16. Ark of the Tea

Noah was sure that this plan was going to work. It was not really about his belief in his own ability or the skills of Jack, but it was more about the dumbness of Bella who was the weaker or may be the only weak link they could exploit. Jack was also confident, but still extremely careful about his moves.

“I have never met a willing parner before. The people of this city are so mean. They don’t even come close to realizing what big mistake they are making. They are such horrible creatures who don’t deserve to live under my father’s extraordinary leadership and incredible shelter. But I won’t give a damn and I don’t need to. I know exactly how my world needs to work and I can make it work, and the bottomline of the same is decided by myself” exclaimed Bella.

“I am quite surprised about the same. One has to wonder why it is so with such a lovely lady, and I am not even flattering – I haven’t started that process yet. Why would I need to use flattery anyway when there is so much of beautiful truth involved with you which cannot be avoided?” said Jack.

It was not that Bella was not used to flattery, but for sometime, she had the need to hear more of it. She had a shortage of people who praised her, as she stuffed most of them alive. It surely was fun for her, but she fell short of men due to the same. So, this was something that hit where it had to hit. The first impression was made, and it was the best and the most suited for the time.

“So, is there any place where you wish for us to go? I would leave that option to you and I am not even going to make you choose from my places this time. You seem to know how to treat a honourable lady and so why don’t you tell me what you want?” asked an impressed Bella.

“Why don’t we go to AchCo Pipelines? Won’t you like that?”

There was a few moments of silence. It was not exactly what Bella was hoping to hear – not even close to what he had expected. Any normal person would have wished to go to one of her grand cottages and enjoy the luxuries there. That would leave her baffled, but still happy enough, yet not without questions.

“Why would we want to go there? There are only rusty pipelines there and a lot of people who are quite disrespectful towards the honourable people like us”.

“Just for the sake of being alone. We can have some good time there, just you and me. I have heard that there is more to that place than what meets the eye. You can just send the employees home if you want to”.
“Not a bad idea. Let me make a few calls”.

As Bella goes on phone to make a call to give the employees an early holiday, Jack alerts Noah who doesn’t exit his workplace even after recording his exit. The whole place becomes empty very quickly as the order reaches there. But Noah waits there for the arrival of Jack and Bella and on their arrival, uses chloroform on Bella.
“Our time is now” said Noah.

They moved deeper into the inner sections of the building until they reached the ladder which lead to the lower side of the coffee vents. Noah manages to stop the flow and open one side of the vent while Jack places tea leaves inside it.

“Lets leave a message with it” said Noah

“A man can be destroyed but not defeated” said the message cards which were sent with the tea leaves through the vents.

Noah and Jack took the exit on the back side so that they could be sure that they don’t come across Bella if she awakens early. They were sure that they would be hunted on the next day as Bella would recognize Jack and the cameras would identify Noah as his partner in crime who had come up with this idea. They could be doomed; they were to be hunted, tortured and brutally murdered by Acheron’s men, not only for disrupting his money flow and power, but also for playing with and knocking out his daughter.

Bella’s response was surely going to be even more fatal. She is known for being dumb and strange, and certainly not for being the forgiving type. Her fury and the love for stuffed people might tell a greater story for the future generations. She would have some weird plans for her, and it is a twisted procedure that would start in her mind from the very moment she gets up. There would be no more games, and no more of being the nice person – there would be torment.

The only better thing other than self-satisfaction was that they had started a revolution, something which is clearly against the norms of a corrupt dictatorship. Their life might end and the revolution might begin with tea, something about which they were more sure than most of the other things of tomorrow. They might be destroyed, but not defeated on an eventful day. They might be executed publicly to a jeering or cheering crowd, and a lot of people would be there to see it. But they might have already made the difference by then, for there would be many acts of brutality and there should be excruciating pain and suffering, but there shall be revolution and there is going to be change, which used to be them, to be carried over.

To be continued…

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13. Not the End

Dion and his wife were to be publicly judged and most probably executed, as they could know from their prisonmates. The concentration camps were for the lesser creatures who posed no threat to the government. It was a necessity if the Northerns were to keep their control over the Southern Bloc at least for enough time to earn money and resources for another war. A scene of public shame was to be created in order to make the king and the queen subject to humiliation in front of millions of their own citizens before their execution so that the last memory of the most powerful figures of the nation would be that of misery and complete helplessness.

It was time. Both of them were taken from their respective cells, stripped and hung from the top, stretched to the full. They were to have the signs of shame on every part of their bodies and those were to be their clothing during their public humiliation. As this was done using the latest laser technologies, they were to stay on the bodies forever, until it decomposes. It was a painful procedure, and it is that pain with which death had to be called upon.

They were then strapped to the front and the back of a car which slowly moved through the streets so that everyone could see. The bare bodies exposed to a light which burned the writings caused excruciating pain. The judgement panel was ready and the two were taken to the stage, gagged, stretched and bound to an “X” sign which stood for eX-terminate, and were turned towards the crowd for their full view. The chief judge removed his helmet, and it was the leader of the Northern Bloc, Laga.

“For the people of the Northern Bloc and the Southern Bloc, I start this totally fair and unprejudiced procedure of ultimate justice. The two people you see on the stage, wearing nothing, but the signs of deserving public shame, are those who are responsible for all the destruction and the loss of life which has happened to us. One of them is referred to as ‘the protector of the weak’ while all the time, he has protected and served nobody, but himself and his family, and now he has surrendered his people and has put them to slavery just so that his daughter would have a life of luxury. He has had his own time of luxury – see how much weight he has gained during the last few months when he sat in his office and ordered deaths. He has sold you all to us, but we will make sure that he pays for it, and you all shall get your due. On his side, she is the first lady to wear these symbols of shame, and it is a shame that all such beauty had to be torn with these letters. It is not about who she is, as her crime is the big lie that is more of a fact. Their child is not their own, and due to your new Act of Legacy, her illegitimate daughter was to inherit this man and rule you all for the next five years. She has not only cheated her husband, but also your supreme leader and the nation as a whole. She is also the reason for his misbehavior, as Lady Macbeth did for her husband, and she has to bear double the shame, but it is obvious that she cannot take it any more”.

As the whip came down on her, she hardly made a move. She was separated from the “X” sign and as she fell down, a rope was tied to her neck and she was slowly lifted as her legs searched for land to ensure her survival, which was not there. The first execution was complete. Dion couldn’t look as he was turned to the other side.

“We both know that the first thing I said is not true. But the second thing is actually truth of partial nature. The child you have is not your daughter. To be frank, your wife was never pregnant, and all the time she spent to have that child was more of the time which was needed for her to help her sister give birth to an illegitimate child. She took the baby back with her after her sister’s death and you took her as your own. How do I know all these? I know the father of the child, and I might have let that little one live a great life, but as the people are already given an impression that she is your wife’s illegitimate daughter which I can easily prove, it shall bring more dishonour to you and your family if she lives a life of shame. Your type should end there, and nobody should jump in the way of the Northern Bloc in the name of saving the innocents, protecting weaker nations, safeguarding the human rights and all the similar stuff which makes me sick. It is your time to follow your wife, but in a different way”.

There was a countdown going on. When it reached zero, Dion was without his head which had flown towards the body of his wife after a scythe had moved through his neck. There was blood all over, and there was silence among the crowd. They had removed the plackards supporting Dion, and even as they were shocked by the public humiliation and the bloody execution, they were certain that Dion had sold them to the Northern Bloc, and the defeat was more of a created result rather than fought. They wanted their revenge, and as Dion and his wife had met the end, they needed to show their anger on someone, and the only candidate for that was the illegitimate daughter of Dion’s wife who had the blood of the partner in crime, and for that they had to wait, but they were ready. Laga had his own proof which were mostly fabricated, but rooted in the truth that the child was not Dion’s, and the treaty that he had signed, which had more additions to it than he had read. The child was the new enemy of the Southern Bloc, and Laga was its new protector, who could bring in anyone as his man to rule his new territory.

To be continued…

10. Final Sacrifice

Elysium, the largest city of Southern Bloc. In the year of our Lord: 2060.

“This is your last chance. Surrender or face the consequences. We have a copy of the treaty which has been approved by our council. Give up now and save what you love” thus repeated the loudspeaker from the battle tanks.
“This surrender is more of your need than hours. Kindly co-operate and stay alive with your loved ones” added the loudspeaker.

The buildings were collapsing, and chaos was everywhere. They had a last look at their child before they surrendered themselves to the invading Northern Bloc army. It was the only way to save the kid, as they had thought. But, how much that worked out is something that they would never know about. It will be another story, and whether it would have a good run is a question they would fail to answer. It would also save the city or whatever is left of it from further destruction. The whole Southern Bloc was nothing better than the wasteland that T.S. Eliot had talked about long ago. “APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain”. – explained the situation of the bloc perfectly.

Dion was the leader of the Southern Bloc when the Third World War started. The Southern Bloc had taken the wrong side in the war, with the smaller nations around the powerful Northern Bloc which cherished their independence. But the Northerns were not that kind of people who liked seeing little ants wandering around their legs and their obvious decision was the crush the little insects. The small city-states had asked help from Dion which he was ready to provide. He has always been the champion of the weak and the voiceless subaltern. It was clearly opposed by the ministers of his chamber, but he was not a man to back away. But at a time when there were only two power blocs, the Northern and the Southern, Dion was asking for a lot more than he could handle considering the collection of arms and manpower which the Notherns have been collecting for ages.

Elysium had fallen, and so had the last hope for freedom. Does the Third World War end there with the fall of the Southerns? No, it doesn’t, as the unholy alliances has kept forming even among the weakest nations, while the Northern Bloc has concentrating its full army, navy, airforce and the special forces on bringing destruction to the Southerns. What would become of Southern Bloc is a question that remains, as no building is left standing. As the Royal Palace has been taken over and Dion and his wife taken prisoners of war, the Northerns can now fix a puppet government there which they can control from a distance. The leader would be a Northern, who would marry from the Southern Bloc so as to maintain his neutrality on paper and so that the new appoinment would be justified in the pages of history. It is more of a temprary contract rather than anything else. To add to that, all the natural resources can be harvested from among the destruction. The rivers from the South shall now flow towards the North, and whatever flows towards the South shall have dams in their path. The annual tribute might be in millions and that amount will have to be paid by the last remaining citizens of the Southern Bloc who number in thousands.

The total loss of life of the Northerns is estimated to be twenty thousand five hundred troops and fifty five civilians while that of the Southerns is estimated to be ninety five thousand troops and ninety nine thousand civilians, with about hundred thousands of civilians captured alive as the prisoners of war, and Dion and his wife has become one of them. They were stripped off their richness and clothed in drags, and put in concentration camps – considering their high status and Dion’s role in the war, their chances of survival in such a hostile environment would be absolutely zero. The only best thing that they can wish for, is a comaratively painful death, as there would be agony and there should be suffering immersed in brutality. He had quoted Eliot before he surrendered: “I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones”. He was not that much of an admirer of The Wasteland, but the situations create different likes and dislikes. What he would have asked in the face of the Northern brutality would have been a few other lines from the same poem: “That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?” He knew about the war crimes the Northerns had committed, and he knew he would become a victim, and the question about his survival was not a relevant one.

There would be the last question that can remain. It would be about their child. Barely an year old, the child has been identified and taken to the Northern Bloc’s capital city of Asgard. From what is known about the Northern brutality, all the Southerns who knew about the same could be sure about only two things. One is that the child will not die easily, and the second is that the child shall grow up and when it does, there is going to be the brutality of the highest order that awaits. Dion chose to make the sacrifice and not run away by making a deal that his child would survive. But what would this kind of survival mean for the child? Is it any better than the realms of Hades and the being caught by a hellhound at the gates of inferno?

To be continued…