A Shadow Around the Sun

by Hugo Damas

  “Uuuh…ok?” The boy whined. “What do you want?”

  The kid did not know who he was. He almost sent a disc to drill into his head right there, but with stealth out the window, he needed to know where to go as soon as possible. Falk contained himself for the sake of results, but his mood was really falling to uncharted depths.

  “Who are you with? Who owns these installations?” Falk demanded.

  The foolish boy hesitated, looking aside uncertainly. “Uuhhh…”

  Falk shot at the ground, startling him further with the sparks caused by the spinning blades rebounding off the floor. “Do you wish to die, boy??! Answer the question!”

  “No! That’s why I can’t say, please! Jus-just go that way.” He pointed to his right, Falk’s left. “It’ll take you to the main office -- the boss is there, as it happens. He is, please don’t kill me!”

  The boy had finally dropped the shell of indifference, tears were welling up in his eyes as whimpering took over his breathing.

  Falk scoffed. The kid would still be useful. “Come here!”

  The boy followed his instructions, Falk grabbed one of his noise mines and smacked it on his back.

  “Wha-what is this?”

  “Speed mine,” Falk said, activating it with the pull of a tiny lever. “Once it starts making noise, it will blow if it stops moving.”

  “Wha-what?!”

  Falk triggered it and pushed the fool along. The alarm started sounding, and the boy yelled in fear, darting off in a run heading where Falk had come from.

  Falk smirked, pleased, and followed the way that had been pointed out to him.

  It was a lie, of course, the mine was a sticky bomb on a timer, velocity and inertia had nothing to do with it. The boy would luckily kill someone important with it, as well as rid the world of his foolish existence.

  Falk considered what he was doing carefully. Everything was lined up to be trap, including the most ignorant clueless inventor he had ever met. At the same time, it didn’t, because he was certain no one knew he was there.

  Falk should perhaps leave the base with what information he had, it would already make much of a difference to all the other members of the Shadow Conclave. The question was, what did he benefit from that?

  They didn’t know who he was, these people, and what they did know was insulting. They had potentially placed Amanda to learn his secrets, and the thought of killing her made him all the angrier. Falk was very fond of the woman.

  However, what made him the angriest was the fact they thought they had him under control. Called him crazy and wrote him up to die. No words of warning, no major plans to deal with him, nothing. They assumed he wasn’t an issue to really trouble themselves over.

  That stung most of all, but then again, Falk was about to knock on the door of their leader and shoot him down. That was keeping his mood somewhat stable. It hadn’t improved, for the deed was not done, but it was no longer diving.

  Falk had to hide inside a room so some strong-looking men could run past him, chasing the noise, but otherwise, his walk was uneventful.

  After a few minutes, with the mine’s alarm now long gone with a faraway blast, Falk found himself facing some stairs. He climbed them for what he guessed were three floors and then walked one more corridor to face with a door which looked prominently wider than all the others.

  Falk smiled. “Finally.”

  Falk approached and pushed it open like he owned it. He held on to it mid-way as he landed eyes on about five men with double-barrelled pistols that were twice the size of regular pistols. They were all locked and aimed. He knew instantly that the door would provide negligible protection.

  Still, Falk considered closing it and running, he could drop a mine and—

  “Come on in.”

  The familiar tone of voice struck a nerve, as did the guns cocking while their sites locked on him. He would not close the door faster than they would pull their triggers. More importantly, Falk was truly taken aback by who he had heard.

  Falk opened the door fully.

  Falk’s ocular enhancers gyrated, taking stock of the room and also analyzing the face of their leader. He wanted to be sure he wasn’t suffering from some kind of trick, looking at some type of mask or some sort of cosmetic butchery job. Behind three other soldiers, stood a black man with grayed out hair, half-leaning on a cane with purpose.

  “Good of you to finally show up… Falk,” he greeted.

  There was no trick. It was him.

  “Griff,” Falk greeted back with a scowl, connecting dots he never even knew had been there. He had assumed his presence there would be unknown, but clearly, for obvious reasons, that wasn’t the case.

  His mood hit an all-time low.

  Falk wasn’t feeling much like a genius. That made him feel ravenously upset, to such degrees that he did not find anything to say. He wasn’t afraid -- Falk could never imagine himself dying, part of him was even thoroughly convinced he would one day find a way to stop his aging -- so his stance was more intimidating than anything while he waited for Griff to say something.

  Griff lightly pointed at him with his hand still on the cane, as if making a passive observation.

  “You killed the Dark Runner,” Griff noted

  The statement, nevertheless, darkened the room. Falk could tell the name meant something to all those men with the guns, something dearly missed. His eyes, fake as they were, showed no reaction, but his brow raised somewhat in surprise. His arms turned and hugged behind his back, thoroughly leaving him open to attack.

  “Really?” Griff settled. “You’re surprised?”

  “I am not surprised you know,” Falk finally spoke, somehow down at him. “I’m surprised you care. You are certainly aware I did not assassinate him, correct? I would have been disqualified.”

  “I wanted you to go through,” Griff explained with a small shrug. “Because I wanted you at the meeting. The part you played in his death and whether it was against the rules was debatable, which is why you weren’t disqualified. I didn’t push for it.”

  Realization dawned on Falk. “Because you wanted me here.”

  Griff waved his arm half-way in presentation, confirming the truth in his deduction. “The Dark Runner, at the time of his death, had already passed the round. I was certain he was the best.”

  “Clearly, that was not the case,” Falk said.

  “Clearly not,” Griff smirked, “but neither are you.”

  “Judge is still out on that one,” Falk said in defiance.

  “No,” Griff said, shaking his head, still calm and collected. “You killed my son. I brought you here to kill you.”

  “Your son? I…failed to see the family resemblance,” Falk stated simply. The boy, he remembered, was fair skinned.

  “You didn’t look close enough,” Griff offered in a grunt, half-offended.

  “Hm.” Probably an adoption. Falk looked around in appraisal, “I have to say you are more capable than I gave you credit for.”

  “’Re you referring to the fact the secret organization competing with the Shadow Conclave is, as it turns out, the Tech Guild itself?”

  Falk stared back at Griff, hiding his thoughts.

  “Kidnapping you and the others was one of many actions we took to pass the appearance of exclusivity. So people don’t think that we’re part of the Shadow Conclave. The truth is, I tied them together, as I plan to one day tie the whole world together.”

  Falk scoffed. “You plan to take over the world? How quaint.”

  “You’d think that,” Griff said with a frown. “Everyone would. I took a lesson from the Scavenger’s Teens a long time ago.”

  “So you would take advantage of this invasion? Of the death of powers and the fall of governments,” Falk noted, intrigued.

  “The invasion is the priority, I’m not insane.” Like you, the tone of voice seemed to mean. “But essentially? Yes. I’ll continue using my position in the Shadow Conclave to the benefit of my own
organization. The Tech guild will unite the lands, and I will rule it all from behind the kings and presidents that we put in place.”

  Falk regarded Griff thoroughly unimpressed. “Uninspiring, and far from what I was referring to.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Griff asked.

  Falk leaned his head patiently. “Do try to follow, old man. When I said you were competent, I was referring to the fact you went through all this trouble to ambush me.” The original Dark Runner, co-savior of the entire world, looked insulted and impatient. “You give me due credit, so you are smarter than I gave you credit for. But this web of shadows and deceit you are administrating? Uninspired.”

  “Your ego really is simply…baffling,” Griff stated with no small amount of spite.

  “It exists and manifests in the exact, accurate measure,” Falk said with a tiny smile. “Trust me, I know. I’m an engineer.”

  “No, I’m an engineer,” Griff said, and he pressed against his staff to make a small barrel protrude from it. “You researchers think you’re so above others, that you employ a level of intelligence that’s unmatchable.”

  “I make no claims for others,” Falk said with a shrug, “but me? I’m--”

  “A fool.”

  Falk’s smile died. He was going to retort but Griff got ahead of him.

  “You might very well be the most intelligent man on the planet, but you’re not smart. Not at all. That’s why there’re no scientists holding power. Any kind of power.”

  “I do no--”

  “They’ve never held a throne,” Griff interrupted, looking aside. “They’ve never led others. They’ve never taken power, they’ve never been in power. They never will. Your intelligence is shadowed by many things, but a clear one is your sheer egomaniacal stupidity. You’re not smart, you’re not interested in being smart, you even see it as a fault. You have intelligence and all you want is knowledge, and because of that, you have no impact on the world.”

  “We invent the world,” Falk said quietly, the same way a predator growls in held back fury.

  “No,” Griff scoffed, looking back at him, “you invent things, and the best you can hope for is that someone actually smart takes an interest in changing the world with them, and then pays you for them. And they usually don’t even do that.”

  Griff then did what no one had done for many many years. He looked down on Falk.

  “I’m an engineer, sure…but I’m so much more. It’s a skill, not who I am and not what defines me, and definitely not what dictates my life. My achievements. My goals. Intelligence? Knowledge? They’re all means, not ends.”

  Falk scoffed. Then he laughed for a couple of seconds.

  “One can--” a loud thump sounded as something hit Falk’s neck, through the bandages, thoroughly interrupting him a third time. His eyes gyrated and extended and contracted as his nerves went haywire, his body tensing up, and then they all stopped as he fell down.

  “I’m not interested in what you have to say,” Griff told him, returning the cane to normal with another squeeze, “I’m not the least bit curious about what you think. As far as you’re concerned, the only question that is relevant is how much pain I can make you feel before you die.”

  Griff gestured at the soldiers

  “Take him and strip him. Remove his mechanical limbs, too. And careful about that, he’ll have built safeties.”

  Falk was still not focused on the threat of death or the impending doom. Again, the consideration he might actually die did not register his mind. He would figure out a way out of his predicament.

  No, what occupied his mind, fully and completely, was anger. Indignant, unprecedented anger. For being ignored. For being interrupted. For being dismissed.

  Griff, the original Dark Runner. He was the leader of what were probably the two most secretive and powerful organizations in the world, which were working every other to his favor. Griff thought he knew everything. He believed he had nothing else to learn.

  Falk Goldschmidt would teach him otherwise.

  * * *

  His feet tapped away on the ground, incessantly. He wasn’t aware he was doing it, his full concentration was squarely dedicated to fueling the most dangerous activity Falk was capable of performing.

  Thinking.

  Falk was sitting in a chair in a dark and damp room that wasn’t big enough for him to stand up or open his arms. Not that he could do any of those things, he was tied to the chair with so much zeal he was practically wearing rope, and that rope was chained to four rings on the floor as well as wrapped so tightly that his blood wasn’t flowing all that well. Neither was his oxygen.

  It was all because they had been unable to remove his mechanical limbs, which was a small victory in an otherwise terrible day. Falk had spent roughly twenty minutes trying to move the chair slightly so he could hear it scraping against the floor, only to find out it was metal.

  Falk was in a metal cage, and although his limbs were still attached, his optic enhancements weren’t. His eyes were free and blindfolded. The only silver lining to his situation, besides the fact Griff had not wanted him dead outright, was the fear that had been demonstrated when treating him like that.

  He assumed Griff wanted him alive to come to terms with the fact he had been outsmarted. To live a little while with the fact that Griff had ambushed him and conjured a prison from which he couldn’t escape, and was thus the intellectual superior.

  One final count was that he was being fed intravenously. Falk had had no human contact for what he believed were two days.

  Falk had already figured out how to escape. His limbs could either safely detach…or eject. The ejection was for the eventuality of capture by men with the clear intent of stealing his greatest bio-mechanical achievement. The rope was tight, fair enough, but it was still only rope, and as such, it would not contend with the concentrated heat of the little burner he had put on his limbs.

  Escaping wasn’t the problem, the problem was a realization he had had during Griff’s ego stroking. He needed to re-prioritize his goals. Falk felt the need to plan.

  Back when he was first in prison, unjustly condemned for the death of many of his peers, Falk had made the decision to become the terrorist menace everyone was claiming him to be. He would punish them for what they had done to him, the things they had said and claimed about him. But in truth, he had never truly prioritized that.

  While he had focused on being a terrorist menace, his ulterior goal to dismantle world society and its many civilizations had never become his primary ambition. Falk had no real interest in the political forces driving the world, but rather in inventing. In truth of fact, Falk had continued to focus on research, on pushing the boundaries of knowledge, with the only difference being that he began to seek out the most destructive of applications.

  That wasn’t enough if the goal was to be a terrorist menace.

  In essence, and Falk could thank Griff for that realization, he wasn’t studying the powers and their institutions, and had, in fact, made no efforts to destabilize them, or even to provoke chaos in the various chains of command that ruled the world. He had, alas, stayed true to the very core of his nature, which was being a scientist and inventor first and foremost.

  However, that was not what people thought he was, he needed to remember that. He needed to show everyone what it was like for him to be exactly what they thought he was. There was no better way to show them how wrong they had been.

  The great thing Griff had done, unknowingly of course -- no one ever truly knew how they affected Falk since he was beyond their meager understanding -- was to slap Falk to attention and present him with the fact that the Tech Guild was already the backbone holding together the status quo in most of the world. Bringing Griff down, and the guild with him, thus became the logical first step if Falk wanted to refocus his efforts on taking down the world.

  Even Griff, though, had shown fear and respect for Falk’s competence and abilities. The ambush had been o
f the highest level of convolution, and his prison was, without a doubt, the most paranoid endeavor Falk had ever been put through. Whatever Griff had said during his ego-stroking had not been what he truly believed about Falk, that much was evident.

  For that measure of respect and consideration, Griff had not, in fact, changed his place in the list of entities who Falk needed to punish. After all, Falk was not an unreasonable individual, he had killed Griff’s son. A certain amount of banter was to be expected, exaggerated as it might be.

  In any case, first came the Beasts. Second, the world. Third, Griff and the Tech Guild. Unfortunately, to pursue the second, Griff and the Tech Guild had to be destroyed. And the Beasts before them, lest they be left untouched.

  Thus, for the sake of accomplishing it all, Falk had decided to sit tight and think. Plan.

  All the information he needed was available to him, he knew that. Falk never gave it much thought, but he did know everything about the several factions plaguing the continent with their order and control. He was aware of the individuals acting as their heads, most especially now that Griff had revealed himself and his true role in it all.

  In a way, Falk was thankful for having the time to think. The silence, the controlled breathing, and the slow blood circulation would drive regular men insane, but he was a genius. He had more than enough mind to lose himself in, more than enough thoughts for his concentration to occupy itself with.

  Making a plan that would account for the behavior of dozens of individuals, and use thousands of the masses, was an extremely difficult thing to do. But it wasn’t beyond his faculties. Nothing was.

  Falk heard a door open behind him.

  “Well, seems your time’s up, genius.”

  That figured. By his calculations, Led By Anarchy would be attacking the base sometime that day. It had begun. Just in time, too, because he had gone over his machinations three times and finished the calculations for a new pair of thruster boots that he wanted to engineer.

  “We’re under attack, no more time for you to suffer.”