Chapter 2: The Journalist

McConnel

The clock hit twenty yet again.

It’s been officially five days since the occupation of Blackfortress had begun, and six since the city’s GCSA tower went offline. Six days, and Riley McConnel wasn’t much closer to finding a way to restore communications, or at least finding a way out of the city he once called home.

Today also marked the fifth day since his long-time friend Collins had died, which was indicated by the number of empty whiskey bottles on his desk next to his fresh cup of coffee. Collins had managed to push Riley off from the rooftop of the Central Blackfortress Police station just mere moments before a wave of artillery shells destroyed the entire building, along with everyone inside it. The fact that another one of his friends had died for him was already bad enough, but when he realized their entire mission towards the ICN terminal was a waste of time since the message never arrived anywhere, Riley broke down.

This grief, however, gave the twenty-five-year-old, brown-haired reporter incentive to do the one thing he was very good at. Finding answers. As a member of the Aftonian News Corp, he knew plenty of things about recording events and getting to places where he wasn’t supposed to go. That was pretty much his job after all, despite his demotion.

At least, that’s what he thought. He scratched his six-day-old beard, and after making sure that nobody was listening in from outside his house in the darkness of the night, he pressed the record button on his camera.

“Good evening! This is Riley McConnel, reporting in from Blackfortress with my…” Riley glanced at the serial number of the ongoing recording then looked back at the camera. “…11th journal entry!”

And hopefully not the last, he thought.

“Sadly, I’ve still been unable to find any of my neighbors or other citizens since log 5, but what I did finally find was some fricking answers! Woooo!” beamed Riley, with an increasingly excited tone.

He took a quick sip from the coffee he had prepared beforehand, then continued the journal. “So, following a rather long and… smelly investigation, which involved me spending a few hours inside a dumpster near the mineral storage complexes in the industrial zone, I came to learn that this group of terrorists, dissidents, disgruntled sanitation workers or whatevers, are all part of the Danuvee’s Defenders terrorist group.”

Riley never really understood where that name came from anyway since the group never defended anything, nor did they operate anywhere near the Danuvee colony ship’s crash site. He usually wrote it off as lack of creativity on their part, but after five full bottles of whiskey and almost a week of isolation, his brain kept coming up with more and more intense conspiracies behind the name.

He shut off that part of his brain and focused back on the recording.

“Now, I would very much like to officially put the blame on this group and close the investigation, but that would be a mistake for a few reasons. For starters, this group never had, and most likely never will have the necessary amount of firepower, manpower, and funding, to take on the most heavily defended city on planet Azuno. But, they did, and I have two theories about why that happened.”

Riley turned a page in his notebook and continued reading from it.

“First, that these guys are in fact, not the Danuvee’s Defenders, and that we are dealing with another group that wants to stay hidden. My second theory is that the DD has backers and private suppliers, who have enough pull to supply this group without anybody noticing. This however would also raise some serious concerns about the integrity of my city’s government if it would turn out to be true, so let’s hope I’m wrong.”

McConnel took a glance at the empty whiskey bottles, then back at the camera. “There’s also the chance that I’m completely wasted at the moment and this is all happening in my head. If this is the case, then please do me a favor and––”

He suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of a gun going off outside of his house.

He immediately stopped the recording and dropped himself down to the floor, holding his breath to listen for sounds from the outside. After a few tense moments, he heard the faint sounds of chatter and footsteps, which seemed to be getting closer and closer. He crawled towards his house’s front door, and after making sure that it was locked, he took a careful peek through his boarded-up window on the left side.

It took some time for the two-man terrorist patrol to enter Riley’s line of sight. Not finding the spot the terrorists had fired at, he figured that they just fired their guns because they were bored. While the two were walking down his trash and debris-filled street, towards his home, Riley suddenly felt very much exposed. The only weapons he had was an old and half-broken revolver with no ammo, and his disarming charm. He figured that it would be for the best if he stayed hidden.

As the two terrorists got closer and closer, Riley made a few interesting observations. Firstly, these people did not use the standard black Kevlar armor used by their comrades, but instead, they wore a bulkier, modular armor suit. The armor consisted of a full-body suit, most likely made from some sort of synthetic material, to which the smooth and angular armor pieces were attached to. Both soldiers were wearing a full-face helmet, with a box above their visors, which he guessed were either night vision goggles or binoculars. It was quite an unusual armor design. If Riley had to hazard a guess, he would have figured that these armors were probably from Esmos, since that country tended to do everything differently from the other parts of Azuno.

The other thing he noticed was that the soldier on the left side of the patrol had a different colored suit. He or she had a dark grey and green one, while the right one’s armor was painted tan and light brown. It was probably meant to be a camouflage for sandy environments, but why would anybody wear that inside a city?

McConnel decided to duck away from the windows when the soldiers were only a few meters away from his door, just to be safe. He could, however, make out their conversation now.

“…which leaves only this street, and one more neighborhood in Northern Blackfortress to investigate, and then we’re finally finished,” said the male terrorist, who sounded like he was in his mid to late forties.

“That’s good news indeed, but what about the sewers? Do we have teams searching them?” asked the other one, who turned out to be a woman, who couldn’t have been older than thirty most likely. Judging by the distance of her voice, she was probably the one in the tan armor on the right.

“Well Jen, if you want to wade through dozens of kilometers of shit, be my guest,” replied the old soldier.

It seemed like Riley finally found out why he did not meet anyone for a while. These bastards have been most likely rounding up everyone they found and dragged them somewhere. Now he needed to find out where that “somewhere” was.

“I’ll pass, thanks. Which house do we want to start with?” Jen said, who was probably right in front of Riley’s front door now.

He tensed up. As his heart started beating faster, he prepared to sprint away at a moment’s notice.

“Eh, let’s go with the one on the other side. This one smells…”

Phew. Riley leaned back to his door as the two soldiers went to check out another house. For once, he felt quite proud of the messy state his house was in. He carefully looked out his window again and watched the two soldiers stack up on his front neighbor’s house, and smash the door in. Riley knew that the house was empty since George gave him his keys for safekeeping when he left for Ashen City two weeks ago.

Lucky bastard, Riley thought.

Since the two soldiers were busy plundering George’s place, Riley decided to take this opportunity to lock his doors and go for an evening walk. He slowly crouch-walked to his kitchen to pick up his backpack, a bag of coffee, a flashlight, some cutlery, and his city map. He also grabbed a few extra batteries and a spare memory card for his camera and then walked out the backdoor. He carefully closed the door and locked it.

He stopped for a few moments to listen to the environment, but the only thing he could hear was a gegant cricket chirping a rather nice melody. The green insects could grow up to 25 centimeters and were surprisingly hard to get rid of. The same was true for the Danuvee’s Defenders.

Except for the size. Riley hadn’t seen any mini terrorists.

Yet.

Once Riley was sure that the soldiers were not breathing down his neck, he set out towards the north-west, straight to Blackfortress’s commercial district.

*

With Tendor being way below the horizon and Azuno’s asteroid ring sitting high in the sky along with Thert, Riley yet again noticed how little the city’s nightlife had changed. It was only six-thirty, but with the days on Azuno being only 20 hours long, it was already getting dark.

Even though Blackfortress was under occupation, the city was as quiet as it ever was. There would still be cars and transport trucks roaming around and the industrial zone’s machines would make a rather big racket in the area on most days, but there wouldn’t be many people roaming around on the streets at night. Usually, the reason for that was that most people were tired from the day’s work, but this time, the explanation was a more sinister one.

He had been walking for about twenty minutes in the commercial district's abandoned neighborhoods when Riley felt safe enough to restart his recording. He did not want to stay in the open since he had seen a patrol in the distance earlier, so he figured he’d just go to a bar like most nights.

He walked off from the streets towards a café, and after a quick look around, he tried the door. Just like most times, the door was left unlocked, since the owner probably didn’t have time to lock it when he got dragged away. Riley stepped inside and was pleasantly surprised when he saw that the terrorists didn’t loot the place yet. He walked behind the counter and checked their stocks, quickly noticing that there were a good amount of cakes and biscuits left, and to his delight, there were a few bottles of iced coffee as well. He grabbed one such bottle, leaving a few bills tucked below the cash register as always, then took a seat at one of the tables inside the building.

He turned on his camera, checked how much storage space was left, and after an approving nod, he turned it towards himself. He was about to press the record button when he heard a creak.

Riley gripped his empty handgun, then aimed it towards the direction where the noise came from.

“Look, I know you’re in here, so how about you come out! We can discuss our business, like normal people would, instead of spying on each other…”

Nobody replied. Riley's heart was beating faster and faster with every passing moment.

He was about to say something when his visitor came out from behind a desk.

“Oh come on!”

The gegant cricket chirped once as a reply, then crawled behind another table. Feeling rather embarrassed, Riley sat back down to his seat and put his handgun on the table.

He then looked back at his camera and pressed the record button after forcing a smile onto his face.

“Hello again!” he started. “I had to cut my last log short because of a few rather impolite guests, so this is log 12.”

He took out his notebook again to check where he left off the previous time.

“Now, before I got interrupted I was talking about why I doubted that the Danuvee’s Defenders were indeed behind this attack. Well, it seems like that I was right because the aforementioned guests were equipped with an armor suit that I had never seen before, even during my days as a combat journalist! They had a modular design, and a rather unique look, which leaves me wondering whether it was designed by the Esmosians or one of the Uthanian kingdoms. One thing’s for sure though, and that’s that a small dissident group like the D.D. shouldn’t be able to get gear like this. Not without help.”

Riley opened the bottle of his iced coffee. After taking a sip from it, he continued the journal. “Here’s what I’m curious about though. I can understand why a terrorist group would want to capture the city since it’s built on the top of a pretty much inexhaustible stash of iron and copper. However, what I don’t get is why did they take literally everyone from the city and took them to emperor knows where? And more importantly, with what? Blackfortress had around 20000 residents, and I haven’t seen anyone else since day three, which means that they rounded up everyone in what, four days? Not even the AMC would be able to pull something like that off…”

The cricket made another creak, which startled Riley a little bit. He was going to murder that insect as soon as he finished here.

“There have to be explanations for all of this, and since I may quite possibly be the last free citizen of Blackfortress, I intend to find them. For now, I’m ending this log. This was Riley McConnel, still reporting from Blackfortress.”

He stopped the recording and then laid down face-first onto the table after a long sigh.

The past week was a collection of sleepless nights and constant running, and the only thing that had been keeping Riley running was his coffee stash. He reached towards his bottle, only to end up not grabbing anything. Following two more failed attempts, Riley frustratedly raised his face from the table and saw that his drink had disappeared.

His heart started acting up again as his brain realized that something, no someone had taken something from him just now, and he quickly reached for the handgun on the table.

“I wouldn’t try that.” said a voice.

He turned around towards the sound almost fast enough to fall out of his seat and pointed the gun at the person behind him. A rather tall and muscular man was standing at the entrance with crossed arms, wearing a dark grey Kevlar body armor that fully covered his skin, and a full-face helmet with a darkened visor.

“Who the hell are you?!” snapped Riley.

The man did not say or do anything but just stared at Riley, who in turn just got angrier and more scared.

“Damn it, answer me or I’ll blow your armored head off!” he yelled.

“We both know that gun is empty,” said the man, with a filtered, almost robotic sounding voice.

Riley suddenly felt a lot less confident and safe. He wasn’t rested enough to think of a good way to continue threatening the terrorist.

“You want to test that theory?!”

The man tilted his head to the left a bit but still didn’t move.

“Yes.”

The two of them stood there in awkward silence for a few more tense moments before Riley sighed and lowered his empty gun. He threw his useless pistol somewhere to the right, then looked at the man.

“Fine, you got me without any sort of weaponry and took my coffee hostage. What do you want?”

“That’s not the question you should ask.”

Riley just blinked, and slowly raised one of his eyebrows.

“What you should ask,” he continued “…is "why didn’t you stab me in the back when you had the chance?".”

The tired Riley just shrugged. “Because you’re a weirdo? Because you like looking into the eyes of your victims before you kill them? I don’t know, but to be frank, I don’t care.”

“That recording you just made tells me that you’re a curious individual,” he remarked. “I am pretty sure you do want to know.”

McConnel shook his head. He did not understand where the terrorist was going with this. “Fine, I’ll play along. Why didn’t you knock me out?”

“Well,” said the man as he pulled out a chair from one of the tables “…let’s just say that I’m quite interested in knowing what you were planning to do once you found out where the civilians were taken to. Because from what I can see, you do not have any weapons, allies, food, and from the looks of things, clean clothes.”

The terrorist pointed at the other side of his table. Riley didn’t have many options right now since this guy was carrying two large-caliber revolvers on his thighs, so he decided to sit down in front of him.

After he took his seat, he spoke up. “Well, I don’t really make long term plans, Mr…?”

“Cipher.”

Riley stared at the man for a few moments, before he concluded that that was probably a codename of sorts.

“Right… Well, I figured that I’d find my neighbors first before I worried about how I would go about rescuing them, Mr. Cipher.”

“And did you have any plans for your current situation?”

Cipher had a way of making Riley feel stupider with every sentence that came out of his helmet.

“Does it seem that way to you?” he retorted.

He didn’t reply for a while.

“I have seen some rather elaborate traps in my life, Mr. McConnel,” he stated. “…if this turned out to be one, I would not be shocked.”

Riley rolled his eyes, then leaned closer to the man. “Look, I don’t know a damn thing about you Cipher, but what I do know is that so far, everyone I’ve met here had something to do with the sacking and looting of my home and you’ve yet to give me a reason to not assume the same thing about you.”

Cipher nodded.

“What if I told you that I’m your ally and not the only one at that?” he asked.

“Then I’d say you’re full of shit.”

He nodded again.

“In that case, allow me to introduce myself properly,” he said as he reached for something in one of his pockets. A moment later he pulled out an orange badge and showed it to Riley.

“I am Agent Cipher. Global Intelligence Service.”