The Shady figure in the trench coat stood reading his newspaper, right where he was told to be, he was even an hour early just to make sure that the transaction went through without a hitch. He was looking for just another face in the crowd, but this face would be one of many faces that would save the planet as we all know it. The man in the coat hiched up his high collar and adjusted himself where he stood, ready for a long, but worth while wait. It had been just another day when he got the anonymous call. He needed to know only where and when once they told him they pay off for this simple pick-up and delivery. He could retire immediately if he did just this one job. It was simple, wait by the bench on the east side of the airport, next to the keychain rack, with a three day old New York Times. Be there at ten, he had been told. He was looking for a girl who would be about five and a half feet tall, dark hair, scarf and a small roller suitcase. She would identify herself as Jade and ask if he was Thomas. He would acknowledge he was even though he had already been told that the real Thomas was already 'taken care of'.
He would then walk her to the limo out front, and at some point or another, either coax her into giving him the 'package' or just take it by force. They told him that if he was lucky that the man he was impersonating may be the one who the package was to be delivered to. Well he didnt give a damn, he would get what he was sent to get, one way or another, he didnt care, too much money was at stake, and clearly this package was worth a whole lot. Well the man in the coat stood reading his old New York Times, the biggest highlight of that day being "Underground Anti-Government Apocalyptic Cult". The man had read it several times and heard it on the news for months now. There was some group of freaks all over the world who thought that the world was going to end in the next year, 2012, and that the world would go into shambles. They were trying to get as many people as they could to 'open their minds' and 'arm themselves with knowledge' about how the world is going to end in the coming months. It was a bunch of crap, he knew, but it was sure getting a whole lot of people and attention lately. He figured they just drugged alot of people by sneaking into random water supplies.
Just as his legs were starting to cramp from having stood in place for so long, he got a break. A girl who fit the description walked just past him and glanced at him as she did. She seemed to want to find herself a keychain next to him. He adjusted his weight and waited for her to speak, when she didnt, he just assumed she was some other tourist and continued reading where he had been.
"You Thomas?" The girl spoke as she browsed through the keychains.
"Jade?" The man in the coat asked, lowering his paper. The girl nodded and had found a keychain of the statue of liberty which she smiled at and whispered "He'll love this!". She walked to the counter and purchased the item, walking away as if she didnt care one way or the other if he followed.
"The Limo's out front ma'am"
"Thanks." She responded quickly, looking all around her as if she were weary of being watched. Once they had made it across the crowded La Guardia Airport, he walked Jade to the Limousine, even opening the door for her, which was surprisingly the only time he had been nice to a mark, but what the hell, he was going to retire a rich man before the day was over, so whats a little courtesy at the last minute? The man in the coat climbed into the drivers seat and drove into the heavy traffic of taxis and bustling pedestrians. After he made it through he finally decided to get to business.
"Ma'am, now i'm just a lackey, so I dont know much, I just do what i'm told and am where I am supposed to be, when i'm supposed to be there. But, I have to ask, what's all the secrecy for? What -exactly- am I working for?" the man asked glancing at the young woman in his rear-view mirror.
"Thomas, did you read that paper you were told to be reading? Or did you just stand there trying not to stick out like a sore thumb?"
"I sure did read it, three days ago though when it first came out."
"And that cover story, about the Apocalyptic Cult, what are your feelings on it?"
"Well ma'am I dont think much, I mean with all the people getting into it, there has to be something to it right?"
"Well, Thomas, what I have here is crucial to their cause, to our cause. Mine and yours. And everyone on this planet."
"And what is it that can be so crucial to this? And shouldnt it be in a metal case with a handcuff attached to your wrist if its that important?"
"Of course it -should- be. But that just doesnt work without drawing suspicion. See Thomas I figure you should know what you are fighting for, what you are honestly risking your life for everytime we ask you a favor of us. See what I have here is the correspondences between the two generals of the cause, Thomas. We arent anti-government, we just know how they will act when this all goes to hell. And we arent an apocalyptic cult because we dont pray, we dont share a common God, or hold any sort of rituals at all, me merely see what is coming and do what we know we must to prepare for it. We have been preparing for years, you as well as everyone else only has been hearing about it because all we need now is people, numbers. Everything else is perfectly set up."
"Hmmm, well I suppose its none of my business really. I shouldnt have asked, I was better off not knowing." The man in the coat now wondered if it had been the government that sent him, then again if the government wanted this done, they would have their own guys do it, not some hired gun do a random pickup for them. No, he had been contacted, obviously, by the opposition to this cult, or whatever the hell it was. He didnt care, he only saw dollar signs as he looked at the girl in the backseat with her bag leaning onto her. When he was free of the traffic and he figured it was alright enough, he turned off the highway and down a path he knew well was usually deserted about three miles down it.
"Hey, we arent supposed to turn off until we hit Wantagh, where you going???" Jade asked, now slightly alarmed.
"They closed the offramp for Wantagh for construction, if you want to get there within the next hour you gotta turn off early." The man replied. He had always been a quick thinker, maybe thats why he was so good.
"Oh. Alright." She grabbed the bag and set it in her lap now, holding onto it like a little girl clutches a doll. The man in the dirvers seat now began to slow down and pulled over, the tinted windows and the mostly deserted road was all he needed. He turned around and leveled the silenced beretta at the young woman in the backseat.
"Well Jade, unfortunately I gotta cut your trip a little short." The girl in the back seat looked out all the windows around her as if there was something that she might see that could help her. She reached for the door handle and the man in the coat quickly locked all the back doors.
"Well, I dont know who you are Sir, but i'm sorry you had to choose this route. The other side probably contacted you after they offed Thomas, huh? Probably offered you a huge sum of money, more money than most people see in a lifetime huh? Well did they tell you that you would never see this money? That you would spend the rest of your days in their service either by choice or by force? Or how about the fact that they will torture and murder anyone you know, or have ever known? Did you think of any of that before you accepted? Or how about this fact, shithead, that someone as important as I am carrying something as important as this would have a hell of a lot more protection and cover than just some random wheelman probably living out of some seedy motel in Queens?"
The man in the coat was tired of this, and just wanted to get this taken care of, so he pulled the trigger once he knew it was aimed for the center of her head. Just as he did and he saw the flash of the shot and heard the muffled sound of the bullet being projected out of the gun, he felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder. The girl sat, unmoved, and unharmed in her spot in the back of the vehicle. The man in the coat now felt hot metal searing into the muscle of his left shoulder. It seemed impossible! He had leveled the shot! She was dead! She had to be! And right as he was about to pull the trigger the little bit of the conscience he had left whispered to him "I wouldnt do that if I were you." Suddenly the conscience was now a loud and audible voice in his head. "The first time's a warning, asshole. Next time you're gone. Now you have two choices, drive the lady to her destination and we may help you to a hospital, or you can pull the trigger again and see what happens. This one, however, I wont have bounce back into your shoulder. It -will- land somewhere in your brain that will paralyze you and make you feel more extreme pain and agony for hours until you finally die of exhaustion or blood loss. Your choice, buddy. Personally I would probably enjoy the option that doesnt include me dying."
The man in the coat was astounded, so many things were now becoming apparent to him. That there was both so much more to this world than he had ever imagined, that he was bleeding pretty badly and needed to get to a hospital in a half hour if he planned to save the nerves in his arm, and that the young woman in the backseat now pointed outside. The man looked out his window and saw a figure atop the hill across the street. It had been there for only a split second, but it was long enough to get the point across. He turned around and tossed the gun into the passenger seat next to him. He took off the hazard lights and pulled back onto the roadway.
"You know, if you want to live past today, you have only one option. If you go back having not collected what they sent you to, you are really gonna get it. And even if you went back with what they asked, they would still make you wish for death, they would say, because you were stupid enough to do anything for them. So, if you want help, if you have any loved ones, you must join us, because I promise they will hunt all of them down. And they will torture them for days, even weeks before they finally end their pain. You're stuck in the middle of this. So you either help us fight for our cause, or you die. The choice is yours."
The man in the coat listened to the girl's words and rolled them over in his mind. Suddenly a random though popped into his head, and he figured he may as well ask, it didnt matter, if he knew too much, he would be killed anyway right?
"If I can ask... why are the two generals sending their information through some young lady like yourself? I mean we have email, fax machines, cell phones, the internet, tons of other, faster ways to keep in touch with people, why this way?"
"Well, because its all monitored by the government now, they are looking through every email, tapping every call, reading every fax or piece of mail. This is the only secure way to transmit the information. The two generals need to give status reports of numbers of recruits, numbers of losses, number of monetary profit and gain, etcetera. I make this trip almost weekly. I'm surprised it's taken the opposition this long to figure out what was going on, though, you're showing up this long after we started shows we are doing a good job."
"I suppose you are right. But where do you fit in all of this? I mean you must be good at something that gave you this grea job of importance, right? So what did you do, or, more specifically, what is your significance?"
"Well," She held up her left hand and it showed she had an wedding ring on it. "I would say I fit just nicely into the equation, being the western general's wife." The man in the coat considered his options and knew he had to join them, but he still couldnt help the feeling that the money he could make from this would make all this nonsense go away. "You and all the other useless rabble in the world, my friend." the voice in his head spoke again, it was the same man's voice, young, probably in his twenties.
After following the directions by the young woman in the back seat the man in the coat arrived at a total normal looking home in the middle of a road of normal looking homes in the middle of Long Island. The house was decently sized, looked fit for a normal sized family. The lady in the back seat exited the vehicle with her baggage, after the man in the coat unlocked the door. His vision had steadily been blurring since he had hit the turnpike and he felt more and more light headed as the minutes ticked by. The door next to him opened up. A man stood there and motioned for him to move over to the passenger's seat, which he did as quickly as possible. The man adjusted the seat and drove off down the road.
"Well what's your decision?" The new driver asked.
"I dont know, its alot to take in. This has to be something huge, there must be more to it. But I just cant grasp the fact that everything i've ever known or expected out of this life, the government, or the world is a lie."
"I understand what you're saying, i'll take you to the hospital to think this all over." the driver said. After a few minutes he slowed down and put the car in park, opening up his door and stepping out of the car. The door slammed and rang through the man in the coat's head. He saw beyond the darkened windows two figures join the figure of the driver. He heard what he thought was one say "Up and then blast? Ok." And a moment later he felt as if he were suddenly on a roller coaster. The car had been sent soaring up into the air about twenty feet off the ground, at the apex of the blast, there was a small bright green light he saw out the side of his window that now pointed down at the figures below. Before he could react the light became huge in an instant. It crashed into the side of the car, the car went flying up and backwards into the trees, very quickly disintegrating as it did. Sparks and small specks of the car's frame caught the sun just right and glittered as it fell towards the ground.
In the distance the young woman could hear the faint blast as the car had disintegrated. The man to whom the house belonged, a person she knew well, now smiled warmly at her as he motioned for a welcoming hug. The young woman proceeded into the man’s arms and hugged him.
“Jade, welcome back…” The man stepped out of the doorway to let her in.
“General, thank you, it was an easy trip, despite the interruption.” She stepped inside the home.
It was a normal looking home, just like any other, if you didn’t know the importance of whom it was housing. Jade carried the case under her arm now and followed the man through the entryway and into the living room. It, too, looked just like a normal home, with chairs centered around a coffee table, all facing a TV. The general, like the home, didn’t seem of any specific importance at all either. He was no taller than 5’8”, and didn’t wear any sort of military or formal clothes you might expect to find on a person who held the title of ‘general’. He had long black hair, and seemed to be of Spanish descent, although his voice, attitude, and choice of clothes didn’t reflect it. He was young, too, like Jade was. The general walked casually through the house, finally coming to a doorway to a library. It wasn’t large by any means, however it seemed to fit the needs of one who would like his own personal collections of important volumes.
The general pulled one of the books out of the front bookcase and opened it up. Cut out of a chunk of pages was a hole that perfectly fit the size and shape of a key inside. He closed the book and replaced it on the bookshelf after having removed the key. He now moved to the bookcase on the right side of the room, where he flipped open the spine to a hardback book labeled “Ishmael”, revealing a keyhole as well as a number pad. Into the keyhole he inserted the key he had removed from the previous book, and upon the keypad he typed 2-0-1-2.
Jade heard the release of the locks inside of the bookcase she had been in many times.
“Malady, please…” The eastern general bowed his head slightly and motioned his hand towards where just a moment ago a case full of books had been; now there was only a dimly lit entryway leading down a flight of stairs. Jade proceeded down the dimly lit stairway into the basement of the home which had been modified to have no other entrances.
