NOTICE:
This is a fragment page.
It is an internal page used by the Arstotzkan Universe Wiki, and is not meant to be read directly, but included by another. This page should be parented, see above.
THEN
— - —
Ivan Hilohiko sat in the back room of a bustling French warehouse. Through the cracks in the blinds he could see people moving to and fro; the faint breaths of their Insurgency. He thought the name was ridiculous — most of them did — but ridiculous was part of the equation. Make them believe you’re incompetent. Make them think it’s not an act. Their footprint was small, but growing steadily. Already they had raided three 909 storehouses in Africa, with another team preparing for a third. Make them think it’s not an act.
But Ivan Hilohiko sat uncomfortably. The week before, they got word that work had begun on a new facility in Italy. There wasn’t a sign on the door identifying it as a 909 site, but all the signs were there. At the same time, three new unmarked ships were seen patrolling the waters near their Somali headquarters. Reports of task forces being deployed in the United States. Dark planes over the Antarctic.
He sat uncomfortably because these were not the choked final breaths of a dying organization. Christopher Walker was dead, annihilated by the finger of God Himself. Most of the 909 research team, the senior leadership of the fledgling 909 Council, had either been killed in the ensuing chaos or defected along with Ivan and Aleksander. Many others had left their posts to join them too, for any number of ideological reasons. The Chaos Insurgency. Yet even in the midst of their greatest defeat, the Council continued on. Their operations seemed untouched.
And Ivan Hilohiko sat uncomfortably.
The telephone on his desk rang out its piercing notice, and Ivan moved to answer it. He hesitated; the phone had only ever seemed to want to bring him bad news. Another shipment lost. Council sites increasing security. More sites under construction. Everything they had sacrificed, everything he had given up, would be for nothing if the 909 Council and its efforts were not ground to a halt. The fear of failure, of the reckoning of his sins, stayed his hand for a moment.
But Ivan Hilohiko answered the phone.
“Can you hear the black wolf howl at the moon?,” said Ismael, his rough tenor barely audible across their meager connection.
“Ismael,” Ivan sighed in relief. His friend’s voice was a welcome reprieve, even in spite of its tone. “You’re well?”
“I’ve told you a thousand times,” Ismael growled over the receiver, “finish the phrase. It’s a security measure. We cannot be compromised, especially not now.”
Ivan’s heart dropped slightly. “What news?”
Ismael paused. “They’re moving to South America. The Broken God's fanatics are involved in some activity there. The Foundation is shipping out en masse.”
“How many?” Ivan felt himself ask.
“Two hundred, maybe three hundred men,” Ismael said, “and that’s not including some other staff members they’re moving in from other sites in the region. It’s a full on escalation, Ivan.”
Ivan sunk into his chair. The receiver of the phone felt heavy in his hand, and he heard a distance cackling that swept over him in waves. How could this be happening? They should be in ruins.
“Ivan?” Ismael’s voice shocked him and brought him back to reality with a start.
“Yes, yes, sorry, I just… Ismael, how is this happening? What did we do wrong?”
Ismael was quiet for a moment. “Maybe Antonina was just more resourceful than we anticipated. Look, Ivan,” he took a deep breath, “all I know is what we’re being told, and what we’re being told is that the 909 Council is mobilizing to Ecuador. We need to have boots on the ground there to try and disrupt their supply lines.”
Ivan nodded slowly to nobody but himself. “Yes… yes, you’re right. Of course. We’ll arrange transports for our agents in the region as soon as possible. Ismael,” he began to say, hesitating.
“Yes?”
“I… I think I want to go with you on this one. I want to go to Quito.”
“You… why?”
Ivan’s eyes descended to his desk. Sitting on the middle of it, tied up with red thread, was a small roll of paper. “I want to see them. I just need to see them again.”
“They’re not there. We’ve already had our agents in the area confirm that—”
“I just… just humor me, Ismael. I’ll leave Hudson in charge, he can handle things here while we’re away. I won’t be gone more than two weeks.”
Ivan could hear Ismael's discontentedness across a continent. “Fine. But you stay with me and my detachment, and you don’t get too close to whatever is happening in Santa Ana.”
Ivan agreed, and then hung up the phone.
NOW
— - —
"We're getting close." says Karl “This is it?” Sam said.
Karl consulted the journal. The location was right, so far as he could tell, but the smoking ruin they had come upon was not the mansion described in the text. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he tried to make out some features noted by the author, but was unable to. As a whole, it was an unrecognizable mess.
“Yeah,” Karl said slowly, “this is it.”
Devin squinted through the smoke that drifted towards them. “You think somebody else got here first?”
Sam grunted. “Likely not. I can’t imagine the other 909 Consulates have made it public that their contract is broken."
“One of ours, then?” the young man inquired.
Karl shook his head. “Delta was very specific. Nobody but us.”
“Well shit then, kids, ”Sam said, taking off down the rocky hill. “Let’s go have a look.”
The three of them followed the road down towards a gatehouse that set nearly a half mile off of the destroyed mansion on the mountain. Aside from the drifting smoke and debris being kicked up in the wind, there was no other movement in the entire complex. The door stood open, and they passed through. The door sat unoccupied.
“Little on the nose, don’t you think?” Devin said, examining the structure as they walked up the long drive towards it. “Evil organization boss has an evil mansion in the forest?”
Karl barked out a laugh. “You haven’t met Calvin MacLeod, then.”
“Calvin MacLeod?” Sam asked.
“909-5,” Devin replied. “He didn’t build this mansion because they wanted to intimidate people. He built it because he’s a coward.”
“You knew him?” Karl asked.
Devin hesitated for a moment. “Knew of him, sure. I’ve never met him. A reputation can follow you, though, regardless of what circles you run in.”
They carried on, though Sam studied Devin closely as they did.
— - —
The damage to the exterior of the mansion was only an appetizer compared to the feast of destruction within. Staircases were broken and inaccessible, the floor beneath them creaked and groaned and in some places gave way entirely to soot and ash. Long steel beams across the ceiling sagged from the heat, and the entire estate stunk of fire and flesh. Every so often they would pass by a corpse of some man, likely a personal guard of the Consulate, their bodies charred and their faces mutilated. Several of them were piled against the inside of a locked door. More lay flat on the ground, running from something in the rear of the building.
They descended the levels they could, until they reached a large room whose walls seemed to no longer exist. The roof above it had long since collapsed and smoke still floated out into the evening sky. There were guards in this room, too, though most of them were now superimposed against the walls, nothing more than the absence of a man where the heat couldn’t reach. They crossed the chamber, careful to avoid the corpses, the point from which the devastation seemed to have burst forth.
It was the body of a man, his body flayed open and his skin blackened. Something dull and metallic was anchored onto his exposed spine, and as they approached, they could hear a gentle whirring of spinning gears. From within his chest grew a massive, scorched, flesh covered spire that branched out in all directions towards the ceiling. Large chunks of burnt meat sat rotting around the room. Devin stooped down to study the figure.
“Yep,” he said, “that’s definitely the Consulate.”
“What the fuck happened here, then?” Devin said, incredulous.
“If I had to take a guess,” Karl said, standing back up, “I think that Karl had enjoyed the benefits of some sort of… augmentations, or magic, or… something unnatural, which were kept in check because he couldn’t die.” He glanced around the room. “Judging by how far down the fires have burned, I’d guess that a few weeks ago he suddenly found himself very mortal, and his augmentations didn’t agree with each other.” He poked the spinning gear mechanism with his foot, causing it to spin a little faster. “Yeah, definitely didn’t agree with each other.”
Sam peered down at the corpse. “That’s it, then? One more down?”
Karl nodded as he surveyed the scene. “Everything here looks more or less self-contained. I guess… yeah, I mean, I guess we’re finished here.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s going to be late soon. Let’s find somewhere to bunk down, and we’ll leave in the morning.”
“So we’re standing alone on a beach, and our evac is five minutes away,” Karl growled, his voice hushed as he gestured a spinning helicopter. “We’ve got Peacekeepers on the other side of this hill, and the rabid occultists sprinting down the beach. There’s a Council destroyer parked three miles off of the beach, you can barely see it, but we know that at any moment they could open up a railgun and turn us into a red smear on the sand.”
Devin rocked back and forth with giddy excitement. “So what did you do?”
Karl made another grand gesture. “What do you think? I unclipped my rifle and mowed them down, every last one! All fire and hot lead and fury, until the beach was empty and our evac arrived.”
The young man’s eyes were nearly bright enough to illuminate the dark room. “Holy shit dude. Why haven’t you told me this before?”
“Because it’s bullshit,” Sam said, walking into the room and setting down scavenged food from the kitchens. “What your glorious leader has failed to mention is that he had lost his gun before we ever got on the beach. He dropped it when one of the native kids threw a rock at him while we were riding down the main road about three towns away. In lieu of a Rambo-style shootout,” she said, smiling at Karl as he simmered across the room, “I glamoured us up a big sea turtle and we hid underneath it until the Peacekeepers had moved on and the occultists got bored. Then we swam out to the sandbar where our rendezvous was waiting, in a fishing boat.” She poked a finger towards Karl. “And I wouldn’t call that glorified dingy a Council destroyer. It was barely a patrol ship.”
“You know,” he said, glowering, “there’s something to be said about the victors getting to write history.”
“I know,” she said, grinning. “I just did.”
Devin laughed. “I didn’t realize you two had known each other so long. Have you worked together for a while?”
“A while!” Sam spat. “How old do you think I am?”
Devin’s foot promptly ran itself a mile down his throat, and Sam laughed again. “Yes,” she said, “it’s been a while. We first met… when? In Budapest? That would’ve been in ‘94?”
“Too long,” Karl squawked, taking a drink from a metal flask. “Ever since I had to pull her ass off the street when she was running with that group of art monkeys.”
“Excuse me,” she said, smacking the back of his hand with a wooden spoon. “Those ‘art monkeys’ were how I got my foot in the door here. The great Karl Brahms would’ve had no interest in me if I couldn’t do magic.”
“I don’t have any interest in you now,” he said, earning himself another smack.
“Hang on, magic? Like, you’re a wizard?” Devin said with renewed awe. “How do I not know this?”
“I don’t make a habit out of talking about it in public,” Sam said, stirring her soup, “but yes. Once upon a time I was The Incredible Ivory, an anartist of some renown. I worked a couple of shows in Paris and Munich before our cell got busted by Foundation thugs. We got scattered, and the Insurgency moved in to pick up the pieces.” She eyed Karl again. “In Vienna.”
He shrugged. “I’ve cleaned up plenty of the Council’s messes in my day. They all sort of run together after a while.”
As another deft smack rang through the ruined hall they had made their camp in, Devin shuffled around a corner holding a stack of books. He grunted as he tossed them to the ground in front of the group, and gave them a nudge with his foot.
“Alright. Homework time.”
Sam scowled. “We haven’t even finished dinner yet. You don’t think we have time for a single night off? We haven’t stopped in weeks.”
Devin grabbed a book off the top of the pile and settled into a large chair. “Suit yourself. But remember that the Consulates aren’t taking the night off.”
They each grudgingly picked up a book and began to flip through them. After quickly skimming a couple of pages, Devin paused.
“Jacob,” he said, “what about him? He’s been around for a while, right?”
Karl grunted a response.
“How long is that exactly?” Karl inquired.
Sam sighed. “I have the assumption that he has a distinct benefit of being the elder member of this group, by far.”
Devin scowled. “Come on. We’ve been working together for months now and I feel like I don’t know anything about him.”
Karl coughed. “Here’s a hint: it’s pretty old.”
Sam glared at him. “At his age, Karl, you don’t think so much about the things you’ve done, and start thinking more about the things you could’ve done.” She grunted. “That list is pretty long.”
“I mean, we all knew what we signed up for, right?” Devin said in between bites of a sandwich. “Our lives in service to a better world? Our lives as sacrifice in order to create a future for the rest of mankind?” He swallowed. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”
Karl elbowed Devin. “Listen kid, don’t let him get you down. We’ll probably all be curmudgeons when we get to be as old as he is. But carrying on the Engineer’s legacy, standing in opposition to-”
Sam snorted. “The Engineer. I’m sure.”
They stopped and looked at Sam, who shook her head slowly. “Feel free to call it whatever you want, but don’t mention it.”
Karl raised a single eyebrow. “You have a better way to describe keeping the torch of our founder?”
Sam closed her eyes. “The Engineer is a lie that Delta Command tells the Insurgency to keep everyone in line. ‘Do it for His Legacy,’ they say. No. Do it for your friends and family. Do it because it’s the right thing to do. But don’t do it for some asinine notion that you’re keeping up a man’s legacy.”
“What are you talking about?” Devin said.
Sam leaned back in a chair. “They’ll tell you a lot of things about The Engineer. Some of them are true. He certainly did build the Insurgency from almost nothing. He set forth many of its tenets. But he also turned traitor the moment he had a chance to grab power.”
Devin sat up quickly, and Karl glared at the old man. “What are you even talking about?” he barked. “You act like you knew the man.”
“That’s impossible,” Devin said slowly. “If you knew the Engineer, Jacob would have to be… God, a hundred years old. Older even than that.”
Sam didn’t move. “Yes,” she said, her voice a low rumble. “He was older even than that.”
Karl laughed mockingly. “Isn’t that something, then. Rail against the unnatural while dipping your hand in that same honeypot to extend your life.”
“Who knows about this?” Devin said quietly.
“Nobody.” Sam rubbed her palm against her temple. “Nobody needs to. Everytime somebody became suspicious, Jacob would disappear for a while and come back with a different name. Even then, in those times he would be gone, he wasn’t ever far away - just enough to snuff out suspicion while still doing what I could to protect our ambitions.”
Karl threw up his hands. “So let me get this straight - you expect us to believe that Jacob, someone who has anomalously extended their life past what is natural and who knows what else, you expect us to believe that he now know better than the Engineer? Everything we have here is owed to the Engineer, and the sacrifices he made. Our entire doctrine is-”
“Sacrifices?!” Sam was standing now, her face reddening. “You think he made sacrifices? He let others do the sacrificing for him. He lost nothing and gained everything he ever wanted, and we all fell for it. Well fell for it because we were idealists, Karl. We believed we could singlehandedly stand against the darkness, that our actions would make a difference. The Engineer took that idealism, used it for as long as it was useful to him, and then broke its back!”
Devin moved to speak, but Sam couldn't be deterred. "They built this Insurgency from the ground up, together, and we shared everything. He took that knowledge back to the Foundation and used it to ruin us. Hundreds were killed! Thousands! He knew everything there was to know about us, our facilities, our encampments, our storehouses. He knew it all, and he destroyed it all! We became a joke to them!"
Devin sunk back into his chair. “We set up Delta in the wake of his betrayal to be purposefully realistic. That's why the Insurgency has no real goal - the Summa Modus Operandi: 909 is the only goal, and until now it has been an unattainable one."
Her expression softened. She looked tired. "Delta doesn’t even know. It wouldn’t matter; even if they did, it benefits them to maintain the cult of personality based around him. He’s a mascot at this point, and one our organization needs desperately.”
“If what you’re saying is true,” Karl said with measured words, “then why haven’t you said anything sooner?”
They shrugged. “To what end? A chance that people believe me and lose faith in the Insurgency, or a greater chance they don’t believe me at all, like what you’re doing now. What difference would it make? Our goal is still the most important thing. Anything that would distract from that goal cannot be allowed.”
“So why are you telling us now?” Devin said softly.
Sam didn’t speak right away. She brought a single finger up to her temple and began to rub it slowly, closing one eye and looking off somewhere in the distance.
— - —
Later, after Sam and Devin had fallen asleep by their stack of burning furniture, Karl sat awake. He rolled a vial of liquid back and forth in his hand, his eyes fixed on it. The light of the fire danced across its surface, reds and yellows scattered across a field of sparkling blue. It was cool to the touch - it always had been - and holding it in his hand made him feel calm. He couldn't explain it, but there was something comforting about —
"Where did you get that, Karl."
It wasn't voiced like a question. Karl spun quickly to find a figure that closely resembles Jacob standing a few paces behind him, face only partially illuminated by the light of the moon. Karl tucked the vial into his pocket.
"You're alive, Jacob?" Karl asked, with a look of confusion on his face. "It's none of your business," he said quietly.
Jacob snorted. "For clarification, I'm am Jacob, but just in your imagination, Karl. Yes, It absolutely is my business, because last I checked there wasn't any of it left." He came forward out of the dark and took a seat on the ground next to Karl. He was whittling at a stick with a short knife. "Do you know what it is?"
Karl nodded. "It's water from the Fountain of Life."
Jacob cocked his head, peering down at the end of his stick. "That it is. I imagine you have already used another vial to help bring poor Dr. Theodore to a long-awaited grave." Karl nodded. "Yet here you are with another one. Now that is something, isn't it?"
He set the knife and stick down and leaned back against a chair, but his body fell through the chair. He sat in the sand. "When they ran the Fountain dry, there was just enough water left for twelve vials. Each of them had already drank from it and had their eternal youth assured, but these extra twelve vials were given to each of them - just in case. Last I had heard, they had all been consumed, but now you have two. I wonder whose you ended up with?" He paused. "What are you going to do with it?"
"Nothing," Karl said quickly. "Destroy it, eventually."
Jacob closed his eyes. "Good. There is nothing in that bottle but poison, take my word for it. It'll clean up your wounds and restore your youth, but the life you lead afterwards is a shallow one - an empty one. You start to lose the taste of things, the color starts to come out of the sky."
"So you really have tasted the waters," Karl said, something like incredulity betraying his words.
Jacob sighed. "Yes. When we defected, we took vials of water from the Fountain for ourselves. Not all of us, but a few. I was one of the lucky ones." He laughed. "Lucky. No, not lucky. Once I realized what it was that I had done, I spent years trying to find a way to undo it. The steps I've taken haven't brought back my taste or brightened my eyes, but they have made me start aging again. Slowly."
Karl pulled the vial back out and looked at it for a moment. When he turned back to Jacob, the man was looking at him. "Back at the burning city, before I died, I said my name was Ismael Cohen - what do you think I meant by that?" Jacob asked.
Karl shrugged. "I don't know. I'm really not." He paused. "Or— well, I don't know. When I think about losing people, the ones I'm close to or the ones who look to me for guidance… something about that makes me feel sick. And, Ismael Cohen, I think I knew who that person was other than your former name. But I don't know."
"Of course it does," Jacob said, smiling. "There's nothing wrong with being afraid of losing someone, Karl. It's the great unknown - and the fear of losing people to it has driven greater men to worse evils. Trust me, even I have succumbed to that fear before." He stopped for a moment, staring now at the edge of his knife blade. "The difference between us and the Council is that we can accept death's role in the natural order - as we can accept the natural order for what it is. The Council contains these monsters and miracles and researches them in the hopes of finding greater truths - all for the benefit of the Consulates. They claim to want to keep the power of gods out of the wrong hands, so they keep it for themselves. We deny the power of the gods at all." He clicked his tongue against his teeth. "It shouldn't exist, Karl. Not like this. Our world wasn't made to sustain it."
Jacob looked back down at the vial. "The decision is yours, Karl, but if I were you, I would destroy it and never think of it again, because I won't let you use it, and I don't want to kill you. I won't let you make the same mistake he made."
Karl didn't look up at him. "You said you've come and gone over the years - that you've used different names. Who are you?"
Jacob smiled. "For you, before I was killed, I'm Jacob Schwartz. I've been other people before, but all of those people died when I passed to the next name. The man I was when we defected hasn't been alive in decades."
"Was that meant to foreshadow your death?"
Jacob's face reddened. "Oh for fuck's sake. Don't mention that, I'm the Jacob in your imagination, Karl."
Jacob sighed. "Good luck with the next Consulate, Karl."
Karl nodded.
With that, Jacob turned over onto his side and within moments he closed his eyes. Then, he was gone. Karl persisted a while longer, until he was taken by sleep.
- BACK -
