Lawless [h.s.] AU

Chapter One

October 2313:
Harry Styles:

"Niall? Niall, where are you, man?" I whisper-shout. I swear Niall is always ten steps behind me or literally nowhere to be found the ass.

We're scoping out a new area to try to occupy in town. Jacob, Dad, always sends me, thinking I want to see the land I'll soon be responsible for running. This part of town is just across the river, in what used to be Chelsea. It's not destroyed entirely, like our side of the border - but it's remained undesirable enough that the rest of London left it behind during the war recovery efforts.

It used to be really nice, real posh around here. It never made sense to me why they wouldn't include it when they planned to "Rebuild, Recover, Restart!" as they like to say.

It's been 100 years since the war, but leave it to this new wave of government to be unable to finish anything they begin. They should have been able to recover the entire city in this amount of time, but even with war recovery efforts still at full force, there are fewer natural resources than there once were, so everything takes time.

Europe struggled to re-establish the lands and people that once occupied it. The Lawless didn't make it much easier either throughout the city, I admit, but we see where there are problems, and until the government listens - we'll do what it takes to fight back.

They claimed to be just and fair and in it to serve everybody, but anyone who wasn't wholly brainwashed should be able to see that it's just more men in power seeking to keep others down so they can maintain a chokehold on citizens.

Things have calmed down in the last 50 years, but in the beginning, it was like some novel from the early 2000's. Women being forced to bear children, men being forced into the army, children being forced to work menial jobs, and lack education.

I've read the history books and I've read what they want us all to think - but I know the truth.

"Niall, you fucker where are you we need to get back. We have a meeting tonight." I call out.

This part of Old-Chelsea is nothing really, not yet. We'll occupy and re-establish it. Move in some of the families bunking together in the other shelters and spend some time cleaning it up. Not the exteriors of the buildings of course; those need to stay exactly as they are to the untrained eye.

The remnants of the untouched parts of the city are marked with nuclear remains and rotting buildings, and the rest of the city would only dare come close to these areas once the government okays it for safety and health concerns. It's drastic, the difference between the areas they chose to focus on and the parts they left behind.

The people they've left behind.

That's half our advantage; no one in London will ever expect us to be as big as we are if we remain unseen. The Lawless runs this town whether its private citizens know it or not. We've been quietly running things since before many of them were born, and soon, I will be running The Lawless.

We managed to keep hold of Brixton, everything South of the water, really. Private citizens and government representatives mainly moved up North, closer to Covent Garden, the palace, and all. It's pretty clean up there; of course when things went to shit, they made sure that the rich continued to live pretty.

We want to take what was Chelsea, so here we are, working our way quietly through the city, scoping out places that seem available so we can slowly gain that foothold. If we can take Chelsea, we are in the perfect position to move up to the West of Hyde Park and be right on the government's tails without their awareness.

It's Jacob's plan, but I'll be the one seeing things out with the way his health is deteriorating at such a rapid pace. I would love to get Lawless out of Brixton. It's a mess, and while the entire city is littered with small areas of "uninhabitable" places, it is possible for us to recover everything. This government is just made up of pieces of shit, we do what we have to. I have plans, plans of my own, a different direction for the Lawless to go - Jacob just doesn't listen. Well, maybe he listens but I don't know that he really hears me I guess you could say.