“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.”
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