Titan tricked that motherfucker so he could get close enough to kill him. To save me.
Xzavic is still sitting with his back against the wall. I guess it’s so he won’t scare me. I hit the ground in front of him so hard I’m sure I’ve skinned my knees. Wrapping my arms around him, I press my head against him as I apologize into the blue wall of his chest.
“Xzavic, they turned my head around, but I know your heart. I don’t know how I doubted you, even for a minute. I’m sorry.” I press my lips over his heart, kissing him again and again.
“I understand, my love. You were in shock and weren’t tracking what happened. It’s hard to disbelieve your own eyes.”
I kiss his chest again, then rise higher, grab the back of his head and ply his mouth with kisses. These aren’t sexy or sensuous, they’re like long declarative sentences, apologizing with my body as well as my words.
“I understand. It’s fine.”
He’s such a good male.
“Those fuckers just told the whole galaxy you’re a rapist. Not just a rapist, but someone who would do that to the woman he supposedly has feelings for. They must not want you to earn another credit.”
“They’re hedging their bets. In case I actually winThe Game, they’re going to have public opinion so strongly against me no one will protest when they find a reason to kill me. Oh, they won’t have to find a reason to kill me. They just manufactured one. They’ll punish me for raping you.”
“Fuckers!” I say. I’ve always hated feeling powerless, yet here I am, totally impotent to protect him.
Even if I kill myself so he can win this shitty game, they’re going to find a way to punish, possibly kill, this fine man who, even right this moment, is trying to soothe me.
“Welcome back, females and males. Shocking, wasn’t it? Seeing Titan rape that poor little defenseless female. You’ll notice his credit count is down to zero. We may not be able to punish him through the legal system, but we here at TMN can do our part to reflect public sentiment.
“Next up, we’ll be taking calls from some of Marentine’s best legal analysts—”
Zedd is interrupted by a black screen emblazoned with one word in white letters: “Truth.”
“We have less than two minutes before the authorities can track our signal. Here is the truth,” says a voice distorted by software.
The screen shows the exact moment when my tote goes from 6,672 to zero, and again when it’s slashed from 37,243 to zero. It shows the moment this morning when I pulled canister after canister out of my backpack and all of them were at zero charge.
Then the shot cuts to the four well-armed males approaching me at a jog as if they were on a military mission. I watch silently, wondering if they’re going to show the down and dirty of what those two were about to do to me.
Instead, they show enough that anyone in the audience sees the truth of what happened. From their rough treatment of me, to how Xzavic pretended he was about to rape me in order to trick them and get close enough to kill them.
“I don’t know who’s behind this guerilla video warfare, but the whole planet will see what the network is doing,” I say.
The final shot is a closeup of Red, his big blue eyes blinking at the camera. Then the announcer says, “It’s time to end slavery. It’s time to stop the practice of one person owning another. It’s time to stop enriching those at the top, at the expense of the poor and hungry. It’s time.”