'The Last Vote' by Lily Hardcastle

Chapter One:

The Trial

They named it Justice Hour.

But it was just another broadcast.

Lyra Quinn, a short, quick-fit, legacy building, smart minded girl stood in the centre of the Dominion Square, her breath misting in the cold morning air as the massive screens flickered to life above her. All around, citizens in red coats and white caps bellowed cheers of broken democracy, holding their phones in the air like the court was a concert. Children perched up on the shoulders of their parents, laughing. Vendors sold Tremane flags and synthetic popcorn. They smelled like oil and sugar.

On the screen, seven figures stood in a row- blindfolded and shackled to the law. Faces drained of life. Their names had already been rubbed out of the folds of history. The vultures didn’t need names. All they needed was the App.

“Welcome, patriots,” the announcers voice boomed. “It is time to decide fate: who speaks the truth, and who silences freedom?”

As the last word wandered in the air. Phones lit up, people began swiping. Upvote. Downvote. Death. Pardon. Justice rendered by a crowd.

The court erupted into silence, everyone dug their faces into the virtual decision, but Lyra didn’t move. She couldn’t. Not when the screams from last weeks trial echoed around her mind. She told herself this was necessary. This was order. This was peace.

She used to believe in it – the App, the system, the cheers. Back then, when the Dominion had first handed her the badge. Her symbol of peace. She’d stood in front of a mirror and repeated the words, “Order is Hope, Tremane is Truth.”  Her mother had vanished, branded a traitor. And the silence left in her place taught Lyra one thing: survival meant submission.

But this particular morning, something felt different. Her fingers hovered above her screen- and for the first time in years. She didn’t submit to synthetic peace.

She just watched. And in the flicker of a condemned man’s eyes.

She saw something that terrified her more than all the chaos the Party had warned her about. Bellowing out of a spark, a broken tear dripping out of the man’s eye, trickling down his cheek. Tumbling to his feet. Pooling around his ragged shoes, the answer screamed from one, singular, fractured tear.

She pieced a truth together.

The Vote ended in less than sixty seconds.

The highest downvoted was a teacher from North Bloc- accused of “corrupting young minds” by showing unauthorized pre-Dominion literature. The crowd roared when the countdown hit zero. No one asked for evidence, no one begged for mercy. Time had stripped away empathy. You don’t get graced with empathy without history.

The man didn’t plead, or beg, or scream, or cry. He merely lifted his head as the drones descended from above, and for a heartbeat, Lyra swore she felt his gaze through the blindfold. And just as that came, the impact was silent. The Dominion preferred it that way.

Clean, surgical, bloodless justice. The life left without a sound. The purest of lives tend to do that.

He crumpled in on himself like cloth, gasps turned quickly to cheers. Fireworks erupted miserably above the square, red and gold. Patriotic music swelled. Just as the man’s eyes once did.

Lyra swallowed hard, blinking away the static feeling impacting her spine.

A child near her tugged on the sleeve of its mother, “May I vote next time, Mama?”

It’s mother laughed, her smile genuine. “Of course, my love. Once your ID implant is activated. Only a few months to go.” She laughed softly and picked her child up, cradling it close to her body. Lyra watched. A pang of something igniting in her heart. A dull feeling of disgust.

Lyra swiftly pushed through the crowd. Her Party badge flashing just enough for people to clear a path. She couldn’t be seen not celebrating. She didn’t want to be seen at all.

She ducked into a side alley, out of range from the drones, and leaned against a rusted metal door, heart thudding. She wandered if the door held more truth.

She started to remember the first time she herself had voted. She’d been thirteen, a girl barley older than her, accused of tampering with social credits. Lyra has swiped down without thinking. The girl had smiled on-screen. A real smile. One of those images that never left. Lyra had dreamt of it for years. And now, the crowd’s cheers rang like static inside her skull – they had kept cheering. But she had stopped.

She let her gaze fall to her device, she never casted a vote. Her thumb hovered solemnly above the screen.

Her phone buzzed. A message from the Dominion’s Social Integrity Office:

INACTIVITY DETECTED DURING JUSTICE HOUR.

RECOMMENDATION: PARTICIPATE TO MAINTAIN STANDING.

She swore under her breath and dismissed the notification. First offence- she’d get a warning. Second meant a score drop. Third?

That night, Lyra sat in her apartment. Surrounded by party-approved decoration. UNITY IS FREEDOM, ORDER IS HOPE. TREMANE IS TRUTH.

She glanced down at a floorboard, slightly ajar compared to the rest. Reaching down and shoving it aside, she dropped to her knees, pulling out an old tablet. An antique. Illegal to own. Hidden beneath floorboards for years.

She didn’t know why she powered it on again. Maybe it was the tear. Maybe it was the silence before dusk. Or the melancholy strike of a merciless drone. Maybe it was her mother, she didn’t know.

The tablet flickered, glitched. Then a single video file appeared on-screen.

Dated: 04.09.2032.  Years after her mother’s death.

She froze. She couldn’t.

She tapped the file open.

Her hands trembled. Not from fear but from recognition. The way the woman on the screen stood upright with the up-most ambition. Something so rare in fake peace, she almost dropped the tablet in fright. Lyra had spent her whole life trying to forget the face. Seeing it now was like being yanked through time by the neck.

A woman stood in a crowd. Tired eyes. Voice like gravel and smoke.

She stood in gravel and smoke.

“If you’re watching this, the lie is still alive. But so are we.”

Lyra’s breath caught in her throat as she recognised the face glitching on the screen, and the voice of a distance lullaby sounding so broken.

“Tremane didn’t save us. He sold us. And we bought it. All of it.”

The screen went black.