This is the third segment of Blur the Lines, and Part One is nearing it's conclusion. I think there will probably be one more three chapter segment before Part Two begins. Thanks to everyone who has viewed / reviewed so far... and please keep it up!
CHAPTER SEVEN
Michael Haley walked into his house like a man on a mission, which technically he was. His job had just become exponentially harder, all because of the impatience of his newest recruit who had managed not only to royally fuck up his strategy but had also gotten himself killed in the process.
I told them! He thought angrily, his feet automatically planning out the route toward his basement. I told them that he was too damn trigger-happy! Outwardly he was a picture of satisfaction, a mission complete and another in the works. But inwardly he was in turmoil. And now he needed to attack London? London?! That was crucial, so damn crucial to the whole operation!
Relax Michael. He tried to calm himself down as he walked down the steps into his basement. You’ll get this figured out. It will work out.
Yeah, just like it did for Abraham.
He swore again, more out of annoyance now than anger, as he approached the derelict door hiding under his basement steps. There was a dusty, cobwebby keypad partially hidden in an alcove next to it, and Michael quickly punched in the code: 01123581321. After a few moments the door slid open and he entered into a small glass capsule that seemed like a strange design for an elevator. Once inside he pressed the bottommost of the two buttons, and the lift dropped into the earth.
So who do I still have? Michael thought, the weariness that had threatened to overtake him since the beginning once again encroaching on him. Not counting Abraham two others have died, James and Bartholomew. James was in Hong Kong. Bartholomew was in Sydney. Neither are key cities, and Houston wasn’t either. I’ve been lucky three times; I’m not getting lucky again. Michael felt the elevator slowing down as it approached the command center, deep below even The Pit, where he had organized his entire operation over three years before.
The Delta Resistance had been named after the fourth letter of the long extinct Greek Alphabet, which meant change. In the beginning it had consisted of twelve high-ranking government officers from around the world, each willing to die fighting for the world’s freedom. Michael Haley had been the one that had gathered them together, and had taken the codename of Judas, after the betrayer in the Old Christian Bible. It was an internal slap in the face to Israel Shimar’s antireligious supremacy, and was only emulated by his eleven followers who had each taken a name of another of Jesus’s apostles. Each of them had taken a city of their choosing; all one of the few old-world cities that still stood on Earth.
Peter took Philadelphia. Andrew chose Paris. John took Rome. James picked Hong Kong. Philip went to London. Bartholomew chose Sydney. Thomas took Moscow. Matthew picked Cairo. Thaddeus had moved from his original station in New Delhi, which had been exterminated less than six months after their formation, to Kolkata. Simon took Tel Aviv. Matthias picked Tokyo. And less than a year ago they had welcomed a twelfth. He had been given the name Abraham, and chose Houston. None but Judas, Michael, knew where each of them had been stationed, and none of them knew that he operated out of Ál-Jalîya itself. It was a perfect system, and it had worked flawlessly for over two-and-a-half years.
And then tremors began. James expired abruptly in the beginning of January; abrupt but natural. Disease had long ravaged Hong Kong, and James had been just one of its thousands of victims. Then, not even a month later, Bartholomew died in a nuclear reactor failure in Sydney, which by itself had almost wiped out the entire city. Soon after that Michael himself had personally exterminated the city. Then five months had passed and The Resistance had begun to overcome their losses, regroup and reload, and tentatively yet boldly plan their mass revolt. And now this… the latecomer had left early before the party had begun. He’d thrown his own instead and tasted shotgun lead instead of his expected cake.
Michael smiled wryly at the irony as the elevator ground to a halt hundreds of feet underground, over five hundred yards below the bottom of Ál-Jalîya. This would be their toughest meeting yet. Of the twelve only nine remained, along with their commander. He just hoped that it would be enough.
CHAPTER EIGHT
There was a small chamber outside the door to the cargo hold, its only feature being a ladder leading up to a locked hatch. Still, it took Esti only moments to pick the simple lock; it took longer to turn the wheel so rusted it couldn’t have been moved at any time in the last century.
Then how did they get us down there?
Esti pushed away the thought, climbing her way out of the opening and into the hallway above. After ascertaining that it was clear, she crept down toward the solitary door standing ajar at the end. It opened into another corridor, with several more doors branching off.
Oh god. Esti thought. Why do ships have to be so goddamn complicated??
Suddenly she heard movement from her right and she quickly ducked behind a row of metal crates. There was a clanging as a door crashed off of a wall, and the hurried chatter of two crewmen as they rushed blindly past her toward the deck.
“…dock in thirty hours…”
“…Philadelphia…”
“…Caius is going to be so pissed…”
Then their conversation faded away, but Esti had heard everything she needed. The ship would dock in Philadelphia in a little over a day, which meant she would have to hide out for the next twenty-five hours or so before she tried anything, or she would have to guide the ship herself. And by the sound of the storm ravaging the world outside, that was not an option.
Caius.
She pursed her lips in thought. That name brought up some memory, something she had once heard in one of her many lives. Caius. That name meant something…
Ignore it! She turned to other things, peering out from behind the crates and seeing that the door the crewmen had emerged from had been left open. After listening for any more approaching sailors, she ducked out from her shelter and walked speedily but quietly toward the room. She slid through the doorway like a wraith, her eyes searching the room beyond for any sign of movement. A few moments passed with no trigger, so she relaxed and searched for a light switch.
She found one after a few seconds of searching, and flicked it on with a subtle click. What she saw was like an oasis in the middle of a barren desert.
She was standing in the middle of the ship’s armory.
Here we go. The warrior inside her had taken over.
Yet as Esti browsed the racks of guns and explosives, her mind began to wander back to the events of the last few days. The image of Abraham, the man she had come to admire so much over the years, being shot blatantly in the middle of the street would be burned into her memory forever; she knew that all too well.
And you ran.
She forced the voice away, but it always returned.
You ran like a coward. You ran away like the inferior cur you are.
STOP IT!
Esti pulled herself back together, steeling herself against the forces about to take over. Abraham was history. Just like everyone else was history. She was a loner, not meant to be a part of anyone’s life.
That’s not what Abraham thought.
Esti forced the voice back down, ignoring its feeble protests. Abraham had taken her in three years ago, when she had been an eleven year old kid stranded in the middle of industrial Houston, wandering the streets long after anyone her age and sex had any right to. The man had found her one night, sleeping in an alcove between a smokestack and a sewage depository, and had taken her back to his home with him. Over those three years he had raised her as his daughter and imbued within her his ideals. He had taught her science and math, given her and education only government men like himself were privy to. He had told her of the wonders of religion and the beliefs of the ancient world. He had shown her maps of the Earth, taught her the continents and the cities. He had given her the gift of reading and writing, something that most of the children born in the world never found. At his guiding hand she had learned about the history of the world, of the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, China, India, and how one day it had all come crashing down because some avaricious people on a street that sounded more like a defensive structure than a name became too greedy with their money. He had shown her how the Capital had arisen from the ashes of a broken world and molded it to their will. His words still resonated in her mind. Learn this Esti, and teach it to your own children. Help us resist, and once we are free make sure we never forget. And maybe this will never happen again.
And he had taught her how to fight. He had taught her self-defense, how to fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee. He had shown her how to fire a gun, though he had insisted on never letting her try it herself. He had taught her how to resist
And Esti intended to honor his memory.
Ten minutes later she emerged from the armory with three more things than when she had entered. One was a silver-plated .357 Magnum, its six chambers filled with deadly hollow-points. Another was a small pouch of small explosives; what in another time would have been called simply hand grenades. The third was a bolstered resolve, and a glint in her emerald eyes that hadn’t existed when she’d entered the armory. She was ready, and in a day’s time she would wreak havoc on the ship that had been foolish enough to abduct her. Then she would go to Philadelphia and find the man Abraham had called Peter. She would resist. For her father. For everyone.
CHAPTER NINE
Over the years since the deterioration of the old world, Big Ben had become a relic of past times. No one could even remember its meaning, but no one, not even the government, had the heart or the money to tear it down. So it had stood for ages while relics had become ruins around it, lasting long after its gears had stopped twitching. It was ironic and more than a little eerie how they had finally stopped at exactly twelve o’clock, twenty one minutes, and twelve seconds; perfectly in sync with the day the world had turned upside down. But Big Ben had one more secret, and that was hidden high in its majestically melancholy tower, behind the dimmed clock face itself.
There was a room there, unreachable by any way but an ancient, creaky old metal elevator. Only one man ever used that elevator, and he himself was hardly ever noticed. His graying hair was odd, as most people usually didn’t live long enough to gain that mark of age, but not odd enough to stand out. Neither did his tired brown eyes or his threadbare clothes, or his sooty age-worn skin. Even his cane, dusty oak stylized with the figure of an owl, failed to register in the minds of passerby. They were all the marks of a vagabond, an old cripple, someone to be passed by in silence. The most he was ever thought of was as a fixer, a maintenance man. And that was exactly what he wanted.
That day Philip climbed into his elevator with a strange feeling of nostalgia rising in his chest. He knew this would be the final time in the room, in his enclave. Before the end of the day the once great oasis of London would be just another ghost town waiting for the Exterminators to appear in its airspace. Then it would simply be gone. He would move to another city, set up shop in another identical room… but it wouldn’t be the same. London did not deserve to be destroyed. There was too much beauty left in it.
This is why you’re the soldier. He thought with a wry smile as the elevator jolted to a halt behind the clock face. And why Judas is the commander. This is why you can’t make all the hard decisions.
One thing was for sure. He was here to follow orders. And follow orders he would. By the end of the day the streets would belong to Chaos, and he would be on his way to Ál-Jalîya.
The streets of London were unusually empty this morning, and Xavier continued his walk until the shadow of Big Ben was splayed around him like a huge dark dust cloud. His mind was free, wandering through the fog that surrounded it, trying to find its path. He was still wandering when he came to an unobtrusive, slightly open door in the side of a dilapidated building, and without knowing exactly what he was doing he walked in and closed it behind him. Little did he know that it would probably save his life.
The computer screen flashed to life before Philip’s face, the darkened visage of the man called Judas barely visible on the other end. The background as always was the same, the reflective, metal-coated blue walls of Judas’s control room in Ál-Jalîya. Philip knew it would be daytime in the Himalayas now, but there was no sign of that in the dimly lit command center.
“Philip.” Judas said simply. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Philip said without hesitation, the skin around his eyes crinkling in anticipation. “What d’you got for me today?”
“Bad news.” Judas replied, his voice betraying a note of extreme annoyance. “You heard about Abraham.”
“I did.” Philip said, nodding sadly. “And I take full responsibility; after all I was the one who recommended-”
“That doesn’t matter now!” Judas said angrily. “Now because of that Shimar has become even more paranoid than he used to be, and he told me that one of his sources informed him of a rebellion about to take place in London.”
“In other words, this is deep shit.” Philip said simply.
“Yes.” Judas chuckled, alleviating some of the tension. “Deep shit… But in all seriousness Shimar wants me to destroy London, and I have fifteen hours. Can you evacuate London in fifteen hours Philip?”
“What am I, God?” Philip asked, now vehement. “You know I have no chance! I need at least two days, probably more to get everyone out!”
“Philip, I’m just relaying. And you honestly don’t think I would have called you without an idea do you?” Judas said reproachfully.
“Well, speak.” Philip said, the anger slowly draining back out of his voice.
“Stage your rebellion, I don’t know how but you have to. Then while it’s happening I can swoop in and make a show of exterminating the city while people are fleeing into the countryside. The only thing is, to get them that scared, it needs to be scary. You need to create a mass mob mentality throughout the entire city telling them to run. That’s the only way we can pull this off.”
“Let me think.” Philip said shortly.
“You have twelve hours until I’ll be back on this screen Philip, and by then you had better have something.” And with that Judas disapp-eared in a haze of static. Philip sat back in his chair, running a hand through his hair in thought. This would take some working. But with a little flourish he might just be able to pull it off.
Xavier looked quizzically around the unobtrusive room he had wandered into. It was small, about the size of a wheelhouse on a ship, and appeared to be made completely of brick. That was odd in itself, as everything new in London had been constructed with metal, but the brickwork looked new. Something fluttered through Xavier’s chest, something he had rarely if ever felt. It was unease. Something here was off. He turned to leave, wanting nothing more than to run back to the orphanage and return to his underground haven and luminous fish, but when he tried the door the handle refused to turn.
He pushed harder.
It didn’t budge.
Xavier threw his whole weight against the door, his adrenaline awakening in desperation and rushing to his muscles. At that moment he probably could have lifted a car.
The door didn’t move a millimeter.
Finally he collapsed beside it, exhausted with overexertion to his undernourished body. His long black hair was running with sweat and his face shone with an oily sheen. Desperately, his eyes searched the room for another exit. Any other exit. A window. A pipe. Because Xavier had never been more sure of anything in his life… that if he didn’t get out of this room he would die.
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