Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance > Look Alive, Sunshine.
The next few days I swam in and out of consciousness. Every time I surfaced, someone different was leaning over me, assessing my wounds. I could always tell who was watching over me before I opened my eyes—Fallon was always bawling, telling me she was so sorry she couldn’t stop them sooner, Fun Ghoul was always quiet, determined, his hands warm and reassuring as he checked my head (always the head), Grace’s hands were too small to be anyone else’s, and Party Poison always stayed longer than the others. The guy was acting like my dad. Who I never met, by the way. He’d left my mom and me before I was old enough to remember him, saying he would ruin my life if he was in it and that he’d never come back.
When I finally woke completely, opening my eyes wide and sitting up, Party Poison was awake next to me, staring at a fire in the center of a circle of sleeping Killjoys, as it was the dead of night.
“Hey,” he said. “Good to see you’re finally awake.”
“Hello,” I mumbled, cringing when my voice sounded like I’d rubbed my throat with steel wool. Not a good visual.
“How do you feel?”
“Like my head’s stuffed with cotton and pain.”
“Yeah, they hit you pretty hard to knock you out.”
“You’re telling me,” I snorted, shaking my hair out of my face. “What’d I miss?”
“Nothing. Laserbam’s been obsessing over this mass extermination thing you told me about.”
“Yeah, about that…”
“Hold on before you say anything. I just want you to understand that going back to Battery City is not in any of our best interests. Any kind of plan to stop them would be highly risky and would probably result in us being captured and probably executed. Possibly even publically. We’d also need help—and lots of it. We aren’t winning this war—not by a long shot—and the odds are not in our favor. So we can do something, just don’t expect the outcome to be any good.”
“I understand,” I said, meeting his eyes. “But the people in their ‘perfect’ community have to realize that they’re not truly living. Quieting the mind and emotions might stop crime, but it also stops passion for who you are as an individual. There’s no art or self expression because there’s nothing to express. These people are slowly coming to their senses and realizing that truth—and BLI’s retaliating in the only way they know how—by killing everyone involved. Besides, their plan’s risky too. And they had direct orders in the file not to act unless Korse himself clears it five minutes before releasing the gas. So the objective is simple: block the message, shut down the operation. Obtaining that goal is going to be a little more difficult.”
He nodded. “That whole world domination thing must be a bitch to run.”
I laughed, my smile fading quickly when the action made my headache worse. “So somehow we need to hack BLI’s system, thus calling off the attack, and breach Battery City’s security long enough to get the ‘rebels’ out of the city. By the time we’ve done that, they can kill us or whatever—it doesn’t matter to me, so long as we save their lives.”
“Okay,” Fun Ghoul said, sitting up, making me jump. “I can do the whole hacking-the-system thing.”
I nodded.
“And breaching their security shouldn’t be hard. We’ve done it before,” Fallon added, sitting up, also making me jump.
“Okay,” I said slowly as things came together in my mind. “Here’s the plan…”
When I finally woke completely, opening my eyes wide and sitting up, Party Poison was awake next to me, staring at a fire in the center of a circle of sleeping Killjoys, as it was the dead of night.
“Hey,” he said. “Good to see you’re finally awake.”
“Hello,” I mumbled, cringing when my voice sounded like I’d rubbed my throat with steel wool. Not a good visual.
“How do you feel?”
“Like my head’s stuffed with cotton and pain.”
“Yeah, they hit you pretty hard to knock you out.”
“You’re telling me,” I snorted, shaking my hair out of my face. “What’d I miss?”
“Nothing. Laserbam’s been obsessing over this mass extermination thing you told me about.”
“Yeah, about that…”
“Hold on before you say anything. I just want you to understand that going back to Battery City is not in any of our best interests. Any kind of plan to stop them would be highly risky and would probably result in us being captured and probably executed. Possibly even publically. We’d also need help—and lots of it. We aren’t winning this war—not by a long shot—and the odds are not in our favor. So we can do something, just don’t expect the outcome to be any good.”
“I understand,” I said, meeting his eyes. “But the people in their ‘perfect’ community have to realize that they’re not truly living. Quieting the mind and emotions might stop crime, but it also stops passion for who you are as an individual. There’s no art or self expression because there’s nothing to express. These people are slowly coming to their senses and realizing that truth—and BLI’s retaliating in the only way they know how—by killing everyone involved. Besides, their plan’s risky too. And they had direct orders in the file not to act unless Korse himself clears it five minutes before releasing the gas. So the objective is simple: block the message, shut down the operation. Obtaining that goal is going to be a little more difficult.”
He nodded. “That whole world domination thing must be a bitch to run.”
I laughed, my smile fading quickly when the action made my headache worse. “So somehow we need to hack BLI’s system, thus calling off the attack, and breach Battery City’s security long enough to get the ‘rebels’ out of the city. By the time we’ve done that, they can kill us or whatever—it doesn’t matter to me, so long as we save their lives.”
“Okay,” Fun Ghoul said, sitting up, making me jump. “I can do the whole hacking-the-system thing.”
I nodded.
“And breaching their security shouldn’t be hard. We’ve done it before,” Fallon added, sitting up, also making me jump.
“Okay,” I said slowly as things came together in my mind. “Here’s the plan…”
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