Immortal Dreams (Revised)

4: Caged Birds

SEQUENCE 19

(Marcus)

The sound blaring through my headphones didn't match with the rumbling of the jeep at all. Every bump and divot we hit in the road came at either an offbeat or off-measure. I distracted the horrid lack of synchronicity with nature by drumming onto my legs and bumping my knee to the steady kick of the bass drum. What I was listening to wasn't anything too special, just music from a game I had been playing at home before we left the states for our vacation wedding. My brain went off on tangents, imagining me playing the game to the tune and rhythm of the music, trying to figure out what sort of things would be happening during tracks I hadn't managed to hear yet. I faded in and out of focus between my imagination and the passing road.

We were just on the outside of the capitol now, and it wouldn't be long until we were in the city limits. The light pollution in the air filled the night sky, drowning out the amazing view we had been getting ever since we got to this country. One thing I believed I would miss when we eventually got back was such a sky, even out in the country where I'm from, you couldn't see as many stars as you could out in the mountains here.

As the music moved on to the next track, my focus moved over to Alex, who was driving the jeep. Her face was only lit by the dim light of the instruments on the dash, but it was just enough for me to see the expression on her face, pure and utter focus. We each had our own way of getting in the zone before a mission, mine was to listen to music, Alex's was complete and total silence. It was almost surreal seeing her prepare, enough to scare even me. I knew better than to interrupt her before she was ready. I'd seen her blow up on every single one of her sisters before, and had been on the receiving end a few times, and it was not something I was willing to ever go through on purpose. She kept her eyes on the road, and turned the wheel sharply to the right as we navigated the long roads into the capitol city.

Our eventual destination was a bank building less than a block away from the House of Government. Both buildings were tall enough to overlook the highway and into the Samborombon Bay. But our target wasn't in the bay, it was the House of Government itself. The bank would be used as a staging ground, and from there, something we called Operation Gallows would be carried out.

It was going to be simple enough. Heather was captured not long after she reached the rendezvous in the mountains, and every single citizen she had evacuated, those who didn't fight back and were immediately executed for it, and they had all been carried back to the capitol where they were to be executed as a show of power. Heather would be fine, as I said before, Tessa would never be so bold as to execute an American citizen, but her own people were an entirely different story. Our primary goal was getting those citizens to safety, but the special thing about the capitol having the nerve to execute these people in the courtyard just in front of the House of Government, President Tessa would be there to oversee the whole thing, safe from the wings of her well secured manor. Being so close to it all was our best chance to cut the head off the snake, so to speak.

Alex was going to be leading a small group to infiltrate the event and free the citizens from being executed, showing those present that not only was their government more than willing to kill them without a second thought, but that they were more than capable of rising up and stopping them, if only given a push.

It was going to be my responsibility to break into the House of Government and see to Tessa and rescue Heather. It wasn't going to be an easy operation by any means, but I was up to the task.

I continued drumming away at my legs as I closed my eyes and leaned back in the car seat.

I had spent hours and hours memorizing the layout of the House of Government, every floor, every room, every chair and decorative plant in the entire building was burned into my brain. Lia was a wizard on her computer, her ability to retrieve any amount of information I requested, despite any firewall it might be locked behind, was second to none. Somehow she was able to get me a detailed blueprint with pictures of every room in the building. Before Tessa had taken power, the governor's mansion, and subsequent House of Government, was a popular tourist destination, and while Tessa had done her best to lock away any trace of such information. She was never any match for Alex's youngest sister.