they snapped.

"God. Damn. It. Man. Stop!" My leader grabbed my arm before I compounded the damage to Morgan's face. With all his powerful build I still pulled him off balance as I tried to throw the punch. Settling for a half kick, I saw Morgan spin, fall and crash to the floor with his elbow into the toilet. His hands full of my clothes, Toliver dragged me out of the restroom and over to where the young woman was lying on the floor, crying. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Shrugging him off, I knelt down next to the girl. Her new Person face turned up to look at me and then she shrank back in horror.

"ARES! Answer me!"

"She's my sister," I said softly.

The laundrette became deathly silent except for the moans from the bathroom and the whimpers of fear from Bellatrix. She was huddled up on herself, rocking slowly.

"She's still one of them. And she's seen us," he said after a moment. He backed away from me when I came to my feet right in his face.

"If you're suggesting what I think you are suggesting, be advised, I will kill you and every other member of our little group just to keep her from stubbing her little toe. Think about that for a second, then rephrase what you were about to say." My words were so cold, ice began to frost the windows. "What would you do if she was your sister?"

Toliver stood silent for a moment. "I would do what had to be done. It's what I would do. It's what I have already done. And it's what I would do again if I had too."

"Well, I'm not you."

He nodded slowly . "Fair enough." He took a deep breath, looked at me and slowly shook his head. "You've got me in a bad position...you know that, right? You know too much about everything, hell you've helped to set most of it up. I need to send you away, get distance between you and the Resistance, but if I do that and you are captured, you could do so much damage."

"Do what you have to do, Toliver. Whatever it is, to me, she is worth it." I said, licking my dry lips. "I can't say that I wouldn't break if they captured me, but then we have always known that could and would probably happen. Someday. So I don't see that anything has changed."

"She is the change. That girl is your Achilles heel. She is the lever by which, they can make you move mountains. I cannot allow you to stay if you have that much of a liability hanging over you like a sword of Damocles!"

There was a pain-filled moan from the bathroom. Toliver looked towards the sound and then shook his head in disgust. He looked back at me, his eyes saying volumes.

"Then we are done," I told him. Looking down at my sister, I began wishing I could turn back time and hit Morgan when we first got here. Anything to make it so Bellatrix had never been scared like this. "I'm going to take her and go. My place is no long headquarters."

He nodded. "I will move us to another city. Less risk." He glanced back towards the bathroom. "Within a week, most of what you know of the Resistance will be useless," he warned.

"Understood," I said, biting back comments I would have liked to have made. There was no point.

"Ares...good luck to you. The world's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. If it gets better." He cautioned me, holding out his hand to me.

"Same...and I know," I said, accepting the hand.

** ** ** ** ** **

I carried my sister in my arms, her weight no burden in the least, all the way back to the cistern. Her pale blonde hair spilled across my chest. The terrible fear in her eyes when I scooped her up still tore at me, but she had offered no resistance to me carrying her here. I probably could have carried her anywhere, done anything to her and she would have offered the same lack of response.

Like a frightened bird facing the snake, fear held her and made shivering her only possible action. That such fear was directed towards me hurt. A hurt that was bone deep. A hurt that was soul deep.

Once through the maintenance hatch I set her in the chair by my heater and got the embers stoked. While it took very little wood to heat the whole of the cistern, I normally only used it on the coldest of days. Many days of work had made sure the the smoke from the fire wasn't detectable but I still felt a sense of unease when I used it too often. Call it a forewarning, or maybe I just didn't like to get too comfortable. Every time I had let that happen in the past, I had always been bitten in the ass by this world's teeth.

"The police will find me," she said out of nowhere. "I bet they are looking for me already. And when they do..." her words died off in the face of my smile.

"Go on. Tell me just what the Grundels will do when they find me." Kneeling down by the stove, I pushed the last few pieces of my dried wood in and closed the metal door to keep the smoke out the cistern. Getting to my feet, I grabbed my kettle off the top and went to the wall tap for water. Once I had it in place on the stove again to begin boiling I turned to look at her with a smile. "Need me to help your description, Bellatrix? Lets see. I will be beaten, severely. Chained. Arrested. Tried in abstention. Dragged through the streets to Golgotha Square. Then, over a matter of four or five hours, I will be tortured to death in a number of painful, creative ways, for daring to lay a hand on one of the Perfect People. Did I miss anything? Were you wanting to add more descriptive details of the tortures? I can add those if you like, Bellatrix. I've seen them up close. Heard close friends scream as white hot irons were plunged into their stomachs to cook their entrails."

She covered her ears and turned away with a small terrified scream.

That stopped me cold. It was something I would have expected of a child of five not a woman of eighteen.

"Bellatrix?"

"Stop using my name! You're a Pariah! Pariahs shouldn't know my name..." She huddled away from me when I moved and knelt down in front of her.

"Look at me. I know you were young when they took you away for schooling but not that young. Remember me reading to you? I used to sneak into your room and read stories to you at night after Mother had gone to bed. Remember?"

"My brother did that, not you." She hid her face from me behind her hands.

"That's right, your brother. Me. Ares. Remember my name?"

She began to frantically shake her head. "No! My brother was like me. He was Perfect. He was not a filthy Pariah like you! Now let me go before the police get here and...and stick hot irons in you!"

Stunned, I leaned back from my sister. I had never really given thought to just what it was that the schools for the New People taught to the children they took from their parents. Their "normal" parents. I had always figured it was simply a much better quality schooling than what I had been given. The more I looked at her perfect skin, devoid of any scars. Smoother than the feeling of silk. The glowing white locks of her hair. The deep crystal blue of her eyes. How could I have been so very stupid, naive to have ever thought that? Of course it wasn't all math and science!

How stupid!

"In a hole in the ground...there lived a hobbit. It was a hobbit hole and that means...?" I let the ending hang in the silence.

"Comfort," she said softly, her voice filled with confusion. "How..? NO! NO! YOU'RE A PARIAH!"

"How do you enter the Kingdom of Terabithia?" I asked her quickly.

"You swing on a rope," she said before she could think about it. Then, her eyes going wide again,she began to shake her head till I was afraid it was going to come off her neck and roll away. All the while her mouth was soundlessly mouthing the word, "No."

"You said...was. That your brother...was...Perfect. What did they tell you? That I was dead?" I asked. "Come on Bellatrix talk to me. I promise you. I really am your brother."

She sat silent for a moment then began to look at my face for some hint there of the person she had known. The half-remembered brother who would read to her.

"They said that you were dead. At school. They told me that you had died. When I asked Mother about you she said you were gone. Daddy wouldn't talk to me about you. They, the teachers at school, told me you were like us. One of the New People.

I slowly nodded. It didn't surprise me to know that my mother considered me dead. I had been dead to her from the moment my little sister was returned from her first surgery. Returned so very Perfect.

Bellatrix looked around her I think for the first time.

"You live here?" she asked. The pretty confusion on her face was sweet.

"Yes, dear sister, I do." I smiled. "It's not the high seat of Cair Paravel, but it's mine. I have everything I need."

"It's dirty."

I had to laugh at her expression. When she realized my humor was at her experience, she got this petulant frown that pursed her lips. I had to laugh even harder at that. As I did I came to realize it was possibly the first time I had laughed in year. Really laughed.

"Why?" she asked when I had control of myself again.

"Why what?"

"Why did you die?" She stopped, frowning at my smile. "I mean why did you let me think you were dead?" A slow tear rolled down those perfect cheeks.

That gave me pause.

"I didn't do it to hurt you. I...woke up. I found I was in a world I could no longer live in, and I had to make a change or die. I...couldn't live in the world, that the New People are taking over, any longer without doing something to stop them."

She frowned.

"Why would you want to stop the New People from making the world better? That doesn't make sense. We're just making the evil in the world go away."

The absolute naivety in her heart-felt words hit me like a brick to the chest. She didn't know...of course she didn't, you idiot. Grabbing a cushion from beside the chair, I settled in beside her, sitting on the floor at her feet.

"Tell me about the world. The way you have been told it is."

She frowned at my choice of words. Puzzled. After a moment she pulled her legs up under herself and began to tell me.

"Well, at first there were the Dark Times. The times before the First Ones were born. When the world was filled with nothing but the Pariah, and they fought and killed each other by the millions, because they had no New People to lead them. To show them how to live like civilized people. Then the First Ones came. But the Pariah were cruel and killed many of them. Till in the end there was only a few of the First Ones left. With painful sciences and sacrifices they used their own bodies as templates and figured out how to change the Pariah, the young ones that were not evil yet, into New People like themselves. Now...every year, more and more of the New People are born. We are slowly taking control of the world from the brutal Pariah. Making them see their true place in the way of things. Making them not fight but lie down as the lambs in the field. To accept what must be so that they can become civilized and not fight anymore. The First Ones are all gone now, except for the Martyr Ambrose. He will lead us to the Time of Harmony."

I wanted to retch.

"The Time of Harmony?" I asked, having never heard the phrase before.

"Yes!" She beamed. "When all the world will have Peace and the last of the Pariah will have laid down their foul weapons and accepted that they are what they were meant to be."

"And what are we meant to be?" I asked, gritting my teeth not wanting to snarl.

"Well, servants to the New People of course. The ones of you that have been Gentled will be able to take your rightful places as our servants. Then you will be happy, and not have to fight among yourselves anymore." She gave me the same smile and look I might have used with a autistic child who was asking about why the sky was blue. So condescending I could have strangled her.

"Gentled?" I asked. She must have missed the ominous growl to my voice.

"Yes. Gentled. You know made tame and unable to reproduce more Pariah."

Getting to my feet, I had to move away from my sister. Least I slap that beautifully Perfect face. So that is what they are planning. The world I thought I had known had just gotten much darker.

"Just how will the New People continue to grow in numbers if they Gentle all the 'normals'...Pariahs?"

"Well, by the normal way of course!" She said, then giggled as if the question was not only silly but slightly rude. "As soon as they have the New Surgeries perfected there will no longer be a need to involve the Pariah in our lives at all."

"The New Surgeries?" I asked not understanding.

"Yes. The ones to make Perfect People in the womb. They nearly have it perfected. My friend Ophelia just had her seventh child and he was born nearly Perfect. He needed only two surgeries to make him New. I can't wait till next year. I know that my children will be Perfect from birth!"

"Wait...what? Your children?"

"Well, yes." She shook her head and looked at me as if I had two heads. "I'll be breeding age in a year and I will join in helping the New People achieve our destiny."

"You're going to be married?" I felt like a steer just after the hammer had fallen.

"Oh, no! Not that silly Pariah custom." She made a retching sound like she was going to be sick. "I'll be given the Sacred Seed of the Martyr, like all New People women when they become nineteen. His Divine Grace will grow in me to become the first of my children."

Looking down into the fire of my stove, I could not believe what I was hearing. My mouth continued to ask questions even though my brain had long since become numb from the answers I had already received.

"The first? Just how many are you planning to have?" I asked.

"Well, Martyr willing, a good two dozen before I reach the age of Maturity and can no longer bear the Seed."

Two Dozen?

Shaking with a sense of rage that was soul deep, I moved away from my Beautiful sister to the side walls of the cistern. There I had wooded shelves, hacked together old pallet wood, with my books. I looked for a moment among the history books I used to help plan attacks on the New People, and then I found the one I wanted. Taking it, I moved back over to where she was and took again my seat on the floor.

"I'm going to read to you again, little sister. Like I used to read to you. I want you to pay attention closely, all right?"

"Sure!" She was almost bouncy with eagerness. "Are there hobbits in this story like the one you read me before?"

"No. No hobbits, but there are good guys and bad guys, and there is a terrible monster who tries to destroy the world."

"Okay." She snuggled into the chair. "Read please."

Opening up my copy of the Rise of the Third Reich, I began my little sisters true education about the world she was living in. As I read, I saw the frown when it began to form.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

It took far more than that one book, or that one night. For the weeks to come with books, newspapers both legal and not legal, taking her to meet with friends of mine, her New Person face hidden by a "normal's" mask, I began to get her to accept the world as it really is. Not the fantasy she had been told it was. Weeks of this reeducation blended into months together. My sister at first was fighting me every step of the way. Refusing to see the truth even when it was put before her eyes.

And she hated me. Hated me for showing her what a dream world she had been living in till now.

Then she met another New Person like herself, while wearing her mask. Well, meet is too intimate a word, it speaks of making a connection between people. No what she did was see one of her brethren in in all their glory.

He was beating a child to death in the streets.

We were on our way back from Timothy's, a friend from my Resistance days, when a limo came through the intersection in front of us, with a full Grundel escort of flashing lights and howling sirens. It was those sirens that caused the problem. There was a boy, a "normal" with a dog on a leash standing there, waiting to cross the road. When the sirens got close the dog began to howl in pain at the noise hurting his ears. Then as the limo began to cross, the dog pulled free and ran across the street towards the green safety of the park.

The limo hit the dog and then, swerving, hit one of the escorting motorcycles of the Grundels, spilling the rider into the wet slush, tumbling him, soaking his pretty black uniform. As everything came to a halt in the street, the boy slid to his knees next to his dying dog. I saw him lift the bloody canine head, a pink tongue come out to lick his hand one last time, and then the dog was gone.

The boy began to cry.

The Grundels were there. I saw mixtures of sympathy from these stalwart men of the law. They had no doubt been boys at one time. Had dogs they had lost. They understood the boy's pain.

Not so much the New Man.

Enraged at the fact this Pariah child had made him late, for whatever he was going to go do, the New Man climbed out of his limo calling for blood. Calling for the boy to be beaten.

I'll have to give it to the Grundels, they didn't leap to do it. One and all they moved very reluctantly to surround the boy.