Running Part 2

Walking through a desolate city, a young girl turned left and went through a rotting subdivision. There was a strange scent of machinery in the air and there were occasional columns of smoke in the air every few blocks. The streets were washed in blood and there was the noticeable fume of rotting bodies that consumed the street and there was a corpse of two every few houses, splattered in blood and half-decomposed, exposing charred innards to soon become the bate of bacteria.1

This street ended and became a gravel path littered with a growing amount of bodies. The young girl was used to the sight of this destruction and death that she sauntered through, but as soon as she turned the corner, a gun slipped out of her sleeve and into her warded hands. She clicked off the safety and held it close.2

After she passed exactly 24 houses, all of them sinking ever deeper into the deep earth below them, she turned right once more and entered the one house that had been well-kept. This house was an unusual color, a dark black that seemed endless when stared upon. This was the master home in the Revolution that has destroyed the city. The leader of the revolution was Faust, named after the character invented by Goethe, and he was quite the feisty, trigger heavy leader.3

Faust was only a boy when he launched the Abolishment Revolution and already had thousands of followers, armed, supporting him at the very young age of fourteen. But he had no choice. Everything was falling apart around him and he had to stop the administration from further destroying his home. The revolution had been country-wide by the time he was 16 and on his 18th birthday, the country enlisted Europe to help them in this struggle to help them defeat Faust. He was too powerful though, then to be stopped for good.  His forces consumed The United States as it was and slowly were spreading into South America and Canada.4

The young girl entered the dark house and found herself in the pitch dark room that always greeted those bold enough to cross the threshold into the center of the Revolution. She heard the familiar voice, whisper in French, the chosen language of Faust for his new world for its beauty and elegance, to ask her for the password. 5

“Son Coeur est un luth suspendu; Sitot qu’on le touché il resonne.� She replied in a rhythmic chant to the guard that was hidden in the darkness. The wall ahead of her slid open and the young girl entered the room a head of her that was shielded in a dark, endless black. But that was only a veil that slid out of place as she stepped forward.6

The lights flickered on in front of her and a large, soaring room appeared out of the darkness, bustling with people of all ages and races, who turned to her and stammered out a welcome in varied languages. Everyone knew her face and quickly bent into a bow in front of her powerful presence. She was a woman of spectacular beauty in full light, despite the many scratches and speckles of dirt that showered her body. She had spectacular greenish, golden eyes that seemed to light up the rest of her cut features and they shined not with kindness, but a steel glint of harshness and hatred that told the story of her challenging life and rise to power. There was a torrent of long, weaved hair that reached her waist,  a shimmering black, half twisted on top of  her head in a decorative bun that added elegance to her gentle frame. A perfectly fit body matched her gorgeous facial features, a perfectly flat stomach added balance to her slender form. 7

“Where is Faust?� She inquired to the many people still bent into low bows. “I need to speak to him most urgently. I carry grave news.�8

One elderly man pointed towards a room on the far left, labeled pondering room in French. Faust was not to be disturbed when he was in the pondering room, but for this young woman, he would make an exception. 9

She went to the golden door and rapped in a most calculated rhythm. The door shuttered and through a speaker attuned to her senses and hearing whispered, “Enter, my dear, please enter.� And the door slid to the side and very slowly she stepped into the pitch black room.10

The second the door slid to a close behind her, a bunch of glittering stars flickered into sight on the ceiling, high above her head. An outline of a handsome man was seen on the floor. She approached him and bowed ever so gracefully in his presence.11

He slowly rose to greet her. He was tall and lean, with tousled dark brow hear that party hid his eyes from view, and yet perfectly framed his powerful features. He had bright blue eyes that sparked in the starlight and seemed to be glinting with the same icy qualities as the young woman ahead of him. He had a strong jaw line and light pink lips, with a perfectly matched slender nose. His tall frame was graced with a chiseled abdomen and extremely thin torso. He was the image of good looks for men in the times then. 12

The young woman rose from her bow when she saw his twitch in his fingers that signaled her to do so. He quickly grasped her close and they stood molded together in a tight hug for many seconds. The young woman was the second in command, the focus of Faust’s affections. Her hair slipped from her tightly woven bun on the top of her head and landed elegantly, framing her face perfectly with slight curls. Faust’s eyes met the young woman’s and they leaned in for a sweet reunion marked with a kiss.13

Once this greeting was over, they resumed their business quickly. The young woman had been out scouting and had much information to give to Faust. She was in the outer forests in the Midwest, far away from the headquarters and was at another base camp when the conformists attacked. They had destroyed their main power source with a contained nuclear explosion. The contained nuclear bombs were an invention of Faust himself and he had his men working on them in various places, across his gained territory. If the conformists had them, then that meant that they had either infiltrated one of the factories, or they had attacked and prevented any correspondence back to the main base camp where he lived and planned. This was horrible news since it could take out large amounts of land without hurting their own men.14

“But Faust, there is more. They had an inhibiter on it. None of our codes to disable the bomb worked.  They either have the plans or they have found a way to alter the bomb after it is completely constructed. The only people on the planet that have that technology are the Russians. They must be either manufacturing them on the old Russian base camps up in Canada or in Russia itself. There is no way to know unless we scout the entire area and find some way to get in.â€?15

“I guess there is no other option. We can not risk that many people for this mission. There was a large amount of people lost in Honduras yesterday and I have already sent reinforcements there.�16

“I will go then, by myself. I can handle it. At the explosion in Colorado, I helped secure the inner security systems, making sure that the DNA electrical forces were enacted to kill the invaders. I was the only one who knew the technology well enough. I am the only one who can take on the scouting mission and survive, you know that.�17

“But that’s putting too much at stake. You know what your chip contains- the entire plans for each and every one of our weapons and security systems, as well as every password to each camp. We can not risk that.�18

“The only scanners that are calibrated to read the chip you created and download the information are here, Faust. You created a complicated self-destruct algorithm if even their fingerprint gets near the chip in my spine. You can’t honestly think they have a way to get around that if the only place the encoding is located is in my chip?�19

“But they have captured people and have at least figured out how to read the chip enough to learn how to change the self-destruct algorithm on the nuclear bombs. I can not take the chance here. I will send another person.�20

“With someone else you will not succeed. What is the real reason you do not want me to go? Your pride? Or are you too afraid of me becoming more powerful than you, learning their secrets? Tell me. Or I will go against your restrictions. I care not if you kill me it is worth discovering the secrets of the conformists.�21

‘This is complicated. I do not want to loose you as a scout and you as the second in command. I do not want to loose you a whole. I love you too much to allow you to walk out and kill yourself trying to infiltrate unnecessarily. It is not worth it. They could preserve you and remove the chip when they have the technology.�22

“No its not fair its not….�23

“Do not make me remove you from activity. You know that I can do that. Please.�24

“Fine. Fail your mission.� She turned to leave the Pondering room to leave Faust to his planning, to make him reconsider the project at hand. He grabbed her hand as she turned and held her close for one more kiss. 25

Suddenly though, during the kiss, something curious came over her. Her entire body shuddered in Faust’s arms, a look of fear and horror come over her beautiful features and she began to look around wildly. Her eyes focused in on Faust’s face. It was blurred into nothingness, and her eyes began to tear in fear at the sight of her lover’s face just melt away. It looked like a corpse, one of the ones she had passed crossing the streets to the building, rotten and corroding. His skin stretched away from his face showing a pure white bone that shone on the dark room…26

Suddenly she awoke, surrounded by the usual sight of the grey swirls around her. Her chest was heaving. It has been a dream. But it was so familiar, so realistic, like it had happened before. The startling image of the skull glowing white branded her cornea, ever shining when she closed her eyes. Yet another haunting image in her mind to trouble her more, but how could it feel so real. She spent that entire day, while traveling on her path, pondering how it was real, like a memory, or something that could happen. But there was no one around her at all. It couldn’t be a memory, but still how could she know that there are other humans in the world, if she cant see them, if she cant ever remember coming into contact with one, if there was no one here to raise her, how did she survive infancy, This led her to believe that she wasn’t always here in this prison. It seemed to be almost like a computer program. But she was still too tired to think about this now. So she reached into her pack, fiddled with the bottle, and then was calmly soothed into nothingness yet again.27