New
Eden is an oasis of calm, peace, and progress amidst a barren and desolate
landscape. Built upon the remains of
Alexandria, in what used to be Egypt, the arcology of New Eden had been in
development long before the events of the Second Fall, the day the angels and
devils were all vomited out from their respective afterlives, and Earth became
their battleground. When that fateful
day came, New Eden had been less than a week away from going live. As such, before civilization entirely
collapsed, it had been possible for the project to be finished and the power to
all be switched on. While it would be a
bit of a stretch to call New Eden a paradise, it was at least secure, had
plentiful electricity, clean drinking water, and many of the other essentials
of modern life that had been taken for granted by billions of people only a few
years before. In a world that had gone
to Hell, New Eden was as close to Heaven as any could hope to get.
Right
at the centre of the pyramid-shaped arcology there is a great tower, known as
the Tree of Life, and which leads right up to the pyramid’s summit, bursting
through and into the air above, reaching beyond the pall of smog and dust that
choked the landscape of northern Africa.
The tower served two principal functions – the disc near its summit, one
hundred metres across, was studded with photovoltaic cells that provided much
of New Eden’s power; and the very tip of the spire was a massive
intake/exhaust, where fresh air could be drawn down into the arcology, and
stale air and fumes pumped out. Within
the disc itself was a private club and the offices of its owner, one Addison
Caine. Caine, an immortal Nephilim, was
generally considered the most influential, if not most outright powerful,
person within New Eden, and subsequently one of the most important people in
the whole of the Mesopotamian region. An
information and power broker, there were many who believed him to be the real
power in the city, with New Eden’s mayor little more than a figurehead in
Caine’s employ.
Donovan
reached into his jacket again, fingers nervously checking that his gun was
still there. It was a snub-nosed
Defender, absolutely lethal at five metres but unlikely to cause much more than
minor flesh wounds at ten. For what he
had in mind, it was all that was needed.
Besides, if everything went well he’d not need to even fire it. The Mattix Defender series of pistols were as
ugly as they were powerful, and were designed to look about as intimidating as
a handgun possibly could. Some guns were
for pros, but the Defenders were definitely for show – the idea was that if you
were attacked and pulled one of those out, your assailant would need proverbial
balls of steel to not back right the frak off there and then. And if they did have the balls, or the stupidity, to not leave you alone, then
the short-range firepower of the gun would leave an exit wound in their back
the size of a football. The selection of
the weapon had been important in the planning.
The Arcology for The People Movement, or ATP for short, were very
specific in their intents, and how they went about them. They absolutely would not stand for any kind
of civilian collateral at all, and they recognised that the majority of the
people that worked in the arc, even here in the Spire, were still just ordinary
folk trying to make a living. They could
be reasoned with, they could be intimidated, but they were not to be hurt
because that would only harm the ATP’s agenda.
Tobias had also insisted on a lack of body armour in the mission. Donovan hadn’t been quite so happy about
that, but Tobias had assured him that the extra bulk under his jacket would
only draw attention and wouldn’t really help him because the Spire’s security
packed non-lethal takedown devices that would bypass any armour anyway.
Getting
the gun had been easy. Getting a holster
that was impervious to the Spire’s automatic screening had been trickier. A lot of places in New Eden had metal
detectors on the door, some even scanned for specific types of electronics,
currents, and densities. But the Spire
had nearly a kilometre of scanners, detectors, and counter-measures built into
the elevator shaft, and the elevators were the only way of getting up here to
the club. Well, unless one wanted to
leave New Eden’s environs entirely and go mountaineering up the side of the
arcology through the dust and smog outside, then try to find a way in through
the air intake at the very summit and crawl through the air duct to get to the
club. Which had actually been
considered, but what limited blueprints the ATP had managed to get their hands
on had suggested that this option was only viable if Donovan was somehow immune
to the effects of going through a particle scrubber, i.e. getting liquefied
into a protein substrate and then vaporised in a plasma field. Besides, he was an activist, not a damned
ninja.
Of
course, what had been really tricky
had been getting access to the Spire at all.
Technician access would have been straightforward, but that would only
have let him use the maintenance elevators, and they didn’t stop at this level,
or at any other level that had access to here.
So they’d had to get a one-day guest access to the club itself, which
had required calling in just about every political favour they currently held. To call the Spire’s club ‘exclusive’ would be
an understatement – nobody got up here without the knowledge and consent of the
club’s owner, Addison Caine. Donovan
couldn’t even remember under what pretence he was here under but it didn’t
really matter. If he had access, nobody
would ask how or why, they just accepted that he was cleared. And once in the club itself, everyone
operated on the basis that anyone else there was demonstrably allowed to be
there. So he’d bought a drink to help
steady his nerves – just the one, partly because he didn’t want to line Caine’s
pockets any further, but mostly because he couldn’t afford a second. The club’s exclusivity was matched by the
exorbitance of its prices. You could get
anything you wanted up here, no matter how black market, but it didn’t come
cheaply.
Donovan
stared at his glass of synth-rum, and then downed the last mouthful. For something produced in a chemistry lab
from synthesised sugars, it wasn’t actually too bad. Right, now or ne-
“Mr
Donovan Zahra?” enquired a polite voice from somewhere behind his right
shoulder. Donovan froze. Whatever name had been on his access card he
was damn sure it hadn’t been his own. He
turned slowly on his bar stool, pushing down the urge to flee or panic.
“Yes?” he
managed, his voice betraying just the barest squeak of tension. There was no point denying his name – if they
knew him, they knew him. Before him
stood someone with a complexion like those NeoItalian coffees his ex-wife loved
so much – smooth mocha with a hint of caramel.
That was the first thing Donovan noticed. The second was that the man was shirtless and
had neither nipples nor navel. Which
meant he was an angel. Fuck.
“My
name is Allegory, and I work for Mr Caine.
Could we speak for a moment in private, please?” Allegory.
That was the name of Caine’s bodyguard.
He sure was a lot politer than Donovan had imagined, but this was still
not good.
“I’m,
ah… I’m kinda busy. I’m waiting for
someone and I don’t want them to pop by while I’m in another room and have them
think I’ve ditched them, y’know?” Donovan
smiled uneasily. It wasn’t the most
convincing of lies but it was plausible enough.
The angel stared at him with unblinking violet eyes that were older than
Donovan’s entire species.
“It
will only take a minute or two, Mr Zahra.
Please.” A hand was placed on
Donovan’s shoulder. The touch was gentle,
and vaguely comforting on a level he’d struggle to articulate, but also
vice-like. Donovan knew a little bit
about angels. Knew enough to know how
much of the popular knowledge about them was just urban myths and how much was
actually true. One thing that was
definitely true was that they were physically superior to ordinary humans in
just about every way – tougher, faster, stronger. If the angel wanted him to go somewhere, then
he wasn’t really left with a lot of choice.
“Uh. Okay.
So long as it’s quick.”
“I
promise I won’t detain you for any longer than is necessary.” Donovan didn’t find that particularly
comforting. He stood unhurriedly,
despite his arteries clanging with adrenaline, and covertly thumbed the safety
on his pistol. If… when this went south, he knew that every fraction of a second would
count. The angel stepped back and
gestured towards one of the side doors that led to the quadrant of the disc’s
interior that was occupied by offices and storage rather than the club. Without even seeming to notice, the crowd
between Allegory and the door parted, as if every person along that line had
subconsciously and simultaneously decided to take one step to the side. Donovan walked ahead of the angel, his jaw
clenched and his hands balled into fists as he focussed on his breathing,
trying to keep calm. “Just through that
door up ahead, if you please.” Allegory
hardly needed to give directions, the Miracle of the Parting of the Crowd had
effectively created a tunnel of people for them to walk through. Donovan suspected, too, that besides them
moving to make way, they’d also have moved so that the crowd would be at its
densest by the gap, to make it as difficult as possible for him to run. He stopped at the door, and the angel reached
past him to open it. Beyond was a small,
well-lit, and very modern office with a woman about Donovan’s age seated at the
room’s only desk, intently staring at the screen before her and frowning
slightly. She gestured vaguely to the
seat on the side of the desk nearest to Donovan.
“Take a
seat; I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Allegory motioned towards the indicated chair and, hesitating for a
moment, Donovan went over to sit in it; this was not what he’d been
expecting. The woman opposite him sighed
and leaned back in her chair, hands folded behind her head. “With all the places that were turned into a radioactive wasteland
during the Cataclysm, why did Somalia have to be one of the ones to
escape?” Her eyes looked over to Donovan
and she blinked, as if not expecting to see him. “Sorry, you probably don’t care.” A hand was waved irritably at the monitor,
“Increased pirate activity around one of our shipping routes. They’ve been a constant thorn in our side. Now…”
She waved her hand again, this time with more intent, switching the
screen to a different view. From the
angle, Donovan could make out a picture of a man that looked very much like
him. Exactly like him, in fact. “Donovan Zahra. Born in Alexandria and a citizen of New Eden
since its founding, you’ve been with the Arcology for The People Movement since
14 AC, were divorced later that same year, and lost your job at InVoq Pharma
the year after. No formal adult
education, no formal military training, and no criminal record or history of
violence.” Donovan stared at her. How the frak did they know so much about
him? “Please, close your mouth; I have
no desire to see your molars. Now, with
your history or lack thereof, why in God’s desolate Earth did the ATP choose you to be the man to carry out the
assassination of my employer? Incidentally,
please don’t make any sudden movements towards your Defender sidearm – Allegory
doesn’t like violence but he is very good at it.” Donovan’s mouth opened and shut a few times,
with no sound but the slight hiss of his strangled breath coming out. Opposite him, his interrogator leaned forward
and rested her elbows on her desk, steepling her fingers and peering across the
top of them at Donovan, one eyebrow quirked.
“I… I…
who the frak are you and h-how do you know so much about me?!” he spluttered at
last, hands gripping the arms of the chair he sat in.
“I’m
Talija Janer, Mr Caine’s head of security, which neatly answers both of your
questions. Now, let me be very clear in
this matter – you are going to tell us the names of everyone in your organisation,
and you are going to answer all of my questions. Then, I am going to kill you and have your
body disposed of. That is the ‘easy’ option.
The alternative is almost identical except that there’ll be a
considerable amount of torture involved.
Allegory’s good at that, too.
He’s been studying humankind ever since we learned to say more than
‘ook’ and what he doesn’t know about how to press our buttons could be written
on one of your fingernails.”
“Then,”
he swallowed, and closed his eyes, “you’re going to have to torture me.” Talija stared at him for a few seconds – she
sensed no bravado there, simply resignation.
“You
understand you will break, eventually, and you will give us the information we require. Not even a dedicated spec-ops agent is capable
of holding out indefinitely, and you, Mr Zahra, are not even close to that
mettle.”
“Yeah,
I know,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ll
get what you need. But I’m not about to
frakking give it over willingly.”
“I
see,” she sighed. “I wonder, Mr Zahra,
if your wife – sorry, ex-wife – and
daughter would feel the same way if they were here right now.” Donovan’s eyes snapped open and stared at
her. “They’re not. But they could be, quite easily. I would estimate it taking us,” she swiped at
the air in front of her monitor and read the info of a new page, “oh, about
twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes to get them here. And that’s including the five minutes it
takes to ride the elevator. Don’t get me
wrong, Mr Zahra, I admire your integrity, I really do. So many people spill at the mere suggestion
of being tortured to death, so to declare your determination to face that
speaks of your bravery. But would
Ardelia and little Tayna feel the same way?”
She watched him, dispassionately, while the angel stood by like a
vaguely menacing statue.
“You’d
kill them too?” He asked, his voice quavering with emotion.
“Are
you familiar with exotics, Mr Zahra?”
“Huh? Sure, yeah.
Hybrids that didn’t take or went wrong.
But wha-“
“Close
enough. They’re a hybrid whose mind
could not cope with the change, nor with the duality of being part-human,
part-beast. Generally they’re insane or
of very limited mental faculties. Barely
sentient, in some cases, and little more than wild animals. The interesting
thing about exotics is that a disproportionate amount of them are people who
underwent the hybridisation process for sexual reasons – they wanted genitals
the shape and size of an animal’s, and the physical power to go with it.”
“I
don’t se-“
“I
wasn’t finished. Exotics, the ones who
aren’t completely brain damaged, therefore tend to have a hard time finding
sexual partners. Most people aren’t that
keen on being fucked by a two-foot-long horse cock wielded by a retard. I say ‘most’ because there are always
exceptions. But anyway, no, we would not
kill your family, or at least not your daughter. How old is she now, seventeen?”
“I-“
“No,
what we would do is abduct her, and then give her to Mr Caine’s pack of
semi-tame exotics as a fuck-toy. She
would spend days, weeks, even months being fucked in every hole by near-feral
creatures with some of the largest and most weirdly-shaped dongs on the planet. Eventually, she would beg us to kill
her. But we wouldn’t. Instead we’d get her physically patched up,
rig her with a Lust implant, and then send her back into the world knowing full
well that she’d be helpless to fight the urge to fuck everything that made a
pass at her, and that every time she gave in she’d relive her time as a
plaything to guys with donkey dicks.”
Donovan stared at her, mouth agape and a tear rolling down his cheek. “Ardelia, your ex-wife... no, you’re right
there, we probably would just have her killed.
In front of you. After explaining
to her what would happen to her daughter, and that we were only doing it
because of your actions.”
“You...
you’re a monster!” he shouted, his voice shrill with a mixture of anger and
horror.
“Oh
quite undeniably. And yet what I said
was perfectly true – it is your actions that will result in them being
hurt.” Donovan hung his head and stared
miserably at his feet. She was right, in
a perverse way – if he’d never got involved with the ATP, he would never have
ended up here, upsetting someone with the power and influence to have his
family killed, and worse. Hell, he’d
probably still be married. His
involvement in the ATP had been one of the major factors in Ardelia leaving
him. Kinda contributed to losing his
job, too. Frak. He’d really messed up.
“If,”
he took a deep, shuddering breath, “if I tell you everything you know, you’ll
leave them alone?”
“I
promise,” came Allegory’s voice, from behind him. That was another thing Donovan knew about
angels – they were incapable of lying.
Sure, they could weasel around things with careful wording but they
couldn’t outright lie.
“And
me?” Donovan asked.
“Oh
we’ll still kill you,” replied Talija, her tone absolutely matter-of-fact. “But it will be quick and pretty much
painless. A bullet to the head, nothing
fancy. Hell, if you’re cooperative
enough I might even leak to the ether that you held up under torture for a
number of days before finally succumbing, and that you cursed us with your
dying breath. At least then you die a
martyr to your people, right?”
“What
choice do I have? Either way you’ll get
what you want and I’ll end up dead. Only
difference is whether my family suffer because of me or not.”
“Exactly! That’s the spirit!” she replied, while giving
a smile that was all too cheerful for the situation.
“Okay. I’ll tell you what I know,” conceded
Donovan. Defeated, he held his head in
his hands and wept bitter tears.
“Thank
you, Mr Zahra. You are making the right
choice,” said the angel, resting a comforting hand on his shoulder, as Talija
leaned across the desk and presented a list of names on a tablet.
Five
days later, when Addison Caine was walking through the streets of the New Eden
arcology, the Arcology for The People stepped up their protests against his
influence on their city. A young man,
not much more than twenty, stepped out of a crowd and fired a pistol at
Addison, while shouting the usual ATP rhetoric about how the arcology belonged
to “the people”. Like Donovan Zahra
before him, this would-be assassin was neither trained nor experienced, and cut
squarely from the cloth of people who felt that sufficient belief could
overcome such obstacles. Had Addison not
been who he was, the young man might well have succeeded. As it was, he barely managed to raise his
weapon before time seemed to slow to a crawl for him, and the shirtless
presence of Allegory the Twice-Fallen made itself known, knocking the
assassin’s gun off target before landing a blow on the youth that caved in the
front of his skull, killing him instantly.
The woman who had been standing to Addison’s immediate right died
shortly after from the grievous wound received from the stray shot, but Addison
himself was left unharmed and unfazed by events, carrying on as normal and
leaving his new head of security to deal with the red tape aftermath of the
attack. It was not the first attempt on
Addison’s life, from either the ATP or the other factions that wished to see
the Spire’s overlord killed, but it was the one that had come closest to
success.
“I am
just expressing my concerns, sir,” explained Allegory later that day, in the
privacy of his employer’s private office.
“The frequency of these attempts is increasing, as is the brazenness and
desperation of them.”
“And
yet they still meet only with failure,” replied Addison, his tone indifferent,
as if the whole subject of people trying to kill him was but a minor nuisance,
and a boring one at that.
“Today
is the closest they’ve come. That shot
missed you by less than half a metre.
Had I not intervened, you could have been seriously injured.” Addison shrugged in response to his
bodyguard’s concerns; he had seen far too much over his existence to be fazed
by the prospect of being shot. “I am not
bullet-proof, sir, and nor are you. Gone
are the days when mortal weapons could not pierce our sides.”
“Not
sure I ever had those days. I do recall
being stabbed and run-through a number of times over the years,” was the
flippant reply.
“Figure
of speech, sir. My point is that it is
entirely conceivable that a well-aimed, or lucky,
shot has the potential to kill you. As
your bodyguard, it is my job to ensure that this does not happen.” He paused and took a breath, quite unnecessarily
but out of sheer habit, “Which is why I will be confining you to the Spire from
now on.”
“You’ll
be doing what?” demanded Addison, his
blasé attitude evaporating.
“Sir,
there are simply too many angles to keep an eye on down in the arcology. Here in the Spire we control who comes in and
who goes out, and about the only attack that I would not be able to see coming
is a tactical missile strike.”
“You
are my employee, angel! I give you orders, not the other way
around!” Addison slammed a fist into his
desk, incensed by Allegory’s intentions.
“Sir,
that is correct. And the principal order
you have given me is to protect you from harm.
That overrides all other concerns, and if confining you to the Spire is
the only way to do achieve that end then that is exactly what I will do.” Despite his boss’s sudden anger, the angel’s
tone remained as level and as patient as ever.
“And if
I disregard this?” asked Addison, glaring at his bodyguard.
“You
were a nomad, sir, a wanderer. I was a
warrior.” Lavender eyes met pale red, as
Allegory calmly held his employer’s stare, leaving the implied threat hanging
in the air. Minutes passed as the two
immortals stared at each other, until at last Addison relented.
“Very
well, I shall agree to remain in the safety of the Spire. However, I want you and Miss Janer to track
down these socialist upstarts and eliminate them. I will not be confined to my home by a
rag-tag bunch of bleeding heart activists.”
“We’re
already on the case, sir,” replied Allegory, giving a solemn nod before turning
to leave Addison’s office.
The
Laurent neighbourhood of New Eden was always busiest at night, and the sight of
it tended to conjure to mind words such as “bustling”, “heaving”, and “fucking
noisy”. It was a good place to get lost
in, deliberately or otherwise, and boasted the second-lowest crime rate in the
city. Of course, this was due almost
entirely to the limited police presence in the neighbourhood, meaning more than
80% of crimes committed there went unrecorded.
If one accepted unofficial
statistics, it was the most crime-ridden region of the city, by a considerable
margin.
Laurent
was where the poor and downtrodden lived, and where the illicit and immoral
worked. As well as being the best place
in New Eden to get mugged, it also had an excellent array of tattoo parlours,
unlicensed implant surgeries – or “chop-shops” – and brothels. A good night out in Laurent could see you
waking up with a tattoo of the name of a girl you couldn’t remember, and the
hastily fitted body modification of your choice.
Despite this less than savoury
reputation, there were a few relatively pleasant areas in Laurent. Those of a not-so criminal nature tended to
band together, like a herd of sheep before a wolf, and there was the odd
tenement block that was entirely self-policed by its residents, and where
parents could raise their children without having to worry too much about them
being abducted and sold into slavery.
The imaginatively named “Block 3” happened to be one of those few
apartment buildings, and it was the home of over a hundred hard-working
citizens of New Eden and their families.
Across the street from it was the Blue Dragon, a bar/club that defied
traditional descriptions, and was a one-stop place to buy all the best and
worst things that New Eden had to offer.
The suited and heavily-armed guards at the front of the Blue Dragon
spent their day casually watching the constantly-rotating militia that
protected the entrance to Block 3, and while there was no hostility between the
two groups this was purely on the condition that they both kept to their own sides
of the road.
In one of the higher level bars
in the Blue Dragon, Talija Janer, the head of security for the Spire, was
having a quiet drink with a long-standing contact of her employer, while
information and payment were being passed back and forth. A few metres away from them, a group of naked
people, both male and female, were bending over and holding their toes while a
large and hairy man with a huge canine penis went up and down the line, taking
each of them in turn. Neither Talija nor
her contact paid this the least bit of attention. Eventually, the pair stood and shook hands,
with Talija heading back to the elevator down to the ground floor, while her
contact sat back down and finished his drink, casually watching the floor
show.
Returning to the club’s entrance,
Talija nodded to her waiting colleague, who fell in step with her as she headed
back out onto the street, where they turned off towards the tramway bridge that
ran through this section of the city.
“Kenny Lu’s been able to furnish
us with three addresses,” explained Talija, as they walked into the poorly lit
area under the bridge, “None of them are exactly top billing but if we can hit
them all in the same night then it will send out a clear message. Meanwhile, he’s also confirmed that one of
the other names on our list, Tobias Albach, is pretty much their de facto leader. Apparently ATP don’t exactly go for
hierarchy, which we kinda already knew, but this Albach guy is definitely the
first amongst equals.”
“Did he have any leads on where
we’d be able to find Mr Albach?” asked her companion.
“Nope, but he knows a guy who
does; said he’d be back in touch with us when he knew more.”
“Which means, I suppose, that
we’d have to go back to that den of iniquity.”
“Jesus, Mel, what is it with you
and ‘sins of the flesh’?” said Talija, a playful smirk on her lips.
“I used to be a messenger,”
replied the angel, shifting uneasily and looking away, “I never really had to
deal with…” he gestured vaguely with his hands, “all this. It just makes me uneasy, that’s all.”
“But you’re cool with us storming
into people’s homes and murdering them in cold blood?” asked Talija, her smirk
spreading into a grin. The angel
shrugged before returning the smile.
“I didn’t always deliver nice messages.” Talija’s laugh echoed off the stone and steel
supports of the bridge overhead, but stopped abruptly when three men stepped
out of the shadows to stand in front of them.
Tatty faux-leather jackets, vinyl patches and duct tape holding them
together, and with chains and metal plates stitched into every bit of clothing
that could take them, the three were clearly gutter rats.
“Ello, pretty girl,” said the one
in the middle, before pointedly turning his attention specifically to Talija,
“And ello to you, too. Going for a
lover’s stroll?”
“Nope, just out on business. Now back the fuck off before I bury you
small-time pricks,” she replied, in a calm and level tone.
“Oooh, sounds like someone’s on
the rag, eh?” The gang leader turned to
the cronies either side of them, who laughed and egged him on. “Now now, precious, just you be handing over
your cash and valuables like a good girl and maybe we won’t hurt either of
you.”
“Last warning, maggot. I’ve been killing fuckers tougher than you
for two decades, now back off or you’re rat fodder.”
“Tal…,” began Mayim’el, putting a
hand on her shoulder to get her attention.
“I know,” she replied, “You take
those two, and these three are mine.”
“Alright! Talky-time is over! You cunts want it the hard way, I’ll give it
to you th-,” he got no further, as a well-aimed throwing knife struck him
squarely in the throat, cutting off his words and causing him to drop to his
knees, clutching at his neck as he tried in vain to stop his life’s blood
leaking away. Talija had already moved
onto the next target while the knife was still in the air, drawing her sidearm
with her off-hand and firing two shots at the goon to the left of the dying
mugger. Behind her, Mayim’el had turned
to engage the pair of thugs that thought they had been sneaking up unnoticed,
and drew a short hatchet from the inside of his jacket. The shocked thugs hurriedly tried to ready
their guns, with one managing to get a single shot off before Mel was upon
them, his hatchet raining down like the judgment of God Himself, and the bullet
glancing off his shoulder to leave a minor flesh wound that would be gone by
the morning.
“I surrender?” tried the
remaining goon before Talija, dropping his knife and holding his hands up as, a
dozen metres away, his two remaining colleagues were swiftly and savagely
turned into road kill by Mel’s furious onslaught.
“Good idea,” replied Talija,
calmly shooting him in the forehead. She
shrugged to herself as he fell lifelessly to the ground, “I mean, it wasn’t
going to save you, but at least it meant I could get a clean shot off.” She retrieved her knife from the gang leader,
casually cleaning it on his t-shirt before tucking it back away. “I swear, street thugs get dumber every
year,” she said, as Mayim’el walked over to her, blood dripping from his
hatchet and splattered over his jacket and face.
“And they were pretty dumb to
begin with. Oh, looks like laughing
boy’s still alive.” Talija glanced over
to where the thug with the neck wound was indeed still drawing faint, gurgling
breaths, his terrified eyes staring at his intended victims.
“Not for much longer he
isn’t. Anyway, let’s go get you cleaned
up before we get back in the drop ship. Kaede
will have kittens if you get blood on the seats.”
“You know, I’ve never understood
that particular idiom.”
“Eh,” replied Talija, shrugging,
“I’ve often suspected that ninety percent of most cants were designed purely to
confuse the fuck out of other people.”
Beside her, the angel chuckled.
“Ah, humans. You have a greater capacity for complex
communication than any other animal that’s ever existed, and you spend much of
your energies deliberately trying to prevent others understanding you.”
“Sounds like we had a shitty
designer,” she replied with a grin. The
angel scowled and lapsed into silence as they made their way to the nearest
hostel to get him washed down.
Later that week, three members of the ATP were
killed in seemingly random attacks – one by a mugger, another in his own home
by men who looked to be enforcers for a local loan shark, and the third in a
bar fight that got out of hand. That
these three events occurred on the same night and within minutes of each other
was a fact that New Eden’s police force completely failed to pick up on. Three murders happening in one night was
hardly unusual in the heavily-populated city, and aside from the victims all
being affiliated with the Arcology for The People movement, there did not look
to be anything that connected the crimes.
Tobias Albach, unofficial head of the ATP, felt otherwise.
“Five people. Five good people, in barely more than a
week. Meanwhile, what do we have to show
for their sacrifice? We’ve killed an
innocent woman, and our target has apparently now confined himself to his
personal fortress. Hardly a success
story.”
“He’s got angels, Tobias, we
barely have guns!” shouted one of the council members.
“Which just means we need to be
even more careful, Arron. We’re
out-manned, out-gunned, and out-funded; we can’t afford to be sloppy.”
“So what are you proposing?”
asked another.
“We need to be patient, and
methodical. Everyone has a weakness, and
we just need to find his. Until we do,
and until we have a concrete, water-tight plan on how to get rid of the monster
at the heart of our city, I am suspending all aggressive operations.”
“You don’t have the authority!”
cried Arron.
“So we vote on it. All in favour of continuing to sacrifice good
people for no gain, raise your hand.” There
was a murmuring around the council table, with a number of members exchanging
glances, but none wanting to show their hand.
“I see. Now, all in favour of
biding our time and calculating a solid plan before we act, raise your
hands.” There was more murmuring, and
this time four of the seven councillors, Tobias included, raised their hands in
favour. “Good. Motion carried, with three abstentions and no
nays.”
Following the vote, as the
councillors started to file out of the chamber, Arron Forgrave caught the eye
of one of the other abstainers.
“It seems our ‘leader’ no longer
has the stomach for the fight, Jinny,” he commented as they walked out of the
chamber together.
“Seems so,” agreed Jinny Wynn,
“But what can we do?”
“We need to marshal our people. Inspire them, if you will. It is through commitment and sacrifice that
we will slay this beast, not through caution and cowardice.”
“Y’got something in mind, Arron?”
“I do,” replied Forgrave, “But it
won’t be pretty.” They walked in silence
out onto the arcology walkway that led away from the rented chamber they used
for their council meetings. After
allowing his colleague some time to consider the matter, Forgrave spoke up
again, “Do I have your support in this matter?”
“Just t’be clear,” replied Wynn,
stopping and checking to make sure there was nobody within earshot, “We’re
talking coup, right?” Forgrave nodded,
and Wynn hesitated, mulling the idea over in her mind. “Alright,” she said at last, “I got y’back on
this. Do what need be done.” Forgrave nodded again, and the two councillors
shook hands before heading their separate ways.
