After a series of gruelling battles, the BRA found itself in a position to establish a counter-regime in several areas, embarrassingly including São Paolo, which was its largest stronghold. Spotting the growing similarities between the two groups, many of the remaining civilians in São Paolo, although initially scared, soon became indignant, which spurred on a minority of the hard-core elements to establish small independent groups that opportunistically targeted BRA facilities and troop movements in and around the city limits. News of these activities soon spread around the country as did the consequent emergence of many other such groups inspired by their successes.
Watching the BRA attempting to establish itself in São Paolo, Ikaros could smell where this was heading and decided that he should get himself involved. He brazenly roamed the streets of select districts and came across several incidents involving civilian guerrilla groups and the BRA. Taking cover in order to survive where necessary, he was unable to assist in three situations — all he could do was to hide behind a wall or a car and listen on as the BRA killed as many of the guerrillas as they could and summarily executed those that were naїve enough to surrender.
Eventually, Ikaros found his chance: late one afternoon, he peeked around the corner of a building at the slaughter going on not so far down the street and spotted three young men running his way. They turned into the alley where Ikaros was hiding, and the first two sprinted straight past him; the third spotted him and came to an abrupt halt, yelled something to him in Portuguese, and momentarily beckoned for him to follow. Ikaros barely hesitated, guessing that the young man either thought that he was one of them, or could be, and that, in either case, if he were to hang around there too much longer, he'd be killed and thus wasted to the cause. He sprang to his feet and they all ran for nearly fifteen minutes weaving through streets and alleys, jumping fences, storming through apartments, and finally jumping into a taxi at a busy intersection near the city centre. Exhausted but laughing from the relief of making good their escape, it took a little while for them to realise that Ikaros couldn't speak Portuguese at all. Curious about his situation and being able to speak English fairly well themselves, it didn't take them long to work out Ikaros's interests, skills, experience, and his worth.
Within six months, their little band of guerrillas became the largest and strongest counter force in São Paolo, partly resulting from the merging of several like-minded groups. They named themselves the Free Brazil Guerrillas of São Paolo and caused considerable and continuing disruption and annoyance to the BRA, which led to national notoriety among the citizenry, inevitably inspiring even more to attempt the same.
The dangers of fighting were something that Ikaros was used to by this stage, but the close proximity to a sophisticated enemy in densely populated urban conditions was new to him and presented mounting difficulties over the long-term; when the BRA extended their response, engaging in a variety of population control measures, including community purging practices, the potential for continued guerrilla actions within the limits of the city became an ever-growing concern. By the time the central hospital was destroyed, Ikaros was in need of a means to hide from the BRA's vast web of undercover agents and community informants, who had been coerced into action by threat of death and the torture of their family members.
Volunteering as a medical assistant wasn't exactly a safe alternative, but since one of the surviving surgeons lived in his building, and many of the apartments there had been deserted by fleeing residents, anyway, there was plenty of room to open a make-shift hospital. At first, Ikaros just participated in administration, but as the patient numbers increased and workloads of the available doctors and nurses were stretched beyond their limits, he started helping with surgery in a minimal way, which allowed him to observe a range of important operations. Before long, though, he found that he was required to perform some basic ones himself, initially keeping quiet about the fact that he had only seen the procedure performed on several occasions. From then on, every morning he just hoped that the most complicated operations that he'd have to do that day were amputations or superficial shrapnel extractions.
• • •
Trying hard to keep his eyes open from exhaustion, as is normally the case, Ikaros stares blankly out at the view while considering the now-obvious prediction that the hospital will sooner rather than later be shut down for good. From the start, Ikaros and his colleagues have held no delusions that the hospital, one way or another, could only ever be temporary and that the weekly raids by the BRA, in which some suspected patients are dragged away to be interrogated, sometimes even just shot dead in their beds, may well come to a violent climax for the whole facility itself; as a consequence, they merely do what they can for their patients and exist day to day.
Over the past two months, Ikaros has worked almost eighteen hours a day, and, when on duty, he only takes a few moments to collect his thoughts and 'freshen up' every now and then before returning to the operating theatre or continuing on his rounds. During one of these breaks by a window three weeks ago, he watched a twenty-two storey building being prematurely demolished, which, it turned out, was still occupied by many of its tenants; this was part of a broader demonstration of the BRA's determination to discourage insurgency. The hospital was subsequently inundated with patients, and the medical staff worked day and night attending to many of the survivors. As a result, some staff collapsed on the job from exhaustion. Ikaros was one of them: he woke moments later to find himself lying on the floor of the operating theatre with blood gushing out of a large gash in his hand from the scalpel that he had been using to operate on a nine-year-old boy. The delay in the operation and the attention that Ikaros then required saw the boy lose a significant amount of blood; although no one blamed him, Ikaros felt sure that if it weren't for the disruption that he had caused during the procedure, the boy would probably have lived.
As Ikaros leans heavily against the window sill, one of the members of the Free Brazil Guerrillas enters the room and walks anxiously straight up to him without his noticing. "Ikaros, you have to get out of here. It's no longer safe here for any of us." He grabs Ikaros's right arm and pulls on it towards the door.
Ikaros slips his arm free and responds, "What are you talking about? It's never been safe here."
"Look, we have to get out. Everyone's getting out right now."
Just then they hear a huge blast emanating from the other side of the city. They look out over and through the buildings that stand between and see a large fire ball expanding furiously and engulfing everything in its path; over the next thirty seconds, they stand mesmerised by it until it eventually runs its course, but not before setting ablaze nearly ten densely populated city blocks. Never having seen or heard of a 'creeping incendiary' before, Ikaros is particularly overwhelmed by the display and the horrors that it so obviously entails. His colleague, on the other hand, holds a tinge of sadness on his face that comes with a feeling of diabolical expectation: he has knowledge that the junta has recently acquired the incendiaries from the international arms market and attached them to their newly developed missiles; he is also privy to the fact that several more of these are currently on a heading towards the city and that this is the first in a series of planned attacks in the lead up to a full-scale invasion of the city set to occur later in the week.
Ikaros states the obvious. "This is just the beginning, right?"
His question is met with a brief silence. "Let's go!"
Knowing the game is up in a way he had no chance to foresee, Ikaros hurriedly follows his colleague out the door and down the stairs, only finding the presence of mind enough to yell out frantically to the staff and any of the able-bodied patients in earshot that they should evacuate immediately.
Out on the street, a stolen car awaits double parked and idling in the eerily quiet street, the remaining residents having reduced their outside activities considerably over the past few months. As they race through the city, more creeping incendiaries can b
e heard going off in the distance, and they track several great fiery masses rolling down some streets towards them in the distance. They remain silent, preferring just to wait and see what happens in the unsettling surge in traffic as many take any mode of transport they can in a desperate attempt to escape from the sprawling metropolis.
Disturbed by the speed with which he's abandoned everyone back at the hospital, Ikaros allows himself to take solace in the fact that had he stayed, he may well never have survived what's to follow.
• • •
Over the course of the following three days, all seventy of the incendiary missiles that were launched reached their targets to great effect, which included many of the BRA bases and facilities but mainly just random suburban districts, and resulted in nearly 720,000 deaths, a large proportion of which were from severe injuries that often went untreated.
The strategy was three pronged: handicap the BRA, scatter and thus weaken the infamous guerrillas of the city, and break the will of the population to resist upon being forcibly annexed. The killing didn't stop with the final explosion, though: on the morning of the fourth day, the junta forces rolled into the city under heavy artillery and air support, killing anyone that they saw on the streets and bombing strategically and randomly around the city. With a further 80,000 deaths and 40,000 injuries, at the end of the sixth day, after only receiving limited resistance from a severely weakened and overwhelmed BRA, a ceasefire was implemented and the terms of surrender were negotiated — although this only applied to just over 60 percent of the BRA forces as the rest had managed to evade capture by disbanding and doing their best to disperse and hide among the fleeing population. Nevertheless, in ruthless disregard of this, over the following fortnight, all of the 15,362 captured BRA troops were summarily executed after being relocated to an encampment in the nearby countryside.
• • •
Meanwhile, driving south-west overnight, Ikaros arrived mid-morning at Brazil's shared border with Paraguay, where he was left to his own devices to make the rest of the journey to the capital of Asuncion. Hitching rides and taking two buses over the next eight hours, eventually arriving at the airport with a handful of money ready to try and pay his way around not having a visa, Ikaros had a bit of time to reflect on his experiences in São Paolo and guessed correctly that he would probably only ever be able to imagine what actually happened there after his rapid departure, knowing all too well that, in addition to the strict controls on communication imposed by the junta, the international organisations and the mass media were paying little attention, allowing it to slide under the radar and be relegated to relatively unattended background noise, if that.
His attempt at bribing the first two officials in the airport didn't go down as well as he'd hoped: he promptly found himself in a cell for just under twenty-four hours before a slightly higher official took over, accepted a larger bribe, and consequently helped to clear the paperwork and get him on the next flight out of the country to a major hub. By the time Ikaros was seated in the first of the three planes he took on his way to Berlin, he was almost completely numb and so relieved that he slept heavily most of the way, even while waiting between flights; upon arrival in Berlin almost fifteen hours later — only a few hours of which were actually spent in the air — he had to be gently shaken awake by a flight attendant after most of the passengers had already exited the plane. He causally disembarked and politely thanked the staff for their service as he did so.
Chapter 23
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg: nearly eight years later
Sascha comes into the darkened living room and sees Ikaros quietly observing the outside world beyond the window. "Are you ready to get going?" she interrupts.
"Yeah, sure." Ikaros turns and walks towards her. "Is there anything important we haven't thought of?"
"Probably plenty," she replies unreassuringly. "We're just gonna have to run with it as is."
They hug quietly for a moment, then silently leave the room and join the others.
Three minutes later
On the other side of the street, Agent 2.0 stands on the pavement next to his car patiently watching Ikaros's apartment and the entrance to the building when four people riding mountain bikes come racing out of the entrance wearing similar clothes and black, full-faced motorcycle helmets. They immediately disperse in different directions: one speeds straight past Agent 2.0 while looking directly at him from safely behind the impenetrable visor; the other three go in the opposite direction only to split up at the nearby intersection. Agent 2.0 briefly and deliberately scans all of them, trying to identify any features that may help him to make an appropriate judgement. Deciding on which one to target personally just before they all disappear, he jumps in his car and orders the driver to follow the cyclist turning left at the intersection. Noisily scraping the car parked in front without regard, the driver hastily gets his vehicle onto the road and gives chase.
Within moments of receiving orders from Agent 2.0, six more cars are following all four targets, all of whom begin attempting as many aggressively dangerous and evasive manoeuvres as they can in order to shake the cars off their tails. While slightly slower than the cars at times, the bikes are generally more agile and better suited to the heavy afternoon traffic and urban conditions, providing the cyclists with a good chance to evade capture; only with aggressive determination and reckless endangerment are the drivers able to keep up.
• • •
Yanyan had left the house earlier in the day and proceeded to go on a seemingly aimless and near-endless trail through the city in an attempt to lose any tail that she might have had from the start or inadvertently picked up along the way. She made it to the school just moments before the students were let out, quickly spotted Samuel in the rushing crowd, and beckoned him into the taxi that one of Ikaros's security guards had commandeered earlier that afternoon. They then headed directly to Berlin Central Station. Upon arrival, all three ran up the stairs to the platform after double parking the car and abandoning it nearby. Samuel was characteristically calm throughout, and when Yanyan reassured him that all they had to do was catch the train so they could meet up with Ikaros and Sascha later, he seemed to accept it, nodding slowly and quietly; being familiar with his style, however, Yanyan believed she could sense that he really feared for all their safety without any thought for his own.
They quickly boarded the train and looked for their seats while the bodyguard skilfully scanned the station looking for anyone suspicious who may have tailed them. No one stood out. He only allowed himself to relax once the train pulled away from the platform, making sure that he spotted them one last time sitting safely in their seats before striding towards the exit.
• • •
Ikaros discards his bike, letting it crash onto the pavement; he jumps out onto the road and stands next to the diver's-side door of a parked car. Taking pause to scan left and right down the side street, he clicks on the open button and holds his breath, wondering whether he really did lose all the cars pursuing him somewhere along the convoluted and indirect route that he took.
He slides into the car and takes off, gently pressing down on the accelerator, glancing sporadically in his rearview mirror for any signs of the grey cars while trying to remember how he had planned to get out of the city and onto the Autobahn south to Munich at this time of day, aware that his advantage in traffic has been lost now that he's behind the wheel.
• • •
He hadn't spotted any of the grey cars since the early stages of his negotiation of a path through the growing traffic of the afternoon, taking the pavement option on many occasions, running red lights, and brazenly crossing intersections and riding into oncoming traffic when the alternatives were blocked or it provided a perceptible window of opportunity. All this was done flagrantly without regard for other road users and pedestrians — he forced himself to view all of them as mere obstacles. Throughout his ride, his attention was reduced to finding a path with a chance o
f maintaining his momentum, and he only had to stop on two occasions, but for no longer than a few desperate seconds.
All this evidently attracted much attention, but, being so mobile, he was gone before most could do anything. It turned out that even the police and military in the streets weren't in much of a position to stop him, although one soldier, incensed by the contempt for the rules of the road, took several pot shots at Ikaros as he careened through the intersection he was patrolling. Five police cars and four military vehicles on the scene ended up attempting to give chase. Before they could make significant gains on him, however, one by one, the drivers were ordered to back off gradually and make it appear as though they had been undermined by the traffic conditions; this was a ruse that Ikaros unfortunately fell for partly because he was so preoccupied with riding that he didn't even come close to seriously considering the possibility of duplicity.
• • •
Feeling almost sure that he's now inconspicuous among all the other cars and that a city-wide lockdown is most unlikely, without resistance, he allows the flow of traffic to guide him to the entrance slope of the elevated Autobahn, where he begins accelerating in accordance with those around him and soon passes over the city's high walls and the sprawling refugee camps far below. He accelerates towards his intended cruising speed of three hundred kilometers per hour, soon shifting into seventh gear and settling into the fast lane and the scenic views that continue all along the direct connection to Munich.
NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) Page 19
