“You act like I don't know what you're saying, and I do: you aren't going to be there for us. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“There wasn't supposed to be an 'us.' I'm married, Av—”
“And you said you'd leave her. So, what changed?”
He sighed, “Nothing. I still love you, but I can't leave my wife right now. I'm the President of a Nation.”
“I don't give a fuck, Derek. The President of the Dawn Federation can't take care of his own kid? She couldn't give you what you wanted but I can: we're having a son, Mr. President!”
“No, Avva.” Derek remained resolute. “You're having a son. We discussed this already, and you were supposed to go through with… It.”
“What? The abortion?! You really thought that's what I wanted? You took care of me for the whole pregnancy, and that's what you thought this whole time?”
The President shrugged his shoulders. “We had this conversation from the start. The leader of the Dawn Federation can't just leave his wife because he knocked up one of his old war buddies—”
“We're more than 'war buddies,' Derek. We've been together from the beginning; the Citadel was meant to be OUR kingdom!”
“And I still want it to be!” He exclaimed. “But an illegitimate son would destroy my public credibility—the plan was for you to wait until after an official divorce and for us to proceed from there! What happened to your patience in conflict, Avva?”
“That's all you care about? Your reputation?” Avva looked away. “Changing the world was our goal, remember? So what if we come out as a family—our legacy is already sealed.”
“No! I can't.” President Derek grasped her shoulders. “I know you can keep this a secret, so don't tell people that he's mine. I'll provide for the two of you—I-I'll send you money—”
“Fuck you, Derek.” Avva shoved him away. “I had to lie to the public after we found out. I told them I was going on a 'religious exodus' because of you, and I had to make sure that they didn't find out…”
“And you kept putting it off.”
“Because I thought you'd grow the balls to take responsibility.”
“Avva! Wait!”
Derek's former mistress left him in his office.
Several decades ago, Avva had arrived at the opportunity to undergo a surgery intended for an early induced pregnancy, and so she planned on heading to a private hospital where she was taken in as a patient. The President, on the other hand, was scheduled to fly with his wife to Gaspul after having overseen a successful invasion of the war-torn country. Derek had prepared a speech he’d tweaked since the beginning of the conflict and felt compelled to make his celebrated appearance.
--
The history of the Dawn Federation and the Citadel itself is a complicated story centered around a time when private militaries vied for control of much of the known world. The amount of those alive in the Federation who still know the legends of the power struggles occurring in the past are relatively few, because the media had been instructed to erase any history believed to be outdated and irrelevant. President Derek was one of the colloquially heralded “Four Commanders,” a group of deserters from a Special Operations Unit belonging to the nation Oloranto's Legion. Oloranto held control over a small portion of the Citadel when it was split between various powers. The Four Commanders were, respectively, Derek, Avva, Khalil, and Ishida, and they founded what became known as Enrec: a private mercenary company which sought to gain territory by recruiting people under the banner of freedom. After gaining a sufficient fighting force, Enrec was contracted by Gaspul to wage a war against Oloranto.
The Four Commanders thus took command of individual units that, with their combined efforts, spearheaded the initial attack and eventually led them to take Oloranto captive as a military force. Exploiting Oloranto’s area of control as a mass supply base, the Commanders reclaimed the entirety of the Citadel before relinquishing some of their dominion to Gaspulan forces. Enrec then navigated their way through the political world and formed their own nation within the infrastructure of what was now known as the Federation’s Citadel. After decades of constant warfare, The Dawn Federation emerged from Derek's own ideas of legislation and civil liberty.
Not long afterward, Khalil, of the Hayashi, departed from Earth and became forgotten as one of the lesser known Commanders.
Ishida is notorious for having founded Angelos, the assassination sect used by major governments around the world.
Avva became a celebrity while enjoying the wealth inherited from years of strategically dominating the enemy and pushing out the rest of the Gaspulan army from the City in the Sky. She also proposed and wrote legislature herself before removing herself from government altogether.
And Derek became the President, establishing a system that had all but diminished his role in the Federation's government, a government intending to herald the future of Derek's vision of Democracy. Yet, there came a day when President Derek decided that he didn't care about his legacy any longer…
--
While Avva went into labor, Derek abandoned the party traveling with him to Gaspul and sneaked away to return to his lover. Somewhere along the way, he’d decided that she mattered to him far more than his own career. Even if it meant being forced out of his seat as the ruler of a major world power, he felt compelled to be there.
President Derek located the hospital housing his mistress and rushed through the building while feeling an overwhelming since of desperation understood by most soon-to-be fathers. Avva had been the first partner to help him create the dream conceived by Enrec. Without the two of them, it’s possible that the Dawn Federation wouldn't have existed. They were originally known for conspiring against their own units in Oloranto in order to break away and use their accumulated knowledge and experience to build a New World with Khalil and Ishida’s lended expertise.
And so, Derek decided that day that he would choose her over anything or anyone else as he shouldered members of the hospital staff out of his way and exclaimed: “I'm your goddamn President; move!”
Dionne Warwick's “You're Gonna Need Me” echoed down one of the hallways on the hospital's third floor. Avva's favourite song, he thought and quickly found the door from which the music resounded.
He never made it in time.
… Almost an hour before he’d even arrived, Avva, dying from an unexpected multisystem organ failure linked to an inherited condition, had a conversation with the doctor who struggled to revive her seemingly lifeless son.
--
“Doctor Rustam…” Avva spoke weakly as the doctor affixed the infant's face and torso to a respiratory machine.
“Don't worry, Avv—ma'am, you and the baby will make it through this! I assure you that I’m more than competent enough to handle the job!”
“You don't have to lie, Dr. Rustam; I know I'm not looking good… but please… save him.”
“Don't speak like that! C'mon, Avva, you're stronger than this! Avva!”
Nurses swarmed the child’s figure as it suddenly sprung to life, but the doctor rushed over to the female mercenary he’d grown close to in only a few days. She smiled at him, and a slight grin came over her face.
“Do me a favor, would you?”
“Anything.”
Her gaze hardened. “Report him as deceased.”
“What?” He was taken aback.
“You have money, don't you? Raise him as your own…”
“Wait—I-I don’t thi—”
“His father left; he doesn’t deserve the boy… so give him the family I couldn't.”
Doctor Rustam was unable to bare an heir himself. It was because of this that his wife had left only a month before the incident in the hospital. Having felt enormous respect and affection for Avva, who was called the “Saint of the Citadel,” Rustam jumped at the opportunity to adopt her son.
She’d made him fall in love with her, a fan in adoration of his idol. While in a more delirious state, she�
��d promised him a future after the operation—perhaps mistaking him for Derek in her stupor—but the possibility of a perfect life passed him over when Avva died unexpectedly. Reacting quickly, Doctor Rustam had the child taken away from the operating room and altered his birth records before President Derek arrived at the hospital to find his deceased lover.
--
“I can’t be too late! –I didn't know…” Derek was said to have collapsed to his knees and sobbed upon viewing Avva’s lifeless body.
When finally regaining some of his own composure, he later accused Doctor Rustam of “Professional Negligence” and, initially, ordered the Dawn Federation destroy Rustam's license to practice. Nevertheless, Rustam absorbed the attack on his esteem and reputation and believed that he would continue to survive with Avva's son by working low-income gigs until Derek's wrath subsided…
It did not.
4
Put Our Heads Together
--
Tavon
--
EZE WILL ALWAYS BE MY FATHER.
Even though he’d possessed his own share of personal issues, he was still a bigger man than anyone I’d known up until that point in my life…
--
I arrived on an unnamed street adorned with a series of buildings and ending in a cul-de-sac of condemned houses, one of which was being squatted in by Eze himself. It had a small fireplace that I learned to keep huddled around during colder months. At the broken, wooden door to the house, the mastiff suddenly reappeared but took on what seemed to be a different form: a slender, pointed face complete with eyes faded completely black. Its body seemed to shimmer—almost as if it was just an image being projected onto a screen. I jumped back in shock after the creature barked at me.
“I'll be,” Eze said in response. “Boy, what spooked ya like that?”
For the first time since I’d awoken, I felt my full knowledge of language return to me.
“It's… it's just… t-there's… a dog.”
“Dog.” How did I know what that meant?
“Damn right, there is!” He exclaimed.
The shadowy canine walked over to sit down in front of me and simply gazed at me with a vapid expression. Eze seemed overly satisfied and clapped.
“Finally! Someone else sees him but me! That means you have it, kid!”
“Have what?” I wasn't totally sure if I should pet the thing again after considering his comment.
“Some type of knowledge that others don't. I knew I saw something in you that made us alike!” Eze walked over to the canine and coursed his palm through the creature’s fur. “His name is Anubis! One day he appeared in my life and hasn't left me since… the only thing is that no one else sees him. When I go to the streets to get my money game on, he always comes with but nobody notices. He doesn't exist, Tavon—at least, not to most people…” His eyes were wide with excitement. “I thought I’d finally lost all sense. This is amazing!”
For a moment, the mastiff's head shifted and made him appear faceless before returning to its original form. It was something not meant to be here, not within the Citadel, which had sheltered itself from the reality of much bleaker land.
“He's quicker than any human or maybe even a cruiser. Anubis is a straight up killer, son! I wouldn't sell him for the world.”
“Why… why would you sell him at all?”
Eze issued a throaty chuckle. “You must be one of the slow ones… I sell everything I can find, kid. Honest work for honest pay, you feel me?” Eze put a hand on my shoulder. “We’re gonna start tomorrow, you and me, but tonight you get to rest. I'll make sure you learn the ropes, and if you follow me,” he grinned, “we’ll make it big.”
I was a kid with no history, no prior attachments, and nothing to my name—and I didn't even have a name. To me, Eze was what a normal salesman was supposed to look like for a long time. I didn't become aware of who he really was until it was too late to do anything about it…
--
Janelle
--
Tavon and Aaliyah waited outside Vendela Andrewa's door as Aaliyah called for backup in case the situation turned chaotic. They’d uncovered enough evidence to act…
Earlier, against the wishes of Aaliyah, Tavon had unlocked a door in Vendela's house leading to her personal office while insisting that the two of them take a more aggressive approach. The detective and her new accomplice searched Vendela’s private quarters to discover a fake bottom beneath her office desk which triggered a panel in the floor to uncover itself. Aaliyah used the panel to activate a side door that slid away to show them a room containing only a laptop. To find the needed password for the device, they searched through the millionaire's bedroom and discovered a diary that opened to a section promptly exposing a piece of paper with a code written on it. The Center mastermind’s downfall proved to be her own bad memory.
Tavon entered the code to access the laptop and was able to view a series of emails from Vendela to Genod and a conference session displaying a list of unknown participants he didn't immediately recognize. They were able to locate even more information after looking through emails to both a lawyer and accountant who’d been advising her on how to hide her revenue generated from increased trafficking efforts. Furthermore, a video was then found detailing the victim of a kidnapping being interviewed by a woman who was presumably Vendela herself.
In the video, an older man—with his hands and feet tied down to a wooden chair—screamed at the camera: “Help! My name is Harlan Dulani; my family is looking for me—I've been taken—”
He was quickly gagged with a white cloth by an immense figure cloaked in black. The stranger then snapped the man's neck as mildly disturbing giggle could be heard in the background. The killer reached his hand toward the camera, which quickly shut off and resulted in a dark screen. All of what Tavon and Aaliyah had viewed was enough evidence to arrest Vendela, and so they returned and waited patiently for the President of Andrewa Centers of Growth to finally make her appearance. During the wait, he’d continued telling his story until Tavon realized something about the video he’d previously seen.
“Aaliyah… the guy who played executioner on the screen; he had a miniature totem hanging around his neck…”
“So what?” Aaliyah said. “These fools wear all sorts of shit to show off—especially on video.”
“No. It's not that.” Tavon shook his head. “It's a symbol belonging to an older gang; I guess you could say more like a tribe…”
“Tribe?”
“Have you heard of Noboros?”
“The hell is that?”
“You're a Dawn Bureau agent and you've never heard of them?”
“Do I have to repeat myself?” She responded flatly.
“They’re a group of people just as deadly as the ones I work with. Compared to a member of Noboros, the guys I've fought in the past are nothing.”
“Wow.” She smirked. “Something that actually makes you scared, huh?”
“Not scared. Cautious.” Tavon replied.
“That's rare for you.”
“I've only ever dealt with them once… but after that I knew to avoid those freaks no matter what.”
Vendela Andrewa arrived on scene with a heavy detail of armed bodyguards. She hadn’t noticed us and hurriedly proceeded into her own estate we’d cleared hours ago.
“I’m calling it in…”
They waited approximately twenty minutes after she reported to the Bureau via her Kom Cell.
Tavon, fidgeting his seat, looked over. “Should we go now?”
“We sh—”
“I’m going now.” The assassin got out of the cruiser before stealthily approaching the manor.
“Tavon!” Aaliyah shouted while chasing after him. She herself absolutely refused to miss out on the action.
He waited by the door for a moment before nodding to Aaliyah. She rolled her eyes but nodded anyways, and he kicked it in as its hinges tore against the wood before loudly peeling off
and clanging to the wooden floor. Tavon sprinted inside; Aaliyah hurried behind him with her gun raised!
Vendela hung by her heels from a high ceiling and cried silently as tape wrapped tightly around her mouth muffled her screams. The bodies of those who’d previously served her were now strewn about the lobby, baring grotesque laceration wounds.
Aaliyah darted toward the stairs close to Vendela but gasped as she felt her right foot catch in a tripwire. Tavon bolted to her side, expanded his leg muscles, and tackled Aaliyah’s body across a large distance before covering her with his figure as the entire building imploded.
--
Aaliyah sprang awake a few minutes after being knocked unconscious and heard several sirens resonating in the background. She peered to see Tavon smiling at her in relief and was shocked after noticing that a small section of his back appeared as if it were… charred.
Tavon looked at the spot and cringed before returning his gaze to her and saying, “I'll heal up as long as nothing’s broken; I’ve got the Fire. It's you I'm more concerned about… We’re even now, right?”
“Shut up. I’m fine—w-what the fuck is the ‘Fire?’ Is that a sex joke?!” Aaliyah moved him off her gruffly and sat up to view flaming debris around them.
“It’s story in itself.” Tavon quickly stumbled to his feet and supported her as the two of them slowly walked through a hole in the nearest wall to the outside. They’d been far from the true center of the blast—which was, in reality, a poorly set up series of explosives placed above and more or so intended to ensure Vendela’s death than to kill first responders.
“Looks like we've got a story to tell them, at least.”
Tavon grinned and indicated Vendela's undamaged laptop he’d taken from the scene.
5
Everyday Struggle
--
Tavon
--
I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I TOOK TO THE streets with Eze. He had a portable stereo that he carried in a cart when he was tired. The first time we went to work he played Biggie's “Everyday Struggle” because he thought it would motivate me. It was the first time I’d ever heard a real track, so I didn’t fully appreciate it at first.
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