Tap Sapiens, page 15
part #1 of Reign of Sapiens' Evil Series
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Danny was a teenage kid like any other, ordinary in some ways, exceptional in others. He was somehow naturally gifted with more energy than the rest of the kids. Coupled with his high levels of curiosity, it would have been a serious trouble for anybody that had to take care of the fifteen-year-old teenager. However, one interesting fact stood out among the rest. Unlike most teenage kids, Danny was fast developing a noticeable common sense. He thought too much for someone his age, his teachers would say. He analyzed just about everything around him and it made his curiosity seem more like a deliberate study of anything that captured his attention. This made adults trust him a little too much.
At fifteen years old, Danny was just old enough to understand that his father couldn’t always keep him company because he was feeling unwell. That was why they had travelled to a far-away hospital in addition to having a couple of nurses to accompany Danny through the days. He easily earned their trust albeit sometimes in a way that wasn’t exactly malicious, he would escape their attention at the first chance he got.
He simply felt like exploring the new streets he saw around him. His home, he had it all memorized from floors to ceilings and one corner to another, but this new adventure had his heart beating faster than ever. What’s more, blood continued to be pumped even faster when his naive mind, after a few minutes, realized he didn’t know how to return to the place he had left. Thinking about never finding his father again almost had him weeping. His expression must have been distressing because soon enough a cute girl, smaller than him with dark hair and what he called them as “magic-colored eyes”, approached him on the street.
“Hello! My name’s Brandi, are you lost?”
“My father is in a hospital, but I can’t find my way there.” Danny wiped the sole tear that had escaped his right eye and stood taller in front of the little girl, attempting to look and sound even older than he was. Though she barely cared, she only started to walk excitedly in the right direction.
“The hospital! I know where that is! But I haven’t been there. That’s a place for people who eat, says my father.”
“Don’t you eat?”
“When there’s food …” the little one shrugged, disappointment written all over her innocent face.
CHAPTER
12
“There are things more important than our personal happiness, Danny.”
T O SAY BRANDI FEELING RESTLESS was an understatement. The previous night, she was ordered to stay outdoors in her sleeping bag and she definitely missed her bed more than she cared to admit ever since. She was still somewhat frozen stiff. However, the real source of her discomfort was something entirely different. It was the surplus energy from her last mission – her very first sabotage against the system of the Confederacy. Her success, instead of bringing her peace, made her toss and turn in her bed with thousands of ideas, impossible plans as well as visions of triumphant victory over the Confederacy dancing around her mind.
“Could you please just fall asleep? I’m literally begging you.” a voice interrupted.
In the darkness, her roommate was a pitiful victim of the distracting sounds that Brandi had been making in her anxious state. Comfortable with each other, instead of apologizing and attempting to remain quiet, Brandi was all jittery and sat up in her bed right away.
“I can’t! There’s just too much going on in here.” she tapped her head, even though the other one could only imagine the gesture.
“Alright, New Boots … do you want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
Sara wasn’t expecting such an enthusiastic response. In a flash, Brandi turned on their lamp and made her way to the other bed. The younger one began spilling out her chaotic train of thought, of which she finished by enumerating all that she knew.
“The Confederacy oversees the production of numerous essential goods, yet most cities are still buried under piles of trash with its people starving. Then, the Confederacy has published new history books with controversial facts that don’t correspond to the original ones locked in the library. On top of these, the army protects trucks filled with food as they move past people who actually need it, in cold blood. What’s more, people are trying to flee across our border, keep away from danger, yet we are restraining them for that! How could this bunch of crooks even have the audacity to claim themselves as pure as the driven snow?!”
“You’re forgetting the various unspeakable difficulties imposed on immigrants, like Mary and Colonel Evans … not to mention they did threaten to kill me once for refusing to marry a man in order to produce babies.”
Sara had been talking with her eyes closed, but upon finishing her sentence, she opened them just to see Brandi’s stunned expression. She kindly smiled to ease the tension of the other girl. Sara’s sense of humor was just like that, she was speaking confidently yet sarcastically in a poised tone, so much so that it was hard to identify by mere strangers. Then, she extended her hand to cover Brandi’s raised fingers that represented all the evils she had come across. The younger girl would screw up one of these days if she only harped solely on the negatives. With her hand tightly holding the other one, Sara questioned her.
“Great, you have all that. Now what? What do you plan to do?”
“I need more people to know this. I need the entire army to see these anomalies for themselves so that the Confederacy will collapse from within.”
“But you can’t exactly stand up in the middle of the mess hall just to shout this out …” Sara said meditatively, she finished with a shrug. “Show them what you’ve seen. You can’t bring the proof to them, but judging by your last shenanigans, you should take them to the living proof instead.”
If only it could be that easy, Brandi thought. And that same idea quickly morphed into a more complex thread. Her mind started moving so fast that she was as incapable of processing her words correctly, as she was of walking back to her own bed properly.
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Despite Sara’s advice, Brandi did share her newfound plans in the mess hall the next day.
“How can I access the online system of the fort?” Brandi asked as soon as she sat down at the table among her friends.
Her question was obviously aimed at Mary and she had been cautious enough to whisper. With all the noises during breakfast hour, no one would have been able to hear them. Cate, Abby and even Sara stayed silent, amused at Brandi’s bluntness while being curious as to how Mary would manage the situation. The Latina could have provided a number of ambiguous responses, but she had learned to understand Brandi a little better than most, there was no way round the interrogation but to answer right here and now.
“You’d put yourself at risk, trying to get into the labs alone where they keep our computers. But in certain missions, they will dispatch an Intelligence truck to manage communications and oversee the operation. I could assign you to guard the truck and when everybody’s distracted, we will switch roles. You get in and do your thing, I’ll watch your back from outside.”
Mary’s words, as usual, flew out of her mouth with such ease. Cate and Abby were left staring at her in awe. Meanwhile, Brandi was wearing a wide grin on her face and clapping softly, ready to declare their next operation a go. Until suddenly, she was interrupted by Sara.
“Hold your horses. She won’t have a clue of what to do when she’s in there. You stay and guide her.” the oldest of the group spoke to Mary. “Sign me up for the mission too and I’ll be guarding the door.”
Another one so confident in her words, Abby thought. Next to her, Cate spoke, “Aren’t you supposed to stay discreet and unassuming?”
“Yes, I need to stay out of trouble. But that doesn’t mean I’ve to miss out on all the fun. If the Confederacy were to fall, I want to do my part as well.”
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That particular mission took place three days later. The team had been training harder than ever, supporting and demanding the best from each other. When the moment arrived, Brandi, Mary and Sara were as prepared as they could for the mission. However, the operation wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for them. An insurrection of poor and half-starved people occurred in a nearby town. It began as a peaceful assembly, but soon turned into an open protest in front of one of the factories of Sapiens Corporation while another group had broken in. Regardless of their intentions, whether they were stealing food or holding hostages, instead of calling the police, the company had a way to bring in the military to the scene at the double.
While a couple of trucks were deploying soldiers on the ground surrounding the building in order to take matters into their own hands, a single one was parked a street away from the action. From there, Mary was supposed to keep in touch with the leaders of the mission and report to their superiors back at the fort, while keeping an eye on security cameras and the state of the rest of the people, in addition to being watchful of local news. Her truck was guarded by a couple of soldiers, they were Brandi and Sara – technically, only the latter one. Brandi quickly made her way into the truck and got to work.
The vehicle had been modified as a tech lab on four wheels. Mary’s sharp mind was capable of handling the necessary conversations and transmitting the mandatory codes while simultaneously directing Brandi to search for the information she needed.
“Here are the complete data and layout of the fort. And you’ll find the instructions we receive from the headquarters, including all the ongoing missions.” Mary explained hurriedly, she then turned around towards another computer and typed at a dizzying pace before returning to Brandi’s side. “This is how you manipulate the details. Please don’t be too obvious, and keep tabs on the map and the clock, too.”
From that moment, Mary paced back and forth on the inside of the truck, she had brief talks with at least ten different people, Brandi counted. She pressed ominous-looking buttons on occasion and she typed frantically on three different keyboards. Still, she made time to look over Brandi’s shoulder and ensure she didn’t mess up at all. On her own, Brandi was having a field day. The recurrent presence of Mary’s gentle and supportive hands squeezing her shoulders, and the sight of the delicate face peering over her shoulder, it was so much like having an angel beside her, it made Brandi feel invincible. Apparently, she didn’t struggle too much to cook up a crafty manipulation of the missions. Sending the less privileged officials and the more inexperienced soldiers, who hopefully could still be wide awake and open-minded enough to witness the chaos around them. Sending groups too small in number to pacify riots at the frontier or elsewhere, guaranteeing the defeat of the army and probably with a bit of luck, allowing the participants to understand the awful nature of what they had been doing without mercy. Finally, it all came down to altering routes and checkpoints in multiple journeys of the troops. If they were to move past enough abandoned towns, deserted schools, desolate markets, streets devoured by desperation and starvation, maybe they could experience it, maybe they could realize what she already had and perhaps they’d be fired up as she, and the world, needed them to be.
The last hasty alteration Brandi had made to one of the upcoming missions actually touched her heart. Originally, the troops were bound for the neighborhood where Brandi grew up. That fact alone was enough to chill her to the marrow. Moreover, when she analyzed the map, trying to determine the next strategic checkpoint for the army trucks to enter so that the soldiers could notice the dismal evidence left by the handiwork of the Confederacy, she spotted a hospital. It was probably destroyed by now, so it was a good choice to set up a checkpoint there. Before long, a corner of her mind was lit up by memories of that zone, that hospital and a pair of beautiful, almost turquoise eyes.
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Five-year-old (as she reminded everybody) Brandi was happily skipping down the street. She couldn’t help it. She just loved making new friends, her parents had taught her to do everything she could, always, to help anybody in need that she might find one day. And the scared teenage boy with incredibly blue eyes, genuinely looked like he needed a friendly hand. She previously pointed him in the direction of the hospital and as he continued to walk forward, she simply then turned back in the opposite direction she had come from. At such an early age, it wasn’t strange for the kids of her neighborhood to know how to freely navigate their way through the many streets. Not if they started working at ten years old, not if they needed to hide whenever they saw a soldier near them, not if they were urgently scavenging for food from the trash sometimes for their famished families.
But Brandi was still too young to make sense of those things. She was still blissfully ignorant enough to merely enjoy the freedom she had and make the most out of it. Just as she was happy to turn around once again, she heard somebody calling out from afar.
“Hey! Girl! Stop! Please!” it was the tall teenager who had left a minute ago.
“My name’s Brandi, I already told you.”
“I know, girl … sorry, Brandi. I got you this. It’s to say thank you.” the boy smiled a crooked grin and offered her a gorgeous red rose that had clearly just been cut from a nearby garden. It was beautiful, though one of the thorns unfortunately cut one of Brandi’s fingers on the way home. But she swore she would always remember the flower and the boy who had given it.
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“You do know she’s waiting for you outside, right?” Colonel Evans said while being seated comfortably on one of the couches in Danny’s office.
“I know! I’ve been prepared for the worst-case scenario of her not wanting to ever see me again. But never do I expect her to come seeking me out to talk, this instant! Well, everything must have been different by now.” Danny answered.
The General had arrived that day at dawn, but he would leave as soon as the night fell. Even under the watchful eye of General Rodriguez, Danny couldn’t bring himself to stay away from his fort for too long. He actually did plan for several quick visits over the course of the month that he had been away.
As one would expect, more than a handful of officers were obliged to present him the reports pertaining to the state of the fort, including the temporary General. Meanwhile, another group simply wanted to have a chance for some regular conversations in order to butter up the only son of the Supremo, trying to get on his good side. Of course, there was one person currently holding Danny’s attention as he cowered in his locked office. A certain Second Lieutenant with bright hazel eyes had requested to talk to the General, and she was patiently waiting outside. If Danny had known her at all, he was positive that she wouldn’t leave until she had said or heard whatever she wanted.
“You should – you should tell her to come in.” Danny spoke in a wobbly voice.
“You think?” Louis replied with a smirk and slowly stood up.
When his best friend was close enough, Danny firmly placed his hand on Louis’ shoulder. “I’m terrified.” he said.
“I know.” Louis answered with a chuckle, but then he scratched his chin and after a quick internal debate, he spoke to the man he had been appreciating the most in the world. “Man, you’re in deep trouble … Look, I don’t think – it doesn’t look like you both are heading in the same direction in life. But uh … it seems you make each other happy, you should tell her that. I don’t know just how far two of you would go in this, but at least let her know your side of the story.”
Louis began walking away, but an unnameable emotion was pushing against the walls of Danny’s heart.
“Why did I always have the impression you were against this all along?”
“Because I’m smart.”
Louis replied without looking back, but Danny wasn’t done yet. “Do you know something I don’t?” he asked.
With his hand still on the doorknob, Louis gazed back at his friend and he appeared sincerely conflicted for a second, as if he were trying to process Danny’s question or perhaps to construct the right answer.
In the end, he gave Danny a sort of half simper and a shrug of his shoulders. “I know you.” was all he could answer before he disappeared through the door.
Danny stayed still afterwards. He felt he couldn’t move a muscle even after multiple times of trying hard, still he was aware of his heart beating wildly, meaning to escape his chest it seemed. Brandi would walk in any minute then. When she timidly opened the door and first peered in with her head inside, Danny’s heart just stopped. But when she smiled, Danny forgot all about his blood-pumping organ and returned a smile instinctively. Brandi had the power to make him forget just about everything but her.
“Hi.” she shyly whispered.
She looked nervous after closing the door. Her hands hung anxiously by her sides, fumbling indecisively with the mandatory salute that was somewhat inhibited by a sense of intimacy between the two that made the formal gesture seem quite ridiculous.
“Brandi.” he acknowledged her softly.
“You’re back.”
“I couldn’t stay away long.”
“Well I’m – I’m glad. The fort missed you, Rodriguez is kind of a big time twat here, you know.”
She started pacing about the office. Danny then uttered few specific words, “Did you? Miss me?”
“I did. That first morning.”
She didn’t miss a beat to answer. She stopped wandering and Danny turned towards her, he got to look into those eyes, they were alive and marvelous, even as being displeased with him.
