The Apocalypse Chronicles: Wall of a Thousand Tears

By Julian Mok

3150. A world in turmoil. Wracked by the ravages of near constant warfare and natural disaster, the embattled populations of the surviving nations are clinging onto the last remnants of civilisation. The land of Echelon, once a proud and free country, has now fallen under the dark reign of a thousand presidents, each worse and more bloodthirsty than the last. Over eight hundred years they have locked their people behind the very seawalls once used to protect them against the forgotten calamities of the past, and over time all memory of life outside the walls that hem them in have faded. Countless freedom fighters have given their lives to try and free Echelons people from the tyrannical masters who set them to work building weapons of destruction with which to crush the remaining countries of the world. But President Immanuel Starks deadliest plans have finally been taken from his hands and placed into Senator Dale Marshalls. Barely, managing to escape his home with the help of special forces soldiers from around the world called Agents, he must now use that information to rally the warring and disparate factions of the world around the banner of freedom, all the while trying to stay one step ahead of Starks deadliest soldiers. Will he and the Agents be up to the task of reuniting the Earth, or will the Presidents long awaited plans finally succeed?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Sep 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477139929

Julian Mok

Julian Mok is a fourteen year old student from The King's School Parramatta, breaking out into the brave new world of writing. A member of the New South Wales Writing Centre, he is the product of perhaps one of the greatest periods in the history of prose, a time where the classics of old and the new bloods of today are mixed together in an enrapturing fusion of amazing work. With the steady guidance of his teachers and the enthralling contents of hundreds of books and the world itself as a muse, he hopes to be one day be amongst his literary heroes.

Book preview

Prologue

The truth hurts.

Never before in his lifetime had former intelligence commander Daniel Lyons thought the saying more apt.

Dusty motes and flecks of dirt drifted through the muggy smoke, blown around like crazed dervishes by graffitied vents that strained and coughed in the shroud of industrial smog. The sweltering heat of the road’s almost unbearable humidity pushed down on him, but he had experienced worse and so pushed on. Lyons kept his hands in his pockets, for he never felt secure without the heavy grip of the age-worn Sartor-11 between his callused fingers. He looked at the scene of life all around him, heart steeled. He saw the downtrodden men and women of his country, shuffling and pushing; a flow of humanity that pulsed slowly like the ebbs of a dying river.

They were all cogs in the gears of anarchy and tyranny, and the despair etched into all of their faces told Lyons warnings of what he already knew. They were the innocent pawns of greater powers, little more than tools used for work they did not comprehend.

If only they knew the grand deception before their eyes… Lyons dearly wished that he could stand on a rooftop and scream to the world what he knew, what every citizen of this harsh land had the right to know. But it wouldn’t be that simple; there were undoubtedly agents already shadowing his movements, watching and waiting for him to make a single wrong move, ready to slip a poisoned tablet into his drink or a knife between his ribs. It was infuriating; a well-spring of knowledge to impart to a barren wasteland of ignorance barred on all sides by the totalitarian and draconian walls of his old masters. A gunship marked in the cobalt and black of the Vigilants passed slowly overhead, its rotors blowing scraps of paper and debris through the streets. Watchful soldiers in dark armour sat in their gunner seats, fingers poised at triggers, waiting for anyone to break the chain of their captivity. Gloomy skyscrapers reached for the clouded and hazy skies, looming over the people who scavenged beneath them like oppressive giants. Lyons watched them for a time. Not that life was any better on the streets.

Workers, once muscled and strong, struggled through the crowds, trying to earn enough money to feed their starving children, displaying the same unbridled hate in their eyes as beaten slaves would observe their sleeping master. Malnourished children, stick-thin and ulcer-ridden, darted about the place like wolves, passing more of their number lying beaten in the rancid city gutters, too weak to even call for help. They passed through the unknowing masses, young hands reaching into pockets or bags, disappearing back into the throngs before their victims had even realised their loss. Mangy and flea-infested dogs paced and prowled around the weak and dying, howling and barking, lunging out with snapping jaws and eyeing passing men with malevolent glints in their bloody eyes. Impatient women with blurred and red-ringed eyes hurried about the place like fugitives, wary to avoid the shabby beggars that reached out for the folds of their faded dresses and pants. Drug dealers, pimps, and surgeons of questionable repute strolled down the streets protected by groups of muscled thugs, plying their seedy trade amongst those who had little left to give. They clashed with the tattooed and ferocious members of the gangs frequently, and every minute screams, gunshots, and sirens seemed to pierce the air.

Daniel strode down the busy market street, the ends of his black jacket flapping in the dusty air. Surveying the street from behind his tinted black sunglasses, he looked for his destination. After a brief scan, he found what he was searching for—a non-descript cafe with a bored-looking waitress in her early thirties lying on a sagging couch and a pair of sweat-drenched builders sitting at a battered wooden table drinking from heavy mugs of coffee. But before he even reached the cafe, a cry turned his head. A baby was bawling from his stroller, his young mother desperately trying to soothe him with a bottle of milk. As she tried to hand it to him, a careless passer-by knocked the stroller, and it fell to the detritus-littered ground. The baby’s cry intensified tenfold, and the man glared down on it, raising his boot. The woman shrieked in protest, and he whirled around, glaring with blood-shot eyes. Daniel could see the obvious influence of drug-use-syringe-scarred arms and shaking muscles. His hand tightened around the cool handle of his pistol, but with a deep breath, he released his grip. He was here to get something done, not to cause a stir amongst the people he was trying to protect.

‘What do you want?’ he growled, shaking loose her hand.

Daniel saw the scene in an instant; twenty years interrogating fanatical terrorists and crazed gunmen had given him the ability to read a man in seconds, and this man was clearly hungover and very, very aggressive.

‘Leave her alone.’ He needed no inflection; it was just a statement, albeit one laden with quiet authority.

‘And what are you going to do?’ The man’s voice was loud, and it threatened violence.

Daniel noticed that the once-bustling market was quiet, every man, woman, and child watching their tense standoff. Without turning his head, Daniel noticed six burly men stand ready to protect their friend, three of them holding notched knives. His eyes appealed for anyone to help, but there was no one, and he cursed.

‘Back off!’ someone shouted from behind them. Daniel turned, and an elderly man in a senator’s suit pushed his way through the shoppers, followed by two muscled bodyguards wielding R9 pistols levelled at the foreheads of Daniel’s opponents. The men immediately withdrew when they saw the harmless-looking man and his not-so-harmless-looking guards.

As they disappeared into the stalls, the old man placed a gloved and fragile hand on Daniel’s shoulder.

‘Daniel, my boy, you ought not to be attracting so much attention. You know how dangerous this is,’ he said seriously, gesturing for them to enter the cafe. He nodded at the waitress at the counter, and she let them into a side room, hurriedly closing the door behind them.

‘So,’ the senator said. ‘Do you have the information?’

‘Yes,’ Daniel replied, pulling a tiny data chip from his black jacket and holding it up, a beam of light revealing tiny green script running down its side. ‘I got as much as I could find—Stark’s tightening up his security, and all his operators are guarded now.’

‘Does anyone know?’

‘Of course, not,’ he replied, slightly affronted.

‘I would expect nothing less, after all; you’re one of the old hands.’

The senator nodded sagely, and Daniel once again wondered who exactly this man was. What the ageing man said was true. He had been torn screaming from his mother’s womb in the irradiated wasteland known as the Central American Wilderness, straight into the midst of a battle between his parents’ tribe and a force of Echelon soldiers. He had been taken from his father’s dying embrace and trained in the Marines for three long decades, where his supreme intelligence and uncanny knack for reading men had propelled him back to Echelon for one of the highest honours an ordinary soldier could receive, a promotion to the secretive CIA. But during his twenty years of service of tracking down hostile spies and sleeper agents, something had changed. He had seen the atrocities Stark inflicted daily on his people and the pain they experienced for his own personal gain. So he had gathered information on his own bosses for years, waiting for the day that he could finally expose their lies and treacheries. One year ago he had been discharged from the CIA, and since then he had led a vigilante surveillance career of his own, digging up dirty secrets for even dirtier cash. Lyons didn’t need the cash personally; hacking into the accounts of the rich and famous had its own perks. But the people of Echelon, his country, those poor souls staggering outside in the infernal heat, weren’t so lucky. He knew that without the donations from his job, the Mission Churches from Queens to Manhattan would have closed down long ago.

Lyons had been contacted by this man two weeks ago and asked to retrieve information from none other than his old superiors—the clandestine masters of the Echelon CIA. He hadn’t argued; the senator had paid in full and in cash. So for the last two weeks, he had been gathering intelligence on various government sources and sending them to this man.

‘The codes are all here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then our business here is done. For your work, I have a little… bonus for you.’ The senator handed him a bundle. Running his fingers over the paper surface, Daniel could tell it was a lot of money. ‘There’s some extra hazard money in that. I’m sure getting through their security wasn’t easy.’

Daniel nodded, got up, and left, giving the waitress a nod and a crumpled five dollar bill before disappearing into the ceaseless ebb of humanity.

Stephanie Evans walked into the library; the aged smell of old parchment and paper was seeping from the ancient oak bookshelves. As far as the eye could see, there were columns of bookshelves, each packed with more information than she could hope to learn in a lifetime. The librarian sitting at her desk gave Stephanie a small smile, before returning to her barcodes and her scanners. She allowed herself to wander, meandering aimlessly through the aisles, finally ending up in the history section, staring at a collection of Napoleon’s greatest conquests. As she passed those lavishly appointed, priceless books, she felt a wave of nostalgia. When she had been young, her father regularly took the family to the local library. Young Stephanie perched atop his knee whilst he regaled her with tales of the Old Wild West and the mighty empires of Greece and Rome.

Thoughts of that happier time brought an unexpected wetness to her eyes, and she silently chided herself; now was not the time to reminisce about the untouchable, forlorn past. Her eyes scanned the rows of books, finally settling on a dust-covered tome labelled America, Land of the Free. Carefully blowing the dust from its leather-bound skin, she flipped it open, trying to keep the heavy object aloft in her delicate hands. The book opened to a magnificent illustration of a coastal city, perfect and gleaming, the ideal image of paradise. White-sailed yachts and boats dotted the crystal clear waters, and flecks of white and blue marked the passage of fish and divers. Gleaming white skyscrapers reached for the sky; a mid-day sun was sending dazzling rays of bright sunlight reflecting from their polished flanks. The tiny dots that were people thronged the long roads and carefully swept paths, and Stephanie wished that she was there, walking amongst the bushes and the perfect white buildings, enjoying the sights, scents, and sounds of a perfect summer’s day. But she knew better That places like that still existed, but they were far from here. Along the more affluent areas of coastline or in the northern boroughs of New York, places like that still existed, idyllic islands of peace and prosperity set against a sea of hopelessness and gloom. There inside their walled fortresses, the rich and famous strolled through their gardens, infuriatingly oblivious to the hardships right outside their gates. It is a pity that barely a handful of Echelon’s people would ever experience such peace. Stephanie once again clamped down hard on her feelings, chiding the rebellious corner of her mind that whispered dark words in her ear. Her angry thoughts were interrupted by a tap on the shoulder. She whipped around, catching the smell of sweat and excrement, her delicate nose wrinkling slightly.

Beside her was a tall and wiry man, his body thin yet not malnourished, like the many hired guns and mercenaries who frequented the more dangerous parts of town. Dressed in a long filth-stained trench coat and faded jeans, hands clad in dark grey gloves that were stained with dirt and dried blood, his appearance set off warning bells in Stephanie’s head. Hair hung loosely from his grimy face, partially obscuring his features and reaching down to his ragged collar. Unkempt stubble covered his mouth, and a long beard reached down his chin, tiny flecks of bread caught within that dark mass. As terrifying as his appearance was, Stephanie remained calm; yet she was surprised by the man’s eyes. Most of the homeless people she had come across in her twenty-four years had possessed the eyes of a lunatic, bloodshot and wide open like the gates of hell themselves. But this man’s blue eyes were calm and clear, penetrating like a lowered lance and entirely at odds with his terrifying attire.

‘Excuse me, maa’m,’ voice hoarse like the gravel of the road outside her home. ‘Are you Stephanie Evans? I’ve seen you on TV.’

Stephanie stared at him in shock. She was a journalist for Afel News, one of the largest media companies in the land.

‘Do you really want to know about Old America?’

She nodded slowly, pondering. ‘Yes.’

‘Then that book is not the place to start,’ he laughed harshly, emphasising the word book with a sneer. ‘None of these books are.’

She looked at him, wondering whether she had misjudged the senility of this man.

‘You’re a journalist right? You want the truth behind things?’ he asked, blue eyes imploring her with that same calming reassurance. ‘I have things you will want to look at.’

She followed him out of the library, ignoring the librarian’s stone-cold stare. They hurried down the footpath, weaving through the morning traffic. It wasn’t hard, even at this time on a Monday morning. Now and then, a policeman would stare them down, but Stephanie took a small measure of satisfaction every time she met their gaze with an even glare of her own, normally reserved for the sweating, shaking business tycoons she made a living interviewing. They entered a dark alleyway, passing blind and lame men and women lying on rags and newspapers, filling the air with their cries for help and salvation. A filthy dog snapped at them, but her companion strode past it, continuing onwards towards an age-stained dumpster.

The man heaved the object aside as if it weighed nothing, reaching a heavy steel door concealed behind it. Stephanie again wondered exactly who this man really was. Producing a key from his coat, he unlocked the door and led her inside to a small room, which had probably once been a laundry. A threadbare rug was draped across the floor, and a small bed pressed up against the far wall, a stove, battered microwave, and stained table were the only other features of the room. But before she could speak, the man pushed the bed to one side and pulled away the rug, lifting a pair of planks to reveal a grated trapdoor.

‘Where does this lead?’ she asked, apprehensive yet regaining some of her courage.

‘Down,’ was all he said, opening the trapdoor with one glove. He leapt catlike into the waiting darkness, landing with a thump somewhere below. Stephanie paused. What if this man was standing in the dark below, knife in hand? What if she had made a terrible mistake? Her heart pounded against her ribs, yet she remembered what her old mentor Nicky Levrin had told her on her first day as a reporter—‘Stephanie, if you don’t take risks, you will never learn anything useful. Take a chance and see the world as it truly is.’

With that, she steeled her body and leapt down the hole.

She landed in an earth-lined tunnel, seeing the man at the other end of the tunnel at a tiny hatch, beckoning for her to come. She followed him down the tunnel and shimmied through the hatch.

She had walked into a huge white room, one entire wall plastered with hundreds of posters and newspaper clippings. Lines of tiny writing or pictures covered every available surface; men and women of all races were clustering at the wall’s base in huddled groups.

‘You want to know about the true America?’ he asked, making a dramatic flourish. ‘This wall has more information on it than every single history book about our country.’

She walked stupefied to the wall, mind reeling with numbers, dates, and classified information, trying to understand their significance—partly assembled spaceships, hundreds of men and women working industriously like tiny ants at their half-built mechanical innards, dwarfed by their gigantic creations, flanked by thousands of planes and tanks frozen in place on kilometre-long manufacturing lines, and battalions of armed soldiers, embarking gargantuan transports that were longer than several football fields combined.

‘My dear,’ the man said, taking off his trench coat and handing it to a nearby man. ‘Everything you have been told is a lie. You might want to take a seat.’

Chapter 1

Dale Marshall picked up the buzzing phone, wiping the sleep from his eyes. He looked at the clock on a nearby mantelpiece, its neon green numbers lighting the room with a faint glow—10.04.

‘Hello?’

‘Listen to me very carefully.’ The voice was low and hushed, tinged with fear. ‘I need you to trust me. Go to your computer and download the files I have sent you—they are of the utmost importance. Are you alone?’

Dale looked around the empty living room; the only noises he could hear were the sound of cars passing by his house and the faint noises of his wife as she slept in their bedroom.

‘Yes.’

‘Log onto your government email and download the files from your newest message into your cortex.’

With two clicks, the message’s vast entire contents were being downloaded directly onto the tiny yet powerful memory chip implanted in his frontal lobe. Most senators and government officials had one of the devices attached to their brain, making the memorisation of even the longest documents surprisingly simple work. And it lets that sneaky son of a bitch keep track of us, he thought darkly.

‘Twelve hours?’ he asked incredulously, calculating in his mind exactly how long that would be. Tomorrow he was due to attend a conference in Cuba with a score of other low-grade senators, all fighting for a few mid-tier positions in next month’s election. He knew he was the front runner for at least one good position, and he was determined not to miss this opportunity.

As if the mysterious caller had read his mind, he spoke again.

‘It should be done before 10.30. If you leave on time, at say 11 a.m. Then you will have plenty of time for your flight at 12.’

‘What then?’

‘The instant these files download, you must leave the house—I will have a car waiting for you throughout the night if anything goes wrong. The driver will take you to the airport to enable you to board your plane for Cuba. On arrival, an escort will ensure your safety. Once you reach the base, find Commander Steele and give him the files. You may not understand the importance this intelligence holds, but believe me the fates of many innocent Americans lie on your shoulders right now. Any questions?’

‘Why me?’ he replied, falling down onto a couch, speculating exactly what was in that email. He didn’t recognise the voice, and if the man was an official, surely he would have announced himself. Maybe this was a test to see if he was worthy of promotion?

‘Who are you?’

‘For your own safety and mine, I cannot disclose that to you at this point in time. But when you hand this over to Steele, all will be revealed. People have died for this information, honest hard-working men and women who want the truth to be laid bare. I fear that I will join them soon, and if you do not follow my instructions, then you will join them.’

‘But what about—’

‘The longer you are talking to me, the greater chance there is that they will find you and me.’

‘Who?’

‘President Stark.’

‘We got a location on Senator Radcliffe, sir.’ The voice of the intelligence operator was timid, mainly due to the seven imposing men standing behind him.

‘Where?’ asked the shortest of the group. He wore an immaculate black suit and a white shirt with a black tie. To most, he was a calculating and callous man, his prestigious intellect only matched by his cold-hearted cruelty. To others, he possessed the true determination and grit needed to lead a country through a time of war and hardship. To all, he was President Immanuel Stark.

The second man wore golden armour, a tailor-made suit of intricate design, which had been forged from the jewellery of his victims. Beautifully hand-crafted weapons hung from a sturdy harness around his body, each a memento of past battles. He was known only as Darius, and he was a phenomenal fighter, able to master any weapon as evidenced by the panoply of items hanging from his frame.

The third was huge, a well-built man in armour bastardised from a dozen different sources. A tattered robe flowed from between his armour, the only remnant of his past life as a monk in the mutant haunted Rockies. He had burnt down that monastery after Stark had recruited him, slaughtering every single one of his fellows and burning their bodies on a pyre made from centuries of priceless knowledge. He knew every type of martial arts practised on the earth’s surface and dozens more long since lost to time. The only tool he had ever used as a boy had been an ancient scythe, its edge imbued with strange properties long lost in the past and handed down from generation to generation. That scythe was now strapped to his back, and it had been a long time since it had tasted anything but blood. He was called Zealot, but Stark knew that his only passion lay in sheer bloodshed.

The next two were more normal than their strange companions. General Douglas Kane was Stark’s most trusted commander in the Echelon military, and although he didn’t hold the title of Supreme General, the true power of the army lay within his bionic grip. He had the stance of a veteran, easy, and carefree on the outside, a bloody killer on the inside. Of all of the terrifying men assembled, an unwary assassin might consider Kane to have been the easiest to kill, but beneath the polite, cultured veil shown during times of peace lay a black-hearted soul, as sharp and as dark as obsidian, begrimed by the blood of countless innocents and tempered by the callous, calculating decisions of a hundred battles.

The man standing beside him was bulky and bellicose, a former boxer who had thrown in the towel for a life serving as Stark’s chief of security. If Kane was the knife, the sharp mind formulating the necessary choices for success, he was a hammer, employed to reach that goal through any means possible. Robin Crestwood was a man few others could match in a hand-to-hand fight and even fewer could outshoot in a pistol duel, apparent from the gold-coated, perfectly balanced Mastershot .55 pistols holstered at his hip.

The shadowy figure slouching against the wall behind them looked human, and to anything but a complete biological scan, he was just that, the finest bio-technicians and plastic surgeons having created an almost life-like body for the cyborg assassin known only as Bullseye. He seemingly flickered in and out of existence, the subtle camouflage projectors built into his torso rendering him invisible to the naked eye. Kane fixed him with a glare powerful enough to melt an iceberg at the ceaseless flickering, but Bullseye ignored the general, subconsciously flicking his finger weapons in and out.

The next man stood out, not only by his stature but by his craft. Ghast was huge, towering a full two feet over Zealot and nearly twice as wide. He was once an underworld enforcer and weightlifter who had sold his soul to darker powers for unending strength and stamina and had received the use of malign sorcery to ensure his loyalty. He had changed his original two-hundred kilo weight into a mace, hammering spikes of jagged metal into its head with his bare hands and rendering it as an insanely powerful weapon. Stark had seen him break open nuclear bunkers with that weapon, and of his allies, he feared Ghast the most, for he controlled the unnatural and the uncanny. Ghast could summon fireballs and lightning into existence, will a storm into reality, turn into shadows, or drain the blood from a man’s body with the twitch of a finger. He drew mutants and more sinister beings to him like moths to a lamp, and Stark was always careful to keep him appeased lest Ghast unleash his never-ending tides of maddened creatures upon his country.

They were Stark’s closest ‘friends’ and bodyguards, and their combined strength had been enough to protect him for one hundred long years.

‘Scanning now, he’s somewhere in the outer suburbs with a disposable network.’

‘Why do you give them their own houses?’ asked Kane. ‘You give them that much freedom, and they will thirst for even more.’

‘Do you really think that any of these senile dogs would risk their lives for the sake of enrichment?’ replied Bullseye tersely, perfectly mimicking the general’s voice.

‘Shut up,’ Stark growled. ‘I want a SWAT team at his location ten minutes ago.’

‘He’s on the phone,’ noted Bullseye. ‘Tracking—he’s calling Senator Dale Marshall. Democrat Member for Manhattan, thirty years old.’

‘Isn’t he one of the ones earmarked for promotion at that Cuban conference coming up?’ asked Kane.

‘I don’t care if he’s the bloody vice president,’ Stark growled, voice husky. ‘If Radcliffe is talking to him, then he is passing on the information. We have already missed four opportunities at taking him out, and if Marshall gets to Cuba, then he can vanish off the radar. You all know how valuable that information is.’

‘Who do we send? Too big and we might start something with the privateers. Too small and they might get picked off by the gangs.’

‘I doubt this Marshall fellow has the gangs or the mercenaries on his side,’ scoffed Darius. ‘He’s got a pregnant wife, and he doesn’t have as much as a parking ticket on his record. Radcliffe’s setting him up because he knows we’re onto him.’

‘Just send the Black Suns to wipe out the entire block and blame it on a blood feud between them and the Sabres,’ Kane proffered. ‘Either that or we risk losing him for good.’

‘We’ve worked on it for too long for it to be lost,’ agreed Zealot. ‘But I don’t like the idea of having all that paperwork on our hands, considering the amount of bad coverage we’ll get. There’s only so much we can take before something snaps with the people. I suggest we shut down his house’s communications and then send a team from First Recon—they’ll get in and get the job done. And in the unlikely possibility that he escapes, I want someone ready to get him at Cuba.’

‘I’ll handle Cuba,’ Darius nodded. ‘I have contacts there, and our… darker comrades are eager to spill blood.’ He nodded at Ghast, who scoffed and looked away.

‘What about others who know about our plans? Radcliffe and his friends are surely not the only ones who know about this—I have already killed six Coalition and Consortium spies in the past week!’ Kane handed Stark a sheaf of papers marked with the deceased spies’ intelligence.

‘It’s time to clean house—I want every single person who knows about this dead by sunset.’

‘It will be done.’

Chapter 2

The shadows darted across the treeline, flickering from twisted eave to dark-cloaked bough like ghosts. The spotlights mounted on the compound walls swept from side to side like pendulums, searching for enemies they couldn’t see. Far from the thick walls and heavy weapons of the main complex Delta 12, the outermost guard post lay in deep shadow.

Within its thick walls, Private Myles stood up and looked out of the window wistfully.

‘Wish HQ would get us some proper food. Just looking at it makes my stomach sick. Eating it, that’s even worse. I’m going out to get some fresh air.’

With that, Myles stumbled out of the room, clutching his stomach. Sergeant Anton smiled ruefully, pulling his box of Lebanese take-away from beneath his desk. He began to eat, the hot food filling his hungry stomach. As he ate, he glanced out of the post’s windows. The forests were unusually silent; the normal howls and screams of its inhabitants were absent tonight. He blinked as he thought he saw a shadowy figure standing in the eaves of a tall oak, surveying the compound, hand wreathed in blue fire. Anton turned to his command station and turned one of the spotlights onto the oak, but as the light turned, the shadow vanished, leaving just the rustling of leaves and the swaying of branches. He reached behind him and pulled out his combat shotgun, walking slowly out of the post. A sharp crack to the other side of the building made him jump, and with shaking fingers, he turned on his flashlight.

He barely stifled a scream as he saw the body of Private Myles hanging from the roof of the building, swaying slowly in the light breeze. Blood dripped from a row of barbed splinters embedded in his neck, and in the light, his dead eyes gazed blankly at a horror, only he could see, mouth locked into a rictus scream.

It took all his training to hold back the bile in his stomach, whilst cocking a magazine into his shotgun. He turned to walk back into the guard post and froze. A shadow materialised in the threshold of the building, a beast from a man’s worst nightmares. Sapphire eyes glowed beneath a tattered hood, and a series of eerily green runes glowed on its flayed chest. The arms of the monster ended in blue balefire, and in one hand, it held a long, bloodstained falcata.

Blood dripped from its flayed and notched skin, leaving splatters across the cement, yet he knew those wounds were not the result of Myles’ final moments. He crawled backwards as the blade passed over his head, and he felt a wave of cold air freeze his muscles. He bumped into another of the creatures and shuddered as goose bumps erupted across his skin. He tried to fire his shotgun, but with blinding speed, a blade sliced his gun neatly in two.

He screamed as he felt excruciating pain running through his body, seeing his cut-off hand lying in a pool of his own blood. He gazed at it numbly for a second, before remembering the horrors standing before him.

One of the demons leaned forwards, and Anton recoiled in utter terror as he saw its soulless green eyes penetrating his soul. He struggled to get away as one raised its weapon, before arms like titanium locked him into place. A cry for help withered and died in his throat, his lungs clenching as an unnatural chill spread through his body. As the blade clove his heart, he screamed as his soul was devoured.

Death, demons, creatures of shadow and flame, blades of steel that dripped gore and bestial roars from the darkness, and a single face, appearing again and again—Shadrak Mir woke from his nightmare, his body covered in a sheen of sweat. He lowered his heartbeat and took a sip of the cool water at his bedside, his mind replaying the nightmares like a broken projector. The same monsters, the same person—Senator Dale Marshall.

Despite his research, Shadrak knew little about Marshall. He knew that Marshall lived in a small apartment in New York, sharing a room with his wife. He knew that Marshall had demonstrated ‘initiative in the workplace’ and as a ‘reward’ was being sent to a fort in Cuba for a political conference. Yet the dreams had warned him about something terrible lurking in the forests of Cuba. His mind grew suddenly weary. Dreams!

He remembered fourth grade at some municipality backwater, where his abilities had first bloomed. Shadrak remembered telling Debbie, a girl at his school, that someone she knew was going to die that day. She had hit him and fled screaming straight onto the road outside their school. He remembered how hard he had gouged at his flesh when the next day they held a funeral service for her, and looking at his arms, he could still see faint patches of skin where he had gouged furiously at them.

He had vowed never to tell anyone about his dreams, watching helplessly as his predictions came true. A pig iron axe, the day before he had come home to find his mother and her knitting friend hacked apart with vicious brutality, their blood covering the peeling wallpaper of the lounge-room like a coat of new paint. A pair of pistols emerging from a bloody spray, hours before his next door neighbours were shot by two masked gunmen.

Even when he had fought against the skeins of destiny, fate had always cruelly intervened, placing a suitable obstacle between him and the poor soul. An image unbidden came to his mind of Larry Tate, a middle-aged clerk who Shadrak had dreamed of in a vision of a dark tunnel and thousands of shards of blood-stained glass. He remembered trying to call out to Larry as he boarded the train, but a fallen trolley blocked his way for bare seconds. But it had been enough, and he had arrived at the platform just to see the doors slide shut with ominous finality.

Two minutes later, the subway train had exploded, consuming Larry and hundreds of early morning workers in a fiery conflagration.

Eventually, he had hidden himself away from the rest of society, tired of seeing people die and being helpless to do anything other than watch. He survived by occasionally entering the phone lottery, perhaps a hundred dollars a week just to purchase food and water. He left the big bucks for some other person needier and more deserving than him to win. Their lives were often too short for him to take some of their deserved pleasures.

He had sworn that he would never again tell anyone of their fate, but this time, it was different. He got the feeling from his dream that if he let this moment pass, something bad would happen. He smiled as he put on his dusty fedora onto his balding grey hair; for the first time in a year, he was going out.

Crack!

Dale was up in an instant, rolling off the bed and drawing his standard issue RI-2 pistol that every senator kept at their bedside. Through their solitary bedroom window, the faint strains of grey early morning New York light filtered in, whilst outside the first sounds of morning traffic were already drifting through the air. The front door burst open in an explosion of shattered wood and metal. Looking down at the entrance room, he could see five men in dark black body armour pace through the ruins of his door, their red laser sights swinging methodically across the darkened room.

Their point man had an axe strapped to his thigh and a pistol in each hand, and a shotgun-wielding soldier stood behind him. Stepping quietly, trying not to attract any attention, he crept along the balcony outside his door, making for his computer room. Pushing the door open, he saw two of the black-clad men stalk into the kitchen, efficiently covering each other’s blind spots whilst the other three went into the lounge room. Checking the files, he just barely managed to suppress a groan of frustration. It had frozen half way through and still had an agonisingly long forty three percent to go.

He mentally wracked his brain, trying to find a workaround to the files, but with a silent curse, he was met by a flashing download bar, mocking him with its luminous sneer. Dale looked at the clock, just as he heard the men finish clearing the ground floor and beginning to ascend the stairs towards him—10.21. That meant the caller’s car was parked outside his house, and if he could get outside without being seen, then he would be safe. Switching off the wireless link he was hit by a wave of guilt—Jenna. His wife was sleeping soundly in their bed, their unborn child still slumbering away within her womb. If he left, then they would be alone, but if he stayed, then they would all be dead…

The door slammed open, and two men entered, their high-tech guns immediately focusing on his face. He noticed they were high-tech MP-10 submachine guns, equipped with 50-round magazines, laser sights, silencers, and even Helix rounds, judging from the tiny bullet symbol inscribed on their sides. The men were wearing gear to match their weapons—lightweight and jet black carbon weave body armour, with inbuilt cloaking devices—and a dazzling array of equipment slung about their bodies, complimented by graceful and silent Jaguar boots and most impressively of all revolutionary Nano-Optic battle helmets.

When connected with a user’s body armour, it would project images to its wearer, things like wind speed, unit locations, battlefield updates, and also interface with weapons systems, allowing the soldier to maintain accurate fire even in the worst conditions. He knew instantly from their equipment, they could only be members of the First Recon, the best soldiers in all of Echelon, the bodyguards of the White House and the personal hounds of the president.

He stumbled backwards, tripping over a chair and landing hard on his back, just managing to put his USB into a pocket before one of the soldiers pulled him to his feet, delivering a spectacular uppercut to his guts.

‘Are you Senator Marshall?’ hissed the man, his helmet’s blue overlay making it hard for Dale to see his eyes.

‘Yes,’ he gasped, squirming in the man’s vice-like grip.

‘Good.’ The soldier threw him out of the room, and Dale rolled down the stairs, coming to rest on the landing with the five men above him, one of them holding his screaming wife by the hair.

‘Make a move, and she dies,’ spat the Recon man, holding his Desert Eagle pistol squarely above Jenna’s ear.

Blam!

The men went low as soon as they saw a bullet impact in the wall, giving Dale a chance to get up and make a run for the door. Behind him, the soldiers reacted instantly, two of them firing seamlessly at the door and the other three rushing forwards. Marshall looked up to see a young man in a jumper and jeans standing at the doorway, firing an old pistol haphazardly at the First Recon men.

‘Go!’ he shouted, turning to follow Marshall down the garden path. He never made it; the deadly accurate fire of the assassins dropped him before he had made two steps. He convulsed and died on the spot; his heart punctured and bloody froth poured from his lips. Dale kept on running, seeing a yellow taxi already up and running right outside the front gate. A man was in the front seat, waving at him and shouting ‘Get in!’

A second man was in the back seat, firing an energy-modified G-40 assault rifle; its energised payload hit one of the First Recon soldier in his calf. He stumbled but didn’t fall; he fired his Mp-10 from the hip while he expertly applied a dark gauze bandage to his leg. The energy bolt had punched straight through his leg and cauterised the wound, but the expensive bandage would begin to reknit and heal the seared skin.

Such was the miracles of modern science. He made it into the car, diving into the