Jiya warned me of my death long before it happened. I argued that this world lacked the temperance for fate or destiny. But watching you slip from my bed before dawn, I find no regret, only grace that we shared these fleeting nights together. Fate's hand runs through the filaments of timelines tying us together and I go to my end praying the universe deems this sacrifice worthy.
I'm sorry I couldn't tell you, my Lucia, but nothing can alter the destiny I face in the dull, grey morning that hangs like a shroud over this burial march. My Valkyrie, my love, my warrior wife, I cannot risk you, my fear for your continued survival all-consuming. The world cannot continue without your light.
I never finished telling you the story of how I met you the first time around. You know the beginning: the dingy bar in Sao Paulo, half empty and smelling of decades of sorrow, heaped on the shoulders of the working dead shuffling in for the oblivion of the bottle. You found me there, drunk, alone, paranoid; a desperate predator, backed into a corner and out of options.
I never told you my darkest confession. I walked away from you that night. You begged me to listen and I ignored you. All of what follows, the Collections and the Cleansing, The Days of Necessity and the Nights of Regret. The creeping smothering plague that crept through history, bent on a more perfect union. It is all my fault.
This journal is the story of the Resistance. Of humanity's last stand. I am only one man, one soldier, and this is my last contribution to the cause. I entrust it to your keeping.
For you. For the future. To amend for the past.
I walk willing into the fire, unafraid of the flames.
I love you, Lucy Preston-Flynn.
To the ends of the earth,
Garcia
xxxxx
September 12, 2014
xxxxx
The smell of desperation stalked him, fear making him sloppy. Rittenhouse only two days behind, Flynn knew tomorrow he needed to be on a plane bound for Siberia. Mauritania. Madagascar. Anywhere a thousand miles away. Under another identity. Running. Always running.
He wanted to stand and fight, but who? Where? How? He was only one man, one soldier. He needed an army. He gestured to the bartender, who refilled his whiskey. His third. After this, he'd throw another dart at another wall. Let the fickle hand of fate decide the next destination. Sipping, the liquid burned and he let it dull the sharper corners of his grief. Nothing lasted long enough to erase the agony of the pale yellow room, Lorena draped over the white bedspread, reaching for her daughter. Her last thought, protecting Iris. His heart, his hope, immortalized forever in a pool of blood. He could not forget the deep red stain enveloping their bodies as he ran from the house. Felt the bullets ricochet, but none succeeded in giving him an easy death.
That image haunted him, chased him around the globe as he tried to disappear from Rittenhouse. He wanted vengeance, could taste its promise beneath the whiskey, beckoning him forward. Whispering of the peace he craved, the peace that eluded him. Penance for the lives he failed to protect.
"Is this seat taken?" a feminine voice inquired.
He looked up, studying her through the haze of alcohol and cigarette smoke. "Suit yourself." Pretty, but rough around the edges. Her cargoes and faded grey t-shirt, old, worn. Brunette hair chopped at the shoulders, utilitarian.
"Vodka. Pura." The bartender filled the glass he placed in front of her. "Obrigado."
Flynn sized her up with a stolen glance, tense, but not going for the weapon at her ankle. Too far away to take him down before he strangled the life out of her. He'd prefer not to, leaving bodies behind complicated his escape. The little he knew about Rittenhouse, they wouldn't be so brazen. If they'd sent her to seduce him, her clothing too sloppy, accenting nothing of her small frame. They'd killed his wife, sending him a whore would backfire. No pale imitation of Lorena would divert his attention long enough to kill him.
"Garcia Flynn." Her words, confident, not a question.
Adrenaline surged through his veins, on immediate alert. "Do I know you?" He touched the weapon at his side, sliding his hand over its cool surface and unsnapping the holster. Though he despised men who used violence against women, in this moment, she was the enemy, not a woman. Nothing would stop him from avenging the death of his family.
"In a manner of speaking," she trailed off, her gaze hiding something.
"There is no manner of speaking," his sidearm slipped from the holster with ease. "Tell me your name or find another mark."
"Lucy Preston," she turned and extended her hand to him. He let it hang in the air between them. "I know about Lorena and Iris. How they died. How you found them and how you ran."
Scoffing, he raised his drink to his lips. "So does most of America. Try again."
"I know who's responsible. They're called-"
"Rittenhouse. Yes, I know all of this." Unimpressed, his stare dissected her.
"You want revenge for their deaths, to obliterate Rittenhouse?" He gave her a curt nod and his body relaxed a fraction. "You're gonna need my help to do that."
A raised eyebrow captured his incredulity. "You? I'm going to need your help?" He shot down the last of his whiskey. "No offense, Lucy," he spat out her name like a curse as his eyes raked down her body, "but you have very little to offer me."
Her face looked like he'd punched her and regret flooded his system. Why? Obviously Rittenhouse, he shouldn't care about hurting her. But the way she looked at him, haggard and hopeless, like she was drinking in the only water in the desert.
"Forgive me." Why was he apologizing?
Her smile changed her entire face, lifted the weariness from it's lines and revealed the girl the years must have worn away. "It's okay. I'm used to it."
She withdrew a battered brown leather journal and set it on the bar between them. "What is it?" he asked without taking it. He noticed the initials engraved on the front, but couldn't make them out.
She chewed her bottom lip, careful of her words. "The story of how we beat them."
"Is that so." He turned away, dismissing her.
"You have to believe me, one day you and I are going to work together to bring them down and you're going to need this journal to-" she swallowed the words she wanted to say and corrected, "to get you there." A wistful, tortured smile crossed her face. "We make quite the team."
Back to skepticism, he moved to leave. "You're insane. There's no way you can know that unless you're hiding a crystal ball behind that pretty face. Now, if you'll excuse me."
Stepping away from her, she stopped him with a hand on his forearm. "Just wait. You can't imagine how important this is." He glared down and shook off her touch. "Just take the journal, what can it hurt?" she begged him, tears threatening to break free of her lids. She pushed the scarred book at him. "Please."
He hesitated, almost grabbing it from her outstretched hands. But he needed certainty, not pipe dreams from a woman who claimed to know the future. He knew what lay in front of him and he accepted his waiting death. "Sell your crazy elsewhere, Lucy Preston. Have a good life."
With that, he walked away from her, overwhelmed by a sense of dread. Had he turned around, he would have seen her, tears streaming, a woman shattering in the dim light, crushed by years of heartbreak.
xxxxx
Four Years Later
xxxxx
The crowd gathered in the square at nine a.m. sharp for the Daily Devotional. Each citizen required to appear at their designated Collection points. These days they served as little more than gathering spots, the Dark Years behind them, but the screams of the Forgotten echoed in the ghosts they left behind.
Garcia Flynn hated being caught out at this time of day, safer to be underground. Too many eyes. He pulled the old Tigers hat lower and knelt with the rest of the group.
The loudspeaker crackled to life. The wind at your back.
"The sun on your face," came the crowd's monotone, an automatic recitation.
Peace through obedience.
We kneel.
Prosperity through control.
We kneel.
Everything in its time;
For the good of humanity, the few must rise.
We submit to the will of Rittenhouse.
And so they began their day. He rose and blended with the throng as they dispersed. Back to the bunker to plan their next mission. Something big, they'd been nibbling around the edges for too long. They needed something to shake people from their complacency. The ranks of the resistance thinned over the past couple years, the fight often fatal. If not in combat, then paraded in front of the jeering crowd, your last breaths, a warning.
He stuck to the dirtier side streets, narrow alleys that filled with garbage the closer you got to the Outskirts. Nearer the Citadel, the center resembled the city of old. But here, the people subsisted on the barest amounts, the scraps of the unused and tossed away. Warehouse workers, housekeepers, and bartenders mingled with the underemployed and the struggling to get by.
Detroit Zone: Restaurant District Three, or RD3 for short, lucked out since the only entrance to the bunker lay in the south corner nearest Warehouse District One and behind the arena. Therefore, RD3 existed under his protection. His guys infiltrated every aspect of life in the district to ensure the peaceful balance. Never letting anything get too out of control, they allowed his Zoners relative freedom to resolve differences however they saw fit. As long as no one rioted and no one died, they needed the release from the weight of the world around them.
Some districts descended into mob style vengeance with the occupants huddling against the night in their one room quarters. Rittenhouse didn't care as long as the cities kept running and the bodies got buried before the sun rose. It played into their ultimate goal anyway. Keep 'em working, slogging through the muck with the promise of a better tomorrow.
He crossed through the last checkpoint into RDS proper, "Hey John, Philly."
His guys waved him through without issue and he scanned the fence in both directions, greeted by the rusting Warning signs that bordered the entirety of the Outskirt Zone. Rittenhouse discouraged mixing between Zoners. Once designated, you stayed in your place until they found you worthy of Ascension. Very few citizens ever made it out of their original zone, but when someone did, the event required a series of solemn rituals.
"Quiet as usual, Flynn," Philly answered his unspoken question. The dark man joined Flynn back in the beginning, when he and the team first organized. He trusted him almost as much as he trusted Karl.
Nodding, he passed through the gates and continued on, torching the forged papers that gave him temporary access to the Central Zone and dropping them in an empty barrel to burn away. Gone, like his original identity. Erased from any database when he stumbled into Detroit right before they closed all the borders.
He often worried about his decision to come back to the States. Sitting in the chapel, back home in Croatia, something drew him to Detroit. He had no idea why, but he followed that instinct. Running into Jiya at the dive bar on Charlevoix saved his sorry ass. He had no idea why she took him in at the time, simply thankful for a clean set of sheets.
Entering MacReynolds by the back door, Flynn wound his way through the stainless steel prep tables.
"Hey Bossman." Flynn dragged his focus back to reality. "What's the haps?"
"Same old, same old, Q." He snagged a french fry out of the basket. "You get in those burgers?"
"Yeah, gave me a bit of trouble again." The young man shrugged. "Trying to pass off the expired stuff as if I don't know."
Flynn stopped at the kitchen exit. "You need reimbursed at all?"
"Nah, man," he shook his head. "I took Karl with me, so I didn't need to this time."
"Take him with you from now on, then." Flynn approved of Karl taking the kid under his wing. Q lost his parents in the Cleansing and Rufus and Jiya'd collected him like so many others. There were too many orphans these days. The kids stayed in the apartments around the bar as long as they needed them.
"Say hi to Mama Bear."
"Will do, buddy." Flynn left the kitchen and headed into the bar proper, finding his regular stool in the corner empty. "Hey, Win, grab me a beer, please." God he missed whiskey.
The tiny punk rock pixie strolled down the bar and pulled a bottle from the cooler, uncapping it and setting it down. "Everything good?"
"Five by five." He scanned the bar. "Decent night tonight."
"Yup, seems like when the devil rolled out hell, he didn't skimp on the alcohol." A regular attracted her attention and she tapped the bar in front of him before going to refill the man's draft.
Served his purposes, Flynn just needed to be seen, especially after the action of the past few weeks. Going quiet would work to give them time to plan and for things to calm down. So Flynn stayed and played owner for a bit. Denise, Rufus, and Jiya-the team, strangers that became family at the end of the world-all took turns making an appearance here and there. Enough to look like productive citizens.
Bars like theirs had all but disappeared. Only a few had been grandfathered in under the Family Domicile Exception. Thanks to Jiya the hacker genius, on paper, MacReynolds was owned by Malcolm Reynolds, whose father passed it down to him and so on and so forth. It was a handy cover. Neighborhood joints like this used to bring people together. They still gathered, but now spoke only in subdued, muttered conversations. As long as they stayed under the radar, Rittenhouse left them alone.
After a beer or two, he slipped out the back. Checking over his shoulder, he pushed aside the garbage can and lifted the bottom of the chain link fence, ducking under. He shoved the metal dumpster back into place and darted across to the drain pipe that lead into an old unused sewer system. Certain no one followed, he jogged through the twists and turns that led him under the Detroit river and into the bunker on Belle Isle.
"Honey, I'm home!" His voice carried down the hallway. "Well, look at this picture of domesticity."
Rufus and Jiya had their heads bent over a stack of old books. When Flynn joined them, Rufus joked, "Mom, creepy uncle's back."
"Have you found anything of substance in the last three hours or are you two just playing footsies under the table?" Former Agent Denise Christopher called over her shoulder while stirring the spaghetti sauce. "Those anomalies in time aren't going to catalogue themselves."
"Hey Denny, how'd everything go?" Flynn leaned against the countertop, dipping a spoon in the sauce. She swatted his hand away a few seconds too late. "Needs rosemary."
"Everything could use rosemary these days. Be grateful we have salt." Elbowing him out of the way, she reached into the cabinet and handed him a stack of plates. "Everything went fine and we got the intel. Now, go make yourself useful."
"I'd rather have a look at the info," he argued as he set the table.
Denise dropped a pot holder in the center, followed by the noodles and sauce. "I'm sure you would, but we're going to sit and have family dinner." Flynn opened his mouth to retort and she held up a hand and placed a small dish of grated cheese off to the side. "No ifs, ands, or buts. Now sit. That means you two as well."
They made it through the meal before devolving into a late night planning session. When the next batch of intel was meant to arrive. What districts needed extra food and who could get it there. The usual details of the ongoing fight.
Flynn started a pot of coffee. "We need something big."
"That's gonna have to wait." Jiya stopped him before he really got going. "I was online today, scanning the boards, and stumbled across a name that started popping up round these parts in the last few weeks." Shuffling through the papers and books, she found the stack she wanted and lay them out. "Every mention talks about her like she's the second coming of David Rittenhouse himself."
"What's the name?" Flynn picked up a highlighted sheet and froze.
Denise leaned over, scanning the page. "Does that say Lucy Preston?" She snatched another page off the table. "Like…"
"Like Flynn's Lucy Preston?" Jiya finished the question for her.
"Not my anything." Flynn growled.
Jiya shrugged. "Fine. Like Lucy, I met Garcia Flynn in a bar in Sao Paulo once and told him we'd make a good team, Preston?" She smirked at him. "Yes. That Lucy."
Flynn eyed the generous pile of research. "This is far more than a couple weeks. How long have you been keeping an eye on this?" He glared at Rufus and Jiya knowing they were in it together.
"Six months," Rufus answered, never breaking the stare. "And before you say anything, it just looked like she was on a welcome back, Kotter tour of America. We had no idea she planned to settle here."
Why was Lucy Preston in Detroit? "What do we know about her?"
Jiya pushed a file at him. "Not much. Apparently she's been abroad and the family brought her back."
"The family?" Denise asked, reaching for the file.
"She's old school." Jiya sorted through the research as passed her the right page. "Daughter of Carol Preston and Benjamin Cahill. Traces her lineage back to the old man himself."
The group fell silent, absorbing the new information. Flynn studied her file, it contained nothing much unexpected; private school, undergrad at Oberlin, grad student at Stanford.
"Spent the last two years traveling through the major libraries of the world?" Flynn barked out, incredulous. "Who does that?"
Jiya looked up at him. "Well, I mean, that just about sounds like a perfect vacation to me." Her brows furrowed. "Though two years does seem a bit excessive."
"And just so happens to coincide with the first Collections." Something pricked at his brain, begging him to follow the thread. He tugged back, wondering if he wanted to see the best in her. Over the years, the memory of that night never dulled, and in light of everything that followed he'd built her into an avenging angel. Thinking, one day she'd come again to save them all. He removed his rose colored blinders.
She'd been Rittenhouse the entire time.