Under the Mask

Panic, fear and anarchy.

Those were the three words that every reporter or news channel across the world used to describe the event that happened at 2000 hours GST. To those who believed, it was a show of her power, to the non believers it was an impossible event. Regardless of which side humanity stood on, one thing remained clear.

Last night at 8pm, the whole world went dark.

Every house, every building, every street, hospital etc. was turned off for exactly one minute. When the lights came back on there was panic in the streets, as many people believed it was the end of the world.

Oddly enough, the ones that remained completely calm in the middle of this unimaginable incident were The Order's followers. All of them remained completely calm when the lights went off and stayed that way when the lights came back on.

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While the people of the world were divided over what to label the incident, the Governments of the world were thrown in disarray. To say that this incident left them searching for answers was a massive understatement. Every civil servant spent the next three days either looking for answers, calling their contacts to find any leads or throwing the blame around to see which one might crack.

Try as they might though, no answers were formed. For a moment, many of those in power honestly wondered if The Leader did indeed obtain the power of a divine and almighty force to perform an impossible feat.

"A miracle," David said, buttering a slice of toast then placing it on the Danica's plate. "That's what they're calling it."

"Gretchen was totally freaking out last night when the lights went off," added Danica, typing on her phone while speaking to her parents "and I heard Timothy and his family started packing up their car wanting to get out of the burbs before things got bad."

"Honey don't you have to get into work early?" David asked.

"Not right away," replied she, "right now they're going to be playing the blame game so if I go now, they'll point fingers at me for any number of stupid reasons. Right now I'm going to let them go nuts for a little while and when they've calmed down I'll go back."

"Mom," Danica said, turning to her "you think what they're saying is real? That it was a miracle?"

Carol thought long and hard about that question. In her line of work, miracles rarely come about. She had seen so much death and despair, so much devastation and destruction that the idea of a higher power was an impossible pill for her to swallow. In her mind if there was an all powerful entity watching over us, then why did such a being allow for so many bad things to happen?

"I don't know honey," was the only answer she could come up with and it clearly was not the answer she was looking for.

"But I promise I'll keep you safe," Carol added and brought Danica in for a hug.

"Hey," David called out "what about me?"

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When she got into the building, Carol was not surprised to get called into Harry's office. She was surprised that when she got there, instead of hearing the tyraid of doubts that would normally follow an event like this, he simply asked her to take a seat while he poured a shot of whiskey for both of them.

"Is your family okay? Did anything happen?" Harry asked, showing his human side, which baffled Carol more. Among the many words that she would use to describe her boss, human was definitely not on that list.

Carol replied that things were were of course caught off guard by what happened, but instead of panicking, the family stayed together. Carol also mentioned that it was good how the power came back on after a minute.

"Harry, cut the velvet touch here and be straight. What's going on?"

"Everyone's busy looking for heads to put up on the chopping block," Harry replied "I used a few favours to keep us from being mentioned so don't worry."

"Then what's got you looking like we've lost?"

"Because no one expected this to happen," said he, his hands trembling in fear "we're supposed to be the ones ahead of the pack. The CIA's power has never had a rival since the fall of the U.S.S.R. We've foiled thousands of terrorists plans and stopped our country from going to war more than ten times."

"And all he did was say four words," added he, with a pause and looked outside "four words and all our credibility went down the drain."

"I…"

"Now look here," snapped Carol, banging her hands on the table, which startled her boss "we may have been sucker punched by last night but that doesn't mean we should throw in the towel like that."

"Yeah we have protocols and rules in place to keep stuff like this from happening but the facts are it happened and we can't change that. All that's left to do is find out how he did this."

"You don't believe its a miracle?" Harry asked "that it's not the hand of God at play here?"

"God left humans long ago," Carol replied in a cold tone "we're on our own here."

Harry looked like he was about to say something when they heard a knock on the door. The computer analyst Lyle poked his head through the door, nervous expression plastered all over his face.

"You're gonna wanna see this," was all he said and that was enough to send warning bells in their minds.

When the two reached the operations room, the giant display showed a video of The Leader.

"It's #1 on youtube and every other news site," added Lyle.

"Is this live?" Carol asked.

"That's the thing," said Lyle scratching his head

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"When I was first visited by the Goddess and given her gifts, I took it upon myself to spread her teachings to all corners of the globe," said The Leader.

"I put on this mask with the idea that if anything happened to me, someone else would take up the mantle and continue on."

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"What do you mean you can't track him?" Carol barked.

"I don't know how he's doing it," Lyle answered, then pointed to the screen he was working on "But his signal is coming from all over the world."

"The best hackers can make their signal bounce from location to location," Lyle adde "But to make it come from every capital city in the world is downright impossible."

"Damn it, I don't care how you do it," shouted Harry, with renewed vigour "I want that SOB's location or I'll have your head."

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"But I have heard the desires of the followers and have spoken to the Goddess as well," continued The Leader "the time that I must hide my identity has come to an end."

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Carol and Harry looked at the man behind the mask in horror. Carol felt an unholy chill rolling down her spine. The two of them looked at each other, wondering if they saw the same thing.

"Hey guys," Lyle said looking at how stiff they'd become "who is that?"

"Michael Fairbrook," Carol replied, her gaze still focused towards the young man on the screen.