“We are responsible for our actions
the decisions that led to them
and the ramifications that follow.”
- Brother Targus, New York Chapter
A balding man, dressed in a drab cloak tied at the neck with a rough drawstring, addressed Ryan from across a large, wooden table, “Acolyte Ryan, do you feel for these people you killed?”
“Master Theodore, I feel for them. My heart bleeds from a thousand cuts,” replied Ryan.
His outward appearance of an aging man was one he kept up deliberately to mask the real man underneath. Only the sparkle in his eyes revealed the fit, active mind that had cultivated the many years of wisdom.
“Do you understand the consequences of what you have done?” he asked.
“There are many consequences, so many I cannot hope to understand them all. However, I do believe that I understand those that are the most significant. I have reconciled it within myself.”
Master Theodore adjusted his spectacles. He leaned back into his creaking chair. “Yes,” he sighed, “I am sure that you have. I do have faith that you are more than capable of justifying your intentions in some sick, perverted way, and that you have not acted without significant forethought. I wonder, though, if you have acted alone, or if this was thrust upon you by another.”
Ryan shifted in his seat and fixed his eyes on a flaw on the table. Silence cloaked the room for a few seconds. Master Theodore looked old, stern. His long robe hid his aged body, a body that had visited so many parts of the world, stood silently among countless leaders and diplomats.
It was but a shadow of its former self, but an inner strength still held him tall and upright. The body, he always believed, was a thing to be conquered, not to be conquered by. And even though arthritis crippled his left hand, and his spine had slipped a few centimeters, he always maintained an erect posture with his head and shoulders back and chest proudly out.
He drew breath and continued, “Very well. We must work off the assumption that you operated alone. Considering that you are but an Acolyte, and that the deed performed is heinous in the extreme, all responsibility will fall directly onto your shoulders.”
Ryan continued to remain silent. Master Theodore nodded and continued, “Silence is a fool's shield, boy. But that is not an issue governing my thoughts right now. I am very interested to hear your justification, Acolyte. We must ask you to explain your debased actions. The slaughtering of innocents? The wanton destruction and disruption? Why, Acolyte?”
Ryan tossed some thoughts about in his head. He could not stand to argue against Master Theodore, nor the other two Masters present, and he knew that they would eventually get to the truth, one way or another. Unless he could anger them, divert their questions and prevent them from administering truth serum.
“I intend to reignite the struggle,” he said at last, looking Master Theodore in the eye.
Taken aback as he was, Master Theodore kept his composure. Those words, 'reignite the struggle', were not Ryan's. They had been uttered by others before him, but that felt like a lifetime ago.
Master Pietro, to Master Theodore's left, leaned forward and spoke, “You answer is designed to shock us, or, at the least, make us think that you are more than what you seem. You will do well to answer very carefully from here on, boy.”
Ryan glared back at him, but said nothing.
Master Pietro had dark, brooding eyebrows that dominated his face. His smooth scalp and nose that had been broken on more than one occasion gave him the appearance of someone who could just as effectively use his fists as words.
Such an impression would be correct. Underneath his robe he held a trim, taught body, an excellent specimen of human conditioning.
He continued, “You have committed what can only be described as an unsanctioned, undignified and morally reprehensible act of terrorism. Reignite the struggle? You have not reignited anything. You have acted ruthlessly, irrationally and without compassion.”
Ryan took a breath. He had dipped his toe in, he may as well go for a swim, “The world has been shocked by the deaths of over eight hundred people. As more events like this follow, their safe little world will been rocked...”
“Rocked? It was little more than a headline in the newspapers put down to a terrorist act! Are you so naïve that you believe direct intervention is without cost? And did you really think that murdering a few hundred innocent people would bring about some kind of revolution?” boomed Master Pietro.
“No,” said Ryan, looking up, “But a few million might. That was just the start.”
Master Theodore raised his eyebrows, “The start? The start of what?”
“Man is a sluggish creature, and every change in history requires a war, an uprising, a revolution to get him to move. Some wars begin with one death, others with a thousand. And that was the start of the war.”
“War?” hissed Master Theodore, “What the blazes are you talking about? We are not at war, Ryan.”
“Oh, but we are. We always have been. It is just that we have been lulled into a false sense of security. The Devil's master stroke, they say, was convincing us that he does not exist,” said Ryan, his eyes blazing, “We are at war with entropy, the devil that sucks the life out of every one of us. And the cretins you watch over are happy to let it grind them up and spit them out and they laze away in comfort, eating, dancing, having sex, drinking their brains to oblivion.”
Master Jacob, gnarled, stooped and with his eyebrows matching his beard in length, raised his hand, “Please, Ryan.”
“They waste their days with pleasures, in a state of nullity, drinking the catatonic syrup of self-gratification...”
“Acolyte, stop! The Brotherhood of the Vigils seeks to retain a balance, to help humanity forward by maintaining order. Man must progress at his own rate, not through violent means, and not through acts of terrorism,” said Master Jacob, “The fundamentals are not to be toyed with lightly. Disrupting the balance of Life and Death, especially by one so inexperienced as to form such clumsy views of the world, could spell disaster...”
“You are wrong! Man is more resilient than the credit you attribute. If I took the lives of a thousand, and by doing so allowed the lives of millions to thrive, in what way does that make me different from doctor who uses the organs of a dying patient to save the lives of ten others?”
Master Jacob shook his head sadly, “Numbers? You speak of humans as numbers? Ryan, we cannot hope to display how precious the gift of life is while at the same time we tear it away!”
Ryan seethed, “And this is where the Brotherhood is misguided. For without taking a life we cannot show how precious it is! It is for this reason we must...”
“Be silent, boy!” demanded Master Theodore, “You are just an Acolyte, and this council has been formed to decide your fate. You have committed an act of extremism, causing the deaths of hundreds of innocent lives and have attempted to justify it using a bastardized creed counter to that of the Vigils! I think we have heard well enough.”
Master Pietro nodded, “Quite enough. Take him to his cell, and we shall confer.”
Ryan was led from the room by two hooded figures. He went quietly. Master Theodore turned to Master Pietro, “This is worrying.”
“Of course it is. He speaks like, dare I say, like Isaac,” said Master Pietro.
“Isaac is dead, and his extremist ideas died with him,” sniffed Master Jacob, “I examined his remains myself.”
The room fell silent once again while the three sat in thought. Master Pietro spoke first, “Ideas never really die. They do not exist only in someone's mind. They just get buried, waiting for another to uncover them.”
“We burned all his texts,” said Master Theodore, “Deleted his documents and propaganda. We sanitized everything and everyone he touched.”
“One can tear down a forest, Master Theodore, burn it to the ground, salt the earth such that nothing may grow again, but one cannot remove a single seed of thought from a man's mind,” intoned Master Jacob, “But I cannot fathom how Acolyte Ryan has come to his conclusions without help. The words he spoke...”
“Were of Isaac, almost verbatim: 'Drinking from the catatonic cup of self-gratification'.”
Eyebrows furrowed as brains got to work.
Master Jacob pressed his fingers lightly together. “If the fruits from two trees taste equally bitter,” he said, “Then we can assume they came from a similar seed.”
“Isaac worked silently, insidiously. It took years to root him out, as you will remember,” said Master Theodore, “This one act was brazen and callous, almost bloodthirsty.”
Master Jacob looked thoughtful, “But his words are the same! By ridding ourselves of one weed we have satisfied ourselves that the garden is clean. We have been foolish!”
Master Theodore protested, “His followers were found and sanitized, the encampments destroyed. The Directors were disbanded. The memory of Isaac is shared solely between us. Unless...”
His eyes widened.
“Unless?” prompted Master Pietro.
“Unless, as Master Jacob implies, the problem ran much deeper than we originally thought. Isaac, though he was the face of the problem, he may not have been the root. Blast it all, we need some tea.”
Master Theodore rang a little bell three times.
The three sat in silence for a while longer. Eventually a solemn figure scuttled in, carrying a tray laden with silver tea cups and a tea pot. After a short interlude the three sat back and discussed matters.
“Ryan has a mentor, this much is clear. Whether he or she is still alive is relevant, but not determinable at this time,” said Master Pietro, sipping his tea, “If we assume that Isaac had a mentor, and that this is the same mentor as Isaac had, then his age must be at least that of Isaac's, or older, putting him at over fifty years of age.”
Master Theodore shrugged, “Indeed. Or it could very well have been a disciple of his, making him at around thirty or so.”
Master Jacob disagreed, “No! We interrogated everyone. We turned this place upside down. Truth serum was applied to over half of our brothers and sisters. All systems were scanned, all documents checked.”
“And there is no way one or two could have slipped by?”
Master Jacob shook his head.
“What is more, we can assume that the extremist ideals of his have grown since Isaac's time, as indicated by latest attack.”
“It will not be easy to find the mentor of Ryan. And even then, if we were to uncover a vein of filth in the Brotherhood, we do not know how deep it runs,” said Master Pietro, “The plain fact is that Ryan may be the sole follower, or just one of many. My biggest fear is that we have been too blind for too long, and that the rot has had time to spread.”
Master Theodore munched on a biscuit in thought. “And what of us?” he asked.
Master Pietro looked at him sideways, “What of us? As viewed by the public eye? We are meaningless, as we always have been. Unless, perhaps, you are concerned that there will be an association between the attack and the Brotherhood, in which case I hold a serious fear that we may lose our anonymity.”
Master Jacob hissed, “This risks everything! Whatever action we take must be swift and quiet. We cannot risk having any attention, of any kind, no matter how insignificant.”
“What do you propose?” asked Master Pietro, rubbing his chin. The scratching sound of his fingers against his unshaven skin echoed through the room.
Master Theodore closed his eyes in thought. The other two let him think.
“I propose to find this radical,” he said, “I propose to let Ryan lead us to him. That we allow him to escape. I propose that we then trail him until he makes contact with whomever is causing us angst. At that point, we shall decide what further course of action must be taken.”
Master Pietro nodded, “But how can we be sure that he will try to escape, and that he will do so without violence? We cannot allow one of our own to be harmed.”
“We sentence him to sanitation in the wastes,” said Master Theodore, draining his cup, “In this way, he is alive and exposed. If someone cares enough for him, they will attempt to break him out, or provide him means to escape. If not, we afford him an egress, and he returns to his mentor. If he does not attempt an escape, then we cleanse his mind and search for the rot via other means. In all circumstances, we are in a better position than we are in now.”
“Very well,” said Master Jacob, “We are in agreement, then?”
“We are,” said Master Pietro.