2020: Chapter Eleven

“Greenpeace is absolutely here,” Dirk says quietly into the bulky satellite phone. His cold cobalt eyes move subtly back and forth, watching the immediate area around him. He’s in the rearguard camp, a collection of tents, barracks, and other portable buildings set up to be the United Nation’s base of command in Japan. “I can prove it, too. There was someone at the UBC I think was more important in GP than they let on, but I believe there’s even more of his kind here.”

“Yes, so can Elizabeth,” comes the flat response from Sir Gabriel, his thick German accent further muddled by his decidedly ‘elderly’ tones. “Tell me, have you lost faith in the Project? You haven’t reported anything in for weeks, and now you’re telling me things I already know.”

Dirk looks from building to building, each one painted a drab green. He casts his gaze north, whereupon he sees the shattered remains of downtown Tokyo. What has transpired is a travesty: thousands have evacuated the capital of Japan, and yet precious little of what Secretary General Kingsley intended to do has been done. Worse yet, he and Logan are here for the insane reasoning that the latter wants to die.

He looks away from the ruined skyscrapers of Tokyo and looks down the path, upon which he stands beside, in the shadow of an empty barracks hall. “My loyalties are to you, Sir, and to Project L. I’ve learned from the battlefield that Greenpeace is among us, and they already attempted to usurp a battle for reasons I can’t yet comprehend.”

Hearing the old man begin to speak, he continues: “I have served you loyally since I was a kid. I assassinated the enemy’s agents time and time again before I could even drive, sir! What more do you want from me?” Dirk’s tone becomes a desperate one, emotion cracking his façade of indifference, “I have given my life to Project L., and now you question me?”

Silence is the response to his earnest questions. A foreign feeling of betrayal stabs at the young man’s heart, and is only magnified as he looks down at himself. His white uniform, still bloodied from battle, looks like a macabre attack on the tenets of peace upon which the United Nations was constructed. “Something is going on here, sir. Greenpeace has way too much access to information, and I will find out what’s going on – I have reason believe they have people in very high places here in Tokyo and maybe even in UNHQ, in London.”

“Dirk,” Sir Gabriel begins, “When I found you on the streets, you told me you didn’t want to die.” The old man pauses in thought, “You’ve spied on innocent men and women, you’ve assassinated more than a few people, and you’ve sacrificed personal ambition in the name of good order.” Finally, it seems, Sir Gabriel has relented somewhat. “I will trust in you this time that you are still loyal to our order, and will give you what may be your final orders.”

“Sir…” Dirk begins, confused and feeling a strong sense of worry for the old man. In his mind’s eye he can see the stiff elder, garbed in a dark blue waist coat and white pants, with a golden ascot, and looking entirely the part of an old world nobleman.

“I’ve sent all our agents abroad and transferred my codes to Elizabeth, and her codes to you. Use the money we’ve collected and the resources you have at your disposal to find the source of the corruption that is endangering the world and destroy it.” His orders, however, come with a haunting stipulation, “But, if Elizabeth or I find out that you have betrayed us… She will kill you, Siegfried.”

“It’s Dirk, sir.” He reminds the elder brusquely.

Sir Gabriel snorts, “Is it? What does a name matter to you, anyway? Goodbye, then. And good luck.” The line goes dead, and Dirk slowly removes the heavy phone from next to his head and stares at it. Is Sir Gabriel dying? Is he finally retiring? He does not know, and not knowing is a terrible thing.

“Well, I should have known better when I met you,” a triumphant, insidious voice sounds confidently nearby. Footfalls sound from the far side of the barracks, and from the shadow cast between the two closely placed buildings comes a figure garbed in a verdant private’s uniform. His black hair is fine and brushed messily to the side, while pale skin, blotchy and uneven, speaks to stress and anxiety. “So nice to see you again, Dirk,” Nathan, Logan’s friend from university and Greenpeace fanatic, sneers. “Or should I call you Siegfried? That is what your caller called you, isn’t it?”

Nathan closes the distance between the two. Standing a few inches taller than Dirk, he looks down at him triumphantly. “I never took GP too seriously until Lacertus took over. He’s all about the action: kill the people who want to hurt the world, save it from itself,” he shrugs sadly, “and you know what? I wanted Logan there with me. I wanted my fellow students… I want them all with me! Lacertus has inspired them to care about politics and the world, to cry out against injustice. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump two years ago? That was little kid shit.”

The newcomer draws ever closer to Dirk, placing a hand on his chest, running the backs of two fingers across the dried blood marring his uniform. “How proper you look in that uniform. Logan says you were quite the hero on the battlefield, but he can’t stop chattering about some kid he shot,” Nathan abruptly grabs a fistful of Dirk’s uniform, the latter of the two still listening and waiting. “You really fucked him up, didn’t you? You’ll fuck up anyone from joining us… You’re a small thorn, Dirk, but a thorn you remain.” His dark eyes glint with glee, “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure Logan’s okay… I’ll take good care of your little boyfriend.”

Something in Dirk snaps.

Thought rushes out of his head, and instinct replaces it. Dirk grabs Nathan by the uniform and throws him into the barracks wall, his body ringing out noisily against the metal surface. The Greenpeace zealot groans as he makes contact. However, the bloodied non-commissioned officer is not done. His right hand curls into a fist and slams into Nathan’s jaw, blood spattering against the wall and ground. “Don’t you talk about Logan like that,” he hisses, placing his face in front of Nathan’s, his cold eyes alive with azure fire of fury.

“Don’t pretend like he’s your friend!” He shouts, punching him against in the face, Nathan’s nose shattering. “You’re just a zealot, following a murderer! Nothing more!” Again, a fist meets the Greenpeace member’s face, blackening his eye. Nathan groans, coughing up blood, his legs failing him. Nathan looks up weakly before a glint of steel catches Dirk’s eye. Too consumed by his beating of his enemy, he makes a terrible error. A syringe is stabbed into his side and its contents drained into Dirk’s blood.

Dirk grabs him by the epaulets upon his shoulders, holding him alight, “Oh no, you can’t black out, Nathan… I’m not done!” He collides his forehead into Nathan’s nose, further breaking the cartilage. “Logan was nice – he was kind! Then his parents died because you sick fuckers thought killing Fournier would push the world into war, didn’t you!? Greenpeace is just a cover for Lacertus’s terrorist organisation, isn’t it!?” Slamming his foe’s head against the wall, he screams into his face, all sense of self-control having left Dirk, “Isn’t it?!” His head is spinning and the world around him grows unclear, but Dirk does not relent, his fury and heartbreak for his friend too strong.

“Logan told me he was my friend…” Dirk hisses, uncaring that his enemy is likely no longer conscious, as he’s now fully supporting his weight, “No one’s ever told me they’re my friend before. No one’s ever cared… Elizabeth’s a monster and everyone else was never at Vaduz Castle…” He looks up, his chest trembling, a painful knot in his throat. “Then you come along, and you fuck him up! You let him talk to Lacertus and suddenly he wants to go to war?!”

Dirk drops Nathan, who collapses to the ground, and to his surprise is still conscious enough to cough and groan, his face swollen and bloody; a hideous malformation of what was once there. “You and Lacertus broke him, you made him so twisted and confused!”

Nathan looks up, only his left eye open, while the other is shut; blackened and swollen. “Just think…” He says weakly, “How many more we got to join us in that one little bombing at graduation…” Dirk screams with fury and heartbreak, his indifferent persona a thing of the past as he bellows with melancholy. He delivers a shattering kick into Nathan’s chest before sagging against the wall behind him of the building opposite the empty barracks, his chest heaving. His vision blurred, he does his best to not let whatever Nathan has injected him with overtake him with the frenzied bloodflow of a quick heart.

“Private Greer,” he says into the walky-talky on his epaulet atop his shoulder, “Meet me at Barracks 16.” His tone is reserved and quiet – weak, as he makes the page, before turning the device off and leaning his head back against the cold metal of the wall behind him. Dirk looks up into the grey, lifeless sky above. Snow is soon to fall, and with it their mission will become ever more difficult.

Minutes pass in silence as he listens to his own breathing, trying to regain the façade he’s honed so well, and only now lost just once in defense of the friend Dirk feels he’s lost. Overhead, the snow begins to fall, gently falling to the ground, melting as it makes contact with the still warmer ground. December seems like a late time for the snow to fall, but yet, here Dirk is, witnessing the first snow fall so late into the year.

“My god, what happened!?” A familiar voice says, clearly alarmed. Dirk looks up to find Logan, garbed in his military camouflage pants, a green t-shirt with a thick, downy jacket hanging open. He immediately moves to Dirk, evidently thinking him injured, given he’s sprawled against the wall of the other building. Dropping to his knees, Logan’s hazel eyes looking searchingly into his superior’s, worry plain in them.

Dirk smiles bitterly. “Interesting, when you’re worried, you look and sound more like yourself,” he comments, observing his friend, “Maybe I should get hurt more so you don’t go back to what you’ve become…” Logan physically retracts, confused and mildly offended.

“What I’ve become? I’m still the same…” Logan trails off, clearly hurt. Feeling the snow dampen his hair, he runs a hand through his dark hair, already having gown back a fair bit. “But, if I have changed – well, you know why! My parents, and that kid…” His eyes become haunted once more, “Did you see him, Dirk? He… He looked so scared…! Why did I shoot him!?”

Dirk shoves him lightly, “Hey, you’re here to help me, not you.” He motions to the unconscious form of Nathan, crumpled in a heap and until now not seen by Logan. “Your Greenpeace friend tried attacking me, I had to stop him.”

Logan looks back at Nathan and quickly moves to his side. He gingerly rolls the battered youth over onto his back, “Nathan!” He says, horrified at what he sees on his face. Looking over at Dirk with confusion and wariness, Logan depresses the talk button on his walky-talky and pages: “Helena! I need you over at Barracks 16! It’s an emergency!” He returns his attention to Dirk: “He wouldn’t fight anyone… He’s not like that.” Logan’s eyes become alive with outright concern, “Dirk, what did you do!?”

“He’ll live,” Dirk says with vehement hatred, his mask slipping once again. Logan looks at him probingly, and demands an answer.

“I want to know what happened, Dirk. Tell me the truth,” Logan looks away for a moment, “Don’t tell me GP was right about you…”

Dirk shifts upward, still feeling wholly drained by his encounter with Nathan and the strange poison sapping him of his strength. “Come here, Logan,” he urges him. Logan complies, though warily. His mind a jumble of confused thoughts and feelings, the sergeant wraps his arms around Logan, pulling the uneasy Logan into him, and holds him tight, the action entirely romantic.

“D-Dirk,” Logan begins, wholly surprised and unsure what to do, but also nervous, given his lack of an answer over what happened with Nathan. Dirk releases him somewhat, only to run his fingers, crimson with Nathan’s blood, up Logan’s cheekbone.

Dirk hangs his head, placing it against Logan’s chest as the spinning world around him begins to ring and make him nauseous. “He’s done so many terrible things,” he murmurs, confused and ill, “Nathan’s a monster that twisted you… You’re my first friend. He took you from me…”

Logan untangles himself and Dirk sags to the side and back into the wall behind him, his extremities feeling lifeless and numb. “You…” Logan begins, horrified, “You did this because of what you think Nathan’s done to me?”

“I…” Dirk begins, though he stops as bile rises in his throat.

“Sergeant Ritter attacked Private Baxter!” Logan shouts to newcomers, though Dirk can’t seem to focus on them, his eyesight failing him. He fumbles dumbly with the syringe still jammed into his side and plucks it from his flesh, dropping it front of him. Collapsing to the side, the blond sergeant feels his head collide painfully with the asphalt below, cold snow falling on his face.

His eyes begin to close, though as they do, he sees Helena’s square face, eyes wide with shock, as well as Logan’s slender features looking down at him, distrust and betrayal laden on his features. “How could you, Dirk? You…” Logan trails off, “You liar!” Dirk’s eyes shut, and the world around him falls peaceably silent.

“I’ve lost him,” Dirk declares silently as unconsciousness finally claims him.

~*~

“Out of the fucking way!” Vadim booms as he shoves a man clutching a bandaged elbow out of the way. He sidesteps an elderly woman, careful to knock her against the eerily still body in his arms. Sasha stays close behind, uncaring of the raucous they’re causing. Snow falls heavily around them and the chilly night air saps the warmth from them as they move through the hospital parking lot.

To their left, a parkade rises six stories into the air, while before them the hospital looms ever larger at seven stories, its faded burgundy exterior looming unhappily over them. Directly in front of them, a few people wait outside the doors, blocking the entry to the emergency room. “Move!” Vadim calls out and kicks open a door, hurrying inside.

Sasha closes the gap between her and the adrenaline-filled Vadim, and notices a disturbing fact. The body which Vadim holds in his arms is not only eerily still, but also deathly pale. Dirty blond hair has fallen back, revealing an otherwise smooth face, but unnaturally white. His right arm hangs loosely to his side, the hand limp.

“Hey!” Vadim calls out, charging towards an unsuspecting nurse. “We have a casualty from the attack Setagaya Preschool attack: get a stretcher and move your ass!” The Japanese woman, stout and unassuming, looks wholly offended and alarmed at the six foot three Vadim shouting at her. She looks at Sasha, who gives her an imploring look as she moves from her to the still form of Ivan.

The woman, after a few long seconds, moves to a nearby phone on the wall with a demarcation in Japanese Sasha does not know. She pages overhead and, though she does so in Japanese, leaving Sasha all the more confused. “A gurney is on the way,” the woman says in simple Chinese, the language of trade for the World Confederation.  

Within moments, the expected gurney arrives as well as two more nurses. Ivan is lowered gingerly onto the rolling bed where he makes no noises. The two nurses hurry him down the hall, Vadim and Sasha quick to follow. Down white, sterile halls they go, the sounds of heavy booted footfalls and the trundling of wheels filling the hall. One nurse directs the bed while the other checks the patient.

“No pulse,” she announces, and panic sets into Sasha’s heart. “Take him into E.F.,” she directs, and the bed is turned completely around – they continue down a different hallway following turning the wrong way. Finally, they reach what Sasha believes to be an operating room, though as she goes to follow her brother’s gurney in, she feels a firm hand stop her by the chest. Looking up, an unhappy looking security guard has stopped her.

“No one can go in with the staff. You’ll have to wait in the lobby.” The man’s words are law, and it’s something part of her dreaded to hear.

In front of them, the doors to the operating room slam close, leaving Vadim and Sasha alone, helplessly looking in through the glass windows in the two doors. She sees Ivan’s shirt torn off and the defibrillators prepped for usage. As they move in to administer them on her lifeless brother’s chest, she feels yet another person pull at her. Vadim’s hand squeezes her shoulder sympathetically.

Vadim gently pulls her away from the doors. “You shouldn’t watch this,” he declares somberly, knowingly. “It’s not… It won’t help you if he doesn’t wake up.” He hesitates as he removes his hand and looks down the hall behind him.

Sasha avoids looking at him and instead takes a seat on a nearby bench, built into the wall. Vadim wordlessly takes his leave. His large form grows ever smaller as he hurries down the now eerily quiet hall, leaving her all alone. Dim lights overhead cast long shadows over the unhappy hallway. She leans her head back against the wall, hearing behind the doors to her right muffled conversation and activity.

She closes her eyes, trying to will whatever gods that may be to let her brother live: “Please,” she urges the universe around her, tears welling in her eyes yet again, “Don’t let him die… Not like this.”

Later…

“I don’t know how she could have fallen asleep sitting like that,” a distant, bemused voice says.

Another responds, though blackness still surrounds her. “She’s been awake for two days, now – after that shit storm nearby, I’m surprised she didn’t pass out sooner.”

Sasha opens her eyes, and finds the same unhappy sight before her: a dreary, yellowed hall, darkened doors down either side. The strong scent of cleaning supplies is heavy in the air, but only after a minute does she realise what had actually woken her. Nearby, she can hear frenzied footsteps. To her right, an unfamiliar scrubs-wearing man and Vadim are speaking quietly. “Ah, look who’s awake,” Vadim says with some amusement.

Confusion mars her fatigued mind, and Sasha struggles comprehend why she’s here in this foreign hospital. “What…” she begins, her mouth feeling fuzzy and unclean. She pushes herself to a stand, her legs aching from their sprinting earlier in the day. “Ivan!” She remembers, and lurches forward, moving past the two men and into the open operating room.

Inside she finds plenty of equipment around an empty bed. “Ivan…?” She calls out, desperation and panic once more robbing her of her composure. She looks back at Vadim, and in his face does not find the answer she dreaded to find. “Where is he?” The Russian soldier says with renewed self-restraint, her voice stronger than before.

The doctor moves toward her, his plastic-like garments, blue and with splotches of blood here and there, rustling noisily. The man is clearly Japanese, and the first thing Sasha notices is his tired eyes, bloodshot and heavily bagged. “Miss Alkaev, your brother is alive,” he says with a gentleness she had not expected.

His statement strikes her heard, and she physically recoils, a hand moving to her mouth, covering it as she quickly turns back around, looking at the bloodied bed. “I see…” She begins, finally having regained her composure now unwilling to lose it again, “And where he is? I want to see him.”

“Sasha,” Vadim interrupts, “the hospital’s evacuating – Zheng gave the evacuation order and the military’s pulling back to China.” He pauses, though she refuses to turn around. “We need to leave.”

Sasha finally turns around and steps toward Vadim, the relief she felt at hearing her brother is alive quickly replaced by fury: “You think I’m going to leave Ivan here?” She questions coldly, “Do you ever think I’d do that?” The doctor, now silent, becomes the focus of her irritation: “Take me to Ivan, doctor.”

The man offers a quick nod and wordlessly hurries past an equally quiet Vadim, unsure of what he should be doing. “What’s your name?” She questions the man as they hurry down the hallway from whence they had come hours before.

“Hideki Kaibara, Miss Alkaev,” he introduces himself as he stops in front of a nearby elevator. He fumbles in the pockets of his scrubs for a moment and procures a keycard which he passes over a scanner on the elevator doorframe. The doors part and in they step, Vadim quick to follow them in, though he avoids Sasha’s withering gaze.

Sensing the tension, Doctor Kaibara speaks: “Your brother had lost a lot of blood. Whomever shot him was either very skilled or had a hell of a lot of dumb luck,” he pauses for a moment as the elevator ascends. All around them, their reflection stares back, but it is not one that Sasha recognises.

Her auburn hair is tied into a ponytail that hangs off the back of her head while her grey camouflage uniform is spattered with dried blood and torn in numerous places. The utility belt around her midsection is thick, but surprisingly light: any weapons she might have had are all now missing and any spare magazines and clips are also empty. What strikes her most is the hollow look in her eyes. “I look so… sad,” she realises, the weight of her own experiences weighing down on her.

“Dina’s dead, killed by some psycho-bitch apparently; my squadron – who even knows? Probably all dead; my brother almost died…” She looks away from herself, her jade eyes looking so weary and listless that they frighten her with their inhuman quality. “I’m disgusting,” she declares, “I was the one who thought joining the military would help us escape our parents, and now Ivan’s paid the price for my hubris.”

“Miss Alkaev…?” Doctor Kaibara says after a moment. She waves a hand dismissively, steeling her worn heart once again, feeling another small part of her die as she refuses to acknowledge her emotions. The doors of the elevator open, and she hurries out. Looking back, Sasha takes note of Vadim: the huge man, well over six feet tall and with the muscular form of a swimmer, looks every bit the Slavic warrior he is. His black hair is cut short and stands up on his head, while a surprisingly angular face looks back at her worriedly. “He’s just a big baby, really,” she reminds herself, knowing that underneath his imposing exterior is a worrywart of a heart with a propensity to cry over the smallest things.

“Vadim,” she questions as the doctor leads them down an identical hall to the one a few floors below, “Did you come here… to protect me? To protect Ivan?” Her question gives him pause, and he looks over at her multiple times, his face contorted with surprise.

He shoves his hands into his pockets and looks forward. “Well,” he begins awkwardly, “I certainly didn’t come for the glory…”

Sasha moves toward him and, in a tremendously rare moment of sweetness, squeezes his forearm kindly, “Thank you…” she whispers to him. Vadim, having composed himself so thoroughly over the past few days, momentarily returns to the boy she remembers growing up with: his face flushes and he looks away bashfully.

Content she’s expressed herself fully, she releases his arm from her grasp and steels herself for what is beyond the door Doctor Kaibara now stands before. “Mister Alkaev refused to rest after he woke up from the surgery until he saw you, Miss Alkaev,” he explains to Sasha, “So as you can see, my motives for bringing you up here weren’t entirely pure.” The doctor offers a light chuckle, and the two weary soldiers seem to mark him approvingly.   

His keycard is passed over another square black scanner, and the door emits an audible ‘click.’ Doctor Kaibara opens the door an inch so that it doesn’t lock again, and looks expectantly to Sasha, who looks backs to Vadim. “I’ll have plenty of time to see the kid. But for now, he needs to see you only, Sasha,” He nudges her forward.

“Thanks, Vadim,” she says calmly, the façade of a calm mind finally reapplied with some level of permanence. She presses her hand against the cold metal panel door push. She steps inside.

Before her, a small room no more than five feet across and seven feet long, is crowded by a large medical bed to her left, machinery around it, and directly across from it, a window. Outside, the cityscape is dark and lightless – most of the electricity to the city having been cut off days ago. Overhead, the sky is alive with distant stars looking indifferently down upon the countless tragedies besetting the innocent people of this city.

Sasha summons her courage and looks left. Heavy blankets are drawn up to his waist and cover his legs, while his upperbody is upright, the bed having been elevated to allow this. A paper-covered pillow is propped lopsidedly behind the patient’s neck, and it rustles as they look over.

In this bed is Sasha’s younger brother, Vadim Alkaev. His face is pale and wan. Lines move from under his eyes toward his cheekbones, and deep, purple bags mark his once cheery visage. Dirty blond hair has been cleaned and is loosely parted to the side. But, what she can’t help but not notice is how frail and small he looks. The large bed, his slim body, his tired face – it takes all of her composure not to weep at the sight of it.

“Ivan…”

He looks her directly in the eyes, the haunted look therein being one of unbridled pain and all too recent terror and mortality. “Sasha,” he responds, his voice deathly quiet.

~*~

Fulfilling a role she thoroughly hates, Ishana holds in her hands a silver tray. Upon this tray is a pot of tea and three teacups atop saucers with small spoons sitting on the edge of the saucers, as well as a small carafe of cream and a saucer of sugar with a spoon seated on the edge. The tea set is adorned with a floral pattern; vines caress the exterior of each cup before blooming into delicate lilies and tulips. She focuses in on these details, ignoring the chatter around her.

Ishana visibly limps as she moves from the corner of Delun’s office, where she spares a glance outside at the snowy blizzard blanketing Beijing, and toward the set of couches and coffee table. The night sky is grey with thick clouds and streetlights give off a calming yellow hue in the snowstorm. The winter darkness calls to her, alluring, demanding of her that she join it. It’s peaceful and quiet, unlike the men behind her.  Her left calf burns in agony as she moves, pleading with her as the muscle fails to completely support her weight.

The office is a new one, and where once peaceful pastels had adorned the walls, here only a bleak greyness adorns the walls. Overstuffed white couches are set into the opposite corner of the room, where, as she turns, she notes the Minister of War, Chang Wanquan, is dressed akin to their surroundings: a grey uniform with a red tie and a silver star below the knot. Next to him on the couch is Vice-President of the vastly influential Sinopec, Jiao Fangzheng. Where Minister Wanquan is older by at least a decade, his form is whip thin and his face marked by an angular bone structure that, with heavy wrinkles, looks far too busy for its own good.

Conversely, Wanquan is portly with a full, soft face and a pair of rimless glasses resting at the top of his nose bridge. Both men’s hair is beginning to grey, but it is the one across from them that looks all the older, despite being their junior. And, while Wanquan and Fangzheng are conversing loudly, this third man is silent.

Seated across from them in a matching white chair is His Excellency, Delun Zheng; Chancellor of the World Confederation. By no means tall, the man is only mildly overweight, and is physically unremarkable. But what Ishana’s come to notice, and sees again as she delicately places the tea set on the table between these powerful men and their puppet, is that in his tired, sad, eyes, is something she knows too well herself: self-hatred.

As she stands, she discretely places a hand on his shoulder, lightly squeezing it to comfort him. He doesn’t look back, but she can tell by the way his shoulder muscle relaxes, he appreciates it. “Delun,” she thinks to herself as she moves back to the other corner of the office and retrieves her cane, finally taking the weight off her injured leg. “Delun, be strong,” she wishes to him, looking down at her leg once more.

Through her navy blue slacks, she can see the outline of the bandages around her calf. It’s only then that, as she relaxes for a moment, she feels a familiar symptom. Momentary vertigo overtakes her, and she braces herself against the small table in this corner of the room, the world around her spinning. A tingling sensation emanates up her leg, into her groin, and finally ending in her lower spine. It goes from warm to burning hot. Her stomach roils, threatening to expunge its contents, but she fights it, taking measured breaths.

Finally, as these symptoms pass, she looks back up and take stock of the situation before her. “Delun,” Minister of War Chang Wanquan, begins angrily; “I am here because after forty years of loyal service, I know how to win wars. I’m telling you now that if you want to pull this off, we can’t just kill their soldiers.” He leans forward, his bony fists pressed against the oaken table top before him, “Cutting off bits of the serpent’s tail is pointless! Go for the brain – if we destroy their communication satellites and undersea communications cables, we can cripple them to such an extent they’ll pull back into their own waters within days.”

Vice-President of Sinopec, Jiao Fangzheng, shakes his wide head. “No, no, no! Chang, for a soldier, you don’t know anything about wars! If we bring down their satellites and blow up their cables, sure, we’ll cripple them. But we’ll also destroy a market one and a half billion strong from ever joining us. China will be bankrupt in a few years, and then what? Your precious WC army won’t get any funding because the WC will be gone!”

Ishana moves from one side of the room to the other, moving past Delun’s matching oak desk and toward the windows, once more. “They make it sound so theoretical: no internet, no TV, no phones, no nothing for 1.5 billion innocent people…” She sighs, “Not even Fangzheng cares about them, he just wants to increase his profits.” She turns away from the blizzarding night, and returns her attention to the frigid personalities in the room, neither of which seems to remotely care about the human cost.

So much humanity is lost in grand politics.

“You won’t have any profits if the UN takes over! They’ll find you out for the gun-producing, drug-selling freak that you and Sinopec are, Jiao!” The military man counters. Jiao Fangzheng leans forward indignantly and takes the pot of tea, pouring himself a cup, before scooping in three levelled teaspoons of sugar, and stirring it. “Oh, nothing to say? Too much of a coward?!” The corporate titan’s last nerve clearly snaps, and he looks over at Wanquan, eyes wide with anger.

“Gentlemen, enough!” Delun finally says. What Ishana has come to realise that he will only act when things are at their worst. “We can’t realistically bomb every underwater cable or destroy every member nation’s satellites in the UN. That would be unthinkable,” his tone is peaceable, but neither man across from him seems to understand, both tense and irritable. For how different their backgrounds are, Ishana cannot help but notice how similar they are, and unlike Delun is.

“We need to end this war quickly, so…” Delun turns to Wanquan, “Chang, as Minister of War, I’m authorising missile strikes on UN military and GPS satellites.” The military leader goes to interrupt, but Delun stops him with a hand raised, “I know, they can just use the civilian ones in a similar manner. Those aren’t nearly as accurate or reliable. We’ll be able to jam those until we end this war.” Again, Wanquan goes to interrupt, but a surprisingly stern Delun Zheng stops him: “That’s an order, General.”

“Yes, sir,” Wanquan says almost petulantly.

Turning next to the corporate titan Jiao Fangzheng, the Chancellor gives out his next orders. “Sinopec is a huge donor to the Chinese Communist Party and to this World Confederation government – I haven’t forgotten that, Jiao. But you also must realise that we can’t wage a war we didn’t want to fight without incurring some costs.”

With that said, he returns to Wanquan: “Send out the Philippines’ submarines, as well as the Russian ones. Make sure they’re not seen, and destroy the communications cables that run across the Atlantic and start jamming all radio frequencies in Japan that the UN is using – we’ll freeze them out and capture them.” He nods once in agreement with himself, “Without the internet, the UN’s people will want to restore peace before long. We’ll bend their fake democracy back on them, and crush Kingsley in the centre.”

“Yes, sir,” Wanquan replies, this time more pleased. Ishana cannot help but simply stare at Delun Zheng. So often has she been there for his moments of weakness, and yet here she sees the leader he always complains he is not: giving orders, not taking no for an answer, using his mind.

“Alright, both of you, go home. It’s late.” Delun doesn’t even wait for them to get up. With a loud groan, he pushes his chair back, stands up, and moves toward his desk, which Ishana is standing next to. She takes a step out of his way as he falls into the large leather chair in front of it.

Wanquan and Fangzheng wordlessly leave the room, both incensed Zheng would have the gall to give them of all people orders, but likely having seen the sense in them. “I just committed the United Nations’ people to an information blackout…” he says after the two white doors to his office close.

Silence falls as that realisation dons upon Delun and Ishana. She leans against his desk, now facing the opposite direction of him, and places a hand over his as he blankly looks up at the ceiling. “You’re doing what you have to do. Kingsley started this war, you’re just trying to end it,” she assures him. “You did excellently – you told the Vice-President of Sinopec and the General in charge of the World Confederation Armed Forces where to shove it – few men, if any, have ever done that.”

“Yes, but –“ Delun is cut off as Ishana places her cane against his desk and cradles his temples between her hands.

“No buts, Delun,” she says, her normally business-minded tone replaced with a softer one. “Ever since I found that horrible note on my couch, I feel I’ve understood you more, Delun,” she leans in, placing her forehead against his, her black hair falling over his head. “You’re trying so hard to please everyone. You’re trying to make sure business doesn’t abandon you and the military doesn’t overthrow you. No one can do what you do, Delun…” She keeps using his name, knowing that, as he hears it, his resolve against himself is broken a little more.

“But, Ishana, what I’m doing… it’s evil! The UN’s people aren’t my enemy, it’s misinformation… Kingsley probably hates this war as much as I do.” Delun once more trails off.

Ishana wraps her arms around his back, turning his chair and placing his head against her bosom protectively. “That doesn’t matter, Delun,” she soothes him, “Everything will be okay – you’re doing what you have to for the World Confederation’s people…”

He looks up at her. She looks past his unremarkable looks and into those sad, helpless eyes of a man in over his head. She leans down, ignoring the searing pain in her leg, portending what she cannot understand, and presses her lips against him. He visibly tenses, before relaxing into the kiss. Ishana retracts herself, “I’m… sorry,” she begins, stepping back.

A firm knock at the doors to Delun’s office distracts them both, and a voice sounds. “Your Excellency, I have here a “Sir Gabriel,” he’s your 10:00pm meeting.”

2020: Chapter Ten

Chapter 10

“If you look to your right, you’ll see the River Thames, which flows right through London,” Shari explains in a pleasant, airy tone. Adorned in her flowing cream skirt and a pale blue sweater with the words “Tour Guide” written in white block letters on her back, she looks ever the part of her job here in the United Nations Headquarters.

She continues her languid, slow pace, behind the hallways connecting to the UN General Assembly hall where Kingsley had been chosen as Secretary General, seemingly oblivious to all around her. Overhead, the coffered ceilings are high overhead and from them hang chandeliers every thirty feet down the long, wide halls. The walls, a similar pale sky blue to her sweater, are decorated with the portraits of significant historical events from all around the UN, from George Washington’s signing of the Declaration of Independence, to the Berlin Wall coming down, and many more.

“The United Nations Headquarters was originally in New York, but following Resolution 530, the Expansion Resolution, it was moved to here, in London, at the request of President Ronald Reagan.” She pauses and looks back at the touring group behind her. In her group are four young families from Romania on a group vacation, as well as two single men and a couple. “Who here knows what Resolution 530 is?”

Those single men and the couple have been entirely quiet the whole tour, but Shari is all too aware why and does not press them for an answer. Thankfully, a young girl no older than ten years old raises her hand. Shari points to her, “Yes, young lady?”

The girl’s accent is thick and shew screws up her Slavic features as she struggles to speak in English. “The Expansion Resolution is the one that let UN resolutions become binding on members, right? And if they didn’t follow them, they’d be given… uh…” She pauses, having lost the word.

Shari nods, “Yes, exactly.” The girl looks at her, relieved and proud. “The Expansion Resolution was passed following the expansion of the World Confederation into Indonesia and the Philippines. It gives the UN’s laws binding power over member nations, under threat of economic and even military sanctions, if the disagreement is serious enough.” She pauses once, letting that set in, “Of course, no Secretary General has gone nearly that far in disciplining member nations ever before.”

She turns around, continues walking, and rounds a corner. Ahead, the wide hallway opens into a large lobby with huge Greek pillars stretching three stories into the sky to support a distant, frescoed roof. On the far wall is the entrance to the UNHQ, and is mainly comprised of large glass panels, looking out onto the serene St James’s Park, a large forested green space in the centre of London, northwest of the Palace of Westminster, where the British conduct their national politics.

Steps descend from their side of the room and into the main lobby, where marble floors glisten brilliantly. On the opposite side of the lobby is a mirrored set of stairs which also rise and are joined by halls on either side. Therein is a set of glass doors with the words “Gift Shop” written above. “As you can see we’ve reached the end of the tour, but by all means, please go and check out the gift shop.”

Those behind her offer a brief, but polite, round of applause, and she smiles slightly and dips her head. Her tour group walks by her, offering thanks and nods, before moving off toward the gift shop. One of the single men stops and looks at her quizzically, “Are you interested in learning about what you can to help the environment?” He asks slowly.

“The code,” she remarks to herself silently, and nods at the man, deliberately raising an eyebrow as she does so. “Of course,” she responds in a measured tone, “The world needs everyday heroes to save her from the shortsighted masses.”

The man nods yet again, and walks off. Shari takes this time to move back into the hallway from where she had come, and rests her back against a plain white door, counting down from ten in her head. “Ten,” she looks down the hallway, finding nobody. “Nine,” she feels her heartbeat begin to quicken. “Eight,” she knows that this will be a turning point in her time with Greenpeace. “Seven,” but Lacertus will praise her for this! It’s his plan, after all. “Six,” this is necessary, she assures herself.

She hears footsteps rounding the corner and steadies her breath. Looking up at the ceiling, she eyes the security cameras. None are pointed in this direction: she’s in a dead zone. “Five,” from around the corner, the couple emerges and stands in front of her wordlessly, knowing gazes being traded. “Four,” she can feel her palms becoming sweaty. “Three,” she takes from her sweater pocket her I.D. pass card. “Two,” she looks up at the two in front of her, the brunette woman looking to be in her 30s, while the man is a bit older and, given his greying hair, is likely in his 40s. “One,” a third figure emerges, that of bald man she had escorted through the UNHQ just prior to this.

“Zero.” Overhead, an alarm screeches through the building. Hurried footfalls can be heard throughout the building and someone down the hall shouts: “Security breach in the Security Council’s chambers!” Shari takes this cue and turns abruptly, her pleated skirt flipping with the abrupt movement. Her pass card is waved before a nearby access panel. She quickly punches in her coworker’s four digit access code and opens the door.

The three behind her hurry in wordlessly, and she too follows, securing the door behind her. The four of them stand in the darkness, waiting for the inevitable rush of footsteps outside the door. Minutes pass as numerous employees and government officials flee before they actually move.

Shari flicks on a nearby light switch, and the room is thus illuminated. “Is the lookout outside?” Questions the woman. Shari takes the opportunity to strip herself of the flowing skirt she had worn. Underneath it is a pair of grey slacks, much more appropriate for their job at hand.

“He is, yes,” Shari informs the woman. “Let’s get moving.” Now inside a utility room, furnaces and ventilation shafts blanket the small room, but at the far end is a narrow hallway with an emergency exit sign lighting up the slim corridor with an ominous red glow. “The air return we need is down the hall and in an access tunnel a few floors down, in the second subbasement.” She looks to the other individual, an Irish man in his late 30s, “Do you have the materials?”

The man opens his puffy winter jacket and exposes a lining of strange metal canisters and various other mechanisms Shari can’t identify. “Aye aye, Athena,” he says, using her codename with a serious intonation in his thick accent.

She smirks, her anxious heart palpitations slowing to a more manageable level. “Alright, let’s move out. P2, you take the lead,” she gestures to the bald man, who takes from his own heavy tan wool coat a long bayonet-style knife and twirls it in his hand. “P1, you’re with me,” the Irishman nods and moves up next to her, zipping his jacket up securely. “P3, you take the back, watch for any security guards, they may come searching for the source of the tripped alarm.” The woman nods and procures from the folds of her jacket a pistol equipped with a silencer.

“Winter really is the best time for this kind of thing,” Shari muses as they begin moving down the dank and dirty hall. “Thick coats provide the best cover for our tools…” The hallway is narrow and even P3’s slender shoulders rub against either wall if she walks completely straight. Piping snakes up and across the walls around them and on the low ceiling above.

Below them, their shoes clunk on the slotted metal floor, similar to that of a theatre catwalk. Shari looks down momentarily, and in the dim light provided by infrequent bare bulbs sticking out of the wall can see two more sets of similar set ups of causeways in the restrictive walkways of the UNHQ basements.

Silence is their closest companion here in these dark corridors. Silence and humidity. Shari, not wearing a heavy coat like her fellow conspirators, feels the humidity dampen the armpits of her sweater and make her pants cling to the hem of her pants under her groin and up her backside.

They turn a corner in the narrow corridor and end up at a set of stairs blocked by a mesh fenced gate. “Shit!” P2 swears quietly. “This’ll take too long to get through?”

“Did you even think why I was here?” Shari questions. “Move aside,” she demands in a huff and shoves by him. Next to the gate is a very basic keycard access, similar to the one she used to gain access to the maintenance room. She punches in the same four digit code from before and passes her keycard over the device. The gate unlocks with a click and she slowly opens it. “I have the keycard and access number for a coworker of mine. There’s no cameras in the basements and none where we entered. We’re invisible, people, so let’s keep it that way.”

“Yes ma’am,” P3 responds from the back of their little group.

The corridor after the gate abruptly descends into a set of steep, metal stairs. The four of them begin moving down, though Shari waits to reassume her place second in line, with P1, the Irishman carrying their materials, behind her; P3, the woman with her silenced pistol in the back; and finally, P2 with his bayonet knife in front. Shari doesn’t know their names, and that’s how she intends to keep it. It’s only safer that way. Greenpeace is a brotherhood, she realises, but it’s easily discovered for what it really is if anyone important is caught.

“I’m important,” Shari reminds herself, “Lacertus made it so… I’m his woman inside the UNHQ. He needs me. These three need me…” The feeling of being valued is so strangely foreign it gives her mental pause as she considers it, before coming to a pleasing warmth in her stomach, speaking to the deeply held desire she has had for as long as she’s been alive to have value to something bigger than herself.

The stairs they descend finally end and, as Shari had assured them, they’re now in the second subbasement. Similar corridors shoot off in three directions before them, and those gathered look to Shari expectantly. She drinks in their reliance, feeling that foreign feeling of being needed, drinking it up as greedily as she can, before pointing to her left.

Down here, the silence is ever more powerful. The cement floor below them is much quieter than the metal catwalks above them which join isolated islands of rooms together in the floating undercity of maintenance rooms, bomb shelters and other rooms even Shari does not know their purpose. Down here in the lowest level, the narrow corridors have frequent doors on either side which open into utility rooms and unsurprisingly, more bomb shelters for VIPs.

They follow this hallway for some time and only after a few minutes does it open into a terminal room, filled with vents and a wall of breakers. “This is the vent control room, which circulates air throughout the compartments of the UNHQ. Each part of the building runs on its own ventilation system to avoid mass poisonings, but…” She looks to P1, “We only need to work on one, don’t we?”

“About that,” P2, the man holding a knife, says trepidatiously, “Are we sure this is what Lacertus wants us to do? It’s so bloody…” An uneasy silence falls over the four of them, “I mean, we’re killing representatives of countries. They haven’t done anything but vote how their country’s government tells them to. Why do they deserve to die?”

“Because they’re implicit in promoting the same divisions that caused the Africa nuclear crisis, the same ones that are seeing thousands of innocent Japanese citizens die in Kingsley’s war of revenge, the same divisions that have kept the world split in two since the end of World War Two!” Shari shouts at him, hot anger building up in her system.

“How dare he question Lacertus!” She seethes furiously, “How dare he think he knows better!” She looks back at the two behind her and finds irritation on their faces too. “He’s a damn traitor! He’s going to expose us!” Mad thoughts begin flooding her mind as she looks over the man who had simply asked a question.

Shari looks back once more at P3, the woman with the gun, and steps back to her, P1 speaking imploringly as she does. “What I’m saying is that that’s not their will. They’re just trying to do their jobs. Why do they have to die for that?”

“Because,” Shari begins, taking P3’s weapon, hoping the dim light obscures what they’re doing. P3 lets her weapon move into Shari’s hands. “Because they’re traitors… Just like you, P2...” She hisses angrily, “Now, get back to work.”

The man slowly turns around to open one of the main vent filter accesses on the wall. As he does, Shari shakily raises the weapon before her, hands trembling with fury. Her heart slams against her ribcage, her hands feel cold and damp with sweat, her knees are shaking, and all parts of her feel as though she’s alive with anger. “Lacertus, I’ll save your mission if it’s the last thing I do!” She promises herself and pulls the trigger.

A silenced bullet escapes with only a popping rush of air typical to a bullet being fired out of a silencer. P2’s body drops to the ground, and he begins to groan noisily. “No more words, you fucker!” She demands furiously, leaping over his fallen body and grabbing his knife out of his hand. “No more questions, no more questioning Lacertus. Lacertus is going to save us! You won’t stop him with your lies!”

Shari raises the knife into the air and eyes it as it glints in the dim light of the industrial room in which they are working. “Get going with the gas!” She demands angrily of the Irishman, who hurries over to the half open access panel and sets up his time-delayed release. “You want those stupid UN representatives dead, Lacertus…” She assures him in her mind, a disturbing clarity coming to her, “What’s one more dead body?”

She takes the knife and drives it into the dying man’s throat and begins turning it. Blood rushes from the new wound and he spasms as the tip severs nerves in his spine. He coughs violently, choking on blood, and tears stream down his face as she agonisingly opens his throat. “No more words, you fucker…” She whispers to him over and over.

She tosses the knife away and places her hand on the large gash she’s made in his throat. Warm blood is slick and slippery against her fingers, but she soldiers through it. He can’t talk. He won’t talk. He won’t tell anyone what they’ve done and he won’t Lacertus. This man, nameless to Shari, is the worst thing she can imagine: “He wants to hurt Lacertus,” she seethes, “Lacertus is the only one that matters… He’s needs me… wants me. Lacertus loves me and I’ll do anything for him!”

She slides her fingers into the ribbon-like interior of the centre of his throat where she had made an opening and finds what she’s looking for. Her pointer and middle fingers, slick with blood and trembling with a madness that’s turned P3 away from the grizzly scene, find their target. She grasps at a collection of fibres and with one sure pull, wrenches them outward.

She raises it to the light and eyes with wonderment the fallen man’s vocal cords. Looking up, she sees that P1 is done with his set up. He averts his gaze, visibly ill from the horrific sight. “We’re good to go, it’ll release in an hour.” He looks over to P3 who’s leaning against the wall, also sickened by Shari’s madness. “Ready to go?”

Shari instead answers. “I am, yes…” She raises the same weapon she had taken from P3 who now realises the error in her doing so. Two bullets are fired off, and the two of them stumble over dead, leaving Shari alone. “I’ll protect you, Lacertus…” She assures him, despite him not being present.

“I’ll protect you…”

~*~

“I’m telling you, Bill, this Kingsley kid is in over his head!” The man sitting across from Bill O’Reilly, an American conservative commentator, exclaims, clearly frustrated. “An invasion into Japan over dubious intel? This is 9/11 all over again, and yet here we are, actually debating on whether there should be an involvement of American forces into this battle.”

Joshua leans back in his chair, and takes a moment to look around. Many in the restaurant he and Alisha are at are watching the political conversation carry out with mild interest, though he can only dread it. Every time they say “Kingsley,” it all comes rushing back: tackling the rebel, holding him down, and then… his head practically exploding right in front of him.

He runs a hand through his short, dirty blond hair, and instead looks over at the decorative Christmas trees set up here and there with fake gifts below. “At least Christmas hasn’t gone to shit yet,” he mutters to himself, folding his arms over his chest. The restaurant has a decidedly English feel to it: oaken tables and chairs lacquered to a shine, worn hardwood floors, a ceiling with large, heavy support beams creating a checkered pattern above their heads from which small lights hang over each table.

In the corner is a bar where, as opposed to political commentary, the latest incarnation of the Roses rivalry is playing out: Leeds United and Manchester United are playing, and, an hour in, Leeds is ahead one goal.

Across from him, Alisha sits, texting away on her phone. He doesn’t blame her, he’s been poor company this entire night. “True, James,” O’Reilly pipes up after the guest, James Carville, finishes his diatribe, “But what about the polls? All around the UN, people love the guy. Kingsley’s seen as honest and likeable… But you’re right that he’s seen as totally ineffective. But come election time, are people really going to care whether he was able to end the terror attack threat? Ever since 9/11 it’s been something we’ve had to live with thanks to the damned liberals.”

Carville laughs, “You’re blaming the left, Bill? Come on. What about President Pence’s refusal to allocate any troops to the UN’s war – which is a breach in the Expansion Resolution I might add, given that the UN representatives voted in a majority for increased forces – isn’t that undemocratic? He’s holding the UN hostage so America can get more seats.” Bill O’Reilly shifts in his seat following this, evidently annoyed.

“And if he is? So what?” He questions, leaving a speechless James Carville. “America is holding up the UN! We’re the strongest nation, we’re the ones with the big military, and we’re the ones with the money, even if we had to suffer through eight years of Obama.” Seeing the look on his guest’s face, O’Reilly backs down to an extent: “Anyway, let’s move on. We’re not going to agree on what has to happen for this war to end. What about Lacertus and the World Confederation? The eco-hippies certainly are making a splash.”

Carville leans forward in his chair, folding his hands on the glass desk before him. “Look, Lacertus is nuts. I think we can agree on that. He wants the UN and WC to make peace and focus on environmental reforms to save the world. That’s all a bit melodramatic and unrealistic for my tastes, but people are eating it up! Look at how many demonstrations have occurred at national capitals in the past year since he appeared on the scene. The man has support.”

“He won’t even show his face!” O’Reilly protests angrily, “He’s a coward. All he does is stir the pot and lets the world run wild while he congratulates himself. It’s little more than self-adulation.”

“What about the World Confederation? A bunch of backward post-modern dictators, that’s what they are. No democracy, no freedom of the press, no bill of rights, nothing! It’s just one powerless chancellor and a whole heap of big businessmen doing whatever they want to increase their profits.” Joshua once more looks back to his girlfriend, finding her now boredly sitting, looking off into space.

He reaches over and gently takes her hand in his own, and she looks up, surprised. “I’m sorry if I’ve been distant,” he says, “I just can’t stop seeing that…” His voice fails him and he falls silent. Alisha studies him, and he only feels even smaller as she does so.

“I know,” she says quietly, “And I’m sorry you had to experience that.” Alisha takes back her hand and stands up. “But you’re not the same person you were when we started dating, and frankly I’m so tired of all the politics. Don’t you see I don’t care?” She shakes her head as he goes to speak. “Goodbye, Josh.”

Josh stands up, his chair scraping noisily against the floor below, as he leans over the table, trying to stop her, but to no avail. “Wait!” He calls out, drawing attention from those around him. She doesn’t look back, and so he slowly falls back into his chair, his listless gaze falling onto the half-eaten meal in front of him.

“I saw the signs,” he reminds himself, “I knew this was coming…” That, however, is of little comfort now. “She kept telling me I should go back to regular school and not take it online. But how many sixteen year olds get offers to work at the UNHQ?” He decides to not answer his own questions. A tightness constricts his chest, and he can feel his knees shaking.

Josh removes his wallet from his back pocket, deposits fifty pounds on the table, and hurries out of the restaurant. He feels the burning eyes of strangers watch him as he keeps his head dipped and fumbles with his jacket. Tears are welling in the corners of his eyes – he won’t let them see him cry. He reaches the front of the restaurant, where stained glass windows have been festively decorated with tinsel and wreaths.

He pushes the door open and steps into a chilly London night. Before him, a dark St. James’s Park extends to the southwest, while on the north side the UNHQ sits, its palatial exterior looking similar to that of Buckingham Palace a few blocks away.

The cold winter’s air pricks at Joshua’s hands, and so his plunges them into his pockets and hurries across the quiet street of Birdcage Walk and onto a path slick with patches of ice. He puts shoe to pavement and hurries into the dark park. The path is wide and paved, and on either side, a grassy field extends, dotted with bare trees.

Given the -20^oC weather, Josh is glad to see there’s no one else here. He slows his pace as he goes further into the park and wipes at his eyes with the stretchable cuff of his downy red jacket, sniffing back snot.

The path ahead leads into a four way intersection. Reaching it, he sees a figure on the bridge which leads toward the UNHQ, while left leads to the far side of the park, and right leads toward the Imperial War Museums. Deciding to go where he knows best, Josh moves forward, toward the bridge, absentmindedly spotting a figure on the bridge over St. James’s Park Lake.

Josh moves onto the bridge, eyeing the half-frozen Lake’s glistening surface. “She didn’t have to leave so quickly,” he thinks to himself unhappily. He passes over the middle point in the bridge, ignoring the individual angrily swiping upward repeatedly, likely playing Pokémon Go.

He feels his phone vibrate and subsequently removes it from his pocket, finding an update from a news app: “LACERTUS AND GREENPEACE THROW SUPPORT BEHIND KINGSLEY.” Intrigued, he taps the screen and opens the notification, finding a video. Noting there’s no one around him on the northern side of the bridge, he plays the attached video.

Lacertus stands behind a podium at what appears to be a news conference. “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” he says. Predictably adorned in his metal half-mask and entirely black outfit, save his starkly contrasting dark green tie. His blond hair is pulled neatly back as to not interfere with his mask, giving him a decidedly proper look.

“I will keep this brief as Greenpeace is very busy at this time. Many of you have asked me over the past months what my, and Greenpeace’s, stance is on the war, and your questions have only become more insistent since the war broke out in reality.” He speaks with a bit of mirth, and a few chuckles are heard from the crowd.

He lets out a breath and taps his mask, “When I was disfigured in the nuclear attacks on Africa, I swore I would never again allow the world to slaughter millions in the name of justice and peace. I swore I would stop the kind of short-sighted politicking that has raped our beloved Earth and left her a smoldering husk of oil spills, deforestation, and polluted fresh and sea water.”

Lacertus slams his fist down, causing many in the press to jump in their seats. For his part, Josh feels so drained he can only watch, numb to any emotion at this point. Where he would feel anxiety or worry for what the masked man is saying, all he can feel is a gut-wrenching hollowness in his chest, like someone had taken something so critical to his very being that all that is left is just a slowly dying husk.

“That’s why,” the Greenpeace patron begins, “I began my crusade. That’s why I took the leadership of Greenpeace just under a year ago.” He looks over the crowd of reporters, his single dark eye looking over them imperiously. “I will support Secretary General Kingsley, not because I believe he is the best man for the job of reordering the world into a peaceful one, but because I believe the evil men who control the World Confederation: the big business slave masters, care only for themselves and their wretched profits!”

He shakes his head, “The UN is a bureaucratic, inefficient, corrupt organisation. But in it there is hope for change. There is hope for unity. There can be only one mind at the head of this great task before us that is saving the world from ourselves. There can be only one world leader, and they must be responsible to the people! Not to corporate interests or backdoor political conniving.” Lacertus gestures grandly with his right hand, “And that man must be Matthaeus Kingsley!”

“The UN government has hidden the news from you, the official reporters, but the new media has already begun reporting on it. I have removed the impediments before Kingsley, so that he may act swiftly and justly in the name of world peace and environmental prosperity.” Lacertus looks over the crowd of reporters before him, who have fallen eerily quiet. “Yes, I commissioned the deaths of those representatives of countries who think their goal in the UN is to stall progress.”

“The representatives of countries who believe profits come before people, who believe profits come before the majestic lion or humble mouse have been removed.” Lacertus points toward the cameras, toward Josh, “I call on your, Secretary General, to act! Call for the War Measures legislation before the cowardly World Confederation attacks you.”

Josh boggles at what he’s hearing: “Just a few days ago he had Kingsley held hostage and was declaring to the world that Kingsley was a warmongerer?” None of it makes any sense, and in his current state.

“I condemned you, Secretary General, for your cowardly, half-step into war. At this rate, many millions will die. If the UN does not support this war, then I will come for you, and I will remove you too.” Lacertus looks around, “This press conference is over.”

The video cuts out, leaving a thoroughly confused and emotionally exhausted Joshua Jagger in its wake.

~*~

She wants to look away. She knows she should. Yet, she can’t. “I barely knew Dina, when I think about it,” Sasha says quietly, aware of the tall, broad form of Vadim at her side, “But this… this is just evil.” Vadim nods.

Before them, the pale corpse of Sergeant Dina Utkin lies sprawled out on the floor of a preschool. All around her, bodies have been covered with beige tarps. Yet, Sasha doesn’t pay them any heed. Before her, her friend lays dead, her throat slashed ear to ear and her knees are shattered by bullets. Her fingers are curled upward and her eyes stare, dead, upward, face contorted in fear and horror.

“Who did this?” She asks, not looking away.

Vadim shakes his head, “Don’t know. There’s fingerprints on her body, but they don’t match anyone in the army’s database. I sent them to HQ in Beijing to see if they could figure it out, but that’ll take months.” He takes in a breath and turns around, “C’mon. You have a squadron to see to.”

Sasha finally rips her gaze from the terrified, mangled corpse before her and turns around. There, military police are investigating the scene, noting the kinds of bullets used that litter the corpses. The door to the preschool opens, and from it comes the youthful figure of Private Demetri Alexandrov. “We may have better training than the UN’s volunteer forces, but our equipment is just terrible,” Sasha thinks to herself, observing the man’s dated rifle and stained uniform.

“Sergeant, ma’am. Word from Squadron 23, there’s UN forces in bound to this location!” He says, alarmed.

Sasha looks to Vadim nearby before returning her attention to the twenty year old man before her. “What are their numbers?”

“Fifty or so. Maybe more. I think they learned we’re here. They’re coming from the north.” Private Alexandrov’s tone is despondent, though Sasha will not allow his despair to colour her judgement

“So the UN thinks we’re easy pickings?” She says, irritated. Turning to Vadim, she says firmly: “Lieutenant, call in backup. We’ve got hostiles coming, and lots of them.”

Vadim nods and shouts: “Right. Everyone! We’ve got hostiles inbound from the north! Get into defensive positions!” Sasha repeats his order over the walky-talky attached to her shoulder.

With this done, she moves to the entryway of the preschool and grabs her own rifle, a dated piece of equipment from the Soviet era. The entryway has a large single window next to the doors, ideal for laying down suppressing fire, but she knows this won’t be enough. “Ma’am, there’s ten of us including the military police. How are we supposed to hold out?” Private Alexandrov asks as he takes position next to her.

“We’ll just have to hope reinforcements will come in time,” she responds tersely and loads her weapon. “How many others from our squadron are here?” Sasha looks over at her subordinate expectantly.

“Just me, ma’am,” someone says from behind them. She looks back and finds an older man in his forties, likely one of the new recruits taken on shortly before the declaration of war. “Private Igor Krupin.”

She nods, “Right, take position here at the window. We’ll provide suppressing fire and slow down any on-comers.” Outside, ominous grey clouds float overhead, threatening snow and cold weather. The suburbs around the preschool are completely barren of life, leaving an ominous stillness to the world around them.

Minutes pass and two of the military police join them, armed with only pistols. “Lieutenant Ivanov and the four members of the late Sergeant Utkin’s forces have taken point outside. The lieutenant is upstairs in the attic. He’s got a sniper rifle and says he “has some plans,” ma’am.” Sasha nods and continues to wait.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity, she sees a glimpse of a large, camouflage-green transport, followed by another, and another, and finally a fourth. Their passengers disembark on the far side, protected by the armoured vehicles. “Are they really just going to bum rush this place? How unprepared do they think we are?” Private Alexandrov asks with incredulity.

“Don’t write them off that quickly, we can’t –“ Sasha falls silent as Vadim’s voice crackles to life over their walky-talkies:

“Platoon 53 has responded to our request for backup. ETA fifteen minutes. Our job is to hold the UN back until they can remove the threat they are.” Vadim subsequently falls silent, leaving Sasha and her subordinates to their devices.

Outside, the UN forces move back and forth, still protected by their armoured vehicles which act as a barrier between them and the WC forces inside the preschool. Sasha studies them as be she can see, and then sees something glint between the two vehicles. Using the scope on her dated rifle, she focuses in on this foreign object.

“A rocket launcher,” she says, aghast. Using her walky-talky, she pages out: “They’ve got a rocket launcher! Everyone get back!” Sasha herself drags Alexandrov and Krupin to their feet, the military police following shortly after, to the inside of the house. She slams closed the door to the foyer of the preschool and, as she does, she hears the sound of a burning rocket engine coming ever nearer.

Sasha throws herself behind a desk, likely overturned during the evacuation. Her comrades find similar shelter behind an outcropping wall that leads to the kitchen. Above, she hears the hurried footfalls of her superior and friend Vadim.

Then, the rocket hits. An ear-splitting explosion obliterates the front half of the small building, tearing the foyer asunder. Heat hits her first in the form of a sickeningly hot shockwave of destruction, before debris begins flying inward, shattering windows behind her and piercing walls. Much to her horror, Private Alexandrov, having unwisely peaked around the corner of the wall, falls backward, dead, a piece of wall stud embedded in his skull.

The entire structure groans in protest as the weight redistribution weakens it greatly. Sasha’s ears ring painfully and she can hear nothing but the incessantly squeal, but nevertheless looks over the edge of the desk as the debris ceases flying. A raging inferno has formed where the foyer once was, but she can see the oncoming soldiers, intent on simply overpowering them.

She gestures to her soldiers, shouting: “Suppressing fire!” Though she’s sure none of them can hear it. She herself places her rifle on the lip of the table, crouched behind it, with her eye looking down the scope. She’s killed before – it’s been part of her job since she was 16 and joined the WC patrol forces in Moscow. Even still, this is different. “This is war,” she realises darkly, “I have to fight… For Ivan… For Vadim. For myself!”

She sees someone emerge from the inferno raging before her and doesn’t hesitate. Three bullets are sprayed from her weapon, and the offending party’s body is explodes with blood in his chest and neck before stumbling backward, dead.

The ringing in her ears, still powerful, has begun to subside, and so she calls out to her soldiers: “Don’t waste your bullets! Keep them back! They won’t take prisoners!” She can only guess this to be the case, given what must have surely been a grizzly fight that killed so many UN and WC soldiers in this very preschool.

Bullets begin firing in, and she reflexively ducks, pinned down. Krupin and the two military police look between each other and then at her, the former of the three of them holding in his hand a grenade. She shakes her head and holds up a hand, now crouched behind the desk completely. “Wait for my signal!” She mouths.

More bullets are firing over her head, and even Sasha, familiar with fighting with armed gang members, feels terror in her heart. Her heart races furiously in her chest, her hands tremble on the weapon in her hand from both fear and anxiety, and stomach is in knots of fear-induced nausea.

She closes her eyes for a moment, trying to collect herself and failing to do so.

“Ivan is out there somewhere,” she reminds herself, finally admitting that the Platoon coming to save them, Platoon 53, includes her sixteen year old brother. Her walky-talky crackles on her shoulder: “This is Corporal Mateev with the 53^rd Platoon, do you read me?”

“Sergeant Sasha Alkaev, Platoon 37! We’re pinned down by enemy fire. We were investigating a suspicious sight, looks like the UN were too!” She calls into her walky-talky, her voice coming out urgent and desperate.

There’s a pause, “Roger. Bombers will intercept ground forces. Stay put, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir!” As she speaks she can hear people entering the building. Looking to her subordinates, she nods. The grenade’s pin is pulled and tossed around the wall. Yet another explosion sounds, and screams are its response. She can only still feel the slam of her heart in her chest, reminding her that she’s not safe, there are dead people everywhere, and she could very easily join them.

The urge to remain completely still is overpowering, but she overcomes it for a moment to glance over the desk. Finding a messy display of blood and limbs in a blackened hole only meters away, her stomach turns and she feels bile rise in her throat. She fights it down and waits for the sound of an airplane overhead.

Mercifully, it is near at hand, and the dull roar of jet engines can be heard over the licking flames of the foyer. She braces herself for what’s to come. There’s a pause, and near silence, and then a syncopation of three explosions, with more screams of pain and agony. More lives lost. More orphaned kids, more widows, more destroyed families.

“I won’t be weak, not when I have Ivan to protect…” She swears to herself, the image of a much younger Ivan marred with a black eye and sobbing pitifully in the corner of the kitchen coming to mind. On that day she swore she’d protect him. To this day she has not failed. “I won’t fail him!”

“Squadrons 42 and 43 are here!” Her walky-talky announces, “Coming in from the south-southeast and northwest!” The announcer pauses, “UN reinforcements arriving! Three more squadons! 37^th Platoon get the hell out of there while you can, we need to pull out ASAP!”

Sasha radios back: “Roger! Moving out!” She flips to another channel, “Vadim! We need to go!”

“Roger,” comes his weary reply. Slamming on the ceiling is heard above them as a body falls through. Vadim lands on his feet, sniper rifle now discarded for a pistol. “Let’s go!” He calls out, loading his weapon.

Vadim moves into a run, his large form disappearing into the flames of the front of the building, heedless of the gore around them. Sasha steels herself and follows his huge silhouette, covering her face as she moves through the fiery inferno that is the remnants of the foyer.

She tumbles into a roll on the grassy field in front of the playground, but doesn’t wat long. Her training is now years behind her but she knows the worst thing to do now would be to remain still. Opening her eyes, she sees that four transports that brought their foes are now smouldering craters in the road, as are two nearby houses.

However, new soldiers have arrived. At the far end of the street, two WC transport trucks have blocked the road and she can see soldiers firing around it at an unseen enemy. At the other end of the street is two UN transports.

“Corporal Mateev, where do you want us?” Vadim radios in, already moving toward a cement monument of a few children standing next to a Japanese man, a reminder that neither they nor the UN forces should be in this country.

With no response from their allies, Sasha and Vadim can only watch as their subordinates follow them outside. “Stay low!” She calls out to Krupin and the two military police. However, in a spray of bullets from a nearby source, the three of them spasm, their bodies erupting in blood, before crumpling over.

Sasha looks around the edge of the monument and sees the culprit. Clearly a non-commissioned officer (NCO) given his single pointed bar indicating the rank of sergeant, he holds his rifle with expertise and, despite the blood marring his blond hair and white uniform, he moves with precision from cover to cover, slaughtering Sasha’s allies with cold calculation.

However, as this paragon of battle moves through the battleground, he abruptly stops as he sees a bizarre sight. A WC soldier with a green armband around their bicep shoots a fellow WC soldier in the back before turning their automatic rifle on her allies and mowing down six before being shot. “What the hell is going on!?” She shouts, horrified.

Many more turn on their allies on both sides, and the same young man who had killed her subordinates is abruptly fighting off turncoats with the same green armbands, bludgeoning them with his rifle or simply spraying them with bullets. “Look at the turncoats! They’ve got those green armbands on, just like the corpses inside the preschool!” Vadim says, watching the same UN NCO expertly handle the traitors in his own ranks. “We need to stop them!”

Sasha wastes no time and places her rifle between the feet of one of the statue children. From her scope she sees them clear as day. The first one is pointing her weapon at a nearby UN soldier, and although she can’t make heads or tails of the grey blood-spackled uniform, she depresses the trigger. The rebel falls over, dead.

“Those must be the terrorists!” Vadim calls out, his own pistol firing noisily into the hellish melee.

Sasha can see her own allies moving in and quickly overpowering the situation. UN and WC rebel forces are cut down as swiftly as they rose without mercy or discrimination. Nevertheless, the once peaceful field where children had once surely played is now riddled with bodies and death.

Men and women lay in the grass clutching at organs spilling out of their bodies, stumps where limbs had once been, and others at their clearly dead comrades, screaming in horror. The sight of it all turns Sasha’s stomach ever further, and she dry heaves at the sight of one man clutching vainly at his intestines which have spilt out of his stomach.

It’s then that she sees a familiar face move out from behind cover. Dirty blond hair, a young, clean face, and determined dark eyes. Ivan. He darts around the corner, firing at a few UN soldiers, killing two. As he sprints for cover, Sasha sees the error in her brother’s movements.

The space between his previous cover and his new cover, a park bench, is too far. A private in the UN forces next to the young man who had killed Sasha’s subordinates aims his gun at the sprinting Ivan. “IVAN!” She shouts, terrified for him.

Sasha doesn’t hear the bullet, but she does see her little brother collapse forward, dropping the weapon he had received only weeks ago, and roll forward onto his back. She tries to stand up and go to him, but Vadim holds her down. “Wait! You want to die too!?”

“Let me go!” She shouts, though he does not.

A distance away, the same blond youth who had so deftly taken out many of her allies shouts: “Logan!” as the man who had shot her brother collapses, his face contorted in horror as he falls to his knees, realising what he’s done. The white-garbed NCO grabs her brother’s assailant and drags him back, his own forces now on the retreat.

With the UN forces withdrawing, Vadim lets Sasha go and she sprints across the field, heedless of the bodies she steps on. “Ivan!” She screeches, her heart shattering painfully in her chest as she comes across his bloodied form.

His chest rises and falls sharply, his arms and legs sprawled out on either side. She can’t see any blood on the front of the uniform, but a pool of the crimson liquid is forming around him. Sasha drops her weapon, tears pooling in her eyes as she cradles his head in her lap. “Ivan…” She weeps miserably, her tears falling onto his face.

Ivan flinches as his sister’s tears drip down onto his face. “Sasha…?” He says weakly, coughing up blood onto his new uniform. “Is that you?” He questions, delirious. “What are you doing – “ he coughs violently again, his dark eyes closing for a long moment as pain wracks his body, “… here?”

She holds him tight, her pony tail of auburn hair falling over her shoulder as she strokes his cheek with her bloodied thumb. “It’s me, Ivan,” she says, crinkling his uniform with her other hand as she struggles to comprehend what’s happened to him, “It’s me…”

At his questions, she smiles bitterly, heedless of the bullets still flying overhead and the calls being radioed in. “You came to save Vadim and me, kiddo…” She continually strokes his cheek, “You saved us.”

“I did?” He questions, confused. The glossy, confused look in his eyes fades away as he struggles to sit up. Looking at his sister who’s now supporting him, fear paints his young face. “Sasha,” he begins, his voice trembling, “I can’t feel my legs…”

She looks around him, at his back, and sees what’s happened. Ivan repeats himself, “I…” he stammers, “I can’t feel my legs!” The youth, only sixteen years old, begins to hyperventilate, “I can’t feel my legs! I can’t feel them! Sasha! What’s going on!?”

Sasha pulls him into her bosom, holding him tightly. He sits there, limp from the waist down and unable to say anything but the same words over and over. “What happened!? Sasha? Tell me!” He buries his face in her arms, completely lost to his own grief and hysteria: “TELL ME!”

2020: Chapter Nine

Winter, being the coldest, darkest season, is often equated with misery and seclusion. But for Ishana Chaudhri, Secretary to the Chancellor of the World Confederation, which includes over four billion men, women, and children, it is a time of peace. She has her hands stuffed into her new winter jacket. The garment is a fine woolen one that reaches down to her knees and fits snugly to her form. Her long black hair, smoother and silkier than ever thanks to the efforts of Zheng’s media relations staff and their demands for her to look presentable at his side, hangs limply behind her.

Below her, the large engine of the bus in which she travels rumbles noisily, while the whole vehicle undulates unevenly as it turns and stops. Outside, the great city of Beijing is covered in a thick blanket of snow. A few pedestrians trudge by outside the bus on foot, their forms fat with thick coats.

Ishana, for her part, despite enjoying the peaceful scene outside on this dark December evening, feels an uneasy anxiety in her chest. “It’s been weeks since I saw them,” she chastises herself, “I hope they’re not too mad… Yet…” She looks down at her left calf. Most of the bandaging is gone, but she can still see through the outline in her black dress pants of the remaining bandages, forevermore a reminder of how tenuous her life has become.

“I’ve done it all for them,” the secretary assures herself, “I took the job so I could help make sure Jon and the kids are safe.” Yet, her reasoning feels hollow and has little substance to it. She knows her family will not see it that way. “Do other people feel this kind of guilt for doing what they think is right?” She looks around the bus at the other eight people still on it. An elderly couple, a night-shift workers, and a woman in her late 20s busily texting away.

The dim, yellow light coming from the bus’s ceiling gives everything a decidedly calm atmosphere. Advertisements above the windows show wonder products ready to be sold for a low price ending in 99, popular fast food chains, and one large advertisement displaying Delun Zheng gesturing dramatically at a podium while fighter jets fly overhead. Above the planes are the words “Stronger Together,” subtly reminding Beijing residents that the World Confederation is a safety blanket for all members.

Ishana removes her own phone and opens her messages. She’s responded to every one her kids and her husband have sent within a few hours without fail, and there’s been no sign that they’re even remotely angry at her, or conversely worried for her. “It’ll be fine,” she assures herself.

However, relief is replaced with confusion as the bus turns down another narrow street and abruptly stops. Looking up to the front of the long vehicle and out the dirty windshield and spies a set of plastic orange barricades blocking the street and a few soldiers clad in their signature grey uniforms. “Fantastic,” Ishana grumbles to herself, hoping to play it off as a checkpoint.

The bus slows to a stop directly before the barricades and a soldier knocks on the door parallel the driver, who complies and opens it. “Office of Public Security,” the woman announces firmly, “Turn off the engine and hand the keys to me slowly.” The driver, evidently familiar with these things, complies and the bus goes dark as a result, before lighting once more as the bus’s battery takes over.

“Everyone is to stay seated and stay still. We will check each of you for identification. Do not remove it until we come to you.” This first soldier unzips her thick grey jacket, revealing the same uniform Lieutenant Atash Hashemi had worn when he had informed Ishana of her injury and Trade Minister Xiao’s untimely death. Three more soldiers board the bus, also clad in the grey suits, red ties, and silver stars of the Office of Public Security.

The first soldier moves to the texting woman first, who removes her I.D. and hands it away. The soldier swipes it through a machine she procures from one of the men who is evidently her subordinates and waits. After a moment, she nods and hands it back.

The four soldiers continue this and slowly move to the back of the bus where they find Ishana seated in the corner. “Ma’am, your I.D.” the woman instructs coolly. Ishana complies and removes her wallet from her purse. Though, as she does, she dislodges her cane from its resting place on the seat next to her and it tumbles noisily to the ground, clattering against the metal floors.

In an instant, handguns and assault rifles are drawn, loaded and aimed at her person. Ishana feels her entire body tense, her injured leg screaming with pain as she reflexively twinges against the noise. In her right hand she holds her World Confederation Government I.D. with her title displayed in large letters.

One of the soldiers behind their superior slowly leans down, handgun still pointed at Ishana, and picks up the cane, taking a moment to analyse it as the superior scans the I.D. After a gut wrenching few seconds, she hands it back and motions for her soldier to do the same with her cane, which the relieved secretary places next to her once more.

“Apologies, Ms. Secretary,” the soldier says in the same cold tones, “But you won’t be going anywhere. We were ordered to make an example of any VIPs from the government.” She turns around and faces the other three, “We have a job to do. Secure the vehicle.”

“Captain Fan,” a younger soldier at the head of the bus who had been interviewing the driver speaks up, “What’s going on? The Bureau didn’t order any of this.”

Fan abruptly draws her handgun from its holster on her waist and fires it. Screams echo off the bus, but the bullet is momentarily louder. Helpless to stop what’s about to happen, Ishana cries out: “No!” But the young soldier, evidently not let in on what’s going on, staggers backward, the windshield shattering as a bullet passes through his chest.

“Why…?” He wheezes, his voice anguished, confused, and miserable. Clutching at the growing crimson spot in his uniform, he stumbles forward once more before collapsing in a loud crash, blood pooling around his already dead form.

The elderly woman at the front of the bus clutches at her husband and weeps quietly while her husband stares at the dead soldier in horror. Panicked whispers are exchanged between the two remaining soldiers, but everything becomes quiet as Captain Fan fires her gun through the roof of the bus. “Enough chatting, you two! Demeter gave us a job and we’re going to do it! Now secure the doors and let’s get the equipment,” she hisses angrily, “We will not fail Lacertus!”

“Lacertus!?” The name echoes through Ishana’s mind with disbelief. “Why would Greenpeace’s leader be involved in this? I know they’re passionate about ending the war and stopping any environmental damage from it, but this!?” It all seems like madness, but then something occurs to her, something sensible: “Maybe they’re doing it for him. Maybe he doesn’t know… Maybe this is just a few random individuals.”

The three soldiers disembark the bus, though the two subordinates quickly move to block the fore and the aft doors from the outside. Ishana wastes no time and quickly removes her phone from her pocket once more. She opens her messenger app and types as quickly as she can to a familiar name: “Hyjacking by terrorists on bus…” she pauses, looking up and spying the number above the rear view mirror, “… 1642. Three soldiers: Captain Fan and two as of yet unnamed. They have already killed one man. Requesting immediate intervention.”

Ishana pockets her phone and prays silently the recipient of the message receives it in time. She clutches her hands tightly together, determined to not look afraid, but feels a horrid dread creeping up her spine. Did she survive the terrorist bombing at WC City on Minister Xiao just to die in a bus hijacking by a couple of eco-terrorists? “Please…” she prays again and again.

Captain Fan moves back onto the bus after her subordinate steps aside, and is followed by the same man after a moment of pause, though he simply takes point in front of the door inside, now. Fan holds in her hands a bulky laptop and a small black box attached to it. “Alright, let’s set up the feed and we’ll run it live to Demeter as well as Poseidon, so he can send it abroad.”

“Right, I’ll start on the uplink if you get the camera ready, Captain,” the subordinate replies confidently, taking the laptop from her and placing it on the dashboard of the bus.

Ishana feels her phone vibrate. A text? She cannot be sure. But then it keeps vibrating. A call. “EVERYONE!” She shouts, “Get down!” Confusion follows, but she dives to the floor anyway.

A window shatters and the soldier outside the bus topples backward into the now broken window of the door, his chest oozing with blood. Screams of horror sound and the passengers drop to the floor. “What the fu –“ Fan is cut off as she too topples to the ground, gasping for breath as she clutches at her chest, her lung evidently having been pierced by a bullet.

“I surrender!” The man at the front of the bus cries out, dropping to his knees, “I surrender! Please! Don’t hurt me!” Tears fall freely down his face. Ishana grabs her cane and slowly rises to her feet, moving down the length of the bus as she takes out her phone and answers the call.

“Thank you, Delun,” she says gratefully, “You just saved eight innocent people’s lives. Of course, we can speak later. Goodbye.” Ishana ends her call and looks around at the passengers. The elderly woman, her face still covered in tears, shakily brings her hands together, clapping. Soon, she’s joined by the rest of those who had originally been on the bus.

Ishana feels a sense of overwhelming gratitude and humility wash over her, and she bows deeply. “Please, I didn’t do anything,” she says earnestly, feeling a wet warmth trickle down her face. “Thank you…”

Later…

Behind her, the military transport trundles off, leaving Ishana alone before her dark, quiet house. The small building, comprised of a tiny kitchen, a living room, a washroom and three bedrooms, is wholly silent. “They must have all gone to bed,” she realises as she moves up the snow covered sidewalk, her heels crunching noisily on the snow. “I hope they won’t be too mad…”

The beige stucco that covers the exterior is worn and yellowed, worst under leaking windows. The roof sags over her master bedroom – something Jon has promised he’ll fix for years but never has. The main door still hangs awkwardly, and so when she unlocks it, it takes some effort to wrench it outward from its frame.

Nevertheless, it releases and she steps into the warmth of her home. Before her, a well-worn green couch sits across from a small television from the early 2000s and is joined by two miss-matched plaid chairs. To her right, a staircase leads up to the bedrooms. She flicks on a few light switches and spies up the stairwell, but sees that the doors to the rooms are all open. “Strange,” she says quietly to herself.

Behind the living room is the kitchen; an assortment of simple white cabinets on a wall and old appliances badly needing replacement. Yet, this is home.

She flicks on more lights as she closes the door and, again sees no signs of her family. Ishana discards her coat on one of the large plaid sofa-chairs and looks around. “Maybe they went to find me?” She questions aloud but pauses when she spies something sitting on the old green couch.

A folded piece of printer paper has her name written on it in her husband’s writing: “Ishana,” she reads aloud and slowly moves around the couch, a great sense of unease working its way through her. She takes a seat and flips over the page, finding a brief message on it.

“Ishana,

When you woke up in the hospital after the Trade Office was attacked, I had never felt happier to see you. I wanted so badly to know you were okay, and seeing you there made me feel like the luckiest man in the world. My beautiful wife was okay and our family was okay.

But then you took your new job. You did it not just for yourself, but for your kids, too. You want what we all want: a world where kids like Jun and Dhruv can grow up without fearing a terrible world war. I fell in love with you for that same heart that drove you to work and work and work.

Ishana, my beautiful, lovely wife, I will always love you, but it’s not safe in Beijing. And, in your effort to save your kids, and even me, from danger, you’ve forgotten all about us. You’ve forsaken your actual family for the idea of your family.

I love you so very much, Ishana. I always have. Please, don’t be sad when you read this. The kids and I will be happier than you can ever make us by working yourself so hard. Now, you can devote yourself to your work without feeling burdened.

Goodbye, my beautiful wife,

Jon.”

Her voice cracks and finally fails as she reads his name. The letter crumples as she balls her hands into fists. Her heart shatters in her chest as she realises all she has just lost. Memories of sitting on this very same couch, holding an infant Jun, her husband’s arm around her shoulders, and a toddler Dhruv fast asleep on her husband Jon’s lap, pass through her mind. Memories of eating dinner in front of the TV as they watch an old sitcom, too, come alive.

Tears, this time not of gratitude and relief, but of unimaginable heartbreak and loneliness, fall freely down her face as Ishana collapses sideways, her cane clattering to the floor. She buries herself in the fabric of the couch cushions, the familiar musty scent now a bittersweet one.

She cries loudly and miserably, her heart throbbing with agony in her chest, crying out for it all to end. Curling up into a ball, she pulls at the couch, trying to draw it closer, to bring her family back.

Instead, all she finds is an empty house around her, and tears for her company.

~*~

Three months of training, and yet Logan feels as though they are not remotely ready for what awaits them. The uniform he wears, camouflage green cargo pants and jacket, a heavy vest laden with various things he barely knew how to use, and an all too real assault rifle in hands -  it’s all now too real, too heavy, too restrictive, and too damning.

Their military transport rides smoothly, if loudly, over the empty streets. Through small windows between each person, he can see the outside world. Tokyo, Japan. Weeks of bombing have reduced it to a smoldering pile of ruined skyscrapers, decimated suburbs, which has left hundreds of thousands of Tokyo citizens fleeing north from the encroaching UN soldiers now moving in by land.

The transport, little more than an overgrown covered truck, seats four on either side in the back, and two in the front. Between the squadron sits a long trunk bolted to the floor of the vehicle. Inside one can find ammunition, food, and other supplies one might need if they’re ever bogged down.

Logan looks to his left, seeing Private Emmanuel Otero, a 35 year old Brazilian man with a penchant for saying nothing and yet seeming entirely disinterested in the world around him, looks predictably bored with the task at hand. Next to him is a much different figure. Where Otero is tall, strong, and stoic, this young woman of only 20 looks horrified.

Private Faith Ryan. Meek, small, and timid seem to be accurate words to describe her, Logan decides. She’s a kind girl, but panics easily. She’ll talk endlessly about her home in Melbourne, but won’t tell anyone why she enlisted. “Dirk said it was because she was escaping…” He recalls the words of their sergeant late at night: “She’s running from something… or someone. In either event, she’s a brave girl to come here. She should be commended for that.”

“Ever the hopeful odd duck, aren’t you, Dirk?” Logan thinks to himself, looking over at the pensive figure of Sergeant Dirk Ritter, sitting directly behind the passenger seat of the vehicle, with admiration and a moment of relieved bemusement.

To Logan’s right is probably the most honest and kind people he’s ever met: Private Samuel Freeman. A young black man from Oklahoma. The nervous Logan sees in Freeman something rare: a genuine care for the human race as a whole; a man of 27 physically, but with an old soul.

Across from him sit three figures to the left of Dirk. Private Claire Levesque, a rich girl from Quebec sent to the military as punishment for marrying an Anglophone. Next to her, Helena Starek, the tough, no nonsense understudy of Dirk’s who wants to make the military her life. Logan admires her drive, but finds Private Starek to come off a bit… strong. Finally, next to her is the ever problematic Private Frederick Eastwick, the British teen who can’t seem to not piss off everyone.

Finally, driving their transport is Private Jack Irving, a Texan through and through, but fiercely loyal to the chain of command during operations. Next to him, their resident ops man: Private Masod Johiqa. Logan’s seen him dismantle a damaged laptop and get it working in under five minutes more than enough times to know this computer engineer means business.

On so many of his compatriot’s faces, Logan sees nothing but anxiety, fear, and even terror. None of them feel ready. None of them seem to feel that they received enough training. However, he’s hard-pressed to blame Dirk, who was given a wholly impossible task of training people with the martial skills he gained as an orphan – a strange personal history if ever Logan’s heard one.

What worries him more is something that none but he knows. “Greenpeace will make their move,” he reminds himself, “Nathan told me himself.” The environmental organisation, Logan has realised, is so much more than that. Lacertus himself explained their goals while visiting the UBC camps. They will destroy the old world of the UN and WC, and in its place build a new, just world, where people live in harmony with the earth and each other.

It’s something Logan dearly wishes for now. “I will die, but I will die knowing I helped end the cruel world that killed my parents and left me all alone,” he assures himself, the faces of his parents slicing into his bruised heart.

The transport slows and rounds another corner, growing ever closer to their destination, when Dirk passively looks over Masood’s shoulder and startles. “Irving! Stop the transport!” He shouts.

“What?” Private Irving looks back for a moment, “What’s the matter, sir?” He looks forward again, “I don’t see –“ he never finishes his sentence.

The front driver side wheel bumps upward momentarily and a loud click is heard. “Everyone! Brace!” Dirk shouts, and this time his soldiers comply as an ear shattering explosion rockets from underneath them.

Logan feels himself leave his seat as the heavy transport truck catapults up onto its back passenger-side tire. Emmanuel Otero slides into him while Faith Ryan collapses forward. Across from them, Dirk holds himself in his seat and braces Claire Levesque back, and Helena Starek does the same for Frederick Eastwick.

Even still, the front of the vehicle is lost to them in a flurry of flames and shearing metal as it explodes violently. Shrapnel flies everywhere, piercing flesh and vehicle with indiscriminate vigor, its surface hot and searing.

Their transport comes crashing down onto its side, and all the strength Logan could possibly muster isn’t enough to stop himself from being thrown across the vehicle and into Privates Eastwick and Starek. His fellow comrades on the left side of the vehicle do the same before everyone roll in a painful jumble of bodies as the vehicle turns over.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity, everything is still, and all is quiet, save the noisy crackle of flames from the front of the vehicle and the occasional groans from a messy pile of ill-trained soldiers.

Logan opens his eyes, having not realising he had shut them, and sees a figure clad in a now dirty white uniform staggering to his feet in the overturned vehicle. His quiff of blond hair is displaced and blood is dripping down the side of his face. Yet, he seems to ignore all of this, even the piece of shrapnel jutting painfully out of his thigh and grabs an unrecognisably burned individual and drags them toward the exit.

“Starek!” Dirk calls out hoarsely, finding the desired soldier to be cognisant, “Get the doors.” He pauses and slings the body he had dragged over his shoulders, “Everyone! Get out, now!”

Private Starek opens the back doors of their transport and staggers out with Dirk quick to follow, a body over his shoulders. Others begin to move out, and Emmanuel Otero, the ever stoic figure, wordlessly grabs another burned body and carries it out. The others, Logan sees, are able to move themselves. He too exits, and finds himself in a downtown intersection bereft of life, save them. Dirk transfers the casualty he carries to Samuel Freeman.

All around them rise cold, jagged skyscrapers into a grey, miserable sky. No sun can be seen, and as such eerie silence greets them. Logan abruptly feels a weight on his shoulder, and finds his superior, Dirk, leaning on him. He can see from this close the small lacerations on his face and the worry in his pale cobalt eyes.

Looking down, he understands why Dirk is using him as a crutch: the shrapnel in his leg is deeply embedded. “Why are we here, Dirk?” He questions miserably as the others wordlessly grab supplies from the overturned truck. The more dutiful soldiers: Helena and Emmanuel, are handing out weapons to those who lost theirs to the explosion.

Dirk looks over and sighs, evidently not believing what he’s about to say. “Because the UN government believes the terrorists responsible for the Chan Centre attack and other attacks are based in Japan.” Looking down at his injured leg, he looks up at Logan, “Pull it out, Logan. I can’t do it myself.”

“Are you su –“ The concerned Private is abruptly cut off.

Dirk nods, “Yes. Now. We need to get going.” Logan hesitates, and as he reaches down to the shrapnel in the sergeant’s leg, he hears a cry of pain. Behind them, Masood Johiqa is clutching his shoulder.

“Someone shot me!” He cries out.

“Snipers!” Helena shouts.

“Now, Logan!” Dirk rasps. Private Greer wastes no more time and grabs the long, narrow shard of metal and slides it out of his friend’s leg, the latter of the two of them hissing in pain as metal slides against rent muscle and sinew. “Everyone! Into that skyscraper! That’s an order!” He points at a nearby office tower.

Eight soldiers, two carrying two more, hurry toward the doors, and Logan hears bullets whistle by, cracking the pavement upon landing. Dirk has his arm around his shoulders, but despite this, still keeps up. Helena points a handgun at the doors and fires off a few rounds, the noise of the bullets causing Logan’s ears to ring painfully.

The doors are opened and everyone hurries in. The glass of the doors abruptly shatters after being shot, and the squadron moves further in, out of sight. “Sergeant,” Samuel Freeman says gravely as he sets down the burden he had been given by Dirk.

Lain before them, Private Claire Levesque lets out a choked cry of horror.

The mangled corpse of Jack Irving lays before them. Once a handsome, tall man from Texas, now his tanned skin is charred black and red, his eyeballs melted, his mouth set open. Dried blood is stuck to his face. His uniform has partially melted to his right arm, and a few fingers are missing off each hands.

Freeman falls to a knee and feels for a pulse. “Sir…” he reports gravely; “He’s dead.”

Logan looks from Samuel to Dirk expectantly. A long pause ensues, but is abruptly broken as footsteps can be heard from somewhere above them. Logan takes inventory of their surroundings: the lobby has only two entrances: the main doors and a set of stairs leading to a landing, from which the stairs begin again, but perpendicular to their original course. The exterior wall is cement, save the doors, and heavy support pillars are placed at even intervals, creating something of a pathway from doors to stairs.

Dirk looks to his soldiers: “We’ll grieve for Private Irving later. We’ve got unknown numbers of enemies closing in from above.” He pauses and grabs the walky-talky on his shoulder, calling in: “Command this is Squadron 73, Second Army. Sergeant Dirk Ritter reporting in: we’ve hit a landmine in downtown Tokyo. Location unknown, bogeys incoming. Requesting immediate support and evac.” No answer.

A tense pause settles, but Sergeant Ritter, now in command fully, does not allow it to be. “Privates Otero, Levesque and Eastwick. You’ll be with me. We’ll take point around the stairs and stop any before they come onto the landing.” The large Brazilian man Emmanuel Otero nods and gestures to the fair woman and problematic Brit to follow him.

“Privates Greer, Starek, Freeman and Johiqa, you’ll take point on the door. Eliminate any that come through until evac arrives.”

“Yes, sir!” Rings out from those gathered.

“Sir, what about Faith?” Masood asks, bandaging his injured shoulder and looking over at the burnt form of the timid girl. “She was right behind Jack’s seat, she needs medical treatment.”

“She does, but for now…” Logan stops listening. A high pitched whine rings in his ears, his head feels light, and everything seems to become somehow abstracted from him.

“Why am I here?” He questions, looking at all the terrified faces around him, “Why are any of us here?” He aimlessly moves behind a pillar near the door and loads the assault rifle hanging from his combat vest, “Are we just here to die?” He looks across the way at Samuel Freeman who’s eyes betray his calm and speak of his fear, “I want to die…” He realises once more.

Behind him, his friend and his fellow soldiers are set up on the stairs to stop anyone from coming up behind them, but all Logan can pay attention to are Samuel’s eyes and the acrid smell of burning flesh coming from the seared, eyeless corpse of Jack Irving which lays somewhere between their two groups.

He stares for a long time at the miserable corpse of a good man. “He didn’t have to die…” he says quietly, his ears still ringing so loudly he can barely hear himself. Logan hears his name being called, and again the raucous blaring of bullets sounds. He looks around the pillar and sees Samuel firing at an oncoming contingent of what he thinks are Russian soldiers, given the flags on their grey, World Confederation uniforms.

Logan looks down at his weapon, confused. “Why do I have this…”

“Logan, for god’s sake, don’t let us down!” A familiar voice shouts over the noise. He looks back and sees a worried Dirk staring back at him. Logan slowly nods and the ringing in his ears begins to abate.

He looks forward once more and peaks around the pillar. “Sam,” he says, and gestures at their overturned transport, behind which he sees three soldiers observing them. “Those three are using the truck as cover...”

“Fire at the gas tank!” Private Freeman announces, evidently understanding what Logan meant. A flurry of bullets is released by the same man, and after a long moment of indecision, he raises the weapon to his shoulder and looks through the firearm’s sight, only to see their method of transportation explode.

A fiery explosion overcomes the ruined vehicle, and in a split second, the sky is raining metal debris on the local area. Body parts, too, come flailing down, smashing against the pavement with blatant disregard for the dignity of the dead.

“They’re coming!” Samuel shouts.

Logan looks to his right and sees four grey-clad soldiers rushing the doors. “What are they doing!?” He questions hopelessly, knowing they’re going to die. He once more brings his weapon up and trains it on the closest man. He’s an elderly Japanese fellow with a decidedly common look. “He’s old…” Logan realises, his finger ghosting over the trigger, but not yet firing. “He probably has kids, grandkids!”

“Well he’s going to kill us regardless!” Samuel shouts at him, “Just fire!”

“I’m sorry,” Logan says silently, and pulls the trigger as the man reaches the doors. Glass shatters and the old Japanese man staggers forward before collapsing, dead. From behind him, he hears a faint voice: “Logan?” Looking back, he finds a badly burned Faith Ryan walking toward him.

She’s dazed and out of sorts, but entirely in danger as more soldiers fire into the building. Whereas Logan, Samuel, Helena and Masood are protected behind pillars, Faith is entirely vulnerable. “Get behind a pillar!” Logan cries out, but realises the enemy saw her before he realised the danger at hand. A spray of bullets enters the deserted corridor between the pillars and catches the petite girl.

She goes stiff as bullets riddle her body before collapsing forward. “Faith!” Logan calls out, horrified at the gruesome scene as blood flows freely from her many wounds. He tosses his rifle aside and grabs her hand, dragging her behind the pillar with him. “Why did you do that?” He asks her miserably.

She coughs violently, her eyes dull, and her face deathly pale. Her once blond hair is largely missing on one side of her head, and in its place a hideous burn mark. The rest of it is now painted with her blood. Logan cradles her in his lap, his back against the pillar. She looks up at him, her hand moving up his arm, and he grabs her hand, holding it to his chest. “Faith,” he begins, tears welling in his eyes.

“I barely know her, why am I crying?” The question goes through his mind speedily, but he ignores it. “Logan,” she begins weakly, “I’m so scared….”

He shakes his head, his tears falling freely onto her burned, disfigured face. Blood is coating his uniform and dripping through the fingers holding her back. “Don’t be scared,” he assures her, his voice calm, “You’re going to be a happy place…” He sniffs back snot and fails to restrain his tears, “You won’t be in any pain anymore, soon.”

“I’m cold…” She whispers, and he can only barely make it out over the screams of Helena Starek as she moves to a new pillar and begins mowing down Russian and Japanese soldiers trying to overwhelm their tenuous position.

“That’s okay,” Logan assures her, “You won’t be soon.”

“You’re right,” her eyes begin to close, “I… don’t feel…” She lets out a terminal breath, her hand slipping from his and her back slackening, “a thing…”

This girl Logan had barely known quietly dies in his arms as bullets fire off all around him. For all the mayhem around him, Logan weeps for a girl whose life was stolen from her.

~*~

A preschool seems like an odd point of interest for the World Confederation Army, but Elizabeth Harrington knows from personal experience never to assume the motives of the armed forces to be sensible ones. From behind an abandoned car, she can see them entering the squat, small building in the centre of a sizable playing field.

Stranger yet, although she is not entirely sure, the Project L. heir-apparent believes she can see green armbands on their biceps. As seven of the nine soldiers move inside the building, she notes the remaining two that move in front of the double doors after their compatriots exit.

Armed with semi-automatic assault rifles and with walky-talkies making a call for backup all too easy, Elizabeth knows infiltrating this strange hideout will not simply be a matter of shooting them. She looks around, gauging her terrain: the preschool is set in a large field, which is then surrounded by closely built houses, all of which have been abandoned prior to the bombing by the United Nations undertook on urban centres.

“Didn’t Kingsley say they were just going to bomb military and strategic targets?” She recalls with bitter chagrin as she looks over her right shoulder at the jagged, broken high-rises of downtown Tokyo. “It seems downtown is a strategic target…” Elizabeth disregards the thought: what the UN and the WC are doing isn’t important. Figuring out who the terrorists behind the assassinations are is what matters, and following that determining their cause is of chief importance.

Looking down at herself, she takes note of her relatively workaday aesthetic: baggy beige pants, an ill-fitting black sweater, and to tie it all together, her short bob of black hair is messy and easily hangs over her face. Clipped to her belt under her large shirt is a small knife, and near the same area, buckled to her chest, is a pistol equipped with a silencer.

Elizabeth moves from her squatting position behind one car to behind an electrical box on someone’s front lawn. From there, she moves to the door, aware that the guards are preoccupied chatting instead of doing their job. From the door, she feigns a limp and begins dragging her right leg as she hobbles toward the preschool.

“I’ll get to the doors, dispatch the guards, then take out everyone but the target: Sergeant Dina Utkin, of the Platoon 37, Third Army…” She gives herself a mental nod and continues on her way. She comes down the sidewalk leading up to the empty house, then crosses the street to the field surrounding the preschool.

Only then do her targets notice her. “Hey, you! Stop right there!” One of them shouts in Chinese. She complies and hangs her head, her hair falling over her face and concealing it. The two soldiers hurry toward her, and she takes stock of them: both are privates, though one is a private first class. Both have standard issue assault rifles: the QBZ-95, standard for the World Confederation Army.

What Elizabeth does find strange, however, is that while one man is clearly Chinese, the other is Russian. “Why would separate armies be working together? Is this really what I think it is?” She wonders to herself. “Lady this is a restricted zone under the authority of General Alan Leung, of the Third Army. What do you think you’re doing here?” The Russian private demands.

Elizabeth forces a stammer and looks up through her bangs, hoping to seem younger than she really is. “My family…” she begins in a purposely broken Chinese accent, “They left me here… Because I’m not Japanese.” She wipes at her eyes, feigning tears.

The Chinese private first class takes a step forward, “Alright. We’ll call for a pickup. You’ll be taken to the WC’s relocation base in the Saitama Ghetto. They’ll be able to help you there.” The two men turn and begin to walk back toward the preschool when Elizabeth speaks up once more.

“Excuse me, mister soldier…?” She says meekly.

The Chinese soldier stops his subordinate and looks over his shoulder; “Yes?”

“Can you do me a favour?” Elizabeth fiddles with the hem of her shirt, subtly slipping one hand behind her back.

“Of course. What is it?” The man says, relieved she didn’t have anything suspicious to say.

Elizabeth lets out a small hum and continues to appear to fiddle with her shirt behind her back. However, unseen to the two men before her, her hand grips the small hilt of the knife sheathed on her belt. “Could you…” She looks up and with a small click, unsheathes the knife, “Die?”

“… What?” The man says, alarmed. However, she gives him no time to react. Elizabeth steps forward and with a glint of silvery metal, his neck is slit open, blood spurting out. His subordinate, alarmed, goes for his gun, but it’s too late.

Elizabeth grabs the barrel of the man’s assault rifle and buries her knife in his carotid artery and drags it across the width of his neck. The two man collapse to the sides, gasping for air as they choke on their own blood. She watches them disinterestedly, “So pathetic,” she chides them.

She reaches down and unclips the Russian man’s assault rifle from his vest as well as a flash grenade from the fallen Chinese soldier. She then moves on, discarding her feigned limp and hurrying toward the building as the two men die. She takes one look back, and notes their green armbands. “Who wears their affiliation so obviously? Not even Dirk is that stupid.”

She reaches the squat building: a single story dwelling no larger than a house. There’s a wide porch off the front where a few chairs have been set up, as well as an assortment of forgotten toys. Inside, there’s a large window next to the door, but curtains cover it. Hearing voices from inside, she discerns that they’re in a different room, and so she slowly opens the door.

Inside she finds a small foyer. Pairs of small shoes fit for children are scattered everywhere, as are winter jackets fit for children. Overturned shoe racks complicate her path, but she steps silently over them. Ahead, the foyer is separated from a large room by a single door with a glass window situated halfway up.

Elizabeth quickly steps to the side and out of view. She peaks around the edge of the door and sees an undesirable sight. Thirteen soldiers: seven from the World Confederation, six from the United Nations. “Why are they together? Is this what the terrorists want?” She pauses, unsure what to do. It’s simply too many to eliminate on her own.

Looking down at the flash grenade in hand, she rolls it back and forward. The grenade is a simple oblong metal tube with a pin at the top, and yet it may not be enough. “Well, no risk, no reward,” she muses before pulling the pin out with her pointer finger. She silently opens the door to the main play room and tosses it in.

Alarmed shouts sound as it rolls noisily along the floor. Elizabeth braces her hands against her ears and shuts her eyes. Even still, a loud bang sounds in the next room and her ears ring. She rounds the corner and throws the door open completely, stolen assault rifle in hand.

Twelve bullets are dispensed and twelve soldiers collapse dead. The last one she shoots in the kneecaps, and she collapses to the ground, crying out in pain as she clutches at her ruined legs. Blood seeps onto the floor, missing in a macabre fashion with the forgotten toys, the happy felt puzzle pieces covering the floor, and the various colouring books strewn about the large room.

Across from where Elizabeth stands in the doorway, large windows look out over the field surrounding the preschool, where she can see a small playground set up behind the building. The smell of blood fills her nose as she breathes in, the stress of the job she’s currently undertaking flowing out of her system.

“Sergeant Dina Utkin?” She questions, moving toward the collapsed woman on the floor. Elizabeth removes the pistol hidden in her shirt and points it at her target’s head. “I’d answer, if I were you.”

The woman looks from her badly bleeding legs and up to Elizabeth. She nods once. The captor loads her weapon and presses the silencer’s barrel against Sergeant Utkin’s head. “Good. I have some questions for you about what you’re doing here, and what Lacertus’s thugs intend to do in Japan…”

“I’ll talk…”

Elizabeth smirks coldly, “Good.”