Sophia's Fables

Cake

Nebraska Undesirables Grear Institution for Treachery (N.U.G.I.T.), 10:38 PM CST

Cool blue light crept into the cell.  It slithered along the smooth concrete like a python, rising up his body, wrapping around his throat. 
Shaking.  Quaking.  Choking. 
No. 
Only eight more hours to go. 
About to die by his own delayed poison.  It was degrading. He knew the American Government was cruel-he had ever since he left the army-but this was an entire new level of humiliation. 
The American Government was the power at fault and any sane person knew it.  Just hours ago, they hacked into the G.E. databases and bombed the center of Mexico City.  Thousands were killed. 
Not thousands of their enemies. 
No. 
Innocents.  Those not on any side of the war, who's lives the Americans destroyed.  None of these dead citizens were a part of the G.E., the Gift Einrichtung.  That was his facility alone. 
But President Grear didn't care.  She was only concerned with capturing war criminals and he was target number one. 
From the door of his cell, he looked into the center of the N.U.G.I.T.  Government agents buzzed around the cavernous hexagonal room; some hunched over computer screens, others walking briskly across the cement floor.  They were all clad in iron grey suits, dressed like the apathetic robots they were. 
The government only put the worst prisoners on the Hex level, so they could keep an eye on them, and he was deemed such an abominable war criminal that there was no othr place the government could put him. 
He could see through the door of his cell so clearly it was as if it wasn't there.  As if, if he wanted to, he could walk right into the Hex of the N.U.G.I.T.  All he had to do was will his feet forward, through the clear opening-
Ah.  I thought so.  Perhaps it was worth the try. 
The magnetic force field was misleading; he knew it was there, but the prospect of escape was just too enticing. 
But of course it was still there.  The entire N.U.G.I.T. was made out of magnets.  The walls of the place were built by the attraction of strong opposite magnetic poles.  The cells were built using the same principles as electromagnetism; the magnets forming the doorway were all like poled magnets that repelled each other, thus creating an electromagnetic force field, keeping prisoners in their cells. 
Grear was a smart woman; he wouldn't deny that.  The prison was her design entirely.  In fact, this very war prison was what foiled their assassination attempt.  At the time of the bombing of the American coasts, she was in Nebraska secretly building the N.U.G.I.T.  The bombs killed her husband, though, perhaps fueling her fire. 
That fire was directed at him, but he could at least understand why.  If anyone ever laid hands on Kitty, perhaps it was safe to say that would be the end of the country. 
The world was destined for failure since the end of the Eastern War.  He was only a child across the globe during the war, but he remembered it vividly.  President Zelenskyy on live television begging for help, people fleeing in droves to Poland, Eurovision in a bunker. 
That was the war that broke the world. 
America and the UK finally sent troops to Ukraine and assassinated Vladimir Putin.  With Old Russia falling apart, America took it upon themselves to decide the country's fate.  Old Russia was split into five new countries under the rule of the Austrian noblemen.  Sevarny Ostrov in the East, Sever Tsentral in the North, Yugo Zapad and Yugo Vostok in the South, and Zapad in the West. 
With the inclusion of these new countries, Austria flourished.  Under the reign of their new leader, Tobias Aigner, the noblemen managed to absorb several slavic countries. 
The world was at peace until America started a war over a cake. 
He was deployed because an American tourist was killed by a cake.  The government left him with nothing because an American tourist was killed by a cake.  He was unable to provide for his family because an American tourist was killed by a cake. 
The Grear administration promised him nothing.  Tobias Aigner promised him all of Croatia. 
Only a fool would refuse an offer like that. 
And no matter how much he loved her, Jolene played the part of that fool.  She would always be an American by blood and heart.  She would always be their pawn. 
Jolene could have done great things, she would have been an asset to the Austrian side.  Her father was the lead chemist of the G.E. who invented the Delayed Mastodon poison, after all. 
Dwelling on the past was pointless. 
He turned his attention to the HoloVision on the concrete wall.  It showed a continuous loop of birds falling through the smoky sky.  The footage must have been shot during the bombing of the coasts. 
In a way, he felt the birds were symbolic of his entire existence.  He was falling, flailing.  And that fall seemed to last forever, only when he hit the ground would it all be over.  But he seemed to fall forever. 
Only eight more hours to go. 
Those birds probably still lay dead on the eastern and western coasts of America.  The bombing two years ago was so toxic, it rendered both coasts uninhabitable.  Some called it Chernobyl Two. 
Perhaps it was cruel, but it had to be done.  With the power they had, America could have ruled the world and no one would have been able to do a damn thing about it. 
That's what happens when a country consolidates too much power; it happened with Old Russia and it almost happened to America.  Power always corrupts.
Something buzzed right outside his cell, causing him to jolt. 
A gust of freezer cold air made its way into the cell.  The forcefield door must be open.  The prospect of escape crossed his mind once more, but it would be pointless anyway; he was doomed to die in eight hours. 
He lazily acknowledged the person who buzzed open the forcefield.  A tall woman in a smart red suit stood before him.  She gathered her dark braided coils over her shoulder. 
"John McCray."  She greeted him coldly, lacking any sense of mirth.  "I've been waiting to get you in the N.U.G.I.T. for a long time."
"Madam President.  So you finally have me."
President Aaliyah Grear sat at the concrete bench opposite him. 
"It's been decided that in the spirit of fairness, you will receive the same death penalty as any other prisoner.  You are to die by Mastodon-"
"Do you take me for a fool?" he spat.  "I recognize the side effects of my own poison.  You decided my fate long before I arrived here."
She looked away.  Perhaps in shame.  Good. 
President Grear stayed sitting across from him, an unspoken solemnity between the two of them.  This was the beginning of the end.  His end. 
"Well, Madam President?  Don't you have more important business to attend to or do you intend to watch me die?"
Her hard, empiric expression softened, perhaps for the first time he had ever seen. 
"I just wanted to know why," she murmured.  She must have been joking; even a college dropout could gather his reasons. 
"Why?" McCray echoed. 
"Yes.  Why would you choose this?  You were in the army, what happened to you?"
McCray laughed. 
"You honestly expected me to fight in a war that was started by a cake and happily receive nothing in return?"
"It wasn't just a war started by a cake, Austria poisoned a US senator!  That was an act of aggression, and I couldn't sit idly when I had the opportunity to stop them from taking over Eastern Europe.  Aigner showed me time and time again that he was just like Putin.  I couldn't let another Eastern War happen."
She paused. 
"You never answered my question, McCray.  Why did you flip?"
He shrugged, observing the cool blue light swim across the floor.  "My family was going hungry in America.  Tobias Aigner offered me all of Croatia in return for running the G.E.  It was something I couldn't pass up."
President Grear scowled at him. 
"And you thought you'd be an Austrian nobleman?  You're a smart man, McCray.  I thought you would have known better than to believe their lies."
He cocked his head to the side.  "And you're a smart woman, Grear.  I would think that you would know better than waging total war and leaving all your veterans penniless."
She looked away, pushing one of her many braids out of her face.  "All you care about is wealth and power, even at the disposal of your honor."
His anger rose.  How dare she criticize his honor. 
"Don't pretend like you're innocent, Grear.  Thousands of American families starved because you only cared about winning a war that was never our business to begin with."
"Never our business?" she seethed.  "How is protecting the greater good 'not our business'?"
"And who made you the decider of the greater good?"  He leaned back into the concrete wall. 
"I'm not," she began.  "But at least I have enough sense of morality to not bomb thousands of people."
"Then what happened in Mexico City?" he whispered.
She didn't speak for moments.  The president seemed almost guilty.  "America's realigned with Old Russia.  They hacked you, we drugged you and brought you here.  No one was killed."
He raised an eyebrow at her.  "America's realigned with Old Russia?  Never thought I'd see the day."
Her face hardened again.  It was clear she was no longer open to listen.  "I had to do it.  I didn't want to, but after the bombing, it was the only way we could win the war."
He stayed silent. 
Aaliyah Grear couldn't keep her face in the angry scowl.  At the mention of the bombing, her expression cracked, haunted like some sort of dismembered constellation. 
He started off slowly.   Speaking about the bombings, anything could trigger her. 
"The coasts had to be bombed.  They gave you too much power.  I'm sorry your husband was killed, but it was inevitable."
"Those bombs killed eighty percent of America!  All that's left is the Midwest!" She yelled. 
"It had to be done.  We were at a stalemate."
"Had to be done, McCray?"  Her voice broke.  "I was drafting a peace treaty as the bomb happened.  With the stalemate, I thought the war could be over.  You ruined any chance of that and now you've lost."
"You're blinded by your victory," McCray growled.  "You may say you've won the war, but there has been so much death, how can anyone truly have won?"
She pushed herself off the concrete bench and strided away from him.  "I can't speak with you.  You're obstinate."
When she buzzed open the forcefield, an iron government agent stood beside her outside his cell. 
"President Grear, we have an update on the situation.  There's two dead in Texas.  Jolene Watson and Ruby McCray."
No...
McCray sank to the cool floor.  His girls...
Gone.  Needlessly. 
Ruby's loyalty to him was no fault of her own.  She was barely an adult, hardly old enough to form her own opinions on the war.  Poor, sweet Ruby, who saved what others threw away, she saw the best in the world even in the midst of war.  Where would he be without her love?  And now his little girl was dead.
And Jolene.  The daughter whose heart he lost years ago. 
"SHE WAS YOUR'S!" He screamed.  The dam in his mind broke, a flood of tears drowning him.  He sobbed into concrete, the never ending fall of the bombed birds finally hitting the ground.  He floated down to the sea, this news, a cancer eating to the bone. 
"She was never mine," McCray whispered.  "She was a true American."
The iron agents ignored his screams.  They continued on winning a war that never should have been started in the first place.  A war that they won at the expense of his family. 
President Grear had long since left him alone, but he could still see her across the Hex ordering her pawns around.  The same agent approached her. 
"President Grear.  There's one more dead in Kansas." He looked over at McCray.  "It's his wife."
Kitty died on account of Aaliyah Grear.  He would never see her again.  Her or their girls. 
No, I will see them.  Only eight more hours to go. 
McCray now welcomed death hoping the demons of him and his family would haunt the Grear for the rest of her miserable war-pig life. 
The iron agents gathered around a computer in the centre of the Hex, just like witches, Satan being their motor.  All their evil minds plotted more destruction, death and hatred to mankind. 
All the politicians like Grear hid themselves away in the N.U.G.I.T. making the poor fight their war.  Why should they go out to fight, after all?
Wait until their judgment day comes; he'd be smiling as God assigned their punishments.  McCray knew better than most that as soon as you're born you start dying.
​There was no point.
Perhaps the Mastodon Poison was starting to take effect, but McCray found himself laughing.  One day, he'd see Grear in Hell with him.  No more filthy American politicians consolidating all the power, burning in Hell for war they started just for fun. 
McCray coughed, spitting up metallic blood.  The tang lingered on his tongue and the red stained the slick concrete. 
Cool blue reason wrapped around his throat.  The minutes change like seasons. 
Only eight more hours left to go.