Authors: David Luna
Neil nearly picks his own jaw up from the floor.
“What the hell does Inna think she is doing?”
He looks to Slayter, still lurched over his food at the booth while watching the news, then takes a moment to scan every face at the diner and convince himself no one saw anything. His pulse begins to return to normal as he lowers his concern, then registers that the encounter was oddly exciting. It was risky to touch hands out in a public space. Dangerous to interact with Inna outside of his apartment since a random identification check could happen at any moment. Just the thought of their brief interaction at the coffee cart sends a small surge through his veins. A feeling no amount of caffeine could provide. A rush similar to the one he felt the night he and Inna fled from the SEO at the restricted church ruins after nearly getting caught. He can still recall that night quite vividly, finding himself lost in the moment while dancing at the Bayou Sector. Now, with a Breacher waiting for him in the restroom and his partner just a few meters away in the crowded diner, Neil is again presented with the opportunity to feel that rush. He verifies that no one is still paying any attention to him, then with a deep breath and going against all better judgment, he moves towards the back and slips into the bathroom.
Inna leaps onto Neil immediately as he steps into the single occupancy stall, her lips targeting his. He backs her against the wall, then stumbles to the sink and returns the passion, tearing at her shirt and massaging her chest. “Wait—,” he says as his brain struggles to regain control, but she shushes him as she attacks his neck, biting him. It’s hot. Heated. Passionate. All elements that have been lacking from their secret relationship. As skin touches skin and beads of sweat begin to glisten off of their bodies, suddenly the door handle jiggles.
“It’s taken,” Neil manages to shout through Inna’s lips as someone attempts to come in. Luckily the lock does its job, but the close call is enough to snap him out of the moment.
“What’s the matter?” Inna furrows her brow as he breaks away.
“You can’t be so careless.”
“Nobody saw anything.”
“What if that was Slayter?” he points to the door handle, then asks grimly, “How am I supposed to protect you when I’m nothing but smoke in those smokestacks?” She ignores him and pulls him forward to kiss him again, turned on by the moment. Neil nearly allows himself to again be swept away until he commands her to stop, then grabs her by the shoulders. “We’ll deal with this later,” he says. This time his eyes never falter. “We have to stick to the procedures.”
“I hate your procedures,” she growls in frustration as she fixes her top.
“It’s the reason we’re alive,” he reminds her.
“What’s the point if you’re just going to keep me trapped in that prison?”
Her words penetrate his shield. He doesn’t like keeping her cooped up, and it’s clear she obviously doesn’t like it, always having had the freedom to explore places like the landfill as she pleased. But he knows it’s what they have to do if they want to be together. He searches for the correct words to say, but he was never good with words so it takes longer than he hoped. Just as he opens his mouth a voice from outside interrupts.
“Attention people of the city,” the voice blares out. The voice is loud – too loud to be coming from the opposite side of the restroom door. It seemingly echoes through the streets all the way outside the diner.
Neil furrows his brow. “Wait exactly three minutes before leaving, say goodbye to someone at the counter, then head north up the sidewalk,” he instructs.
Inna gets it. She’s heard him explain the procedure for exiting the same location before. He’s had her recite it dozens of times to prove her understanding. She nods just to convince him yet again that they are on the same page. Neil kisses her forehead before slipping out the door.
Immediately Neil notices everyone in the diner is crowded near the window and staring outside. Even Slayter is on his feet, already on his way out and lumbering into the street. Neil rushes to catch up.
The two Collectors join dozens of others from the surrounding buildings, all flooding out onto the cracked pavement with their heads tilted up towards the largest digital billboard screen towering over the Downtown Sector. The screen has been hacked, transmitting a live video feed of Leon and Chelsea.
“The Agency can try whatever dirty tactic they want to try to control the flow of information, but they can never suppress us,” Leon announces. Neil and the citizens gravitate towards the transmission like insects to a light. Leon continues, “For the last decade, a virus has infected our city. Slowly spreading. Ingraining itself within our core and killing us by the masses.”
Inside Agency Headquarters, dozens of television screens display the same video feed as the Agency workers are forced to watch on. The Brigade has managed to hack every broadcast system.
“There is a name to this sickness,” Leon says on the television. “They call themselves the Collections Agency.”
Mazer sits behind his desk while the message plays on his computer. Stoic and motionless, he watches Leon crowd the camera and stare directly at the lens – directly at Mazer – his face nearly covering the entire screen.
“Bill Mazer,” Leon calls out. “You stand in front of the Board as the face of this disease. A vile leech sucking life from our great city. Now hear our message. You kill our innocent, we kill yours.” Leon rotates the camera to reveal Adrianne tied to a chair with the burlap sack over her head.
Mazer doesn’t react, though his thumb nearly subconsciously snaps his pen in half.
Adrianne’s digitized whimpers echo from the billboard’s speakers throughout the heart of Downtown.
Leon taunts her as he pets her like an animal, stroking her hair. “Do you hear that? The heartbeat of the people waking up? Do you smell that? Life percolating back in?” Leon turns and stares into the camera. “You have forty-eight hours to dismantle the Agency otherwise this woman dies. We are the true preservers. We are the Brigade.”
Leon flips a switch and the video feed disappears, replaced by the signature Uncle Sam image and Agency slogan, SPARE LIVES BY SELLING YOURS. A stunned silence fills the air until suddenly –
BOOM!
– an IED explodes at the base of the giant digital billboard. The sound of twisted metal screeches as the towering billboard careens over. Masses of bodies flee the streets away from the collapsing monument, Neil himself included as he sprints to escape the structure’s reach. He dives for cover on the opposite side of a parked car, then shields the back of his neck just as the tower crashes into the pavement, propagating a riptide of smoke, dust, and debris outwards through the streets – Neil narrowly avoiding death by just a few meters.
The screams of pain and hysteria force his eyes to open. He glances to Slayter, still on his feet having never even flinched from the blast, then to the surrounding state of chaos. He rushes to aid a nearby man whose lower torso is crushed beneath a piece of the billboard’s metal, tugging to pull him out until he realizes the man’s lower half is missing. Neil almost gags at the growing pool of blood as the man babbles in a state of shock, then grows quiet as his body goes limp.
Neil stares at the lifeless body until his PDA buzzes and jolts him to release the dead man’s hands. It’s an emergency message from Mazer, “Find them!”
Neil crosses through rising smoke in the aftermath of the blast where a sadness washes over his face. Dozens are dead, and many that are alive will soon die from their wounds. He clinches his fist, furious at the selfishness of the Brigade.
The heartbeat of the people
– nothing could be further from the truth. He agrees with Mazer’s text. He must find the Brigade.
Neil reaches the origin of the IED at the base of the collapsed billboard tower and scours for clues. Sifting through the rubble, most everything has been turned to ash except for the last remnants of a thick strand of string embedded within the metal. To most it would look like a fragment of debris caught in the blast radius, but Neil recognizes it as the remains of the fuse used to ignite the IED. As he thumbs it between his fingers, a distinct smell reaches his nose, his brow furrowing. He examines the fuse closer, noticing it is made up of clumps of dried moss braided together. He smells it again – a unique musty scent – the same he first experienced from the webbing of the Dream Catcher back in the Bayou Sector. He retrieves the pendant hidden in a cargo pocket of his uniform and compares it to the fuse – an exact match – both items forged from the same scented material Abby claimed was specific to their region and couldn’t be found elsewhere in the city, not even the Black Market.
Neil rubs the moss between his fingers as he mulls over the clue. If what Abby said is indeed true, then Neil knows he just found his best lead to the origins of the bomb – and with any luck – potentially the bombmaker.
******
Coincidence or Not
Does anyone find the shape of the Wall enclosing the city to be a little suspicious? It’s shaped like a horseshoe. Next time you see the Agency logo, tilt your head and you’ll see the C is also kinda shaped like a horseshoe. I know the Wall was built prior to the Agency, but that is some coincidence!
-Quado
19
C
helsea squats between two fallen trees, just a few of the many no longer living, the outskirts of the bayou a graveyard of parched cypress. She extracts thin fibers from the shredded bark littering the forest floor and packs it into a pail, then adds handfuls of moss to her collection, retrieving it from deep within the cracks in the ground and also between the branch limbs.
With her supplies sufficient, she returns to the ground level of the Bayou Sector – the former site of Elijah and Abby’s Collection Date party – and crosses towards a shack on the edge of the perimeter. The dwelling is separated from the rest of the communal forts built high within the trees. Isolated. Reclusive. A bearded man in overalls stops rocking in his porch chair and pretends to shift his focus to his harmonica, eyes white like he’s seen a ghost. Other residents spy from the tiered bridges connecting the upper levels above, whispering to one another as Chelsea passes below, oblivious.
Inside Chelsea’s shack is a bombmaker’s paradise where shelves of chemicals and other components used in homemade explosives line the handmade aluminum shelving.
The pail tumbles to the floor immediately as Chelsea spots Neil already inside her home waiting for her, his arms folded in confident victory as he’s finally one step ahead. Before Chelsea can blink, let alone turn to flee, Slayter blindsides her from the shadows with his shock baton, sending her reeling to the floor as the baton nearly dislocates her jaw. Slayter continues to beat her into submission until the sound of a crying baby steals his attention.
Neil works to tie Chelsea’s hands, but she goes berserk when Slayter picks up her baby from a makeshift playpen, her flailing arms clawing skin from Neil’s neck.
Slayter notices Neil’s freshly drawn blood. He sets the baby aside and returns to help secure Chelsea, yanking back both arms and slamming her face to her wooden workbench. He shoves Leon’s photo at her.
“Where is he?” Slayter demands. No answer. Slayter slides Neil a chemical bottle from the shelf, then wrenches Chelsea’s head to expose the side of her face.
“No…,” Chelsea whimpers.
“She nearly killed you once, now she drew blood again,” Slayter shouts to Neil.
Neil hesitates. Slayter pops off the cap and slams the container down, spilling liquid near her cheek. She whimpers more as the residual chemical bubbles on the wooden workbench and trickles towards her face.
“Forrest. Borders. Roberts. Benson,” Slayter lists in rapid succession, “our blood’s on her hands. She makes the explosives.”
Neil looks to the blood on his own hands, then to Slayter, his eyes ordering Neil to douse her with the chemical. Neil lifts the container and tilts it towards Chelsea’s face, his throbbing heartbeat drowning out the sounds of Chelsea’s pleas and the hysteria of the screaming baby.
Just as the bottle is about to tip over, Slayter suddenly intervenes. “Stop,” he announces. Both Neil and Chelsea are relieved until Slayter retrieves the crying baby and lays it on the workbench. “Last chance,” he threatens.
Chelsea breaks into such a panic that even a straightjacket would have trouble containing her, yet Slayter brutishly pins her in place. As she continues to withhold information, choosing to fight and squirm rather than comply, Slayter nods to Neil to proceed.
Neil squeezes his eyes shut and slowly begins to tilt the acid over the helpless infant...
A short while later, Slayter locks the rear doors to his utility truck, while Neil staggers to the passenger side. He glances over his shoulder to verify Slayter is out of sight, then uses the door for support as he leans forward and vomits.
“What did he just do?”
Half a dozen Security Enforcement Officers swarm the shack and remove the explosive materials. One SEO exits carrying the baby, unharmed. Chelsea must’ve given in before Neil went through with it, though the episode with the chemical bottle was still intense for him.
Slayter strays towards the fire pit at the center of the sector – the heart and soul of the community – while dozens of hidden eyeballs watch in fear from the forts up above. He scoops a handful of dried moss, the same moss used to help ignite Chelsea’s explosives and dips it in the few remaining red embers at the bellows of the smoldering fire pit. The moss fibers ignite like a fuse.
Neil wipes the sour residue from his mouth just as he spots Slayter through the windshield with the glowing flame in hand, addressing the hidden residents spying from above.
“This is the only place to find this, they say. Not even the Black Market has it, they say,” Slayter mocks as he waves the burning moss in the air. “You know what I say? One, seven, five, two, A – all weapons intended for use against the Agency shall be seized and destroyed.”
“Slayter!” Neil shouts as he whips open the door and stumbles out of the utility truck.