The soldier continued repeating the exact same lines, each time receiving a round of applause from the citizens and employees crowding around the archaic tank.
Spurious shuddered. Thoughts of tyranny raced through his mind as the reality of his situation finally made sense to him. For his adult years he complained about the routine nature of his life. He always knew something about his life wasn’t right.
And now he knew why. It was at that moment, when the future of the TDU was uncertain, that he finally understood.
Spurious walked away from the growing crowd, disguising his anger with a smile. He shoved his way through his co-workers, beaming with excitement. He finally knew he had a purpose. The only thing to figure out now was what he was going to do to change the future. He could be a part of this change, just like his parents.
He left the courtyard thinking again of what Leo told him just weeks ago. “You have the ability to shape Tisaia’s future.”
Finally understanding what that meant, Spurious tucked his head into the safety of his collar and headed back to work, avoiding the growing wind.
Another storm is coming.
Chapter 8: A Daring Escape
“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.”
~William S. Burroughs
Time: 2:22 p.m. February 14, 2071.
Location: Tunnels. Tisaia
What had been the TDU’s stronghold was now nothing more than a smoking wreck of tangled metal, wires and concrete. A thick layer of smoke trailed through the corridors, mixing with the stench of burned flesh and death. The underground beacon of hope was now a grave of ruined hallways. The mangled bodies of TDU staffers and soldiers lay scattered in the smoldering wreckage, some of them still whimpering and crying out in pain.
It was early afternoon and the clean-up process was well underway. A small army of Royal Knights was combing through documents in the war room, while another team worked on confiscating weapons and defusing booby traps in the armory. In the pantry a pair of Knights moved the broken body of Eddia, whose hand still clung tightly around a kitchen knife, his eyes wide with fear.
The sound of sporadic gunfire broke out in the smoky tunnels as Knights uncovered TDU soldiers who managed to escape the initial onslaught.
Obi and his team had been lucky, escaping through a hidden tunnel used to transport patients to Lunia. To cover their tracks he had ordered his men into a sanitary sewer, where a foot of raw sewage ensured their escape. The Knights would never look for them there.
Commander Heri, however, hadn’t been so lucky. He had attempted his escape from within the control room, ordering soldiers to the northern tunnels. The Dark Horses were waiting for him in the darkness, their swords drawn and blue goggles glowing through the smoke.
Obi shuddered, recalling the image of the commander being hacked down by the swords, his blood peppering the concrete walls as he cried out in pain. But it wasn’t the way he met his fate that bothered Obi. It was the surprise in the man’s eyes. As if he never imagined the Knights would find him.
The bastard was too arrogant to see the damn Tin Cans coming, Obi thought, crawling on his belly through the wretched sewer water. He looked back and saw his squad members battling through the mucky brown sewage behind him, relieved they had all made it out.
Time: 2:42 p.m. February 14, 2071.
Location: TDU HQ War Room, Tunnels. Tisaia.
Commanding Knight Augustus arrived with an entourage of his most trusted Knights, their swords still tipped with the fresh red stain of blood. They stood around what was left of a conference table, snapped in half by a block of concrete.
“Where is Commander Heri?” Augustus shouted. “I want his body brought to me immediately.”
The eerie sound of a body being dragged across the concrete filled the room. Augustus turned to watch two Knights pull the limp body of Heri into the office, dumping him at his feet. So this is my adversary, Augustus thought, staring at the corpse at his feet.
“We’ve broken them,” Augustus muttered under his breath. He wanted to smile, to laugh even. He had waited for this day for so long and now it was finally here, he was amused.
“This is the man who evaded us for so long?” Augustus asked, laughing. “Take this scum away,” he ordered. He watched the cold body of Heri being dragged out of the office.
“Supreme Knight Morr,” Augustus said, taking a puff out of a nearly spent cigar. “Can you give me a status? I want to know exactly how many of the terrorists escaped.”
“Sir, as far as I know, none of the terrorists have escaped.”
The sporadic popping of gunfire in the distance interrupted them, prompting Augustus to shoot Morr an irritated look.
“Do you hear that, Morr?” Augustus asked arrogantly, putting one of his arms around Morr’s shoulders.
“That is the sound of gunfire. And unless our men are shooting at rats, I’m assuming there are still some terrorists out there. So I’d suggest you get your men in order and eradicate every living thing that moves!” Augustus screamed, pushing Morr through the office doorway.
“Yes. Yes sir,” Morr yelled. He rushed back down the hall towards his men.
Augustus sat in an ancient wooden chair, careful not to scuff his recently buffed armor on the protruding splinters. He propped his legs up on the broken table and stared up at the ceiling, blowing another trail of smoke into the air. An odd sense of disappointment overwhelmed him. He had waited for this day for so long, but now that it was finally here something didn’t feel right—something was wrong.
Another shot rang out, echoing off the concrete walls. Augustus took one last drag of his cigar before standing up. It wasn’t time to put his feet up yet, there were still TDU to kill.
Time: 3:00 p.m. February 14, 2071.
Location: Tunnels, Tisaia
Obi could see a slight sliver of light in the tunnel far ahead. He took a deep breath, forgetting momentarily of the filth he was crawling through. That mistake cost him his last meal. The stench crawled up his nostrils, prompting him to dry heave into the muck beneath him.
“Are you all right up there?” Creo asked, a hint of concern in his deep voice.
Obi nodded and continued on. “It looks like we’re almost there,” he said.
“We need to keep moving.”
“Where are we headed?” Ajax shouted from behind.
“We need to find a safe house in the city, and regroup with the rest of the survivors at the checkpoint in a few days.”
Ajax nodded in approval with the rest of the team, who at the moment were just happy to be alive. The small squad knew the dream of the TDU was still alive, but today they had suffered significant losses. Obi knew it would be hard to replace many of his friends, but there would always be a pool of citizens they could recruit from. As long as the State continued its oppressive policies the TDU would exist. The main obstacles would be finding the weapons and a secure location to rebuild their headquarters.
The team continued to crawl through the narrow tunnel swiftly, the stench of waste infiltrating their nostrils. A faint light was growing and as they got closer they pressed on, anxious to get out of the sewage.
They crawled faster, their weapons scraping against the concrete sides of the tunnel, but quickly they realized the light was nothing more than an anomaly- an energy efficient light bulb managing to survive years of life underground, still yielding a small but bright glow. It had more than likely been changed by some straggler or refugee who had used the tunnel as a shelter long ago.
Two hours later they emerged from the tunnel. Their armor and skin were stained with brown filth and sweat. Nathar dropped to his knees, dry-heaving until nothing but a milky fluid came out. Creo patted the young man on his back while the rest of the team scraped the waste off their uniforms in the cold winter night.
Obi took a step towards the ledge and glassed the landscape with
his binoculars. He could vaguely make out the shape of a storm drain jetting out over a small body of water below, most likely an old sewage treatment plant. He knew they were somewhere outside Rohania, but he wasn’t sure exactly where.
He squinted and glassed the horizon again, the skeletons of high rises and office buildings staring back at him. Judging by the broken shapes of the buildings, he assumed they were close to the Boondocks. It was the one place where the majority of buildings were from the old world, artifacts rising into the sky as a reminder of a war not so distant. It was also not the place he wanted to be at the moment. The Boondocks were controlled by gangs; a number of them squatted in the old buildings.
“Here we go,” Obi said, turning. “When I give the green light I’m going to remove this gate and we’re all jumping into the pool of water below us. I don’t care if you don’t want to, you’re doing it,” he said, glaring at Nathar, who was terrified of water.
Nathar scowled, still recovering from throwing up his guts moments earlier. Obi turned his attention to the gate, kicking it twice with his steel toed boots, but the gate was secured tightly to the concrete wall and didn’t budge.
“Let me try, boss,” Ajax said, maneuvering behind Obi. He let out a grunt and kicked the center of the gate, sending it flying off its hinges and into the water below. A large splash broke the silence of the night, as two large birds took off flying from where they were nesting.
“Nice work. Now, hold my rifle,” Obi said, as he jumped into the cold water below without hesitation. His men followed closely behind, taking turns so their weapons didn’t get wet.
Silence flooded over the junk yard as Obi sat shaking in the frozen dirt, his eyes scanning his surroundings for potential danger. Within seconds, his three comrades were next to him. Nathar spit a mouthful of water onto the ground. Ajax laughed and swatted him on the back, but Obi shot them a stern look to quiet down. They sat for a few moments before Obi took off limping across the gravel. His two wounds burned from what he knew was the beginning of an infection.
He crashed against the rusted metal of the building, the fragile wall vibrating from the impact. Obi could only imagine what the roof looked like, hoping it even had one. They needed a place to get dry and clean.
He made two hand signals from the edge of the building and Creo and Nathar took off running, Ajax staying behind to offer covering fire.
The front door had been kicked in long ago and lay resting on the concrete ground. The glass cracked under Obi’s boots as he surveyed the guts of the building.
Nathar and Creo stood on the outside of the entryway, waiting for their commander’s order to enter and secure the building.
Obi hesitated. He wasn’t afraid of Knights, but he was nervous that there might be stragglers that could give away their position. He waited a few minutes for Ajax to catch up with them before signaling Nathar and Creo to enter the building.
He clicked on his night vision and continued to scan the junkyard from the outside of the building, making a mental map of the landscape. Two water silos towered above them in the distance, gaping holes visible in their sides. They hadn’t held water in their guts for years. The north side was filled with old construction equipment: forklifts, cranes, bull dozers, all machines designed to run off gasoline and now nothing more than useless artifacts from the past.
A large moon illuminated the junkyard below, keeping Obi on edge. Any straggler could be lurking around in the shadows, but silence crept across the landscape. Satisfied, Obi clicked off his night vision and slipped into the darkness of the building.
Time: 11:12 p.m. February 14, 2071.
Location: TDU Headquarters Pantry, Tunnels. Tisaia
Nordica and Ran took turns peeking through a small opening in the fortress of stone where they were hiding. They watched helplessly as Knights gunned down their comrades, who lay dying. With each shot Ran shuddered, holding his ears and fighting back the tears swelling in his eyes.
“Keep quiet,” Nordica whispered, smacking Ran with her dreadlocks by accident. “We can’t help them now.”
“We have to do something.”
“We don’t have to do anything, because there isn’t anything we can do,” Nordica responded. “But go ahead and be my guest. See how many Knights you can kill before you end up just like them,” she said, pointing towards the carnage beyond the safety of the pantry’s walls.
Ran looked down at Juliana and Tsui, who shook their heads at him, agreeing with Nordica. Defeated, Ran sat back on the stone floor stroking his pistol slowly, tears running down his face. Juliana crawled over to him and put her arms around him, embracing him in a hug. “It’s going to be ok,” she whispered in his ear.
* * *
“Do we have a body count?” Morr asked.
“Riya confirmed we have fifty bodies,” Albri responded.
Morr nodded in approval. “That’s about what we anticipated, but fifty strong and able to produce so much chaos? Damn, they were resilient little bastards,” he shouted over the commotion.
A clatter of armor echoed down the hall, bringing Morr and Albri to attention. Augustus and his entourage had been surveying the headquarters and were now headed towards the war room.
Morr stood nervously. He knew even with a tentative body count there was no way of providing an accurate estimate of those that managed to escape. His men had made every attempt to salvage documents containing names of TDU members, but most were burned or destroyed before the Knights had a chance to recover them. There was simply no way to know how many escaped.
Albri watched as Augustus approached. The Commander’s armor was bone white, reflecting the highest rank a Knight could obtain. He did not wear a helmet or the standard blue goggles other Knights wore. Instead he carried a massive sword and a small machine gun strapped to his right hip. Sometimes Albri thought Augustus cared more about his appearance than his men. Riya came to know Augustus all too well through the years; his vain habits and arrogant behavior rivaled that of Morr’s. It was the vanity that threw Riya off the most.
Today Augustus put his appearance before safety by entering the complex without a helmet.
Riya shook his head and prepared himself for any questions Augustus might ask.
“I assume you have an update for me,” Augustus said.
“Yes sir, we have a body count of 50 and counting. And I have reports that all skirmishes with the terrorists are over, bodies are being retrieved and counted.”
“Well done Morr, I’m happy to say you have done your job well today,” Augustus replied, offering Morr his armored hand.
Morr took it quickly and bowed.
Augustus turned to his entourage of Knights. “That is all, men. There is nothing left to do here; the Governor will be anxious for an update.”
Knights on clean-up duty watched as their commander left them in the smoke infested room. Riya turned, his eyes falling upon the lifeless body of a nurse who lay in a puddle of her own blood. She stared up at him with piercing brown eyes, still reeling in terror. Quickly he bent down to close her eyelids before any other Knights saw him. In his years of service he had seen a lot of bloodshed, but this was the worst massacre. And his intuition told him this wasn’t going to be the last of the TDU.
Chapter 9: The Disappearance
“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”
~Bertrand Russell
Time: 9:11 a.m. February 17, 2071.
Location: SGS Headquarters. Lunia, Tisaia
Spurious leaned back in his chair, the wooden legs groaning in restraint. In one hand he held his morning coffee, and in the other his tablet. He sat there staring at the headline featured on the Lunia Post, unable to read any further.
Was it true? Had the TDU been eradicated? Curiosity drew his eyes to the headlines again. He had to know.
TDU Crushed, Headquarters Destroyed and Terrorists Slaughtered
He put the tablet down on his desk in disbel
ief and took a small sip of his cold coffee.
If this was in fact true, then what Leo told him wasn’t. Without the TDU how could he have any hope of making a difference? It was impossible. Leo had lied.
Nothing but a senile old man.
Something inside of him hoped he was wrong. For several weeks he had found himself torn in the conflict, especially after Paulo’s death, but could the TDU really be completely destroyed?
The morning slowly ticked by, and Spurious counted the seconds as his wall clock coughed them out. It was mid-morning, and Spurious still hadn’t been able to bring himself to do any real work. He had always been good at putting on the facade of doing something that at least looked like work, but today he was failing at even this menial task—today his mind was interfering.
He craned his neck and looked back at the glowing blue screen, pulling up an article he had saved describing the gruesome details of the attack on the TDU headquarters. Commander Augustus and Supreme Knight Morr were being hailed as saviors of Tisaia and a special ceremony was being planned to mark their accomplishments, an event he would not be attending.
Spurious took in a deep breath and got up from his chair, deciding a walk might make him feel better. He headed into the hallway trying not to focus on Lana’s cubicle. The last thing he needed right now was to draw attention to their affair.
The tan structure of her office appeared around the corner. He pressed on, and as he was just about to pass the entry to her work station, Lana walked out into the narrow hall, ramming directly into him.
The two fell in a tangled mess on the ground. Varius and two other employees immediately popped their heads out of their cubicles to see the cause of the commotion.
“My apologies,” Spurious said.
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