The Book of Rai: SoH Ch. 01

"I'm going to have to kill this bitch." It was 5:00 a.m. He shook his head, returning to his sights. They were talking in hushed tones and furtive glances, looking around the kitchen for a bug or something. He didn't much care. There was only the stock, the scope, the barrel, the mark. Marcus was a very good shot. The woman from the boat seemed to be apologizing. He could shoot the frames off a pair of spectacles. Carter's mistake was trying to comfort her. They talked for quite a while, Marcus ate the last of his protein bars. He quietly hoped the sugar imbalance wouldn't flinch his fingers. In the end, the woman from the boat left quickly. The sun was almost fully up by the time she'd crossed the street. There was only Josephine, standing in silk and satin, watching the sunrise. She watched from her balcony, smiling into the new day. He clicked the parallax. 3 pounds of trigger slipped beneath him. She was waving at something. The recoil, buffered by the muzzle break and floating barrel system, was minimal. The bullet, a .338 Lapua cartridge flew like wind and freedom, sole zephyr on ignition's breath.

Carter shuddered as he stepped out of the van. The predawn light caught him well and he smiled at being alive. He knew little.

'Arsinoe is Vanguard. Arsinoe is the target. The target sucked my dick.' His feet were not taking him to his apartment. They were stepping to Josephine's. He was okay with this. 'I put three slugs through the body of a boy five years younger than me. He cried when he died.' He stopped to lean on a wall. He considered vomiting very seriously. 'Marcus was not on the raid. Marcus is missing. That... thing.' He felt a stirring in his loins as he remembered the toned perfection of the amazon program. 'It wanted me. What was that?' He sighed. His head hurt. He needed a cup of coffee. It was all he wanted, all he needed. And maybe Josephine. He couldn't fuck her, not after what had just happened. He just wanted to hold her, be with her, next to someone as he sorted through the life he could not consider. 'Davis shot him in the back. In the skull.' He shivered. He considered if he'd have to report the incident. He didn't. He checked his watch anyway. 5:15. It had all happened in less than 90 minutes. He sighed. He stood at a corner, eyes watching the first wisps of dawn. There were no cars on the street. He crossed quickly anyway. In this distance he saw her apartment, and her immaculate form materializing from the morning mist. She was smiling into the sunrise. He was a minute down the street when she saw him, raising her hand to greet him. The kick of her skull was instant. A surfeit burst of pressure and blood, the shredded flesh and brain matter erupting in a jet. Singular, complete, it was definitive. Marcus was a very good shot. Carter stopped dead. The momentum of the shot had carried her fully onto her side. The blood was dripping from the balcony. Fight or flight. Both. He sprinted to the stairs, vaulting the rails and taking three at a time. There was no motion. No. There was a heave. He tore into the material under foot, sliding under her frame. His hands reached forward. They drew back. Her night dress was soaked about the side that touched the balcony. Arterial blood. Burgundy dark. There were flecks of things in the flow. He knew what they were. Skull fragment. Brain meal. His fingers inched forward again. Her shoulder was warm, in sunshine and the internal wave of living heat.

He half turned her into his arms. Her bottom lip was quivering. She focused on him for the smallest slice of a second and unfocused entirely. She was terrified. He tried propping her up, holding her under his arms. Her bottom lip was quivering. The shoulder that had been lying in the blood was twitching where his arm held it. Her bottom lip was quivering. Her head was not quite complete. Her heartbeat was very weak. Someone was screaming. He realized it was him. His shudders, the racking of his body were half tears, half trying to start the twitching in her shoulder and lip that was fading with each repeat. Her eyes locked on the infinite, and there was no twitch. And all were screaming and all was black and there was no twitch. Carter rocked on his knees. Blood soaked his pant legs and the front of his shirt. On his arm, where he'd supported her head, were bits of her thoughts. He stayed there for a long time. He had not cried for a very long time. He cried for Josephine, for the boy he'd put 3 slugs in. He even cried for the captain Davis had shot in the back. He could hear cars on the street below. He shivered, the balmy morning breeze feeling wrong against the blood wet. He realized he was holding a corpse. Her head touched the blood very softly. His boots stood in the material. The pallet of men holds many colors. The marks of his feet, descending the stairs, were one of them. A woman sitting at a café table rose and walked towards him. He stopped when he saw her, and let her come to him.

"We both know who did this."

"Where is Marcus?"

"Dumping the rifle in the harbor. As he was instructed. What will you do?"

"What must be done."

"Revenge won't bring you peace."

"What will?"

"Answers." He looked her in the eye. Her eyes did not shift one millimeter. "You once told me, that humanity is worth saving. Do you remember that?"

"Yes."

"She would have wanted you to do more." His eyes were frothing like the maw of a mad animal. They flit to hers, and caught only sadness.

"Okay." She took, his hand very softly, supporting his arm as they went.

"It's going to be all right. Come with me."

"Break now the dawn." The disk spun into his palm, an iron grip seizing the zinthoprometheoid alloy. The digital screen ticked slowly upward in count. Floor 20 became floor 21. 'I exist.' 23. 'I interact with my surrounding, exert my will.' 26. 'By virtue of this correspondence, the world is inextricably connected to my existential self. It exists around me.' 33. 'These... others. Vie for what? Truth? Love? Apotheosis?' 37. 'I move for the unity of humanity.' He whispered as the floors fell around him. "Let fall the hammer." Silence followed. The plate metal doors transposed before him. The Cloud Club. Chrysler building, top three floors. Not the most stylish of locations for a meeting of this magnitude, but the stranger had insisted. Yes... the stranger. He in the black with the tight black beard, the onyx ring, the perfect physique and the propensity to finger a sword strapped to his hip. Men like that, men with influence like that, were allowed their inevitable eccentricities. The man who stepped out of the elevator was quite different. Clean shaven, possibly even more muscular though lithe, clad in a painfully pristine Anderson and Sheppard suit where his former had worn Valentino Couture. The new was brutal of angle, taller than any other in the room, easily passing 6'3" all of it in the most compact of muscular arrangements. Of a distinctly Anglo Saxon continence, where the former was possibly Middle Eastern. High cheek bones, but olive skin, much like the stranger's, although with as much reliability it could have been called a tan. They could have been brothers, if they had not already been opposites.

"Ah. Good Morning. You must be the representative. Forgive me, but I expected..." The speaker, hobbled by cane and age, stood at the head of the table in the clear cut room. Those around the table forgave the three piece sack suit he pretended to fit in. The word is that it was the first suit he'd ever bought for himself. He was silenced by the flick of the newcomer's hand. The eyes belonging to it caught red in the harsh light, flashing hungrily between the attendants. Backers all, of the Peerless Few. Those who would make war on the Vanguard. On the Village.

"Mr. Wharton, I understand. You expected the Broker, Jioto Mizarat, of the house Mizarat, dai Mythique ascendant. No. The broker of accords will not be in attendance today. I'm sorry to say, but today, you get me."

A new one spoke. He was young. "Of course it's the big bad you. We're not renegotiating the offer, but we'll forgive the pageantry, for an explanation. New people involved this late could cause problems. Publicity if we're not careful."

"I don't think any of us want that," He could see the beady eye of the third man on the left looking to his cohorts. Searching in their eyes for the recognition his already held. How did he know him? Was it a closed circuit camera feed they'd forgotten to pick up? A whispered name in a dark alley? If he didn't act fast, that man's mouth would open. The moment his panic set into a determination. "You will know me simply as the Breaker." The timer in his head was buzzing him backwards, excess time spent. They were seated round the rectangular table, its orientation east to west. He would never have a better shot. "There is, Gentlemen, only one order of business today," he said, pacing his way to the head of the table, two fingers cocking into a finger pistol. He could feel the charge building, knew they could to. He'd saved a lot up for this.

The first to see it were a couple at the corner of Grand Central. Young and naïve, the first thought to enter their mind were that it was some kind of firework, an American tradition they had missed in the brochure. The sound, the complete sonic boom and subsequent evisceration of atmosphere and its fusion into ozone, well, that kind of thing tends to turn heads. The lightning arc, or plasma discharge as scientists would later try to rebrand it, extended 4 blocks in length outside of the Chrysler building's head. They measured from the shadow's it soaked into the rooftops. The rubble, and rubble it was above the 68th floor, that fell into the stream was instantly incinerated. The firestorm calamity of nature, the rending of the energies of the earth, lasted 5.75 seconds as the man in the $10,000 suit forced lightning from his fingertips. When released, it arced through the air in bolts, striking the nearest buildings with abandon. The hole left in the side of the Chrysler, smoking and smote with wreckage remained an abyss to the eyes of the city. And so, the abyss gazed back. From clearing smoke emerged a vaguery, that which before was not. The new, the breaker stood upon the ledge of his creation and surveyed his handiwork. Did he see that it was good?

"Farther down then I thought." He played at the buttons of his jacket, sliding the tailor made masterpiece off his athletic frame and tossing it casually out the window. It fell on a man, transfixed like all the others, on our specter of doom. He tightened now his tie, rolled his sleeves in the most efficient and practical way, that they would not slip. He disappeared from the public's eye, receding into his blackness. And then, without warning, without pause, his body was flung head long from the pillar, his momentum impressive both laterally and vertically. Almost as if he had aimed. Which, of course, he had. As he fell, the air roaring in his ears, his arms extended towards the earth, and from both shot the same arc that had destroyed the world above, now so below, launching him up and along his chosen path. Crosstown. Over 3rd avenue. The flight had shocked his system into reverse, he, flipping over and through his abs in the air, a motion he'd simulated endlessly, flawlessly performed. Sergeant Andrew Sullivan, a man on the force for 12 years, decided that now was a good a time as any to open fire. What he didn't see was the reformation of the creature's dive angle, two fingers and a cocked thumb on each hand aimed directly at the ground. They buried Sgt. Sullivan's photograph the next Thursday. The propellant was smaller this time, but surely it needed to be, the last block of flight into the United Nations plaza a short and dramatic one, as he righted himself in the air, blasting half a pulse directly to his front, a retro rocket to stop his fall. His feet hit the ground without a jolt, catching his stride without pause. The security guards looked to each other for a full second. There was no hesitation on his part. A sword strapped to the small of his back was whipped into his hand, the zinthoprometheoid alloy glinting warmly in the light. He allowed himself a smile. Lead filled the air, smoke and sound as magazines were emptied. The bullets caught the stone around him, deflected by the electromagnetic lines he lifted with his blade. He smiled, arcing his sword into a backhand horizontal figure 8, lazy at first but with distinct increase in speed. The butcher does not rush.

The only living guard was saying something. "WE NEED BACKUP, COPY, IMMEDIATE BACKUP. MULTIPLE CASUALTIES. I NEED SNIPER SUPPORT, SWAT, SECURITY, POLICE." The Wakizashi entered his trachea at an angle, the distinctive sinew hook at the blade's end distending his neck. As he pulled it out, he used the hook to catch any important arteries or veins he might have missed on the first pass. The result was brutal and absolute. The man simply had no neck. He slumped to the ground, hands still clutching his radio as his gurgles attempted to summon support, help, safety perhaps. Like the doorkeeper, they drowned in a pool of blood. He caught the sounds of boots on the ground. A quiet march, an objective halt. They knew what they were doing. He stooped to pick up the door guard's pistol, chambering the first round. The first head that scoped his position from the corner caught a bullet between the eyes. He stood, arm outstretched and aligned in his left, his sword in his right.

He heard his friend's voice in his head. "There is no firearm. The firearm is a construct of language and thought. It defines what is a weapon as a firework display. Named for its action. As axes were born for felling forests, the firearm was born to kill men at a distance. Your weapon is a delivery system, of one unit lead to one unit forehead. You will inject your projectile into your target, your precision, your accuracy, will be absolute." He flipped the firearm into his right hand, whipping his sword into his left. Two teams were converging from opposite sides of the courtyard. He moved to the wall, placing bullets in skulls in passing. 1. 3. 5. 7. Half empty. Each shot had been debilitating, clipping neck or head. No double tap necessary, the squad of 8 reduced to one. The last armored man raised his rifle, putting two rounds into the opposing team leader. Chaos erupted. The armored man tossed a clip to the suited man, he and a similarly geared woman from the other squad turning rifle fire on the remaining six before they could turn to surprise. The man in shirt sleeves changed clips, the blood of the door guard drying on his neck and face.

"Boshe. Bouzonai. Little close there, those rifles were up. I can't stop what I can't see."

Boshe, the hulking armored man, stripped his helmet. His ebon skin flecked with light in the afternoon sun as he shook out his naked head. Droplets of sweat flecked in the sunlight. "You're late. I had almost turned my attentions... elsewhere. She wanted to get dinner." His visage creased in the harsh sunlight. "It is hard to shoot a woman you have known," he said this as he approached a slumped figure, turning her over and removing her helmet, chestnut hair falling with a shudder, a single rivulet of blood trailing from her lips. "You know this as well as I do, Inoraiya." Bouzonai looked at the ground as sheepishly as she could at her age. Inoraiya remembered that Boshe had known Bouzonai. With a flush of his collar, he remembered a glade in the moonlight, the movement of the breeze in Gaul. He had known Bouzonai as well. Ignition caught the air, the meaty sound of cracking skull met the three where they stood, near the wall of the courtyard. Jioto's first shot had been into the neck of a sniper on the adjacent roof. The security sniper's rifle had already been set up, himself in a prone position. Jioto's round went through his 5th vertebrae, cutting his ability to use his limbs, but leaving him alive enough to bleed out. It was the reverberation of the round in his chest that had whiplashed his skull into the concrete, splitting like melon. Jioto had watched the entire scene play out, over watch in a near impossible angle. Jioto didn't fuck around.

Bouzonai spoke. "Inoraiya, time."

"Right. Zero Squad, wedge on me. Let fall the hammer."

The U.N. general assembly was packed. All the diplomats, all there. Bomb threats were wired in to blow, but only if the diplomats were escorted out would they detonate. Searches of course commenced immediately, and explosives of significant caliber had been found. EOD teams on site were at a total loss, the explosive bosy was highly magnetic, pulling to its surface any and all metal materials near it. The bombs weren't going anywhere until the building was cleared. The occupents weren't going anywhere until the people controlling the bomb were disarmed. The people controlling the bomb were gunning down strangers in front of the building.The assault on the building's front door had eased its way into the building. How far, they didn't know. Anything that confronted them, didn't come back. The door to the general assembly room was kicked open. Someone screamed. Someone's scream was cut short.

"Boshe, secure the doors, post the ambassadors. Bouzonai, monitor the feed." Boshe approached the doors, twisting the metal into a gruesome bar, one by one blocking the exits. He finished by posting over watch, his rifle at the ready. Bouzonai's laptop was already firing on desk at the head of the room. Inoraiya stood next to her, pacing behind the podium. He looked to the faces. It was time. He was about to speak when Boshe's voice rang clear across the room.

"Ambassadors and dignitaries of the United Nations, I present for your consideration Lord Inoraiya Seminoe, of the house Seminoe. Mythic Captain of the fabled squad zero. He who had achieved the status, of Dai Mythique Rai." The reverence with which he spoke those final words was not lost on the crowd, moved more by the hulk's obvious and complete deference, than any respect for his words.

"Good Afternoon. I urge you, do not let the circumstances of our first meeting have effect on the words I say to you now. There will be a time before this day, and a time after it."

"So, whatdya think?"

"I think there's blood on the leaves, and the halcyon's flown the coop."

"I fucking hate metaphors."

"I think people are going to start dying, en masse."

"Did you see the sun rise, at Agincourt?"

"When the strong drowned in their strength. When rode the Valkyries. When came the vanguard."

"And we the few, we Peerless Few survived that day."

"A thousand years we've handed down those words. You think they mean anything?"

"They ask the simple question. When will we avenge them?"

"Soon. Very Soon."

(Here Endeth Part The First. If you PM me I'll answer any plot questions you can think of, this has been stewing in my head for a while. Comments and criticism are welcome. I am looking for an editor, if you are interested please email or PM me.)