Chapter Nine: Free For All
As he made the ballroom, Bill skidded to a halt, staring in shock at the chaos that confronted him.
"Bill!"
God, he'd never been so happy to hear that voice in his life.
Alistair grabbed his arm and pulled him into the relative safety behind a nearby bar.
"What's going on-?"
"What happened to you?"
They stared at each other.
"Later," Bill said quickly, "what's going on, Alistair?"
Alistair pointed.
In the center of the ballroom, still smoking with the fire that the crash through the roof had caused, was a massive banner. Clumps of burning ceiling littered the ballroom, along with the debris the explosion had caused. The banner hung in the center of the room, glaring bright white, splattered with several stark black messages:
Freedom For ALL Shapes!
THE THIRD DIMENSION IS REAL!
UPWARDS NOT NORTHWARDS!
Flatland for Flatlanders!
"Wow!" Bill breathed.
"They're not gonna like this," Alistair whispered. "Where is Cerchio?"
"Probably trying to find a way to chase me," Bill whispered back. "He tried to attack me, just like I thought."
"We should get out of here," Alistair said, "especially if Cerchio is after you now as well."
"Can we, without looking like we knew about this?"
"I think we can, everyone's running around, nobody knows what's going on."
"Free For All! Free For All!" a chant was rising amongst the terrified party-goers, within the ballroom and seeming to echo outside. "Flatland for Flatlanders! Free For ALL!"
"I didn't tell them to do that!" Bill hissed as the two of them ducked under broken ceiling and furniture, heading as quickly as they could for the exit. "It's only going to make everyone angrier!"
"FREE FOR ALL, FREE FOR ALL!"
"DOWN WITH THE CIRCLES!"
"Come on!" Alistair said, grabbing Bill's arm and pulling him, stumbling, towards one of the secondary doors. "Let's get to Orbits and find out what's happening."
When Alistair yanked Bill into the clear, cold confusion outside the Palace ballroom, his senses reeled a second, dizziness threatening to sneak up and bash him in the angle. His brain was beginning to fog.
"Bill! Come on!"
Alistair's firm, strong hand pulled him along with him, mixing into the crowd and zipping into the first alleyway they could find, running until they were sure they'd put enough distance between them and the chaos.
Even so, echoing cries of 'FREE FOR ALL', lingered in the streets.
"This is... I can't believe... that-that bast-"
"Wait until we get there, Alistair," Bill breathed, fighting down the wooziness that kept threatening to overtake him.
The door to Orbits was open, the club was busy, though more with shocked patrons staring at the television displays above the bar in the cocktail lounge. Confusion and a healthy current of fear filled the place, which only served to increase the business for the bar. Everyone was drinking anxiously.
Bill and Alistair made their way into the back room, waving at the employees as they went by, who knew them by now and didn't care if they came in the back.
After a couple of turns into the storage room and the small hallway beyond, the two Shapes emerged in Flourish's small, secret 'office' in the basement.
"Flourish!" Bill yelled shakily from the doorway. "What the hell was that?"
"I decided to up the ante," she said coolly. "I made sure to seed the crowds outside with our own people and pay off some Isosceles Royal Guard to make sure my men got to where they needed to be. What's the good of having money if I can't use it for something worthwhile?"
Bill stared at her, as did Alistair.
"The idea was to make a statement, Flourish, not to start a riot!" Bill nearly screeched with anger, his voice threatening to soar into the higher registers that made him sound kind of insane.
"Nobody's rioting."
"Not yet!" Bill panted, weaving on his feet, "how many of those Isosceles Royal Guards are going to remember that they were bribed to let this happen?"
"They're Isosce-"
"DON'T START WITH ME," Bill hissed, his muddled voice taking on an almost hysterical note. "NOT TONIGHT."
Flourish caught herself, looked horrified and sat back down. "I-I'm sorry, Bill, I-I..."
"Okay, okay, just let's calm down," Alistair said. "Flourish, you go and check with anybody of ours who's upstairs. Get a glass of water for Bill, I think he's been drugged."
She gasped, jumping to her feet.
"Next, make sure everyone's okay and get any more information you can from them about what's going on outside. Uh, c-call yer dad if you can... he's probably gone home, hopefully if he was able to. Uh, call my Da and make sure he's safe."
"Right," Flourish said and left.
Alistair closed the door behind her and pushed Bill back down in the chair Flourish had just vacated.
"Bill, first, what happened to you?"
"Cerchio attacked me."
"Yeah, y' said tha'. H- I'm afraid t' ask, how?"
"Tried to convince me to have sex with him, again." Bill mumbled, hand to his eye, "D-didn't like it when I said no... a-attacked me. He was gonna make me whether I wanted to or not. Seemed to like it when I kept tryin' to make him stop."
"I'm going to kill him."
Alistair's voice was calm, cold and entirely clear.
Bill stared at him.
"Alistair?"
The Rhomboid blinked and shook himself a bit. "Right. Okay. We may have a riot on our hands but right now, th' only thing I can think of, is gettin' to our place, grabbin' our stuff and my Da and gettin' home as quickly as possible."
"How are we going to get home, Alistair?" His brain was beginning to fill with cotton wool.
"Shh, Billy, I have a way," he said softly. "But yer gonna have t' trus' me."
"I-I always trust you, Alistair."
"Right now, I'm gonna have t'ask y' to really trus' me, Bill. Jus'... we gotta get out of this city."
He reached out and hugged Bill tightly.
"God, I'm so sorry Bill..."
"It's okay, Alistair," Bill heard himself saying through an increasingly sickly fog. God, he was so sweet! So handsome. So perfect... "I'm okay. Don't worry. I'm okay... I love you..."
"I love you too. Shhh..."
"Free For All! Free For All!"
The chant rang through the streets of Pantocyclus. The Militia and the Royal Guard fanned out throughout the city, hunting for anyone they thought might have had something to do with the disaster at the Chief's Artistic Reception that night. The shocked and scared relatively innocent city-folk were only trying to get back to their homes, encouraged at times by the sharp angles of the Isosceles policemen and the substantial bulk of their Square and Pentagon commanders.
This was a disaster.
Bill's brain was still fuzzy but fury was beginning to burn some of that fog off. He'd never intended or dreamed that people would take matters into their own hands so fast. Flourish said that the city was a powder keg, just waiting for someone to set a match to it. He realized that he never did have a real idea how fine an edge it was teetering on.
Those who'd been responsible for what was now being called 'the attack' on the Palace, who did everything they could to stir the confusion and dissent, were now making a point to divert the attention of the Militia, protecting anyone who they saw as being bullied or threatened by the City's guardians. There had been little violence on the part of the rebellion themselves but they weren't all the Militia had to deal with. Those innately rebellious types, the ones who enjoyed rabble-rousing, took up the cry immediately and were making trouble with anyone and everyone they encountered. They were a little harder to deal with.
Bill, Alistair, Varien and their handlers used the efforts of the rebels to clear out their apartments as quickly as they could and make for the outskirts of the city in Varien's small fleet of two cars.
"Drink this," Alistair said, pressing another glass of water into his hand.
The fact was, neither the non-Polygonal policemen, nor his rebels, really wanted to fight with anyone. That hadn't been the point of this exercise. What Bill knew Flourish and the more radical members of the Pantocyclus Cell had been counting on, was the unpredictability of the City's non-Polygonal street-toughs. The very thing Bill didn't want to happen.
Once they made the border, things changed. The lights of the city were brighter than Bill remembered, brighter and punctuated with bright, intermittent flares of what had to be explosions or fires.
He'd only planned to explode the ballroom ceiling and drop the banner into the party, where everyone, from Cerchio himself and his spoilt Polygons, servants, paid media reporters to the hangers-on and the masses of commoner crowds outside could see it and read and think about its message. It was to be a shot over the bow, a warning.
Not the first volley of what looked to be a war.
Apparently Flourish's Subversives decided it needed to be that very thing.
Things were bad in the Prefectures, he was very aware of that. That was why he'd advised caution. The more he thought about it, the further they sped away from the City, the angrier he got.
The Rebellion wanted a war, well it looked like they got it.
They reached the edge of the massive circle that marked the border of the Pantocyclus Prefecture. It was dark, icy cold and silent.
From this distance, the city looked like a bright glittering silver ring occasionally lit with the flares of fires or smaller explosions.
Bill was legitimately sick and seething by now.
"William?" Alistair said softly from beside him. "Hey, look at me."
Bill turned his eye towards Alistair.
"It's gonna be okay, jus', look at me a moment."
"Alistair?"
"Remember. You trust me, don't you? So just, shh..." Alistair leaned in and kissed him.
Dark, comforting warmth surrounded him as his eye fluttered closed and he felt himself fall into Alistair's strong, firm, safe embrace.
The sound of wind through the trees filled his senses and he could smell the scent of pine needles...
He didn't recall anything else.
Cyran Prefecture, Late Summer
When Bill opened his eye, he was lying in his bed, in the little room he used to have in Alistair's house.
The window was open because he could smell the scent of the pine trees and hear the soft gurgling of water in the fountain in the garden just below.
He sat up, looked around and saw a card on the nightstand, next to a plate of lemon poppy-seed cake and a cup of what he assumed was coffee.
Come down when you're ready. ~A
The coffee was still warm, not hot, so he knew Alistair hadn't been gone from his side long.
As he sipped the coffee and wolfed down his mother's cake, he wondered. How had they gotten here? From Pantocyclus, it was still several hours, nearly a day's worth of a trip by car, yet it was clearly morning outside. Had he slept the entire way? What was the date? Was it tomorrow? Or the next day?
Alistair said to trust him and he did, completely, but still, Bill's brain couldn't just accept that Alistair, somehow, had made him sleep the entire time. Oh sure, after that horrible encounter with Cerchio, the Subversives' crazy catastrophe and him bolting down that potent martini he'd been given, he'd been tired and wobbly and nearly incandescent with rage. He supposed that would take quite a bit out of a man, even one as sturdy as he was.
With a sigh, he got to his feet, rummaged around in his closet for a favorite soft light gray bathrobe and made his way to the small en suite attached to his cozy little room.
"Hullo, Bill," Alistair said, as Bill walked into the sitting room, freshly showered and feeling a bit better now that he was someplace warm and quiet.
"How long has it been?" Bill said, frowning. "I didn't sleep the entire way, did I?"
Alistair sighed. "You said you trusted me, Bill."
"And I do, I just need to know."
"It's been two days," Alistair said softly. "Yes, you did sleep the whole way, because you were drugged, just like I was afraid of. So I just... made sure you slept it off. I... hypnotized you. I'm sorry."
Bill blinked and stared at him. "How did you know?" His memories of everything after he'd stumbled into the ballroom were spotty, fuzzy.
"I guessed. I hoped I wasn't right. I know enough to know when someone's been drugged, unfortunately it happens a lot in the Capitol. I had to learn fast."
"Alistair-?"
"I'm sorry Bill. I just had to do what I thought was best. Fast."
Bill sat down. "Bastard."
"I-I'm sorry-"
"No, not you. Him."
"Cerchio."
"Yes. I-I'll-"
"Shh, Bill."
"Why? We feel free here all the time!"
Alistair looked around and his angles slumped. "Anymore, I don't know. They know where we are, where we're from. Da and I have swept th' house for microphones an' haven't found anythin' but even so..."
Bill nodded and slumped himself. "Yeah."
"Wanna go for a walk?"
Bill tilted his angle and nodded a bit. "Yeah, I could use some fresh air."
The Ruins
They sat on one of the stones in the center of the ruins of the ancient library, leaning against each other in silence.
"I never wanted to actually kill someone before," Bill said. "Not even Secant, not really. I mean, I just acted. In defense of everyone, me, you, everyone. I didn't really feel anything when I was doin' it either. Or after. It was just... somethin' that had to be done. I don't regret it. Even now, I don't even feel anything about it. I didn't care. I didn't hate him, either. I-I didn't care, one way or another. I was angry. That was all."
"And Cerchio?"
"I hate him. With a passion. I want to kill him. He would have humiliated me and enjoyed every minute of it. He didn't care about me either. I was just a prize, a toy. When he was bored with me, maybe he would have killed me, just to make sure nobody else got me. No, there's no maybe, he would have. I just know it."
"Do you think he will retaliate?"
"Yeah, I do," Bill said. "He actually insinuated that you were going to be out of my life in one way or another. I believe he was meaning to remove you. I had to correct him; I told him you are my fiancé and he repeated: boyfriend. He made it clear, just before he attacked me."
"If you don't kill him, I will."
Bill closed his eye, a shudder going through him.
"This is bad. Really, really bad. He's not gonna stop, Alistair. He's gonna think I humiliated him, even if he can't trace me to the message the resistance sent that night. If he finds out that it was my idea-"
"He won't, Bill. H-he won't."
"If they catch one of them, what's to say they won't talk?"
"Hardly anyone knows it was your idea. They only know Cipher."
"Yeah, Cipher." Bill's mind cleared a little more. Cipher, yeah. Code names had been his idea. He was Cipher.
Bill Cipher.
"Bill! Alistair!"
He hadn't expected to feel joy at the sound of Daniel's voice but he did. He sat bolt upright and stared at the figure of the Square and Nan and four other Shapes that were running towards them, laughing with delight.
"You're back!" Nan cried and threw herself at him, hugging him tightly.
"Watch that!" Bill cried back, hugging her, "Yer gonna truncate me!"
Nan laughed, squeezing him hard. "We missed you! We were all so proud of you and then-"
"Yeah, then," Dan said, the mood of the group crashing down around them. "We were terrified. Thank Spherius you're alright."
Bill blinked and then looked at Alistair and Nan.
"Well, he's not thankin' th' Circles," Alistair muttered. "Tha's somethin'."
"Daniel, for the millionth time, Spherius isn-" Nan began, rolling her eye.
"It's an expression, Nancy."
"It's a stupid expression, Daniel." Nan still hated being called 'Nancy'. Bill blinked and laughed lightly, feeling as though years of stress were lifted from him, even though it'd been only a year since they'd gone away.
"We missed you guys too," Bill said softly. "And we're safe. Thanks to Alistair."
"That disaster, that was you, wasn't it?" Dan said softly.
"It was my idea," Bill said with a sigh. "The resistance decided to spin it into their own thing. I didn't advocate a demonstration, or the rioting that followed. It was supposed to be a warning, a statement. A shot over the bow. Not an attack."
"So you're Cipher."
"Yeah." Bill drew in a deep breath. "Might as well tell the truth to you guys anyway. If I'm rememberin' right, and bear with me, my brain's still a bit foggy, you guys are in the leadership of the Cyran resistance."
"Foggy?" Nan said, shooting Alistair a look.
"Later," Alistair said.
"Dan is the current leader's lieutenant," Nan said. "Cosine will want to meet you."
"Cosine?"
"He's the leader. My father."
Bill blinked. The only teacher in Secondary he'd liked, Daniel's father, was now leading the Cyran resistance.
"Codenames here too?"
"It was a good idea," Dan said. "We all have them. Nobody knew who Cipher was but we all liked his ideas. To find out it was you, well it just makes sense now. We thought that Cipher had ordered the attack, everything that happened. We were stunned. I'm glad to find out you didn't approve all that. We thought Cipher was finally going to make things right. Do things right."
"And he will," Bill said. "From here."
He drew in a deep breath.
"We may not have a choice anymore, since the Pantocyclus resistance seems to think that violence is the only way they're going to be heard. If the other cells decide that is what needs to be done as well, we're going to find ourselves smack in the middle of a revolution we don't want and honestly, in my opinion, we don't need. But it looks like it's too late for that."
He frowned, shaking his angle.
"So the only thing we can do at this point is protect ourselves. We don't want to fight but we need to make sure that we can if we have to. We need to make sure that we know how to use weapons, that we have stores of food and safe places to go. We need to make sure we can protect our own and keep everyone safe, no matter if they want to fight with us or not."
He stood and began to pace, arms behind his Shape.
"I think we should contact the other groups, find out who is wanting to go to war with the Pantocyclus resistance and who is like us, who wants to protect our own from reprisals. The Circles know that there's an active resistance. If they suspected before, that disaster on my birthday will have convinced them. They're going to be hunting for anyone who expresses sympathy with our cause, whether they're actually resistance or not. If they begin to suspect the locations of all the active Subversive groups, they may decide to assert their control. To make sure the outlying Prefectures are still under their sway. Our Prefect is a Circle and he's directly related to House Pantocyclus. More directly than-" he spat, "Cerchio. He's not gonna stand for any insurgence from his Prefecture."
He cleared his throat.
"We gotta go underground. We don't have a choice now. We gotta protect ourselves but what's more, we gotta protect the innocents. Our families. The townsfolk and the poor people, all the people who just want a normal life, free of oppression and fear." He sighed. "Free. For. All."
Daniel nodded.
"Come to my house for coffee tonight, Bill."