Chapter 1: Part 2
The Fighter's again mourned Madeline Derwent. They were shocked and many did not believe that she had been alive all that time, and in the hands of the Bureau. Several of them had been in the crowd rounded up by the 'hunters to be shown what happens to dangerous dissenters and had "seen" their beloved leader be hanged all those years ago. The Fighters managed to shorten the Alliance's enjoyment of the execution by a mercy shot from a roof top.
After the standard mourning period of two days, the Fighters began to wonder if Madeline had revealed the location of their current camp. What if the 'hunters were on their way? The 100 families packed their belongings and moved to their backup camp. Due to the logistics of the move, they had to leave their biggest treasure; their library. They buried the entrance to the tunnel system and ove on. Once the library tunnels of their new camp were ready, the would return for the books.
As time went on, however, the landscape changed through flooding and landslide events and the location of the entrance tunnel was lost.
Madeline's family lived on in her children; Amanda, Alan and Robert. Alan exceeded in the organization of raids and attacks against the Alliance and rose to hold the leadership of the Fighters, the position that his parents had shared. Robert defected from the Fighters in the midst of a raid and was executed alongside his partners by the Alliance for being a traitor. Upon the execution of her youngest brother, Amanda began to lose faith in the ideals of the Fighters. She moved to live amongst the citizens of the River City. There she married an intelligent citizen, Chris Brunt, whose sympathies ran towards those of the Fighters. Together they had three children; Chris Jnr and twin girls Alicia and Kate. Amanda never mentioned the fact that she was the daughter of one of the most famous Fighters, although she told her children of their heritage.
When Chris Jnr was 11 years old, he was taken by the Bureau of Historical Investigations in a street raid and volunteered by them for recruitment into their ranks. Chris Snr mounted a daring rescue for his son, but was captured. Alicia panicked. What if the 'hunters knew where he lived and came after her and her two remaining children? She fled back to the mountain refuge of the Fighters with the young Kate and Alicia in tow.
The twins each had a different outlook on what they thought of the Fighter's camp, but they shared one thing in common. They found the restrictions placed on the children of the Fighters suffocating. When they lived as citizens, they were allowed to run the streets as they wished during the day and then reading and mathematics lessons from their parents at night. The Fighter children, however, were required to spend much of the day at lessons and weren't allowed to play outside, in case the noise gave away the location of the camp. It took Kate two years before she finally baulked fully at the restrictions and ran away, just before their 10th birthday. She tried to convince Alicia to run away with her, but Alicia didn't want to leave their mother. Alicia had made more of an effort to fit in than her sister, and had made a couple of loose friendships, although she still felt like an outsider.
Amanda was in shock after Kate ran away. Now she had lost three members of her family; probably never to see them again. She began to coddle Alicia, never letting her remaining child out of her sight other than for classes. She even volunteered to teach the history class, so that she wasn't apart from her daughter for all of the day. She showed preference to Alicia in this class without even trying to hide it, and this made Alicia even more of an outcast to the other children. It even earned her the enmity of some of them; most notably her cousin, Cameron.
After an arguement with her older cousin turned into a fist fight, Alan began to wonder if having his niece in the Fighter camp was a good idea. She bristled at being told to do her homework, did not pay attention in her classes and always seemed to be looking for an arguement with the other children. Her last fight had lost her the few friends that she had. Alan could see that she was just forward thinking, but she caused so much trouble. She (and her sister) had been the first children to have living as a Fighter thrust upon them after having lived elsewhere. Was there a way that he could use Alicia's knowledge and attitude to the advantage of the Fighter's cause? There was the... He shook his head at that thought. Could he take Amanda's last child off her?