Fighting For Your Rights

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

As Jack went to look for a medic, Owen laid Robyn on the bed. She groaned as Owen slid his arm around her back and pulled the gun out of her skirt belt. Sliding it into the back of his pants, Jack commented from the door, “You really don’t trust us, do you?”

Owen turned to look at Jack and the medic that stood beside him. As the medic stepped towards Robyn, he asked, “Is it okay if I examine her?” Looking at the man, Owen nodded, but watched him carefully as he approached Robyn and began to examine her.

“I don’t blame you for being cautious,” Jack explained, “and for us it is easy to just check our sources and they can tell us if you are telling the truth. You don’t have that luxury because we have made it our personal goal to disappear from the system. So, who do you talk to when you can’t trust anybody? The only question I have is,” Jack stated as he stepped closer to Owen, “are you ready to kill someone to defend yourself and Robyn?”

“I have done it before,” he answered glancing at him then turning his attention back to a more nervous medic, “and this time I have someone that means more to me than anything to protect. I don’t have to think too hard about the consequences of my every action like I have with others I worked for.”

“What can I do to convince you that you can trust us?”

“I don’t know,” Owen shrugged trying to watch every move the medic made. “When do we meet Al?”

“Right now,” a woman answered stepping into the room.

Owen looked at her with uncertainty. He was supposed to be looking at a woman in her sixties and the long, black-haired woman that stood before him looked like she wasn’t much older than him. Owen offered his hand, “I’m Sean O’Brien.”

“Alohilani Pekelo,” she replied shaking his hand firmly, “and this is your new wife, Robyn Dored.”

“So, they told you.”

“Not Jack, he doesn’t like to share secrets without permission. I know it is hard to take my word at this moment, but he is the most trustworthy person of the revolutionaries.”

Owen sighed in annoyance with all the convincing to trust them, but saw the medic insert a needle in her arm, “What is that?”

“It is something to help her,” Al spoke calmly. “She will be all right.”

Sitting down on the bed beside her, Owen caressed Robyn’s cheek and watched as her eyes slowly opened. Lifting her hand up to take his away from her face, she muttered, “I’m sorry. I tried to say a word, but it didn’t come.”

With his other hand, he pushed her hair out of her face, “Don’t worry about it. You just gave me a small heart attack that’s all.”

With a chuckle, Robyn’s gaze spotted the people around them and she started to sit up, “Where are we?”

“Shouldn’t you try and rest?” Owen stated looking at the medic.

“I feel fine,” Robyn answered not wanting to wait for confirmation from anyone else as she slid to the side of the bed that Owen sat on.

“You have your Grandma’s stubbornness,” Al stated, then offered her hand to Robyn. “I am Alohilani Pekelo, but everyone calls me Al.”

Robyn took her hand, but Owen refused to allow anyone to help her to her feet by wrapping his arms around her shoulder and waist. Realizing she had no choice, Robyn relaxed into Owen’s strong arms wrapped protectively around her. She looked at the middle-aged woman with her black hair pulled into a French-twist with small highlights of gray, and stared into her dark eyes, “Do you know what happened to my Grandma?”

Al turned away from them as her face became serious and spoke, “Come with me. It’s time you both get some answers.”

Robyn started to follow, but Owen hesitated keeping his arms around her. It seemed unreal to her that they had formed such a tight bond in a short amount of time. She never thought it possible that a dependence on a man would be a good experience. Seeing her grandma stuck in the apartment until her father was available to take her somewhere. Seeing her baby brother have more rights than she did. Watching women emotionally die from neglect from the men in their life, made her wish she never had to associate with them. Now she stood next to a man that she did not want to leave her side. A man that cared only about her safety and was ready to take on an entire revolution at the slightest notion she was in danger. “It will be alright,” Robyn whispered sliding her hand over the hand placed on her stomach. She rubbed his hand as she pulled it from her stomach and spoke loud enough to see Jack smile, “She has a familiar face.”

“What does that mean?” Owen asked as he finally relaxed his grip for her to pull away, but held onto her hand.

“It means I trust them,” she spoke glancing up at him and then followed the three revolutionaries with Owen right beside her with a firm grip on her hand.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Jack smiled as they followed Al down the softly lit hallway.

When they reached a hallway that ran in a circle to the left and right, Al led them to steel a door that stood across from their entry and led to the room the hallways were encircling. Al placed her hand on the screen and her eyes up to the scopes.

Robyn nervously laughed, “Heavy security.”

“I’m not finished yet either,” Al stated as she turned to look at them. “Before I enter the final code, I have a duty to make sure of your commitment.”

Owen looked at the screen flashing for the code and then at his wife, she smiled, “I want to do this.”

Looking straight at Al, he stated, “We are in this to the end.”

Al turned and pressed the blank buttons quickly in a certain sequence and the door slid open. Al stepped into the room while Jack motioned the couple to enter before him. Robyn held her breath in awe as she walked into the arena style room and saw the training at the bottom level. Slowly exhaling, she tried to keep up with her husband and Al as they weaved their way down stairs and through aisles of CURT terminals. Robyn tried not to notice numerous people watching her trek to a small office on the second level down.

Opening the office door, Al motioned everyone inside. She looked at Robyn as she closed the door, “I have a message from our informant in the palace about Mariah Masda, but this also has a picture that I don’t know if you are ready to see.”

Robyn swallowed hard and squeezed Owen’s hand as she spoke, “I want to see it.” Al nodded slowly as she slid into the chair and touched the screen to access the file. The image had already been burned into her mind, but Al closed her eyes anyway as she struck the last button on the screen.

Covering her mouth, Robyn tried to hold in the scream. The feeling she experienced under the hot sun was returning and her legs began to shake. Robyn tried to see her Grandma through the blood and bruises. She looked at the patches of missing hair and the hair matted with blood. As she stared at the pictures, Al read from another CURT, “Angela Amerow, a.k.a. Mariah Masda, was brought to the palace on July 6 for information on her granddaughter, Robyn Star, and nephew to the king of Europe, Owen Dored. She met with King Roham and he interrogated her with force. It resulted in only one piece of information being discovered. That she had guarded the person who witnessed King Roham murder his father. My curiosity wants to know more, but I will let that be your decision. The king knows that Masda’s family has no knowledge of where their daughter or Mr. Dored are, but he is attempting to bring them in, in hopes of convincing Masda to reveal what she knows or her family suffers. I am trying to convince the king not to do so.”

As Al turned around in the chair and saw the terror and confusion in the eighteen-year-old’s eyes as comprehension wrestled with reality and what life had in store for her as a revolutionary. Al knew one thing as Robyn opened her mouth to form her question, she had no idea what job she was expected to take. Robyn spoke, “Who is the witness?”

“That I don’t know. My father spoke of it like it was a rumor or a story and when Mariah disappeared the witness disappeared with her.”

Robyn’s mind flashed back to when she was little before her sister and brother were born.

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“Mommy, how did you meet Daddy?”

Amaris smiled softly and looked into her daughter’s eyes, “Your Grandma took care of him before she even met your grandpa. His parents were killed so she took him in and raised him.”

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“I know who the witness is,” Robyn uttered as she moved to the CURT screen to try and access information.

“Who?” Owen asked.

“What are you doing?” Al questioned stepping aside.

Robyn pulled up a map to the warehouse and started to mark the areas she remembered were destroyed and the best routes to get to it. “We have to get my Grandma and family out of there before my family is taken.”

Al watched Robyn work on the CURT furiously, “I don’t understand.”

“If the king brings in my family it will put her in a position… Just get them out of the capital.”

“Wait a minute,” Owen stated placing his hand on her shoulder to calm her down as she pulled up a second screen. “Your grandma didn’t want to leave before what makes you think she will come now?”

“She wouldn’t come because she thought it would save my family. We tell her that we are taking them to safety,” she explained as she worked on creating a map of the tunnel system under the White House that Mariah had her memorize. “My family’s life is in danger and the one chance you have of overthrowing the king will be gone if you allow him to take them.”

“I don’t understand,” Al spoke as she watched Robyn manipulate the CURT unlike anything she had seen. They had people who helped build CURT’s system over the years and those that spent a lot of time trying to work on it, but Robyn’s ability was staggering. “Why would that be on your family?”

“I just need you to trust me,” Robyn stated finally breaking eye contact with the screen and looking at Al then at Owen. Al looked over Robyn’s shoulder and saw a third screen accessing old satellite locations.

“It is a risky venture,” Owen stated pulling the tunnels map onto another screen to change the parts that he knew had been altered, “and I don’t know if these people can…”

“Can what?” Jack finally broke in. “Can handle breaking into the palace?”

“Can handle a loss for one family?”

Al looked at Owen and then at Robyn, “Mariah was like a mother and Grandma to us all. There are many here who would sacrifice their lives to save hers.”

Robyn looked right into Al’s eyes and as she tightened her lips Robyn stated, “Then get them out of there.”

Before anything else could be said, Robyn rushed to the office door and swung it open. “What is she doing?” Jack inquired as she began to run up a set of stairs to leave the stadium.

“Leaving,” Owen answered as he chased after her.