PREDESTINY
By C. T. Phipps and Frank Martin
A Mystique Press Production
Mystique Press is an imprint of Crossroad Press
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Digital Edition Copyright © 2018 C. T. Phipps and Frank Martin
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Meet the Authors
Frank Martin is an author and comic writer that is not as crazy as he work makes him out to be. A fan of storytelling in all its forms, Frank always enjoys exploring new genres and mediums. He currently lives in New York with his wife and three kids. You can check out updates for all of Frank’s writing at frankthewriter.com, on his Facebook page at facebook.com/frankmartinwriter, or follow him on Twitter and Instagram @frankthewriter.
Published works:
Modern Testament (comics)
Mountain Sickness
Skin Deep/Ordinary Monsters
C.T. Phipps is a lifelong student of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. An avid tabletop gamer, he discovered this passion led him to write and turned him into a lifelong geek. He is a regular blogger and also a reviewer for The Bookie Monster.
Bibliography
The Rules of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #1)
The Games of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #2)
The Secrets of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #3)
The Kingdom of Supervillany (Supervillainy Saga #4)
I Was a Teenage Weredeer (The Bright Falls Mysteries, Book 1)
An American Weredeer in Michigan (The Bright Falls Mysteries, Book 2)
Esoterrorism (Red Room, Vol. 1)
Eldritch Ops (Red Room, Vol. 2)
Agent G: Infiltrator (Agent G, Vol. 1)
Agent G: Saboteur (Agent G, Vol. 2)
Cthulhu Armageddon (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 1)
The Tower of Zhaal (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 2)
Lucifer’s Star (Lucifer’s Star, Vol. 1)
Lucifer’s Nebula (Lucifer’s Star, Vol. 2)
Straight Outta Fangton (Straight Outta Fangton, Vol. 1)
Wraith Knight (Wraith Knight, Vol. 1)
Wraith Lord (Wraith Knight, Vol. 2)
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PREDESTINY
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER ONE
“Isn’t this exciting, Robbie? We’re making history!” Anna shouted in my ear as I walked near the front of a massive march of protestors. It was probably rude to use a cellphone in the middle of a protest march, but Anna wanted to share every bit of the excitement she was feeling from her own part in the march.
“We haven’t accomplished anything yet,” I said, with my hand cupped around my mouth to block out the noise from the crowd marching alongside me. “This is just one step of many.”
Anna tended to get overly excited on the phone. In person she was as cold as ice, but there was something about not having the person she was talking to in front of her which excited her flair for the dramatic. “I know, but we’re doing it! We’re really part of this thing.”
“This thing” referred to a nationwide protest of the Butterfly Corporation’s corrupt political lobbying and environmental abuse. Even though Anna and I were in different cities, the scenes surrounding us were the same. Tens of thousands of men and women, all ages and races, marched through crowded metropolitan avenues lined with skyscrapers. Huge mobs of people completely blocked off traffic across the entire street as we all pushed on ahead one step at a time. Our destinations were Butterfly’s many offices located all around the country.
There were at least a hundred thousand marchers in my group alone. With all the protests across the country combined, there must have been close to a million people involved, making it one of the most extensive demonstrations of anti-corporate activism in our nation’s history.
I may have been only seventeen, but I could see the way the wind was blowing and wanted to show the American people we weren’t going to take it. I cut school and caught a bus to be here while my girlfriend, Anna Cross, stayed behind to take part in the protest in our hometown of New Detroit. I could’ve joined her but was personally invited to the main one in Chicago by the girl marching next to me.
Christine Trainer was a beautiful intellectual only a couple of years older than me. Her tight, blonde ponytail and thick, black-framed glasses never left her head. She was only a junior at Connor University, but the girl had more courage and bravery than many people twice her age. Christine had coordinated this whole event, methodically planning every rally. Connor was just fifth on my list of schools to apply to, but after meeting Christine there, it was the only place I wanted to go. After I finished high school, of course.
So obviously when she called and asked if I wanted to join her at the heart of the protest, the only answer I could give her was yes.
As if she read my mind, Anna immediately changed the subject and asked, “You’re with Christine?”
“She’s right next to me,” I answered.
Anna was by no means the jealous type and knew Christine by reputation. She was a big name in the activist world, and I’m glad my girlfriend was excited rather than resentful that Christine wanted me by her side.
I continued to press the phone right into my ear to funnel out the noise around me. A bad choice since it was also loud on Anna’s end, causing her to yell. “How did your dad take you leaving?”
>
The excitement was clearly getting to her. I’d never heard her keep changing the subject so rapidly.
“I didn’t tell him,” I admitted. “You know how he is, Anna. He would’ve handcuffed me to my bed. He’s a cop. They’re legally allowed to do that, ya know.”
“He’ll see the light, eventually,” Anna said.
“Yeah, right,” I said, sighing. “Dad is a cop and a member of the New Freedom Party. As far as he’s concerned, corporations like Butterfly can do no wrong.”
The New Freedom Party was the replacement for the previous working-class representation of the United States, except its leaders were all richer than God. It believed all the problems in the country were the result of the government standing in the way of business. They believed in a minimum of interference, which generally translated as letting the megacorporations walk all over any laws which might apply to them, be they environmental or financial. Yeah, some jobs had been created but they’d also gotten lots of people killed as Butterfly didn’t pay much attention to safety standards once people could no longer sue them.
“Well, we’ll just have to… Oh! I see the building now!” Anna said.
I looked up as well and could see Butterfly’s main headquarters in the distance. We were still too far out, but if Anna’s group had already reached their protest that meant things were getting underway.
Knowing she needed to go, I cut our goodbye short. “OK. Be safe.”
“I will. You too!” Anna said.
A click immediately followed her voice, and I wasted no time shoving the phone back into my pocket with a shaking hand, which I think Christine noticed.
“Are you nervous?” Christine asked.
I could feel her eyes gazing at me as we walked, but I just took a deep breath while staring into the back of the man’s head in front of me. “Yeah.”
“Good. You should be. We’re going up against the second most powerful force in the country.”
The Butterfly Corporation was one of the ten megacorporations that arose in the wake of the New Freedom Party repealing virtually all the laws holding back corporate interests to end the Great Recession. It had worked in the short term and employment was up but reports of abuses were everywhere, including New Detroit. The company and its fellow megacorporations had been granted special powers and rights by the government, making them virtually untouchable. After Anna showed me some videos of how their business practices were destroying lives overseas, I’d decided enough was enough and gotten seriously into activism. I was glad because the energy here was amazing. Anna was right. We were making history.
Looking over at Christine as we walked, I found a strangely confident smile on her face. It was a far cry from the jittery expression that must have been on mine.
“You don’t look nervous, though,” I pointed out.
And her smile remained as she stared into my eyes, emitting the bold fearlessness that made her so charismatic. “Because I know we have the most powerful force in the world on our side.”
“And what’s that?” I asked, expecting one of her usual pithy speeches.
“This.” Christine lifted her arms and looked up as if to put every single person surrounding us on display. “The people.”
Following her lead, I raised my head and really took in how much we’d managed to reach out with H.O.P.E. (Heroes for Occupying the Public Economy—which I thought was silly, but Christine wanted it to spell hope). Christine had founded the group with e-mail and Liveworld but it amazed me just how many people had rallied around her cause. Several demonstrators held signs over their heads, yelling out anti-Butterfly proclamations into the air. Others were chatting and laughing amongst themselves, every smiling face beaming with optimism.
Some would say we were at war with a heartless corporation dead set on taking over our country, but our revolution was to be a peaceful one. Proof that this government was still a democracy and that it will always exist as long as the voice of its citizens refused to be silenced.
Then, as if on cue, a man farther behind us in the crowd began chanting by himself. “Butterfly-fly away. Butterfly-fly away.”
It was certainly not the most intimidating chant. In fact, I thought it sounded stupid the first time I heard him say it. But he kept repeating it over and over like a mantra. H.O.P.E. was a peaceful organization, designed to resist the megacorporations through demonstrations and love rather than violence. So far, it hadn’t done much. Still, the entire world was watching us now.
It wasn’t long before a woman joined him. And then someone else. And another. And another. And before I knew it, I was shouting at the top of my lungs. “Butterfly-fly away! Butterfly-fly away!”
The crowd’s steps were out of sync and erratic, but our voices boomed nevertheless. Our words echoed throughout the street, bouncing back and forth between the skyscrapers on either side of us. The excitement was contagious. Christine was the only person here I knew, but I felt connected to every single individual around me. My heart was racing. My head was spinning. And I found myself smiling from ear to ear, lost in the rhythmic beat of our chant. Was this what being drunk was like? I felt alive. As if my entire skin was on fire. But the sensation suddenly faded when I glanced behind me and found a set of eyes glaring in my direction.
They belonged to a girl not much older than me a couple of feet back. I could barely see her with a big fat man directly behind me, but from what I could notice she looked strange for a whole mess of reasons. She had short, ghost-white hair that brushed along the tops of her shoulders. Although nobody here was dressed fancy, her clothes were especially ragged. Like a jacket she just found lying on the side of the road.
But most peculiar of all, the girl wasn’t chanting. Unlike every other face around her, smiling and yelling at the top of their lungs, she had on a cold stare aimed right at me. Or at least, I thought it was aimed right at me. With several people between us I couldn’t be sure. But it was strange to find someone at the protest so disconnected from everyone else around her.
My focus on the girl’s intense stare was broken when Christine gave me a small nudge with her elbow. “You ready?”
I turned back around and realized I’d been so distracted that I failed to notice we were only a block away from Butterfly’s headquarters. At its end, the avenue we marched down split into a perpendicular cross street, and in the middle of the intersection rested Butterfly’s headquarters, vainly positioned to be the center of everything. I slowly allowed my eyes to follow its immaculate, clear glass windows up to the sky, and I had to admit, in a city of skyscrapers, Butterfly’s main base of operations could only be described as a tower.
We approached the front of the building, which perfectly faced us, and I was surprised to see a thousand-man-strong human barricade of security guards waiting in a semi-circle around the front steps. They were Monarch PMC, Butterfly’s massive ‘security division’ which had its own standing army.
“Steady,” Christine said, perhaps sensing my nervousness.
“I’m not afraid,” I said, lying my butt off.
Rumors of their horrendous, yet unproven, war crimes have become notorious on the Internet. It was only recently that Butterfly had been granted permission by Congress to use Monarch PMC employees on U.S. soil. They wouldn’t dare deploy full-fledged combat troops here. Not yet, at least. But the riot police-looking guards stationed in front of their headquarters were no mall cops, that was for damn sure.
The guards’ uniform consisted of little more than thick, black vests and helmets, which I assumed were meant to be more intimidating than anything else. They didn’t have any guns, but their belts were outfitted with batons and what looked like pepper spray. The men stood in a tight-knit line with arms crossed and their legs spread apart.
Admittedly, the sight of a well-disciplined, military-like unit also put me on edge. Granted our dysfunctional army completely dwarfed theirs in size, but the guards just stood there waiting for us to arrive as if they w
ere preparing for battle. Not that it was going to matter much anyways. This was organized as a peaceful protest, and Christine made extra sure when planning the demonstration that violence was not to be tolerated. Had I been in charge, who knows how I would’ve reacted? Probably attempt to fade my way towards the back of the group and let someone else take the lead. Certainly not like the fearless souls who stomped right up to the human barricade in front of the building and began yelling in their faces.
“If we don’t provoke them, we’ll be fine,” Christine said. “Butterfly is just trying to scare us.”
“It’s working.” I summoned my courage to keep going, though.
As if we routinely practiced this march, the entire group, all one hundred thousand of us, stopped on a dime without disrupting our chant. The wave of demonstrators then began to fan out across the street, completely encompassing every inch of the headquarters’ entrance. With fists and signs raised into the air, everyone continued screaming our battle cry into the sky. “Butterfly-fly away! Butterfly-fly away!”
And I was right there with them, smiling and pumping my arm up high above my head. It was an adrenaline-fueled rush but not like riding a rollercoaster or playing basketball. This had purpose. It had meaning. I was making a difference, part of something greater than myself.
We were doing it the right way.
No one in the first row laid a hand on the guards in front of them. We weren’t rioters. We were protesters. We didn’t even want to go inside. We were perfect right where we were. Because we had a job to do, too: letting Butterfly’s corrupt executives know the people couldn’t be silenced.
The apparent captain of the Monarch PMC guards seemed uncomfortable with how close we had gotten, though. His uniform was slightly more ornate than the others and he was in the center of the group. Around the heads blocking my view I saw the man clenching his jaw. He then stiffened up straight while intently staring at the male college student chanting in front of him.
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