by David Brush
The thud against the glass was barely audible. Nightrick looked straight ahead as a large, spider web crack fanned out across the sheet, level with his forehead. He frowned, craning his head towards the apartments at the far end of the park before feeling the metal gauntlet on his shoulder pulling him down. The crowd roared in fury and fear, pressing towards the stage and away from it in a wave of flesh. The Shadow Guard circled the doctor, rushing him off the stage as another projectile slammed into the shielding, spreading the cracks even further.
From the balcony, James stared in amazement. “Holy shit.”
The soldiers below looked up towards the building, spotting the young couple on the fire escape.
“Holy shit,” said Haley, noticing the black clad men running towards the building. “Come on, quick.”
They pushed the window open on the sixth floor and crawled into the building. There, on the floor, were two bodies that had been riddled with bullets. A wide pool of red connected the corpses.
“Oh my God…,” started James as the door leading into the adjacent room shot open. Two black armored figures stepped through the opening, each cradling chrome coil rifles across their chests. The two soldiers regarded the couple for a moment.
“Please,” said James, raising his hands. “You have to believe us, we had nothing to do with this.”
“James?” said the heavier looking masked figure. “James Mercer?”
“Uhhh…”
The man removed his helmet. “Long time no see, bud.”
“Matt? Oh my God, I’d heard you were dead!”
“Not dead,” Matt laughed, pushing his hand through his thin, black hair. “Not quite yet anyway, but as you can see, I’m working on it. How’re things going for you, buddy?”
“Is this really the best time for a reunion, Matt?” said his partner, turning towards him. “They’re coming. Are you fucking stupid?”
“Shut it, Megan. I haven’t seen this guy in ages. He’s practically my brother. We grew up together here. I’m going to take a second to say hi.”
“Well no need to do it here, you idiot. We can’t let them go now anyway that you were brilliant enough to rip off your mask. We could’ve pinned the whole thing on them if you had half a brain in that head of yours.”
“We’re not framing my friend, and it’s too late now anyway,” said Matt, gesturing towards the staircase. “James, James’s, I don’t know, love interest? Stick close to us and you’ll be just fine.”
The group made their way out into the main hall of the floor, racing towards the staircase.
“We’re going up,” said Matt. “There’s a helipad on the roof. We need to get the hell out of here before they get their own choppers into the air.”
Two stories down, the rattle of boots against the stone floor reverberated off of the walls. As the fleeing group made it to the roof, Matt stopped for a moment to catch his breath, wheezing harder than the others. “Ok, load them up, Megan. It’s time to go.”
Megan turned towards James and Haley, pulling a smaller handgun out of her side holster. “Looks like you’ll get to finish your little reunion back at base.” She leveled her weapon and fired twice towards the couple. James pivoted in front of his girlfriend, taking both shots clean to the back and collapsing into her arms. Haley lifted him, but her world went dark the second Megan had lined up the next shot.
James lurched upright, his heart and mind racing. He looked around the cell that they’d been placed in. Beside him, Haley had been laid out on a red gel pad similar to the one he was sitting on. The steady rise and fall of her chest caused a small wave of relief to wash over him. Grey stone walls and very cheap looking aluminum furniture were the only other things to greet his gaze as he swiveled his head around the room. He could feel the dampness of a cold sweat leaking into his clothing as he strained to remember what had happened. All he could recall was the sound of the shot, crawling into the apartment, and then nothing. The sound of the metal door grating against its frame brought him back to reality. And then, as he watched Matt come trotting into the room, he remembered.
“You son of a bitch,” he started in a fit of rage, pushing himself up off the ground.
“Calm down. Calmmmm down,” said Matt, gesturing for James not to attack him. “My bad on all of this. Megan insisted that we couldn’t leave you once I’d taken my helmet off and we had to get you here without you knowing where ‘here’ actually is. It’d be pretty hard to stay hidden for long if we took everyone we kidnapped through the front door.”
“What are you going to do with us?” James replied, still weighing the possibility of mauling his old friend with his bare hands.
“Well, that’s up to you really. You can either join us, which I’d advise, or we can wipe your memory of the last day or two and drop you off at home. You won’t remember any of this and things will go back to how they were for you.”
“Who exactly is ‘us’ and how long have we been here?”
Matt took another step into the room, momentarily regarding Haley before looking back at James. “We’re the Consciousness Liberation Front, which I’m sure you’ve heard of by now. And as for how long you’ve been with us, probably around three or four hours.”
“So you’re a terrorist now. Wonderful. Welcome back from the dead.”
“A terrorist?” Matt scoffed. “Hardly. We’re freedom fighters. I know, I know. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, but the public really has been misinformed about what it is we actually do.”
“So you don’t blow up Induction centers full of civilians in broad daylight?”
“No, we don’t,” replied Matt with a hint of indignation. “We ransack distribution centers and attack facilities at night. We also occasionally try to put a bullet between Dr. Nightrick’s eyes, as you’re probably well aware of now. Our goal has always been to end the procedure, not rack up a massive body count. Those high-casualty attacks are either Crusaders or false flag operations by Nightrick. It’s impossible to tell anymore, really. The two always seem to be trying to outdo each other in brutality, but the point is we have nothing to do with it. Neuro Corp is just made up of opportunistic dicks that take advantage of propaganda moments like that to discredit us whenever they get the chance.”
“Yeah, I bet. Guess it’s all a big conspiracy to make you look bad, huh?” said James, noticing Haley begin to stir nearby. “Look, let me talk to her about it. You’re not bullshitting me about letting us go?”
“Nope, like I said you’re free to leave when you want. We’ll just wipe your memory a bit before you go.”
“Well thanks a lot, asshole. Now I won’t even be able to remember my final days with her before Induction,” said James, feeling a new wave of anger coming on at that realization.
“Well that’s up to you, buddy. Whether or not either of you gets bound is up to you two now. If you join us, you can help us battle against the oppression that you’re staring down the barrel of. Together maybe we can overthrow Neuro Corp and liberate our generation from the horse crap parade that Nightrick has started. Think about it at least.” And with that, Matt turned and walked away, leaving the door open as he went.
“Great…,” sighed James, looking down the dark and empty hall. “Just fucking great.”
CHAPTER TWO
Dr. Johnathan Nightrick sat peering out the window of the lavish office that he had built adjacent to his laboratory. The chemist watched with great interest as a squirrel battled one of its companions for a precious acorn. At the sound of a distinct chirp, he briefly shifted his attention from the contest to the luminous green AI that had risen up out of its nearby terminal.
“Dr. Nightrick, your appointment with Command is in five minutes.”
He nodded, turning back towards the window. The larger rodent finally overpowered its smaller counterpart, stealing its treasured bounty. “You see that, Turing? Nature demands that its champions be strong.”
“As you say.”
“Tell General Bismuth to start without me. I’ll be there shortly.”
“Yes, Doctor,” said the AI, regressing into the terminal that it had risen from.
Dr. Nightrick stood up and brushed the wrinkle out of his lab coat before making his way from his office out into the large lobby of the tower that marked the core of the sprawling complex. A crescent-shaped desk in the middle of the expansive room housed two receptionists, flanked by two richly decorated waiting areas on either side. Across the large white wall behind the two receptionists, the upside down triangle with two lines jutting from the right side that symbolized the corporation was projected in thick, black lines. Above the symbol, in gilded letters, were the words NEURO CORPORATION. He took a minute to acknowledge the huge display before pushing his way through the heavy glass door that guarded the main entrance, trying his best to avoid getting bogged down in any pointless conversations as he walked across the grounds of Neuro Corporation’s main campus. Despite the swelling bustle of employees rushing all over the city-sized complex, the doctor was able to scan his way into the command bunker, which had only a small mound protruding above the surface, undisturbed. After taking an elevator countless stories underground, he finally emerged outside of the war room. On either side of the door, two honor guards stood at attention, their polished black armor glimmering slightly in the bright, synthetic light.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” Nightrick said as he walked into the packed assembly. At the far end of the chamber, numerous displays were projecting all manner of facts, figures, and maps out to the occupants of the thin room. A long, metallic table, housing around thirty commanders, admirals, high ranking Neuro Corporation officials, and a few politicians who had come in from the capital, stretched down towards the far end of the room.
“Ah, Dr. Nightrick, good timing,” replied the highly ornamented General Joseph Bismuth, who was standing behind a lectern at the forefront of the room. “Please, take a seat.”
The general was a plump man, but his mass was more muscle than fat. He had a rather large, white mustache draped across his upper lip that gave him an almost fatherly look, despite the fire that still burned in his eyes.
Nightrick sat down at the head of the table near the door and looked around at the gathering. Despite a sea of confident faces, an air of tension hung heavy over the room.
“First off, I’d like to say how relieved I am that you survived the attempt on your life in Dunton,” said Bismuth, pausing as a round of polite applause filled the chamber. “Now, as we were discussing, the so called ‘CLF’ is beginning to grow again at an alarming rate. Based on the model of coil rifle used in the attack, we’re relatively certain that it was one of their assassins who took the shot. The ballistics are a dead on match to our older models, which makes sense when you take into account the composition of that particular group. Originally consisting of mostly defectors from among our own ranks, the CLF nearly fell apart after their disastrous assault on Northgate. For two years they withered in obscurity, only becoming a major player again over the course of the last few months. Now they’re becoming as sophisticated a threat as the insurgent Crusaders, not to mention their through the roof recruitment over the past year. Add that to the Human Liberation Army, the Free Thought Brigade, and the Raynon Reborn Army, among others, and the list of factions against us grows. The CLF was formerly content with raiding offices and local clinics. Now, however, they’re beginning to go after manufacturing plants and R&D facilities as well as government registrar offices. We’re now dealing with multiple fronts and multiple enemies who are all beginning to pose serious threats. We need to contain this situation before it spills into a full on civil war.”
“I think it’s a little late for that,” said Nightrick, gesturing at the territory control grid projected out behind the general. The red lands indicating territory lost to the insurgents covered almost as much of the map (primarily the south) as the blue lands indicating regime-controlled regions. “How are they managing to successfully attack these facilities? All of our factories are heavily guarded. I can’t seem to understand why you’re having so much trouble squashing these homegrown insurgencies. At the rate you people are losing land, there won’t be anything left to defend by the end of the year. And let’s not bother calling it a civil war. That’s not the right term for what’s going on. It’s a proxy war between the East and the West, and our people are the unlucky hosts who get to bleed as a result of it. This conflict wouldn’t have even lasted a year had it not been for foreign intervention. If the rebels are in fact becoming more sophisticated, as you’ve claimed, it’s because every nation with an ax to grind or an ideology to shove down the world’s throat has decided to make their stand here. Now please, explain to me this newly observed sophistication and the reasons why no one at this table is competent enough to deal with it.”
“You have a lot of fucking nerve, you know that?” said the white-suited admiral near the front of the room, turning to address the doctor. “Isn’t it bad enough that we allow a child to wield so much power? Do we have to listen to him berate us too? You’re thirty and you’ve been running the show for some eleven years now. What a lovely job you’ve done so far. What’s your official title even? President? Emperor? King of Coren? This entire war council is a joke. Why don’t you head over to one of the elementary schools nearby and see if you can find us a viable prime minister while we’re on the topic, Bismuth. You want to know why there’s a war going on, Dr. Nightrick?”
“Admiral Mizuno, enough,” said General Bismuth, trying to regain control of the room.
“No, it’s not enough. I’m tired of listening to this imbecile make decisions like he knows a goddamn thing about war. You’re a great chemist, Dr. Nightrick, but you’re a shitty, shitty statesman. Just because Parliament gave you emergency powers during the Uprising doesn’t mean you’re fit to rule Coren. I feel like I must be insane, like I’m the only person who notices this. You weren’t elected to do a damn thing by anyone, and I’m tired of spineless bastards like Senator Huxen over there slithering around Dovaruss like your personal whipping boy. You ended the Raynon Uprising, I’ll give you that, but it’s high time you stepped aside and let humanity rebuild itself.”
A strained silence overtook the room for a long moment. Dr. Nightrick cleared his throat. “Is that so?”
“You bet your ass it is.”
“Is anyone else of this opinion?” asked the doctor, looking around the table. “No? Let me explain something to you, Admiral, that you might not have caught wind of while you were out at sea all that time. The only reason you, or anyone else at this table, is here is because of me. Because of what I’ve done. You look at me and all you see is a chemist. Sure, I wiped out mental illness, cured diseases your feeble mind couldn’t even begin to comprehend let alone address, but I also ended the Uprising, and I lifted our people from the rubble of Armageddon to forge a new path. I alone created Induction to stabilize and strengthen our gene pool so that we might avoid another cataclysm. I won the war that you couldn’t, and I’ll win this one too. Unfortunately, this time you won’t live to see the end of it. Tell me, Admiral, don’t you think it’s odd that none of our helicopters were on patrol over the park at the time of the assassination attempt? The shooter just flew away unhindered. Why do you think that is?”
“I have no fucking idea,” replied Mizuno, starting to sweat a little bit near his collar.
“And, based on the shot they took, they seemed to be under the impression we were still using grade four glass. Their rifle would have put a round right through that. Luckily, we were using grade five. It’s almost as if they thought we’d gone back to the old variant. And where could they have gotten that intel?”
“What’s your point, Nightrick?”
The doctor smiled. “My point is that you were the only person I told about the grade four glass. And as for the helicopters, your friend, Colonel Sulman, was in charge of that particular deployment, no? The shooter owes
her a great deal. If we had known about her ahead of time, we’d of gotten all of you. Don’t worry about that though, she’s already on her way to the Charon Detention Facility. You honestly didn’t think we’d find out about your new friends in the CLF? You don’t give Central Intelligence enough credit, Admiral Mizuno.” He gestured at the soldiers near the door. “Take him.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the two black-clad guards approached the admiral and dragged him out of his chair. The thin man tried to wrest himself free, but he was no match for the raw strength of the doctor’s honor guard.
“Find out what he knows and then put him down quickly,” said Nightrick. “Consider that your severance package.”
The admiral continued squirming as he was forcefully dragged out of the council chamber. “Fuck you, Nightrick! You’re all sheep. He’ll be the death of all of you!” he screamed as the heavy doors slammed shut behind him.
The doctor waited a moment for the sound of the raving to die down. “I want every single person in attendance at this meeting to understand something. The foremost quality I look for in my commanders is loyalty. I value it above even competence, obviously. If you serve loyally, you will be rewarded. If you choose treason, then the same fate as Admiral Mizuno’s awaits you. Now please continue, General Bismuth, and forgive the interruption.”
“Err…of course,” replied the general, taking a second to tap open a new map on the center screen behind him. “Like I said, the CLF is becoming more sophisticated as time goes on. Before, they used brutish tactics to vandalize equipment. Numbers and the element of surprise were their foremost tools in overrunning our positions. Now they’re using weapons and technology that would require engineers and scientists to upkeep and operate. For instance, let’s review the recent attack on the Valker Plant.”
Nightrick grimaced.