Chapter Twenty
Zella Mills - The Errant, Solaria Del Sur
The girl in the tracksuit aimed her pistol at Zella. Her expression showed either fear or hatred; Zella couldn’t tell. Something was fueling her vitriol, and Zella had to know what. The man who had helped capture them had cuffed Zella and Khloe both to a large conference table in the Errant’s conference room. For a moment, Zella had considered fighting him off before he could finish cuffing her to the table’s leg. It was her curiosity about them both that made her fall back. For now.
She had to know what would compel a South East Asian woman, and what appeared to be a Naguelean native to capture them from a library car park. And why had they hacked into their network?
The Errant vibrated as it traversed through Naguelean airspace. Air vehicles were required to stay under a certain altitude in order not to conflict with aircraft and military operations. Regardless, the Errant was experiencing a similar level of turbulence that you’d find in an aircraft.
“Answer me this, Zella Mills,” the girl finally said once the turbulence calmed. “Why did you bug the library? Who else does Solace work for?”
“Did you get my full name when you hacked into our network?” Zella asked.
The girl’s fingers tensed around the gun. Zella noticed the dragon tattoo that coiled up her right forearm. “Answer me! Are you in cahoots with Xopren?”
“What does cahoots mean?” asked the mystery man.
“Quiet,” the girl snapped.
“My English ain’t as good as yours,” the man replied.
Zella sensed some misunderstanding. She chose her words carefully. “We don’t work for anyone. Our goals are our own. You’re the one that hacked our network. We should ask you the same question.”
“Right,” Khloe said, eying the girl. “Your work has Phantom DNA all over it. If anyone can’t be trusted here, then it’s you.”
Finally, the girl lowered the gun by her side. “Says the ex-EIA agent.”
Khloe scowled. “Hackers like you make me sick. You hold no value for privacy.”
“And the EIA snoops on their own civilians, using their tax money. We all know that.”
Zella’s patience wore thin. “Look, who the heck are you? We’ve acknowledged that we didn’t bug the library. You hacked us. Just what the hell is going on here? Why are we cuffed?”
The girl spoke in abundance. “The only reason I’m trusting you is because I looked through your network. Everything there suggests that you’re telling the truth. I just had to cover myself, Zella. I have many enemies.” Zella was all ears. “They call me Chi. Like Qi. In China, it means life force or energy.”
“That explains the username we found in our system,” Khloe said. “It was something like xhixx. I know the x’s are a signature of the Phantoms.”
Chi nodded. “There goes that EIA mind of yours. Now shut up and hear me out.” Khloe’s face reddened. “Zella, it was me who hacked Santino Varela. And through tracking him, I learned about your interaction with him. I was curious about you. And then I learned you were the same Zella connected to the murder of the immortal. In my circles, that makes you an underground legend. My friends in the hacker community revere you. They’d be eating out of the palm of my hand to learn anything tangible about you and Solace.”
“Great, why don’t you go ahead and take some selfies with us as evidence,” Khloe said.
Chi raised the pistol at Khloe. “One more word, and I swear.”
“Hey,” Zella said. She raised her cuffed arm. “You haven’t explained why I’m in cuffs. Keep talking.”
Chi lowered her pistol again. “I’m a Xopren defector,” she said. It made sense. Xopren was a nation with a mixed background. Half of the nation was ethnically Chinese, while the other half was Eastern European, predominantly Russians. Not only was Xopren a military nation, but it was a breeding ground for hackers. “My parents were engineers, hired by the Xopren regime. When I was seventeen, they were called onto a confidential project. The only thing I was told was that it was critical to Xopren’s national security. Two years later, they were dead. Lost in a mysterious accident tied to their work.
“By this time, I was already spending my days in cybercafes. And though I saw little of my parents when they worked in the regime, their deaths still hit me hard. I needed answers. The feeling of belonging that came with a family was something I craved. I’d lost that when my parents died. That’s what pushed me to develop my hacker skills, hoping to join one of the local crews.
“After months of busting my brain, I scored my first big payload. That feeling of exhilaration as I typed away for hours was like a drug. That score got me recruited by Flow Bit. Eventually, one of the higher ups in the Phantoms offered me crucial information about the deaths of my parents if I agreed to work with them. I couldn’t pass that up.”
“What did they tell you?” Zella asked.
“That the funding for the project my parents worked on came from someone in the six families.”
“The families?” Zella asked. “Ain’t that the mafia or something?”
“Not them,” Chi said. “The one you’re thinking of doesn’t exist today. These six families run the entire world from the shadows. Everything that happens benefits them. Their reach is global. They have influence over every single world power.”
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Khloe leaned back in her seat. She twirled her hand around as if the handcuff was hurting her wrist. “Naturally, I’ve heard about them. Being at the EIA and all. But whenever they’re brought up, they’re downplayed as if they’re just a conspiracy theory. I always got the feeling there was some truth there, though.”
“Your country has the tendency to call anything a conspiracy that doesn’t fit their narrative,” the man said. His chiseled biceps and broad chest showed his disciplined training regimen. His tanned and weathered skin bore scars.
Zella was losing her patience again. “Keep talking, Chi. I need to know why we’re cuffed.”
Chi turned her direction to the man. “Uncuff them now, Tay,” she said. The man known as Tay walked around the table and released both Khloe and Zella. Chi’s attention turned back to Zella. “As I told you, I’m a Xopren defector. If I ever go back there, they’ll have me executed. All because I exposed how my country built one of its autonomous nuclear weapons using slave labor. They used both child and adult slaves. I leaked a series of articles online detailing everything, and they traced it directly back to me. Because of this, I’ve been traveling around the world for the past three years. Searching for any information I can find about the six families. Because the buck stops with them. These proxy wars and political agendas that influence our continents, countries and communities, they’re all decided by them. And that ruins the lives of the people who want peace and freedom.” Chi looked Zella in the eyes. Zella was certain that Chi read the frustration in her eyes now. “Long story short, I’ve been here in Naguela for a while now, chasing leads. I had reason to believe that Varela received funds from an organization connected to the six families. That’s why I hacked his accounts. And while tracking him, I discovered ties to you and the Xopren mafia. That’s why I had to look into you, Zella. I cuffed you because I couldn’t trust you. I needed to know you would not sell me out.”
“How could I sell out someone I didn’t know existed?”
“And how could I know you didn’t know I existed? If you were cliqued in with the Xopren mafia, or the government, you absolutely could. Now that you’re here before me, I can see that you’re clueless about all my shit.”
“What now then?” Tay asked.
“Who are you, anyway?” Zella asked him. “Phantom protection, or what?”
Tay eyed her with a smirk. “Far from it. Names Tay, short for Dante. The leader of Los Tenaz. A merc group here in Solaria Del Sur.”
“I bet mercs are paid well during a territorial war,” Khloe said.
“Something like that. We make enough to keep my brothers fed, at least. I grew up in the slums with my close friends. I regarded them as brothers. We were all poverty-struck. Education was a distant dream, and survival was a daily goal. As kids, we found comfort in our unity, forming a brotherhood that would last for a lifetime. Realizing that our country respects violence and brutality, we taught ourselves warfare strategies. And as we grew older, our skills became our ticket out of poverty. We built our own faction. An army for hire, if you will. Los Tenaz.”
From Zella’s understanding, the name meant The Tenacious. She admired Tay’s cause. She got up from her seat and stared him in the eyes. “That’s a cool story. But if you ever put a gun to my friend’s head like you did in the car park, I don’t care how big your army is. I’ll take you down.”
Tay chuckled, looking as if he took her threat lightly. “That was a precaution while we feel you out. You have a reputation for being a firecracker.”
Khloe stood, placing herself shoulder to shoulder with Zella. “So now that we’ve proved our innocence, are you just going to keep us here and feel us out?”
“Look, you have to understand,” Chi said. “She’s the first person to ever kill an immortal. You can’t blame us for being intrigued by that. And now that I know you two aren’t working for COG, or any Xopren faction, I feel like we could help each other.”
“You have issues with COG, too?” Zella asked.
Chi smiled. “I’m a Phantom. Of course I do.” Chi pointed at Khloe. “We expose her country’s misdeeds all the time. Most of them are related to COG or the Seers.”
Khloe looked annoyed at being singled out as the American in the room, but she dismissed it to serve her curiosity. “Who are the Seers?”
“You don’t know?” Chi asked, looking between them. “Zella humiliated the Immortals so bad they changed their name. I came across some Intel that revealed that they’re now internally referred to as the Seers. They haven’t gone public with the name yet, but I’m sure they will. It’s difficult to market them as immortals when one of them is dead. Not to mention, you’ve exposed them as the murderous scum that they are. America loves a good rebrand.”
“Can we stop with the slandering of my country?” Khloe snapped. “It’s COG and those…Seers that are the problem.” Khloe’s phone blared. She dug into her pockets and retrieved it. Joe’s name flashed across the screen. Khloe looked over at Zella. “Do I take this?”
“Let’s call him back. I want these two to tell us where we go from here.”
A man came bursting through the door, calling out to Tay with urgency in his voice. “Excuse me for a minute,” Tay said, leaving the room.
Chi glanced between Zella and Khloe, looking slightly nervous that she was now alone with them. “I’ve been through your network. I’ve seen what you’re doing, and I like it. Our interests align. We need to work together. We can share information. Let’s be honest, if the Seers figure out where you are, you’re sitting ducks. Your current operation makes you vulnerable if I can crack it that easily.”
Zella agreed they could use help to fortify their cybersecurity, but she didn’t verbalize it. “What do you get out of our alliance?” she asked.
“Allies. I need more allies,” Chi said. “The Phantoms aren’t combat-ready like your team. I need people like you and Tay to help me on the ground. In exchange, I can offer all the security and Intel you need.”
“What other allies do you have?” Zella asked.
“Remember the girl with the frilly hair in the library? She was my little spy,” Chi sneered. “Your taste in fashion isn’t as great as she made out.”
Zella’s lip curled. “Why do you have teenage spies planted?”
“Like I said, someone is tracking me. I need eyes everywhere.”
After thinking it over, Zella agreed that having allies would benefit them. A hacker could improve their security, and a mercenary group could ease some of the stress over keeping her comrades safe on outings. Not to mention, they may now gain new intel on the immortal’s movements.
A strong vibration took Zella’s pockets. Khloe’s phone did the same for her. Khloe eyed her phone and turned her attention to Zella. “I think something is going on. Joe is asking if we got caught in the strike.”
Zella’s eyebrow curved. “Strike?”
The door shot open again. Tay emerged with an urgent stride. “This is bad,” he said. “This is fucked!”
“What happened?” Chi asked him.
“The Estreans hit the Costaluna district with a drone strike. They’re shooting down innocent civilians. Children, elders, people who can’t defend themselves.” Tay was fuming as he spoke, his arms shaking.
“That’s terrible,” Khloe said. “They couldn’t even wait for President Secada to be laid to rest before making a move.”
“The orphanage under our protection is there,” said Tay. “Please, I need you to follow me over there and help rescue as many people as we can.”
“Let’s go,” Zella said. Perhaps it was stupid to oblige him after being cuffed to a table just moments ago. But she couldn’t bear the thought of helpless children being struck down by drones over some territorial dispute that had nothing to do with them. Zella glanced over at Khloe, who nodded with approval.
“Gracious,” Tay said. “Our pilot will get us over there. Just be ready. Something more devastating may come.”
Zella turned her body towards him. “Get me some guns.”
-Mere Immortal is written by Gary Swift. If you see this on another website under another name, then someone has plagiarised it. Visit mereimmortal.com for official chapters. Subscribe to the Substack paid tier to read further ahead in the story.
-This version of Mere Immortal is written in US English.