Okay, okay, I owe everyone an apology. Sorry for being so terribly slow at updating; I honestly have no excuse, I'm just lazy. But anyway, I still want to thank everyone who gave me a review, and this time I saved the emails so I know who everyone is: Mijo54, (to whom I extend further apologies at the length of my update time) and the two anons who sent me reviews. Unless you're the same person, in which case… I don't know where I was going with that. Anyway, do enjoy this chapter.

Chapter Seven

Two hundred years ago, give or take, a group of men decided they didn't like the way Spain was being governed. That in itself is nothing out of the ordinary; there's always someone complaining about the system in some form or another; but these men, ten of them, decided to take their own action against it. They set up what they called "El Voz de la Gente," which literally translates into "The Voice of the People," or "The People's Voice." Their aim was to set up a council that would listen to problems the people had, devise a solution to these problems, and then make sure they reached the desks of politicians and bureaucrats who could do something to ensure these problems ceased to arise. It was a very effective scheme, and initially only active in and around Madrid, but when people began to come to the Office from further and further away, the Original Ten (as the founders are now known) split up and created Offices in nine other major cities in Spain, ranging from Bilbao and Corunna in the North to Seville and Malaga in the South. They still sent their requests and ideas via the Head Office in Madrid, but the operation by this stage worked on a country-wide scale.

It functioned like this for fifty years; it was a flawless system, really. But the Original ten were coming to realise that they were getting old, and they could not continue running the Offices for much longer, so decided to hand them on to their sons. This was not a problem for all but one of the Ten, named Miguel Ortega. He had two sons, and since the other Nine had one and one alone, he was forced to decide between them. By tradition, he gave it to the older of the two, but since they were merely months apart the younger did not think this was fair. When it came for Miguel to officially hand over the Office, the younger brother pretended not to mind, and congratulated his brother on his achievement. But that night, as a storm raged outside the windows of the Office, the younger Ortega killed his brother, making it appear as a suicide, and the following morning announced himself as the new Head of the Bilbao Office. Miguel Ortega was distraught by the news, and pleaded with the rest of the Office Heads to investigate his son's death further. However, since none of the Original remained in power, his pleas went unanswered, and Julio Ortega, the younger brother, was free to command the Office.

He had no plans to remain in control of just the one Office. Julio Ortega wanted power, and to attain it he needed to control each and every one of the Ten Offices, and declare himself Head of the whole organisation. He set out to murder the other Heads, fabricating it to look like suicide as he had done his brother, and in no more than three years his goal was achieved. Seven of the ten Offices belonged to him, and the remaining three Heads agreed to resign than be killed as well.

Of course, Ortega knew that he could not rule all of the Offices alone, so instead he trained Deputies, all of whom shared his lust for power and were completely loyal to him, and assigned each one an Office while he retreated into the Ortega family mansion in the countryside somewhere around Bilbao and received and sent information from there. After this, no one saw his face besides his Deputies, and even they saw him only rarely.

Under Julio Ortega's control, El Voz expanded. It went from its beginning of ten men in an Office in Madrid to having the largest private army in the whole of Spain, a so-called Peacekeeping Force that now consists of millions of soldiers. Ortega was resourceful; anything the people brought to him he could achieve, if not through political persuasion then certainly through violence and threats. The People learned to fear El Voz. The black uniforms and primary-colour insignias lost their original meaning of hope and peace, and became a symbol of spying, torment and cruelty. By the time of Julio Ortega's death, the reputation of his institution; for it really was his own by this time; had forced all who did not wish to involve themselves to forget. El Voz had been transformed into its own government sector, used by those in power to sway the opinions of their political enemies and providing Spain with a stronger foothold on the world stage.

For too long many made the mistake of believing that the Ortegas were loyal to Spain. They were not. Julio Ortega's only child hungered even more for power than he had, and by the end of his rule El Voz became a group of mercenaries, working for the highest bidder. It was often the case that the client they had served one day would be the intended target the next; they were a significant reason as to why the civil war of the 1930s turned out the way it did.

The organisation soon slipped from the minds of all but the most powerful, power-hungry and illegal, and now operates on a global scale, not just in Spain, praying on the oblivion of other governments. It is said that the only accurate record remains in the possession of the Royal Family and is passed on in secrecy from generation to new generation, but no one has ever invested any truth in that. The Ortegas didn't even keep a record of their dealings and plots in the early days, so anything dated from Julio's time is most likely a forged document.

About fifty years ago, Kesara Esme Ortega was born, and trained from that birth to believe in the ways of El Voz. She learnt what was necessary to continue its wellbeing, and has an unnatural talent at devising the most cunning and subtle plots and schemes. When her father died and left her at the age of twenty five in command of the whole organisation without an heir, her instincts told her to act. She charmed a young Englishman, Samuel Taylor West, while he was taking a vacation in the charming seaside town of San Sebastian, and used her extraordinary talent at lying and pretence to gain from him two children; first a boy, and then a girl. After the girl's birth, Kesara needed keep up the charade no longer, and so left West, denying him further sanction in Spain and forcing him to return to England and forget everything about El Voz and other details Kesara exposed him to. This was the beginning of the long list of mistakes she made. West demanded that he take their son with him, dashing Kesara's hopes of El Voz eventually having two strong leaders. Her plan had been that the daughter would command in her place, and the son would grow up strong of both body and mind to lead the organisation's vast and expanding army. However, neither Samuel West nor the child were ever seen in Spain by El Voz again.

Undeterred, Kesara attempted to raise her daughter to the same standard as she had been; to understand the ways of the organisation and eventually replace her as its leader. Unfortunately, and to this day Kesara does not understand where she went wrong, her daughter resisted.

"And here we are," West ended her story, popping a bubble in her chewing gum with a loud snap. For a moment Jess didn't move. She had taken West's advice halfway through and taken a seat inside the car while the Spaniard remained in the exact same position throughout; leaning against the back door with arms folded. She seemed to lean on things with her arms folded a lot.

"So you're supposed to be the leader of El Voz?" she eventually asked, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

"Not yet. Unfortunately my mother still has a few more natural years ahead of her. Or at least, she will if my brother doesn't have a say in it."

"That's barbaric," Jess muttered. West stared at her.

"No, Jess, it isn't. If you had any idea how…"

"You don't need to give me the lecture, West, I understand. It's just not right that the two of you are trying so hard to kill your own mother. It's not… I don't know… natural."

"I don't think that what's natural had much of a say in anything this organization has been involved in," West muttered. "Now, about that backup?"

"Oh, yeah. Right." Jess, thankful to be doing something useful for the first time all night, took out her phone. Three missed calls from Matt. Why was Matt calling her at five in the morning? Oh well, she'd find out later, once all this was, hopefully, over. On the third ring, three black 4x4s rolled through the security gates behind West's car, and Jess hung up, confused. One man jumped out of the front vehicle before it had even stopped and strode up to Jess.

"We received an emergency backup call from Captain Becker," he announced. Becker. Of course. "He only sent a text message; can you tell us what's going on?"

"Multiple hostiles have taken over the building," West informed him before Jess could even get a word in. "Unknown quantity, but there are a lot of them. We also have two friendlies inside, Captain Becker and a white adult male of similar height and build."

"How do we proceed?"

"Shoot to kill," West decided, a steel glint in her eye. "No one gets out of here tonight."

"Let's face it, we have no plan," Jack pleaded with Becker for the ninth time since getting out of the lift on the ground floor and being faced with no one at all. "We are going round in circles, and our enemies are hiding from us. That spells trouble."

"Will you please shut up? I know exactly where I'm going."

"Really?" Jack glared at the back of Becker's head. "Care to fill me in?"

"I told you, we're going to the loading bay, and from there, outside. With any luck Jess and Teresa will be out there waiting for us."

"And your backup, too, presumably, although you told me when you texted them in the lift that they would be here in seconds, not years."

"You know, for someone who specialises in stealth, you make an awful lot of noise."

"For someone who specialises in tactics you are unbelievably clueless," he retorted. Becker stopped suddenly and held up a hand, and Jack was worried for a split second that he was going to hit him. He didn't though. Instead he brought his index finger over his lips in a movement that meant 'shut up, we're going in,' so Jack shut up. It got very boring very quickly, but for once Becker seemed to know what he was doing. With a bleep, he swung his wrist in front of the door before them and pushed it open, bringing his pistol to the ready in his hand as he did so. The gesture, however heroic, wasn't necessary; the loading bay was empty. Jack whistled, listening to it echo around the vast room.

"Okay, now they're creeping me out. There is no one here. At all. Anywhere. And I think we've looked everywhere…"

"Shut up." Becker snapped. The tone in his voice was a pretty good indication to Jack to do as he said, and at once he realised why. The bay was not empty; rather, he just couldn't see anyone. But he could hear them. Footsteps, heavy ones in heavy boots no less, were trying to be as quiet as possible as they ran across the concrete. Jack mentally kicked himself; he had just done the less dramatic equivalent of shooting a flare into the sky to signal their location. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the loading bay besides a few stone pillars keeping the ceiling up, so they couldn't hide. Neither were they going to go back; that would just lead them right back to square one. So it seemed; indicated to Jack by Becker's rapidly advancing frame; that the only way was forwards. Well, he had been trying to steer the man down the less deadly path over the course of the day.

By this time, Becker had reached the opposite wall, which Jack could now see led round a corner, and signalled with a disparaging glare for him to stop daydreaming and get over there too. Jack did so, and pulled out his own pistol once again. It seemed he had been holding the thing far too much lately. The footsteps were getting progressively louder, which was something of a stupid observation, and eventually Becker cocked his pistol and swung round it in the same mock-hero movement he had used on the door. He was greeted not with an abundance of gunshots as they had both expected, but with an explosion of swearing that only he could have accomplished. He and one other, at any rate.

"Captain!" the unmistakeable voice of his sister echoed through the loading bay. "I was this far away from shooting you! How did you get out?"

"They've disappeared," he told her, disarming his pistol. "We haven't seen them anywhere."

"We?" Great. Nice choice of words, Becker, Jack thought to himself grimly.

"Yeah, I picked up this idiot on the way." Becker took a step back, and Jack took his cue. Moving out of the way of the concealing corner, Jack looked down at his shoes, delaying their eyes meeting for another second. When he finally brought himself to look at her properly, he detected a vast multitude of emotions flash through her eyes before she sealed them completely. Wonder, confirmation, pain, hatred. They were just a few. Without a word from either of them, Teresa straightened up, turned away from him, and addressed Captain Becker.

"So what's the plan?"

"We'll need to sweep the building floor by floor, find out what they're doing and if they took anything. And then one of you will have to explain what the hell just happened."

"Very well. Where are they now?"

"I don't know. We heard them in the vents above the Hub but haven't seen hide or hair of them since…"

They carried on planning as they made their way, in no hurry, towards the outside exit, leaving the rest of Becker's men to scurry around and secure the loading bay. They both had their backs to Jack, and he knew exactly what his sister was doing. The silent treatment. Fine. He could deal with that; it meant she wasn't going to try and kill him.

Hope you had fun, and once again I am so very sorry for not updating for a few months. Please leave me a review, and I promise it won't happen again.