1997

Sarajevo

Brotherhood of Nod Temple Prime


Building blocks upon blocks, plans upon plans – Kane gazed through the bulletproof glass as two of his commanders attempted to piece together the chunks of prophecy and human plans that had bet into motion.

The first piece had been his freedom from his prison 50 years before. Next had been working his way up and through SELEE members as the post world war 2 world gave birth to the United Nations as members of the Brotherhood and SELEE alike pushed their influence and power through unseen tendrils into the very fabric of both organisations.

Being ageless immortal with the mind and memory of a human he could never plan for events he could not have foreseen – the few memories he had prior to his imprisonment where of human beings living in mud huts somewhere in deepest, darkest Africa, he passed on agriculture and mathematics where he could and generalised his goals down until he was taken.

By whom or why where another of the century, or perhaps millennia long gaps he would have to fill.

The gifts of the modern age upon his repatriation to the world during the early 1950s helped with these goals no end, physics, language and technology had finally caught up to some of the points he needed to meet and culture encouraged the spread of the former but not the major components he needed to complete them.

Computers where developed, moving through their periods of vacuum tubes and silicon chips, genetic technologies could plan out segments of the human genome, but at that point they could not be used to generate entirely new material, or even edit existing genes within the human "frames" he had at his disposal.

But with the Brotherhood already existing in a limited sense, all Kane had to do was take control of the organisation that had somehow already been waiting for his return and start to influence the equatorial third world nations as the world passed into the 1960's and 70's and the proxy battles of the cold war that spread it's influence into the 90's.

Eventually though – even with certain organisations awaiting the arrival of Tiberium in 1995 as he had translated from the scrolls that described from the many patterns of events that would soon come to pass – their tendrils could not have spread everywhere in their entirety and the United Nations had given birth to another organisation known as the Global Defence Initiative.

Despite there being some ways to coerce, bribe or simply kill their way into the newborn defence agency to place agents from both Nod and SELEE within it, they remained out of the control of Keel and Kane alike.

So as the turn of the galaxy brought the planet Earth into contact with the vast asteroid fields that sat at the extrasolar edge and with it, the crystal that had been one of Kanes two prisons. Tiberium started it's full encapsulation of the globe in Italy, somewhere near the edge of the Tiber River.

So with the fore-planning provided by SELEE and the Dead Sea Scrolls, the brotherhood has already been waiting for the arrival of Tiberium in the regions where it's growth could be promoted best – and the arrival of the alien Ichor had finally propelled industries and science to where he needed them to be.

Selling Brotherhood and SELEE technologies derived from reverse engineering or translating notes from the Dead Sea Scrolls had given birth to early Genetic Engineering technologies which had been sold or passed through to Corporate spies to kick start the various beginnings of what was needed to fight back against the coming of the Angelic ones.

Later as SELEE expanded further they used their United Nations ties further and directly created the "Artificial Human Laboratory" as the guise for researching artificial means to combat Tiberium poisoning in humans . . . it was in truth to create the basis of much larger and far more secret projects.

So feeding his own data to SELEE for them to feed to AHL regarding Tiberium exposure to human flesh both living and dead would speed up the process of genetic engineering and creation in real time considerably.

In turn he passed on various chunks of data regarding Tiberium and liquid Tiberium power cells to SELEE to then feed again into the resurgent GDI. Granted feeding technologies to the forces now directly assaulting his fortress left a bad taste in his mouth . . . it was perhaps the only way to utilise their own economic powerhouse to further push the world onto the path it needed to walk.

"I, we've taken serious - the temples been blown all to hell, we need to get out of here before"

"Sir!" One of the two officers, the one with a heavy setting and an eye patch finally turned to face the enigmatic leader "Upside has taken significant damage. Structural integrity has been compromised. I estimate GDI will have access to this command centre in approximately twenty minutes"

As he looked down on the two underlings he watched as the first to speak started to panic and falter – all of his men within the brotherhood where disposable to a point, but to watch one of his highest ranking within the temple itself was unforgivable.

The second officer turned to face the first and with an unthinking motion pulled his pistol and shot the man before holstering it again.

Impassive, Kane turned and left the command centre.

These pawns had played out their usefulness and now it was time to ensure the final steps of the future where in place.

He moved through to his private quarters – a temple within a temple in the usual ornate reds and blacks he styles the brotherhood within.

Logging into a terminal at a standing desk he began to fire off the final data packets to their various anonymous email boxes where various programs would bounce them off of servers around the world until they reached their final destinations.

A theoretical doctorate on using three cloned human brains as the basis for a rudimentary Artificial intelligence based off of his own research into a yet unborn PROJECT CABAL would be sent halfway around the known world and would end up within the Artificial Human Laboratory and eventually the hands of Doctor Naoko Akagi. With enough time and effort she would perfect the scientist/mother/woman system as she would eventually call it and give birth to the first MAGI supercomputers whilst his own Nod scientists would continue on with the CABAL aggregate system.

Into the hands of SELEE – he dumped gigabytes of information from the half-translations of his own ace in the hole.

He knew they had the Dead Sea Scrolls – but he held another artefact that he had lifted out of unwitting locations. The first half had been within an impossibly old temple in Bolivia and the second embedded within Antarctic ice. Finding the being known as ADAM was one of his and SELEE's goals – but finding the Tacitus was a curve ball that didn't seem to play into any prophesy or foretold event.

It was a complete mystery.

An utter unknown.

Kane intended to keep it that way.

He had long ago sequestered the object away along with half a dozen objects within the CABAL facility that was utterly hidden away from the world until the time was right.

With the trail of breadcrumbs set for the search to find ADAM he linked a final set of documents for project Re-genesis and dumped the entire contents into public File Transfer Servers half a world away for eventual GDI/Public discovery . . . having that extended knowledge running loose in the world would dramatically cut short the time needed for the later SELEE goals.

With the last chunks of the databanks ready he knew it was time.

Time to face the proverbial music.

Taking the first of his secret elevators he rose through the gradually deconstructing Temple of Nod and rose into the sunlight that broke through the torn apart structure – light pouring through the bare ribs of the dying building.

He turned from the bank of ruined screens and took what would be his last breath of fresh air for many years. He knew he would return. It was a simple case of eventuality.

For now however, the Messiah needed to face his temporary death to the world.

In high orbit the GDI weapon known as the Ion Cannon had reached it's final charge – the slowly spinning blade of Damocles made it's final target confirmation and with the doom it had prepared in the milliseconds of being unleashed it reached the end of it's code line.

In a world of 1's and 0's there could be no grey – and with a simple statement /END OF LINE the satellite split the sky asunder.

The first stream of particles ignited the air as it forced the vacuum channel from orbit to the ground as it then entered full activation and fired the Ionic stream of charged energy directly at the entrance to the temple.

The effect on the ground was devastating as the air buzzed with sound from every direction, the atmosphere took on the tang of ozone that had been ripped from the Earths extremes and pulled down to the ground and anything caught in the beam simply ceased to exist as the energy stream either incinerated it outright, or ripped apart the links between their component atoms and then incinerated the atoms themselves.

Kane watched impassive as the beam started to approach him, simply erasing the temple in which he stood.

Hidden from the world and never to be seen by living eyes, he raised his arms to embrace the coming fire as everything faded into white and the temple was no more.

Devoured for all intents and purposes by holy light.

The flagstones and foundations had been laid, the path had been set and the first steps taken, the first Tiberium War may have come to a close but the true war was only just beginning.


A moment from Scythe himself

Hokay – maybe NOT having writers block immediately after penning the first chapter was not part of the plan but I managed to pull this second chapter together enough to include one of the main events of the C&C games (ignore 4 – 4 never happened and if you think it did you need to seek advice from a medical professional) alongside more events from the EVA timeline without having to resort to the horrors of writing a massive as all feck timeline.

Huzaah!

At best we have maybe one more chapter of exposition and setting the scene/tone before the story begins and that wonderful bitc- I mean . . . protagonist we all know and love will be introduced.

Until then – thanks to all for the favourites/story subscriptions, if you want to add a review you are more than welcome to do so guys and gals . . . and . . . until next time . . .

Tarrah for now.