Phase 5

Through the haze of sleep there came a sharp rap at the window behind Berynne's head and he awoke with a start, barely knowing where he was. Immediately he sat bolt upright, wheeling around to see flickering yellow light through the window and very briefly assuming the sun was dawning. Almost instantly, he realised his mistake as to his horror he saw a face peering through at him.

His heart skipped a few beats and he reached beneath the blanket to pull the revolver from his belt. He pointed it at the face, which rapidly backed away, revealing the thin body of a woman whose arms were holding the lantern producing the waxy yellow light that sickly illuminated the car's interior.

Berynne realised that he was in a tight spot, but fortunately the woman was now disappearing from view. He shuffled backwards as quickly as he could and reached behind him with his free hand, finding no handle and instantly realising why - the vehicle was a sports car whose doors were at the front.

He could no longer see the female who had abruptly woken him, and decided that, although not out of danger by any means, it was probably safe enough to make a move. He clambered over the seats again, and pushed the handle down. The door wouldn't open; he remembered the Tekki lock that had been on the passenger door, and felt for that, too. Pulling this off carefully, he tried again.

The door swung open two inches and stopped dead, clanging noisily against the metal barrier at the centre of the road. Cursing audibly, the memories from the day before came back, and he considered desperately what to do next. The female would be in the direction of the passenger door, and if she had a firearm, he'd be an easy target egressing from that side.

Aside from the sunroof, which Berynne ruled out quickly as foolish, and the passenger side door, there was no other exit from the vehicle. He lunged across the car, knocking the door from its resting place across the road with a loud scraping noise. Seeing the lantern light jump slightly, as quickly and noiselessly as possible he followed the door through the dark. Once his feet hit the road, he skidded to the right, hopped backwards along the front bumper of the vehicle until he felt the central reservation barrier behind him. He turned, vaulted it as best he could, and leaned back hard against the cold steel, breathing heavily.

Taking the gun into both hands, Berynne took off the safety catch and wheeled whilst getting to his feet. Instantly he pointed it at the light source now standing a few feet from the verge. In spite of the dark, he could still make out her face. As his eyes readjusted to the lantern light, he realised it was one of terror.

He could see her much more clearly now. She was young, much younger than his meagre 23 years, and wearing a very simply and rough hand-made brown dress, with a large frontal pocket like 20th Century aprons. She had on her feet a pair of old running shoes, and her dark hair was tied back tightly behind her head. Practical, he thought. She's probably Follower.

Slowly, the girl put the lantern on the ground and raised her hands above her head in the time-honoured gesture of surrender. Her whole body shook in fear; plainly she'd never been in this kind of situation before.

If Berynne was to be honest, neither had he. He'd listened to tales of the Followers in the Tekki mess halls, but had never actually encountered one. Tekkis in general had a deep mistrust for them and their Metaphilosophy, but there were many similarities in the aims of the two gangs and personally Berynne had no quarrel with them. Especially now. If this Follower girl was here, there'd be a Follower enclave somewhere near by. Besides, on her own she was barely a threat.

"Hey," he shouted in English as he replaced the gun in his belt, clicking the safety back on. "Look - I'm putting the gun away. I'm going to come over - don't move."

Slowly, he climbed over the barrier and walked towards her, both hands at head level. The girl looked calmer, but still as though she was about to bolt. Berynnne had to admit that he had quite a few questions as to why suh a meek and fearful Follower had strayed from the enclave before dawn, but he thought it best not to worry for the moment. After all, he was in dire need of her help.

With the width of a highway lane between them, he stopped. She flinched and took a step backwards, shivering slightly. "Don't worry," he called to her, softly. "I'm not here to hurt you. I need your help."

To this, the girl looked puzzled. Berynne wasn't surprised. By all accounts, the general mistrust of Tekkis for Followers was fairly mutual. She made no response, and he began to worry if she really understood him. "Parlez-vous Français? Habla Usted Español? Do you speak English? Catalan? Listen; I need your help."

She shook her head vigorously by response, indicating frantically down the highway. He took another few steps forward with his hands at eye level, and she stepped backwards again, right to the bushes in the verge, to which her back was now pressed firmly. Berynne sighed, exasperated, and picked up the lantern that was now by his feet, not hers. "Look." Now his voice was flat and tired. "Here's your lantern. Take me to your enclave." He repeated the sentence in rough Spanish, and proffered one hand forward to offer her the lantern, indicating with the other down the highway in the same direction as she had indicated.

She flinched again, but after a moment's pause she grabbed the lantern suspiciously, stared at him for a few seconds before making off towards where she had pointed at full speed. He followed her, confused but pleased he had gotten the message across.

His injuries from the day before moaned in complaint, and he was desperately tired. For the season, it was surprisingly chilly in the pre-dawn air, and he was afraid that those looking for him might be coming back. Berynne looked incredulously at the girl striding a few paces in front of him, and almost prayed that the walk would not be long.

Phase 4

It was quiet in the streets. It generally was, and the two Visiths had learned to be wary if it wasn't. The Callers had suddenly withdrawn from this area months before, not before time following the campaign Shelob and her pack had wrought against them. It had been a bloody conflict across at least two Winters, and Shelob had lost more many more than the Callers had including her partner Sûrgarge, who'd been killed by rookies in a firefight. This killing had the effect of making the job of the Callers much harder, and Kirsev and Morgolloth had been called on almost nightly at one point. They hadn't been associated with the Tsodik before but Shelob had needed a good Vixen. Now they were friends, even though the Callers had left and there was no need for Kirsev to stick around.

But here they were, months later, running errands for Shelob. They hadn't heard from her in most of that time, running only occasionally into members of the Tsodik in the streets and hearing that there was no news.

Morgolloth was lost in this chain of thought when Kirsev put an arm out to stop him. In the street ahead she could hear voices - young voices, laughing and shouting. "NAs," she told him flatly. "This is ridiculous. We're late already."

They stood there, waiting for the gang to approach. As they did, one boy stood forward from the others, ragged clothes and unkempt hair hard to make out in the dark streets. "Cabrones," he said, as salutation. Morgolloth growled and made to step forward, but Kirsev held him back with a pinch. "You gonna let your puta tell you what to do, cabrón?"

The leader stepped up to Morgolloth. He wasn't tall as the Visith Nightshadow but he probably would be. "She got no hair because she sick, hombre? Or you just like it that way, neh?" He turned his face to look at Kirsev. "You shiny like that anywhere else, mi flaquita?"

Kirsev sighed, and took a step forward, brushing one side of her trenchcoat aside and drawing a knife from her belt before the youths realised what was happening. As the danger dawned on him, she was already drawing the cruel blade along the soft flesh of his upper arm. The scant moonlight illuminated the scene as the lad, upper body clad only in a T-shirt, felt and saw the long wound open up and begin bleeding profusely as Kirsev spat on her knife and rubbed it idly with the forearm of her coat, watching as the boy clasped his arm in agony. Morgolloth smiled wryly, pushed the others aside and moved slickly through the group, Kirsev following.

They walked side by side as the group hurled abuse after them, moving with a cool grace until they turned the next corner. Morgolloth giggled; Kirsev shot him a sharp look. Without halting, she accelerated to full stride, Morgolloth struggling to keep up.

The rest of the journey to the Tsodik passed without incident; the two barely exchanged a word, and their tormentors hadn't ventured through the streets after them.

The rendezvous had been at Shelob's base of operations for a reason: The basement had only one entrance. The place used to be a café, or so they had been told, and Shelob had been the owner back then, too. She'd been in there on Zero Day, and survived it, living in the darkness for months until Sûrgarge and his Visith cronies had dug her out whilst looking for a place to sleep. The Tsodik had been born out of that sleepless night - the next morning a grateful and tousle-haired Shelob had been sworn in as Visith, and the rest was history.

The Tsodik had been a three storey building in the centre of the town, but the upper part was all but gone bar a skeletal hand of structural girders. Entrance was from the street through a delivery hatch; ordinarily, one had to know its precise location, but tonight Shelob and another Visith were standing alongside it.

Shelob was tense and jittery, quite unlike her usual calm self. Like Kirsev she was bald, but wore red dye on her head. She had done since Sûrgarge had died. Her and the other Visith wore black trenchcoats, but hers had been Sûrgarge's, shiny and leather, the coat of an Aleph. Although shorter in stature than any of the other three, Shelob demanded more respect, even when fidgety.

The other Visith was male, and Morgolloth didn't recognise him as Tsodik. His eyes were set deep into his long face, and Morgolloth suspected him to be from Eastern Europe, which garnered some brownie points. They interlocked fingers and pulled them brusquely apart, nodding slightly to each other as they did so. Shelob and Kirsev brushed the backs of their hands together slickly. Following this greeting, Shelob began to speak hurriedly.

"Kirsev, Morg - thanks for coming. This," She indicated the other Visith. "Is Boris. He's from the Dalet up north. He ran in a pack with Sûrgarge years ago. That's one reason he's here. Another is that he speaks Basque."

Kirsev raised her eyebrows, mind working quickly. "The client is from the Basque?" Straight to business. That was Kirsev. "What symbol do they run under, Shelob?"

Shelob grimaced. "They don't, Kirsev, that's the thing. Look - " She motioned with her arm and Morgolloth followed with his eyes to a battered, tatty van with sprayed, stencilled letters on the side. He could make them out if he squinted - D42623.

"Tekkis," He muttered, and Kirsev stamped her foot impatiently. "What's this about, Shelob?"

Boris made to open his mouth but Kirsev interjected. "No. He didn't ask you."

The feeling was tense and pregnant with awkwardness, and Shelob shivered visibly. "The Tekkis wanted a Vixen. Kirsev's the best I have."

The Vixen sighed and kicked open the delivery hatch, spilling sputtering yellow light into the dark street. She jumped down into the basement below. Morgolloth looked at Shelob, a look of apology in his darkened eyes.

"Perdón, Shelob," He muttered as he slipped through the hatchway clumsily. "Perdónale a mi flaquita."

Phase 3

She slipped two long, serrated daggers into her belt and pulled a black trenchcoat over a tight black top which hugged her small, malnourished form suffocatingly. The cold darkness about her eyes was in stark contrast with her pale skin, her newly-shaved head shining in the pale moonlight glancing through the holes in the tarpaulin which covered the window frame.

She glanced briefly at the small pack on the chair, but ruled out taking it. It was only a meeting, and she'd have her knives. And -

"Morgolloth," She murmured. A dark shape on the mattress behind her stirred sluggishly, and a face appeared from beneath the blankets. "Ven conmigo. They aren't local."

The male grunted, but climbed up from the floor and began, clumsily, to pull on clothes. His own were just as black as hers, but sported logos from a bygone era. They looked well-loved, fitting neither their owner nor the Visith image, but comfortable. Besides, nobody would see them beneath his trenchcoat.

She sighed slightly as he almost fell pulling on his boots as she laced her own thigh-high boots from a crouching position, before pulling them tightly, wincing slightly as they gripped soft flesh. Morgolloth stashed his blades and pulled on his own trenchcoat, flicking out his dark shoulder-length hair as he did. He tried to flatten the unruly uppermost hairs futilely, until the female pulled a brush from somewhere and did it for him, savagely.

"Gracias," He looked at her straight on. "No pack, Kirsev?"

She shook her head. "I don't want to scare them. This job will help us. If it turns nasty Shelob's promised us a pack of Alephs will be outside. But ..."

Morgolloth nodded. They had the knives, four of them in all, so unless the Outsiders had guns there wouldn't be much left for the kids to finish off anyway.

The room stank of dust and sex, and Morgolloth considered untacking the scrap of tarpaulin across the window. The day had been unseasonably warm for autumnal Catalonia, so the long night would be hot too. If the smell was bad now, it'd be worse when they came back, tenfold. He walked across to the pane and undid a tack or two, but Kirsev shook her head again.

"Leave it," she said, slowly. "We're late."

Seconds later, the pair walked out of the front door of the apartment. Kirsev took the key from a pocket and locked it. She turned away and Morgolloth made an abrupt laughing sound somewhere in his throat, remembering when they'd found the apartment. It hadn't been the first empty one in the building, but Morgolloth hadn't needed to kick in the door. When he'd pushed it open, the stench of death and decay had overpowered even them, two Visith assassins. Within minutes they'd found the body of the owner twisted in agony and slumped against a wall. Zero Day had passed eighteen months before that day, and putrefaction had set in and done its worst on her and her three cats. Only the cockroaches remained, but Kirsev didn't mind them, so they had taken it. There was even a key.

The pair of them walked down the stairs. They were on the eight floor, and it took them several minutes to make it all the way to the bottom. Morgolloth was hungry but didn't mention it; he didn't expect Kirsev would care, and even if she did, there was naught as could be done about it. He'd ask Shelob when they made it to the rendezvous.

They'd reached the lobby. Morgolloth saluted to the skull of the concierge that Kirsev had placed on the counter and she laughed slightly. He grinned, and pushed open the door, letting in the night air. Kirsev stepped out into the dark street with Morgolloth following, letting the door to the apartment block close softly behind him.

Phase 2

In his dreams he moved through fields, without walking, without running, without using his feet. Around him the trees were unscathed, the fields were lush and green and the people looked fed, healthy, without worries. He lived the days that had been before Zero Day, before everything began to change.

Carefree, he jaunted through fields, vaulted colourless stone walls, sang noiselessly in ancient forests. After a time he lay down in the grass and gazed unthinking at the bright sky until his eyes hurt from the effort. Animals - he could barely remember their names - grazed around him, confused by his presence. Eventually, the pain about his eyes became too much to bear and the creatures encircled him, baying lowly, until one specimen began to lick his face gingerly. The saliva dripping onto his face was freezing, chilled like dewdrops falling, and it shocked him, jolted him, startled ...

Here. Where am I? How ... How did I get here?

His eyes - bolted open; the pain in his head - real. The water dripping onto him from above was cold, hard and real, as it had been in the dream, but it came instead from the dead branches in the trees above him. Terrified, he remembered the early days following Zero Day, the days of the Black Rain which had killed so many he had known from those times, and before he truly recalled where he was he rolled away flinching, bunching himself up in the relative dry of a tree hollow. He brushed the water from his face instinctively, hurriedly, desperately.

Stop. He told himself. Think. Where are you? When are you?

It came back to him between the shooting pains in his head. His name; he was called Berynne, Berynne Zerith. Any other personal information was irrelevant at the time being except his gang and that was Tekki. He was a Tekki Beta, clad as such as far as he could tell and ... more crucially, armed as such - he had found, fumbling through his pockets, a revolver. But ...

No. I wasn't given this. I took this. I took this from -

From who - from her, the Delta wheelz in the yellow sportscar. He could remember it, remember lying down in the back and sitting in the passenger side and kicking out the door. Slowly he could remember why he had done that; the plane. Eventually he remembered that in the first return strafe the plane had shot out the windscreen, killing the wheelz. A Tekki plane. He could remember her blood and bullet wounds, but he couldn't remember knowing why Tekkis had been shooting him, which was a reasonably good sign that he hadn't ever known, either.

Scrambling through his pockets revealed nothing else, and on checking the chamber for the revolver he found but one bullet. As he remembered more of the car trip, the pursuit across the field, the vault over the wall and precisely where he was, he both considered and ruled out using this single shot on himself.

No. Then they would have won.

There was not the faintest clue in Berynne's head as to who They were or why They wanted him dead, only that indeed They did want him dead, and that fact alone spurred him onto survival.

He began to reconsider his situation as carefully as he could. From the scant memories he could piece together, it had been mid-afternoon when he had leapt from the car. Now it was much later, getting on towards early evening, and soon it would be dark. Even straining his ears against the overpowering silence of the Wilderness, he couldn't hear the plane. This stood to reason. Only the oldest and most decrepid planes had withstood Zero Day, those whose engines were not electronically controlled and whose technology was reasonably uncomplicated for Tekki Kappas to repair. These planes had small fuel tanks, and Berynne made the assumption that he was suitably far from Tekki territory to have to worry about the plane returning anytime soon. He toyed with the possibility that he was not important enough to come back for. Perhaps the pilot thought that they had killed him.

Berynne was well aware that out of the infinite sea of possibilities, he had chosen those most suited to his own desires. But that was fine by him - he didn't really see any point in being pessimistic about it. Objectivity, that was the way forward.

Time passed. He fancied he could hear some birds somewhere in the thicket, but he wasn't sure. It was unlikely. His eyes were still burning from the impact of his head against the tree, and the curtain of night was falling slowly about him. He realised that as night fell, so did the possibility of the plane returning.

He made a flash decision, and stood up, wincing from the pain in his head. He reached up and felt it instinctively. There was a monstrous bump, and what felt like a scab, but no fresh blood. Taking this as a positive sign, he climbed slowly over the wall, and walked nonchalantly through the field, looking at the numerous bullet-hocks in the ground.

Pushing his way through the shrubs, Berynne hopped down the slope, seeing the highway ahead of him. He looked along it in the direction that the vehicle had last been travelling in and saw the yellow sportscar a little way down the road, leaning against the central barrier. He began to walk.

A few minutes later, he arrived at the vehicle, and examined the corpse properly. She had been beautiful, but in death her body was ugly, writhen in pain. He closed her tortured eyelids and considered whether or not he could dispose of the body. He found nothing more of use on her person, and turned away from it, distraught.

After a pause, he searched the car. There were some blankets in the boot, and biscuits. He took them both and got back into the car through the gap where the passenger door had been - now it lay a few dozen yards behind them on the road. He opened the glovebox, and searched it. There - the two-way radio. He grabbed it, and thumbed the power button, waiting for a signal whilst he continued his search.

Bullets. A bottle of water. A handful of shiny things, obviously personal items. He considered taking them for trading later on, but his conscience put the things in the Delta's pockets. There was no honour in taking them from her in death, not even in this circumstance.

He didn't know how to operate the vehicle, but the ignition was still engaged. Aside from being freezing, the car would otherwise make a good shelter for the harsh night. He looked at the dashboard, and turned what he judged to be the heating up to full blast. Next, he grabbed the wheelz's body, and dragged it from the vehicle, repulsed by the act. Her dead, unstruggling weight was almost crippling, but as he had done so many times before he managed to bring it to the shrubs at the side of the road. He lay her down, and resolved to cover her the following day.

Berynne shuffled down the road to where the door was lying, and carried it back to the car, pulling it back into place from the inside. He climbed over the seats to the back, and covered himself in the blankets. The temperature was slowly rising, and soon he felt vaguely comfortable. Sunset had been and gone, and the long, dangerous night had begun.

For the second time that day, he closed his eyes slowly. Everything could wait. He would still be in grave peril tomorrow.

Phase 1

The D42 driving the battered sports car slumped forwards in his seat, her hands falling away from the steering wheel, her head slipping onto it. From his position in the cramped back seat, the man with whose safe passage she had been charged looked on helplessly as the red stain sprawled lazily across the middle of the fabric seat.

This sloth was an attribute which couldn't be applied to the vehicle at that moment, and the cowering figure, lying flat on his back and petrified, realised that something needed to be done quickly. He cursed his option-limiting position, trying to consider the situation as objectively as he could. His driver was dead, the vehicle shot to bits and himself without weapons except for whatever small arms the wheelz might be carrying. Meanwhile, the car was careering without direction along the highway in the middle of the Wilderness. There was no telling when the plane might return for another strafe, but at the very least consolation he had ascertained that there was only one out there.

The wheels hit a bump in the road, and the Delta's corpse jolted slightly, stirring the steering wheel and causing the car to swerve. He bolted into life, forcing himself from his hiding place and vaulting into the passenger seat. Pushing the young lady's body backwards and grimacing at the bullet wounds, he searched her body for the two things that would help him out There.

A few moments later, he heard the familiar drone of the plane overhead. Again he began to act, frantically hammering at the passenger side door. A few solid kicks later the hinge mechanism gave way, flying open backwards and hanging on only by the sturdy, customised lock. He tightly gripped the side of the door, placed his feet deep in the alcove, and forced himself to his feet.

Hair blowing in the slipstream, he turned his head back to sneak a look behind the car. Surely enough, there was the plane, flying low. In the cockpit he could see the head of the Delta wingz flying the thing. The Delta could probably see him too, and was almost certain to be resting a finger on that damned trigger.

Nothing for it but to jump, then.

He pressed himself backwards into the car for the final time, before hurling himself forwards over the broken asphalt of the ancient highway. Behind him, the plane opened fire on the vehicle, now swerving violently away from its escapee. He landed rolling so that he could get instantly to his feet and begin running as fast as he could towards the nearby line of shrubs at the edge of the highway.

Above his head the plane shot past, guns blazing at the yellow sports car speeding towards the central reservation. In a few moments, the impact came, and he winced as he heard the bodywork screech against the corroded steel, painfully decelerating the vehicle. He heard the plane cease firing, continuing on its bearing. Without looking back, he told his body to keep moving, to accelerate. That plane was coming about, and would soon be upon him.

The shrubs offered little protection, but they were better cover than the open highway and he scrambled through them as best he could, hoping that there would be something better further along. The plane would begin strafing these haggard plants, and if he wasn't somewhere with better hiding places, he'd be as dead as his wheelz was.

He afforded himself one second to shoot a glance to his left, where through the thin line of bare trees he saw a wide field, bordered on one side some way ahead of him by a wall and a thicket of withered trees. He made a quick decision, and broke away from the shrubs, looking over one shoulder to determine where the plane was. He couldn't see it, but he could hear it, and it was close.

Must be flying lower than the tops of those shrubs. If he can't see me ...

His feet pounded against the ground and the stitch in his chest was growing with every step, but he knew that he had to press onwards. There was around fifty metres left to run, but each second counted now. If the plane appeared above the shrub line, he'd be both in range and in the open.

Forty metres ... thirty metres ... twenty metres ... He glanced over his shoulder to see the tips of the propellers nosing above the treeline behind him. Another five metres passed beneath his feet. The cockpit would be clear now, and the finger would be on the trigger. With ten metres to go, he heard the terrifying sound of gunfire behind him, bullets impacting on ground he'd been fighting against only moments before. He drew a deep breath, and tried to accelerate across the last stretch.

The wall was taller than it had looked a hundred metres earlier, and with five metres to go he began to wonder whether or not he'd be able to vault it. Only one way to find out. More gunfire, closer this time. He could taste the acrid smoke on the air as he prepared himself – hands out before him, knees ready for the impact.

His palms hit the coping stones. Instantly he forced himself upwards with his shoulders and knees. Crying out, he caught his shins on the coping stones and flew head first through a few metres of clear air before a tree put an impromptu end to his improvised flight.

As his body hit the reeking leaf mould, more bullets slammed into the wall behind him. The man grinned and hiccuped as the plane tore once more over his head, before his eyes shut in slow motion, and consciousness slipped away from him.