BLUR THE LINES
PART ONE - ALIGNMENT
CHAPTER ONE
The night sky was suddenly split open by a million shafts of blazing light as the Mach Ones blasted over the deserted streets and derelict houses of Annandale, North Dakota. The air was filled with the screeching of flight and the cracks of a thousand sonic-booms. A single stray dog looked up laxly before returning to his steak bone, gnawed to the core days before. A pair of newborn kittens mewled quietly, curling against their mother who watched the dancing shapes in the sky with the wary eye of a protector. A snake winding its way through an abandoned power plant, looking like just another strand of wire, peered questioningly at the source of the unique vibrations. And the few people that remained in the ruined city stared in blatant horror as the demons of the Capital closed in on their destination. Mach Ones they were called, because they could break the speed of sound a thousand times over without breaking a single bolt, but they had gained another nickname through fear and power. They were called Exterminators, because that was what they did.
The first of the fleet of seventeen, marked on the side with the Capital’s symbol, pulled into an upward roll over the center of the city and then finally coasted into a slow, steady curve over the once magnificent city hall. The rest of the group dispersed, surrounding their leader in a close yet loose circle, covering the city to the surrounding wall. For three minutes they circled, ensuring that each of their partners had gained their position. And then the captain gave the order.
Seventeen hatches opened in the hull of seventeen planes and out fell seventeen elongated capsules, each painted in alternating stripes of black and red. They dropped the thousands of feet in seconds, watched by the terrified few, each person hoping that they were figments of a mass dream. They all touched the ground at the same instant, exactly as was intended. There was a simultaneous crash, one second of suspended disbelief, and then the warheads exploded in a blast powerful enough to blow the leaves from trees fifty miles away, completely obliterating any sign that the city of Annandale, North Dakota, had ever existed. The planes, Mach Ones, Exterminators, circled for another minute, each pilot carefully watching the ground for the remotest sign of life. And then, one by one, they turned and shot back across the sky, creating a series of shock waves heard around the world. The Exterminators had finished their work, and were returning to their hangar until they were called upon again.
CHAPTER TWO
Around the world those thunder-cracks were heard with a mixture of apprehension and relief. People with relatives in other cities immediately picked up their telephones and dialed their numbers with shaking hands. Others logged onto the remains of the once proud Internet, trying to find the government report detailing what had been eliminated. Still others flipped on their flat-screen televisions, remnants of a past time, switching frantically between channels to find where the Exterminators had paid their visit. In the next few hours peddlers in the streets would sell hundreds of bogus newspapers, each claiming that every city from Los Angeles to Tokyo had been wiped off the map, each earning enough for him or herself to live on until at least the next extermination. And inside his one-story house, amid the screaming of tens of young children and the groans of their older caretakers, Xavier closed his eyes and tried to break through the haze of terror falling upon his city.
Eventually he could no longer block out the raucous screaming from inside and the frantic shouting from outside, so Xavier headed for his hideaway. Most days it was an ordeal sneaking across the kitchen, but as there was no reason for the cooks to be exempt from the uproar he knew it would be easy. As he peered into the room he saw each of the five in some state of shock, and it was no trouble for him to slide five feet to under the sink in the near right corner. The crawlspace was where it always was, hidden in the junction of corners and blocked from view by a janitor’s cart that hadn’t moved since the day Xavier had first arrived. However what had once been an easy fit had become a tighter squeeze as the years had gone by and Xavier thought with dejection that very soon he would be too large to fit through this particular crawlspace. Well then, I’ll find another way. He thought. It wasn’t as if anyone would notice a random teenager wandering aimlessly through the halls of the dormitory, the caretakers had enough to worry about.
But he pushed that from his head as he slipped deeper and deeper into the bowels of the building, the space around him gradually widening until he was in more of a tunnel than a crawlspace. Slowly the walls transformed from cheap sheet-metal to old and crumbling brick as he left the area under the building and entered the long-unused sewers of the city. Ironically, what had once been the city’s waste disposal system was now cleaner than the streets themselves. Waste was now incinerated… it was more productive, and the sewers had been left in disrepair. Now the water that ran through the underground tunnels was cleaner than most of the drinking water, and the only evidence that anything fouler than frogs had once inhabited these passageways was the subtle odor of forgotten decay. The light was low but still substantial, created by strange bioluminescent fish that glowed with a soft yellow hue like fireflies. When he had visited the sewers in his younger years, Xavier would stare in wonder at these fish for hours on end, entranced by their simple ability to create something that he had been taught only God had the right to create. Still, in what he thought was his sixteenth year, they fascinated him and afforded him a sense of wonder in a world where any kind of wonder was short-lived and fabricated. They were his secret, his lighthouse in a sea of crashing waves. And in a world where Exterminators roamed the skies and greed ruled the streets hope was a rare occurrence.
In the end Xavier had no idea how long he had sat in that one spot in his secret home, watching the fish of wonder flutter back and forth through their watery abode. Once he felt a sudden spike of hunger stab through his gut, he attempted to rise. Yet it took him three times before his spine became loose enough for him to move, and he heard at least twenty cracks in his back before he managed to stand again. I’ve spent at least a day down here. He thought, his conviction real. Maybe more. In reality he had been sitting by the underground river for only around ten hours… but in this world time had become as blurred as the lines that bound it and a complete rotation of the Earth no longer defined the standard unit of time. Time was now relative to the mind that controlled it, and as Xavier crawled back up the rusted ladder to the hole that would take him back to the dormitory it could have been ten hours or ten days since he had last traversed the stretch of broken concrete and dust that had lain undisturbed, except by him, for decades. And as he prepared to return to that world where the lines had been blurred beyond recognition, he turned back just once to regard the strange and wondrous creations that swam through their underground city. And, even if it was just his imagination, he knew that he saw the fish blink their lights softly, as if to wish farewell to their only companion for the long and lonely days and nights in their stretch of river. Elated slightly by the thought, he smiled, and crawled back through the passageway. Goodbye. He thought, something that in another time may have been considered childish for a sixteen year-old. Yet in this era Xavier was just one of the masses, neglected by the world itself, who had never grown up in spirit. He was alone among many, a stranger among strangers. The world was falling apart, and no one seemed ready to save it.
CHAPTER THREE
Chaos attacked the streets of Houston like a rabid animal as one of the few remaining old world cities was surrounded by the blasting whir of helicopter rotors and the shrill ringing of police sirens. Terrified people dashed through the streets, throwing themselves into buildings that seconds later exploded with the sound of millions of firecrackers. Those that could not were plowed down in hundreds upon hundreds by impartial, sweeping gunfire. The world was in an uproar, and the Capital had sent troops to arbitrate the situation. A weak rebellion had arisen and before it could so much as spread its wings it had been quelled. Its leader, a middle-aged man named Abraham, had been shot with a hollow-point round, his head exploding like a grapefruit in the midst of the charge on City Hall, his followers scattering like confetti in a breeze. Now they scrambled along with the masses, everyone paying the price for the attempted insurrection. Policemen dashed through the streets, shooting anything and everything that moved. People expired on the burning asphalt, staring up at the smoggy sky with glazed eyes and wondering what they had ever done to deserve such a death.
However none of the policemen noticed a young girl dashing through the backstreets, leaping over rubble like a gazelle and dashing through alleyways faster than her worn sneakers could bear. She didn’t look back; doing so would waste precious time and even more precious breath. The scenery around her was in a blur, sooty factories and dilapidated buildings passing by in a mixed palate of muted color. The sirens grew fainter and fainter in the distance until they faded altogether, and the menacing slicing of the rotors became background noise. Only then did Esti finally stop running, nearly falling over as sudden exhaustion and fatigue set in. The best she could do was lean against a building, panting crazily, trying to suck in as much air as her hyperventilating lungs could process. She hardly remembered any of the frenzied moments before the charge; it was all a collage of incoherent images quickly fading from her mind, the chants, the insanely giddy feeling of elation and achievement that came with the idea of the rebellion. The only clear instant was the moment when the hollow-point round, shot by a policeman standing on the steps of City Hall, had smashed through Abraham’s head. That image would be fixed in her mind forever, as the last moment of deranged sanity before hell set in.
And then she had been running… running… knowing that any moment she would feel a searing point of pain as a bullet pierced her body yet still pulling at all the energy she could muster to keep going. And in the end she had beaten the odds. She had survived. She… had… survived… … …
Minutes passed by with agonizing slowness as Esti struggled to remain conscious, knowing that if she were to faint here she would probably never wake up. The world swam in an out of focus before her eyes, blurred past the point of recognition, and then sliding back into perfect alignment, angles sharpening to the finest points and changing the world into a mass of blocks and geometric shapes. More than once she felt it slipping away from her, and it was only with every ounce of mental power that she was able to rope herself back in. The moon had risen fully in the sky overhead, a sight unnoticed as she leaned against the wall, her only refuge from the hurricane of darkness attempting to sweep her away. You cannot fall. She thought doggedly, pulling at fleeting scraps of resolve. You cannot fall. If you fall you will die. If you fall you will die.
Still she sank down into a crouch, the futile energy left in her system not enough to sustain her body’s needs. She closed her eyes, clenching them shut, and then struggling to open them. Her eyelids felt as if fifty pound weights had been stapled to them, and were impossible to keep from sliding shut. Exhaustion had nearly overcome her. Her lungs ached. Her heart still pounded. Every inch of her body was being assaulted by pain of every kind. She had run miles through dark alleys trying to escape, falling more than once and always getting back up. And now it was returning to haunt her. Esti’s last memory of the city of Houston was of that bleak backstreet filled with the decrepit remains of houses and burnt out shells of factories, and of a tall, dark, menacing figure walking toward her as everything else dissolved into darkness.
CHAPTER FOUR
The jagged peaks of the Himalayas sliced through the thick layer of clouds like shears through a sheep’s fluffed wool, piercing the placid sky above. Snow coated their summits in a deep layer of white, reflecting the moonlight brazenly back at its creator. Their lower slopes were coated with piles and towers of icy rocks, dislodged from the summits as massive boulders and slowly being chipped away as they rolled down the slopes. And amid those unforgiving mountains, nestled in between two rising peaks which formed a kind of circular pit, was the ethereal silhouette of the Capital, Ál-Jalîya.
The city itself had been built uniquely, whereas instead of streets in a flat grid it had instead been constructed as a system of circular terr-aces, each one growing larger until they stopped at around two-hundred feet, creating the shape of a huge funnel. Right now the moon had risen over southern Asia, but during the day the eerie city was screened by a domelike shield that deployed and retracted at each eight o’clock hour, or at the sight of any avalanche. It would slide out above the top layer in no more than half a minute, two halves closing in like a clam shell. With the dome up the city would be nearly impenetrable. It would become a fortress, a moatless castle surrounded by guardhouses equipped with turrets capable of taking down a shielded spacecraft. Because among those in the Capital, paranoia was not an option.
As the moon began to set in western sky a group of dots appeared on the horizon, all morphing quickly into the seventeen Exterminators sent out hours before to annihilate the ghost city of Annandale, North Dakota. One by one they filed into the Capital’s central chute, slowly lowering themselves past terrace by terrace until they reached the aircraft hangar on the second lowest. Below them was the final ledge containing only the President’s mansion and its grounds before another hundred foot drop into a darkened underground cave, known only as The Pit, which had been long used as the city’s prison.
General Michael Haley descended from the cockpit of the first Exterminator, and strode across the walkway toward where the solitary figure of the President was standing, though Michael knew that hundreds of guards had their sniper scopes trained on him at that very instant, waiting for an order that could end his life. Truly, it didn’t disquiet him anymore, he’d become accustomed to it.
“General,” President Israel Shimar said graciously, holding out a smooth, serpentine hand which was immediately engulfed in Michael’s large callused palm. President Shimar was not a tall man, rounding out a thin, sinewy frame at a height that could only be considered average. His truly imposing quality was his face, never showing the slightest hint of an expression. Framed by a mane of smooth black hair and inset with a pair of murky brown eyes, his visage was sharp and angular to the point of striking fear into anyone not accustomed with the image.
“Mr. President,” Michael Haley responded, releasing the man’s hand as they began to walk down the tarmac toward the elevator that would take them down to the bottom level of Ál-Jalîya. “Our mission was successful.”
“As always General,” President Shimar replied, his face staring placidly into the distance. His skin was deeply tanned, hiding a usually tawny Middle Eastern complexion. “I expected nothing less.”
“Annandale was eliminated completely.” Michael continued with the mission report. “The exact time was recorded on the onboard computer for your records.”
“Very good,” The President replied. “You are dismissed.”
“Thank you sir,” Michael said, and began to walk back toward his plane.
“Actually…” President Shimar said softly, and Michael turned back. “I hate to give you another mission so soon…”
“It’s no problem sir.”
“There is another city that needs to be exterminated. However this mission is complex. It must be done ethically, as this city is still densely populated.”
“Then why sir, do we need to exterminate it?” Michael asked, feigning confusion. Over the years he’d become quite good at it.
“I’ve heard stirrings of rebellion,” The President stated simply. “From extremely well-versed and accomplished contacts. Of course you’ve heard about the incident in Houston with the man named Abraham?”
The shock that coursed through Michael’s system at that name was only hidden by years of practice, and yet he still wasn’t sure his face remained completely expressionless. For his sake he hoped it had. “No sir.”
“Ah, of course. How silly of me, you were in the air.” The President said, and for the first time an expression formed on his face: a small amused smile. “About the time you were exterminating Annandale a man named Abraham launched a charge on City Hall. He was almost immediately shot by a hidden policeman, but his followers dispersed too quickly for us to track them all down. The few we have caught… well… you know how they speak.” He let out a low, softly maniacal chuckle. “And they said there were many groups like them, each one planning a rebellion in a key city. Apparently this man Abraham became a little trigger-happy and decided to mount his charge early.”
“And they told you the next one was to happen in London?”
“Sharp as always.” President Shimar paused, thought for a moment, and then spoke again. “There is another thing. They did not know who their true leader was, the handler that Abraham and his counterparts around the globe answer to. However they did know that it was a man, a man in a very high place in our government. Any thoughts, Michael?”
Michael knew what this was, it was an entrapment. Shimar was baiting him, testing him. The only problem was that he was far better at this game than Shimar ever had a hope of knowing, and he barely popped a sweat as he replied. “No idea whatsoever sir.”
Shimar’s face remained expressionless for a few moments, and Michael prepared for the painless sting of a sniper’s poisoned bullet. However after another moment a new look formed, and for the first time that Michael could remember, the President looked ever so slightly crestfallen. He had thought he’d had his man, and he had been proven wrong. “Very good General,” he said finally, the gears in his mind once again twisting with speculation and conspiracy. His number one suspect had passed the test. It was time to construct a new list. “You may go now. I will see you in fifteen hours, once you have formulated a plan of attack… as I am sure you will.” The President abruptly turned and strode away.
Michael waited a few seconds, as was customary, and then began to walk in the other direction toward the elevator to Level Three, where his own government-provided mansion was situated. Throughout his body adrenaline was kicking into overdrive and he was so on edge that even the tiniest buzzing of a fly on the corner of his vision was transformed into the whirring of an assassin’s knife. He had outmaneuvered the President. He had beaten Israel Shimar at his own game. He had masterminded the mastermind.
CHAPTER FIVE
The archaic cargo ship plowed through the roiling waves with the ferocity of a wolfpack through a blinding blizzard, constantly falling back but never giving in. Across its decks its crew, tiny figures of darkness lit only when lightning crackled overhead, dashed haphazardly about tightening everything that could be tightened and doing their level best to keep from being thrown into the whirling Atlantic. It’s captain stood barricaded in the bridge, grimacing as he tried every maneuver to escape the infinite barrage of incoming waves, each one taking more of the crew away than it left. Crates slid across the slickened deck, crushing even more men underneath them before they toppled over the edge and down into the sea. One seemed to hang suspended in midair for a moment as a massive tusk of lightning blasted into the metal mast, highlighted against the dull silver hull painted all the way across with a thick, solid red stripe, before it too dropped into the depths. The ship had been named many times throughout its illustrious campaign, and the current one had been worn away nearly to the point of nonexistence by the elements. Still it was visible, painted in black along the uppermost band of silver on the side of the bridge. It had been named the Flying Dutchman, in a time when that name meant nothing to those with eyesight keen enough to read it. Like so many others, the myth of the Flying Dutchman had been lost in translation when the Earth had been torn apart and the Capital built; yet it still found ways to live on in mundane incantations and in the recesses of the human mind.
Deep below, in the bottommost hold of the Dutchman, a pair of emerald green eyes opened slowly; flinching shut every time a wave crashed into the side of the ship. They slowly surveyed the word around them, blinking as they adjusted to the darkness. Then they closed again, squeezed shut, and opened back up, hoping to see something, anything else. The world around them was in constant motion, rocking and rolling to the rhythm of invisible waves. A cacophony of clanks and a symphony of grinding metal assaulted her ears, and her nose was filled with the overpowering scent of salt and mildew. The air had a heaviness, oversaturated with humidity to rainforest-like levels and coated in mechanical grease.
Suddenly a sickening pain pulsed through her questing eyes like a sharp spike of molten metal. At this they squelched shut for the third time, and as the remaining senses were overwhelmed their owner drifted back into a world of even more complete darkness.
A man known simply as Caius sat in his luxurious cabin, ambivalent as to the crashing waves and raging storm outside his ship. He had sailed the Dutchman in even worse storms than this, and every time the sturdy old ship had broken through. Philadelphia would appear on the tempestuous horizon in a matter of hours, and there they would dock until the weather broke and they could sail their final route down through the canal to Bangkok where they would unload their cargo of weapons, drugs, and young women to the interspersed drug rings and cartels run by Caius himself. He was the overlord of a massive crime empire, with the world trembling at his fingertips. His network was massive, his connections widespread from the streets of every city to the sacred halls of the Capital itself. For a moment he leaned back in his chair, smiling placidly and allowing a rare moment of arrogance. Then it passed, and abruptly he had become a poker player with an expression so enigmatic that a team of psychologists would have spent days figuring it out. He stood and walked toward the door, then stepped out into the hallway beyond. Caius paused for a moment, regaining his balance on the ever-moving floor of his ship, and then began toward the bridge where he would oversee the final leg of their route to Philadelphia.
Back in the hold, amid a sea of clanks and whimpers, the pair of emerald green eyes opened again. This time they remained open, as if testing for any more flashes of pain. Feeling none, Esti sat up as slowly and as carefully as she could. The world around her was in darkness and for the moment she could hardly see the hand in front of her face. Slowly however her eyes adjusted to the nearly nonexistent light, and she began to take stock of the situation.
She was sitting in a large metal cage suspended about three feet above the cast-iron floor, made out of inch-thick steel bars that, though rusted, didn’t look ready to break any time soon. The hold around her was also made out of steel, reflecting and magnifying the miniscule point of light over by the equally thick door. After another few moments of looking at it Esti could see that it was a lantern of some sort, glowing with an otherworldly iridescent green light. Around her were more crates, made of every possible material from wood to metal to what looked almost like animal hide. And then she saw the other cages.
There were three or four of them that she could immediately see, and there were probably more hiding behind the mismatched crates. In each one she could see a dim figure silhouetted against the greenish light. A word popped into her head, one of the only old colloquialisms still remembered by mankind simply because it had never lost its ring nor its meaning.
She’s been shanghaied.
Caius slammed the door to the bridge shut behind him, walking up behind the beleaguered captain as he tried to right the course of the ship.
“Good evening, Captain,” Caius said softly. At this point he wasn’t being intentionally menacing, but the specter of the dark, muscled overlord of crime behind his shoulder couldn’t have done much for the captain’s morale.
“Good to see you taking part in things sir.” The captain replied smartly. He knew if he had any chance of surviving these last several miles he would need all the concentration he could get.
“Let me have a shot,” Caius replied.
“Sir?”
“Let me steer my goddamn ship, captain.” Caius said. And now he was menacing.
“It’s all yours,” the captain said gratefully, stepping back and giving Caius the controls. And the man who had flown jets over the Atlantic, piloted submarines in the Pacific, and driven a tank over the Sahara, went to work.
Esti leaned back against the back of the prison, allowing her mind to clear. The first step was to escape the cage; once she did she could figure it out from there. And after a few moments she had her scheme, and was extremely thankful that no one had searched her cargo pants.
Why would they? I’m just cargo myself. She chuckled slightly at the thought, amazed that she could find humor in a place like this.
A few moments later she had taken out everything she needed from her myriad of pockets and spread them out over the tightly-knit cage floor. There were three items in all. The first was a strange little machine she’d picked up a long time ago at a rest stop in the Mojave. It was a cooling device, almost the polar opposite of a lighter. When she turned it on it would create an area of severe cold, cold enough to freeze the moisture in the air into ice on the spot. The second item was a portable lighter, which ironically had come along with what Esti had long been calling the Froster. However it was far from a normal lighter; instead of fluid or propane there was a special chamber inside that collected the natural methane in the air which would light with a tiny electrical spark. The third item was a pocket-sized hammer, worn and beaten over years of use but still more than serviceable. Esti ran through the list in her mind, making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, and then went to work.
She looked for the weakest bar; finally finding one at one of the corners that looked nearly rusted through. Looking around again, ensuring that there were no guards, she flicked on the Froster which immediately emitted a quiet but incessant whirring sound. After a few moments she could tell it was working because the handle had begun to grow cold and little crystals of ice, almost too small to see, began to form between the two curved prongs that signaled the cold zone. After triple-checking the area—it never hurts to be too careful—Esti began to run the machine up and down the lower half of the bar.
After a few moments she began to hear the crackling sound that was the cue to a finished job; it was the sound of ice crystals forming in every free space inside the bar. Now if this works, she thought, picking up the lighter and smiling, it should break.
In the end she was lucky it was using methane instead of fluid. A regular lighter with its slow-burning flame would have taken several tries to break the bar. But when the white-hot flame exploded out of the tube and over the frozen pipe Esti heard the snap! almost instantly as the bar, chilled and contracted by the cold, tried to expand too quickly for its limited strength to allow and cracked straight through the middle.
Esti breathed deeply, relieved that her makeshift plan had worked, and began to hammer the bar as lightly as she could while still doing more than chipping the rust. Before long the tiny crack had grown into a rusted gouge. Once it had been widened to her satisfaction Esti repeated the process with the top of the bar until it too splintered from the temperature-shock. After it was done she surveyed her handiwork, allowing a moment of revelry in her self-earned achievement. Then her inner survivalist kicked in once again and she grabbed the bar on both ends of the cracks, jiggling it until the cracks had widened a little more just to avoid the grating it would make on the rough metal. Then the bar was lying on the cage floor and she was landing catlike on the metal below, returning the tools to her pockets and heading toward the door. For a moment she looked back at the other cages, five in all, and at the eerily tranquil figures of the unconscious girls imprisoned inside them. She considered breaking them all out, but she knew that one would have a much better chance of surviving on a ship than six.
If I make it back I’ll make sure to personally break those cages myself. Esti resolved. But at the same time she knew that she would never see this hold again. She turned away toward the door, pushed it open, and was gone into the bowels of the ship.
CHAPTER SIX
Exactly fifteen hours after the bombing of Annandale, North Dakota, at the exact time General Michael Haley conned the President and Esti broke through the bars of her cage, Xavier emerged out of his home and onto the streets of his city. London was beautiful in the early morning as the sun rose over the ancient architecture and even the undeniably turbid Thames, before the masses began to congregate in the streets and turned the once great city into a mosh pit. Now the streets were home to only stray cats and dogs, lounging around in the coolness of the dawn before running off to their daily hideaways. The streets of his city always brought about a different kind of wonder in Xavier, the opposite of the kind that appeared to him in the tunnels fifty feet below his shoes. It was a special kind of broken beauty, the stark wonder of the olden American Midwest, the glory of the blazing Sahara Desert, the icy aloofness of the Antarctic plains. It was the sun rising over a wonderful dying city, where the once paved streets had crumbled into the dirt and dust of the sixteenth century and the once astounding buildings of the future and past had fallen into dilapidated pictures of human decay. It was the barren beauty of death where there had once been life, whereas below the streets lived the sparkling beauty of life where there had once been death. London had become two cities, and Xavier loved both of them.
Sometimes for hours he would wander the streets of London, looking in wonder at sights that, centuries before, tourists much like him had gawked at. Tower Bridge still stood, and the Tower itself had reprised its role as London’s prison and center of government. The Parliament building had burned down in a massive fire, but Big Ben still remained even though the gears inside had long ceased to grind. A thin pall of smog hung over the city, changing color throughout the day with the movement of the sun. It gave s strange spectral quality to the streets at the hour of dawn, adding to the beautiful image of decay that covered the city.
For a while Xavier simply strolled the morning streets, enjoying a few moments of freedom in a world where it was hard to find. The dreamlike grind of life had given him the wonder of a small child, but at the same time had established a quick and clever mind that almost never showed its face. By nature, the two sides of him rarely met, except when he was walking through his city. When he was looking at art. That was all this walk was, a browse through a gallery of forgotten art. It was watching a city of ruins in a hope that it would someday be resurrected. Of course he didn’t think of it as anything more. He definitely had no idea that he would never see the door of his home; one of London’s many mass orphanages, ever again.
For in twelve hours the streets of London would be consumed in chaos as the second of twelve rebellions began.
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 his 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; radio operated and designed to be able to slid into small spaces. 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 Abraham. 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 snarled. “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 scanned the room again, his eyes lighting upon its only piece of furniture, a tarnished copper wheel set in the wall. What the…? He thought, looking more closely. What is this supposed to be? Xavier tapped the floor. It was wooden and solid, not hollow. There were no secrets kept back there. Still there was an inconspicuous stain near his left foot, something that looked like it could once have been maroon but now was just plain brown.
Is that blood?
No. It can’t be.
But it is!
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.
Launched into hysterics, he clawed at the stubborn door, his nails breaking against the ancient wood. A red mist began to form in front of his eyes as he beat at the door with both fists, scratches opening on his fingers and agonizing splinters forcing themselves in. He threw his entire body at the frame in one last crazed escape effort, but the door wouldn’t even give the subtlest of cracks.
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.
So thanks for bearing with me, and if you liked it there's a second segment waiting!
There are only two things that I can point out. First instead of making your edited chapters new stories, it may be easier if you go to your original story and edit it there. That way you don't have multiple entries of the same work. Second, there was this one line that kind of confused me. I don't know what I didn't like about it but I guess the wording was a bit strange
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