Marked By Shadows

Chapter 15

Gomez slammed his fist on the table angrily. "We have to end them! We have to! If they get into power and defeat the government...who knows what will happen next!?" he was enraged. Infuriated. Vexed. Chairs were strewn on the floor all over the room, and the map crumbled on the floor. The man in the black hood sat across from the table and watched.

"We will get them, Gomez. That's a promise. We killed Roger. We can kill the others just as easily."

Gomez nodded slowly, tapping his fingers on the table, thinking.

...

    Mike was doing pull-ups in the training room. As soldiers walked into the room to train, he glared at them and they ran off. There was something about this giant of a man that made people run away in fear. It wasn't his muscles, his height, he was six feet tall, or even the fact that when he talked, his voice rumbled like thunder. No, it was none of the obvious facts. It was his eyes that scared people: those intense blue eyes, full of power and anger and intensity. And yet, there seemed to be something sad in his eyes.

    Some people have sadness built into their bodies so deep it cannot be detected.

    Michael Jones was one of those people.

He grabbed a towel to wipe his sweat off himself and breathed hard. He glanced at his jacket that had his wallet sticking out of it. He took his wallet and opened it up. Inside it was his ID, some money, and a lockpick. He reached in between the money and pulled out a wrinkled photograph and stared at it: five boys, tall with brown hair and blue eyes that were various shades, and a girl with the same brown hair but dark blue eyes. The kind of dark blue that hides in a fire and dances in the flames.

Mike took pride in the fact that he could win a fight against anyone. He had trained, fought, bled, and killed to be the best. But the funny thing is, fighting the world is easy. Fighting yourself is the hardest and steepest journey. He plunged his fist into the punching bag. Right, lift, right-left one fist after another punching the bright red sack. He hated his past and yet he never thought about it he had tried to forget but something about it always tugged at him like a wave dragging grains of sand into the sea. Worst of all was his father's voice. It was gruff, hard. Everything about it measured to inflict pain every iron syllable chucking more ice into him. He hated the league because, for the first time in a long time, he was scared. Scared that the ice around his heart would thaw.
"Why am I here? Why am I with a bunch of crazy people? Why do I want to kill my sister?" His mind filled with those same questions as he wrestled for an answer. Was it because he finally couldn't ignore what he was apart of anymore? Was it because he wanted to get away from Zoey? He didn't know yet but he knew he needed to know if he wanted to feel sane again.

...

David lay on the itchy grass by the league. He looked up at the sky etched with burning balls of light. He always felt safer looking at stars because they were like a piece of home implanted in the universe after all these were the same stars he saw in Ireland. He always missed home a strong nostalgia surrounding Ireland like the Oceans bordered the Emerald Isle. He let his mind drift; he was exhausted and did not feel like curbing his thoughts so his thoughts went home. To the dirt-poor house, he had grown up in. His abusive alcoholic father. His harsh shattered mother and his scared sister with those deep chocolate brown eyes starving for love. His father would come home railing about some problem or another and then turn and curse and scream at his mother beating her unless David stepped in but stepping in causes pain. He remembered one day coming home from mowing lawns and he heard Kelsey, his baby sister, crying and huddled in the corner with a black eye and scratches and whimpering "He said I am not pretty enough." When Kelsey cried it always eroded part of David's heart and he promised himself that he would step in and protect her and whoever else. His mother, a doctor who could never keep a practice, worked for a new organization and one day decided she would test the Mark on Kelsey. Kelsey screamed and David charged in between his sister and his mother, the needle landing into his arm and landing a curse on his life. His wrist and the twisted eagle with the Spears in its beak were proof he was fifteen when his father dragged him from the house and drove him to Belfast "You have a deformity now you creature" his father yelled at him drunk. David Remembered crying "I am sorry it's not my fault I would change it if I could-" his father slapped him and pushed him out of the car "does not matter! You're no longer a part of this family you will live like a monster" and had spat at him and left David to fend for himself. But enough in the past, after all the world would be at war soon there was no time for memories.