Riga, Yellow Zone 1
[22/5/2056]
A line of prisoners stood on the scaffold before the old town hall. They were bound and hooded, with two uniformed soldiers flanking each figure to keep them restrained. Despite being stripped of their armour, Gideon could feel the sheer physical danger radiating from the broad-shouldered men and women.
Gideon stood at the left of the wooden platform, a bolt-action rifle in his hands. Despite the muggy warmth of the day, his knuckles were white and trembling as they gripped the wooden stock of the antique weapon. There were thousands gathered in the square before Radic's residence. They packed balconies, and spilled into sidestreets. Giant screens adorned the walls of buildings, displaying the inhabitants of the stage for the populace of Riga.
A ripple of rapture spread through the crowd. Whatever caused it was too deep within the press of people for Gideon to see, but he could guess the cause of their excitement. He was soon proved right, as Radic emerged from the crush, flanked by an honour guard in flowing capes and glossy black helmets. As he passed, he favoured the exuberant, lucky few nearby with a casual wave.
The Colonel took the stage, and raised his right fist in greeting. The gesture was echoed back a thousand times. He was dressed in a fine charcoal jacket, approximating a military uniform. Red braid adorned his right epaulette. A rainbow of medals and ribbons was spread across his chest.
"Today, we see justice done!"
The wave of cheering reached an ear-splitting crescendo, as the hoods were ripped from the prisoners. Their faces were bloodied and beaten, though whether that was from the battle or the hospitality they'd received after, Gideon couldn't tell. Radic's Confessors weren't known to be gentle towards traitors. Nevertheless, they raised their faces proudly and stared down the crowd in defiance.
Radic held up both palms to the crowd for quiet. The exclamations died out, followed by a ripple of shh's emanating from the stage.
"Thank you, brothers and sisters," he began humbly, his stage whispers amplified for the attentive masses. "This has been a time of trial for the Brotherhood. We have all sacrificed a great deal in our struggle for survival."
The Colonel paused, and shook his head in mock disbelief.
"But these traitors!" he spat, thrusting a finger at the nearest prisoner, "Have sought to undermine everything we have fought for! But their devilry is not the worst threat!
"They are but the tools of a false prophet, one who has twice betrayed the tenets of Brotherhood and Unity to which we all hold. One who is too cowardly to stand by his own ideals, and sends others to do his dirty work!"
Radic drew a pistol from his belt, and cocked it. The archaic revolver gleamed in the morning light.
"I am not such a man."
The next moment, the handgun was against the first prisoner's head. The moment after that, they were slumped on the wooden floor.
The pistol's report was sudden, a harsh thunderclap that reverberated from the stone walls of the apartments fronting the square. It was followed by shocked gasps, and then by cheers.
One by one, Radic approached the prisoners, riling the eager crowd into throes of blood-lust before pulling the trigger. Despite his theatrics, each of the condemned faced their executioner with resolute stares.
Radic pressed the cold steel against the temple of his last captive. "Any final words, traitor?"
Click.
The revolver jammed. For the first time, an expression split the captives face; a feral grin.
In a flurry of movement, the muscular behemoth pulled himself clear of the two guards, and barrelled into Radic. His head caught the Colonel in the stomach, and they both toppled off the stage, into the crowd.
The beast of a man threw his whole body weight against Radic, pinning him down. Gideon vaulted over the barrier, heart pounding in his ears, and landed beside the struggling pair. The people surged forward, knocking Gideon off balance.
Gideon swung his rifle like a club. Wet thuds followed with each impact. He battered his way through to where his commander lay. The Black Hand prisoner towered over the fallen man, and was pummeling his head against the cobblestones. Gideon raised his rifle, and fired. The crack reverberated off the stones. The people nearest pushed against their neighbours, desperate to escape the violence now that it had spilled over towards them. A bloom of red appeared on the condemned man's shoulder, but he barely seemed to register it.
Gideon charged, and slammed his rifle butt into the back of the man's shaved head. It snapped forward, then turned to face his attacker. The man's eyes were pools of black. Veins throbbed in his temple and neck, thick conduits that pumped a viscous green substance. Gideon faltered. His heart was pounding in his throat.
A meaty fist caught him with a backhand, and he went sprawling across the cobblestones. His rifle clattered out of his grip. His head throbbed, and everything was obscured by a red mist.
Shrieks and the crack of gunshots rang out through the press.
The next he could see, the captive was face down in the dirt, crimson water pooling with him. Radic's bodyguards had closed around the fallen Colonel, blocking any sight of him. A second squad poured out from the sides, pushing the crowd back. The huddle of soldiers beat their way through the crowd with nightsticks and gloved fists. A path was carved through the Brotherhood's devotees, up to the steps of the Colonel's manor. The military procession disappeared within its grand metal doors.
"Curfew is in effect," a digitised voice issued from the speaker horns at the corners of nearby rooftops. "Return to your homes. Curfew is in effect." The harsh electronic voice repeated the command endlessly.
Soon, Gideon was standing in the middle of the square, with only the bodies of the dead for company.
—
Trappings of former grandeur clung to the lobby of the old hotel as withered leaves cling to an autumn branch. The plush carpet was trampled and stained. Plaster peeled from the walls, and the velvet cushions of the chairs were patchy and faded.
Despite its decrepitude, the warriors of the Brotherhood had converted it into a somewhat cosy common room. A battered wooden table had been dragged into a corner of the common room. Candles sat on it, slowly melting into puddles of wax which dripped off the edges and onto the threadbare carpet. Five figures sat on mismatched chairs around the table. The Kid, babyfaced and bright-eyed; Rodriguez, sour and implacable; Dimitri, bushy-browed and withdrawn; Laimonis, shaved of head, and tattooed with holy glyphs, and Gideon, sporting fresh bruises from his encounter with the Black Hand.
Alongside the candles sat a clear glass bottle full of home-distilled spirits, and half a deck of stained and warped playing cards.
"That shiner is something serious, bro," Rodriguez remarked, pointing at Gideon's black eye. The injury smarted; he was lucky the prisoner's backhand hadn't shattered his orbital, or so the drunken quack that passed for a physician had told him.
Gideon chuckled, and touched his swollen eye absentmindedly. "Yeah, it hurts like a bitch. That man hit like a devil."
"Maybe he was a Cyborg!" the Kid piped up. The rest of the players looked at him with expressions ranging from amusement to disgust. "What? Lukas, y'know, from the Berģi Hand? He told me they cut the prisoners up after they -" he drew a thumb across his throat "- and they found all sorts of robot parts inside of them."
"Don't be daft, Kid," Dimitri growled. "There's no such thing as Cyborgs, not anymore."
"I've seen one! It was wandering about in the wastelands, mad and rambling, walking in circles," the Kid enthused as he lay down his cards, and reached for the communal bottle of vodka on the table.
"The only one mad and rambling here is you," scoffed Dimitri, to general laughter. The thickly bearded man clutched his cards in one hand, along with a lit blunt; his other arm ended in a bandaged stump.
"I swear! The Cyborgs are back."
Rodriguez slapped down his cards, and cackled with delight at the dismayed looks he received from the others. "If you did see a cyborg, and I'm not saying you did, it was probably just an old one from the Firestorm," he rationalised as he scooped chips into his arms.
"Nah man," the Kid continued. "Meat or metal ain't gonna last twenty years in a Red Zone, it's gotta be a new one!"
"There haven't been any new Cyborgs in that time though; not since CABAL went rogue," Rodriguez reminded him.
"Well what about four years ago?" The Kid offered. "There were plenty of them then!" Dimitri waved him off. "Ah, just more ghost stories from the Americas. They say the Visitors still walk there, and mutants can harness the power of the ion storms. All nonsense."
"If it was all just tall tales, why would there be GDI news reports on it?"
Laimonis laughed at that. It was a thin, reedy sound. "Next you'll tell me you're reading Voice of the Forgotten."
"Kid's got a point though," Gideon said through a mouthful of liquor "They're real alright. I was in the Midwest when they were revived."
"When were you in the Midwest?" Dimitri scowled. Gideon shook his head in disbelief.
"Really?" He pointed at his face. "Did you think this was an Estonian accent, brother?" The table erupted in raucous laughter. Dimitri waved his hand dismissively at the derision.
"I don't listen to half the things you say anyway." Dimitri's teeth shone through his bristly beard in an incongruously bright smile.
"They're calling it the Machine Crusade, you hear that?" The Kid continued, unable to let go of his current obsession.
Rodriguez spat. "They're pincho godless cyborgs. This ain't a crusade; it's a malfunction."
"Do you think it's… him?" the Kid asked in a whisper.
"Well who else?" Laimonis entreated. "His hand transforms those it touches. He has commanded cyborgs before." The devout man had no cards in his hands; his only vice was a vial of some Tiberium-infused brew that bubbled in its glass vessel. "They crept right in the backdoor of a big GDI fortress in the Americas, stole some major tech right out from under their noses. What's that if not a sacred task?"
Dimitri scoffed, and leaned forward in his chair. His brow was heavy over his narrowed eyes.
"You kids are too young to remember CABAL. When Kane vanished, that mad machine took over, and nearly tore the Brotherhood apart. There's nothing holy about that." He scratched at the stump of his arm with his free hand.
"But what about the Technology of Peace?"
The old man gestured at the dimly lit interior of their musty barracks. The candle stubbles guttered in the wind that wormed its way through the cracks in the walls.
"If there is such a thing, it's not meant for folks like us."
The dismaying proclamation lay over them, a smothering black blanket, darker than the gloom in which they sat…
The bleak silence of their contemplation was broken by the roar of a motorbike turning the corner onto their street. The bike was a growling beast, over-engineered and hulking. It pulled up to the bunkhouse in a spray of dirt, and its rider dismounted, leaving his machine purring.
"The Colonel has a job for you, soldier," the bike courier declared as he swept off his helmet and ascended the steps of the Hand. The man was thin and wiry, with a receding hairline and pockmarked face, but held himself with a self-important air. He stood on the top step, framed by the doorway and lit from behind by the dying sun.
Gideon raised his eyebrows as he scooped his small collection of chips towards him. The courier frowned. Clearly he was expecting more awe at his invocation of the Colonel's name. He carried on, though without the air of grandiosity.
"The Colonel requests your presence at his headquarters. He has a mission for you, related to the attempt on his life."
Gideon pushed back his chair with a sigh, and threw down his cards. Immediately, Dimitri's hand darted out to turn them over. He took one look and snorted through his beard.
"Yeah, yeah, you had me," Gideon conceded. He picked up his jacket and rifle from the back of the chair where he'd slung them, and bid his comrades a farewell. As he turned to leave, there was an electrical hum, and the lights flickered on. "Typical," he muttered. The game resumed as he followed the courier out into the street.
The general's headquarters was a tall mass of marble pillars, bedecked with the typical regalia of the Brotherhood. The structure's mighty facade belied the rough metal scaffolding holding up its rear. The grubby marble was topped by burnt umber tiles. Black cables ran from the turret of its clocktower to the rooftops of the nearest apartment blocks.
Gideon was patted down and led through security checkpoints. He ascended a flight of cracked marble stairs beside a disused elevator shaft, and came to a gallery on the third floor. Crimson banners bearing the iconography of various sects of the Brotherhood hung between the windows; scorpion tails, pyramids, even a Teutonic cross. The clenched fist of the Black Hand, which had flown alongside them in years past, was conspicuously absent.
Gideon crossed the carpeted floor to the nearest window. The vantage point gave him a view of the streets surrounding the commons. Many of the city's windows were unlit, but a few gleamed with faint candlelight. To the west he thought he saw flashes of red light; the laser batteries vaporising whatever lifeforms had strayed too close.
A door behind him opened with a creak. Gideon turned to see Colonel Radic standing in the archway.
"Gideon, please," the older man gestured to the dark room behind him, beckoning his guest inside. Radic was dressed more casually than his appearance earlier in the day. A long, black coat fluttered behind him as he strode across the room. The side of his face was a swollen mass of bruising that faded into his salt and pepper beard. Violet bruises pooled under both eyes. A thin red scarf was tossed loosely around his neck.
Faint red light filtered into the dimly-lit room, enough to see by, but insufficient to illuminate the shadowy shapes that loomed out of the murky gloom. Three crimson stained-glass windows stretched from floor to ceiling on the far wall, etched with symbols and iconography. In the middle of the room sat a black wooden desk; simple in design, but solid and imposing. Paperwork was scattered over its scarred surface, along with the stub of a candle that was burning low. A high-backed chair sat behind it.
"You will have to forgive the conditions," he gestured vaguely around the room. "I have not been able to stand bright lights since the uh… earlier today. Head injuries, da?" This was a much less theatrical persona than the one he had adopted at the execution, but it was no less of a performance.
"This has been a… humbling time." Radic paced about the room as he spoke. "It seemed we were on the verge of a lasting peace, a chance to rebuild. A new era for the Brotherhood."
The Colonel's winding path took him behind the desk. He laid his hand on the back of the chair.
"I sent you to Gdansk to bring this vision to fruition, and come to find, the Black Hand is already there, waiting for us. Which leads me to thinking, there is a traitor in my camp." Radic snarled out the last words, knuckles white as they gripped the chair.
"You don't like working for me, Gideon." It was a statement, not a question. "You'd rather be under the command of a true believer, someone passionate, close to Kane, like Brother Marcion, no?" The name of the Black Hand's current figurehead hung in the silence between them. Gideon was wise enough to say nothing; any response, whether positive or negative, was likely to enrage the paranoid Colonel. Radic stepped out from behind his desk. In his right hand was the revolver he'd used to execute the six prisoners.
"I know what you must think of me. A traitor, a man who would sell out his faith and side with the enemy, and all for what? A temporary stay of hostilities. But the Brotherhood does not last long if we all die as martyrs, da? Some must stay behind, to keep the torch burning." Radic gestured idly with the weapon as he talked. Gideon kept his eyes fixed on it, as he stood rooted to the wooden floor.
"That doesn't keep it from rankling me. Every time I have to deal with those smug niekšai I want… ah!" He mimed strangling a phantom foe. "We all do things we would rather not to survive. You'd rather not be under my command. I get it. But until Kane graces us with his… vision once more, I am the next best thing."
Radic was much closer to him now, maybe two feet away. The revolver was stained red by the faint light from the window.
"You were quite reluctant to go to Gdansk as my representative, if I recall. Only after significant persuasion did you relent."
The click of the gun's hammer being drawn back echoed through the room. The vast chamber seemed to have shrunk to the size of a coffin, penning Gideon and Radic in together.
Gideon tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. Of course he hadn't wanted to travel to Gdansk; it meant going to GDI on bended knee. He spoke slowly and clearly.
"If I was a traitor, I would have been eager to go to Gdansk, and not returned."
A vein throbbed in Radic' temple, but he remained motionless, his thumb still on the hammer. Gideon forged ahead.
"And if did want to undermine you, I could have stood by and let the terrorist finish the job." Gideon indicated the bruises on his own face. Radic considered the words for a moment. A smile abruptly split his wounded face.
"Of course. You must forgive me; paranoia and betrayal are in the blood of the Brotherhood."
The Colonel broke the revolver apart and dropped the weapon onto the desk. The bullets clattered out across the floor. Gideon exhaled, and tried to mirror Radic's smile.
"Now that unpleasantness is out of the way, I have a task for you." Radic sat on the edge of the desk and folded his legs.
"We had thought that the terrorists you apprehended in Gdansk were enhanced in some way. They proved… resistant to our Confessors, and divulged no details of their operation. But the blood and tissue samples that were taken when they arrived in our custody revealed what they would not.
"It seems the Black Hand now employs Tiberium-addled mutants as their vanguard."
Gideon's eyes widened, and not just at the contempt on display. That would explain the brute force behind the man's punches. He'd seen mutants shrug off wounds that would prove fatal to ordinary humans, fighting on with their entrails hanging out.
"There is a settlement near Białystok. It lies on an old route into Black Hand territory. I want you to take a force of trusted soldiers and show the rest of the mutant scum what happens when they side with traitors."
"Yes, sir," Gideon nodded. "When should we depart?"
"With the dawn. One of my Lieutenants will be waiting at the western gate with the coordinates."
Radic smiled again, and rose from the desk. Gideon tensed as he approached, but the Colonel only laid a hand on his shoulder.
"I trust you to execute this mission to the best of your abilities." Radic nodded, dismissing his subordinate. Gideon snapped to attention, and turned to leave. As he reached the wooden doors of the inner sanctum, he paused, and turned back to Radic.
"Something else?" the Colonel asked, a hint of frustration emerging through his amiable facade.
"Apologies Colonel, it's just… speaking of Gdansk. Have the supplies we acquired been distributed amongst the people?"
Radic's lips grew tight. "I can assure you, they have been sent where they will be of greatest use. Now, go; you will need your rest." Gideon took his cue to leave.
He paused in the gallery once more. Night had fallen during their conversation, and the moonlight cast its clear illumination over the city. The angled rooftops were edged with silver, and even the speaker towers were transformed into white threads, dangling from the heavens. It was a stark contrast from the daytime, when the grubby stone and cratered streets were lit by stained and sickly sunlight.
At the foot of the building, an old woman feebly begged passers-by for aid. A threadbare scarf was wrapped around her head.
—
Rodriguez and the Kid were waiting for him when he returned to the Hand. The Latino man was reading a pamphlet by the flickering lamplight. He folded the paper theatrically as he rose from his chair,, as if to say what time do you call this, and pressed a wad of Tib Mark banknotes into Gideon's hand. "Your winnings, from the game." Gideon pocketed the crumpled paper notes gratefully.
"So what did El Comandante want?"
Gideon sucked his teeth. "He wants us to fuck up the mutants at Białystok. Send a message that siding with the Black Hand means death."
"Typical; Radic hurts, so he lashes out. He got humiliated by the Black Hand, and now we're going to go kick an ant's nest to prove that he's a big strong man," Rodriguez said with disgust.
Gideon shook his head slowly as the pieces began to fall into place. "I don't think this is a mission we're meant to survive," he muttered, wary of potential eavesdroppers in the crowded Hand.
"My mama used to say 'the man kicks his dog, the dog scares the cat, the cat bites a mouse, and the mouse has nothing to do but eat the wall'." Gideon raised an eyebrow at the Kid's statement. The Kid shrugged. "It loses something in translation. Learn some lietuvių kalba, man!" he berated his superior with a hint of laughter.
"Well I'm sick of kicking down. I say it's time to start kicking upwards," Gideon declared.