Redeemers

Chapter 3: the Prisoner

Scais Vandrin smiles at his handiwork from behind the mirror, his special two-way mirror in his special inescapable interrogation room. He must admit to himself that the interrogation did not go exactly as he had planned. So unlike all his other personal interrogations. He always likes to leave the interrogations to the lower ends of his elites, but he would make an exception for a few people. Annora Vella definitely makes that list.

The one that people on the street had started calling the Black Bandit. She may not be fully aware of her title that has been whispered, but he is. Some say that there are several Black Bandits that work together and collaborate as a team. He knows that this is not true, it was just her the whole time. He did not know this at first, and that fact annoys him immensely. She completely escaped him for five years. No one has ever done that, and he will never let them do that again, especially not her. He will admit that this is the fact that intrigues him the most. Her intellect must be extraordinary to have evaded him for so long and hiding in plain sight.

Her family, however, he is not so enamored with. They have hidden from him for seven years, but not with the same flare. They have buried themselves away somewhere, cowering like the fools that they are. He will find them, and he will force them from the hole that they have dug for themselves. He has some theories as to where they may be, including his least favorite.

He knows that it is extremely likely that the Vellas have been hiding out with his worst enemies in this city, the Redeemers. The children that run amok through his city in multicolored suits of metal, stealing the hearts of the people of this city, and weakening his influence. It sickens him. These so called "heroes" gained more influence than he ever thought possible for a rag tag group of vigilante teenagers with a hobby. When he took this city by force seven years ago, he thought he crushed any thoughts of rebellion with it. He chased all the Democratic leaders of their "senate" and rendered the city powerless in one night. At first, he scoffed at how easily the city fell into his grasp. Now he sees how wrong he was. That night he had whipped out all the technology in the city sending his army of Geromes with one of his favorite weapons, the EMP, and announced the change of authority.

Orsinon was one of the most technologically advanced cities left on the planet. Throughout the decades of strife that followed the digital age, including the gradual warming of the globe and the shortage of fossil fuels and the Great EMP that would permanently reset all the technology that previously existed, Orsinon thrived. This did not mean that the city this not see its own challenges. 

 No, this meant that throughout those challenges the city adapted. When fossil fuel reserves started shrinking, the brightest minds in the city, and quite possibly, the world, stepped forward and refurbished and rebuilt the city. When nuclear warfare threatened, the cities finest found and created new economic materials to combat the bombs. When the Great EMP whipped all technology out, everyone banded together, and genius reinvented the future, a future without the artificial intelligence that nearly destroyed humanity, without the trifling games that would distract humanity from what really needed to be done. 

 The city was able to move past the primitive fear of surviving in an era of change and continue to grow. The city established outreach programs and attempted to spread their technology with the world, but their gifts were not well received. Instead of negotiating agreements for trade, countries attacked the city in any way they could to steal all the cities work, maybe even the city itself. In response, Orsinon cut all ties to any foreign countries and became the first city state in a millennium. Vandrin had to admire them for this, for recognizing the world for the corrupt system it was and developing their own system, but that doesn't hide the awful fact that the city chose, out of all forms of government, democracy.