“When the Devil seeks his prey,
He does not give chase.”
- Wisdom of the Vigils
Rocking slightly, a transport rattled out through Harrisburg's southern gates. Sentry guns posted at the top of the walls tracked its movement slowly as it left, following it until it had reached the other side of a pontoon bridge, constructed over Susquehanna River during the Hanean war.
The city functioned well enough, having only sustained light damage from misguided shots. Philadelphia, by contrast, had sustained a much more focused, brutal pounding. Many of its proud buildings had been crushed to street level. Many of its inhabitants were crushed also.
Those who managed to leave resettled in a few of the other large cities, only to face yet another onslaught as Scranton and then Erie and then Pittsburgh came under fire.
Harrisburg's defenses were reinforced as more and more refugees came to depend upon it for shelter, and, more than a decade after the bombs had stopped falling, they remained, keeping the city safe and its people secure.
The transport left the pontoon and rumbled on, leaving the range of the turrets. It continued along quickly, rolling past rows of houses, swerving every now and then to negotiate another vehicle, but never stopping. Locals poked their inquisitive noses out from dirty windows to watch as it went.
Anything that came out from the city gates was of interest. Like a pretty carriage drawn by a horse, the locals watched on entranced, making up their minds as to the contents.
Not that any would dare attack, not unless it was imperative. Any weapons outside the city were rudimentary at best and all ammunition was conserved to fend off roving bands of rags or other unsavories.
As it continued on, hour after hour, the number of locals thinned. Houses became more sparse and ruined. Whole streets had been scavenged clean and razed to the ground or burnt in an uncontrolled fire.
Wild animals scuttled about through the ruins, looking for any morsel to fill their mouths.
A muttrat, busy chewing on a gristly bone, did not move out of the way fast enough and was crushed by the truck's tires. Its body was found and consumed within minutes by other foul beasts.
This was the wastes, a vast expanse of scorched earth tortured by radiation, toxins and mutagens.
All across the globe, from India to Istanbul, it appeared the same: brown-gray and hostile.
Cities, suburbs, parks and towns, monuments built to stand tall and proud, all had been reduced to jagged obstacles. Roads were pitted with holes, broken and cracked, the truck's oversized tires struggled to find a purchase.
It was twilight now. The truck left the main road and roared off down a dirt track toward a pile of boulders that hid a dirty, little barn.
The door creaked open as it approached. Inside a security camera blinked steadily as a plasma sentry gun tracked the transport inside.
The doors closed, yellow lights lit the room and a red strobe began to pulse. The earth groaned a little, and the truck began to sink through the floor.
The Vigils were masters of disguise. Most of the time they hid in plain sight, opting for anonymity within a crowd over sneaking and hiding. People have a tendency to pay attention to that which is different, beautiful, or clever. The Vigils ensured that they seemed uninteresting, plain and worthless.
The truck, for example, was neither a new model, nor too noisy or beaten. It had just the right amount of muck on it, with cracked yellow paint and a worn out sign for a business no one would want and phone number that did not exist.
The driver wore faded blue overalls, clearly just another boring worker with a boring delivery to a boring location on the other side of the wastes.
The shack was no different. Anyone who had made it out to that portion of the wasteland would need a reason to go there, and even if they had found the shack they would have found nothing inside but dust, cobwebs and some broken shelves.
If they managed to probe further, deliberately or otherwise, they would have met their end in a hail of searing plasma.
It served as a secure entrance to one of the Vigil's underground facilities and it was to here that Ryan was being transported to be cleansed in the process of Sanitation.
The platform slowed and stopped its descent inside a room carved out of the Earth, reinforced with giant steel braces. A Vigil, Brother Petroclus, came out from a solid, black door flanked by two guards. He approached the truck to talk to the driver.
“Brother Farnham, it is good to see you,” he said, offering his hand.
“And you, Brother Petroclus!”
“How was your drive?”
“Uneventful. Here, I come bearing a gift,” replied the driver.
He produced a book, red in color, from his overalls and handed it to Brother Petroclus.
“Ah! My sincerest thanks, Brother! Wherever did you find it?”
“Believe it or not, I had to appropriate it from Brother Holland! He pretended he did not know of its existence, and so by that reasoning I determined that, if he knew not of it, he would not mind its departure!” laughed Brother Farnham, showing his palms.
Brother Petroclus looked the book over and put it away into his jersey.
“Once again I thank you. I am sure that this... Oh, Brother Marcus? What are you doing here?”
Brother Marcus, his hair slicked down, sauntered out from the passenger seat.
“Hello, Brother Petroclus, old chum! I came to keep Brother Farnham company on his long drive,” he said cheerfully, “And to see that his payload gets the treatment.”
“This is most irregular, Brother Marcus. I was not informed of you being here, or that you would be overseeing the treatment. Was this sanctioned?”
He replied, “I will not be responsible for his treatment, I am only here as an observer. Besides, Master Jacob held no objection.”
“That is not the same thing. Well, anyway, to the more serious matter. I have been in contact with Harrisburg, and they have informed me that this one has a particularly unclean mind,” said Brother Petroclus, wringing his hands, “His room has been prepared. Brother Justin, Brother Aaron, please escort our guest.”
The two guards, armored in dull gray, walked to the back of the truck and entered the code. The doors squeaked as they swung back, revealing Ryan, his dark eyes smoldering, glaring back at them.
“Out,” ordered Brother Aaron.
Ryan clumsily got to his feet. His legs were sore having been rocked about in the back of the transport for so long.
He stepped out and squinted in the light of flood lamps.
Brother Aaron pushed his arm, “Move.”
Brother Petroclus walked ahead of them, opening the security door and chatting to Brother Farnham. Brother Marcus followed from behind. Inside was well lit and at a comfortable temperature. A maintenance robot whizzed past them to quickly inspect and service the truck.
Ryan was led into a room with white walls and a bench. It reeked of bleach. The door slammed behind him. The sound of the lock sliding into place echoed for half a second.
“Strip,” came Brother Aaron's voice through a speaker.
Ryan did so methodically, placing his plain clothes in a neat pile on the floor. When he had finished, he stood facing the door. Blasts of cold disinfectant and disirradiant sprayed his body from nozzles protruding from the floor and walls.
His skin broke out into goose pimples, and he started to shiver.
The blasts stopped, the door opened. Brother Aaron was waiting on the other side, holding a gown.
“Dress,” he said.
Brother Aaron certainly had a way with words. Ryan took the gown and slipped it over his head, tying the knot at the back and feeling at least a little warmer after the disinfection process.
“Drink,” said Brother Aaron, holding out a small cup of clear liquid.
He hesitated and smelled it first. It seemed innocuous enough, smelling somewhere between apples and liquorice.
Brother Aaron, not content with Ryan's reluctance, brought his hand close to Ryan's neck. Embedded in his leather gauntlet was a strong magnet. The collar began to twist.
Ryan gasped. Brother Aaron held his hand close for a few seconds, before taking it away, allowing Ryan to get an understanding of exactly who was in charge.
The collar eased and Ryan gulp air down noisily.
Not wishing to offend any further, he tossed the liquid into his mouth. It tasted like flat cider and went down easily.
“My, that was pleasant, Brother. Your hospitality knows no bounds. May I have another?” he joked.
“No,” said Brother Aaron, leading Ryan over to a basin.
“What now?” asked Ryan sarcastically, panting slightly, the collar still unwinding.
Brother Aaron looked at him dead pan.
“Wait,” he said.
Ryan waited. Brother Aaron stood by him, expectantly.
After a short while he made to speak again. Involuntarily he convulsed, clutching his stomach. Brother Aaron supported him over the basin as his stomach violently emptied its contents again and again.
It was over after a minute.
Ryan wiped his mouth with a towel and glared at his captor, his hatred swelling like a blister within him. His stomach continued to wiggle in little bursts inside, making him burp.
“Walk,” said Brother Aaron, pushing Ryan into yet another room.
It was another white room, clean and dry with a drain at the center. A shower head jutted from one wall, a toilet was affixed to another. Brother Aaron left the room, locking the door firmly behind him.
The toilet beckoned. Whatever it was that Ryan drank was working its way through his bowels at an alarming speed.
***
Brother Petroclus flipped through the pages of his book, a translation of Homer's 'The Odyssey'. It was liberating to thumb pages made of paper. The synthetic feel of an e-reader was just not the same, no matter what the advertisements said.
He had been tense since Ryan had come into his custody. He had put the brethren on full alert under orders from Master Theodore himself, before and during his tenure. What they were on guard for, he was not told, only that the unclean one, Ryan, may attempt an escape.
An hour later his eyelids began to meet more often. He closed the book, put it on the desk and sighed.
He had come to be a Vigil as a teenager, trained and served loyally. It was not as if he had sought after such a life, it sort of just found him. As a typical youngster, he would hang out with his friends, watch television and surf the internet.
Then contention about some island or atoll called Midway seemed to dominate the headlines and chat rooms. He was old enough to understand the politics, but too young to care.
That was until the media started talking about treaties, and defenses, and invasion.
He had spent a lot of time watching images of the Hanean war, how it ravaged lands, buried cities in clouds of glowing dust.
He watched as headlines screamed about deaths, about 'Terrorists' and about 'Peace Processes'.
Numbers jumbled into other numbers, statistics jostled for position. After a while it all blended into a fuzzy noise of tabloids and sensation.
The scene moved from the atoll, the archipelagos, to Hawaii. At unbelievable speed, the floodgates opened and fire flew across the Pacific and landed firmly upon American soil.
The first mainland city was San Francisco, its fantastic lights disappearing under a haze of fire and dust.
Like a wildfire, the face of war menaced its way across the mainland, rendering to ashes town after town, city after city.
Breaches in security meant that missiles were launched against both coasts unimpeded. New York fared terribly, its population massacred like so many ants.
And still the tabloids came, and still the numbers rang out.
Missiles were launched in retaliation, decimating strong points in China, Pakistan and Korea, along with tactical bombing raids. They were surgical in their precision, knocking out missile silos, airfields, aircraft carriers and bunkers.
But as fast as they were knocked out they were replaced by a seemingly endless supply of people, machines and weapons of war.
And with each new raid, more and more suburbs, towns and cities were demolished.
A steady stream of people came through his home town of Apple Valley, Minnesota, carrying injured family.
Many retained severed body parts in the insane hope of reaching a hospital that could sew them back on. Days were filled with screams and cries, a constant wailing that would fill even a banshee's heart with woe.
Petroclus remembered it well. His innocent heart broke as woman after man after child died despite his efforts.
Though the numbers were overwhelming and many of his townsfolk up and left from horror, fear or exhaustion, Petroclus, his mother and his friend Drewen, continued to tend to the sick and dying.
It was during this time that Drewen introduced Petroclus to a strange man he had met. He did not have the same manic, dirty face as the refugees, but one of soft melancholy.
“Hello young man,” he had said, “I have been watching yourself and young Drewen here tending to the sick. Why, I ask? Why not just leave and head to Minneapolis where it is safer?”
“Then you don't understand. These people are hurt, and we've got to help them. They are coming because their homes have been destroyed. Just look around you!” he had said.
“Do you know any of them?”
“What's to know,” he had replied, “They're people, aren't they?”
“That is a noble thing to say, young man. You want to help people, even those you do not know. But listen, if you really want to help people, then come with me.”
That was so long ago but the words were etched into Brother Petroclus' memory.
That was Brother Warren, and he was to be Petroclus' and Drewen's mentor. He was an excellent role model, showing them the fine arts of the Vigils.
Balance instead of extremes, influence rather than direct action, anonymity rather than fame. Above all, he would always act in the interests of humanity as a whole, not for individuals, nor for himself.
That was long ago, and this was now. He needed to get his sleep to be prepared for the terrible process of sanitation the next day. He prepared himself for bed in his small bedroom, ready to turn out the light, when an alarm sounded.
Cursing quietly he hastily donned his robe and walked briskly to the interphone. He called up the guard house.
“Brother Frederick, what is going on?”
Brother Frederick, the Brother on guard duty that night, was quick to answer, “It is the unclean one, sir. He insists that he has taken ill.”
“Blast it! I will be right there!”
Petroclus made his way out to the cells, joining Brothers Frederick and Aaron. The trio went to Ryan's cell where he lay on the ground, clutching his stomach and moaning loudly.
At the sound of their approach he looked up. His face was white.
“Get up, boy. You have been purged and checked thoroughly.”
Ryan grimaced.
“It hurts! It hurts!” he panted, “What have you done to me?”
“Nothing that can cause you pain.”
“Oh, but it burns! It has not stopped burning since the shower. It has only gotten worse, ow!”
“Really, Ryan, that is quite pathetic. Now get back to bed and stop this charade.”
He had seen every trick, from subjects plucking hair from their head and claiming that they were going bald, to punching themselves in the stomach until they bruised to make it look like internal hemorrhaging.
It was only after they visited the infirmary and witnessed Brother Christopher's thorough methods pertaining to diagnosis that they returned quietly to their cell.
This particular act was probably one of the worst performed, however, and that worried him. Ryan was a smart one and should have been more than capable of acting the part of a sick prisoner.
“Call Brother Christopher. And unless his leg falls off, do not disturb me.”
He stormed to the cell door.
Ryan wailed louder, “Oh, I am dying!”
“Rubbish!” scolded Brother Petroclus, turning back around, “If you were really in so much pain you would not be able to talk...”
He stopped himself. Ryan did not want to go to the infirmary, he wanted to create a distraction.
“Blast it! Leave him and come with me!”
He raced out of the cells and skidded along the corridor, his mind racing with possibilities. It seemed like an endless run from the cells, and all the way he looked about for anything out of the ordinary.
Brother Marcus met him by the main entrance.
“Ho! Brother Petroclus! What is with the hurry? Is everything alright?” he asked.
“My suspicions are aroused,” he replied sharply, side-stepping him, “Have you seen or heard anything strange tonight?”
Brother Marcus scratched his head, “Well, that all depends. I have only been here a short while, so I am still getting used to the...”
Brother Petroclus pushed him out of the way, “Curse it! I do not have time!”
He raced, skidding on the tiles, down the hallway and back to the dormitories and swung into his room.
The book was no longer on the desk where he had left it, but had moved over to his personal terminal. Fine filaments had extended from it, felt their way inside the crevices of his terminal and attached themselves to the motherboard.
It had found a sweet spot and was tapping its way into the computer's circuitry. Billions of computations whizzed around inside microprocessors hidden under the book's cover as it probed various portions of the system.
“Shoot it!” yelled Brother Petroclus, “Shoot the bloody thing!”
Brother Frederick was pale and sweaty. “What, shoot your terminal?” he asked, cocking his machine pistol.
“The book, the terminal, whatever, just shoot!” hollered Brother Petroclus, pointing wildly. A hail of bullets riddled the book and terminal alike.
Smoke and sparks streamed out from the many newly created holes, but it was too late. The probes had found the master password and in half a heartbeat deactivated all of the facility's defenses.
The lights flickered out and emergency lighting, pale and ghostly, came on. The air conditioning units ceased, leaving the smell of gun powder lingering in the air.
Outside, the rumble of the elevator platform sounded.
“Brother Frederick, inform Master Theodore of Harrisburg that Brother Farnham is a suspected traitor aligned with Ryan. Brother Aaron, call everyone to arms. We are about to have company,” ordered Brother Petroclus.
Brothers Frederick and Aaron rushed off to fulfill their orders while Brother Petroclus headed back to the cells, stopping to put on a suit of body armor from the locker rooms. He closed the cell block door behind him firmly and walked over to Ryan's cell. The magnetic field at the doorway was still functional, working off the emergency power.
Ryan was standing, waiting for him. His face was no longer white with pain, but flushed red with excitement.
“I am feeling much better, thank you Brother,” said Ryan, smiling, “It must have been wind.”
“You treacherous scoundrel...”
“Tell me, did you enjoy your book? Hmm, perhaps you did not get to read the part about the horse. It always was my favorite.”
“I have read it. Did you know that Dante placed Odysseus in the eighth level of Hell?”
“Trickery and treachery, yes? I guess some do not appreciate wiles.”
Brother Petroclus stood silently.
Ryan pushed further, “And what of my friends? Have they come to visit yet? I am sure you will make a great host for them.”
“The doors are sealed. None can get through.”
“You do not have to lie to me, Brother. I can see from your face what faith you have in those flimsy doors.”
Brother Petroclus moved to the intercom.
“Brother Frederick! Have you called for help?”
The intercom remained silent.
“Brother Frederick! Damn it all to Hell! Brother Frederick!”
Squatting at the front desk, Brother Marcus ignored the cries from the intercom. He had more pressing needs in front of him. The emergency door release was not responding, its capacitors were fried thanks to the overloading of the power circuit.
Outside the elevator platform slid to a halt and eight masked men, dressed in shining black and gray, jumped off and ran to the outer door. They waited patiently outside like mannequins.
“What are you doing, Brother Marcus! Call for help! Can you not hear Brother Petroclus?” yelled Sister Tzu, trotting over and waving her hands, “Wha... Why are you down there?”
He looked up momentarily from the innards of the front security desk then resumed his fiddling. Sister Tzu was no fool.
“My God! Traitor! He is trying to open the main doors!” she yelled to anyone who would listen. Infuriated by her cries, he lashed out, kicking her square in the stomach and sending her sprawled out on the floor.
Brother Amos came rushing over to aid, drew his pistol and aimed shakily at Brother Marcus.
“What is going on?” he demanded.
He was ignored.
“Brother Marcus, stop whatever you are doing! I will shoot you,” he said as he cocked his pistol and adjusted his aim.
“Do not be silly, Amos old boy, you have no time,” said Brother Marcus somberly, completing the circuit and joining the last of a cluster of bared wires. Brother Amos turned around as the main door hissed, unbolted and swung open.
He let out a cry and ducked behind a chair, firing wildly at the door.
The shining black force burst in just as Brother Frederick and his men came racing into the front area.
Brother Aaron managed to get a few shots out before his arm exploded in a hail of red.
He fell to the floor, groaning in agony. Brothers Victor and Ahmet fell beside him, their lives spilled messily across the white tiles. Sister Hali followed shortly afterward.
The intruders moved about methodically, checking and clearing each room with precision. Any resistance was met with an accurate volley of bullets.
Brother Frederick burst out from his shelter, raking the troop with bullets. Two fell before he, too, felt the barrage of their wrath. Soon the foyer, mess hall and dormitories were littered with bodies.
Brother Amos hung loosely over the chair, his pistol lying in his blood.
At the sound of the commotion, Ryan began to become agitated.
“They are here,” he laughed, shaking his finger, “They have come for me.”
“The Devil takes care of his own, I see. You have let yourself be used,” snarled Brother Petroclus.
Ryan's smile fell.
“Save your breath, sheep, while you can still breathe! It is but a matter of seconds before your life is within my hands!”
“The beginning of my life, along with its end, has nothing to do with you.”
The noise stopped.
Brother Petroclus listened as the men made their way to the cells. Heavy boots scuttled across the floor outside, kicking away debris and bodies alike.
“Tick, tock, tick, tock... Can you hear it? That is your life ticking away, that is the pendulum swinging,” whispered Ryan, approaching his cell door.
Brother Petroclus straightened himself, “The pendulum swings wide, but always about the center. What may transpire now shall be rectified in the end.”
He did his shaky best not to let his fear shown through.
Ryan stopped a few feet shy of the cell door, the band around his neck already starting to tighten. He ignored the choking to make his point, “We shall soon see how well your annoying proverbs stand up to the cold reality of a high velocity bullet.”
The cell block door slid open with a hush. Brother Petroclus bravely turned to face the menace.
“God save my soul,” he said, as a burst flared from a muzzle. As darkness covered his eyes, Brother Petroclus silently prayed for the salvation of man.