Roleplay Online with RolePlayGateway

Narrator: January - November 2012 – Life continues as it were, sort of. The New Year brings the expected prophesies of the return of Christ, the end of the world and everything in between. As if a nation has not suffered enough, the day after New Years, thousands of random homes across the world, in every country suddenly catch on fire. Entire families are killed. Once more the Vatican steps in and claims this as an act of God, cleansing the world of those who do not believe in him. The Pope begs the U.S. President still in term and world leaders to forbid the practice of any other religion but Catholicism in order to save the people of God. Amazingly, this request is granted making Catholicism the official religion of the United States. All other forms of worship on U.S. soil are deemed unsafe and a danger to a humanity and thereby outlawed. Any case attempting to dispute this brought before the Supreme Court is never heard. Protesters to new U.S. policy are jailed without trial. Some are never released.

December 20th, 2012 – It happened overnight. Across the Globe, it woke up every living human being. The sound of someone crying, an omniscient presence echoed out around the world for three hours. When it stopped, it brought both hope and fear.

The Human DNA strand was suddenly repaired. Not a person alive had a split helix anymore. The thousands of deficiencies that existed in the genetic makeup of humans was suddenly cured. Allergies ceased to exist. Common aliments like Asthma and Arthritis were cured. Coma patients woke up, cancer patients miraculously recovered and any trace of the dis-ease was gone.

But there was more.

In Egypt it was reported that a great blue light shot up from the head of the Sphinx and the eyes of the great monument glowed green. When dawn struck, they still glowed. Off the coast of the Biminis Islands, submerged Pyramids, they’re very existence still in debate, suddenly rose up from the ocean floor and could be seen as sudden islands. In the Yucatan, soft chirping sounds could be heard from the Pyramids there, and every full Moon thereafter caused every Pyramid standing across the globe to make the same sound.

But there was more.

Many human beings suddenly remembered past lives. Many more reported sudden abilities like ESP and Telekinesis. Medical Doctors suddenly had the knowledge to cure dis-eases thought incurable through unconventional or even unaccepted methods. But perhaps more importantly, every human being on the planet had the same feeling. For those three hours, they all knew that there was more to the world, to the universe, to their very lives then what they had been told. They knew something else was out there, that was being hidden from them.

The Vatican called it an act of God. The Vatican said those who believed in God were saved. The Vatican told people that the feeling was Satan, that those who exhibited those strange abilities had been overtaken by the devil in his attempt to confuse and thwart the message of the Lord, our Savior. The Vatican once more begged the President of the U.S and other world leaders to step in and save those that were lost. Once more, their wishes were granted. Thousands across the United States were jailed or sent to churches for “exorcisms”.

By the beginning of January 2013, the dust had settled and the world leaders felt that once more they had the situation under control. The answers would come, it was promised. God would come, he’d already proven that hadn’t he?

Not everyone believed it. But those people would have to search for the truth in secret.

Luckily, they were not alone.

His mother died whispering words that laid the piece just the right place on the chess board.

“You look so much like your father.”

He didn’t. Marcello had seen pictures, but she was so ill he would not correct her. Instead he smiled and squeezed her hand.

She suddenly looked determined, sat up slightly and whispered hurriedly at him. “That was not your father, Marc. Not your real father. Don’t tell your grandmother…”

She was not able to answer his questions after such a statement. In the end she didn’t have too.

To this day, he had no idea who the man was; the one that had walked up to him at his mother’s funeral and handed him an unmarked envelope. The messenger hadn’t said a word, only looked Marcello in the eye, waiting until it was accepted. Then he walked away.

One letter. One letter and his life changed completely. One letter from a father to the son he never knew. And it was staggering at times to sit and process who your father really was. What you had been left heir too. The sort of legacy set down, dropped in your lap and expected to execute with the same perfection.

It was a challenge no Terenzio could resist. Especially not Stefano’s own son.
It was too dangerously easy, how well he had fit in. It was too dangerously tempting, what they pushed at him. Is it ironic, how well the line becomes blurred when you step onto the other side?

“Someone else will take it if you do not, why shouldn’t it be you? In the end you need no other reason then why not.”

Written in a journal, from a father to the son he never knew.

At times, Marcello wondered if the confidence bled into the words came from a father’s intuition and uncontrollable pride, or a man who loved to take a risk and what better one than a son he didn’t know?

In the end it didn’t matter, not really. His father had been right about that too. It was in his blood, a genetic tick he couldn’t run away from. He’d proven it when he’d strangled his grandmother for her lies. Snap one. He proved it again when he shot a man who threatened his family. He didn’t find out until later it had been a paid actor, one who had no idea he was going to be killed. Snap two. It wasn’t the first time his own family played him, just to bring the Terenzio out in him. Snap three came when they told him Mari was a spy. His Mari. He’d gone over there with a gun not even an hour after he’d killed the actor. He hadn’t wanted to do it. Hated her for making him do it. He saw her hesitation and thought she was lying, not that she was frightened by him and telling the truth. He’d pulled the trigger.
The second time he was played by his own family, to bring out the Terenzio in him. Twice was all it took. His uncle had given him a different gun when he told him about Mari, this one filled with blanks. She was alive. The truth came out when his Aunt and Uncle walked in. She hit him for the first time that day and that was also the first time he kissed her. It hadn’t been the last for either.

After that, when he took the helm the very first task assigned to him was the most important. It was not ironic to him. It felt more the way it was, a planned move. What a father expected from his son. And in the middle of all that was her.

He never really understood, not until that night, how important the information business really was. And Marcello often wondered, especially now, if his father had ever imagined the game would go so far. He already knew how much he would have loved it. But Marcello never expected the infamous Terenzio’s would actually pick a side instead of riding in the middle to milk both for all they were worth.

He had already been awake when the crying started. He hadn’t gone far, not from her sleeping figure. She’d see him when she woke. He sat in a chair in front of the cracked window, the gentle lull of the ocean echoing out peacefully. His laptop sat on top of outstretched legs, the dull blue glow from the screen throwing a strange shadow over his shirtless form.

He was reviewing transactions, legal and not when he heard it. Quiet at first and then louder. It drummed out from the sky, invading the conscious with it’s insistence to be heard. Obviously the message was important. He would often wonder, how so many could ignore it.

Marcello brows furrowed, his eyes lifting to the ceiling as if to find the source of such an omniscient sound. Emotion was not something a Terenzio did easily. It was all about control; but there was no defense against this.

Just as suddenly as it came, the crying stopped. He found himself missing it when it passed. And then the ringing started.

For some reason it didn’t surprise him when it turned out to be her house phone and not his cell. He had turned it off on purpose; he hadn’t seen her in six months and did not intend to be distrubed. But that wasn’t why the ringing didn’t surprise him. He was just…expecting it. He leaned in the chair, pulling it off the nightstand and up to his ear.

“It better be important.”

“We just intercepted a phone call. In addition to the crying sir, there’s a light coming out of the Sphinx.”

Nothing could have prepared him for that. Really. At what point did you expect to hear that in the business they were in? You didn’t call the President of Dion Corp, unless it was really important. Perhaps if the crying hadn’t preceded this he would have never believed it. Or maybe it was the sudden feeling in his gut. The one he couldn’t explain that made him want to just, go with it. “What else?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you sir. Maybe you better come down here.”

He glanced over at her. She’d come with him. “Be there in twenty. Call the rest of the family.”

He was almost becoming less and less shocked. After everything that had happened so far, from the earthquakes, to the fires, to the slowly turning tyrannical government, now there was a light coming out of the Sphinx. Not just that, but something else, something more unbelievable then that. Something that had been to seen.

No, Marcello was certain his father had not planned for this. But SVT defiantly would have loved where the game would take them now.

His son did.

Check.

For Terenzio, that’s really all it was. For Kyle Zhane, it was two years too long. Two years of hell.

It started with a conversation, an assignment two days before the death of Stefano Terenzio. Nuclear Weapons, stolen years ago from a black market deal that Stefano wanted watched after; he’d asked Governor (and then New Orleans Don, an impressive feat) DeMarco. Request granted.

A small air force sat on Alcyone Island. Kyle ran it. Forty eight hours later the inevitable happened. Stefano died. The weapons were ordered to be moved. The plan was already set into motion. The execution of that plan was Kyle’s job. He remembered kissing his fiancé good bye. Remembered looking at her and whispering at her to be careful. He remembered taking off from Barrow Air Base and making the successful land in New Orleans.

But initally, Kyle couldn’t remember anything after that. He couldn’t remember why, or how long had passed when he finally woke up in a room shrouded in the bright glow from the overhead lamps. He was in a hospital bed. There was an IV in his both his arms. His head felt heavy, his mouth dry. He was nauseous. He tried to wiggle, but found that to be too exhausting. Slowly he looked around, could hear voices that sounded so far away. They faded in and out, at once loud enough that he could make out the words, and then it would drift away to whispers. He tried to focus his vision, tried to grasp hold of some image and saw his co-pilot, and four omega cadre in the room with him, all in the same condition. They were missing a man.

He blacked out again.

Kyle woke up at different points. Only for seconds, sometimes a minute. Long enough to see the room around him, to start to recognize what was happening only to loose it to the pull of whatever drug was being fed constantly into his system.

He was kept in this state for two years. And it hadn’t been about him, not really. It had been about Terenzio. A family he had almost married into. One that had briefly caught the attention of a certain powers eye.

They were listed as the underdog in this fight. The kind of odds no Terenzio can resist. The kind that he no longer wanted.

Kyle Zhane realized that; when he finally woke up for good.

It was the sudden scream that had pulled him from sleep first. It slammed into his drug induced comma like state and ripped him roughly out of it. His eyes snapped open, a dull cloudy blue that starred for several seconds at the ceiling before the sound truly registered. Two things were then realized; the only light was coming from underneath the closed door to his room, and it was raining. A sudden burst of lightening briefly illuminated the small space and he identified that no one was with him. He tried to hold onto consciousness, knew something was horribly wrong but simply could not do it. The lids slowly dropped and he felt himself slipping back into unconsciousness...

Ironically, it was the silence that took him from sleep the last time. Kyle opened his eyes again just as the rain stopped. Seconds later it was replaced by the crying. The sudden omniscience sound he simply knew was not coming from the room, or from the hallway outside of it. It was surround sound, coiling around his ears, rumbling through his veins, refusing to be ignored. He could feel emotion in it, something so profound he couldn’t put it into words and felt a little choked up.

Just as it had come; it stopped.

Kyle blinked several times giving a small shake of his head to erase the grogginess. It was…strange, how awake he suddenly felt. His head was amazingly clear and for the first in how ever long he sat up in bed, hesitantly, thinking any moment he would pull himself out of a dream and back into whatever nightmare he had fallen into.

When he was upright he didn’t move further, but looked around the room. Peering into the darkness, trying to identify what he could see. He was hooked up to an EKG machine, silently beeping. Some clear fluid was trickling down from two IV bags, one on each side of his bed, into each arm.

Brows furrowing, he slowly turned his arms over exposing the needles sitting underneath his skin, just below his elbow. That’s when the pain started.

It began as a sudden headache. Then it was a migraine. Then it was so intense he slapped his palms against his temples, squeezing tightly as if that would make the pain cease because for seconds it peaked near unbearable. His face contorted, instinctively suppressing a scream to bare it in the safety of silence.

When it stopped, the memories came.

They came in a fury, a sudden tsunami that crashed into his brain, flashing in front of his eyes in milliseconds yet every single scene was processed, because it was simply a memory. Memories of the last two years and before.

From the earliest moment of his childhood, to growing up without any blood siblings.. To the brother ship he’d felt with his cousin, Jack. To sharing the dumb things boys do as they grow up, the girls they date, the ones they sleep with, the ones they use and cheat on, the ones that broke their hearts.

They both joined the Air Force. Jack had always been the better pilot. He left first to work for a private employer. Kyle had stayed. A year later, he was finally fed up too and was on his way to take advantage of the same opportunity.

Jack died before he could get there.

It all came without warning, pounding through the veins in his skull, a damn that suddenly broke leaving no mercy for whatever lay in its path. He would remember. Everything.

The despair caused by his cousin’s death. The anger. Then it eased and a home was made. Then there was Lil. The first time he met her. The first assignment on the Island. When he asked her to marry him. When she said no. When she finally said yes. The life they shared.

He’d kissed her goodbye the last time he’d seen her. Told her to be careful. He remembered he was worried about her. Couldn’t help it. He remembered thinking, calculating in his head how quickly he could complete his assignment then meet her in New Orleans.

He didn’t throw up before a flight anymore. That had been her doing. He remembered thinking that, remembered smiling when they landed early. That’s when he blacked out. No, they had been ambushed.

He remembered how fast it had happened. Even the Omega Cadre, Alcyone Islands best military unit, a bunch of hard core bad boys hadn’t been able to stop it. They had been ambushed by a cliché and lost. Ski masked faces. They hadn’t even carried guns. Just billy clubs. That had been enough. He remembered opening the cockpit door and seeing only a pair of eyes, the brief glimpse of two cadre getting clubbed over the mans shoulder. He remembered reaching for the pistol at his hip, too late.

The pain seared through his head again, driving out the memories and Kyle gritted his back teeth, the air hissing out of his nostrils, heaving in his chest. Sweat beaded on his forehead, trickling in wavy lines because of the sudden fit of trembling that racked through him.

It stopped only to slam him back onto the roller coaster, barely giving him time to breath, for his heart to skip a beat. They had been tied up and thrown into the back of vans. Through a haze of pain he remembered hearing voices confirming that the package had been bagged. He was familiar with the term, knew they were in trouble.

They had been taken somewhere. The drive was endless, whenever they woke up they were beat with the club again to ensure submission. One of the Cadre hadn’t made it to their final destination, the constant trauma to his head too much.

He was forced to watch the experiments, the two first mistakes in the attempt to clone them; the way they carelessly played with a living mans DNA and used him like a lab rat. He remembered how they were all moved from one lab room to another. The conversations that floated around his ears, the faces he saw hovering over him every time they drew blood, fed a new sleep induced drug into his system. They even tested a new truth serum on him and growled in frustration when it hadn’t worked. He remembered the beatings, being locked in a steel, light less cell for days on end.

His copilot had died after six months of it. Another Cadre dropped a week after. He remembered being taken out of the cell, all the while told his body could be put to better use. He remembered struggling, trying to fight uselessly. He was drugged again. They cleaned him at some point, if only so they didn’t have to stand the smell.

They wheeled him back into one of the lab rooms and by this point there were only two others left, hanging on the verge of death. No one else in the room looked concerned. He remembered the face, leering at him. Telling him it wasn’t about him. That the mission was successful. That Terenzio had taken the bait. He remembered a face; laughing at him. Telling him it was movie worthy, the expression on his fiancées’ face when she had shot what she thought was the shell of the man she loved.

Kyle’s body shook harder, almost rattling the bed with its force when the pain came again, pounding like a hammer through his skull, cracking against the bone as if trying to break free. He gasped for breath, squeezing his eyes tightly closed, gripping at clumps of his hair, digging his fingernails into his head as if to stop it. Make it all cease for just a moment…

But it didn’t stop yet. They had cloned him. Had failed miserably and instead of killing a failed creation had decided to use it, had decided to use all of the failed experiments in a little grotesque sort of fun. Terenzio’s nuclear weapons had been bugged, planted on some obscure island with all the failed tests there. Just the right information was leaked out, a WMT spy sent into Terenzio territory to complete the final move. Ultimately, it was blamed on DeMarco and Terenzio took the bait. Hook. Line and sinker. Ingenious.

Kyle felt the despair, the agony through his clones eyes. Somehow he had been unexplainable linked to this grotesque off shot of himself. Real furious tears streaked down Kyle’s face as he remembered the movement his clone had made once it saw Lil. The way he had crawled, if that’s what you could call it up to the bars of his cage and pressed his temple against the barrel of her gun. Something he actually might have done himself. What tore him up more was the look on her face. She’d said I love you, right before she pulled the trigger…

Then it all stopped. Suddenly, without warning. Silence echoed out peacefully from the world he had been stolen from. The pain in his head was gone. The memories stopped but lingered in his mind where they should. He felt more alive then he ever had.

And he had to get the hell out of here. Now.

He ripped the IVs out of his arm and threw aside the sheets and set his feet on the floor. Two years. He knew it. Knew instinctively how long it had been. There was no way he would be able to walk, to hold his own weight. Placing his hands on the bed on either side of him, instinct lead him to stand up, ready to collapse at any second. But he didn’t falter. He felt fine. More than fine.

In the darkness he moved across the room, placed his hand on the metal of the doorknob. It was strange, the sudden tingle that shot up through his arm and went straight into his brain. It was a whisper in his mind, almost as if he could see who had touched this door before….

He gave a short shake of his head and like a breeze it passed. Holding his breath, he twisted the knob and pulled it open.

It was time to go.

“It’s worldwide?” Incredible. He looked floored. “But nothing pointed…yes sir. I feel it too … Terminate all test subjects? ... I see. Very well sir.” The razor flipped closed.

“Is that the order?”

“Momentarily.” He tucked the cell phone into the pocket of his white lab coat. “I want to see how this affected them first.”

“Make it quick.” The sharp click of metal snapping back was the locking of the chamber, on the gun.


Holding his breath, Kyle Zhane twisted the knob slowly pulling it open. It was time to go.

“Pyramids rose where?? How is that possible?”

The voice echoed out to the right of him down the hallway. Tensing, Kyle silently pushed the door closed again. He stepped to the side of it, leaning slightly to listen. The steady echo of footfalls came closer and instinctively he held his breath…

Until they passed him and continued.

Pyramids rose…

It was the most indescribable feeling in the world. One moment he could see clearly in front of him, the next his vision had tunneled leaving a mess of hazy pictures whizzing past his eyes. He had no choice but to go with it and like a roller coaster it jerked to a sudden halt, leaving him starring at a trio of Pyramid marking the desert sand.

The sunlight almost made it impossible to look at them directly, the light of the rays reflecting with awesome power off the limestone that covered them. Markers. He could hear noise over head, a thundering rush of something cutting through the atmosphere leaving a blazing trail of smoke staining the sky.

Kyle stumbled backward when the vision faded and brought him back to the present. He pressed a hand against the wall, breathing hard and jerking his eyes around the room as if he expected it to disappear again at any moment.

He was loosing his mind. But he knew he wasn’t, and that was impossible. He’d never given much thought to what ever the hell had just happened, the unexplainable but…

Footsteps rang out again, a pair. Now wasn’t the time to think about it either.

“Which one first?” The voice was right outside the door. Kyle recognized it and his eyes slowly narrowed in a sudden rush of anger and the piercing stab of a memory, pounding in the back of his head.

“Should have seen the look on your wife’s face. Priceless.” A scar ran down the left side of his fine, marking the skin with the thin white line. A cigarette hung from his lips, tainting the air with faint wisps of smoke. He leaned down closer, cruel eyes piercing. “You’re dead to her now. So start talking Zhane, you’ve got nothing to loose.”

“The good General puts up a fight to all the treatment.” There was a sound against the door. Something pulled off the front. A clipboard, probably his medical chart. “You can kill him. I’ll go examine the other two, they’re nearly dead anyway.”

The good General…Kyle knew that voice too. Doctor…

It came as it had come before, and he was just as powerless to stop it. The room suddenly faded out, tilting and spinning until he was thrown back into the dry heat of the desert. This time against the backdrop of the Pyramids hundreds of people ran frantically away from them.

“Like I said, make it quick. I don’t like this feeling.” The holster was already unsnapped he pulled the gun right out of it and walked up to the door.

He wasn’t running like he should have been. He was shouting at someone, pushing her away from him. A child clung to him. Barely dressed, but they all were. He could see the whip marks on the sunburnt skin of their backs. He knew he had a few himself.

She wouldn’t leave, not without him. He picked up the child and pushed him into his mother’s arms. She had to go. He had to make sure they had sealed off the lab. Even if the Landing Strip was taken…

The man with the scar pushed open the door, and didn’t bother to flick on the light. The trained eyes of a killer, in this life and few before slide immediately to where his mark would be, comatose in the bed...

Something was shouted, someone pointed. He whirled around, wincing with the light reflecting of the pyramid briefly blinding him, and then it was the amour of the steel that covered to the seven foot tall…

The door whooshed closed just as Scar Face realized, the good General was not in his bed. When he twisted around he came face to face with a very awake pair of dull blue eyes. Coldly angry blue eyes. Shoot now, ask questions later. He lifted the gun.

When Kyle was slammed back into his present, the visions of his past life fading, it was to the he was looking down the barrel of a gun. And he knew the man pointing it at him. The same man that had told him ... laughed at him…

Kyle moved faster than he should have. A lot faster than a man who had been drugged, beaten, and cruelly tested for two years should have. He should have been hanging near death. But he wasn’t. He shot forward and got one hand on the arm with the gun, the other hand around Scar faces neck. Forward motion propelled them both.

Kyle's movement had been unexpected and footfalls stumbled. The sound of two bodies hitting the wall was loud enough to draw attention. Grunts followed. Fists were thrown. Teeth gritted against the strain of muscle, the push and pull as they fought over the gun. A knee came up, the arm came down.

Kyle curled his fingers into the front of fabric, yanking him closer, roughly shoving the barrel of the gun into his stomach. The trigger was pulled; three times.

Kyle stepped back when the body slumped to the floor, his hand shaking slightly with the urge to pull the trigger again, to keep pulling until the chamber clicked empty. Slowly, Kyle backed up a hate filled stare sent to the dead as he inched back to the door. He could hear commotion down the hallway.

He could tell what it was. Whatever had happened to them because of that crying, he wasn’t the only one feeling better.

It was defiantly time to go home.


One hour later, in the desert of New Mexico an explosion pierced the night. As if the evening hadn’t been strange enough…

Six months ago, Liliana put a gun to her husband’s head. She had woken to the faint gargle of his snore and realized that she didn’t love him; that, hoping she could move fast enough to sail past the bitter ache of the two losses suffered that Day nearly two years ago, she had had slept and exchanged vows with an idea. She meant to deal with this revelation the best way she knew how. She meant to kill him.

Liliana threw aside the covers and cocked the .45 she kept in her nightstand. She walked to her husband’s side of the bed and put the barrel to his temple. But rather than pull the trigger, she slung her robe over her shoulders and called on her nephew. He opened the door not to just a warm, tropical night, but to his aunt; hesitant, determined, torn. “I want to see it.” He took her to the basement, showed her the case, and closed the door behind him.

Liliana ran her fingers over the wood. She used to envy him. How easily he separated himself. How seamlessly the two halves wove together. How comfortably he wore it. She didn’t understand how it worked. Until she opened the box, and put it on.

Six months later, she could still feel the shape of her brother’s mask. It wasn’t heavy. The gold had been cool and warm at the same time. She had worn it all through her divorce, through the trials and tribulations of the changing world; every day, taking it off only for her children. It simply fit, and she finally understood.

She was sitting in the study of her quarters at the Governor’s mansion (she had moved in once her marriage was dissolved), the night the earth cried. Documents lay scattered across the large desk. Inventories. Spreadsheets. Classified dossiers.

“Mama?”

Liliana set her glasses on the desk and turned her chair around. “What is it, baby?”

Five year old Emilia stood in the slanting light of the cracked door, a blanket under one arm and a stuffed rabbit tucked in the small crook of the other. “Can I have a glass of water?”

Liliana smiled and pushed the papers aside. “Of course you can.” She stood and lifted Emilia up onto her hip. “Does Boppy want a glass, too?” Emilia nodded against Lil’s shoulder and together they went into the kitchen.

They were upstairs again, when the crying began. Liliana had just tucked Emilia back into bed. Then the first gentle sob filled the room. Slowly, Lil straightened, eyes rising to the ceiling.

“Who is that?” Emilia asked.

Junior’s eyes opened. “Someone has an owwie, Mama.” He was on his stomach, the sheets tangled around his legs; groggy but awake. Liliana knelt beside his bed.

“Who has an owwie?”

He blinked matter-of-factly. “The person who’s crying. Right here.” He touched his chest.

Then, it stopped.

“It’s okay, Mama,” Junior said. He reached for her hand as she stood. “The owwie will get better.”

Liliana kissed her children and waited until they were asleep before returning to the study. She sat in the leather chair and reached for her glasses. That was when the pain lanced through her right arm; two sharp pricks deep within the muscle. She gasped, closing a hand around her shoulder as an acetic heat burned through the veins. It quickly faded, leaving a ghostly numbness in her limb. Lil flexed and shook out her fingers. She needed a drink.

She stood, making for the decanter on one of the bookshelves. Two more burning pangs tore through the flesh of her thigh. Leg buckling, she collapsed against the desk. Another two pierced and lit in the back of her calf. Her stomach lurched. Her mouth went bone dry. As quickly as the burning had come, it was gone. Then, suddenly, her muscles seized. She heard laughter, felt a man’s presence; cruel, taunting, killing. And just when the darkness began to descend over her eyes, it was all ripped away. She was thrown back into the study, the lights too bright but quickly dimming as her heart slowed and the sweat that broke across her forehead and between her breasts began to dry.

Liliana sagged against the desk, white-knuckled and panting, and started fiercely as the phone rang. Two separate times. The first was the direct line. Phoenix Isle. Liliana’s face set. Already there came the sound of an engine from the front of the mansion. The second was Agostino. Carissa was in labor. Too soon, she thought as she changed into her uniform and met the idling, unmarked car. Twins never went to full term. She knew from experience. And while it didn’t seem right that her sister was giving birth so soon, it didn’t seem wrong, either.

None of it did.

So much so that when, on the ferry to Phoenix Isle, phantom pains flared into hot, acetic life, they were warmly received. They raced through her body. Invigorated her. Left her raw. Throbbing.

They made her feel alive.

She wouldn't have believed anyone, if they told her.

That she would leave Alabama for Los Angeles. That she would live in Italy, for a time. New York. That the world would change so suddenly and violently. That she would come to this little island; this tropical jewel, one of the several precious stones set in the sceptre that had been handed to the man sleeping beside her. That she would be one of thousands of pieces in the most thrilling and the most dangerous game, ever.

She wouldn't have believed anyone, if they told her, that the stakes could get higher.

There had been and were still times when she questioned; silent moments, in the dark of night, on the pale crescent of sand that was her private beach, when she wondered if the entire thing was simply the product of a single man's endeavors, or if there was something more. If she wasn't only part of a game, but a piece of a much larger puzzle. If it was God's Plan, or Fate, or any of the suppositions that attempted to explain people; the world; the universe.

She had been asleep; laying on her side, her hand above the pillow and beneath her cheek. It came. Haunting. Jarring. Her eyes flared wide. Her spine tingled. A ghost of a flame swept across the base of her skull. She reached for Marcello. She saw him in the chair, his face illuminated in the pale blue glow of the LCD screen. Later, when she saw on the news the light from the Sphinx, that memory would send a shiver through her. Marilyn pushed the covers down. Her feet were light on the floor. "Marcello? What--?"

It stopped. And the moment it did, the moment she put her weight on her feet, she lost her balance. She only stumbled. But her world lurched.

She stood still but pitched forward, headlong into a rush of echoing voices and the distant crying of gulls. Onto a cliffside of jagged black rock and soft green grass. She smelled the ocean; the damp musk of furs, heavy and warm across her shoulders. She felt a horse beneath her; strong, sidling, anxious; the heavy, bronze weight of a torque around her neck and the metal warmth of a circle around her head. She felt them behind her. Men. At arms. Watching her. Waiting. She felt the sword in her hand. Rough-hewn. Crude, but true. She raised it above her head. The men roared; a fierce, rabid battlecry. They bashed their swords against their shields. The wind whipped her hair across her face. They charged. They met in the middle. The two waves of warriors clashed violently together; glutted themselves on each others' blades. The proud warwhoop choked into grunts and the iron sing of swords. In the end, the others fell. The sword was delivered to her. So, too, was the head. She turned and an entire battlefield knelt before her.

The memory ripped through her and fell still. Every smell, every sensation, settled like dust along a windowpane. Marilyn blinked owlishly, gaze settling on Marcello. The phone shattered the knowing silence.

"It better be important."

On any other night, she would have jumped.

"What else?"

Not that night.

"Call the rest of the family."

That night, she believed. That night, her questions were answered.

Liliana’s life had been a series of revolutions. Not of the American or French, or of the Industrial kind, but of the planetary kind. She was born into an orbit and had been slowly circling her personal sun for thirty two years. There were times when she thought she had changed; when the sun seemed farther away and she swore she had broken out of the track; but those moments proved to be the rotations inherent in the life of a body bound to the same elliptical path; she never really changed, or took herself anywhere new. She merely bared the same sides to the different angles of the fiery constant she’d been drawn to. Sometimes the heat wasn’t as intense, but it was all an illusion.

Until December Twenty First.

She could feel it on her way to Phoenix Isle; slow but vast, the way galaxies drift and expand. She looked up at the stars and felt them spreading inside her, pulsing with each fresh throb in her arm, thigh, and calf. Liliana gently rubbed her body, gaze traveling from guard to guard. They were alert, ready as always, but they felt it, too, in their own way. She sat it in their eyes and their carriage, held somewhere between rigid and slouched, brimming with something inexplicable. She didn’t understand it yet. But she knew she would.

Past the ferry landing and the three armed checkpoints, Liliana was greeted by the unobtrusive slope of Phoenix’s central intelligence compound. And by the quiet but frenzied movement of guards. Her motorcade came to an abrupt halt. Through the barrels of automatic weapons and between uniformed shoulders, she saw an officer hauling a body up against the side of a jeep in another caravan. Then she saw a brief flash of blonde hair, and Lil shoved her way through the manmade barrier. She knelt beside her incoherent nephew. “What happened?”

One of the Cadre answered her. “We don’t know, ma’am. There weren’t any shots, but we have a team securing the are.”

Liliana checked Marcello’s pulse and was relieved to feel it beating a strong, healthy rhythm against her fingers. She looked at Marilyn. The woman was hovering, but composed. Knowing. “Are you alright?”

Marilyn made to reply, but Marcello beat her to it. “Holy shit.”

Lil grinned at her groggy nephew. “Had an epiphany, too, did you?”

Shortly thereafter, she was inside the compound, leafing through a classified folder as the Head of Intelligence briefed her on the evening’s events. “Boot up those satellites, boys,” she said, slapping the closed folder on top of a tracking monitor. “I want a topographic and infrared feed of that Sphinx and the area surrounding it.” The officers scrambled to her order. Liliana rubbed her lips, glancing from the monitors, to Marcello, and to the Head of Intelligence. “I want our people there, too.”

“The WMT is moving to close the site, ma’am.”

Liliana slowly cracked a smile. “I have no doubts. All the more reason for us to infiltrate their blockade.” Tapping the folder, she glanced at Marilyn and back to the intelligence officer. “Find a way to plant someone. A scholar on the WMTs approved list. Make one up. Or find a real one and replace him or her with one of our own. I don’t care, but I want them down there in twenty four hours.” Liliana folded her arms and gave her attention to the monitors. “Go.”

Sabina was in Kirov the night of the awakening. On a job. A meddling WSA agent had been sticking his nose in places where it didn't belong, and he needed killing. Sabina and Kirill were given the order. They'd left Leningrad early that morning, and by eleven o'clock that night they were standing at the bar of some trendy nightclub, dirty Parisian-electro thumping and grinding out of the wall of speakers across the dance floor; the grungy, sweaty kind that made Sabina want to drag Kirill to a dark corner and give him a really good... well, you know.

It happened a lot, when they worked together. Kirill was tall, chiseled and rugged. He did amazing things with his mouth. He was even better with his knives. And he was as dedicated as she to their work. Triple fucking threat. The music pounding through her, Sabina knocked back a shot of Zarskaya. It burned all the way down, igniting a small, hot fire in the pit of her stomach.

Kirill came up behind her and slid his arms beneath hers, neatly framing her against his chest as he set his hands on the bar. "Think he'll show?" he shouted over the music.

"Not until twelve," Sabina shouted back. She glanced up. Kirill glanced down. Their eyes met. Charged understanding passed between them, and they both grinned. It was only 11:06. They had plenty of time.

At 11:42, Sabina's lime green miniskirt was shoved up around her waist, Kirill's pants were at his ankles. Sabina went suddenly rigid - but not the reason she would have preferred. "Kirill." His head was buried against her shoulder. She tugged on his hair. "Kirill!

"That's right," Kirill panted against her neck. "Daddy knows how to give it to you. You've been a bad--"

Sabina smacked him on the side of the head. "He's here!"

Maksim Tarasov was the agent responsible for tracking down and taking care of the savage criminals who had bombed a WSA field office last month. It had taken weeks of digging, and interrogations, and torture, but it seemed like his hard work was about to pay off. He'd received a tip from a good source, and he was meeting that source that very night. Ordering a drink from the bar, he put his back against the counter and passed a sweeping glance around the club.

"Tarasov?"

A shadow fell over him, jittering in the frenetic pulse of a strobe light. Squinting, Maksim looked up. "Who are you?"

"Kirill."

Across the club, Sabina lounged against the same speaker, watching Kirill and Tarasov talk at the bar, heads bent together. At midnight, Kirill would take him to the alley behind the club - so Tarasov could point to the detonater used in the bombing, and Kirill could tell him which group favored that build. Sabina, waiting for them, would put a bullet in Tarasov's brain the moment he stepped through the back door. That was the plan, at least. And thing's hardly ever went according to plan.

Five minutes before midnight, Sabina went into the alley. The street was wet, and filthy, and glittered with broken glass and bottle caps. Dumpsters lined the brick wall opposite the back of the club. It reeked, but at least it was too cold for the flies. She had a black fur coat - she'd needed something to keep her guns hidden - but it only went to her waist. Her boots, also black and nice and shiny, topped her knees. Her thighs, though, were freezing. Slipping a silver case out of the top of her right boot, Sabina took out a cigarette and lit it, resisting the urge to keep her lighter lit just for the warmth. When she exhaled, the smoke came out mixed with the frost from her breath, and that made Sabina shiver all the harder. Where the hell were they? It was 12:05. One of them was stalling. She glared at the door, trying to summon them with willpower alone.

Behind her, something moved, grinding broken glass into the street. Sabina whipped around, both guns drawn and the cigarette pinched between her teeth. A rat, maybe. Or a stray dog. She saw neither - nothing, in fact. The back door swung open. Kirill's laugh tumbled across the threshold. Sabina threw a glance over her shoulder and started to turn, but Kirill's eyes widened. "Behind you!" he shouted.

Tarasov, a step behind Kirill and thinking Kirill was shouting at him, ducked. Sabina threw herself back, firing two shots as she landed on her back and slid along the ground. The shadow - or what had looked like a shadow - cast along the side of the club stepped off of it, and materialized into a woman. Sabina blinked, cigarette falling from her mouth as it fell open, and pulled the triggers again. They went through the still-shadowed part of the woman's chest. But Kirill's knife hit home, punching straight into the woman's left eye. She crumpled to the ground.

Sabina scrambled to her feet. "What the hell was that?"

Kirill shook his head, turning around. "I don't know, it-- Tarasov!" Over his shoulder, Sabina saw Tarasov sprinting down the alley. They took off after him, Kirill pitching knives and Sabina squeezing off shots. Tarasov hunched his shoulders and veered sharply to the left, ducking between two brick buildings. They followed, flattening themselves against the walls when Tarasov fired at them from above. Sabina looked up. He was on the fire escape.

"You follow him," she told Kirill, dropping into a crouch as a bullet chipped into the brick above her head. "I'll go inside." Kirill put his knives away and jumped up, catching the lowest run on the ladder above him. Bodily, he hauled himself up onto the fire escape, boots clanking on the iron stairs as he charged after Tarasov.

There was a door to Sabina's right. She kicked it open. Inside, under the dim light of a lone, naked light bulb, three men started and glanced up, one with a lighter under a spoon and another with a belt around his arm. Ignoring them, Sabina ran to the stairs. She was fast. She always had been, even as a kid. The Ground Forces had loved to send her on raids, because of her speed and her efficiency. Taking the stairs three at a time, she raced to the top of the building and burst onto the roof, breathing hard and guns at the ready

The fire escape ran along the northern face of the building. Hurried footsteps echoed from it. Two shots rang out. She heard metal glance off of metal, and Kirill curse. Sabina ducked beside the fire escape's ladder. It jerked. She heard hard breathing, and two feet landed in front of her. Tarasov stumbled, caught himself with his hands and scrambled to his feet again. Sabina rose, aimed between Tarasov's shoulders and--

The crying began. Tarasov stopped and looked up. Kirill froze, halfway onto the roof. Sabina's .45s dipped, just a little, as the sound of tears filled her, ringing in the hollows of her bones. Pure, pregnant silence followed in its wake. Sabina raised her guns just as Tarasov looked back down. Their eyes met. They both took a running step, and Sabina's heart exploded.

At least, that's what it felt like.

She hit the roof, grinding her face into the gravel and the bird shit. The .45s skittered end over end. Her heart tripped like a piston on a red-lined engine, throttling in her ears, deafeningly loud. She couldn't breathe. Her vision went dark. The world looked and sounded like it was underwater, slow and wavering, and she could see the air ripple around Kirill's mouth as he shouted something, his face twisting with fury. She glanced up. Tarasov was still running, but in slow motion. His pants fluttered against his legs. The flesh of his cheeks trembled each time a foot struck the roof. Kirill leapt, suspended, through the air and smashed into Tarasov's back. They crashed to the ground, the same gravel that was stuck in Sabina's face arcing gracefully through the air and bouncing lazily away. Kirill drove his knife through the back of Tarasov's neck, and Sabina could see the blood spray up, droplets bulbous and trembling against the night sky.

And just as quickly as it had begun, it was over.

Sabina drew a deep, gasping breath, rolling onto her back as Kirill ripped his knife free and tilted Tarasov's head back, slitting his throat for good measure. The world was sharp and clear again. Her heart beat as normally as it ever did, a healthy, reassuring cadence in the center of her chest. She put her hand over it, dragging her gaze upward as Kirill bent over her. "Are you okay?"

Sabina swallowed, rubbing the gravel off of her face. "Yeah," she croaked. "I think so."

She hadn’t liked him much the first time they met out of the office. He hadn’t liked her much either. He was the Italian asshole; she was a little too uptight.

Then they started spending time together. Then one bonfire, and one night, changed everything.

“Just one question." Quietly. The smile came, just enough. A little high, a little drunk, but there when he looked at her “ What do you want for breakfast?”

Oh. Marilyn melted. Really. She had so much liquor inside her, she felt like one big puddle and was amazed she didn't drip through the rungs of her barstool. But that sugary, sappy confection of a moment quickly passed. Her eyes darkened. She dipped her chin. And her hands moved, just slightly, higher. "You."

Funny how those things worked out.

There were so many things in the worn journal his father had left him that Marcello found profound. It gave a son a mix of emotions when he read the words of a man who was regularly described as a heartless bastard. Regardless, his father was often right. Even in matters most would have thought Stefano Terenzio knew nothing about.

Sappy, a word no would think to use in a sentence associated with my name. Yet on occasion the sentiment is there. Tell me I don’t love and that is simply something else the mask hides. Tell me I am incapable of such an emotion and what they don’t know about me, spreads like the Grand Canyon. They don’t need to know, so long as she does. A man could get lost behind the mask; someone must exist that has seen him without it. When he kills without mercy, when he lies to those that think him friend. When his near entire existence boils down to moves on a chessboard. When he is cruel without conscious and kind only to her. She will knowingly cut through it all and hold onto the one thing that keeps human and she will love him anyway. Our lives are complete then, for one simple reason. Without her, how else can a man like me feel very simply, alive.

Ever been thrust in a game you didn’t know existed? Ever had to juggle a legacy that demanded you put on a mask and hold onto a woman who had seen you without it, who could love both men? Most couldn’t have done it; grown up into someone else and held onto the truth underneath. Most couldn’t have tried to make a relationship work, when one partner had to disappear without contact for six months at the very beginning.

He promised when he came back the next time he had to leave she would come with him. He intended to keep that promise and it defiantly started tonight.

If your last name was not Terenzio and you were not the highly trained Omega Cadre you didn’t get onto Phoenix Isle, period. The only thing the common man knew about the island was that it was a restricted area. It was the communication network of the Island, the source of information. It was also one of the locations a former Mafioso family keep the slightly less than legal things they did. The items they “acquired”, the money waiting to get laundered. There was a helicopter pad for deliveries, other than that you got onto the island via guarded Ferry. Three check points existed throughout the thickness of the jungle before you finally found the main compound.

If you had gotten this far and you were not suppose to be there someone was going to die; the guards that let you through and your dumb<censored> for venturing there in the first place.

Three pairs of headlights navigated the thin dirt road through night time heat of jungle. Marcello sat in the backseat of the second, and Mari was with him.

She had told him on their way about her…experience. It was utterly incredible and try as he would like he couldn’t discredit her. She wouldn’t have lied to him anyway and she was fare from insane. Besides, there was a feeling sitting in the pit of his stomach, one that he knew would lead to the changing of almost everything. Something profound had happened tonight, something that no one had taken five minutes to really ponder. It was the feeling that just maybe there was more to life than nine to five. Just maybe, there was more than growing up, making money, getting a house, a job, living a simple human exsistance and then dying. Just maybe those little feelings that rocked the conscious every now and then, the ones we ignore were right. Humanity had gotten a wake up call, it was time to listen.

The rest of the family had been located. He had just gotten word that Aunt Carissa’s water broke so some would head to the hospital with her. He needed to see what was going on in the rest of the world. There was still a game to play, though Marcello had the feeling that that was going to change too.

Three checkpoints later, the entourage pulled through the rolling barbed wire gate and into the Phoenix compound. There was a uniform waiting for him, as expected. He climbed out of the jeep first, reaching for Mari’s hand. That’s when it hit him.

It started like a sudden twitch against the side of his temple. The vein pulsed. It was just warning him of what was to come. One moment he was looking at her, the next he couldn’t see anything. From far away he heard her call his name. And then he couldn’t hear anything but the faint lull of lapping waves.

It was like a sudden omniscient slap, the way his vision zoomed in and when it settled he no longer saw the compound. What he saw was breathtaking. He took it all in from a birds eye view, the towering buildings of gold, the shinning crystal clarity of the river that ran around the city in a circle. It sat on three levels an island unto itself with the main entrance the primary port marked by three towering statues. They stretched a higher than skyscrapers, the architecture pricesless, ingenious. Each figure stood with its arms raised, large metal disks sitting atop their hands. It was a flying car; that was the only way to describe the strange vessels that landed atop the statues. Men and women climbed out of them, walking into elevators of glass that would carry them down from each landing point.

The vision swooped low and to the right, almost as if he were a bird coasting effortlessly from the quiet beauty of the atmosphere above to the same below. The homes on the hills, the healthy lush greenery that surrounded some of them. There was energy to this place, it settled calmly; balanced. The way it should be. Children played, dressed in the soft warmth of silk. Men and woman prowled streets, engaging in everyday life.

He saw a man lift his hand, talking over his shoulder while motioning at a potted plant. Seconds after the plant levitated and landed in the mans upturned palm. No one blinked an eye at the feat. It wasn’t impossible, it was normal.

The vision changed, carrying him into an open square. A water fountain sat in the middle, with a miniature pyramid sitting center stage. Water trickled out from the sides of it, rolling smoothly down the glinting gold. A red crystal hovered just above the point of the pyramid, as if providing the needed power to make the fountain work.

A man was sitting on a bench in front of it, with his eyes closed. Marcello knew he recognized him, so very familiar. Had seen him…and then it hit him with perfect clarity. Almost a “duh” moment. He was looking at himself. Watched his own eyes open, the clarity, the color, the way they subtly glowed with a knowing light. When the vision suddenly shifted, he felt the gentle grip of claws on his forearm. He was not surprised when he met the familiar, almost friendly eyes of the raven. The bird cocked his head at him, as if asking “what next?”

Without warning Marcello was thrown back into the present. He blinked his eyes rapidly and saw Mari crouching in front of him, felt his back pressed against the side of the jeep. He looked around him at the concerned faces of the uniforms and realized he was sitting.

“Holy shit.”

Understatement. The game was defiantly going to change