Episode 6: Rebellion in the Shadows

“They’ve wiped it. Everything. The whole region. It’s gone.”

The sound of the tablet clunking onto the table echoed through the cloud of disbelief and tension in the interrogation room. Joji saw on the screen the remnants of Sector 670; rather than seeing an apocalyptic hellscape of destruction and death, destroyed buildings and ravaged homes - he instead saw clinical eradication. It was clean and surgical, as though a god had clicked its fingers and banished it to nothingness.

The earth was scorched and all evidence of habitation had been wiped.

All of the air in Joji’s body left him and he slunk deeper into his chair. The door was now open and more people were coming in and out of the room, but Joji sat in silence amidst the backdrop of panic. The clamouring and running around merged into the background static and the ringing of his mind overwhelmed his senses.

He tried to feel; he tried to cling onto even the feeling of sadness or grief, but the cold and numbness had taken over and commanded the system. Flickers of memories came to the forefront of Joji’s consciousness; the wide and warm sunset over the wide skies, the winding rivers, the walks that lasted forever with nothing in sight for hours, the warm home cooked meals, the faces of-

The static fought back and glitched his attention to the present.

Pixelated faces and hazy images of ghosts fought their way to his mind, but were torn apart by the white noise screaming in his ears. He didn’t move when they lifted him out of the chair and moved him out of the small room.

The dark corridors blurred into an endless and indistinguishable maze; tired and wary faces passed him by and yet the journey from the interrogation room to living quarters felt like stepping through a dream. Perhaps he could wake up, or perhaps he could go back to sleep; he was lost in a state of disarray like the disorientation of finding himself waking over and over again to fall into darker and darker dreams.

The darkness and emotion had disoriented Joji enough, but he had picked up clues and hints from his surroundings to realise that the base was underground; and the dim concrete walls of his living quarters only validated the hypothesis - the weight of the world above him was now crashing down on his senses, and as he lay on the bed he felt the increasing pressure in his chest.

✧

The hours merged together and Joji lost all sense of time. His mind could not comprehend rational lines of processing; his ever present inner dialogue was silent.

He felt cold detachment creeping in; as though he was trying to split from himself. The fire within had turned blue, and he felt it withdrawing - he wanted desperately to fade into the background, to become a physical manifestation of the numbness. His soul still felt present, but it felt tired; it ached. He had felt the deep burden and crushing ache before, it was the silent crushing of society. It had often been accompanied with deep resentment and loathing of those who were ignorant to it - the everyday people in the UGA metropolis, bound and chained to the systems that controlled their every waking hour and actively sought to extinguish any flame of life and passion.

Joji’s mind turned once more to the contrast of freedom, and the extreme thrill of grabbing hold of those threads of life. He saw flashes in his mind of the glowing purple eyes, present and glaring, judging heavily and staring deep into him.

In his waking life he only saw glimpses and flashes of threads, piercing through the rotting fabric of society - and now he was missing the glow and life of the mech.

Joji shivered and the hairs on his arms stood to attention - and suddenly he felt the walls closing in around him. He felt the sudden desire to feel. The concrete walls around him needed breaking; the numbness needed obliterating - as his thoughts swelled, so did his emotions, and the flickering embers in his heart stirred and bled deeper in colour and burned with more vigour. He thought of the images of his childhood home and memories being eradicated, and he thought of the orbital station and the devastation at the hands of the mech; and he felt the invisible pull of desire.

“Sekko”, said a deep voice at the door, “come with me.”

The man’s voice shot through Joji’s spiralling. He looked up at the old man standing at the door; noting to himself just how unaware he was of it being opened.

“Well, come on man.” said the man at the door.

Joji’s disdain of being told what to do was countered by the strange warmth and familiarity of the old man. His face was weathered with a scruffy, yet shaped, grey moustache.

Reluctantly, Joji got to his feet. As he got closer to the old man, the old man grimaced.

“Have you not washed in the two days you’ve been here?” he asked.

“What?” replied Joji bluntly.

The man rolled his eyes.

“Oh whatever, just follow me.”

✧

Joji followed the man through the dark winding corridors of the base and was led into a busy command room. There was a flurry of activity, with men and women shuffling through tight spaces between desks and large semi transparent screens and holograms. The room was dark and cramped but overly lit by the buzzing and whirring of large offensive projector lights. The soft glow of the semi transparent floating screens and holograms added flickers of colour; making the array of desks and the mish mash of old technology and people look akin to the vast UGA cities at night - being assaulted by the neon flicker of advertising holograms and security spotlights.

Joji was led to a centre console, a command table, being watched over by Rin and the man from the interrogation room, together with three other gentlemen. The three unknown men stood with an evident authority, and were flanked on either side by Rin and the aggressive man.

“Sir,” said the moustached elderly man who had led Joji, “he’s here.”

The five people huddled looking at the command table stopped their conversation and looked up, focusing on Joji.

The man in the middle, a middle aged man with glasses and greying hair, was the first to speak.

“Ah yes, thank you Mikkel.”

He looked into Joji’s eyes, and spoke once more.

“Joji Sekko, I’ve heard a lot about you. Come.” The man gestured for Joji to come closer.

“Now,” he started once more, “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions. I’d have preferred to have given you more than a couple days before laying this all on you, but time is really not our ally.”

“I want to be fully transparent with you, so-” he stopped mid sentence, noticing Joji’s fleeting glances to Rin - “oh of course, my apologies. You have met Rin Kuroda and Aris Thorne here.” gesturing to both Rin and the man from the interrogation room.

“This,” gesturing to the large, muscular man to his right, “is Darius Krell. And this gentleman here is Kaelen Vane. And of course I am Ryu Imai.”

Joji merely nodded. This Ryu Imai seemed friendly and authoritative, but Joji still felt on edge. The conversation had just started, and yet he was already feeling impatient. He was aware of the looks from the people in the background; the silent glances and soft murmurs.

“Now, as I was saying, I want to be fully open and honest with you. There’s a lot you don’t know; through no fault of your own of course, but no doubt this is very overwhelming, and so… Oh yes, please, take a seat.” Ryu Imai gestured at the chair on one side of the command table - a large table with 3D holograms of what looked like locations and buildings.

Joji took a seat, and he felt as though he was sitting before a committee.

“I’ve seen the data from the Seraph 1,”

Joji shot a curious glance to Rin as Ryu spoke.

“Seraph 1 being the white mech you piloted to destroy a UGA class 2 orbital station… and I think we owe you an explanation.”

“We- you- us, here on Earth, we live in a bubble. The United Global Accord has control of the planet, they run our cities, our security, our lives - you know this, of course, you’re seemingly an intelligent man.”

Ryu’s soft features hardened and the glasses sat lower on the bridge of his nose.

“They also have complete control of information. There is a war in the colonies. All across the solar system, the United Global Accord is violently repressing all thought, expression, and any opposition to their totalitarian ruling. They don’t tell us of course - the Earth is locked down.”

“The Seraph 1, it was made-”

The smaller man to the left of Ryu cut across him. He was smaller in stature, his face was thin and his eyes deep in his head.

“Apologies, Director, but if I may?”

“Yes, yes, right, of course Dr Vane please, continue.” said Director Ryu.

“When the modern day mechs were first being developed, the first rumblings of discontent across the colonies was already well under way, albeit in secret. It was harder for the UGA to hide their crimes; their silencing of critics, their murder of entire communities who dared to speak up. The flourishing colonies you hear of are more akin to space slums. Labour camps and floating prisons. A group started to develop a new technology, a mech that could compete with the latest UGA combat suits… something that could stand up to the oppression. Project Seraph. Five mechs were created, and the analytics were… scary. They were superior in every way to the new UGA mechs and the technology that came with them, but… no one could sync with them to pilot them anywhere near their capabilities.”

“The experiments were… troublesome… and unfortunately futile. But the data was real, they were a glimmer of hope to an otherwise doomed existence to the UGA expansion. But the UGA caught wind of the whispers in the shadows and they were sought out and attacked; the Seraph mechs were hidden or destroyed. The truth is, we don’t know what happened to them. It was imperative that they were never found by the UGA - if they could get them to work they would be used as machines of total war; they would be as though God had been trapped in machine form. We would be doomed.”

Joji sat and a layer of silence filled the room. At this point the murmurs in the background had stopped and people had stood still to witness the conversation. There was palpable tension.

Joji could see the piercing purple eyes burning into his mind - he also felt the gravity of the mech. The words from Ryu and Kaeleen Vane filtered through his brain like data points adding to his already existing disdain of the United Global Accord. He had forever felt the heavy, soul destroying grips of the UGA on his life and the world. He had grown accustomed, and that made him feel sick.

He had heard whispers of trouble in the colonies. People had been removed from positions and relocated to jobs on a random moon or some colony ship; it was framed as a promotion, an experience - but the soft itch of scepticism was ever present. There were too many coincidences, too many inconsistencies; but it was never worth discussing, no one would openly question the reality of what was being reported.

The silence of inequality and oppression was deafening. He had seen the slums in the metropolis; he had seen the experiences and treatment of those deemed lower than the AI workforce.

What Ryu and Kaeleen had spoken of sounded plausible, but that didn’t mean it was real.

“What are you trying to say?” asked Joji. “That there is a secret rebellion in the colonies that the United Global Accord is keeping hidden? That seems a bit… convenient?”

“Convenient?!” spat Aris Thorne, “what part of this is convenient you little shit!” he slammed his fist on the table.

“I’m no fan of the UGA, but you guys shot me and are now telling me that the people running the entire solar system are evil? No shit they’re evil, I’ve lived this; I’m not blind or stupid. But, what about you? Why should I trust anything you’re saying?”

Aris jumped forward but Ryu put out his arm as a barrier, halting his momentum and diffusing an otherwise aggressive Aris.

“Let’s… be calm.” Ryu said softly. “Joji, I told you I would be open and honest, and I appreciate that despite that, this requires a large amount of trust from your side.”

“Can I show you something?”

Joji frowned, but nodded cautiously.

Ryu tapped away at the command desk and before them popped up a news broadcast. It was on the UGA’s global news channel.

It showed the aftermath of the destruction of sector 670. It was a drone shot, and yet rather being the clean cut empty mark on the landscape that Joji had seen previously, huge industrial scale excavator vehicles and construction mechs were patrolling and floating over the area.

On one side of the broadcast a man’s face was speaking. A UGA spokesperson.

“Numerous accounts of suspicious activity were identified and reported, and following a large-scale and comprehensive surveillance mission using our state of the art orbital satellites, we identified various weapons hubs and insurgency build up in the area. These terrorists had, callously and without remorse, used this community as a camouflage to their evil and dangerous intent. Our new orbital stations used low orbit weapons to destroy the terrorist base and build up of weapons. Fortunately, no UGA servicemen were injured, and the low orbit stations continue to ensure the safety of our society.”

The broadcast cut to a large towering building. “That was official UGA spokesperson Mr Wirtz. We are forever grateful for the decisive action of our military. As we can see from the drone shots, Viktori Industry are already on site and we’re told that they will quickly be redeveloping the area for a new and improved extension to Metropolis 3-

Ryu clicked a button on the console and the hologram faded to nothingness.

“Joji, I’m told you are from the area. Can you tell me what you think of the reports that an insurgency was building up?”

Episode 5 - Project Seraph

Episode 7 - Coming Soon

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