Prologue - The Captain
The sun burnt him. Blazing hot, and partly hidden by the black fumes from the eternally burning fires in the Vault Dome, it burnt him. Far away, he could see the warhead rising up and coming towards the World-Under-The-Earth. Our doom, he thought. The Others had released the Warheads, the final nuclear weapons of the planet. It arced through the sky, like an arrow finding the final soldier in a war. The last shot. He watched. He could not do anything else. They had failed the World-Under. His soldiers were talking, reminiscing about their lives’ best moments, which were few and far between.
The missile arced, and the soldiers shook hands. It whistled though the air, moving closer………
Suddenly, it veered off course, and struck a few hundred meters off target. The blast would not destroy the World-Under after all, though it would harm it severely.
The captain felt his bones shatter, a moment of excruciating pain. He felt his skin melt. And then the world went dark.
1 - The Waitress
Power is the most important thing, thought the waitress as she served her customers in the New-clear Bar. “Refill my cup, Tris” seven-foot tall Small Ben called out to her. She refilled his cup, and then made some pleasant talk. “Nothing like a good drink to make ya feel good, especially with these thrice-damned fumes permeating all the damn empty space you have. Why, even my drink tastes like smoke now.” Tris moved on. Small Ben would continue grumbling. She watched the crowd as she walked back to the counter to refill her jug.
A lot of new people had come to the World-Under after the overworld was bombarded with nukes. Some looked healthy and affable, others rat-faced with keen eyes and suspicious expressions, some grateful for the fact that they were still alive, and others too tired and worn-out to be feeling anything.
Tris worked her shift till six in the evening. She grabbed her satchel and went out the back door. The fumes and stench of the World-Under greeted her. She did not mind, though. Better live and smell the shit and piss of the world, than to be buried with it.
The roof of the underworld hung menacingly over the people of the underground city. So did the threat of the Others sending in troops to destroy the Under-Dwellers, once and for all. She tossed a beggar some bread as she passed him. She always spared something for the beggars. It seemed inhuman to let them suffer when there was already enough suffering to go about in the world.
She made her way through the congested paths in the underground city. The crowd gradually thinned as she reached the areas on the edges of the settlement. There she met Phi Shun, as arranged beforehand. The vigilantes had chosen the abandoned house at the edge of the settlement primarily for the reason that nobody lived around there. As the sallow faced man walked beside her, he asked “Ready?”
“Uh-huh. The kill or be killed mission. Well, that’s what I have been preparing for these past six years, haven’t I?”
Phi Shun nodded. Tris’s dedication to the cause was legendary among the members of the secret group. She had been picked up as a teenage orphan from the streets. Her childhood was only a fuzzy picture in her mind. She remembered a man, who brought her into the World-Under. She had lived with him for a few years. He was never home, she recollected. Scarred, muscled and with eyes that showed a weariness of the world and its trials, he was never far from a bottle, draining away his essence and his sorrows into the glass. But he had taught Tris her most important lesson – to have something worth living for. Tris did not know whether the man was her blood, but his slow fall had made her determined to have something to live for. She did not want to be like him, having no aim in life but to die. So she had applied herself wholeheartedly to the vigilantes’ cause. In five years, she was one of the most trusted assassins in the group, and in the sixth year had been included in the top five members of the group. These five held the power, the grit, the will and guts to direct the vigilantes and finally liberate the people under the world, by opening the shelters of the Others, situated aboveground, for their use, ending the elitist and despotic power of the hated ones.
Phi Shun told her “The other three are waiting in the meeting room. Let’s go see them, huh?”
“Well, shouldn’t keep them waiting long, after all, they want someone dead, no?”
They had reached the door of the meeting room. Tris readied herself, squaring her shoulders and pushing her long hair back. She walked in. Phi Shun closed the door behind her.
The five people greeted each other. “Well, is my mission approved?” Tris asked.
The four other top vigilantes nodded. Then the Stag said, his thin lips slightly curving upward, “Well dear, it seems the Overlord’s time has come.”
Tris grinned, a feral grin of anticipation. It was time for her to see the Overworld.
