Broken World

Broken World

Jraden looked at the men. Three of them. Two seemed ready for combat, the third looked like a civilian. The former seemed to be slowly regaining their senses from Jraden's tampering with the machine's mind-numbing chemicals, while the third simply kept a far-away look in his eyes.

Three prisoners per officer should keep the scales balanced, he thought. At least he hoped so. The other two men, Valerian and Xiaowen, seemed capable, but if the mixture had rendered them ineffective and their charges regained their senses fully only to rebel, they may not survive. He was hopeful that in such an event the traitors would merely flee and abandon the rest, leaving him to continue the mission, but if bad came to worse, being in the rear of the group, he was certain he could swiftly dispose of his own company and retreat to plan anew.

"My head..." one of the men in combat gear moaned.

"It will wear off. It's the effects of the machine." Jraden said. He patted the man on the back and motioned for them to follow him.

"Wait." the other man, not the civilian, said.

"Yes?" Jraden asked, turning around half-way, careful not to let them see his hand reaching for his sidearm. The three prisoners had been armed with nothing but crude melee weapons, at Jraden's command, so he was not overly worried. The only group with firearms was Xiaowen's, and two of his' were sporting mild wounds, that while not lethal, would make them unlikely to best him in a fight. With each group separated from the other so that visual contact was null, he was as safe as he could be.

"Where are you taking us?" the man asked. He was holding his weapon tightly, Jraden did not fail to notice.

"To kill bandits. A leader, to be specific. My superiors tasked me with killing him and retrieving a set of machinery." Jraden replied. Valerian and Xiaowen had instructions to repeat the lie should they be pressed.

"Is that so? Then who's he? Why won't you arm us properly if you need us, why won't you share the plan, and why're we splitting up? You seemed quick enough to talk to those other two and toss them some guns."

The other two men had stopped walking and were standing beside him, all looking intently at Jraden— expecting his reply.

"Curiosity is a trait of useful, if dangerous appliances. You need not know who the man is or how he wronged my superiors. All you need to know is that freedom will be yours once the mission is accomplished. Is that not enough?"

The man had grown a light shade of red, but he kept quiet, arched an eyebrow, and smiled. His grip on the weapon did not relax.

"Well, let's kill him then. It's the only thing bandits are good for." he said.

"Who's to guarantee you'll set us free in the end? You seemed quick enough to kill men that did you no wrong back there." the second man, the one who'd complained of his headache, spoke. His jaw was clenched and he held his head with his hand, but his weapon was still tightly held in the other.

Jraden's hand moved to slowly remove his pistol from its holster, but the first man who'd spoken put a hand on the other's chest.

"No, no. He's saved us and all he wants is our help. Thank you, sir." he said, looking back at Jraden with a grin that screamed insolence. "We'll gladly aid you. Isn't that right?"

"Completely." the second man replied. "Forgive me, I was not thinking clearly." he said, spat, and turned around brusquely, not looking at Jraden. He walked to the front of their small group of four. They resumed their march in silence, with Jraden slowly falling behind until he had a clear view of all three of the others' backs. His hand never left the grip of his pistol.

***

"Their names are Adam Smith and Neslo Noremac." Saint Kelly murmured. He didn't outright trust the man called Jraden, but he was entertaining. In a way, and after the endless chore of being held inside a prison, he considered him the best thing to have happened to him since he was taken from his beloved.

"Formerly Army. They sometimes babbled that their comrades would rescue them from the cells before we were put to sleep." he continued. Certainly, the battle with the grenades had been entertaining. If the man called Jraden could supply some more of that, he'd gladly follow him, for a bit, at least. Ida was waiting for him, after all. Somewhere, he knew. That crazy, lovely, lovely, crazy bitch was out there.

"How do you know these things?" Jraden asked. The man looked like such a moron, that much Kelly knew. Stone-faced all the time, except when he smiled that fake, mocking smile. He did not know how to do it, it just came off as arrogant. No, the real talent was elsewhere.

Kelly smiled, the way it should be done.

"I have kept close attention. I knew the bandit leader here would be sought out and killed. I never doubted it. I wanted to make sure that when someone did come, I could be of service." he said. Jraden's face moved slightly, almost imperceptibly, and Kelly grinned in thought, but not in body, no. That would ruin it. Now he knew. There was no leader. There was something else.

"What of it? This information is worthless. Go back to your post. Take point."

"Of course, sir. I will obviously share anything worthwhile I find." he said and moved back to the front. He stood somewhat off to the side, not close enough that Jraden would think something of it, but close enough that he could speak without having to leave the safety of whispering.

"He plans something." he murmured. Smith, the man who'd almost had them all shot a while before, the fool, turned slightly. "No. Stare ahead." he added.

Smith obeyed, but he was impatient and his whispering was loud. Wrong, wrong. Kelly wondered how exactly he was supposed to work with such people. Then again, he had made do with way worse. If someone was able to pull through, it would be him. Not Smith, not Jraden, but him.

"What do you mean?" Smith had asked.

Kelly shook his finger, 'no', in front of his chest so Jraden would not see. He then pulled out a cigarette and chewed on it. He couldn't light it—that pestersome Jraden would not risk the smell of it, but it brought him comfort to bite down on it.

"Later." he whispered, and walked on.

***

Xiaowen was gagging. His face was red, with the veins on his neck and face protruding to the point that they seemed ready to burst. He was on his knees, trying desperately to breathe. Martian looked on from behind.

"Is that what you meant?" he asked Dingu, the fat man of skin that was blacker than the darkness around them. They'd been walking some hundred meters ahead of Jraden's group when Xiaowen first started to react badly to the captain's treachery.

"It is. Look how he squirms. It's the venom, it is. It's surging through his veins, causing a rare, but extremely potent allergic reaction. One in a thousand men, or so I've heard." Dingu said, and he laughed a deep, grave laugh that sounded like a cross between a growl and the rumble of an earthquake. "It's the work of the Gates, Martian. The Gates of Madness themselves. That this should happen to us..." he whistled and winced. Blood was seeping out of a dozen shrapnel cuts on his massive belly.

"I don't understand. Why would that bastard do this to one of his own?" Grayson asked, running a hand through his beard. He himself was badly battered. His left arm was suspended in a sling and thoroughly bandaged to keep the burns from becoming infected.

Xiaowen wheezed and struggled to rise, but his knees gave way and he fell. His breathing was erratic as he lay on the floor, barely moving.

"Couldn't have known. I tell you, it's the Gates. They're working for us now, but not for long. We ought to move and fast." Dingu said and started to walk away through an opposite tunnel.

"Wait, where are you going?" Martian asked as the gigantic man blended into the darkness.

"I'm leaving these madmen. You can come with if you want. I wouldn't mind someone to watch my back. You too, Grayson. It's a large back I've got after all!" he laughed and hurried, wheezing out a few pained breaths of his own.

"Shouldn't we help him?" Grayson asked, reaching for the first aid kit he kept with himself. He looked at Martian.

Martian cast his gaze over to Xiaowen, lying on the ground, barely managing to breathe. He felt a pang of pity for the man. He had been nothing but polite since they'd started down the tunnel. Perhaps it would be wrong to leave him.

Then he remembered the grenades and just how many of them there had been at the start.

"Fuck him." he said, and turned to follow after Dingu. Grayson looked at Xiaowen one last time, and then he followed behind Martian.

They walked in darkness for a while, not daring to light their way for fear that Jraden would see the light and follow. Still, the tunnel did not open into a crossroads or make sharp twists, so they negotiated the lack of light fairly well. They walked on until they bumped into something large and soft.

"Watch it." Dingu said with alarm. "You don't want me to fall on you."

Martian cursed and wiped away sweat from his face— enough to soak up a sponge, and none of it was his.

"Do you even know where we're going?" Grayson asked from behind them. He was guarding their backs, aiming down the sights of the rifle he'd been given.

"Sure do. I've seen the blueprints of this mine a time and a hundred. I know my way around it." Dingu said cheerfully. He seemed at ease in the darkness.

"What? How?" Grayson asked. He turned to face Dingu's back, even if he couldn't see him.

"Let's just say me and a couple of friends had been thinking of paying these people a visit in the near future." the large man said, and chuckled. He slid further down into the tunnel, with his small retinue close behind. Martian mulled over his words for a while and then he placed a hand on Dingu's shoulder as firmly as he could despite the sweat that covered it. His fingers were almost fully extended— so large were Dingu's shoulders.

"If you knew so much, why did you not leave the moment you woke? Why did you follow Jraden's commands?" Martian asked. He felt— not saw, but felt as Dingu turned around. A current of air hit him that had been previously blocked by the frame of the giant man. It smelled of fresh air.

"Why did you?" Dingu asked, and Martian moved to reply, but found that he couldn't. He thought back, and it was all a blur. Waking up, exchanging words with the man, then the explosions, the gunfire, the killing. After that it was a haze. As though he held a paper sheet between his fingers with the reasons for his inaction written on it, but the more he tried to read it, the more unfocused they became. He struggled for a moment, and then Dingu chuckled in his booming voice.

"You can't explain it, can you? You remember what you did. You can recall every movement and second of it, but you can't explain why, now can you, Martian?" Dingu gave a few, short laughs, and his stomach bounced a little with each one.

"You should pay more attention, Martian. For all your skills and abilities, the obvious escapes you. Jraden found us all asleep and defenseless. Xiaowen paid the price of that. We all did. Martian, when was the last time you were drugged by industrial-grade othrio?"

"Othrio?" Grayson spat, frowning. "We should go back there and shoot that son of a-"

"No. What is done is done." Dingu chuckled. "Yes, we all were under heavy-duty drugs to keep us asleep, and when Jraden found us he must have slipped a few drops of othrio into the tubes feeding us right before he woke us. I don't doubt you know the way the drug works in its simple form— making beasts out of men, but I don't doubt you ignore how it works when refined either.

"In my line of work," Dingu continued as he walked, "we sometimes need to make men malleable. Susceptible to suggestion. It's simpler to move about a herd of human cattle rather than a mob of captives. Jraden must be a darker shade of coal-black in his heart if he was willing to drug us all to further his cause." Dingu laughed. "He basically made meat-shields of us all. Sent us ahead of him, like dogs sweeping a minefield. Separated us. Three of us per every one of his. Even without the drugs, that's a losing battle. The True and Tried are well-known for taking the fight to Grand Demons. What battle will three ordinary men give them?

"Now, it's true that they were also drugged," he added once Martian began to debate, "but I still wouldn't bet my meal on our side." he laughed. "Truth is, Jraden mustn't have really cared if we turned on the others. Way he saw it, we'd run, and like you can see, we have. He's still free to do as he likes. He can go on with his mission. By Madness, he'll probably leave Xiaowen where he is. It's not hard to figure out a man like Jraden. You just need to think of the most heartless course of action."

"So he drugged us? How would that turn us into obedient slaves without addling our brains? You said the stuff was industrial-grade." Grayson said.

"Don't look at me. I just use the stuff. I don't make it. Demon nutcases brew it inside their lairs. Only the Gates know what goes into the mixture, but it's damn useful." Dingu chuckled again and slapped his belly. "We're near a large hall. I'll be needing a brave, slender soul to move up ahead and tell me if my fine self will be able to pass unnoticed."

"Not yet." Martian said and moved in front of Dingu. "I still need to know more."

"Oh? How may I help you?" Dingu asked, smiling broadly.

"What of the others?" Martian asked.

"What about them?"

"We left them with that mad bastard, that's what." Grayson said, shifting his arm inside its sling.

"Oh, was that not the plan?" Dingu laughed.

"We need to help them." Martian stated. He knew them not, but he felt it was necessary. "That bastard is abusing his self-granted power. He's drugged and manipulated men who owe him nothing, and if what we think of him is true, not one of those people will leave these mines alive. You know of a way out, Dingu. There's more of us, and we are armed. If we can catch that bastard unawares while he is distracted with Xiaowen, we can set the rest free."

"Damn right." Grayson growled. "So will you? Will you help us?" Grayson said, moving beside Martian with his rifle leaning against his shoulder. The massive black man arched an eyebrow.

And he smiled.

***

Valerian was standing at the first major crossroads of tunnels since they'd left the prison. Jraden had told him of the location of some of them, the ones that he wanted explored, and sent him ahead with the most agile-looking men in the group. Stealth was their mission, and it would soon begin.

We passed an exit a while ago, he thought to himself. The fleeting notion of escape had entered his mind at that point, but he dismissed it as soon as it came. The mission was all that mattered. His time serving the True and Tried had taught him that. If the lives of the men who stood alongside him, or his own life was needed to achieve the greater well-being of mankind, then so be it. Had he the right to decide for them? Perhaps not, but theirs was no longer a world of good and bad. It was a world of needs.

And the needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the few, he murmured in his mind.

They had stopped at his behest.

"Russell. Go down that tunnel, return in five minutes. Julius, cover him. Alex, with me." he said. They split as he had demanded, and each group went down their tunnel.

Russell and Julius caught a glance of Valerian as he disappeared into the darkness, keeping behind Alex. They then moved on into the darkness themselves.

"What are you thinking?" Julius asked after a while.

Russell was caught unawares. He hadn't been paying attention.

"I'm just keeping tabs on the time. We have to be back in five-"

"Minutes. Yes." Julius smiled. Russell couldn't see it in the darkness, but he could sense it. The man was smiling.

They walked on for a while longer, until Russell reached three hundred inside his head.

"We have to go back." he said.

"Do we?" Julius asked, and Russell frowned. Of course they had to go back, or had he not been paying close attention? Were they five minutes? He thought back on the exchange. It had definitely been-

"Russell," Julius said and raised a small flashlight to Russel's eyes. He pointed it at each of his eyes for a few seconds and watched the pupils contract. "Russell, Russell... It seems to have hit you rather hard."

"What?" he asked, not sure if he meant the explosions of the grenades or the man with the hammer. His thoughts went back to the pipe he had held, and his grip tightened on the falchion Valerian had given him.

"Hold still." Julius said, and Russell almost cried out as his skin was pierced by a needle. Julius injected something into his bloodstream, and the entirety of his flesh around the area began to burn.

"Better?" Julius asked when Russell had recovered. The man nodded slowly.

"What was that for?" he hissed, and Julius smiled.

"To clear your head. Give it a few seconds, think back on what has happened, and tell me if you still want to go back."

Russell began to protest, when a feeling of uncertainty began to slowly creep into him.

"What did you inject me with?" he whispered.

"What do you care?" Julius replied, and Russell's head snapped up to look him in the eye.

"What do I care? There could have been any number of things inside that syringe." he squared up to the smiling man. Julius chuckled.

"So concerned of the contents of a syringe, and yet he doesn't give a damn where he's going." Julius looked down the tunnel to the beginning of the crossroads, where they had parted ways with Valerian.

"We need to leave this place, and quickly. Valerian has been free of the drug's effects for at least ten minutes, and he still hasn't deviated from Jraden's command. He has either been damaged beyond repair, or he truly believes in what he does. I don't know which is more dangerous."

Russell mulled over his words for a second.

"What drugs?" he asked in a hushed voice even as he slowly thought back on every event, every action he'd taken and had not taken. A particular memory struck him, when Valerian commanded something of him and he'd followed. How he'd let Julius walk away, how he'd let Valerian walk away without pressing either of them for answers. How he'd seen Jraden maneuver men he'd never met as though they were drilled soldiers.

"Othrio." Julius said, a sad smile on his lips. "I noticed its effects soon after I regained consciousness. Dilated pupils, confusion, compliance... Many more. I will not bore you with them, but I think we all were under their effects until just a few minutes ago. I recovered quickly, but others took longer. I was hoping that Valerian would break ties with Jraden when he recovered. I planned to approach him then, but I do not know anymore. If he has definitely sided with Jraden, I'm not sure what lengths he will go to achieve his mission. The True and Tried can be real bastards."

"We need to warn the others." Russell said. "We have to go back and-"

"And?" Julius asked, the sad smile still on his lips. "Try to reason with mindless zombies? Gamble it all on the possibility that Valerian will choose us over his comrade? Die valiantly in defense of what is right?"

"The others might have woken by now." Russell pressed. "If we can appeal to them-"

"-we'll be gunned down by Jraden the moment he realizes we know. Then he'll gun down his zombies, crawl back into a tunnel, and weave another web." Julius shook his head. "No. Russell, we have to either kill Jraden and subdue his men, or get out of here and find help. Just remember, these are the True and Tried. They're not called that for their honesty and 'we tried' attitude."

Russell ran a hand through his hair and sighed. It was a lot to take in, yet he could not run and abandon the others. There had to be a way out. There had to be.

"We need to try and talk to Valerian." he said. "He can help us-"

"Do what?" Julius asked, not impolitely. "Fight Jraden? Perhaps. If we can convince him before Xiaowen reaches us in less than five minutes. We may be able to subdue one, if we are lucky, but never two. Xiaowen's group is better armed as well, even if wounded. If they haven't regained their senses, or if Xiaowen is so in league with Jraden that he commands them to open fire under threat of death, how long would we last? It's a large gamble in many ways, no matter which path we take. But I've chosen mine."

Julius then turned around and kept walking into the darkness of the tunnel. Russell was left alone, unable to call to him in case Valerian or Xiaowen heard him. He stood in the darkness for a moment, wondering.

"Damn this all." he muttered then, and rushed down the tunnel, to try his luck against Valerian.

***

Alex whistled merrily as he went. A tune he'd heard played sometimes in some place that was more like a dream now. His gask-mask muffled it, but still it seemed to bother Valerian.

"Stop that, you fool. You will set the bandits on our tracks." the man said. Alex didn't quite like the mask he wore, he felt his own was better.

He kept on whistling.

"Did you not hear me? Stop that this instant." Valerian growled and landed a heavy hand on Alex's shoulder and turned him around. Both men faced each other then.

"Sorry, sir." he said then, smiling, though Valerian could not see that. "Just thought I'd lighten the mood, after all, it's fairly grim at the moment. What with all the men you helped Jraden kill."

He grunted as Valerian's hand punched him. His nose bled behind the mask, but his smile was still there.

"I have shot men for lesser offences." Valerian growled, aiming the pistol Jraden had given him right at Alex's head. "But we have a mission that is greater than us. A task that is beyond our anger and insolence. By God, I swear I will see it accomplished. If you can't see the greater scheme of things, then that is your curse, but I will not have you soil mankind's future for your petty arrogance."

Alex nodded and tilted his head to the side a tad— the closest he could get to letting Valerian see his sneer.

"As you command, sir. For the greater scheme, then." he said and turned to walk. Valerian followed shortly after, though Alex never did hear him holster the gun. They walked in silence for a while, until they reached a dead end, with a small, waist-high tunnel sticking out to the left.

Alex knelt and took a look inside.

"Sir, you may want to look at this." he muttered, and Valerian took a step forward, but did not kneel.

"What is it?" he asked, keeping his sidearm trained on the opening of the small tunnel.

"Some form of camera..." Alex said, and Valerian immediately cursed.

"Get back then, you moron!" he reached down and shoved Alex out of the way, hoping against hope that the camera had not seen him. He turned to face him then, rage welling up inside him at the man's carelessness— debating whether he should shoot him.

Then he felt the blade slide into him, just beneath the sternum.