by Mike Essex
Saved by the bell, the three of us dashed to the war room following the other citizens. Grace, who looked equally thankful for the distraction quickly caught up to us. When we walked through the door we saw Jacobi on stage with two people I hadn’t expected to see again.
“Everyone,” said Jacobi, “this is Chris and Tom, they have some troubling news.”
FORTY TWO
Tom and Chris looked like they’d been through hell.
Chris’ face was bruised with dried blood all around his ear, whilst Tom held an arm tightly to his chest, betraying an injury. They’d clearly been in some sort of fight although their clothes looked brand new, almost like Jacobi had dressed them up for the occasion. I wouldn’t put it past him to have faked their injuries too.
“We have word about SO13. We know what they are planning,” said Chris.
Taking their lead Jacobi jumped down from the stage and walked towards the map in the centre of the room. It had changed heavily since I last saw it. Blue circles almost covered the map entirely, indicating where the regeneration efforts had been completed. The remainder of the map was mostly covered in red circles, still blocking off the edge of the city, the Strand and a few smaller districts that I hadn’t heard of before.
“Our city has almost finished changing,” said Jacobi. “A new London had been born, a city that is rightfully ours but which the haves want to steal away from you. Our families spent generation upon generation building this city up to be the envy of the world and now these privileged sycophants want to take it from us. I ask you, is that right?”
Opinions were blurted out from the crowd, all of them negative, most of them hate filled. They may not have all been soldiers but they still had some fight left in them.
“The sound wave has been stopped and only a small part of the original city remains,” explained Jacobi. “Thanks to our friends here we now know that the wait is almost over.”
“Yeah!” shouted someone from the crowd.
Jacobi drew his sword and slammed it into the map, the tip piercing through the wooden table. “This is where it all ends. Javon Prison.”
A gasp came from the crowd; I couldn’t help but go along with it.
“Javon Prison,” repeated Jacobi, waiting until the words had sunk in for everyone. “The origin point of the 20 Day Siege sound wave, where everything changed and where it will all change again.”
“Thanks to our friends here,” Jacobi pointed to Tom and Chris, “we’ve been able to find out that the SO13 soldiers are planning to complete the regeneration efforts tomorrow and that their final stop will be the prison. Once they are finished they’ll begin to leave the city and that is when we start to take back control. Everything changes tomorrow.”
I looked at the crowd unsure if they were ready for this. Their faces seemed to echo the same concerns.
“I promise you all that in the weeks and months to come we will be able to emerge from these tunnels. We will be able to integrate ourselves back into the world above, to live normal lives again.”
Rapturous cheers erupted through the crowd. Feeling happy for the citizens I joined in.
“And then,” continued Jacobi, “when the bureaucrats, the fat cats and the haves think their city is safe; when the soldiers have left and defences are low we will take it back. Now they have spent their money and power creating a new metropolis we will seize it back from them. We will give them just a taste of their utopia and then it will be reclaimed in the name of the Queen of England.”
“Long live the Queen,” chanted the crowd. I didn’t join in this time. Was this the army I had helped encourage? The plan I had helped promote? I didn’t want to see innocent lives ruined even if they did belong to haves.
I thought about speaking out, trying to quell their rebellion but I knew there would be little chance of me making an impact. Many of the citizens had been here for years, some their whole lives. They needed a scapegoat and the haves and soldiers were the perfect candidate. This wasn’t my war after all.
Jacobi riled up the crowd with talk of his plans for their return to the surface. He explained how they would pose as the wealthy elite using the clothes and supplies from Q-Whitehall during the day and then return to the underground base by nightfall to plan their attack. No one seemed surprised by the plan, as if it had been in the making a long time already and this was just Jacobi repeating it again so everyone knew what they needed to do.
It was a speech I was sure he’d give many more times in the next few months as they planned their attack slowly but carefully. His army was not one based on strength like the one on the surface but one built on cunning, like he knew it was the only way he could win.
When he had finished speaking he didn’t ask for questions and simply dismissed everyone back to their rooms leaving myself and Grace face to face with Tom and Chris for the first time since they had left the base.
“I thought you had abandoned us,” I stated.
“Abandon you? I think your father would have a thing or two to say if we did. We’re stuck with you until the mission is over,” said Chris.
“Stuck with me?” his words angered me. “You can leave any time! Sod your stupid mission.”
“It’s your stupid mission!” he reminded me. “We’re only here so you can find your brother. Trust me I’d much rather be helping Gabe secure the remaining TethTech supplies than helping you on some wild goose chase!”
“It’s not a wild goose chase. Will is here he’s …” I stopped myself before I started speaking about the purple hooded man. Mission or no mission, Chris would not want us to take a maniac back to the base.
“Oh yeah? Well what makes you so sure? We’ve been here for nearly a week now and I sure haven’t seen him. The only person around here who has any idea what to do is Jacobi.”
Tom’s face fell, desperate for the approval of his mentor.
“You can’t be serious?” I furiously replied. “My first day here he strapped a bomb to my head and I nearly died in a fire.”
“Yes those earpieces were fun I have to admit. They certainly made our sortie for Jacobi more exciting. There’s nothing better to get the blood flowing that the risk of imminent death.”
“Are you insane? Do you actually have a death wish?”
“Maybe,” said Chris, nonchalantly. “What else is there in this world now? We’re no different at The Deck to these people. We hide underground hoping to survive another day and for what? Just so we can repeat it over and over?”
“We help people,” said Grace. “Each day we’re alive is another day we can try to change things.”
“Change?” said Chris. “You mean like this city? This used to be the heart of Britain and now look at it. Apart from a few old monuments everything has been changed. No more heart and no more soul.”
“And no reminder of the millions who died here either,” I said. “It’s a fresh start for the city; better than leaving it as a ghost town.”
“Whatever,” said Chris, with Tom still not speaking a word, too worried to upset either side. “I heard you saved Olive. That was…” he paused to find the right word, “lucky.”
“Lucky? Lucky!” I shouted. “Luck had nothing to do with it. You never collected the medicine and you left her to die.”
Tom seemed as surprised by this as we had been. “You left her to die?” he asked incredulously.
“Shut up Tom,” said Chris. “I told you all, she was a liability and she still is. She’s just not mission critical.”
“You heartless bastard,” said Grace.
“Not mission critical?” I spluttered. “Because she’s a Club?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Grace and I remembered that she was a Diamond, not a Club.
“I know what the cards mean. Anyone who has a Club card is supposed to give their life for me like a martyr to the cause. I’m not worth all of this!”
His cruel eyes looked at me but he didn’t utter a word.
“How can you be so hea
rtless?” I demanded.
“Whatever,” said Chris, grabbing his own dog tag and throwing it to the ground. He kicked dirt over the Jack of Clubs symbol in a sign of defiance. “If you’re so important then you can protect yourself, oh and you’d better find your brother soon Emmie, those SO13 soldiers didn’t sound like they were waiting around. It would be terrible if you found yourself stuck in the middle of a war.”
He walked out of the room and Tom started to follow.
“Wait Tom,” I said, “do you really want to end up like him? To grow up jaded and obsessed with nothing more than death and finishing the mission?”
He ran his fingers over the etching on his own dog tag, the Seven of Clubs. “I have my orders,” he replied, just what Chris would have said, and he left the room.
“I am your orders!” I punched the wall in anger and looked down to see a grey bruise had already started to form on my left knuckle. “I hate them.”
“I know,” said Grace. “He was always headstrong, but seeing the world remain unchanged after we captured Tobias was what caused him to lose it. He wants the world to get better, and I share his frustration that it isn’t there yet, despite all we have done.”
“You’re not like him though. You channel it towards helping people.”
“Right and I just wish he could do the same. If he doesn’t then he’s just going to hurt someone. Right now he’s a liability we just don’t need.”
“Promise me you’ll never tell him about Will,” I whispered to Grace. “Promise he’ll never find out that Will is a killer.”
“We don’t know that for sure Emmie.”
“What if he is? Promise me you’ll never tell anyone.”
“I promise. We’ll get him the help he needs.”
“Whatever it takes.”
FORTY THREE
I slept badly that night. My mind ran through everything I knew about the purple hooded man, the damage he had done and the cuts he had made in the soldier’s flesh. When I did manage to find a moment’s sleep I dreamt of being reunited with Will but every time it ended badly.
In one scenario Vlad stabbed Will in his lungs, flooding them with fluids much like he had done to Rex. The second dream saw Chris gunning down my brother, and then the rest of us, before he turned the gun on himself. In another dream we discovered Will had killed hundreds of victims. In the face of so much evidence all I could do was shoot him myself.
As the gunshot echoed around my head I woke up to find a knocking on my door. “Wake up!” it was Jacobi. “You are not going to want to miss this.”
I threw on my clothes from yesterday’s above ground adventure and opened the door.
“Dressed already?” Jacobi looked me up and down. “I love a girl with low standards.”
“What do you want?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“I told you. We have a surprise for you. Come along now.”
I walked after Jacobi, slowly waking up as we went.
“Your trophy has woken up,” said Jacobi, “looks like we’ll be getting some insider knowledge today or else,” he made a claw and moved it towards his eye and back again imitating the motion of removing the soldier’s eye again and again.
“He’ll talk,” I said, really hoping that he would. “Why do you need me here?”
“You saved this man’s life. If he’s going to speak to anyone then it may as well be you.”
“You want me to speak to him?” I tried to think of excuses knowing full well that if I failed to get answers I’d be damming the man to be tortured. The best I could come up with was; “I’m not an interrogator.”
“Exactly. It’ll throw him off balance and he won’t expect it. If he trusts you then there’s a chance he’ll tell you something. Don’t worry we’ll be watching the entire time. We won’t miss a thing.”
“Great. Just great,” I muttered under my breath.
For something that wasn’t meant to be an interrogation Jacobi had certainly spared no time creating a room that screamed ‘We are going to hurt you if you do not comply’. A light shone brightly on to the soldier’s face, whilst he himself was bound.
“We learnt that one from you,” he said, pointing to the man’s legs which were tied around a steel chair. “There’s no way he’s going to go toppling over like you did.”
I’m sure Jacobi meant it as some twisted compliment but I wasn’t sure how to take credit for ensuring a man was securely fastened whilst we interrogated him. I mean ‘had a conversation with him’.
We walked through two giant marble arches that were holding up the high ceiling and into a room filled with ivory statues of fierce beasts. Their lifeless eyes looked on as the soldier sat in the centre of the room, his hands bound to the table in front of him.
I was thankful for the bounds. This soldier was a killing machine, heavily built and far more capable with a weapon than I could ever be. Without him being contained there’s no way I’d want to be in a room with him alone.
“It’s time,” said Jacobi.
“But you haven’t given me any training. What am I supposed to ask? How should I ask it?”
“Just talk to him and remind him that you saved his life. Stuff like that. Don’t sweat it. It’s not like he can hurt you if it goes wrong.”
The sense of danger was not deflated by Jacobi’s promise that I’d come out uninjured. With just a few binds between the soldier and me I certainly didn’t feel safe. I just hoped the binds would hold better than mine had.
I entered the room and Jacobi closed the door behind me locking me inside. The noise startled me and I backed against the door, not yet ready to proceed.
“Hi. I’m Emmie,” I mumbled and then cursed myself for using my real name. Could he find me later by my name? What if he tried to hunt me down? Had I just signed my own death warrant? Those questions ran through my mind and I realised I hadn’t spoken for a solid minute, nor had the soldier.
He merely sat forward in his chair, his head looking down at the shackles. For the entire time his gaze did not break from his hands as if he was trying some sort of mind control to set them free.
“I’m the one who saved you. Do you remember?” I asked.
He didn’t reply or even acknowledge me with any movement. I bent down on the floor and looked up at the soldier’s face. Drool was coming from his mouth and he did not blink or move. He looked practically comatose.
“Is he ok?” I asked, aiming my question at the security camera in the room, realising I’d instantly given away that this was more than just a casual chat. I shrugged it off; Jacobi had done that already the second he’d bound this man.
“Let’s check,” boomed Jacobi’s voice into the room. “Mr soldier? I have something you’ll love to hear. You see this girl in front of you?”
He wouldn’t.
“This blond haired, sweet, innocent girl? Do you know what she did yesterday?”
No. Surely he couldn’t say it.
“Do you know what she did to your fellow soldiers?”
He would.
“No!” I shouted but it was too late.
“She killed them. Yes, that’s right, she shot two of them right through their skulls, killing them instantly.”
“It’s not true,” I shouted and backed away to the door.
“Oh why deny it Emmie? You wanted a reaction and now you’ve got one.”
Except we didn’t. Despite the fact the soldier should have been desperate to kill me he still didn’t move. “I don’t think he’s well,” I said to the camera.
Jacobi sent in a medical team to check on the soldier. They had to keep hold of his head just to prop it up, whilst they took his vitals. He didn’t fight it or attack them and his body was almost jelly like, barely giving him enough energy to sit upright.
Something wasn’t right, although it did explain how Grace and I had been able to lead him to the base so easily yesterday. We were the enemy, there was no denying it, but he hadn’t seemed interested t
hen or now.
“Could it be trauma from the attack?” I asked the medical team.
“It’s possible but his energy levels are incredibly low, like he has some kind of virus,” explained one of them. “It’s like his body has given up.”
“Let’s give him something to fight for,” said Jacobi as he punched his fist into the soldier’s face so hard that a contact lens flew out of his good eye and landed on the floor.
“Man that felt good! I’ve wanted to do that to them for a long time,” said Jacobi.
The soldier let out a groan from the pain and blood rushed to the point of impact on his face. His body was functioning on some base level but not enough for him to fight back. After the groan he shut up completely and went back into his nonresponsive state.
“So pain gets a response. This should be fun,” said Jacobi. “I’ll get my sword.”
“Wait,” I stated firmly, “there’s something else,” I ran my fingers around the earpiece in my pocket not wanting to give it up. Once Jacobi had it I doubted he’d give it back to me, which meant no more help from March or The Deck until this was over.
Nevertheless I couldn’t watch the soldier be beaten to a pulp. I had to see if it would work. “There’s this,” I held up the earpiece and showed it to Jacobi. I figured that the mysterious noises on it had to mean something so maybe they could help.
“Where did you find that? You should have surrendered it on arrival.”
“I found it on him,” I lied but the earpieces seemed pretty universal across the soldiers so what harm could they do.
“Give it to me,” demanded Jacobi but I ignored him and started to walk towards the soldier. “We have to check it out first.”
“There’s no time, Jacobi. The soldiers are planning their assault on Javon prison today. Don’t you want to know what they are planning?”
“On your head be it,”
As I got nearer to the soldier I could hear a buzzing sound coming from the earpiece. The chants began to emerge again from its tiny speaker “Get. Find. Kill. Have-nots. Regen. Dead,” in amongst mixed up words in another language.