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Description
Ted sat, dying, on the leather driver’s seat of his Jeep, his left hand pressing a sheet of cloth tightly against his bleeding chest. His right hand gripped the trigger of an Uzi pointed out the passenger side window and down the empty alleyway echoing with an automatic buzz.

Behind him, his friends and comrades were running the other way. He didn’t turn around to see them. His eyes were trained down the rails of the gun as he fired his last three shots into a black-haired woman on the roof of the building across the street at the end of the alley. She was carrying a rifle; he watched it tumble lazily off the edge and to the sidewalk below, where it broke in half.

This completed, Ted dropped his hand weakly onto the center console. The empty gun slid out of his numb, trembling fingers and into the crack between the center and the seat.

He looked at the top of his hand, the tattooed symbol of Omega seeming to burn as it did when it was first put there. As he stared he saw it was ridged around the edges, like a gear; he hadn’t noticed that before.

It fascinated him for a moment how something so familiar could still hide something he had never seen before in plain sight.

His vision started to fade away. He could feel less and less of the throbbing air around him, eventually only noticing the sound of his own waning heartbeat as it slowed to a crawl.

Jesus, this is it, he thought. I’m on the way out.

Ted looked up from his leather-sleeved wrist and saw somebody in the alley walking toward him. He was empty-handed, and although Ted knew what it looked like, his face was partly hidden in the toppled light of the alley under a brown fedora. He had a white tie that stood out starkly against his black suit jacket, and in place of slacks wore what looked like dark brown jeans.

Ted tried to move, only to find his legs had gone numb. He realized that his left arm had, as well; it was lying limp against the door, holding the bloody cloth loosely. He hadn’t felt it drop, and he couldn’t move it back.

He heard the man approach his car and stop. Ted could see his face now; it was old and rough, his unshaven cheeks united by a coarse and thin gray mustache. His eyes were an odd brown color, like they were made of wood.

“You had to know this was coming, Harris,” the man said in a low, surprisingly clear voice.

Ted would have replied, but was too weak.

“I should thank you,” the man went on. “This is the sign Shiner’s been watching for, you know.” He smiled briefly. “This war’s already over.”

Ted forced himself not to believe him.

The man looked down at Ted’s wound. “You’ll be gone in a few more seconds,” he said, grim in his frankness. “You’re lucky; you won’t feel a thing.” He turned away from the Jeep and leaned on the side, looking sideways over his shoulder and sighed. “If you were anyone else, Harris, I’d end you right now, you know that?” He laughed, then slapped the door twice and stood up and started to walk away.

“You’re a great fighter, Ted,” the man called. “I’ll see you in Hell someday.”

He flicked his hand off the side of his hat in a dismissive salute.

It was the last thing Ted Harris ever saw.

~

The next morning, a dirty white-and-red convertible rolled north up Bright Avenue. The streets were full of people breaking the windows of police cars left haphazardly in the middle of the roadway. Some had been taken forcefully by the mobs of assaulters, and some were simply abandoned after hearing the reports from the south end over the radio, along with the hysterical cries inevitably followed by silence.

From inside the car, John looked out at the scene with satisfaction. “Looks like everything's going well,” he remarked.

Jacob, the driver, grunted in agreement. “Better than expected, I'd say,” he said. “This...what'd he call it, Johnny?”

“Blitzkrieg,” John replied, looking back forward at the road.

“What is that, German?”

“Yeah, it's German for 'lightning war.' It was what the Nazis did when they did one over on Poland."

Jacob looked over at him amusedly. "They actually got a word for 'lightning war' over there?"

"It's a compound word, Jake," John replied, as he watched a group of three thugs tackle a policeman and start to hit him with his own nightstick. "'Blitz' is lightning and 'krieg' is war. They do that all the time. You can make anything with 'em. You know lederhosen?"

"What?"

“Ah, never mind, forget it."

“Anyway,” Jacob went on, “whatever you call it, you got to give Shiner credit for comin' up with it.” He shook his head in amazement. “He was serious, wasn't he? When he made that speech?”

“I'd say he was,” John replied. “Sure sounded like it.”

Jacob laughed through his tight smile. “He always sounds that way, Johnny, haven't you noticed? It's just the way he talks. He'd make ordering breakfast seem like a big deal.”

John laughed as he looked back out the window. He noticed up the street a small building on a corner with the sign over the door reading "Police" in glowing blue letters. He pointed to it, nudging Jacob in his rib. "There, there's one."

"Get it ready," Jacob said, as he slowed the car down and pulled over to the roadside next to the police station.

John opened the glove box to reveal several small devices made of sections of pipe sealed with cement at both ends. Each one had a small black circuit panel glued to the side. He took one out and opened the passenger door. “Here we go,” he said, as he closed it behind him.

John, device in hand, walked up to one of the windows decorated with the SAPD logo. He reached into his pocket and took out a small towel, the size of a dish rag. He slapped it on the glass of the window, holding it there with his left hand, then, with his right elbow, smashed the towel at full force onto it. There was a thunderous crashing sound and the window broke inward, creating a large hole in the glass. This being done, John pressed a button on the panel of the device in his hand, and threw it inside, rolling it underneath a table in the corner.

John quickly ran back to the car and slid into it. “Let's go!” he said, pulling the door shut.

Jacob hit the gas and pulled back out onto the street. The two sat quietly for a few seconds as he drove.

“Is it 'leather hoses?’” Jacob finally asked.

John looked at him. “What?”

“Lederhosen.”

“Oh, right, uh...no, it means 'leather pants.'”

“Ach,” Jacob exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “I was close, though.”

A block and a half behind them, the police station exploded. The bottom floor was vaporized instantly, and the upper floors immediately collapsed onto its charred remnants. The blast left a shower of glass shards, rubble and paper thrown onto the intersection as the gathered mob cheered from a distance.

~

24 people sat around a long elliptical table on the top floor of a dilapidated apartment building. The walls on the floor had all been knocked out, making the whole of it one open room. Along the walls were hung banners emblazoned with the Greek letter omega in black with a blue outline.

None of the 24 spoke for a long time. Many took mournful, halfhearted glances at the large chair at the end of the ellipse, looking for some kind of leadership that wasn’t coming.

“Come on, guys,” one redheaded woman finally said from hear the middle of the table, looking up and down it as she spoke. “Why are we just sitting here?”

No answer came for a few seconds. Eventually a man with a thick brown beard spoke up. “What’s the point, Liz?” he asked.

Liz scoffed. “What’s the…the point is, we could be out there, pushing these goons back, and we’re all just feeling sorry for ourselves! I don’t get it!”

“Look,” a clean-shaven man across from her said. “This was Ted’s fight. His determination was what kept pushing us to attack, to keep fighting in his war. It was like a drum in a marching band; it kept us going long past when we would have quit.” He looked up and down the table. “I mean, would any of us be here if it wasn’t for Ted? Would any of us have stayed past that first battle?”

Nobody answered, but the answer was clear.

“And now, our drum’s gone.” He pointed to the empty chair at the head of the table. “We don’t have a beat to march to anymore. And if we tried, we’d just end up tripping over each other.”

Liz put her palm over her face. “I can’t stand it, Ben, I really just can’t stand sitting here on my ass and watching them undo everything we’ve done.”

“At least you’re safe here on your ass,” a blond woman at the foot of the table said.

“You gotta face it, Liz,” Ben said, sadly looking up at Ted Harris’ empty chair. “The Omegas are never coming back.” He sat back in a slouch. “We’re just an army of idiots.”

Liz sighed and leaned back in her chair to look out the window she was sitting in front of. Through it, she saw with a shock that there were two red-and-white cars parked in front of the building.

“Shit!” she shouted, standing up in a start. “They know we’re here! We need to get out of here!”

The rest of the 24 quickly stood up as well in a commotion, following Liz quickly to a large wall hanging at the back of the building. She ripped it off to reveal a panel of the wall behind it, which she began to push. There was a metallic creaking and grinding and slowly the hidden door opened out onto a fire escape leading downward into a closed-off alleyway.

“Listen,” she shouted at the group. “Get to the ground and scatter. Stay off the streets as much as possible. Use tunnels, subways, sewers, anything, just don’t let them see you. Try and get to somewhere where nobody will think of looking for you.” She stepped aside. “Now, go! Move!”

Liz watched as the team filed out onto the metal scaffolding and hurried down the stairs to the ground. Just as the last member was leaving and Liz was climbing out the doorway, the stairway door at the other end of the room opened halfway. A hand quickly stuck itself inside and threw a small white device that looked like a sealed pipe into the room. Immediately after, the door slammed shut.

Liz looked at the bomb for a second, like a frog staring into a flashlight. Reality came snapping back fast, though, like a slap to the back of her head.

“Hurry!” she shouted to the others on the fire escape as she began to run down the thin metal stairs. “There’s a bomb!”

Liz sped down the stairs, expecting at any second to hear a tremendous explosion, not knowing if she would be consumed by it or not, wondering if she forgot anyone or anything up there, then finally resolving not to think and just run.

Looking down, Liz saw the last of the group get off the bottom of the escape. She was still about two stories up, and was about to turn the corner to go down one last stairway when the bomb went off above her.

Flames shot in all directions from the top of the building. Pieces of rubble and metal flew in all directions like shrapnel from a grenade. Liz lost her balance and fell onto the metal platform as the whole building shook. She had felt a lot of earthquakes, and the blast felt exactly like one.

Just then, there was another jolt in the platform accompanied by the sound of bending and snapping metal from above. Liz looked up and saw that the fire escape had come loose from the top of the building and was starting to peel off of it, snapping the bolts that tied it to the stone and brick walls.

Liz, in terror, jumped down the stairs in one hop, twisting her ankle when she landed. She got to the end of the escape, where instead of a ladder there was an open dumpster deliberately filled with bags of packing peanuts beneath the hole to break the half-story fall. She jumped into it, but landed awkwardly because of her ankle and rolled off onto the ground on her back.

As Liz stared upward, the fire escape separated completely from the building, and started to fall into the alleyway on top of her. She closed her eyes and held her breath.

While she definitely heard a crash, she felt nothing. She opened her eyes.

The escape had fallen, but had become stuck on the building across the alley and had not yet totally collapsed. However, it was still making loud groaning sounds and she could see it bending under its own weight. Hurriedly, she managed to stand up and limp away just before it collapsed completely, eliminating the last vestige of the House of Omega.

Liz looked up at the smoking ruin on the top floor for a few seconds before turning and heading into the adjacent building where a tunnel in the basement would let her into the subway system.

~

“Fellow citizens of San Alejandro,” Mayor Rick Squire said, shakily, in front of a live camera broadcasting on every channel. “The city is under attack. Do not leave your homes. I repeat, to anyone watching this message, do not go out onto the streets.”

There was a pause as he was startled by two gunshots that sounded distressingly close. He shut his eyes and took a breath, then went on. “Barricade your doors. If you hear a knock, do not, under any circumstance, open your door. If you have a bomb shelter, I urge you to take advantage of it immediately.”

“Mayor Squire, we need to leave,” a slick-haired man in sunglasses and a black suit near the office door said, off-camera. “The helicopter’s waiting for us. We need to leave now!”

The mayor looked at him. “Tell it to wait,” he declared in a resolute tone. He looked back at the camera after taking a breath, with watery eyes. “And to the thousands that have turned on reason and are perpetrating this madness, I urge you—I beg you—to stop, before more lives are senselessly lost.”

“Sir, they’re in the building!” the slick-haired man said, hysterically. “We need to—“

He was interrupted by the sound of the door being broken down. The slick-haired man drew his gun, but he wasn’t fast enough; one shot later, and he was dead, a hole through his brainstem.

Every TV that was on in the city at that moment showed Mayor Rick Squire turn in his chair toward the doorway, mouth the word “no,” and receive two rapid shots to his chest and neck.

Five seconds of silence and stillness followed on the broadcast before a pale hand grabbed the Mayor’s body and pulled him out of the chair. The owner of the hand then sat down in the chair in front of the still-live camera after a two-second pause.

He slowly placed the weapon he had used, a .44 magnum revolver heavily modified for semiautomatic fire, onto the desk in front of him. As he lowered his arm, it appeared almost bone-thin beneath the sleeve of his white hooded sweatshirt, which itself appeared almost surreal in the flooded lights of the office. This was only heightened by the man's hair, which was a bizarrely uniform white cascade that dropped past his shoulders. His face was thin, but plain, and his skin seemed nearly as pale as his hair, making him look washed out on the image, like a photograph taken with too intense a flash. His eyes seemed to even be colored white.

“Hello, you innocent masses,” he said, his voice somehow hollow-sounding but surprisingly sharp and defined. “My name is Roger Corsic.” He smiled, almost seeming amiable. “The city calls me Shiner.”

His smile faded, but just halfway. “I, along with my closest allies, represent the leadership of an... organization, shall we say, called Halogen. We, along with seventeen other major urban organizations with similar interests, yesterday formed a coalition for a...shall we say, popular uprising. It is this force that you see in the streets of San Alejandro, purging this beauteous city of its mechanical shackles.

“Let me first entreat you to feel no fear in what is happening. We hold no quarrel toward you, our friends and neighbors, who merely wish to live their lives. On the contrary—we are all but people such as yourselves. What we have set into motion shall be a boon to us all in due time. In the meantime, please, come outside. You will not be harmed, or harassed; you will be left alone to go about your lives. However, as is the case in any rule of law, if you are in our way, we shall...” He paused for a second, searching for a word. “...push you aside,” he finished.

Shiner leaned forward, casting menacing shadows on his jagged and bony face. From this light, the video showed that he had eyes that were, in fact, a milky blue, and not totally white. “With regards to members of the police force that have gone into hiding,” he went on, “know that we are willing to accept a sincere surrender. Know also that this is the only way that your safety can be ensured. If our brave forces encounter a uniformed officer or cruiser—and they are indeed searching—they will respond with force. If you wish to be safe from such an end, come out from your hiding and tell one of us that you want to surrender. You will be taken here, to City Hall, where you will surrender your uniform, your badge, and your weapons. You will then be free to leave and go about your life without any further harassment.

Shiner sighed and looked down at the desk. “As for the disappeared members of the Fellowship of Omega,” he said, his tone growing darker as he spoke, “we know who you are, and it is already too late for you to seek forgiveness.” He looked up at the camera. “If we see you,” he droned grimly, “we will kill you.” He cracked a smile under his cold, white eyes. “We will kill you without a second thought.”

Description
Ted sat, dying, on the leather driver’s seat of his Jeep, his left hand pressing a sheet of cloth tightly against his bleeding chest. His right hand gripped the trigger of an Uzi pointed out the passenger side window and down the empty alleyway echoing with an automatic buzz.

Behind him, his friends and comrades were running the other way. He didn’t turn around to see them. His eyes were trained down the rails of the gun as he fired his last three shots into a black-haired woman on the roof of the building across the street at the end of the alley. She was carrying a rifle; he watched it tumble lazily off the edge and to the sidewalk below, where it broke in half.

This completed, Ted dropped his hand weakly onto the center console. The empty gun slid out of his numb, trembling fingers and into the crack between the center and the seat.

He looked at the top of his hand, the tattooed symbol of Omega seeming to burn as it did when it was first put there. As he stared he saw it was ridged around the edges, like a gear; he hadn’t noticed that before.

It fascinated him for a moment how something so familiar could still hide something he had never seen before in plain sight.

His vision started to fade away. He could feel less and less of the throbbing air around him, eventually only noticing the sound of his own waning heartbeat as it slowed to a crawl.

Jesus, this is it, he thought. I’m on the way out.

Ted looked up from his leather-sleeved wrist and saw somebody in the alley walking toward him. He was empty-handed, and although Ted knew what it looked like, his face was partly hidden in the toppled light of the alley under a brown fedora. He had a white tie that stood out starkly against his black suit jacket, and in place of slacks wore what looked like dark brown jeans.

Ted tried to move, only to find his legs had gone numb. He realized that his left arm had, as well; it was lying limp against the door, holding the bloody cloth loosely. He hadn’t felt it drop, and he couldn’t move it back.

He heard the man approach his car and stop. Ted could see his face now; it was old and rough, his unshaven cheeks united by a coarse and thin gray mustache. His eyes were an odd brown color, like they were made of wood.

“You had to know this was coming, Harris,” the man said in a low, surprisingly clear voice.

Ted would have replied, but was too weak.

“I should thank you,” the man went on. “This is the sign Shiner’s been watching for, you know.” He smiled briefly. “This war’s already over.”

Ted forced himself not to believe him.

The man looked down at Ted’s wound. “You’ll be gone in a few more seconds,” he said, grim in his frankness. “You’re lucky; you won’t feel a thing.” He turned away from the Jeep and leaned on the side, looking sideways over his shoulder and sighed. “If you were anyone else, Harris, I’d end you right now, you know that?” He laughed, then slapped the door twice and stood up and started to walk away.

“You’re a great fighter, Ted,” the man called. “I’ll see you in Hell someday.”

He flicked his hand off the side of his hat in a dismissive salute.

It was the last thing Ted Harris ever saw.

~

The next morning, a dirty white-and-red convertible rolled north up Bright Avenue. The streets were full of people breaking the windows of police cars left haphazardly in the middle of the roadway. Some had been taken forcefully by the mobs of assaulters, and some were simply abandoned after hearing the reports from the south end over the radio, along with the hysterical cries inevitably followed by silence.

From inside the car, John looked out at the scene with satisfaction. “Looks like everything's going well,” he remarked.

Jacob, the driver, grunted in agreement. “Better than expected, I'd say,” he said. “This...what'd he call it, Johnny?”

“Blitzkrieg,” John replied, looking back forward at the road.

“What is that, German?”

“Yeah, it's German for 'lightning war.' It was what the Nazis did when they did one over on Poland."

Jacob looked over at him amusedly. "They actually got a word for 'lightning war' over there?"

"It's a compound word, Jake," John replied, as he watched a group of three thugs tackle a policeman and start to hit him with his own nightstick. "'Blitz' is lightning and 'krieg' is war. They do that all the time. You can make anything with 'em. You know lederhosen?"

"What?"

“Ah, never mind, forget it."

“Anyway,” Jacob went on, “whatever you call it, you got to give Shiner credit for comin' up with it.” He shook his head in amazement. “He was serious, wasn't he? When he made that speech?”

“I'd say he was,” John replied. “Sure sounded like it.”

Jacob laughed through his tight smile. “He always sounds that way, Johnny, haven't you noticed? It's just the way he talks. He'd make ordering breakfast seem like a big deal.”

John laughed as he looked back out the window. He noticed up the street a small building on a corner with the sign over the door reading "Police" in glowing blue letters. He pointed to it, nudging Jacob in his rib. "There, there's one."

"Get it ready," Jacob said, as he slowed the car down and pulled over to the roadside next to the police station.

John opened the glove box to reveal several small devices made of sections of pipe sealed with cement at both ends. Each one had a small black circuit panel glued to the side. He took one out and opened the passenger door. “Here we go,” he said, as he closed it behind him.

John, device in hand, walked up to one of the windows decorated with the SAPD logo. He reached into his pocket and took out a small towel, the size of a dish rag. He slapped it on the glass of the window, holding it there with his left hand, then, with his right elbow, smashed the towel at full force onto it. There was a thunderous crashing sound and the window broke inward, creating a large hole in the glass. This being done, John pressed a button on the panel of the device in his hand, and threw it inside, rolling it underneath a table in the corner.

John quickly ran back to the car and slid into it. “Let's go!” he said, pulling the door shut.

Jacob hit the gas and pulled back out onto the street. The two sat quietly for a few seconds as he drove.

“Is it 'leather hoses?’” Jacob finally asked.

John looked at him. “What?”

“Lederhosen.”

“Oh, right, uh...no, it means 'leather pants.'”

“Ach,” Jacob exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “I was close, though.”

A block and a half behind them, the police station exploded. The bottom floor was vaporized instantly, and the upper floors immediately collapsed onto its charred remnants. The blast left a shower of glass shards, rubble and paper thrown onto the intersection as the gathered mob cheered from a distance.

~

24 people sat around a long elliptical table on the top floor of a dilapidated apartment building. The walls on the floor had all been knocked out, making the whole of it one open room. Along the walls were hung banners emblazoned with the Greek letter omega in black with a blue outline.

None of the 24 spoke for a long time. Many took mournful, halfhearted glances at the large chair at the end of the ellipse, looking for some kind of leadership that wasn’t coming.

“Come on, guys,” one redheaded woman finally said from hear the middle of the table, looking up and down it as she spoke. “Why are we just sitting here?”

No answer came for a few seconds. Eventually a man with a thick brown beard spoke up. “What’s the point, Liz?” he asked.

Liz scoffed. “What’s the…the point is, we could be out there, pushing these goons back, and we’re all just feeling sorry for ourselves! I don’t get it!”

“Look,” a clean-shaven man across from her said. “This was Ted’s fight. His determination was what kept pushing us to attack, to keep fighting in his war. It was like a drum in a marching band; it kept us going long past when we would have quit.” He looked up and down the table. “I mean, would any of us be here if it wasn’t for Ted? Would any of us have stayed past that first battle?”

Nobody answered, but the answer was clear.

“And now, our drum’s gone.” He pointed to the empty chair at the head of the table. “We don’t have a beat to march to anymore. And if we tried, we’d just end up tripping over each other.”

Liz put her palm over her face. “I can’t stand it, Ben, I really just can’t stand sitting here on my ass and watching them undo everything we’ve done.”

“At least you’re safe here on your ass,” a blond woman at the foot of the table said.

“You gotta face it, Liz,” Ben said, sadly looking up at Ted Harris’ empty chair. “The Omegas are never coming back.” He sat back in a slouch. “We’re just an army of idiots.”

Liz sighed and leaned back in her chair to look out the window she was sitting in front of. Through it, she saw with a shock that there were two red-and-white cars parked in front of the building.

“Shit!” she shouted, standing up in a start. “They know we’re here! We need to get out of here!”

The rest of the 24 quickly stood up as well in a commotion, following Liz quickly to a large wall hanging at the back of the building. She ripped it off to reveal a panel of the wall behind it, which she began to push. There was a metallic creaking and grinding and slowly the hidden door opened out onto a fire escape leading downward into a closed-off alleyway.

“Listen,” she shouted at the group. “Get to the ground and scatter. Stay off the streets as much as possible. Use tunnels, subways, sewers, anything, just don’t let them see you. Try and get to somewhere where nobody will think of looking for you.” She stepped aside. “Now, go! Move!”

Liz watched as the team filed out onto the metal scaffolding and hurried down the stairs to the ground. Just as the last member was leaving and Liz was climbing out the doorway, the stairway door at the other end of the room opened halfway. A hand quickly stuck itself inside and threw a small white device that looked like a sealed pipe into the room. Immediately after, the door slammed shut.

Liz looked at the bomb for a second, like a frog staring into a flashlight. Reality came snapping back fast, though, like a slap to the back of her head.

“Hurry!” she shouted to the others on the fire escape as she began to run down the thin metal stairs. “There’s a bomb!”

Liz sped down the stairs, expecting at any second to hear a tremendous explosion, not knowing if she would be consumed by it or not, wondering if she forgot anyone or anything up there, then finally resolving not to think and just run.

Looking down, Liz saw the last of the group get off the bottom of the escape. She was still about two stories up, and was about to turn the corner to go down one last stairway when the bomb went off above her.

Flames shot in all directions from the top of the building. Pieces of rubble and metal flew in all directions like shrapnel from a grenade. Liz lost her balance and fell onto the metal platform as the whole building shook. She had felt a lot of earthquakes, and the blast felt exactly like one.

Just then, there was another jolt in the platform accompanied by the sound of bending and snapping metal from above. Liz looked up and saw that the fire escape had come loose from the top of the building and was starting to peel off of it, snapping the bolts that tied it to the stone and brick walls.

Liz, in terror, jumped down the stairs in one hop, twisting her ankle when she landed. She got to the end of the escape, where instead of a ladder there was an open dumpster deliberately filled with bags of packing peanuts beneath the hole to break the half-story fall. She jumped into it, but landed awkwardly because of her ankle and rolled off onto the ground on her back.

As Liz stared upward, the fire escape separated completely from the building, and started to fall into the alleyway on top of her. She closed her eyes and held her breath.

While she definitely heard a crash, she felt nothing. She opened her eyes.

The escape had fallen, but had become stuck on the building across the alley and had not yet totally collapsed. However, it was still making loud groaning sounds and she could see it bending under its own weight. Hurriedly, she managed to stand up and limp away just before it collapsed completely, eliminating the last vestige of the House of Omega.

Liz looked up at the smoking ruin on the top floor for a few seconds before turning and heading into the adjacent building where a tunnel in the basement would let her into the subway system.

~

“Fellow citizens of San Alejandro,” Mayor Rick Squire said, shakily, in front of a live camera broadcasting on every channel. “The city is under attack. Do not leave your homes. I repeat, to anyone watching this message, do not go out onto the streets.”

There was a pause as he was startled by two gunshots that sounded distressingly close. He shut his eyes and took a breath, then went on. “Barricade your doors. If you hear a knock, do not, under any circumstance, open your door. If you have a bomb shelter, I urge you to take advantage of it immediately.”

“Mayor Squire, we need to leave,” a slick-haired man in sunglasses and a black suit near the office door said, off-camera. “The helicopter’s waiting for us. We need to leave now!”

The mayor looked at him. “Tell it to wait,” he declared in a resolute tone. He looked back at the camera after taking a breath, with watery eyes. “And to the thousands that have turned on reason and are perpetrating this madness, I urge you—I beg you—to stop, before more lives are senselessly lost.”

“Sir, they’re in the building!” the slick-haired man said, hysterically. “We need to—“

He was interrupted by the sound of the door being broken down. The slick-haired man drew his gun, but he wasn’t fast enough; one shot later, and he was dead, a hole through his brainstem.

Every TV that was on in the city at that moment showed Mayor Rick Squire turn in his chair toward the doorway, mouth the word “no,” and receive two rapid shots to his chest and neck.

Five seconds of silence and stillness followed on the broadcast before a pale hand grabbed the Mayor’s body and pulled him out of the chair. The owner of the hand then sat down in the chair in front of the still-live camera after a two-second pause.

He slowly placed the weapon he had used, a .44 magnum revolver heavily modified for semiautomatic fire, onto the desk in front of him. As he lowered his arm, it appeared almost bone-thin beneath the sleeve of his white hooded sweatshirt, which itself appeared almost surreal in the flooded lights of the office. This was only heightened by the man's hair, which was a bizarrely uniform white cascade that dropped past his shoulders. His face was thin, but plain, and his skin seemed nearly as pale as his hair, making him look washed out on the image, like a photograph taken with too intense a flash. His eyes seemed to even be colored white.

“Hello, you innocent masses,” he said, his voice somehow hollow-sounding but surprisingly sharp and defined. “My name is Roger Corsic.” He smiled, almost seeming amiable. “The city calls me Shiner.”

His smile faded, but just halfway. “I, along with my closest allies, represent the leadership of an... organization, shall we say, called Halogen. We, along with seventeen other major urban organizations with similar interests, yesterday formed a coalition for a...shall we say, popular uprising. It is this force that you see in the streets of San Alejandro, purging this beauteous city of its mechanical shackles.

“Let me first entreat you to feel no fear in what is happening. We hold no quarrel toward you, our friends and neighbors, who merely wish to live their lives. On the contrary—we are all but people such as yourselves. What we have set into motion shall be a boon to us all in due time. In the meantime, please, come outside. You will not be harmed, or harassed; you will be left alone to go about your lives. However, as is the case in any rule of law, if you are in our way, we shall...” He paused for a second, searching for a word. “...push you aside,” he finished.

Shiner leaned forward, casting menacing shadows on his jagged and bony face. From this light, the video showed that he had eyes that were, in fact, a milky blue, and not totally white. “With regards to members of the police force that have gone into hiding,” he went on, “know that we are willing to accept a sincere surrender. Know also that this is the only way that your safety can be ensured. If our brave forces encounter a uniformed officer or cruiser—and they are indeed searching—they will respond with force. If you wish to be safe from such an end, come out from your hiding and tell one of us that you want to surrender. You will be taken here, to City Hall, where you will surrender your uniform, your badge, and your weapons. You will then be free to leave and go about your life without any further harassment.

Shiner sighed and looked down at the desk. “As for the disappeared members of the Fellowship of Omega,” he said, his tone growing darker as he spoke, “we know who you are, and it is already too late for you to seek forgiveness.” He looked up at the camera. “If we see you,” he droned grimly, “we will kill you.” He cracked a smile under his cold, white eyes. “We will kill you without a second thought.”