Never Again
The skies above New York City were dark, predicting rain later on, as Liam Kincaid slowly walked down Broadway. Shivering at a sudden gust of cold wind he pulled the collar of his leather jacket up. This was one visit to New York he wished he didn´t have to make. And the weather had nothing to do with it.
He had come here for talks with the leaders of the New York Resistance cell. For weeks now they had been pressing him, frustrated by the lack of results these last months, calling for a much more radical stance. They blamed him as the leader of the Resistance for the lack of results, for not doing enough to stop the Taelons. It did not matter to them that that wasn´t true. But Liam wasn´t ready to give in to their demands, had told them ´no´ every time they asked that same question. He felt as frustrated as they did, but he would not and could not revert to the terrorism they asked for. The square he came to now was one of the reasons why.
It was huge. A gaping hole in the tightly packed office blocks of Lower Manhattan. Stepping onto the dark flagstones of the square Liam thought back to what he had read about this place.
That day, September 11th, 2001 had started bright and sunny, until a dark cloud had descended on New York and all the world. The day had still been young when shortly after another two hijacked airliners had slammed into the twin towers of what had up till that moment been known as the World Trade Center. It had left a huge gap in New York´s famous skyline, and a huge gap in the local population. The names edged into the flagstones beneath his feet bore silent testimony to that.
Liam´s eyes swept from one name to the next, taking them in, but above all taking in the ages right next to them. Twenty-one, Fifty-five, thirty- three, forty-eight. It just went on and on, thousands of names, thousands of ages, covering this memorial square from one end to the other. There were more than five thousand names. It saddened him, even though he had not even been born yet when this tragedy occurred.
Still, the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC had let to a lot of good as well. It had united the entire world in a fight against terrorism, a united stance that would give the world a fair chance of beating the secretive enemy. And terrorism had received a number of critical blows. It still existed, but huge attacks like the one responsible for the names beneath his feet were a thing of the past.
Then the Taelons had arrived. Terrorism had a different face now. It no longer claimed lives out in the open. These days terrorism took place behind closed doors, on a much smaller scale.
But not for long if the New York Resistance had any say in it. Liam could not understand why they so desperately wanted to turn back the clock to a time when every single day people died in bombings and other tools of terrorism. Had they not learned anything from what had happened here? Did this disaster have to repeat itself over and over again?
No, it did not, Liam vowed to himself. He would keep fighting terrorism, be that Taelon or human, or die trying. If he did not nobody would ever be safe again. The people who had died on that dark day in September of 2001 would have died in vain. It had to stop here! And he would convince the people he was about to face of the same thing.
With that thought echoing through his mind and a last look at the flagstones of the square behind him, Liam continued on his way, his resolve stronger than ever.
The skies above New York City were dark, predicting rain later on, as Liam Kincaid slowly walked down Broadway. Shivering at a sudden gust of cold wind he pulled the collar of his leather jacket up. This was one visit to New York he wished he didn´t have to make. And the weather had nothing to do with it.
He had come here for talks with the leaders of the New York Resistance cell. For weeks now they had been pressing him, frustrated by the lack of results these last months, calling for a much more radical stance. They blamed him as the leader of the Resistance for the lack of results, for not doing enough to stop the Taelons. It did not matter to them that that wasn´t true. But Liam wasn´t ready to give in to their demands, had told them ´no´ every time they asked that same question. He felt as frustrated as they did, but he would not and could not revert to the terrorism they asked for. The square he came to now was one of the reasons why.
It was huge. A gaping hole in the tightly packed office blocks of Lower Manhattan. Stepping onto the dark flagstones of the square Liam thought back to what he had read about this place.
That day, September 11th, 2001 had started bright and sunny, until a dark cloud had descended on New York and all the world. The day had still been young when shortly after another two hijacked airliners had slammed into the twin towers of what had up till that moment been known as the World Trade Center. It had left a huge gap in New York´s famous skyline, and a huge gap in the local population. The names edged into the flagstones beneath his feet bore silent testimony to that.
Liam´s eyes swept from one name to the next, taking them in, but above all taking in the ages right next to them. Twenty-one, Fifty-five, thirty- three, forty-eight. It just went on and on, thousands of names, thousands of ages, covering this memorial square from one end to the other. There were more than five thousand names. It saddened him, even though he had not even been born yet when this tragedy occurred.
Still, the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC had let to a lot of good as well. It had united the entire world in a fight against terrorism, a united stance that would give the world a fair chance of beating the secretive enemy. And terrorism had received a number of critical blows. It still existed, but huge attacks like the one responsible for the names beneath his feet were a thing of the past.
Then the Taelons had arrived. Terrorism had a different face now. It no longer claimed lives out in the open. These days terrorism took place behind closed doors, on a much smaller scale.
But not for long if the New York Resistance had any say in it. Liam could not understand why they so desperately wanted to turn back the clock to a time when every single day people died in bombings and other tools of terrorism. Had they not learned anything from what had happened here? Did this disaster have to repeat itself over and over again?
No, it did not, Liam vowed to himself. He would keep fighting terrorism, be that Taelon or human, or die trying. If he did not nobody would ever be safe again. The people who had died on that dark day in September of 2001 would have died in vain. It had to stop here! And he would convince the people he was about to face of the same thing.
With that thought echoing through his mind and a last look at the flagstones of the square behind him, Liam continued on his way, his resolve stronger than ever.