“I’ll say it again—nothing that happens to these people matters to me.”
Erna gasped, shocked that she hadn’t realized it.
Annette had looked like she’d been enjoying their work, and she’d been all smiles when the officers doted on her during the welcome party. Was all of that just for show?
Was Annette just engaging with her because it was necessary for the mission?
Was she just enjoying an opportunity to test out her inventions?
Erna wanted to ask if that was really true, but the words got caught in her throat.
Annette slowly rose to her feet, her skirt fluttering as she turned around. She was ready to go. She stepped away from Erna.
“I need you to understand something,” she muttered softly. “I’m just gonna keep getting wickeder and wickeder.”
Unable to grasp what she meant by that, Erna was helpless to do anything but watch her go.
That night, not a single firework went off.
Two days later, Jean assembled the Knights of Valor in a Nicola University lecture hall.
All told, there were over fifty youths there.
Gatherings of over twenty were forbidden by law, so they’d passed themselves off as a series of different seminar groups and borrowed the hall under the guise of holding a study event. No one who wasn’t affiliated with the Knights was allowed in.
It wasn’t just university students there, either. They’d even called in the officers who’d been working fervently from off campus. According to Jean, it had been two years since so many of their members had gathered under a single roof. Aside from the officers living in the dorm, they generally avoided assembling people in one place to prevent information from leaking.
When Erna found out just beforehand, she had concerns. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked, but Jean was insistent. “Chloe says that she really wants to tell everyone in person.”
Today was special. Erna was a little worried, but she couldn’t bring herself to spoil their good cheer.
“Today’s news is going to turn this nation on its head,” Jean had said excitedly.
Among the crowd, there were a number of bona fide masters of distributing pamphlets. They came in all sorts, from men who forged IDs and work papers at town halls, to policewomen who helped support their fellow comrades, to rail workers who spread pamphlets across the country via train.
When six PM rolled around, Jean spoke up as the pendulum clock rang out the time. “There’s a reason we gathered you all here so urgently, and that reason is this.” He had the confidence of a man who’d given speeches before. “We’ve gotten our hands on some information so big, it could overturn the whole government’s rule. Time is of the essence here. We’re going to quickly brief you now, then broadcast the news across the country as fast as we can.”
Oohs and aahs rose up from the members throughout the hall.
Erna and Annette were sitting in the back.
“Chloe, do you want to take it from here?”
On Jean’s urging, Chloe stepped up to the podium.
Her skin had been sickly pale back at the mines, but now that she’d calmed down, it was tinged with a faint hint of red. She was dressed in a beige blouse and spent half the time staring at the ground.
“My name is Chloe. I’ve worked in those mines for three years.” She gave a small bow before continuing, her words spilling out in a weak staccato. “Up until three years ago, I worked at a factory in the Muret region, but everyone at the factory got pressed into service, and they took us to the mines against our will…”
Erna hadn’t known that about her.
As she recalled, Chloe had mentioned having a daughter. The government must have stripped her from her home and from her family and transferred her to a mine cut off from the outside world simply because it suited their ends.
I feel bad for her.
The officers bit their lips out of sympathy for Chloe’s plight. All of them had doubtless been the victims of similar tragedies themselves.
But once the world knows the truth…
Chloe started off by talking about the situation in the mines, then got to the meat of the matter: the strike.
“Last month, there was a large strike at the Bertram Mines. Workers built barricades, holed themselves up in Mine Shaft Seven, and demanded improvements to their working conditions. Their negotiations with the government went poorly, and it didn’t take long before things descended into violence…”
That was the very same intel that Erna and Annette had gathered.
One of the women sitting at the front of the lecture hall cut in. “So wait, you’re saying that the explosion was actually—?”
“Part of the battle between the Royal Guard and the striking workers. We think they used hand grenades.”
The officers gasped.
Everyone understood just how big a deal that was. They were all on the edges of their seats. News like that could deal a huge blow to the administration.
Jean was practically buzzing. “Tell them the rest,” he said.
Chloe pursed her lips and gave him a solemn nod. “Rumors about the strike had been circulating among us workers for a while. Nobody knew exactly when it would be, they just said to be ready once things went down… I didn’t participate myself, but as I understand it, it started around noon. By evening, though, soldiers had descended on the mines in droves—”
She described the grisly scene in detail.
The air had echoed with gunshots and explosions. She and some of the other workers had hunkered down in the barracks, crouching on the ground with their knees in their arms. They heard a rumbling sound, like part of the mine had just collapsed. The battle ended in under an hour, and after it was over, many of the workers were never seen again.
The officers got more and more worked up as they listened, and even Erna in the back found herself empathizing with their rage.
Once Chloe had said her piece, Jean stepped forward. “And there you have it. We’ll get you a more detailed rundown later, and starting tomorrow, we need to spread the word far and wide. It’s time for Operation K. We’re releasing an emergency bulletin. Let’s get it to every corner of this country.”
His voice echoed exultantly through the lecture hall in celebration of the big step they were taking toward bringing about revolution.
“This is all-out war. We’re going to muster every ounce of strength we can, and—”
“But there’s one thing I need you all to understand.”
That was when Chloe cut him off.
“Spies from the Galgad Empire were behind the whole thing.”
The mood in the room changed.
She was speaking in a different voice from before, one that was sharp as a knife.