Part One

Absolute Freedom

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     The sky was beginning to lighten up, but not from the coming dawn. Thick and dark clouds were moving low over the buildings, covering up the moonless and star-filled sky above and reflecting the lights from the city back upon itself. It would soon begin to rain, the mundanity of the weather lost on a sole figure that was charging through the vacant streets and alleyways. If not for his desperate run and the sweat soaked office clothes clinging to his lanky body, he would not have looked amiss in his surroundings. Not long ago, his satchel bag would have been filled with documentation befitting his position in this city. Now it contained his only belongings, jostling inside by his running as he attempted to flee and steal away from what he had done.

     His breath was ragged and his lungs were burning even though he had barely ran a few blocks, his legs beginning to shake from the slight exertion he had forced upon them. Everything had gone wrong, another misfortune that had been heaped upon him since he had made his decision to flee the city. As he hid in the gap between two buildings he heard a resuming clatter of machine gun fire, this time much closer than it had been only minutes ago. Not for the first time his hand grasped at the holster hanging from his belt, finding assurance with the sidearm within. Where he had run from only moments before had now erupted in a turmoil of gunfire and screams muted by the distance.

     “Damn,” He muttered between heaving breaths, struggling to recover himself for another quick sprint. Of course it had all gone to Hell. The ‘Interference Squads’ were mostly wiped out by now; surely there was no other explanation to why the Civil Reserves had already made their way into the industrial sector. It wasn’t meant to work out this way… the plan was set out too well to be routed so quickly.

     He wiped the beading sweat from beneath his eyes, readjusting his eyeglasses and trying to recollect his thoughts and remember where he was going. As he shirked deeper into the darkness of the alley he pressed up against the wall, resting his head against the rough concrete trying to bring some focus back to his psyche. It was all for naught as an earth rumbling explosion lit up the undersides of the clouds behind the cityscape. In the streets the lights flickered once before dying completely, the whole area plunged into an all consuming darkness for a few moments before the ghastly, red, emergency lighting winked on in their place. In the sky he began to see an unearthly, blue column of light steadily becoming brighter as it pierced the heavens above him. Below it, surely, was a boiling cauldron of nuclear fire that had just been violently birthed to wreak havoc and spread poison upon the world.

     “Those charges worked a bit too well…” The quip had forced it’s way out of his stressed mind. The containment building should have stopped the reactor from detonating so violently from his improvised explosives. That, or, the Demolition Group didn’t succeed in destroying the substation first; he thought passively to himself.

     Just a moment later came a whine of interference that reverberated and echoed across the streets, the backup generators rumbling to life, providing power and starting up an emergency broadcast with a woman’s deadpan voice:

     “Attention! Attention! All Civilians will remain inside their residences. All Citizens will submit to Civil Agents and to the Civil Reserve. Any Citizens outside during this emergency will be detained. Resistance to detainment will be met with severe consequences.”

     There was a break in the announcement and the man strained to hear over his heartbeat the sound of any authorities in the street before him, his breath still ragged. In the pause, he only heard the sound of explosive ordnance detonating and the apparent exchanged of gunfire. As the announcement repeated he took off at a jog again, working his way back along the path he and the guerrillas had taken only a quarter hour before.

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     He did his job: He made the bombs, taught the roughneck fighters how to detonate them and even at the iron handed insistence of that pushy guerrilla woman he preformed look-out and warned them of the approaching Civil Reservists. Clearly he had done his part, his job was done as was any obligations he once had.

     Free… he was free as soon as he could make it into the underground.

     A rumble startled him as he dashed across another empty road and he looked over his shoulder at the sky with the dread that the reactor was not yet through with it’s death throes. His panic, however, was unfounded and he was met with the pungent odour of ozone. A fierce wind began to whip through the streets and a searing rain pelted down upon the steel and concrete yards of industry. The klaxons were muffled by the rain yet the sounds of battle seemed to grow more violent and prolonged within the downpour, lighting up the underbelly of the clouds with muzzle and grenade flash.

     With a turn of a corner, he was finally in sight of his goal: a small column of warm steam wafting up from an open manhole in the middle of a dead-end street. That glimmer of hope was enough to give him a second wind and he charged the two blocks that separated him from salvation. Once he was within those warm yet putrid depths, he could make his way to the next rendezvous location and finally be on his way out of this wretched country.

     Over the drumming of the rain he heard the rattle of equipment in time with the dreaded footfalls of Heavy Troopers. He was already caught running away, clearly. Redoubling his efforts, he sprinted towards the tepid embrace of the sewer system below. He was only a half block away, surely he could make it before the distant gunfire became a more present danger.

     “HALT! You are being detained! Submit and Surrender!” Came the order, garbled over the helm-speaker the troopers wore.

     The runner gave no heed to the order, wishing instead that the hole in the pavement could have been moved closer or that the guerrillas had chosen some other manhole to pry open. As if in reply to his unspoken desires the asphalt beside him was suddenly ripped up, spraying him with rocky shrapnel as the terrible bray of machine-gun fire erupted from behind him. No sooner had the burst ceased that he was suddenly picked up off his feet and thrown forward by a tremendous blast, his ears ringing and darkness encroaching on his vision as he struck the ground.

     For just a moment he was unconscious before suddenly snapping back to his horrible reality, the sound of rain and enemy movement lost to the screeching in his ears as he tried to move. Just as sudden as the explosion that took him off his feet came a wave of pain that surged across his whole body. Stars were forming and popping in his vision as he looked back down the street at his attackers. His tunneled vision, however, couldn’t look past what was left of one of his legs and the cauterized exit wounds in his stomach.

     Just below his knee was a mangled stump of flesh and splintered bone, pumping out blood from ruined arteries to be diluted and washed away by the rain. His heart thumped fast and loud in his chest, his life draining out of him in time with his pulse. Shock replaced the pain by an equally debilitating coldness that wrapped around his body. He wasn’t long for this world, but the underground was still his goal.

     In his delirium he rolled onto his stomach and noticed he was only a foot or two away from the sewer hole. As a man possessed he gathered as much strength as his arms could muster and pulled himself forward, leaving behind what was once a foot and shoe. Just as his fingers wrapped around the opening in the earth a lucid part of his mind remarked on how violently he was shivering; asking, pleading with himself to find some way to stop the bleeding after he entered this sanctuary. With his vision growing dark he made one final heave of his arms and felt the ground beneath him disappear as he fell into the warm depths.

     He was dead before he hit the water.