Lieutenant Cody Tane walked down a row of ten bunk beds lined up and down the room with matching sheets, blankets, and pillows. A cleanly made fold in the blanket cut a forty-five degree angle at the foot of every single bed corner he could see. And at both ends of each bed stood a heavy wooden chest sitting on the stone floor, closed, locked, and perfectly aligned with the bed frame behind it. It was all so neat, tidy, and completely pointless that Cody hardly even looked at the bedding as he passed.
He didn't normally walk through for the barracks checks at the end of each week, but tonight he needed to be seen. He opened the door at the end of the massive bay to enter the next barracks room as the soldiers behind him finally relaxed. As soon as he stepped through the door however, a new NCO called the room to attention as the entire room went silent and the men stopped moving. A new set of perfect beds, with perfect folds, and perfect chests passed by as he walked down a line of men standing perfectly still.
At the end of the line he found his platoon sergeant standing at the same position of attention as the rest of the men. Cody stopped in front of him to put his feet together in a similar position of attention at exactly one step away from the sergeant, then did a crisp turning movement to face the man.
‘One! Two!’, went the click of his feet on the cold stone floor. The sergeant across from him waited the customary second of respect, then began to talk.
“Sir, how have the troops done?”
“Platoon Sergeant, they've done…” Cody let the words hang in the air just long enough to get the soldiers' attention. He saw the whites of a couple eyes look over at them from further down the room, the closest thing the men would commit to a breach in decorum.
“...well. They've done very well Sergeant Henry. I think they might even deserve an out of city pass this weekend. What do you think, Sergeant?”
“I'd have to agree sir. I think they earned it!”
Cody smiled at the man across from him as the grizzled veteran with more than a decade of experience called the boy ‘Sir’.
“Pass approved. Have a nice night Platoon Sergeant.” Cody said.
“Thank you sir. Glory to the prince!” The man gave a quick salute, fist placed over his chest. A gesture that Cody quickly returned, allowing both men to drop their fists.
‘One! Two!’, Cody faced away with the same perfect two step movement they had all been trained to use, and strode out the room without a single look back. While the door was still swinging open, he could hear Sergeant Henry yelling commands across the bays.
“Make a horseshoe ‘round me!” Echoed through the stone hallway until the thick wooden door finally closed behind him and he started making his way to his own room on the other side of the building. When he finally got there he took half a second to check that no one was around before he opened his door.
His own rooms were small, but spacious in comparison to the open sleeping bays that his soldiers stayed in. A single bed stood in the corner of the room by a window thrown open to accept the last rays of light from the setting sun. Across from the bed stood a thin study desk with several papers strewn across it, and next to it was a wooden chest like the ones his soldiers used. The top of the chest was propped open, stuck on a single arm of an exposed uniform jacket that hung out from the top.
Cody settled onto the bed with his uniform still on as he took a moment to stare up at the texture of the wooden ceiling above him. The bedding was crumpled under his weight, straining against the edges of the bedframe where he had loosely tucked in the blanket the morning before. His mind was focused on the night to come however, not nearly concerned with the quality of his bed.
‘Is it even worth it?’ He asked himself.
Earlier that week he had decided that he might attend tonight's meeting just to tell them he wouldn't be coming anymore. That way they wouldn't have to take the risk of sending him the messages about where to go anymore. It was logical. It was probably even the right thing to do. But Cody knew he could always just forget to attend tonight, and then the next night, and then the next. And they'd catch on eventually, without him even doing anything.
“Uggghh!” He rolled out of bed with a groan and started taking off his uniform, opening the chest to throw the pieces in one by one. His coat and jacket flopped into one pile while his undershirt and socks were tossed into a small bag tied to the side of the chest for laundry.
‘Sure, I'll do the right thing.’ He thought. ‘Always gotta do the right thing.’
—
When Cody finally found the safehouse for tonight's meeting, he was slightly taken aback by the venue. The customary thin white sheet hung out from a window to dry, but this time there was no underground bolt hole for the group. He could see the lights from inside the house, bouncing off of window sills and out from the creases in the doors to shine out into the night. Shadows crossed the inside rooms, adding a liveliness to the lighting that made it fairly evident just how many people must be present inside the small, squat, one story apartment in the middle of the city.
Cody knocked at the door twice but no sliding eye level window existed to look out at him this night. Instead, the door merely opened as an older woman beckoned him in with a smile.
“Come on in dear, did one of my friends invite you to the harvest party tonight?”
“Of course ma'am. Thank you for hosting.” Cody figured the group must be using the excuse of having a small harvest party as their cloak tonight, so he just played along.
The old lady smiled a somewhat toothless grin at him, closing the door behind with just a simple latch keeping the darkness at bay. Cody realized the inside of the building was a fair bit larger than he had expected from the outside, as everyone inside had crowded into a single main room set further back into the abode than all the front facing rooms with windows. It still seemed a bit reckless to him that the revolutionaries were just playing off their meeting like it was a run of the mill night party, but then again wasn't that one of the reasons why he had decided to leave their little group?
Light flickered through the room from a center fed cooking fire that left the air slightly smokey in between the several dozen people packed into the room. Men and women sat on blankets and rugs scattered around the room, while others perched on tools like a butter churn in the corner or a spinning wheel by the door. As he had expected, no windows opened up to the outside air, leaving the place smelling like a musty mix of human sweat and heavy wood smoke.
‘More laundry to do.’ Cody thought to himself as he walked over to meet with Tom, leaning against a wall and talking mildly with some random woman. It seemed like Cody had gotten there early enough in the night that they hadn't even started the traditional speeches that made up the bulk of the meetings. Instead it was more of an open ‘cocktail hour’ as the nobles would have called it at one of their balls. Not that anyone present called it any formal name as they just tried to catch up on the recent news of things before the event kicked off.
“Hey Tom, I want to talk to you about something.” Cody led with.
“Oh yeah? Something big coming down from the garrison? Oh! Have you met miss Dani here before? She's actually kind of a big-”
“Tom. I'd prefer to speak in private for a bit.”
“It's alright Tom, we can always catch up later.” Dani reassured him.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Tom smiled at the girl to his side for just a moment then nodded, letting Cody drag him back out to one of the street side rooms to get some space. Baskets of fruits, vegetables, and covered barrels lined the majority of the room as the two sat down on a pair of wobbly crates in the middle of the room.
“So…” Tom asked.
“Tom, I need to get out of this group. I'm not going to be coming to the meetings anymore.”
Tom stared down at the ground at the words, distant firelight playing over his eyes from around the corner. Cody let him sit for a bit, then continued, determined to make his friend at least understand.
“I just can't do this anymore. The goals we share mean well, but with the way things are going I just can't see anything really happening that will actually cause a difference. Not when the only thing we do is meet in secret and talk about old books.”
“But those old books hold value Cody!”
“Yeah, sure. But a solid argument isn't going to do anything to change people's actual lives.”
“So we change the future by maintaining the knowledge for the next generation!” Tom's words were starting to hiss out of his mouth, rising into a forced whisper that echoed through the room.
“What does that make us then, Tom? Mobile book holders that keep the information safe until someone with the actual courage to do something comes by?”
“Then you do it!” Tom snapped. “If you want to make a difference, why can't you be the first person to do something about it?”
Cody stopped talking. He had thought about this before, staring up at wooden beams that crossed a small stone room in the middle of the Princedom's military. But what could he really do? He was just one man.
“I don't-”
“Do you actually want to do something about it Cody? Or are you just too scared to get caught on the wrong side of the law? Gods know you might be able to actually make things happen if you ever set your mind to it.”
Cody sat there, transfixed. He hadn't expected this at all. It was supposed to be easy, just a simple excuse then a long walk back to the barracks. Not all these questions. Worst of all was that he wasn't even sure what the right answer was.
The world exploded. One second they were sitting on small wooden crates, the next moment wood and debris was flying through the air from the direction of the outer wall like a hail of arrows coming down on an army. Cody's training came to him by instinct and he pushed out into a small three inch thick bubble of force surrounding his body on every side. He felt his feet come off the ground as the crate below his feet buckled under the pressure and collapsed to reveal a pile of salted fish stored within. But the pressure of some other force suddenly hit him at that moment.
Wooden shrapnel sprayed across the room, puncturing Tom's body in a hundred small bloody holes as Cody was pushed across the room. It happened so fast that Cody could hardly even comprehend the look on Tom's face. The surprise, the pain, and then nothing. Instead, Cody was flung handily through the opposite wall and deep within the main room until he hit a ceiling beam and bounced off, smashing into the wall hard enough to leave a hole. He heard screams and gasps of surprise around him, but he was distracted by the need to keep up his force field no matter what. Someone was attacking, and these people would need his help.
Cody looked up from the corner of the room where he had landed, small bruises across his body already protesting against the fact he had nearly been thrown through two walls. But as he started to register the faces of shock looking back at him, the ceiling caved in where he had smashed through the supporting beam. He heard it before it happened, a massive creaking sound from above as the remaining wooden planks snapped and fell down on him, but he couldn't move in time. The protective coat around his body kept him from getting any sort of a grip on the ground, causing him to scramble in place as a hundred pounds of wood and tile fell down on him.
He heard a short scream from beside him as someone else was caught in the same avalanche of debris, then the soft squelch of crushed flesh as the scream died out. Wood and dust blocked his sight from the rest of the room almost immediately, trapping him in a strange world of brown darkness. With a mere thought he could have simply pushed outward in all directions, sending the deluge of house parts away from him in an explosive display, but he was afraid that would take the whole building down with him.
Cody braced himself by the knees as he pulled upward at the front of the pile of wood that was trapping him, putting a strain on his lower back but otherwise getting a small peep hole out of his cage. On the other side, a single man had walked into the only doorway into the room, emerging from the dust at the front side of the house like a specter of green armor and contempt. Cody recognized the Pricedom Army uniform immediately, but the man looking out at the room with cold blue eyes from behind a long head of flowing black hair was a mystery.
The rest of the room was in chaos. Several people were digging at the rubble around Cody, while others were helping their friends who had fallen down from the earlier explosion. Cody noticed that Lucy was trying to run past the soldier in the doorway, but her legs buckled backwards as she got close to the entrance. Her feet cut out from under her, she flew horizontally for half a second before her body was smashed downward into the ground like a giant hand had just swatted her out of the air. She hadn’t even managed to scream as she turned into a pile of mushy flesh on the floor of the room.
The strange man’s hair flew wildly as he disposed of the runner, first flying towards the girl, then backwards like he was in the middle of a massive gale of wind that affected no one else. The very floorboards around the man buckled under his weight, popping up and cracking in a small circle around where he stood, and a cloud of dust poured down on the man from where a matching circle in the ceiling had been pushed outward.
Everyone settled into an awkward silence then, as the lone man took in the gathering like a butcher preparing for the slaughter. There was no joy in those eyes. Only the cold determination of a man doing his job. The floorboards began to rattle once again, every inch of wood and nails pealing into the night as the building itself shook. Cody could feel what was about to happen, and started to push on some of the debris between the two men, sending it shooting towards the butcher, but it was too late. The man's hair clung to his face like he was being pushed upon in every direction, and the building exploded once again.
The floorboards ripped up from the ground, sending random fragments flying in every direction out from the soldier, ripping through the flesh and blood of the people gathered around the room. Their bodies trailed after the small projectiles, slowly catching up to the outer walls as the wooden beams of the ceiling seemed to stretch and buck under the weight. Men and women screamed in pain and confusion amid the sound of ripping clothing, and the warm thuds of powerless flesh.
The debris that Cody sent flying towards the man had gotten caught between the two of them, but in his haste Cody hadn't sent a counter push behind himself with the attack. The force that he had sent into the attack slammed into his chest like he had just pushed upon the ground itself, flinging him backwards alongside all the others. His body flew almost perfectly out of the open hole he had left in the wall where he had last made impact. Small bits of metal and wooden slivers followed after him, ripping into his force bubble, reducing in speed as they made impact but still making it through to pierce the outer layers of his skin as he flew into the night.
Below him, the hovel the meeting had been happening in seemed to bow at the seems, practically bursting with the weight of the gathering, until eventually it did. Bodies sailed out into the night as the wooden walls finally caved under the pressure and exploded outward. If anyone in the room had thought that might have meant they were free of the man, those thoughts were dashed when their bodies collided with the surrounding buildings in a sickening crunch. A thick cloud of dust settled over the area as the building collapsed in upon itself, rooftop spinning up into the air for a few seconds before stopping, and falling back down to add to the chaos.
Cody remembered himself and looked around in the night at the hundreds of rooftops that surrounded him in every direction. He had reached the apex of his arcing movement through the air, and started to drift back down as the man reached out to a nearby three story building and started pulling. He spread the pull across the entirety of the roof, causing his body to lurch in mid-air and suddenly start sailing towards the tall architecture. A slight push right before he landed slowed his approach just enough that he landed with a running gait across the top of the roof.
When he turned back to look at the meeting place he could see a stream of green dots in the night bobbing up and down over the area. Men and women picked over the area like scavengers, searching through the rubble for any survivors of the blast. Cody looked down on the dusty cloud of death and rubble as the cockroaches raised small slivers of metal into the night sky, then thrust them through the invisible body of some hapless victim on the other end. Lights started to burn in the nearby buildings as the neighborhood came awake to sounds of destruction and screams of pain that could be heard all the way to Cody's vantage point.
It was horrible. It was everything that Cody had been worried would end up happening to the revolutionaries. The reason why he had wanted to get out in the first place. And he hadn't managed to do a single thing to help them.
A hole of dark green hung in the night at just about eye level with Cody, thirty feet or so in the air above the wreckage. As it turned about, looking down and around at the surrounding area, he could just make out a nest of black hair pushing upward into the night, like he was submerged in water. But no, the butcher was just observing his handi-work, checking for any individuals that he might have missed.
Cody scrambled up the roof top to fling himself over the other side, away from the man and the ruble. One hand still grasping the peak of the roof his breath finally came back to him as he remembered to start breathing once again. His folly now out of sight, the adrenaline of the last minute started to cool down. Bleeding cuts from a dozen small impact marks across his body started to sting and burn, but Cody couldn't care less as the tears started to stream down his face.
“Why did this have to happen? Why tonight?” He spoke into the open sky. Behind him, through a barrier of thin roof tiles that could do nothing to protect him, a single man rotated slowly in the air, watching. Waiting. Hunting.