Liberty or Possessions Chapter 10 God Given
Liberty or Possessions Chapter 10
God Given
Chapter 10 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2_Y59HCyhA
Warnings: Violence, Gore, Racism, Language, Blood Diseases, Drug Use, Religious Inequality and Segregation, Minor Character Death, Mentions of: Forced Prostitution/Rape, Sexism
Day had descended into dusk and then twilight, and there was still plenty of movement out on the streets. The hysteria of seeing the Presence seemed to still be in full swing a few hours since their appearance. Even the alleyway saw foot traffic that Mikkel had been leery of at first, but by then just found to be an annoyance. He kept his hand on the grip of his pistol as he glanced through the drawn shades, watching to make sure that no soldiers poked their noses in the area and compromised their hideout.
The two men had talked at length for a while, Mikkel holding up his part of their agreement by actually trying to explain things to the younger man. Of course he did not have a lot of answers to some of the things that Oliver asked about, and tried to get the young man to understand that he really did not have all the information that Oliver thought he did. His lack of knowledge became the most obvious when Oliver asked about the Presence.
When the topic was first broached, Mikkel fell into a brooding silence. He had not actually thought they had existed up until that day. Sure, there were the stories told that they were aliens coming to abduct people, or messengers of god, or any number of tales that always pointed to something higher than humanity. They were all tabloid reports, though, stuff said with an air of humor and disbelief when even spoken of at all. What they never were was actually real, but Mikkel had seen them, and so did thousands of others. It took some severe skepticism to deny them then.
"We all just kind of thought they were hallucinations," Mikkel had begun, wiping the blood off of his pistol. "Take too much Opal and some people started seeing shit, feeling shit. But, I can guess we're going to have to call this one real because you saw it, right?" Oliver nodded, looking up from where he sat, cross-legged, on the floor. He had seen the hand reaching down from the sky, and it had been terrifying, but there had been other terrifying things that had happened that day. Actually, when looking back, Oliver could only place a few non-terrifying things that had happened since he had woken up on the street three days prior, and had generally accepted that that was just the way things worked in that reality. However, the strange nauseous expression on Mikkel's face told him that there was more to it than that.
"Maria, she said that there were people that saw stuff on Opal, that she had. Is that what they saw?" Oliver asked and could not have imagined it would have been a good drug trip at all when suddenly confronted by the giant translucent hand. Mikkel did not exactly shrug, but tipped his head toward his shoulder as he turned back to look out the window once more. Oliver's frown slowly deepened when Mikkel did not answer him. He waited a few seconds before he called out to the older man, obviously annoyed. "Is that what they saw?"
"I don't know," Mikkel said curtly, a light growl in his tone. "I have no idea what they saw, only what I saw and what you saw. Who the hell knows what the other people out there even saw, Oliver!" Mikkel had turned back to face Oliver, body ridged as he fought back any need to shake the younger man and pray, desperately, for him to just understand for once. "They could have seen Jesus, or Buddha, or Hitler for all I fucking know, but we saw a giant god damn hand and, really, I'm a bit fucking on edge about it right now." Oliver's face crashed into a heavy frown, eyes hard and glaring at Mikkel for the outburst. Finally he turned, shifted the book bag full of Opal and the medical kit they had decided would be good to take along, and lied down with his head on it, facing away from Mikkel.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Mikkel asked slowly after a few seconds, still annoyed with the childish need to just know that Oliver displayed. He thought the young man should be worried far more about surviving than figuring out every mystery in the universe. Unfortunately it seemed that Oliver did not function that way. Oliver rolled a little, glaring over his shoulder back toward Mikkel.
"I've slept almost nothing in the last three days, Mikkel, and god knows when I slept before that! I'm tired and really just want to take a nap." Mikkel's grip tightened on his gun for just a moment before Oliver pushed on. "Look, I get that you haven't been having the time of your life either, but you took your drugs and now I'm taking my nap." Oliver was most definitely done with the conversation and Mikkel recognized his chance for silence. They would not stay long, but if Oliver wanted to spend that time sleeping, Mikkel was for it. He welcomed the silence after the litany of questions.
Mikkel had given about an hour before he approached the younger man and tapped the bag with the toe of his boot. It shifted under Oliver's head; the remaining vials clinking together as Oliver's head rolled over them. He shot awake, eyes wide and suddenly alert. It only took a fraction of a second for his eyes to come to Mikkel's, obviously confused over the sudden return to wakefulness.
"Time to go," Mikkel said simply, reaching down to grab the bag, slinging it over his shoulder. Oliver had sat up, rubbing roughly at his eyes for several seconds as he stood slowly. There were a few grumbles in his tone, but no real completed thoughts to annoy Mikkel, so he merely ignored him and moved back to the door.
"Where're we going?" Oliver asked quietly, rolling his shoulders and neck as he moved to follow Mikkel. He did not even have a moment to wake up before Mikkel expected him to be moving, getting back out onto the dangerous street. He missed coffee and practice times. He missed hot showers, even the ones in terrible rinks. Mikkel flipped the locks and spoke quietly as he responded.
"Getting you somewhere safe," His voice was a monotone as he scanned the street quickly before he opened the door and left the store. Oliver hurried after him, keeping on Mikkel's heels as they moved back up the alleyway and toward the main drag. Mikkel hoped that the confusion was still thick enough to cover their movement, or that a curfew was in place and they would be able to dodge the soldiers. A curfew would not have been as promising as complete and total chaos, but they did manage to walk out onto the street into something that lay between the two extremes.
It seemed that most people had gone indoors, huddling with their families in the wake of the Presence, but there were still people moving around on the streets in confusion and fear. Soldiers were out there as well, but they seemed far too preoccupied to even notice Mikkel and Oliver. They were surrounded by civilians and seemed twitchy, fielding questions that they could not answer. They directed people, asked people to return to their homes, but the Presence had riled people up, and the civilians had no interest in moving away until they had answers.
Slipping around people the two moved. Mikkel had an idea of where they could go, where he could dump Oliver and get back to his own mission, but it depended on some pretty important information he did not have quite yet. Mikkel glanced back, seeing how Oliver looked around with widened eyes, as if trying to absorb as much information as he could as they moved. They hurried across the avenue, entering another street and Mikkel slowed, falling into step next to Oliver so he would not draw attention to their Swedish nor their conversation topic.
"Are you Catholic?" Mikkel asked slowly, getting a confused look in return. Mikkel's own gaze narrowed in response, showing Oliver that he really did want the question answered.
"Yeah, I guess. I mean, Lutheran, but I don't really go to church all that much…"
"That's fine, so long as you can go through the motions," Mikkel responded curtly, hurrying his pace again as he turned another corner. For a few steps Oliver did not follow, turning and jogging a few steps to catch up once he realized Mikkel had made an unexpected turn. He did not understand why his religious orientation mattered and was about to ask when they came upon a large mob of people.
There was a lot of noise in the area, general chatter that was distressed and loud, but above it all was the booming sound of someone speaking into a microphone. It was hard at first to distinguish what was being said, but after a few seconds, Oliver managed to start getting snippets of words.
The man standing on the stairs of a large church asked them to stay in order. Well, as Oliver listened more to the tone, asking the crowd to do anything was not quite right. He demanded of the crowd, reminding them that he had power over them while occasionally sipping on a glass of water. No one stormed the stairs, what with the armed guards standing around the man. They did not look like soldiers, but more like private guards for either the church or the man, Oliver was unsure. Instead the writhing mass of people had to stand and wait as one person at a time ascended the stairs to speak to the man.
"What is this place?" Oliver asked Mikkel quietly. The older man had been trying to find a way to wiggle into the crowd without too much attention being drawn on them, but so far had been stonewalled by the pure aggressiveness of the frightened civilians.
"A church," He replied dryly, getting a glare from Oliver that was simply ignored until Mikkel had finished scanning their surroundings. When he turned to see the look on Oliver's face, he returned it in kind. "It's The Church of Plano. They're practically an extension of the Government, but they run things their way: god, gun, and country, that kind of bullshit. Welcome their overlords as a path to salvation. It's all crap, really, but if the Church takes you as a member of their flock, then you will be protected, and that's all that matters."
"If you are found worthy, you will be welcomed into god's embrace, children, but if you do not stand in an ordered line, you will not even get an audience, do you understand me?" The preacher continued over the cries of the crowd who demanded a faster audience, for rules to be ignored in wake of what had happened two hours before, and tear streaked sobbing. Oliver grimaced when he looked around, seeing the utter terror on the faces of those close to him. Sure, the Presence had made him nervous as well, twitchy, but he had not been as deeply moved into any emotion as others had. He felt calmer, maybe a bit more at peace since then. Not frightened, enraged, or saddened.
"So you're just going to dump me here?" Oliver asked, his tone a bit more clipped than he really meant it to be, but he was annoyed. He had stopped the john that had led them to the Opal. He had stopped him from being killed by Mikkel's rage, and for that he thought he had earned a bit of respect from Mikkel. Instead he seemed to still only be viewed as a liability. Hardly a step up from the original threat he had been labeled as.
"Oliver," Mikkel said, eyes hard. "What I'm about to do, you want no damn part of. I can't just walk away from this to keep pulling you out of the fire, and Maria wanted me to save you. I complete her last mission for me by putting you here, and then I'm going to do what I have to do to put an end to this." Oliver's glare fell into a confused look, brows knitted as he stared at Mikkel.
"Maria asked you to save me?" He asked slowly, confused and surprised. "I thought… I thought she was dead." He felt a little choked up by the words, stunned not only that Maria had been alive, but also that she had thought of him while shot. Mikkel shifted reaching into his back pocket to remove Maria's journal. He held it out to Oliver who snatched it and leafed through the pages quickly.
"When I got back to Molious, Maria was still alive. She told me to get the journal, and with it I understood that she wanted me to get you and get you somewhere safe." Oliver wanted to read the whole thing. He wanted to just exit the crowd, find some stairs, sit, and read. However, Mikkel did not move, and Oliver understood that they needed to stay there in order to get Oliver to safety.
"Did she…?" Oliver began, but stopped when Mikkel shook his head.
"She died there, Oliver, so I knew I had to do it. Here." Mikkel took the book back from Oliver. There was a lot of information in it such as strategies of attacks, brainstorming on how to solve problems, and vague information she had managed to obtain through various sources. Interspersed were her visions, the things she saw, heard, or felt that made her a bit of a religious leader in Molious. She had never let it affect her missions, but many of those under her command would come to her with problems that they thought she could help them solve. Unlike the leaders of the Church of Plano, Maria gave advice for free, and it usually consisted of telling Molious' soldiers to be kind to themselves. It seemed a lot more on board with Christian teachings than even the Christians were deploying, so Maria was let to do what she liked. What she had not told anyone about, what Mikkel did not even know until he had read it himself, were just how vivid her visions had become.
There were many pages in the journal depicting what she had seen while on Opal, and it hit Mikkel harder thinking about them after he had seen the Presence himself. She had seen the world dying, humans slaughtering each other before eventually they were all wiped from the planet. She detailed plants attempting to grown only to continuously die as the poisons of the earth sapped their life out of them. She had seen the long and slow rebirth the Earth would undergo without human destruction to kill her more and more until there was nothing left. Then, as the Presence had said, there was still a chance to turn some things around and save humanity as well, but their time frame was growing short. If they did not step up and do the right thing, then they would be done for. Mikkel never would have believed it if he had heard Maria preach it to him, but after the Presence had said it so clearly, Mikkel had no doubt that she had had some connection to them.
Skipping past all of that information, the information that would bottleneck what Oliver actually needed to know, Mikkel handed the book back to the younger man. Oliver took it quickly, looking at what Mikkel had opened it to. The top of the page had been dated, which was not abnormal, but was also not entirely the norm in Maria's journal. There seemed to have been madness to the mayhem that only she knew. However that page held the date of November fourteenth, the day after Oliver had first arrived at the base.
Oliver's eyes read quickly. Most of the entry was in Swedish, but occasionally switched to English or some other languages that Oliver was not familiar with. She had seemed Swedish, Oliver swore that she had been, but he realized, as he tried to translate some words that held no meaning to him by using the context of sentences, that he had no reason to have thought that she was. She could have been any number of nationalities, and given how many times her pen seemed to slip into Polish, Arabic, Cantonese, or even English, she could have been any of those by birth. Mikkel's hand had curled against his arm at some point, but Oliver did not look up as he was shifted into the crowd once Mikkel seemed to have found the queue that the pastor had implied was formed. He was pulled and pushed against people that voiced their displeasure, but he paid them no mind, only looking up once the question began getting too much to hold in.
"I thought she was Swedish," Oliver said barely a whisper. He had taken into account that they were in the thick of the crowd and spoke accordingly. In hindsight he probably should have spoken in English, but no one really seemed to have taken notice. Oliver looked around a bit, seeing the faces of those in the crowd. They were scared, on edge, and definitely did not want to be waiting as one at a time people were brought onto the stairs where the pastor stood, and were interviewed. They could not hear the questions, but apparently the woman had answered a question wrong because the pastor shouted, boisterously, in her face. She broke down into sobs and he pointed her away, turning back to take another drink of water as the armed guards forcefully removed the woman from the step. She turned and struggled against their hold, screaming about her child. That exact child was ushered onto the stage and cried as well. She reached for her mother in the same fashion, but was forced to face the pastor who spoke down to her sobbing face from over his nose. Oliver clenched his teeth and pulled his eyes away, looking back to Mikkel.
"She was… Or, at least, I thought so." Mikkel responded to Oliver’s question in English, and Oliver got the idea. Anyone around them could bust them, and it was definitely a time to be careful. Mikkel thought back to the entry, to how Maria had done similar things throughout the entire journal. She could not have been more than a few years older than him, four, max, but she had seemed to have had grasped many languages. He knew a few of them from his days as a soldier, just some local ones like Finnish, Polish, and German, but her grasp on them was well beyond that. Plus, to use some like Cantonese, which had been outlawed since the war started, seemed like a feat one would never be able to accomplish. At first he thought that she had been multilingual as a child, but after the Presence, he had had a different theory.
She spoke of them often in her journal, the voices that spoke all the time, and so, given the new information about just how they spoke, Mikkel had puzzled it out. They had spoken to her so often that she had started to learn the other languages. She had learned every language mankind had ever spoken because the Presence had taught her. He had no idea how to take that information, so he pushed it down and far from his mind.
"Then… how did she…?" Oliver asked, skimming the page with his finger as if to show Mikkel what he meant by the question. Mikkel had not needed to see the page to know, so he purposefully looked away from it.
"She just knew them, I guess," Mikkel told him briskly, not wanting to draw too much attention to their conversation. He did not want to meet Oliver's questioning glance, and waited until the younger man looked back down at the journal to look at him. He could not remember feeling much besides pain and hatred, but something pulled at him that felt vaguely like remorse when he looked at Oliver. He would never be able to protect the younger man, and so he would need to get Oliver as far away from his as possible. So long as Oliver did not draw too much attention to himself in the Church of Plano, he would be fine. He would be safe.
Oliver read quietly after that, decoding the words he did not know as much as he could. It did not take long before the passage turned from their hasty retreat on the street the night of the thirteenth into a musing about Oliver. Musing, though, might not have been the right word, Oliver realized. It was far more serious than that.
"I've seen the boy before," Maria had written. "He's a little different, but I think that's because he was actually there and not just something the Presence showed me. He has a frame of reference when I can actually see him standing in front of me, and he actually seems meeker than the Presence made him out to be." Oliver's brow creased when he read that. He had not been stuck so much on the idea that Maria had known about him before he had even woken up in the strange world, but over the idea that he seemed meek to her. He was far from meek, he knew, more than happy to start a fight on the ice if he was pushed to. Sure, he tried to be nice off the ice, but he had definitely said things that were less than nice many times in his life, but he never would have considered himself meek, even when cowering away from Mikkel's gun or Sinclair's needles. It was just self-preservation then.
"Still, I'm positive that this is the kid they told me about. He's going to go on to do some pretty impressive things if I've received their message right, so I'm going to have to protect him. Even if the [redacted] doesn't know about his destiny, I can't let them get their hands on him, and it won’t be terribly long now until they come knocking. Going to have to get him out and to safety before then. I wonder if Amile will take him." Oliver finally looked up, catching Mikkel's eye before the man had a chance to look away and crane his neck to look over the crowd.
"Who’s Amile?" Oliver asked, pointing out the name. Mikkel stopped feigning his detachment from the situation to look at Oliver full on. He wondered if Oliver grasped what was happening at all, if he understood what anything in the journal meant. Mikkel was sure he, himself, had no idea, after all.
"Don't know," He told Oliver easily, looking away once more. "Read through the whole thing, and there was no mention of an Amile. Granted it could have been one of the words that I can't translate, but that's not my problem anymore." Oliver seemed to not like that answer one bit, so Mikkel pushed on. He grabbed Oliver's shoulder and shifted closer so their conversation was more private. "This is the end for me, Oliver. I'm going to see to it that you get into that church, and then I'm out of your life forever. Maria seems to think that you were chosen or something by the Presence, that you will fix this whole damn mess. I don't necessarily believe it, but what I believe doesn't matter. This is going to be all up to you."
"Why won’t you come with me?" Oliver asked back, voice low but obviously desperate. He had no one in that strange world: no family, no friends, and no contacts. Mikkel was the closest thing he had to any of those, and he wanted, desperately, to hold on. It was no longer the fact that this Mikkel had the same face as his best friend, but that he needed someone, anyone, to help him navigate the foreign world. When Mikkel answered, his face was grim, shadowed not with anger, but with pity.
"Oliver, where I'm going and what I'm going to do are what needs to be done. I don't believe in destiny, but I believe in doing the right thing. I'm going to do what's right by me, and you need to go and do what's right by the world. What I'm going to do will only ruin that for you, do you understand me? We have to go our separate ways, because I'm not going to drag you down with me." Oliver did not understand because Mikkel had never exactly told him what he was going to do, but he thought he knew this Mikkel well enough to guess. There was something in him, something evil and malicious that would eventually get Oliver killed if they stuck together. He wanted to think differently, imagine this Mikkel on enough Opal to keep the Berserker down forever. He wanted to imagine them remaking Molious and running America from Sweden and then Denmark. He wanted to imagine all that, but as he looked around, as he saw the scared and tear-streaked faces around him, Oliver knew that it was not the answer.
Mikkel was a soldier, a fighter, and Oliver was not. What he was was an optimist, someone that hoped for the best and tried to find joy even in the darkest places. He wanted to protect the civilians around him, bring them up from ignorance and depression. Mikkel just wanted to hurt those responsible. Their ideologies were too different, too far off to make them viable partners in any endeavors, and Oliver could finally see that. He needed to let Mikkel do what he thought was right, just like Mikkel hoped he was letting Oliver do. Slowly Oliver closed the journal, holding it up between them.
"Can I keep this?" He asked cautiously, a touch of sadness in his voice. Mikkel forced a soft smile on his face, not because he genuinely felt for Oliver, but because he figured it could not hurt.
"Would serve you better than me, anyway," He commented back in English, squeezing Oliver's shoulder slightly before letting his hand fall away. Oliver nodded slightly, slipping the journal into his pocket. He knew what was coming, the goodbyes that would not be said, but which he knew were meant. Mikkel would not come with him into the church. Oliver would be alone and on his own. He would need to take care of himself.
"Answer the questions when you get up there. Be smart and lie if you have to. Use only English from here on out, learn it, and commit to it. Keep your head down, stay smart, and when you know that they're not watching you, you find that Amile. You find whoever the hell that is, and you get out of here as fast as you can." Oliver nodded and forced a smile onto his face as well, feeling the nerves. His stomach had gone cold, and he felt like he should shiver, but nothing even close to it came over him. Instead he looked into Mikkel's eyes and extended his hand.
"Thank you, for everything." He told the older man, and Mikkel took his hand, shaking it once before letting go.
"Take care of yourself," Mikkel told him before he turned and began moving from the crowd. Oliver swallowed hard and watched Mikkel until the man disappeared into the throngs of people. Oliver did not think he would, but within seconds he felt absolutely alone. He would never see Mikkel again, never see Maria again, and it hit him harder than he thought it would have. For a moment, a fleeting one, Oliver wanted to push his way from the crowd, run after Mikkel and convince him to come with him, but he understood what Mikkel had meant. They were on two very different paths, one that lead to war and the other to peace. They both would need to play their parts to fix the world and how completely out of control it had become. Swallowing hard, Oliver straightened and looked forward to where he was only a few people away from the pastor. He needed to concentrate, to listen, and to figure out how to respond to the questions everyone was asked. He strained his hearing until a gunshot blasted from one of the guards and the man in front of the pastor dropped dead.
Oliver stared wide-eyed as the man fell to the stairs and rolled down a few of them, staring out at the crowd with unblinking eyes as blood seeped down step by step. Oliver could not think, breath caught in his chest as the woman in front of him howled with sobs. Others, apparently members of her family, held her back. They all sobbed as well. The guns of the guards had turned on them, but they did not fire, lest one approached.
"I do believe we have been over this enough times!" The pastor spoke into the microphone as he moved down the stairs to stand straddled over the man's lifeless corpse. "No heathen Niggers are allowed in this sacred church! What don't you monkey-brained idiots understand? Could you not learn English because it was too hard for you?" The crowds undivided attention was on the pastor and the family who still wailed with sorrow, Oliver's included.
Maria had spoken of it, of how the differences in race had caused an easy separation between those the American Government had use for and those they did not. Sinclair had elaborated further by simply showing Oliver how extremely bigoted people had become. Still, seeing it first hand, seeing a man shot on the steps of a church while doing nothing other than wanting entrance for him and his family solidified it for Oliver. He had not attacked the pastor, had not gone into any violent rage when most certainly denied a place among them, and was still shot dead as a spectacle. He had been killed purely because he was black and in an apparently white only area consisting of the church, and Oliver could have sworn he felt his soul crush at that idea. All of the whites that had failed to answer the questions had been escorted from the church and yet a black man, maybe even one that would have passed the interrogation, had been executed on the spot.
"These good people do not want your kind in this church with them! You are slaves of the devil, sent out to corrupt and destroy! You steal their water and their food, making their children go hungry!" The man suddenly had the crowd on his side, but, as Oliver listened to their taunts, their shouts of hatred toward the black family, he realized that they had been on the pastor's side all along. The crowd was scared and miserable, hugging their children in panic and fear. They lived in a dog eat dog world, and as long as they could join the side eating, they would eat. It was easier to do unimaginable things when life was on the line, but Oliver felt sick over it. The family had not done anything wrong besides be born of African descent. There was no reason for one of their family to be killed in cold blood.
"He was an Engineer!" One of the women in the family shouted, the one that hugged her mother who sobbed into her chest. Her eyes were directly on the pastor as she spoke, narrowed with distaste and spite. "He was one of the best in Sweden until your precious Government came in and got him basically exiled!"
"How dare you speak ill of our wonderful Government!" The pastor shouted into the microphone, and everyone in the crowd seemed to mirror the sentiment. Slurs were thrown, many that Oliver did not know, but they all rang out in English. He turned and looked around him at the once scared crowd and now angry mob. They would tear the family apart; kill them, if only the pastor told them to. Oliver wanted to rush to their aid, to protect them, but Mikkel had told him to get inside, and Oliver knew when it was a losing fight. He would never be able to save the family, just get himself killed along with them. The guards had begun descending on the group, and the pastor backed up the stairs, although not in fear. He had the upper hand, there was no doubt about that, and he would never even have to get his own hands dirty to see the grieving family taken care of.
There were almost no people of color in the crowd, so it was easy to place where the family members were. It was a sizable family, the wife of the man, three daughters, and several younger children. Oliver wondered where the husbands of the women were, but as he looked at the children, he got a good idea. They seemed mixed race, save for two, and were probably the result of rape or forced prostitution. The system that America deployed on Sweden worked primarily for white men. Some white women seemed to be employed as well, such as one of the newscasters he had seen on the television in the Molious base, but beyond that the rest were treated as the bottom of society. Blacks, obviously, were at the bottom of the food chain by how the crowd turned against them like ravenous wolves. Men of any descent were probably used for their laboring, used in mines and factories, but there had to be almost no desire for women to be working anywhere. Oliver had not asked because it seemed like enough of the world was out of whack as it was. The gender divide had not seemed that important once Oliver had found out that the Earth was practically dead. He wished he had asked Maria more about it in the brief time he had had with her, so he would not have had to find out about it the way he had.
"Leave now, you Nigger devils, or there will be none of you left to mourn this miscreants death. It will be so easy to send you all to hell right now while you force all of these children of god to wait in the same area as your stench!" Oliver could not believe what he was hearing. His brain essentially refused to believe that it was real, but his body reminded him it was. His lungs ached since he had basically stopped breathing. His body shook with rage and fright that mingled too close together to really be separated. They had a chance to walk away, but yet they remained, and the guards looked like they were ready to open fire on them right that moment, and to hell with any that got caught in the cross fire.
"Take the little ones," The mother said, no longer sobbing, but quietly determined. Oliver watched as she stood up straight and ran her hands over her clothes, staring down the pastor.
"Mom," One of the daughters said, tone quiet and shaking, but with a hint of determination in it that mirrored her mother’s. She wanted to say more, but the older woman cut her off.
"Take the kids, Lanisha. Take them, and your sisters, and get the hell out of here." The mother's voice was rigid, not wavering at all. "I've done all I can do for you girls, and this monster wants blood, so I will give him my blood so then I can piss on him from heaven."
"There is no heaven for you beasts," The pastor countered, and the woman did not even blink. She moved up the stairs defiant in the face of death, and her oldest daughter kept the others back. Oliver could see the daughter’s face, stoic as she separated herself from what was about to happen, turned to gather her siblings and the children. Lanisha wanted them gone before the inevitable execution on their mother, but there was no way that could happen. The crowd was all around them, many still growling insults, some even taking to pushing them as they tried to move, or blocking their way. Some of the guards kept their guns on the family, but others kept their sights on the mother that moved with authority toward her husband's body.
"What?" She asked the pastor loudly, venom in her tone. "Too afraid to shoot when someone isn't afraid to die?" The pastor did not move, did not take his eyes off the woman despite her glare, her hatred directed right at him. He seemed strong, one that would do anything in his power to protect his community, and though Oliver thought he was a terrible person, one that surely deserved to die, he also saw what Mikkel meant. He would be safe if the church took him in. He would be protected, though not happy. Par for the course, it seemed.
"Figured you would have some last words to leave this mortal plane with, devil," The man responded, not in the microphone, but loudly. The woman grit her teeth and glared harder up at him. Oliver could not imagine she would have any last words, none that would have come to mind through her grief and rage. However she was quick, spitting at the pastor. She caught his pants with the down arch of her saliva, but the message was clear.
"Burn in hell!" Were the woman's last words before a guard pulled his side arm and shot the woman in the side of the head. She collapsed heavily, dead before she hit the ground, and her family howled with misery once more, pushing their way from the crowd. Oliver had a front row seat to the atrocity, and could only stare in shock. They had actually done it, his brain slowly rationalized. They had actually killed people for just being different and standing up for themselves. There was horror simmering under his emotionless confusion. He thought, not for the first time, that it all had to be some sort of terrible nightmare.
"Let this be a lesson!" The pastor spoke once more out to the crowd. "We will not tolerate heathens in our midst! Be gone any that are not children of god or you will meet a similar end!" As the man spoke, guards removed the bodies of the wife and husband. The stairs remained streaked with blood and though someone from the congregation wiped them with a rag quickly, they still remained red, wet, and dusty. Oliver realized, suddenly, that he was next in line.
Mikkel had moved from the crowd, head kept low as he slipped off into the darkness. He would need to lay low for a few days, find supplies and a new place to hide out. He thought about Margie, but knew that he should not impose on her again. She was his last resort, usually, and unless he became dehydrated or started starving, he would give her a wide berth. There was no reason to put her in danger when there were possibly other places he could go. Back to the sewers, he thought. There were probably still other ex-military down there, some which did not feel a call to battle, even against the Government. He might be able to get information on somewhere out of the city limits that he could go. There were probably other factions, smaller factions that needed someone to help.
Mikkel was hyper aware of the guards around him, but they seemed distracted, attention on the church that they were protecting. It did not seem like they paid him any mind, but still he kept his head low and his movement brisk. He hated soldiers of any kind, and just being near them kept his pulse rate high. He would burn through Opal that way, Mikkel knew, so he tried to school his breathing and keep his hands from shaking.
A gunshot broke through the noise of the area, and everything immediately fell silent for a fraction of a second. In that moment thousands of thoughts went through Mikkel's mind. Oliver, he thought at first. He thought that maybe the pastor had been alerted to them, that he had figured Oliver to not be worth the trouble and had shot him. Mikkel had hoped that information would be slow given the sighting of the Presence, had put all his money on it really, but in that fraction of a second he thought he had been wrong. Then a woman howled and Mikkel relaxed. It had not been Oliver, he thought, momentarily relieved. Oliver had no friends, no allies in the world that would cry over his body like that. It had been someone else, and though Mikkel knew that Oliver would be scared and mortified as he watched the spectacle, he was still thankful that the church had not proved to be the wrong move so soon after Mikkel had made it. Oliver was smart and would be fine, he told himself again.
The crowd grew restless and Mikkel could hear their shouts. He could hear the pastor condemn the black family, but there was nothing to be done. He turned and started retreating again. He moved down the street in a hunched walk, not raising his face but keeping his attention shifting at all times. He needed to see if there was any suspicion on him before it turned into more. Unfortunately it was not long before it had turned into something more.
The cocking of a gun behind him had Mikkel reaching for his pistol again. He pulled it out, slid the hammer back, and turned all in one fluid motion. He shot the guard in the face before he had time to react, but the man had not been alone. Others swarmed him fast, not shooting, however. They knew, Mikkel thought as he moved and shot. They knew he was a Berserker and they would not risk spilling his blood for fear of contamination. That worked well enough for him because Mikkel had an extra clip and that was all he would need to keep them off of him until he could slip away.
Each shot was perfection, muscles moving independent of thought as Mikkel gunned down guard after guard, but more came, and soon enough soldiers joined them. He kept his book bag behind him, safe from attack if they finally got sick of not shooting. However, as Mikkel slipped around a corner, he walked directly into an ambush. He did not even have time to react before he was grabbed and a needle jabbed into his neck. Whatever they pumped into him was not anything Mikkel had been on before because, within a second, he had faded to black.
Oliver was called up the stairs and he hesitated. He felt like all eyes were on him, but it was not the same as it was when stepping out onto the ice for a game. It was nerve wracking, sickening, and terrifying. There were no shivers of anticipation, no excited butterflies in his stomach. All Oliver could feel was complete dread as he was sure any ability to speak, let alone in English, had left him entirely. They would know, he panicked, cold clammy sweat on his hands. They would know he had been with Molious and that he was not even supposed to be there. They would know he was from somewhere else, somewhere without war. They would know, but they were calling him up, and people were growing impatient.
Oliver swallowed hard, steadied himself as much as he could, and began up the stairs. There was no way to avoid the blood, so he stepped in it, tried not to let himself think about how two had died there just because they were black. He tried not to think about it because there was more pressing matters, but all he could do was think about it. Two had died there, and Oliver would be the third. There was no doubt in his scared mind of that.
"What's your name, son?" The pastor asked, seemingly calm and, dare Oliver think it, happy that Oliver was there. There was far too much that went with that thought so Oliver ignored it, pushed it back.
"Oliver," He said, just a bit of a tremor in his voice.
"Oliver, can you recite to me the Lord's Prayer?" Oliver opened his mouth to reply and then stopped. He could, but it was in Swedish. He could say it, but it was in the language that Mikkel told him explicitly not to speak. Oliver stared at the man and he felt utter horror wash over him. "Do you not know it?" The pastor asked, eyes narrowing and voice tightening. He had maybe liked Oliver when he first came forward, but at his hesitation, his temper began to flair again. He would need to lie, Oliver knew. He would need to say something.
"I do know it but… but not English." Not a lie, but not entirely true. He did not say he only knew it in Swedish and hoped, maybe, that the pastor would just suggest he recite it Swedish. Maybe he could con the man into giving him the answers.
"Then in Latin," The pastor replied, but it was not what Oliver wanted. He knew he had painted himself into a corner, but that was what he had to work with. He had to try to make it work, even though there was no way it would. Oliver shifted, licked his lips, and closed his eyes. His mind was full of prayer, that was for sure, but it was not a Lord's Prayer. It was a prayer for his life to be spared, a prayer that something would happen, anything would happen, to keep him safe. Slowly his lips moved, slowly he spoke anything that came to his mind. Of course, what he assumed he had said was "Please, God, I don't want to die!" on repeat, but when he opened his eyes, Oliver saw that the pastor looked impressed.
"It has been a long time since I've heard the Lord's Prayer in Latin, especially with such fine pronunciation." Oliver was dumbfounded, floored, but not so much frightened. Sure, there was still a heavy dose of that in his system, he still shook slightly, but he was more preoccupied with the fact that he had, apparently, spoke Latin. He had not taken Opal, but Oliver wondered if what he had done had been the same thing Maria had done in her journal. He wondered if there was more weight to her idea that Oliver was brought there for a reason than he had given her credit for.
"Welcome to the church of Plano, son," The pastor said, and though the nickname rubbed Oliver the wrong way, made him want to recoil, and scream that the man was a monster, he knew enough to shut up and just accept that, by some miracle, he would make it inside. Oliver slowly extended his hand to shake the pastor's outstretched one, but as he reached, a gunshot echoed from not too far away. Oliver jumped a little and turned, looking in the direction that it had seemed to come from. Seconds later more shots came, solid pops that seemed to be retreating from where they stood. Something in Oliver told him it was Mikkel, but the man had told him to get inside, and running off then, trying to find Mikkel and maybe save him, would bury his chances of that forever. He doubted the pastor would forget such a transgression, and Oliver knew that he would never get the divine intervention a second time.
Gritting his teeth, Oliver turned back to face the man, but what came into his vision was not the grey-haired man, but the butt of a rifle. He had just enough time to brace for the inevitable hit before, for the second time, Oliver was knocked unconscious. Still, Oliver reasoned, it was better than being shot.
Playlist by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://8tracks.com/masterpenguin/liberty-of-possession
Chapter 10 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2_Y59HCyhA
Master Post: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/16531.html
Chapter 11 Meet Your Master: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/19226.html
God Given
Chapter 10 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2_Y59HCyhA
Warnings: Violence, Gore, Racism, Language, Blood Diseases, Drug Use, Religious Inequality and Segregation, Minor Character Death, Mentions of: Forced Prostitution/Rape, Sexism
Day had descended into dusk and then twilight, and there was still plenty of movement out on the streets. The hysteria of seeing the Presence seemed to still be in full swing a few hours since their appearance. Even the alleyway saw foot traffic that Mikkel had been leery of at first, but by then just found to be an annoyance. He kept his hand on the grip of his pistol as he glanced through the drawn shades, watching to make sure that no soldiers poked their noses in the area and compromised their hideout.
The two men had talked at length for a while, Mikkel holding up his part of their agreement by actually trying to explain things to the younger man. Of course he did not have a lot of answers to some of the things that Oliver asked about, and tried to get the young man to understand that he really did not have all the information that Oliver thought he did. His lack of knowledge became the most obvious when Oliver asked about the Presence.
When the topic was first broached, Mikkel fell into a brooding silence. He had not actually thought they had existed up until that day. Sure, there were the stories told that they were aliens coming to abduct people, or messengers of god, or any number of tales that always pointed to something higher than humanity. They were all tabloid reports, though, stuff said with an air of humor and disbelief when even spoken of at all. What they never were was actually real, but Mikkel had seen them, and so did thousands of others. It took some severe skepticism to deny them then.
"We all just kind of thought they were hallucinations," Mikkel had begun, wiping the blood off of his pistol. "Take too much Opal and some people started seeing shit, feeling shit. But, I can guess we're going to have to call this one real because you saw it, right?" Oliver nodded, looking up from where he sat, cross-legged, on the floor. He had seen the hand reaching down from the sky, and it had been terrifying, but there had been other terrifying things that had happened that day. Actually, when looking back, Oliver could only place a few non-terrifying things that had happened since he had woken up on the street three days prior, and had generally accepted that that was just the way things worked in that reality. However, the strange nauseous expression on Mikkel's face told him that there was more to it than that.
"Maria, she said that there were people that saw stuff on Opal, that she had. Is that what they saw?" Oliver asked and could not have imagined it would have been a good drug trip at all when suddenly confronted by the giant translucent hand. Mikkel did not exactly shrug, but tipped his head toward his shoulder as he turned back to look out the window once more. Oliver's frown slowly deepened when Mikkel did not answer him. He waited a few seconds before he called out to the older man, obviously annoyed. "Is that what they saw?"
"I don't know," Mikkel said curtly, a light growl in his tone. "I have no idea what they saw, only what I saw and what you saw. Who the hell knows what the other people out there even saw, Oliver!" Mikkel had turned back to face Oliver, body ridged as he fought back any need to shake the younger man and pray, desperately, for him to just understand for once. "They could have seen Jesus, or Buddha, or Hitler for all I fucking know, but we saw a giant god damn hand and, really, I'm a bit fucking on edge about it right now." Oliver's face crashed into a heavy frown, eyes hard and glaring at Mikkel for the outburst. Finally he turned, shifted the book bag full of Opal and the medical kit they had decided would be good to take along, and lied down with his head on it, facing away from Mikkel.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Mikkel asked slowly after a few seconds, still annoyed with the childish need to just know that Oliver displayed. He thought the young man should be worried far more about surviving than figuring out every mystery in the universe. Unfortunately it seemed that Oliver did not function that way. Oliver rolled a little, glaring over his shoulder back toward Mikkel.
"I've slept almost nothing in the last three days, Mikkel, and god knows when I slept before that! I'm tired and really just want to take a nap." Mikkel's grip tightened on his gun for just a moment before Oliver pushed on. "Look, I get that you haven't been having the time of your life either, but you took your drugs and now I'm taking my nap." Oliver was most definitely done with the conversation and Mikkel recognized his chance for silence. They would not stay long, but if Oliver wanted to spend that time sleeping, Mikkel was for it. He welcomed the silence after the litany of questions.
Mikkel had given about an hour before he approached the younger man and tapped the bag with the toe of his boot. It shifted under Oliver's head; the remaining vials clinking together as Oliver's head rolled over them. He shot awake, eyes wide and suddenly alert. It only took a fraction of a second for his eyes to come to Mikkel's, obviously confused over the sudden return to wakefulness.
"Time to go," Mikkel said simply, reaching down to grab the bag, slinging it over his shoulder. Oliver had sat up, rubbing roughly at his eyes for several seconds as he stood slowly. There were a few grumbles in his tone, but no real completed thoughts to annoy Mikkel, so he merely ignored him and moved back to the door.
"Where're we going?" Oliver asked quietly, rolling his shoulders and neck as he moved to follow Mikkel. He did not even have a moment to wake up before Mikkel expected him to be moving, getting back out onto the dangerous street. He missed coffee and practice times. He missed hot showers, even the ones in terrible rinks. Mikkel flipped the locks and spoke quietly as he responded.
"Getting you somewhere safe," His voice was a monotone as he scanned the street quickly before he opened the door and left the store. Oliver hurried after him, keeping on Mikkel's heels as they moved back up the alleyway and toward the main drag. Mikkel hoped that the confusion was still thick enough to cover their movement, or that a curfew was in place and they would be able to dodge the soldiers. A curfew would not have been as promising as complete and total chaos, but they did manage to walk out onto the street into something that lay between the two extremes.
It seemed that most people had gone indoors, huddling with their families in the wake of the Presence, but there were still people moving around on the streets in confusion and fear. Soldiers were out there as well, but they seemed far too preoccupied to even notice Mikkel and Oliver. They were surrounded by civilians and seemed twitchy, fielding questions that they could not answer. They directed people, asked people to return to their homes, but the Presence had riled people up, and the civilians had no interest in moving away until they had answers.
Slipping around people the two moved. Mikkel had an idea of where they could go, where he could dump Oliver and get back to his own mission, but it depended on some pretty important information he did not have quite yet. Mikkel glanced back, seeing how Oliver looked around with widened eyes, as if trying to absorb as much information as he could as they moved. They hurried across the avenue, entering another street and Mikkel slowed, falling into step next to Oliver so he would not draw attention to their Swedish nor their conversation topic.
"Are you Catholic?" Mikkel asked slowly, getting a confused look in return. Mikkel's own gaze narrowed in response, showing Oliver that he really did want the question answered.
"Yeah, I guess. I mean, Lutheran, but I don't really go to church all that much…"
"That's fine, so long as you can go through the motions," Mikkel responded curtly, hurrying his pace again as he turned another corner. For a few steps Oliver did not follow, turning and jogging a few steps to catch up once he realized Mikkel had made an unexpected turn. He did not understand why his religious orientation mattered and was about to ask when they came upon a large mob of people.
There was a lot of noise in the area, general chatter that was distressed and loud, but above it all was the booming sound of someone speaking into a microphone. It was hard at first to distinguish what was being said, but after a few seconds, Oliver managed to start getting snippets of words.
The man standing on the stairs of a large church asked them to stay in order. Well, as Oliver listened more to the tone, asking the crowd to do anything was not quite right. He demanded of the crowd, reminding them that he had power over them while occasionally sipping on a glass of water. No one stormed the stairs, what with the armed guards standing around the man. They did not look like soldiers, but more like private guards for either the church or the man, Oliver was unsure. Instead the writhing mass of people had to stand and wait as one person at a time ascended the stairs to speak to the man.
"What is this place?" Oliver asked Mikkel quietly. The older man had been trying to find a way to wiggle into the crowd without too much attention being drawn on them, but so far had been stonewalled by the pure aggressiveness of the frightened civilians.
"A church," He replied dryly, getting a glare from Oliver that was simply ignored until Mikkel had finished scanning their surroundings. When he turned to see the look on Oliver's face, he returned it in kind. "It's The Church of Plano. They're practically an extension of the Government, but they run things their way: god, gun, and country, that kind of bullshit. Welcome their overlords as a path to salvation. It's all crap, really, but if the Church takes you as a member of their flock, then you will be protected, and that's all that matters."
"If you are found worthy, you will be welcomed into god's embrace, children, but if you do not stand in an ordered line, you will not even get an audience, do you understand me?" The preacher continued over the cries of the crowd who demanded a faster audience, for rules to be ignored in wake of what had happened two hours before, and tear streaked sobbing. Oliver grimaced when he looked around, seeing the utter terror on the faces of those close to him. Sure, the Presence had made him nervous as well, twitchy, but he had not been as deeply moved into any emotion as others had. He felt calmer, maybe a bit more at peace since then. Not frightened, enraged, or saddened.
"So you're just going to dump me here?" Oliver asked, his tone a bit more clipped than he really meant it to be, but he was annoyed. He had stopped the john that had led them to the Opal. He had stopped him from being killed by Mikkel's rage, and for that he thought he had earned a bit of respect from Mikkel. Instead he seemed to still only be viewed as a liability. Hardly a step up from the original threat he had been labeled as.
"Oliver," Mikkel said, eyes hard. "What I'm about to do, you want no damn part of. I can't just walk away from this to keep pulling you out of the fire, and Maria wanted me to save you. I complete her last mission for me by putting you here, and then I'm going to do what I have to do to put an end to this." Oliver's glare fell into a confused look, brows knitted as he stared at Mikkel.
"Maria asked you to save me?" He asked slowly, confused and surprised. "I thought… I thought she was dead." He felt a little choked up by the words, stunned not only that Maria had been alive, but also that she had thought of him while shot. Mikkel shifted reaching into his back pocket to remove Maria's journal. He held it out to Oliver who snatched it and leafed through the pages quickly.
"When I got back to Molious, Maria was still alive. She told me to get the journal, and with it I understood that she wanted me to get you and get you somewhere safe." Oliver wanted to read the whole thing. He wanted to just exit the crowd, find some stairs, sit, and read. However, Mikkel did not move, and Oliver understood that they needed to stay there in order to get Oliver to safety.
"Did she…?" Oliver began, but stopped when Mikkel shook his head.
"She died there, Oliver, so I knew I had to do it. Here." Mikkel took the book back from Oliver. There was a lot of information in it such as strategies of attacks, brainstorming on how to solve problems, and vague information she had managed to obtain through various sources. Interspersed were her visions, the things she saw, heard, or felt that made her a bit of a religious leader in Molious. She had never let it affect her missions, but many of those under her command would come to her with problems that they thought she could help them solve. Unlike the leaders of the Church of Plano, Maria gave advice for free, and it usually consisted of telling Molious' soldiers to be kind to themselves. It seemed a lot more on board with Christian teachings than even the Christians were deploying, so Maria was let to do what she liked. What she had not told anyone about, what Mikkel did not even know until he had read it himself, were just how vivid her visions had become.
There were many pages in the journal depicting what she had seen while on Opal, and it hit Mikkel harder thinking about them after he had seen the Presence himself. She had seen the world dying, humans slaughtering each other before eventually they were all wiped from the planet. She detailed plants attempting to grown only to continuously die as the poisons of the earth sapped their life out of them. She had seen the long and slow rebirth the Earth would undergo without human destruction to kill her more and more until there was nothing left. Then, as the Presence had said, there was still a chance to turn some things around and save humanity as well, but their time frame was growing short. If they did not step up and do the right thing, then they would be done for. Mikkel never would have believed it if he had heard Maria preach it to him, but after the Presence had said it so clearly, Mikkel had no doubt that she had had some connection to them.
Skipping past all of that information, the information that would bottleneck what Oliver actually needed to know, Mikkel handed the book back to the younger man. Oliver took it quickly, looking at what Mikkel had opened it to. The top of the page had been dated, which was not abnormal, but was also not entirely the norm in Maria's journal. There seemed to have been madness to the mayhem that only she knew. However that page held the date of November fourteenth, the day after Oliver had first arrived at the base.
Oliver's eyes read quickly. Most of the entry was in Swedish, but occasionally switched to English or some other languages that Oliver was not familiar with. She had seemed Swedish, Oliver swore that she had been, but he realized, as he tried to translate some words that held no meaning to him by using the context of sentences, that he had no reason to have thought that she was. She could have been any number of nationalities, and given how many times her pen seemed to slip into Polish, Arabic, Cantonese, or even English, she could have been any of those by birth. Mikkel's hand had curled against his arm at some point, but Oliver did not look up as he was shifted into the crowd once Mikkel seemed to have found the queue that the pastor had implied was formed. He was pulled and pushed against people that voiced their displeasure, but he paid them no mind, only looking up once the question began getting too much to hold in.
"I thought she was Swedish," Oliver said barely a whisper. He had taken into account that they were in the thick of the crowd and spoke accordingly. In hindsight he probably should have spoken in English, but no one really seemed to have taken notice. Oliver looked around a bit, seeing the faces of those in the crowd. They were scared, on edge, and definitely did not want to be waiting as one at a time people were brought onto the stairs where the pastor stood, and were interviewed. They could not hear the questions, but apparently the woman had answered a question wrong because the pastor shouted, boisterously, in her face. She broke down into sobs and he pointed her away, turning back to take another drink of water as the armed guards forcefully removed the woman from the step. She turned and struggled against their hold, screaming about her child. That exact child was ushered onto the stage and cried as well. She reached for her mother in the same fashion, but was forced to face the pastor who spoke down to her sobbing face from over his nose. Oliver clenched his teeth and pulled his eyes away, looking back to Mikkel.
"She was… Or, at least, I thought so." Mikkel responded to Oliver’s question in English, and Oliver got the idea. Anyone around them could bust them, and it was definitely a time to be careful. Mikkel thought back to the entry, to how Maria had done similar things throughout the entire journal. She could not have been more than a few years older than him, four, max, but she had seemed to have had grasped many languages. He knew a few of them from his days as a soldier, just some local ones like Finnish, Polish, and German, but her grasp on them was well beyond that. Plus, to use some like Cantonese, which had been outlawed since the war started, seemed like a feat one would never be able to accomplish. At first he thought that she had been multilingual as a child, but after the Presence, he had had a different theory.
She spoke of them often in her journal, the voices that spoke all the time, and so, given the new information about just how they spoke, Mikkel had puzzled it out. They had spoken to her so often that she had started to learn the other languages. She had learned every language mankind had ever spoken because the Presence had taught her. He had no idea how to take that information, so he pushed it down and far from his mind.
"Then… how did she…?" Oliver asked, skimming the page with his finger as if to show Mikkel what he meant by the question. Mikkel had not needed to see the page to know, so he purposefully looked away from it.
"She just knew them, I guess," Mikkel told him briskly, not wanting to draw too much attention to their conversation. He did not want to meet Oliver's questioning glance, and waited until the younger man looked back down at the journal to look at him. He could not remember feeling much besides pain and hatred, but something pulled at him that felt vaguely like remorse when he looked at Oliver. He would never be able to protect the younger man, and so he would need to get Oliver as far away from his as possible. So long as Oliver did not draw too much attention to himself in the Church of Plano, he would be fine. He would be safe.
Oliver read quietly after that, decoding the words he did not know as much as he could. It did not take long before the passage turned from their hasty retreat on the street the night of the thirteenth into a musing about Oliver. Musing, though, might not have been the right word, Oliver realized. It was far more serious than that.
"I've seen the boy before," Maria had written. "He's a little different, but I think that's because he was actually there and not just something the Presence showed me. He has a frame of reference when I can actually see him standing in front of me, and he actually seems meeker than the Presence made him out to be." Oliver's brow creased when he read that. He had not been stuck so much on the idea that Maria had known about him before he had even woken up in the strange world, but over the idea that he seemed meek to her. He was far from meek, he knew, more than happy to start a fight on the ice if he was pushed to. Sure, he tried to be nice off the ice, but he had definitely said things that were less than nice many times in his life, but he never would have considered himself meek, even when cowering away from Mikkel's gun or Sinclair's needles. It was just self-preservation then.
"Still, I'm positive that this is the kid they told me about. He's going to go on to do some pretty impressive things if I've received their message right, so I'm going to have to protect him. Even if the [redacted] doesn't know about his destiny, I can't let them get their hands on him, and it won’t be terribly long now until they come knocking. Going to have to get him out and to safety before then. I wonder if Amile will take him." Oliver finally looked up, catching Mikkel's eye before the man had a chance to look away and crane his neck to look over the crowd.
"Who’s Amile?" Oliver asked, pointing out the name. Mikkel stopped feigning his detachment from the situation to look at Oliver full on. He wondered if Oliver grasped what was happening at all, if he understood what anything in the journal meant. Mikkel was sure he, himself, had no idea, after all.
"Don't know," He told Oliver easily, looking away once more. "Read through the whole thing, and there was no mention of an Amile. Granted it could have been one of the words that I can't translate, but that's not my problem anymore." Oliver seemed to not like that answer one bit, so Mikkel pushed on. He grabbed Oliver's shoulder and shifted closer so their conversation was more private. "This is the end for me, Oliver. I'm going to see to it that you get into that church, and then I'm out of your life forever. Maria seems to think that you were chosen or something by the Presence, that you will fix this whole damn mess. I don't necessarily believe it, but what I believe doesn't matter. This is going to be all up to you."
"Why won’t you come with me?" Oliver asked back, voice low but obviously desperate. He had no one in that strange world: no family, no friends, and no contacts. Mikkel was the closest thing he had to any of those, and he wanted, desperately, to hold on. It was no longer the fact that this Mikkel had the same face as his best friend, but that he needed someone, anyone, to help him navigate the foreign world. When Mikkel answered, his face was grim, shadowed not with anger, but with pity.
"Oliver, where I'm going and what I'm going to do are what needs to be done. I don't believe in destiny, but I believe in doing the right thing. I'm going to do what's right by me, and you need to go and do what's right by the world. What I'm going to do will only ruin that for you, do you understand me? We have to go our separate ways, because I'm not going to drag you down with me." Oliver did not understand because Mikkel had never exactly told him what he was going to do, but he thought he knew this Mikkel well enough to guess. There was something in him, something evil and malicious that would eventually get Oliver killed if they stuck together. He wanted to think differently, imagine this Mikkel on enough Opal to keep the Berserker down forever. He wanted to imagine them remaking Molious and running America from Sweden and then Denmark. He wanted to imagine all that, but as he looked around, as he saw the scared and tear-streaked faces around him, Oliver knew that it was not the answer.
Mikkel was a soldier, a fighter, and Oliver was not. What he was was an optimist, someone that hoped for the best and tried to find joy even in the darkest places. He wanted to protect the civilians around him, bring them up from ignorance and depression. Mikkel just wanted to hurt those responsible. Their ideologies were too different, too far off to make them viable partners in any endeavors, and Oliver could finally see that. He needed to let Mikkel do what he thought was right, just like Mikkel hoped he was letting Oliver do. Slowly Oliver closed the journal, holding it up between them.
"Can I keep this?" He asked cautiously, a touch of sadness in his voice. Mikkel forced a soft smile on his face, not because he genuinely felt for Oliver, but because he figured it could not hurt.
"Would serve you better than me, anyway," He commented back in English, squeezing Oliver's shoulder slightly before letting his hand fall away. Oliver nodded slightly, slipping the journal into his pocket. He knew what was coming, the goodbyes that would not be said, but which he knew were meant. Mikkel would not come with him into the church. Oliver would be alone and on his own. He would need to take care of himself.
"Answer the questions when you get up there. Be smart and lie if you have to. Use only English from here on out, learn it, and commit to it. Keep your head down, stay smart, and when you know that they're not watching you, you find that Amile. You find whoever the hell that is, and you get out of here as fast as you can." Oliver nodded and forced a smile onto his face as well, feeling the nerves. His stomach had gone cold, and he felt like he should shiver, but nothing even close to it came over him. Instead he looked into Mikkel's eyes and extended his hand.
"Thank you, for everything." He told the older man, and Mikkel took his hand, shaking it once before letting go.
"Take care of yourself," Mikkel told him before he turned and began moving from the crowd. Oliver swallowed hard and watched Mikkel until the man disappeared into the throngs of people. Oliver did not think he would, but within seconds he felt absolutely alone. He would never see Mikkel again, never see Maria again, and it hit him harder than he thought it would have. For a moment, a fleeting one, Oliver wanted to push his way from the crowd, run after Mikkel and convince him to come with him, but he understood what Mikkel had meant. They were on two very different paths, one that lead to war and the other to peace. They both would need to play their parts to fix the world and how completely out of control it had become. Swallowing hard, Oliver straightened and looked forward to where he was only a few people away from the pastor. He needed to concentrate, to listen, and to figure out how to respond to the questions everyone was asked. He strained his hearing until a gunshot blasted from one of the guards and the man in front of the pastor dropped dead.
Oliver stared wide-eyed as the man fell to the stairs and rolled down a few of them, staring out at the crowd with unblinking eyes as blood seeped down step by step. Oliver could not think, breath caught in his chest as the woman in front of him howled with sobs. Others, apparently members of her family, held her back. They all sobbed as well. The guns of the guards had turned on them, but they did not fire, lest one approached.
"I do believe we have been over this enough times!" The pastor spoke into the microphone as he moved down the stairs to stand straddled over the man's lifeless corpse. "No heathen Niggers are allowed in this sacred church! What don't you monkey-brained idiots understand? Could you not learn English because it was too hard for you?" The crowds undivided attention was on the pastor and the family who still wailed with sorrow, Oliver's included.
Maria had spoken of it, of how the differences in race had caused an easy separation between those the American Government had use for and those they did not. Sinclair had elaborated further by simply showing Oliver how extremely bigoted people had become. Still, seeing it first hand, seeing a man shot on the steps of a church while doing nothing other than wanting entrance for him and his family solidified it for Oliver. He had not attacked the pastor, had not gone into any violent rage when most certainly denied a place among them, and was still shot dead as a spectacle. He had been killed purely because he was black and in an apparently white only area consisting of the church, and Oliver could have sworn he felt his soul crush at that idea. All of the whites that had failed to answer the questions had been escorted from the church and yet a black man, maybe even one that would have passed the interrogation, had been executed on the spot.
"These good people do not want your kind in this church with them! You are slaves of the devil, sent out to corrupt and destroy! You steal their water and their food, making their children go hungry!" The man suddenly had the crowd on his side, but, as Oliver listened to their taunts, their shouts of hatred toward the black family, he realized that they had been on the pastor's side all along. The crowd was scared and miserable, hugging their children in panic and fear. They lived in a dog eat dog world, and as long as they could join the side eating, they would eat. It was easier to do unimaginable things when life was on the line, but Oliver felt sick over it. The family had not done anything wrong besides be born of African descent. There was no reason for one of their family to be killed in cold blood.
"He was an Engineer!" One of the women in the family shouted, the one that hugged her mother who sobbed into her chest. Her eyes were directly on the pastor as she spoke, narrowed with distaste and spite. "He was one of the best in Sweden until your precious Government came in and got him basically exiled!"
"How dare you speak ill of our wonderful Government!" The pastor shouted into the microphone, and everyone in the crowd seemed to mirror the sentiment. Slurs were thrown, many that Oliver did not know, but they all rang out in English. He turned and looked around him at the once scared crowd and now angry mob. They would tear the family apart; kill them, if only the pastor told them to. Oliver wanted to rush to their aid, to protect them, but Mikkel had told him to get inside, and Oliver knew when it was a losing fight. He would never be able to save the family, just get himself killed along with them. The guards had begun descending on the group, and the pastor backed up the stairs, although not in fear. He had the upper hand, there was no doubt about that, and he would never even have to get his own hands dirty to see the grieving family taken care of.
There were almost no people of color in the crowd, so it was easy to place where the family members were. It was a sizable family, the wife of the man, three daughters, and several younger children. Oliver wondered where the husbands of the women were, but as he looked at the children, he got a good idea. They seemed mixed race, save for two, and were probably the result of rape or forced prostitution. The system that America deployed on Sweden worked primarily for white men. Some white women seemed to be employed as well, such as one of the newscasters he had seen on the television in the Molious base, but beyond that the rest were treated as the bottom of society. Blacks, obviously, were at the bottom of the food chain by how the crowd turned against them like ravenous wolves. Men of any descent were probably used for their laboring, used in mines and factories, but there had to be almost no desire for women to be working anywhere. Oliver had not asked because it seemed like enough of the world was out of whack as it was. The gender divide had not seemed that important once Oliver had found out that the Earth was practically dead. He wished he had asked Maria more about it in the brief time he had had with her, so he would not have had to find out about it the way he had.
"Leave now, you Nigger devils, or there will be none of you left to mourn this miscreants death. It will be so easy to send you all to hell right now while you force all of these children of god to wait in the same area as your stench!" Oliver could not believe what he was hearing. His brain essentially refused to believe that it was real, but his body reminded him it was. His lungs ached since he had basically stopped breathing. His body shook with rage and fright that mingled too close together to really be separated. They had a chance to walk away, but yet they remained, and the guards looked like they were ready to open fire on them right that moment, and to hell with any that got caught in the cross fire.
"Take the little ones," The mother said, no longer sobbing, but quietly determined. Oliver watched as she stood up straight and ran her hands over her clothes, staring down the pastor.
"Mom," One of the daughters said, tone quiet and shaking, but with a hint of determination in it that mirrored her mother’s. She wanted to say more, but the older woman cut her off.
"Take the kids, Lanisha. Take them, and your sisters, and get the hell out of here." The mother's voice was rigid, not wavering at all. "I've done all I can do for you girls, and this monster wants blood, so I will give him my blood so then I can piss on him from heaven."
"There is no heaven for you beasts," The pastor countered, and the woman did not even blink. She moved up the stairs defiant in the face of death, and her oldest daughter kept the others back. Oliver could see the daughter’s face, stoic as she separated herself from what was about to happen, turned to gather her siblings and the children. Lanisha wanted them gone before the inevitable execution on their mother, but there was no way that could happen. The crowd was all around them, many still growling insults, some even taking to pushing them as they tried to move, or blocking their way. Some of the guards kept their guns on the family, but others kept their sights on the mother that moved with authority toward her husband's body.
"What?" She asked the pastor loudly, venom in her tone. "Too afraid to shoot when someone isn't afraid to die?" The pastor did not move, did not take his eyes off the woman despite her glare, her hatred directed right at him. He seemed strong, one that would do anything in his power to protect his community, and though Oliver thought he was a terrible person, one that surely deserved to die, he also saw what Mikkel meant. He would be safe if the church took him in. He would be protected, though not happy. Par for the course, it seemed.
"Figured you would have some last words to leave this mortal plane with, devil," The man responded, not in the microphone, but loudly. The woman grit her teeth and glared harder up at him. Oliver could not imagine she would have any last words, none that would have come to mind through her grief and rage. However she was quick, spitting at the pastor. She caught his pants with the down arch of her saliva, but the message was clear.
"Burn in hell!" Were the woman's last words before a guard pulled his side arm and shot the woman in the side of the head. She collapsed heavily, dead before she hit the ground, and her family howled with misery once more, pushing their way from the crowd. Oliver had a front row seat to the atrocity, and could only stare in shock. They had actually done it, his brain slowly rationalized. They had actually killed people for just being different and standing up for themselves. There was horror simmering under his emotionless confusion. He thought, not for the first time, that it all had to be some sort of terrible nightmare.
"Let this be a lesson!" The pastor spoke once more out to the crowd. "We will not tolerate heathens in our midst! Be gone any that are not children of god or you will meet a similar end!" As the man spoke, guards removed the bodies of the wife and husband. The stairs remained streaked with blood and though someone from the congregation wiped them with a rag quickly, they still remained red, wet, and dusty. Oliver realized, suddenly, that he was next in line.
Mikkel had moved from the crowd, head kept low as he slipped off into the darkness. He would need to lay low for a few days, find supplies and a new place to hide out. He thought about Margie, but knew that he should not impose on her again. She was his last resort, usually, and unless he became dehydrated or started starving, he would give her a wide berth. There was no reason to put her in danger when there were possibly other places he could go. Back to the sewers, he thought. There were probably still other ex-military down there, some which did not feel a call to battle, even against the Government. He might be able to get information on somewhere out of the city limits that he could go. There were probably other factions, smaller factions that needed someone to help.
Mikkel was hyper aware of the guards around him, but they seemed distracted, attention on the church that they were protecting. It did not seem like they paid him any mind, but still he kept his head low and his movement brisk. He hated soldiers of any kind, and just being near them kept his pulse rate high. He would burn through Opal that way, Mikkel knew, so he tried to school his breathing and keep his hands from shaking.
A gunshot broke through the noise of the area, and everything immediately fell silent for a fraction of a second. In that moment thousands of thoughts went through Mikkel's mind. Oliver, he thought at first. He thought that maybe the pastor had been alerted to them, that he had figured Oliver to not be worth the trouble and had shot him. Mikkel had hoped that information would be slow given the sighting of the Presence, had put all his money on it really, but in that fraction of a second he thought he had been wrong. Then a woman howled and Mikkel relaxed. It had not been Oliver, he thought, momentarily relieved. Oliver had no friends, no allies in the world that would cry over his body like that. It had been someone else, and though Mikkel knew that Oliver would be scared and mortified as he watched the spectacle, he was still thankful that the church had not proved to be the wrong move so soon after Mikkel had made it. Oliver was smart and would be fine, he told himself again.
The crowd grew restless and Mikkel could hear their shouts. He could hear the pastor condemn the black family, but there was nothing to be done. He turned and started retreating again. He moved down the street in a hunched walk, not raising his face but keeping his attention shifting at all times. He needed to see if there was any suspicion on him before it turned into more. Unfortunately it was not long before it had turned into something more.
The cocking of a gun behind him had Mikkel reaching for his pistol again. He pulled it out, slid the hammer back, and turned all in one fluid motion. He shot the guard in the face before he had time to react, but the man had not been alone. Others swarmed him fast, not shooting, however. They knew, Mikkel thought as he moved and shot. They knew he was a Berserker and they would not risk spilling his blood for fear of contamination. That worked well enough for him because Mikkel had an extra clip and that was all he would need to keep them off of him until he could slip away.
Each shot was perfection, muscles moving independent of thought as Mikkel gunned down guard after guard, but more came, and soon enough soldiers joined them. He kept his book bag behind him, safe from attack if they finally got sick of not shooting. However, as Mikkel slipped around a corner, he walked directly into an ambush. He did not even have time to react before he was grabbed and a needle jabbed into his neck. Whatever they pumped into him was not anything Mikkel had been on before because, within a second, he had faded to black.
Oliver was called up the stairs and he hesitated. He felt like all eyes were on him, but it was not the same as it was when stepping out onto the ice for a game. It was nerve wracking, sickening, and terrifying. There were no shivers of anticipation, no excited butterflies in his stomach. All Oliver could feel was complete dread as he was sure any ability to speak, let alone in English, had left him entirely. They would know, he panicked, cold clammy sweat on his hands. They would know he had been with Molious and that he was not even supposed to be there. They would know he was from somewhere else, somewhere without war. They would know, but they were calling him up, and people were growing impatient.
Oliver swallowed hard, steadied himself as much as he could, and began up the stairs. There was no way to avoid the blood, so he stepped in it, tried not to let himself think about how two had died there just because they were black. He tried not to think about it because there was more pressing matters, but all he could do was think about it. Two had died there, and Oliver would be the third. There was no doubt in his scared mind of that.
"What's your name, son?" The pastor asked, seemingly calm and, dare Oliver think it, happy that Oliver was there. There was far too much that went with that thought so Oliver ignored it, pushed it back.
"Oliver," He said, just a bit of a tremor in his voice.
"Oliver, can you recite to me the Lord's Prayer?" Oliver opened his mouth to reply and then stopped. He could, but it was in Swedish. He could say it, but it was in the language that Mikkel told him explicitly not to speak. Oliver stared at the man and he felt utter horror wash over him. "Do you not know it?" The pastor asked, eyes narrowing and voice tightening. He had maybe liked Oliver when he first came forward, but at his hesitation, his temper began to flair again. He would need to lie, Oliver knew. He would need to say something.
"I do know it but… but not English." Not a lie, but not entirely true. He did not say he only knew it in Swedish and hoped, maybe, that the pastor would just suggest he recite it Swedish. Maybe he could con the man into giving him the answers.
"Then in Latin," The pastor replied, but it was not what Oliver wanted. He knew he had painted himself into a corner, but that was what he had to work with. He had to try to make it work, even though there was no way it would. Oliver shifted, licked his lips, and closed his eyes. His mind was full of prayer, that was for sure, but it was not a Lord's Prayer. It was a prayer for his life to be spared, a prayer that something would happen, anything would happen, to keep him safe. Slowly his lips moved, slowly he spoke anything that came to his mind. Of course, what he assumed he had said was "Please, God, I don't want to die!" on repeat, but when he opened his eyes, Oliver saw that the pastor looked impressed.
"It has been a long time since I've heard the Lord's Prayer in Latin, especially with such fine pronunciation." Oliver was dumbfounded, floored, but not so much frightened. Sure, there was still a heavy dose of that in his system, he still shook slightly, but he was more preoccupied with the fact that he had, apparently, spoke Latin. He had not taken Opal, but Oliver wondered if what he had done had been the same thing Maria had done in her journal. He wondered if there was more weight to her idea that Oliver was brought there for a reason than he had given her credit for.
"Welcome to the church of Plano, son," The pastor said, and though the nickname rubbed Oliver the wrong way, made him want to recoil, and scream that the man was a monster, he knew enough to shut up and just accept that, by some miracle, he would make it inside. Oliver slowly extended his hand to shake the pastor's outstretched one, but as he reached, a gunshot echoed from not too far away. Oliver jumped a little and turned, looking in the direction that it had seemed to come from. Seconds later more shots came, solid pops that seemed to be retreating from where they stood. Something in Oliver told him it was Mikkel, but the man had told him to get inside, and running off then, trying to find Mikkel and maybe save him, would bury his chances of that forever. He doubted the pastor would forget such a transgression, and Oliver knew that he would never get the divine intervention a second time.
Gritting his teeth, Oliver turned back to face the man, but what came into his vision was not the grey-haired man, but the butt of a rifle. He had just enough time to brace for the inevitable hit before, for the second time, Oliver was knocked unconscious. Still, Oliver reasoned, it was better than being shot.
Playlist by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://8tracks.com/masterpenguin/liberty-of-possession
Chapter 10 Song by the Amazing MasterPenguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2_Y59HCyhA
Master Post: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/16531.html
Chapter 11 Meet Your Master: http://z4rf3.livejournal.com/19226.html