Time: 3:00 p.m. February 14, 2071.
Location: Tunnels, Tisaia
Obi could see a slight sliver of light in the tunnel far ahead. He took a deep breath, forgetting momentarily of the filth he was crawling through. That mistake cost him his last meal. The stench crawled up his nostrils, prompting him to dry heave into the muck beneath him.
“Are you all right up there?” Creo asked, a hint of concern in his deep voice.
Obi nodded and continued on. “It looks like we’re almost there,” he said.
“We need to keep moving.”
“Where are we headed?” Ajax shouted from behind.
“We need to find a safe house in the city, and regroup with the rest of the survivors at the checkpoint in a few days.”
Ajax nodded in approval with the rest of the team, who at the moment were just happy to be alive. The small squad knew the dream of the TDU was still alive, but today they had suffered significant losses. Obi knew it would be hard to replace many of his friends, but there would always be a pool of citizens they could recruit from. As long as the State continued its oppressive policies the TDU would exist. The main obstacles would be finding the weapons and a secure location to rebuild their headquarters.
The team continued to crawl through the narrow tunnel swiftly, the stench of waste infiltrating their nostrils. A faint light was growing and as they got closer they pressed on, anxious to get out of the sewage.
They crawled faster, their weapons scraping against the concrete sides of the tunnel, but quickly they realized the light was nothing more than an anomaly- an energy efficient light bulb managing to survive years of life underground, still yielding a small but bright glow. It had more than likely been changed by some straggler or refugee who had used the tunnel as a shelter long ago.
Two hours later they emerged from the tunnel. Their armor and skin were stained with brown filth and sweat. Nathar dropped to his knees, dry-heaving until nothing but a milky fluid came out. Creo patted the young man on his back while the rest of the team scraped the waste off their uniforms in the cold winter night.
Obi took a step towards the ledge and glassed the landscape with his binoculars. He could vaguely make out the shape of a storm drain jetting out over a small body of water below, most likely an old sewage treatment plant. He knew they were somewhere outside Rohania, but he wasn’t sure exactly where.
He squinted and glassed the horizon again, the skeletons of high rises and office buildings staring back at him. Judging by the broken shapes of the buildings, he assumed they were close to the Boondocks. It was the one place where the majority of buildings were from the old world, artifacts rising into the sky as a reminder of a war not so distant. It was also not the place he wanted to be at the moment. The Boondocks were controlled by gangs; a number of them squatted in the old buildings.
“Here we go,” Obi said, turning. “When I give the green light I’m going to remove this gate and we’re all jumping into the pool of water below us. I don’t care if you don’t want to, you’re doing it,” he said, glaring at Nathar, who was terrified of water.
Nathar scowled, still recovering from throwing up his guts moments earlier. Obi turned his attention to the gate, kicking it twice with his steel toed boots, but the gate was secured tightly to the concrete wall and didn’t budge.
“Let me try, boss,” Ajax said, maneuvering behind Obi. He let out a grunt and kicked the center of the gate, sending it flying off its hinges and into the water below. A large splash broke the silence of the night, as two large birds took off flying from where they were nesting.
“Nice work. Now, hold my rifle,” Obi said, as he jumped into the cold water below without hesitation. His men followed closely behind, taking turns so their weapons didn’t get wet.
Silence flooded over the junk yard as Obi sat shaking in the frozen dirt, his eyes scanning his surroundings for potential danger. Within seconds, his three comrades were next to him. Nathar spit a mouthful of water onto the ground. Ajax laughed and swatted him on the back, but Obi shot them a stern look to quiet down. They sat for a few moments before Obi took off limping across the gravel. His two wounds burned from what he knew was the beginning of an infection.
He crashed against the rusted metal of the building, the fragile wall vibrating from the impact. Obi could only imagine what the roof looked like, hoping it even had one. They needed a place to get dry and clean.
He made two hand signals from the edge of the building and Creo and Nathar took off running, Ajax staying behind to offer covering fire.
The front door had been kicked in long ago and lay resting on the concrete ground. The glass cracked under Obi’s boots as he surveyed the guts of the building.
Nathar and Creo stood on the outside of the entryway, waiting for their commander’s order to enter and secure the building.
Obi hesitated. He wasn’t afraid of Knights, but he was nervous that there might be stragglers that could give away their position. He waited a few minutes for Ajax to catch up with them before signaling Nathar and Creo to enter the building.
He clicked on his night vision and continued to scan the junkyard from the outside of the building, making a mental map of the landscape. Two water silos towered above them in the distance, gaping holes visible in their sides. They hadn’t held water in their guts for years. The north side was filled with old construction equipment: forklifts, cranes, bull dozers, all machines designed to run off gasoline and now nothing more than useless artifacts from the past.
A large moon illuminated the junkyard below, keeping Obi on edge. Any straggler could be lurking around in the shadows, but silence crept across the landscape. Satisfied, Obi clicked off his night vision and slipped into the darkness of the building.
Time: 11:12 p.m. February 14, 2071.
Location: TDU Headquarters Pantry, Tunnels. Tisaia
Nordica and Ran took turns peeking through a small opening in the fortress of stone where they were hiding. They watched helplessly as Knights gunned down their comrades, who lay dying. With each shot Ran shuddered, holding his ears and fighting back the tears swelling in his eyes.
“Keep quiet,” Nordica whispered, smacking Ran with her dreadlocks by accident. “We can’t help them now.”
“We have to do something.”
“We don’t have to do anything, because there isn’t anything we can do,” Nordica responded. “But go ahead and be my guest. See how many Knights you can kill before you end up just like them,” she said, pointing towards the carnage beyond the safety of the pantry’s walls.
Ran looked down at Juliana and Tsui, who shook their heads at him, agreeing with Nordica. Defeated, Ran sat back on the stone floor stroking his pistol slowly, tears running down his face. Juliana crawled over to him and put her arms around him, embracing him in a hug. “It’s going to be ok,” she whispered in his ear.
“Do we have a body count?” Morr asked.
“Riya confirmed we have fifty bodies,” Albri responded.
Morr nodded in approval. “That’s about what we anticipated, but fifty strong and able to produce so much chaos? Damn, they were resilient little bastards,” he shouted over the commotion.
A clatter of armor echoed down the hall, bringing Morr and Albri to attention. Augustus and his entourage had been surveying the headquarters and were now headed towards the war room.
Morr stood nervously. He knew even with a tentative body count there was no way of providing an accurate estimate of those that managed to escape. His men had made every attempt to salvage documents containing names of TDU members, but most were burned or destroyed before the Knights had a chance to recover them. There was simply no way to know how many escaped.