'The Last Vote'

by Lily Hardcastle

Chapter two: The Tremane Doctrine.

They called it the Second Revolution.

But God knows it was never about freedom.

It began with tweets.

Then Rallies.

Then riots that were broadcast like sporting events.

Lyra scrolled through the documents unknowing to the disgust that is a truth. Her heart pounds as if it would explode, as the sun created a downcast around her room. The faint blue glow of the tablet kept her eyes entertained. Her mother’s video had unlocked something. As if it was waiting for her. A hidden vault named: TR-ROOT.

Inside lay pixels of history. Layers of forgotten past in the folds of technology, Voice recordings, grainy security, all hidden behind a mask.

She felt sick. Not from the videos, but from the quieted realization that she’d been good at her job. Her speeches, her hashtags. Her voice. She had fed the fire and started the machine. The same one that had erased people like her mother. Her guilt wasn’t a wave. It was a slow, dripping wound. A rising tide that lapped at her lungs.

She tapped the first file.

“JUNE 2024- WARLAND BURNS”

A news anchor’s voice sparks to life.

“What began as peaceful protest against election manipulation has escalated into full-scale occupation. The Capitol is under military lockdown, and the President has yet to step forward to halt the violent actions.”

Images appear on the screen, like pages ripped from a book. People with signs saying, ‘History repeats itself.’

Then the crackling sound of voices, a crowd, a rally. All screaming.

“Tremane! Tremane!”

The crowd chanted like believers. Lyra stared at their faces. Pixelated by time, but still so alive. And she loathed that she understood them. They didn’t look brainwashed. They looked certain. That was the Dominions greatest trick. The face behind the curtain was so evil, they dressed the veil up like food. They never erased doubt. They just replaced it with pride.

Lyra had only known the cursed name through monuments. The man who shot political injustice in the face. Ron Tremane, Savior of the Republic. His face was everywhere; his words carved into the ribcage of history.

She gazed at another clip. A man standing tall on a stage, surrounded by people.

He hadn’t started as a monster. That was the worst part. Ron Tremane has been a fringe commentator, a media darling for the angry and afraid. His videos always ended in slogans. His rallies felt like old country churches, only louder. And then – the 2025 riots. The broken election. The military lockdown. He stepped into the chaos wearing a suit and selling salvation. One country. One voice. One Tremane. By 2030, the Union was gone. Dissolved “for national unity.” The Dominion was born from its ashes – sleek, sterile, absolute.

His face was orange under the hot lights; arms raised to the sky like a preacher.

“They hate you because you still believe in truth. In God. In Union. They’ve taken your jobs, voices and your country. AND I AM TAKING IT BACK. Make the Republic great again!”

The crowd roared.

And they did take it back.

Through manipulation,

Loyalty apps.

Through blood.

The next file was raw footage- no filters, no editing. Which was rare in Lyra’s time.

“January 2026- The Night of Cleansing.”

Civilians kneeled on the cold gravel streets while masked enforcers marches behind them. Almost robotic, clinical. Loudspeakers played the Dominion Anthem.

“The country is bright,

So is the night.

Keep on going through blood for the light.

His word is strong. And God above it all.

Choses to decide,

Who lives and who...

Dies.”

The clip cuts to a woman being dragged from a burning library. Piles of soldiers filed out from the building. Smoke and ash filled the pixilated clip, leaving a dampened version of the proof from the past.

“Books are not weapons!” A man shouted from above it all. Like from a speaker.

“YOU’RE WRONG!” Someone bellowed.

“They always were.”

By 2030, the term “Union state” was gone.

Now Replaced by the Dominion.

The borders closed. The internet firewalled.

People voted every day- not for candidates but for punishments. For entertainment of the hungry. Virtue points.

It wasn’t about justice or injustice anymore. No politics. It was about performance, the art of the act. The art of destruction.

Tremane died a mere four years after his perfect state was birthed from his word. His body cremated in state ceremony. No grave, no shrine. Just a digital statue in Dominion Square. His final speech looping like scripture. But he didn’t need to be alive. God knows the dictatorship the Dominion runs off isn’t alive. And it wasn’t like that was exactly hidden from the public.

It ran off his words. His algorithms. His doctrine. Every broadcast, every court decision, every cote on the App was filtered through policies stamped with his signature. The world Lyra lived in was posthumous fascism.

Government by ghost. Dictatorship by legend.

Hell for most by spirit.

History has always been lost to paintings. But what happens when you burn the paint?

Lyra sat back, stunned. Her pulse thumped in rhythm to her thoughts. Her ears ringed out anthems.

She remembered textbooks from when she was young, from school. The writing. How they called Tremane “the People’s Voice.” How they said he ended chaos with fire. Ending smoke with smoke.

She remembered reciting the Creed in class.

“One Voice, One Will, One Tremane.”

She hadn’t understood it back then. She was only a child. Her mother used to whisper warnings in the tone of a story. Her favourite book was about a girl that saved the world with words.

Tiny rebellions.

Then one day, her mother was gone. A “terrorist.” No trial. No funeral.

The screen blinked again.

Another file: A speech.

Tremane, older now. Eyes void of empathy as he stood before a monument knows as, The Great Wall Of Truth. A digital propaganda board that wrapped around Dominion Square.

“Democracy is a lie they told you. A trick to make you feel powerful while they robbed you blind. I didn’t steal Union. I liberated it.”

He smirked at the wall, turning to the crowd.

“And you thanked me.”

He bared his teeth like a wolf, the camera zoomed in on his face, he stared up into it.

“And you’ll thank me all over again.”

Shortly after, a long run-down of the events. A picture-by-picture shrine, a timeline.

The years were never exact. History had been re-coded into emotional timelines – eras names after integrity and “Unity” instead of dates. The fall of the Union – around the end of the 2020’s. After the Elections in 24’. The rise of the Dominion was before Lyra was old enough to remember colours that weren’t red and gold. They’d scrubbed the decades clean.

Lyra slams the tablet closed, her chest heaving with injustice.

Everything she had believed- every oath she’d sword as Party PR. Had been built on this doctrine. On fear. On false memory. On a man who had weaponized attention itself. Using only promise.

This wasn’t about her mother anymore, or even Lyra. It was about everyone who never had the chance to ask why. Every silence full of a question never answered.

No wonder they’d erased her mother.

Not because she lied.

But because a single whisper of a truth puts another crack into the glass ceiling.

Outside her apartment window, the sky glowed with red sparks, from the weekly parade. Celebrating Dominion Day.

Lyra didn’t look.

She sat in silence.

And for the first time in years, she had whispered something she didn’t even know she could remember. Like she had inherited the strength to push aside a lie.

“There are more of us then there are of them.”

A phrase she hadn’t heard since she was small. A phrase her mother used to mutter.

Just before the lights went out.

The tablets blue glow faded behind her. What remained wasn’t light – it was intention. And for the first time in her life, Lyra walked not toward answers, but toward the questions she might ask.