| writing that puts story first

With a flick he pushed his collar up against the cold and plunged his hands still further into the pockets of his tattered gray coat. His footsteps echoed down the streets of this “Land of Prosperity”, other than him nothing in the street moved. Of late the city had grown tense beyond belief and Jack had more than begun to worry. Word had begun to circulate that the Eight Families had fallen to seven; that the political dealings of this sprawling urban beast had resulted in the killing of an entire ruling family.

Fear gripped the base of Jack’s spine as headlights washed over him. They came closer only to rush by in a wash of cold air and blown about trash. Luckily that car had passed by, but who was to say the next one would? A sudden answer to this question had Jack prying open a Secure-a-print box in an attempt to cheat his way into a building. The box was no problem, Jack had learned how to bypass a thumbprint scan when he was very young, now in his late twenties he was an old pro at it. His near frozen face managed a smile as the door hissed and slid open.

A look down the hall inside and one would wonder why the lock was even on the door. The flickering of the dying light let the eye grasp the desolation of the hall in flashes. Flash; brown wallpaper, dingy and peeling. Flash; a window sits with only the security mesh left in it. Flash; a floor littered with countless bits of paper and shards of broken glass. Flash; a map of New Haven hangs on a wall.

New Haven’s story was a unique one. Eight people had found a hill of green out among the ravaged land a few years following the fire falling from the sky. Together they founded a small town. A town, the news spread quickly. The Founders ushered in many rules and set the foundations of the “Safe Technology” laws in order to govern the hordes of new comers. New Haven grew from a town to a Mecca, a modern marvel, a city larger than any other before. The city was divided into eight districts, each governed by one of the Founders. As the Founders settled into their new roles as governing bodies they also acknowledged the need for each other and founded the Ruling Council. The Founders also started their own families on the road to inherit their rule. As far as history claims the Founders were responsible for most, if not all, of the rules and laws that people today seemed so hard to fight against. Jack was told that their ideals of free thought and expanding the mind were amazing cultural advances. He didn’t know, he wasn’t a history scholar.

Jack shuffled his way down the filthy hall and into the power lift at the far end. His destination was simple, the quiet solitude of the roof. The doors hissed shut behind him. Yeah, Jack figured that the ideals had seemed good at first, and had they been upheld it’s fairly sure that they would have been. Although no one ever admitted it, the people on the street knew, those who spoke out against the Families and their rule were never seen from again.

Sure the history vids of New Haven showed the high points, the festivals, the works of art, the triumphs of the Families. They showed the founding of the Clean Reactors and the Mag Levs, the huge network of Commvids that were established, and the foundation of the Network. They didn’t show the disease that raged through the underbelly of the Direlli District and killed over two hundred thousand people, nor did they show the assassinations. No, the history was as clean as the city was dead.
The lift slid to a stop and the doors parted to the night sky. Bundling up against the cold Jack slipped out onto the roof. Despite all his walking, he was still in sight of the Capitol Seat. The white marble building with its grand arches, flying buttresses, and sweeping walkways stood in the centre of the city. The rich area around the Seat stood brightly, but it could only hold out for so long before the darkened tentacles of the city took hold of it. The change from rich to real was even more obvious from above.

Those years ago, Jack could still remember walking about the Seat hand in hand with Jezabelle. Even then, the change was not so obvious, so stark. Often he thought that his mind was playing tricks upon him, that in the ten years since Jezabelle had been taken from him the city could not have changed so much. He had loved her, and he still might, but he had long since given up hope of ever getting her back. Perhaps love had blinded him to the desolation, or perhaps it had merely warmed him against its cold.
As Jack’s mind continued to wander he rested his back against the cold metal and composite matted wall and sank to the ground. The Seat before him was bathed in light, standing strong and silent in the midnight air. Curfew had taken affect hours ago and Jack knew if he stayed on the street much longer he ran a serious risk of getting picked up.

The city no longer had any love left in it. New Haven left Jack with a bad taste in his mouth. He had managed by as one by one, or sometimes in groups, his friends, family, and even his love Jezabelle, had been taken away, or disappeared, or just lost the will to live. Why? Anger grabbed Jack and he sprung to his feet shaking one cold fist at the white marble Seat. Why must this city suck the life from everyone inside? The Founders long dead, and their children, now on the eighth generation, were so power hungry that they choked the life from the very city they depended upon.

Jezabelle, she was a sweet woman. They had loved each other so. When the Voloni Family had put her brother down, had him shot for speaking out, she was devastated. He had been making a public speech when the assassination occurred. William had been rallying the people of the Voloni district to leave the city and start their own civilization. To the Families his words were dangerous. To those who had been listening, the assassination marked a bloody end to the cat and mouse game the Families played with upstart ideas. It also marked a beginning to a strong movement against the Families. Jack could clearly remember how withdrawn she had become afterwards. Jezabelle had frantically searched for a firearm. They were outlawed in the city, yet her brother’s dead body showed that someone had one. One night Jezabelle simply wasn’t around anymore. Jack moved on like he always had, but he knew he wasn’t the same.

From somewhere near the Seat, Jack’s ears picked up an explosion. In the distance an orange and red spout of flame danced into the black night sky. Debris was thrown into the lights that bathed the elegant Seat.

“So it has begun,” was all Jack could force from his cold lips. He didn’t know who was responsible for the explosion, but he had some guesses. Perhaps the Cerello family grew fed up with the Sanders. Or maybe a movement against the Families had itself struck a near victory. Many miles behind that, by the look of it in the Hestile District, another explosion rocked the night. Flames rose up into the sky, crafting a fiery flower where building used to be.

Jack sank back down against the wall. How many of the Families would still live tomorrow? He knew that little or no sleep would come to him tonight. Instead he sat back to watching as the city before him set to bloom into oranges and reds, blues and yellows, and the shaking violent whites.

Once the Families were not so rich, they led the people, but were not so far above them that violence was risked. But the Families over time had grown wealthy and withdrawn from the near fifty million people that inhabited its tall steel city walls. Life here turned towards survival. Knowledge and experience, the foundations that the Families had started New Haven on were gone. Schools were attended little and learned from less. Most people just learned like Jack, on the street. It’s not his fault he’s good at crime. Its not his fault at all, in Jack’s eyes it’s a gift, a talent. For Jack the long night was just beginning. His mind had set to work and his heart flew back to Jezabelle as it so often did.

Father Timmons stood gazing out the Simu-glass window at the night sky. The city seemed to be going truly mad; either the city or the Families that governed it anyway. The other Elders would be in the room shortly, or should be. They’re on their way, Father Timmons knew that much. His people were on the move too. The Geraldi family was already no more; they had to be removed. To him, the Geraldis were a threat. To him, anyone who found out he was responsible for their murder was also a threat.
His own reflection caught Father Timmons’ eye. He was the picture of dignity reflected in the Simu-glass pane. From the finest clothes that New Haven could produce, to the stiff way his face stood, nothing of Father Timmons spoke of weakness. Nothing of him spoke of caring either.

Before he had taken control of the Timmons family, all the Families were rumored to have their own agendas; agendas between the Families and agendas within the Families. He didn’t know when they became the power structure they were today, but Father Timmons would be damned if his family would fall to the conspiring of another. The dignified man gritted his teeth and stepped away from the window. The meeting hall, sitting high in the Capitol Seat, was lavishly furnished. Along one wall was a large fish tank filled with real fish, not genetically engineered beasts but natural fish from the reawakening outside world. Around them a series of potted plants, also real. The two walls at Father Timmons’ back were huge plates of impenetrable force shielded Simu-glass. He didn’t know when weapons had begun to filter into the people, but none of the eight Families, well seven now, were willing to risk their own lives in their own Seat. The centre of the room held eight richly large, high backed chairs. Each chair had a built in computer with direct access to any computer in New Haven. Each were regularly shielded against the digital bandits that seemed so intent on cracking them.

His middle aged, yet rock hard, eyes drifted over the room to the still closed doors at the far end. None of the Elders had arrived yet, perhaps he was the only one left alive. He almost smiled at that thought, almost. A sudden flash filled the room and the Father whirled to see pieces of debris slap against the window’s force shield. That explosion had not been planned for. Someone else must be at work in the city and they were coming too close to the Seat for the Elder of the Timmons family’s comfort.
Still ever dignified he crossed the room to his tall chair and pressed a small console. A keyboard lit up on top of the arm. With well-practiced strokes Father Timmons typed the code to summon his security chief on an ultra-secure telecom line. Behind him the city was coming to life in a kaleidoscope of silent balls of fire.

“What’s going on out there?” Who else is striking?” Where are those other explosions coming from?” Father Timmons demanded as he leaned towards the view screen. The picture he was greeted with was not the calm collected man he had oh so expected to see, instead he saw a scene of chaos. The room on the other end of the line had smoke filtering through it and moans of pain leaked through the speaker.

The Elder once again put his hand on the keyboard. Quickly he entered the code to cut the communication, a few more rapid keystrokes and two panels on the wall opened. The first (the larger of the two) held an assortment of glasses and liquors. The other held a small and almost elegant pistol.

Three confident strides brought Father Timmons to the pistol. He picked up the gun and pulled back the slide on top. The gun buzzed softly, beeped twice, and then went silent. The Elder placed the gun into a pocket in the left breast of his coat and took another step, leading him to the small bar. At the bar he fixed himself a glass of warm brown liquor. With the glass in his left hand Father Timmons drew back out the pistol and held it in his right. His gaze once again fell out of the Simu-glass window. In the distance a fire raged, by the look of it in the Direlli district. His mind pondering the attacks and possibilities of the attackers was racing at an amazing speed. With his exterior cool and still, he slowly sipped his drink that gun in hand.

The earth shaking crash had woken her up. Sweat beaded and fear ran high as outside her window fire raced across the face of the building across the street. Charlette had never moved as fast as she did then racing to reach her crying child in the next room. Outside, the explosion had torn a building to bits, sent a shower of flame up into the black night air, and set the loose trash and surrounding buildings on fire. Hastily Charlette bundled young David up in a blanket and then hurriedly dressed herself.
A tendril of smoke caught her nose and added another bit of urgency to her already panicked footsteps and David’s infant cries only made thinking that much harder. She was so afraid, not for her possessions, or even for her apartment, or even for her life, but for her son. The world that she had brought him into was by no means the greatest, but she’d be damned if his turn to live was over so soon.

With the blanket-bundled infant clutched to her chest and herself shrouded in an old woolen parka she rushed down the hall of the apartment building. The wall at the end held the power lift. Try as she might, the door refused to open despite the beating it received from her free arm.

The smoke was now unavoidable, not just the scent but also the sight; clouds hung thick across the ceiling. Warm in his blanket and close to his mother David stopped crying. Even in her panic Charlette was amazed at how the little bundle of life, a part of her, could be so serene in the midst of so much decay, so much sorrow, and so much hardship. Inspired by her child, Charlette gathered up some new inner strength and began searching for some escape from the rapidly spreading flames.

She wound her way down the hall and back to her smoke filled apartment. The smoke was now too thick to allow for Charlette to stand. Instead it forced her to crawl with her child in her arms. She wriggled her way through the entry hall and down the fifteen feet or so to the living room. Those few feet were a terrible journey; the smoke and heat were so strong that Charlette found herself crying. She didn’t stop the tears; she didn’t see a reason to.

Her father had hated crying, perhaps that is why he had hit her so many times, too many pent up tears of his own to deal with. When she was little all she ever wanted to be was a mother, so that she could have a child of her own. Charlette had wanted a child to love and to hold, to raise with love, a child that would never get hit.

As the fire and smoke rose so did Charlette’s will. She had come now to the steps down into her living room, the few steps that allowed her the comfort of half standing. In a few quick leaps she had found the window with the fire escape. Without thinking she reached out with her one free hand and picked up a wooden chair. The chair, one of the few pieces of furniture Charlette owned, had little effect on the window with the first collision. The second time Charlette managed to crack the pane and the third collision of chair and window shattered the Simu-glass altogether. With a careless toss the wooden chair skittered across the apartment floor and mother and child slipped out onto the fire escape. The entire left side of Charlette’s body was bombarded by rolling waves of skin cracking heat and a quick glance showed the front of the building to be blanketed in rolling, dancing red flames.

Charlette’s free hand fell momentarily to the metal railing only to be pulled away with the hiss of burning flesh. With her hand in pain, and the fear of her child, somehow Charlette didn’t notice that her bare feet were already blistered beyond belief. She didn’t stop to think of this either. With one arm still laden with a child she set to lowering down the ladder. With a loud, long whine, and the flecking of paint and rust chips, the ladder fell to a stop roughly angled eight feet off the ground. A few frantic kicks at the ladder and one or two slaps failed to move it any further.

Biting down her for fear for another and already countless time, Charlette, with young David clutched to her chest, slowly backed down the ladder. Rung after rung, the hot metal bit into her flesh. A sudden scream bubbled from her lips as the ladder jerked down towards the ground stopping half way there. The jerk woke the sleeping David, but Charlette took his cries as a good sign, a sign that he still lived. Her joy at this was cut short as she lowered herself another rung and the ladder fell the rest of the way. The stop this time was much more sudden, and the pair of escapees found themselves landing with Charlette’s back first on the concrete below. The fall had only been two feet, but that was more than enough to send jabs of pain shooting through Charlette and cause David to redouble his efforts to cry as hard as possible.

After a few seconds Charlette regained her feet, adjusted her child in the crook of her arm and next to her heart and began running. Her blistered, burned, and bloody feet didn’t hurt yet and if they did Charlette certainly didn’t notice. But neither did she notice a Clean Generator off in the distance as it erupted into a bubble of white devastation and turned a large part of the Cerello district into dust.

Trevor gripped the composite plastic of his laser rifle tightly. He couldn’t feel the ever-warm material of the gun through his gloves, but it was still reassuring. The hallway before him was littered with smoke, debris, and the acidic stench of charred bodies that seemed to hover along the walls.

“Who knew that a laser could make a body smell so terrible?” The voice came from behind Trevor. He didn’t know if his partner was trying to joke or not, but he didn’t bother to turn and find out. Instead his gaze remained locked on the deathly still hallway. Well, it was still except for the tendrils of smoke.

Moments earlier a report had sounded announcing the success of another Exodus team. No call had come over the radio, but the shear force generated by the destruction of the Clean Reactor had swept through the Cerello district like some darkly divine wind was proof enough. Trevor squinted his eyes trying to remain ever vigilant on his guard duty. Try as he might he could not keep his watch from falling over the bodies.

Two years ago a fate much the same as these bodies had fallen his brother. Paul. He had been one of the first to fall. Paul was all that Trevor knew in the city. They had lived together on the streets. He had always told Trevor that this city was unforgiving. But with his older brother there it was as if he had had a blanket there to protect him against the outside world. When Paul had been shot it was as if that blanket had been ripped off and Trevor was thrust into the body numbing cold of the outside world.
The entire event still ate at him. Paul knew what he was doing was dangerous.

Speaking out against the Families had a way of bringing about a sickly silence. Those who spoke out just disappeared. Maybe the Families had just run out of jail space, but for whatever reason they had, they began shooting demonstrators. They shot Paul. Trevor had been there. He was there as the assassins were preparing to take him out. That was a scene Trevor never could shake.

Walking through the market square buried deep within the Cerello district he passed by the three men. Trevor didn’t know why, but he was listening as he passed them. The three had been huddled in a circle and they seemed to be fidgeting with something. Trevor got a good look at it, but he’d never seen a laser rifle before, no one had. One of them pointed to Paul as he began to climb a light post in order to address the masses.

Trevor had passed within two paces of the assassins. But he walked right passed them in order to hear his brother speak. Oh, how he had loved to listen to his brother speak. He used words that carried so much power that Trevor was surprised that people hadn’t revolted against the Families yet. His eyes were locked upon his brother as the bolt of lightening shot across the market. Paul’s body was rocked and falling backwards as the second and third shots collided with him.

Trevor turned to see the assassin with the rifle raised to his cheek, the barrel pointing to where Paul had been standing only seconds ago. Even before Paul’s body struck the ground a panic plowed through the crowd and everyone scattered running away. There were only three assassins. They only had one gun. If only the crowd had been thinking they could have stopped them! Instead Trevor was left in a rapidly emptying square. At one end, the smoking remains of his fallen brother, at the other the three dark and menacing figures known as “Family Men.”

“You get used to it,” Trevor breathed out in return to his partner at guard.
Seconds of silence followed his response, and then the other guard spoke again, “You sound like you’ve smelled it before.”

“I have.”

The three men wasted no time in slipping off into the city, leaving Trevor alone in the square. Without a thought, and in a numbness he’s never experienced before, Trevor made his way to the fallen corpse. A thin black smoke hung over the body. There was a good sized clean hole roughly the thickness of a thumb burned through his chest. The other two shots had not been so nice. One caught Paul halfway through the head and due to his movement cut a gash up to the top of his skull and sent his hair into a quick burning blaze. The last shot had taken a chunk roughly the size of a fist out of Paul’s left hip. Trevor hoped that Paul had been dead before he hit the ground.
The first catch of that smoke had reduced Trevor to a vomiting mess. As his stomach emptied itself upon the sidewalk the gravity of the situation began to dawn upon Trevor. He was helpless. He was now meaningless. The Families had ended his will to live.

“The Cerello family killed my brother nearly a year ago. I was there when it happened.” Silence.

Trevor had begun to wander the city after that. He lost all touch with reality. Curfew and laws altogether lost any meaning to him. He spent more than his fair share of nights in jails. Looking back upon it, it was time spent in jail that probably kept him alive. But it was meeting Michael by chance that truly saved him. Trevor had been running from someone nearly two months ago, he couldn’t remember why, but he could remember he wasn’t afraid. No, it was closer to a masochistic joy in anticipation of getting caught. He could remember hoping that this was the end. Running in a dead sprint Trevor rounded a corner and his vision was filled with the like of a very impressive man. Trevor was sure that in the split second before he collided with Michael all of his great charm and influence sunk into him.

Michael had slipped most of the way out of Trevor’s path, enough of a shift to allow Michael to both retain his feet and catch Trevor before he fell himself.

“Paul?” Michael had asked him. Before he could answer Trevor’s pursuing predator rounded the corner, skidding to a winded halt before Michael. The hunter and Michael exchanged words and Michael quickly diffused the situation. For some reason, in all his self-sorrow, Trevor was relieved to see Michael.

The relation to Paul quickly came out and it was discovered that Paul had been teaching revolutionary ideas to a group of other young people. Michael had been one of these people. With Paul’s fall, Michael took up the yoke of leadership, using his charisma and intelligence to influence others. The group, Exodus, was nearly strong enough to begin the overthrow of the Families.

Somehow Michael had gained a hand into the operation of the Families. He had learned that there was a great deal of internal strife between them and that each was secretly developing technologies outlawed by the rules set down by the Founders oh so long ago. Amongst these secret developments were weapons, items so severely outlawed in the city that few had even dreamt to develop them.

Michael was also somehow able to discover the where-abouts of certain warehouses in the Cerello district, warehouses of Family Guard uniforms and warehouses of laser rifles. It was not long before Trevor was swept up into Michael’s impossible war. It had only been two days ago when he was informed that there was a strike tonight.

A beep sounded in Trevor’s ear and Michael’s voice soon seeped into it, “All units the perimeter is clear, begin room by room searches. Good luck, Michael out.” As the message ended Trevor’s hands fell from his ear and down towards the rifle’s barrel. He turned to see his partner give him a nod and the two of them left their post together.
With guns raised to eye level the two moved through the elegant halls of the Cerello mansion scanning everything before them with the scrootinous eye of a rifle barrel. Large open rooms with tall, wide windows along the walls greeted the sights of the two Exodus members. Furniture the likes of which Trevor had never seen were delicately placed throughout the rooms. On walls hung works of art like Trevor had only seen in art vids.

One picture in particular caught Trevor’s attention. The picture was like something out of a dream, fields and hills, rolling green and covered with grass and wild flowers. Off in the distance there stood trees. The outside. All those years trapped behind the terrible walls and outside the once ravaged world had been reborn. Anger swept through Trevor. Anger lent itself to regret, which in turn burned with a fire to escape the retched city. Trevor was overwhelmed and sought to do what he did when he felt this way, he sought the confidence of someone stronger. His hand reached for the mike trigger on his radio only to be seized by the partner’s hand.

“Radio silence,” he hissed at Trevor.

Trevor nodded in response. Michael would just have to wait and learn that Paul did not die in vain. This thought did not get far into the recesses of Trevor’s mind, mere seconds after the command had been hissed a burst of lasers were fired at the two revolutionaries. The few weeks of training that Trevor had paired with his human instincts led Trevor to dive for cover and avoid the deadly hail of light.

Sinking behind a couch Trevor watched as lasers burned holes around him. He heard as a horrid scream erupted from his partner’s lips. With no one else innocent in the room, Trevor had little to worry over hitting. He looked up one last time at the picture of the outside world and backed away from the couch. Laying in the prone he began to blow holes through the couch where he remembered the guards to be positioned.

His efforts of an attack were greeted by a symphony of screams, yells, orders, and a burst of laser fire. The couch was slowly but surely deteriorating, and with Guard’s laser fire the sand of Trevor’s hourglass of safety slid by. Trevor reached down to his abdomen, where on the side of his vest a special device was located. Michael had told him not to use it unless absolutely necessary, and no time could seem more necessary.
The device was a scaled down version of those used to destroy the clean reactors, a small explosive device that emitted a bright flash and intense amount of Clean Heat. Trevor frantically pried off the rubbery plastic that protected the ignition components as bursts of lasers came to close for comfort. With the ignition devices freed, Trevor jammed the firing switch up and waited for it to hum. The “armed” hum leaped into the fray of battle and with a quick overhand toss, Trevor sent the explosive package over the top of what had once been a couch.

The window behind him must have been shattered sometime during the battle but Trevor was in no position to contemplate exactly when. Instead he hurled himself out the window that stretched the entire height of the room and out onto an expansive cement balcony. As he was rolling, rifle in hand, away from the window a wave of white heat rolled over him and sent shards of wall, Simu-glass, and furniture outwards.
In a fight against the pain Trevor rose to his knees and brought his gun to his cheek ready to fire into the room if anything moved. A streak of pain shot through Trevor as his finger closed around the trigger of the rifle, sending sparks flying from its damaged side. The gun was of no use now; it had been all but destroyed in the explosion. Trevor didn’t put it down though, he didn’t even think to. Instead he edged his way down the ornate stone patio that overlooked the ravaged city,

He found his way to another large set of windows. These looked into another equally ornate room. In the early night a woman stood within, silently watching all that went on around her. Trevor fumbled around the window for a moment until locating the opening switch. With his useless gun raised to his cheek and spitting sparks off to its side, Trevor approached the woman.

Anger ate at him, this Cerello, she knew that the outside was reborn. And she had kept it from him. She had been part of Paul’s death. She was the enemy.

The last explosion had startled her somewhat. Yet she didn’t show it. She didn’t even need to try and hide it; her nature was of calm complacence. Alexis didn’t lack passion, no she was fancied as perhaps the most caring and passionate member of the Cerello family. Fifteen minutes ago the fireworks across the city had begun. Not only across the city, but inside her family’s house as well. A heat flash further in the district had brought her to the study where the huge Simu-glass panes gave her an excellent view of the bubble of destruction that had been carved into the city’s belly. Mere moments ago the guards had found intruders in the adjoining room. Alexis was not worried about this. It was an interesting mixture of faith in the guards and faith in the kindness of human beings that eased away what should have been fear. The ruckus caused next door had been silenced with a wave of heat, light, and noise that poured forth from the relaxation chamber. This explosion did not sit well with Alexis, but when does an explosion in one’s home sit well with anyone?

Ever so slightly she began to pace about the room. One of her long legs bound by her thin black skirt anchored her in place where as the other tried to move in several directions. Her creamy skin and cool soft brown eyes didn’t show it, but her mind was racing with too many questions to count. One slight finger rose up to brush a short golden lock from her view as she detected a figure standing with what appeared to be the same thing the guards had started carrying lately. Sparks flew from the side of it as he came closer to the large Simu-glass entrance to the study. Behind him the patio was littered with debris and a layer of black dust: the remains of the relaxation room.

Alexis followed his gloved hand as it shakily reached down and opened the large door. One cautious and weary foot fell into the room, hesitantly followed by a second. Without taking his eye or his gun sights from her he reached back and shut the door. The click of the door shutting was the only sound in the room with the two people. Alexis drank in the sight of the man. No he was a boy, as she drank in the sight of the world about her.

He was damaged, shaken, beaten, and bloody. His guard uniform was tattered and stained, hanging loosely from his shoulders and with a large patch of material missing from his left knee. Both hands held the sparking rifle to just below the right eye of his soot-covered face. His entire body was convulsing, as if he was enraged. The thought of enraging someone troubled the soft soul of Alexis Cerello and she nearly took a step forward. Gracefully she composed herself and decided that she did in fact need to approach the man, boy.

“Please I mean you no harm. Lower your weapon,” her voice was not that of her noble breeding. She spoke softly, with the voice of a woman not a title. He didn’t move though. She walked forward, scared a bit, but not worried enough to flee.

Click. She froze as his finger brought the trigger of the gun back. Seeing only a slight burst of sparks from the gun’s ruptured side, she continued to approach him. Click, click, click, click. Panic touched the eyes of the boy, yet he was frozen where he stood. The woman that embodied woman, a statue of dignity and grace, beauty and elegance, stood before her would be assailant. With the utmost care she placed one hand on the end of the rifle’s barrel and softly forced it towards the ground. Her second hand came, ever so delicately, and covered the boy’s hand holding the rifle’s pistol grip. Together the pair eased the rifle from the injured boy.

With a slight frown, both for touching the gun and for the regret towards the becoming of the boy she turned and set the rifle aside. The two once again stood in silence. One a battered and beaten soldier, however young he was, who was fighting beyond his life for what he felt had already killed too many, the other a woman with short blond hair, a picture of all that is right in the world. Neither knew what to say; yet in the seconds of silence beyond them the city continued erupting into fire. The silence only lasted half a minute or so, the adrenaline that the young fighter seemed to be surviving on ceased and so did the ability of his knees to function.

Her gasp of surprise did not impede her quick slip to grab the falling fighter. His arm landed around her lithe shoulder, smudging her thin red shirt with the ash that covered his body. Quickly she eased the stumbled soldier into one of the large chairs that were so carefully scattered about the study. With a sigh that touched her caring brown eyes she stepped back away from the body. She could see the shock slip from him and tears began to leak from his eyes. As paths were cut into his ash-dirtied cheeks the boy looked into Alexis’ eyes.

He didn’t seem frightened to her, rather saddened. He had let go. She took three elegant paces towards a small table situated next to his chair and with one delicate hand pressed a few keys on a console. The edge of the table closest to the chair sank back and two bowl shaped cups rose forth. Steam slowly wafted from the tops of them. Alexis motioned to the cup for the fallen soldier and took the other for herself. The warm, dark drink would ease away both of their tension and perhaps make the night pass a little easier.

Alexis found her way to a seat across from the soldier and slowly eased her way into it. She raised her cup to just in front of her face, letting the steam gently wash over her. Looking over the brim of the cup she kept her attention on her new guest.

“You aren’t one of my guards,” she said at long last.

“I am not a Cerello, nor would I like to be,” the guest spat in a broken gasp. At this she was taken back a bit, but not too discouraged to continue.

“I see. Then who are you?” She raised one of her softly curved eyebrows and took a sip of her drink. The warmth washed over her and she could feel the dark drink working almost instantly. Her centre returned and dignity was once again a tool for her to wield.

“My…brother…is dead,” he mumbled taking a look at the cup next to him. Alexis sat back a little, shifting to her side and taking another look at the soldier. He was indeed a boy; only his heart was aged beyond his body. She didn’t say anything in response, she merely continued to sip at her drink and watch and absorb the boy in front of her.

“It’s been two years, and why? Why did you have to kill him?” The tears were steadily rolling from the boy now.

Alexis sighed in an attempt to stop herself from talking. There was so much that she wanted to say, so many questions to try and clear up the scattered bits of conversation she was being fed.

“He got his freedom didn’t he?” the boy slipped out amongst his tears. “You killed him and gave him a way out of these damn city walls.” His ramblings were beginning to come together, but they were forming a story unfamiliar to Alexis.

“I don’t remember killing anyone,” she whispered, not sure if she spoke at all.

“But that doesn’t bring him back does it?” His response was so sudden, so loud, that Alexis almost spilled her drink. “I was there when the three of you…you couldn’t let him speak. He used to speak so well. Oh…his body…and everyone just left,” the boy’s speech came out broken, words slipping out when tears were not.

“Why did I kill your brother?” she spoke softly, as if not to startle the tensed and angry boy, perhaps it was so she wouldn’t startle herself.

“The Cerello killed Paul because he thought, and he dared others to think. And you know what? He was right. Your picture proved it,” he was making little sense, but he seemed to be stirring himself into a sort of excited composure. She didn’t know if this was better than a crying mess, he continued to rant. “The world out there is alive. But it’s too late for most.” His cryptic tirade came to a close and Alexis realised much of what he was saying seemed strangely true. The room was dancing in a flickering red light. Outside the city was a blaze.

A smile should have stood out on Michael’s face, but it was not yet a time for smiling. No his attention remained fixed to the halo-screens that he had set up before him. Around him the church was quiet. There had been someone here when Michael first stepped into its despaired and downtrodden interior. But he, the priest in question, was nowhere to be seen now.

It wasn’t that long ago when he had mused to himself while erecting the projectors that the government hadn’t killed God, not officially. No, he had told himself, officially the government sanctioned religion; the Families had simply put God on a life-support system. That conversation with his self had transpired nearly an hour ago. Shortly following that the air above the projection boxes went from clear to a slight fog in a paper thin, square picture, about a yard on each side. With the halo-screens active Michael had began to work at the console he had lugged in here with him. The work was quick, well practiced prior to the evening, and a network of streets and building maps appeared as well as the tiny red dots bearing alpha-numeric tags; beacons of his teams; his soldiers. Just like he had known how to set up the halo-screens with such proficiency, they all knew their jobs. This revolution had been rehearsed. The radio hooked to his ear crackled into life.

For half a second Michael actually wondered if all this was too much. Paul’s beliefs had become Michael’s craft for revenge. He stopped his mind before it could go any further. His lips parted and issued the order, “All teams go,” into the microphone that ran along his jaw. He knew he couldn’t afford to continue his doubting, he might actually change his mind.

The first strike of the evening, against the Clean Reactor in the Cerello District, had gone smoothly. Two of his men, he had stopped toying with the term followers tonight, didn’t survive the incident. But tonight the loss of life was acceptable.
Surely, and seemingly as the seconds ticked by, he could see his men fall. His Exodus Teams were chewing into the city’s belly, into the filth of the Families, but not without loses of their own. Now there was nothing he could do, he just sat watching the screens alone in the dark and quiet church.

Michael considered himself a lifelong victim of the Families, jaded from birth. Jaded even before birth. Bastard. The word haunted him. Bastard! Half Sanders, his father scheduled to take the head of the Family. Bastard! Not after tonight though. Bastard! The man in question, by the name of Jackson, had been young and the third in line for his family’s inheritance. Bastard! Michael had often played the scenario out in his head. Why third? He was quite sure that if Jackson Sanders had been higher in the Family they would have had to accept Michael, or kill him. Either way he wouldn’t be what he was today. Bastard. He almost laughed at that the sudden realization that, after tonight, he’d be the only surviving Sanders. He’d be the head, bastard.

It was dark in the basement as the priest held his breath in frightened hesitation. Above him the beast eyes poured into the face of a leader was noisily erecting equipment and Brother Chiao knew he had to act shortly, but a mistake could mean his life or worse the lives of the two souls that were as near innocent as this accursed city could muster. There on the staircase that ran into the back of the kitchen that sat buried in the recesses of the church that was left to rot in a city that had no real heart for God, a priest frightened enough to question his own faith gripped at the fabric of his gown. Painful seconds passed and Chiao’s pulse pounded in his ear as he strained himself to listen. The man beast had stopped moving and the priest didn’t know if this made his situation any better, but he did know that it greatly increased his chances of being discovered. A church, of all the places that this monster must decide to take for its nightly lair it had to choose a church. Above him a soft humming engaged and Chiao, with a short silent prayer, continued on down the rest of the stairs and into the dark and dank confides of the basement. Why do the children play down here? Chiao had such a hard time understanding them, had such a hard time understanding so much and such a hard time believing anymore as he had taken a few moments here and there to consult the world that twisted and toiled outside of the confines of this “Holy House”.

They must have sensed the danger, the two young ones, Virginia and Caroline, for as the priest ushered himself into the storage room that sat directly below the fellowship hall that the Beast had taken to lair in, the two were frightened enough to sit amazingly still.

“Dim.” The priest dared to utter the whisper and the lighted pains of the ceiling slipped barely into being. Brother Chiao knelt beside the two girls, for all purposes sisters of just shy of ten, and placed a rather thick hand upon the shoulders of each. “Girls we must leave tonight.” It wasn’t the most descriptive explanation; it didn’t answer the questions that most children would have immediately responded with of why and where and for how long and can this dolly or that teddy bear come along. They didn’t ask these, didn’t inquire about the scant possessions that they had despite the life they led was that of a rather fat Family bankroll, Virginia blinked her wide green eyes and Caroline yawned and nodded. Brother Chiao wished they would ask, wished he could confess to them the doubts and fears that he had welling up inside of him, wished he had an outlet to confess his own doubts and fears, but a priest must be strong. He rose. With a young child scooped up and nearly sitting on a forearm the priest moved through the room and towards the storage door that it had in the rear. “Dark.” Darkness.

The door hadn’t been used since Chiao had become one of God’s chosen, he had no idea really what use a church had for receiving shipments or storing much more than spare chairs and books. But it didn’t stop him from thoughtlessly breathing a prayer of relief as the door worked and the night scene played out before Chiao. With a kick he managed to knock loose a good bit of the trash that had accumulated in the recess behind the building and with his path clear he carried the two girls out in the crisp night air. Building blocked his view of the skyline and his adrenaline forbid his senses from noting the faint taste of smoke flavoring the normal layer of stale air. With a pair of young girls surveying the world they rarely saw from the vantage point of the arms of a priest and Chiao’s mind running in rather frantic circles they made for an oddly comical, nearly tragic, party.

Chiao providing the confused and frightened motivation for the group all three found themselves in the street before the church. Here, deep in the heart of the Geraldi district the curfew is very loosely enforced, but outside of his church, Brother Chiao knew of nowhere to seek help. Where can a priest go when his own church has been forced from him? Without God as an answer, faced with questions in which he himself must make clear answers, and not use a question to answer a question, Chiao was lost. He started from the beginning; he started with walking, with the basis of everything, he was a man who must find answers for himself. Working his way down the street the priest cast a questing, hungry eye in each direction, looking to the howling wind and fluttering of trash, and praying for an answer though if one where to ask him who he was praying to he might not have been able to answer. Change began to slip over him.

“Virginia, Caroline, you must walk children.” It felt good, he was changing and he wanted to share the experience. These two girls, they were clean slates; they knew less of the outside world than the little that Chiao did. They didn’t argue or complain or question; no, they acted with simple obedience, for it mattered little to them one way or the other. With a young girl’s hand in each of his own the priest began to walk again, and this time he sought his answers with a lifted chin and a sudden, nearly childlike fascination with a world of change.

But no, this is wrong. It drove from deep within him, his own past and teaching wrestling with his newly forming present. The girls, church, the mad man, the situation was one that did not call for change, it called for a return, a return to what he had the last night and every night for the past, nearly uncountable years that he’d worn the robes and gowns and carried the burden that being a priest is. Part of him chastened the other for questioning himself, for veering towards temptation at a moment’s waver, in a heart’s shiver that allowed for the slipping of faith. This was a test. Brother Chiao must prove his faith by helping himself and the girls that weren’t sisters but could have been, and weren’t his daughters but he was their father. They were clean slates, yes, as was he, but he shouldn’t allow for them to be turned and changed as he had just allowed himself to be. He was not God, and he shouldn’t bear such an influence over the lives of the two young ones. But the fledgling spirit inside Chiao argued otherwise, argued that he had indeed been acting as their God by not allowing them the right to choice, by keeping them to live their lives within the confines of the church. By not allowing them the pains and hardships that a life of choice carries inherently he had indeed been a God to the two girls, and now, now they must learn what life is like. That life is pain, slick biting winds, and dirt; where a man has the power to destroy God by force: force of action or force of choice or force of circumstance.

Chiao needed someone to talk to, someone to confess the rumblings and transpirings that were turning his head, world, and soul about. There was noise near by, the carrying-on of people and too perplexed to contemplate or conceive of what these ranting, clashings, and carrying-ons might be, he veered towards them, two girls walking with a hand in each of his in accompaniment. Besides the trio’s path a man sat with a bottle clutched in his hand and he laughed a mused as the three entered the doorway into Geraldi Narrows, Bar and Grille.

“What a world we live in where the holy and the innocent seek refuge in the comforting kiss of alcohol.” Adam laughed a cynical, brooding cackle and turned back the bottle of dark liquor. He took a deep inhale and he caught the traces of smoke in the air. “The cycle turns around and around, that’s why it’s a cycle, a wheel, it knows no beginning or end, just fate and faith and man’s ignorance that he won’t do what his father did before him. It’s funny how each man feels that he is somehow better than those who came before him, the new model, the latest thing, immune to the mistakes and ails because he has “learned” from the mistakes of those before him.”

Adam knew he wasn’t talking to anyone, knew that there was no one around to hear. But he liked it better this way. When there was no one around to hear, there was no one around to interrupt; to fail to understand; to question; to compel; to try and introduce false ideas into the frail world of prickly cynicism that he had oh so carefully crafted through all the hardships and harrowing events that life could possibly construct and expect some trace of a man to live through.

“And they fail to see time and time again,” he pointed the bottle to nowhere in particular, just prior to partaking of it, “that the taller the shoulders of the giants that we stand on the farther the fall. We develop and devise. Talk is given to the consequences and the benefits, and both are supposedly weighed in equal, and perhaps they are. But it doesn’t give us reason to look back, only forward, always forward. We drive with a passion, race up the ladder without a second’s pause to consider how we are going to get down. How high? How high can we go? Man finds himself in a competition to prove he can out “do” those he had inherently convinced himself that he is better than. And then it comes, because we’re in a cycle, a circle, and they don’t have ends or beginnings, the damn things turn around and man is hit with the same thing that he had convinced himself he was so much better than because he was so much better than the people to who it happened before.”
In the dark and quiet street the drunken ramblings of Adam were lost to all. Perhaps had someone been there they could have hit him, beaten him into submission. He thought so too.

“Why? Why do my words cause so much harm? Does the truth hurt us all that much? Is the sharp cutting of the truth better than the bone smashing of consequence? I say so, so I talk, I sit I drink and I talk.” Had Adam the benefit of Jack’s vantage point he could have had reason to add laughter to that list. It would have been a bitter, brooding, cynical “I told you so” laugh, but he would have undoubtedly laughed. The city was now quite bright red as flames rolled about it.

They had all had their faces pressed up against the Simu-glass panes of the Mag Lev as it was taking its last run of the night. The mixture were business men and women, professionals mostly, coming back from this part of the city or that, and for one reason or another this trip was passing through the border of the Hestile and Direlli districts. But that isn’t what had their faces plastered to the window in an awed, nearly sickening fascination. They were seeing with their own eyes a historic moment, the part of history that doesn’t make the vids, the darker part of history, and so each found within themselves their own dark fascination and could not stand to look away. Before them they were witnessing a fire raging its way throughout the two districts and licking dangerously close to the rails.

They didn’t worry though, no, there was no need to, this train was rocketing along on a cushion of magnetism. The ride was so smooth that with one’s eyes closed it was easy to not realize any sense of movement. With “oohs” and “ahhs” as if witnessing a light show or an array of orchestrated lasers they noted as the flames began to lick at the first car in the train as it rounded a bend. Sean Newberry noted how quickly those sounds turned to panic and shock as the first car failed to make the turn and the remaining followed in a lemming habit off the track behind it.

They didn’t get much farther, the first car has sailed into the face of a building, lodging itself in and proving that a steel composite building will provide the necessary friction to stop a speeding locomotive. The other cars piled up behind their dumbstruck leader, buckling with their sudden change in momentum. The first two v-ed and teetered precariously over the edge of the Mag Lev track a good hundred feet above the ground. A sick wind, or perhaps the passengers had swayed, but the cars didn’t remain perched for long, instead plummeting to the ground with a viciously nauseating twisting and tearing of metal and the screams of passengers. Sean Newberry found his feet underneath him as his own car lurched with the others, pulling forward on the tracks, scrapping and sliding along.

It was a wreck in there already, people were vomiting, crying, the train reeked of urine; Sean was utterly calm though. This morning he’d had a bad feeling about this night. The week before he’d had a twinkling and years before that he knew his end would come through some sickly violent fashion, and now with the lady in the business suit retching on his shoe he felt rather certain that this was just that moment. Fate: Sean lived a life that was governed by the rules of irony, why should death be any different? The train was lurching forward, edging on the precipice and Sean Newberry felt totally unworried about it, he was an uncaring eye in the storm of self-pity and fear that swirled about him. With a seemingly casual manner he stood up, the thought of dying in a puddle of someone else’s vomit didn’t seem to appealing, not a way he would choose to go out, ever. Using poles that served as hand holds Sean made his way down the train, the lurching was slower and the distances were shorter but no one else in the Mag Lev seemed to notice. He caught a glimpse outside the window and he could see that part of his own car hung off the track and that, over what suddenly appeared to be a great distance, others had piled up below. Some had piled over others, two were even vertical, and still attached to his car. All in all it gave the train the look of some giant metal snake, the fire that was licking up about it only adding to this mental picture.

Turning his own cold blue eyes from the scene below Sean was forced to regard the inhabitants of his impromptu tomb. A few had grouped together, nearly all were crying, one was banging and beating on a Simu-glass pane, and two or three were silently sobbing, their gazes on him. Sean looked away, back to the giant metal snake that was slowly turning black below. Sparks were spitting up in a few places and if one listened rather well, no, he was probably imagining those screams. But he looked back, and those few eyes were still cast upon him, he looked away, hoping that they would follow suit, that their dying attentions and questing silent pleas would be given to God or someone other than Sean. But he looked back and they hadn’t looked away.

Sean walked to the other end of the car, towards the end that was dangling off the train. They forced him into this, and if he was going to get out it was going to be here. The doors on the side of the train were all electric, he ran a hand along the rubber seams where they divided and the thick epoxy the door’s windows were set in. He ran those cold blue eyes over the edge of the door, where they slid back and into the body of the train. His eyes fell to the floor and then the ceiling, he was looking, looking for something that would open the door but there was some goddamn thing raising a ruckus in the car. Sean turned to see that same man still banging futilely at the Simu-glass.

“Just stop it.” It was the first comprehensible speech that had been heard on the train in nearly three minutes, but it seemed like it could have been the first three words ever spoken. The man turned to face Sean, his tear stained face blank and his lip trembling. While some semblance of peace crept over the tomb sitting on a timer, a car full of people waited to die and wished for anything, anything at all, other than the fate that they seemed to have just been dealt.

“But I happen to live a life governed by irony,” Sean mumbled as he planted a foot on the back of a chair and lifted himself closer to the ceiling directly in front of the door. From his closer vantage point his experience as an engineering student those years ago began to help. A small knife taken from his belt helped him to pry at the ceiling panel under which he hoped would house the electrical workings of the door. The Mag Levs were a well-documented technology and Sean vaguely remembered some information about them. The doors were electrical, like most safety doors, held closed when a current ran through them, but also, they had something to do with momentum that kept ‘em closed during transit. The basic idea was, were a train to lose power the car would coast to a stop and then the doors would open. The flickering lights showed that some power was still active.

With a grunt and a clutter that echoed and rose in resonation the piece of ceiling fell to the ground and bounced and spun two or three times. Sean looked from the fallen shard to the gathered and silently sobbing mass. The looked to him with such hope that it made him sick. Why couldn’t they just give into the notion that death was here? And what’s worse, why did they feel so compelled into guilt tripping Sean Newberry into a role that he was not cut out for? He wasn’t a hero, he really didn’t need this, he was supposed to die tonight.

And his life was governed yet again by the laws of irony; the roof compartment did hold electrical conduits. Sean dragged himself closer so he could inspect, running a finger along each wire and cable, tracing rather quickly each to their source. HVAC: they were all heat or air conditioning. No power. All the wires were climate control. Sean slipped down from the chair back and with his hands on his hips shook his head. Sobbing picked at his ears, and the crowd had turned to focus on one woman.
Her pleads were compelling, she missed her baby and her husband, regret after regret came from the woman. Regret turned into confessions, she was a bad mother, a lousy wife, she didn’t go to church enough, once she cheated on her taxes, and all these people were trying to comfort her. Sean couldn’t stand to hear all of this, he didn’t know if his conscience was acting or if he simply loathed self-pity. But he knew he wanted it to stop, all of it.

Sinking to his knee Sean tossed the ceiling panel to the side and sank the knife blade into the rubber entrance mat. Dragging the blade along he cut something that he’d imagined would look like a surgical cut, but in reality was a jagged line, but a cut was all that mattered. Sinking both hands into the gash he leaned back, the rubber stretching slightly but not giving. A few moments’ strain and Sean gave up. Behind him the woman was still weeping, now a bit of ranting mixed in with her confession and Sean sank the knife back into the ends of the gash, cutting a short perpendicular cut at each. With the cut made he again dug both hands in and leaned back, this time with a path of least resistance granted the rubber gave way and exposed a gray box.
Sean heaved out a bit of a sigh and pried the top off the box. Inside was a mass of power lines crossed into a power junction and then wider cables running out to this place and that. But the two that interested Sean Newberry were running right towards the door. Removing that scrap of floor rubber he grasped it from behind and used it as something of a protective barrier prior to grasping the cables.

The grunt of effort was nearly drowned out by the hydraulic hiss of the doors parting and then a bit of clapping. Sean looked to see tear streaked and dirty faces smiling at him. He didn’t wait for them though, instead he poked his head out of the train. A few feet away and next to the electromagnet, recently reduced neutral metal by means of fire, was the maintenance pathway. Sean hopped down off the train and was immediately smacked by the sudden rolling waves of a city on fire. He turned away and back towards the train only to see its inhabitants marching like zombies towards him. Outside now, Sean gave a glance down, the trapped and suddenly jealous members of the other cars were beating desperately on their windows, wanting so much to only be on the outside. Sean couldn’t believe himself, he trotted off to the next train, a quick pry opened the emergency cover and a bashed fist opened the doors. The next train was the same, and the one after that. Sean opened the five cars that stood on the tracks but he didn’t stop, he knew he couldn’t. His life was governed by the rules of irony; he kept walking and eventually came to a small station that held a ladder to the ground. A look over his shoulder showed that the passengers had embraced their freedom and were helping the others off, he’d primed the pump for their hope and he guessed maybe that was what the tingling had been this morning.