"Hey."
I groan and peel open my eyes. The room is bright, shining, round. We're in the center of a lightbulb. A large desk against a glass mosaic, light slicing through the windows and lobbing at my retinas.
"Sorry about the cuffs. Mom insisted."
I jiggle my wrists. They're stiff, tied to the leg of the cheap plastic chair I'm propped in. All my joints ache, and my head. The light is killer.
"Not you again. Son of a-"
"Hey, Caleb. Everyone up?"
Kyle is sitting on the edge of the desk. He's wearing jeans, a plaid shirt and beanie- very different from what the rest of us wear, the sweats and tees I saw at Compass. His tennis shoes are untied and he's playing with a rubix cube.
"Let us go," Logan growls. He's in the plastic chair next to me.
Kyle tosses the rubix cube up, lazily catches it. "If you're not going to say something productive, why talk?"
"Where are we."
He nods at me. "Rio de Janeiro, Brazil."
"Why."
"Need your help with something. Let me just buzz Mom- she'll explain."
"Who's your mother?" Logan asks.
Caleb, struggling, tips his chair over.
Kyle glances at the carpet. "We'll let you go later, Caleb. Calm down. Logan, I know this must be confusing but you'll meet her in a moment."
"Actually," says a smooth, rhythmic voice, "we've already met."
A door slides open and Jamari steps into the room.
"The frick are you doing here?" Caleb spits.
Jamari regards him calmly as the door shuts behind her. "I am trying to correct a mistake. Kyle, untie Mister Garcia."
He hops off the table and crouches behind my chair.
"Compass," Jamari continues, "was a mistake. Have you heard of the Rwandan genocide?"
"Pretend we haven't."
"In 1994 a small African country named Rwanda was at war. An ethnic group, the Hutu, attempted to obliterate another group, the Tutsi. There were horrific massacres. The United Nations wanted to step in but couldn't- not all member nations agreed to commit military power to stop the carnage.
'A low-level representative at the UN solved the problem. He created a group independent of any country, able to gather intelligence, create weaponry, or form an army. This group was never actually used, since a rebel group successfully defeated the Hutu regime and ended the genocide. So the coalition broke apart from the UN and became an independent organization for hire. Compass, because it reaches to all four corners of the world.
'But Compass has become poisoned."
"You don't have to tell us," Caleb interrupts. "Clearly, Compass is bad news. And isn't the world round?"
"It's round," Kiko agrees.
"But you should understand. It wasn't always evil," Jamari continues.
YOU ARE READING
The Golgotha Initiative
Acción"When she sees me, the woman shrieks. Doors open in time to see her fall to the ground, screams splitting the air as her severed neck parts in a spluttering trail of blood. I grip my katanas carefully, white gloves on white hilts, staring down the l...
