Sibylla of Earth

by A. D. Baldwin

  “Your father.”

  Sibylla looked at him. “You knew my father?”

  “Of course, I did.” He took the seat across the table from her and wiped his mustache. “He was Captain of the 13th.”

  Sibylla shot him a doubtful stare. “Anyone could’ve looked that up.”

  “Okay, how ‘bout this: he was the biggest asshole I’ve ever met.”

  “Wow,” Sibylla said, genuinely impressed. “I guess you did know him.”

  “That man,” the General said, pointing at the door, where Dr. Bachman had just exited. “Was your last chance at freedom, young lady. Those documents you uploaded held top-secret information. If it weren't for some of our best engineers, we’d be having to explain ourselves to the Red Empire right now as to why we've broken at least a dozen points of the armistice. The court will have no choice but to find you guilty and hand you over to Division.”

  Sibylla’s mouth opened as fear dawned on her. The Division was a special section of the government, a covert agency dedicated to the eradication of terrorists and traitors alike. If they took her in, she’d never see the light of day again.

  “They can’t do that,” she said.

  “Sure, they can. As of right now, the G.P.T.O. is currently protected under government law.”

  “And who protects me?”

  “For the time being?” He sat back in his chair and sighed. “I do.”

  She scoffed. “People like you don’t protect people like me. You use me, toss me out when you’re done. ‘For the stones of the road are trampled on by the wheel.’”

  The quote provoked a thoughtful pause from the general. “Maria Escobar?” he asked, waiting for her to answer.

  Sibylla froze. “You’ve read Maria Escobar?”

  “It’s from her treatise, I believe, The Poverty of War. I read it during my time at West Point. She was one of my favorite writers.”

  Sibylla stared at him, stung by the revelation. “I didn’t know they taught pacifism in the military.”

  “They don’t,” he said coyly. “I read it in my own time.”

  Different indeed, she thought. “Why are you helping me?”

  Murdock leaned across the table. “Breaking into that facility took skill, talent, but most of all, it took courage. We could use someone like you.”

  “Who? The military?” She shook her head in refusal. “No way. I’ll never be a soldier.”

  “No,” he agreed. “Not any soldier. A Blood Eagle.”

  Sibylla laughed, astonished at the ridiculousness of it all. The Eagles were the toughest soldiers in the military, psychopathic astronauts who burned into orbit using drop pods. Only the hardest of the hard enlisted—something Sibylla wasn’t. “You want me to choose between getting blasted into outer space or going to jail?”

  “You’re seventeen,” Murdock said. “So, you meet the age requirement. Besides, the program works.”

  “For the military. Not us.”

  Murdock ignored her protest. “What about your mother?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Sibylla.”

  “I told you, she’s dead. You would’ve known that if you’d read my file.”

  Murdock glanced down at the table, his fingers steepling together as he realized that she was right. “The Nest is home to one of the most advanced facilities in the world. You’d be working with the some of the sharpest minds in the country. People like yourself.”

  “I don’t care if it has the best cafeteria in the world. They’re still soldiers. They still kill people.”

  “Actually, now that you mention it, they do serve meat three times a day, which is more than the average person eats in a weak.”

  “Too bad I’m a vegan, huh?”

  The general sighed in frustration. “The world has always been at war, Sibylla. If we don’t prepare for it, we put ourselves in a position to lose.”

  “We’re losing anyway.”

  “Fine,” the general said. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “What’s the answer then? Give up?”

  “No, not give up. But what about reason?”

  “Reason.” The general rubbed his eyes in exhaustion. “Here we go again.”

  “Why not?” Sibylla said. “If you put the same amount of energy in understanding your enemies that you do in building your armies, you’d see that the world could be a different place.”

  “That’s naive.”

  “No, that’s hope. And what’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing,” Murdock conceded. “But you have to be realistic. The nature of the world is aggressive, cruel. It’s in our instinct to kill. Even amongst the best of us.”

  “We could be better,” Sibylla said. “There’s more to us than just hate and revenge.”

  Murdock stared at her in silence. He seemed transfixed by her somehow, as if struggling in his mind to build a bridge for the two of them to meet. Finally, with a little reluctance, he removed his coat and, rolling back one of his sleeves, held out his arm across the table.

  Sibylla cringed as she saw a landscape of charred skin along the inside of his forearm. It was a honeycomb pattern of pale bumps and pink grooves, the horrific signature of third-degree burns.

  “Do you know what January 7th in the Ukraine is?” he asked.

  Sibylla shook her head.

  “It’s Christmas. I didn’t know that either until I was stationed there. We were embedded in one of the villages near the Croatian border—the last line of defense against the Russian Army.

  “They were good people. Loving. Welcoming. They didn’t even care who governed them as long as they could live in peace. In fact, there was this one little boy…” The general’s eyes brightened, as he thought back in his memory, and Sibylla saw a smile spread across his withered face. “His name was Yevhen. About half your size. Dark, brown eyes. Pudgy belly. I can still see him if I think about it.

  “He used to hand out pieces of fresh bread to the troops, goods that his mother baked in their home. A cute child, always smiling, never angry.”

  “A week before Christmas, we were called up to reinforce a battalion of Marines stranded along the coast. It was a day’s march even with the newest Exo-suits. Plus, the weather was rife with storms. We knew we’d be gone for a while, and more importantly, we knew that our absence would attract the attention of the enemy.

  “The Russian soldiers along the border were starving. They needed supplies, and they knew where they could get them. Desperation makes people do things….” He shook his head.

  “So, as we packed up and headed out, one of the Russian spy satellites picked up our movement and notified command. It didn’t take those sons of bitches long to roll in and start punishing the villagers.”

  “But why?” Sibylla asked. “They were innocent.”

  “Innocence doesn’t matter in war,” Murdock said, leveling his gaze at her. “You have to pick a side, or else a side will pick you.”

  Sibylla fell quiet as she felt the weight of his words.

  The general scratched his chin, frowning in annoyance as his fingers grated against the light stubble that had formed. “They started with the men,” he said. “Cut their throats, hung them up on the trees.” He glanced up at the ceiling as if he could still see the bodies hanging around him. “After that, they moved onto the women. It wasn’t that hard when there wasn’t anyone left to protect them. They dragged them into the barn, raped them through the day, taking their time, taking their turns. When they were done, they finished them off no different than the men.”

  Sibylla sat in silence, a slight shiver rising up her body as she imagined the atrocities. This is what was wrong with the world, she thought, her eyes filling with tears. This is what she was trying to end. Holding her emotions in check, she looked to the general and asked, “And the children?”

  He shrugged. “Those who were fast enough escaped to the forest where they froze to death in the night. The others, the ones who were either too s
low or too...pudgy got it the worst. They were locked inside the church, left to burn as the Russian army torched the grounds.”

  He glared at the burns on his arm; his eyes lost to the fury inside of him. “It’s amazing how fast wood can burn.”

  Sibylla said nothing as they sat in silence. She’d heard similar stories from her father, tales he’d told in the dark of a messy room, a bottle of liquor clutched in his hand, while her mother hid in the kitchen, afraid he might snap at any moment. They ended all the same: painfully.

  “Reason has its place,” the general said as he began to roll up his sleeve. “But sometimes you face an enemy that won’t reason, and that’s when you have no choice but to do whatever’s necessary.”

  “I can’t accept that,” Sibylla said. “I can’t accept a world that only offers revenge and hate and murder as its only refuge.”

  “Well, you’d better. Because war is coming. One that will change the face of this earth. And we’ll need every man, woman, and child if we’re going to survive. Right now, you need to make a decision. Division is waiting outside to take you. I can stop that. You only have to say the word.”

  Sibylla felt the threads of her fate tightening around her. If she let Division take her, she’d be doomed to a life of torture and anonymity. If she took the deal with Murdock, she’d be betraying her principles…herself. Hanging her head in defeat, she could only say what was in her heart: “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  The general nodded as he considered her answer. “Alright then.” He pulled the sensor key from his pocket and held it up to the door. With one slide of the key, the door unlocked and he swung the door open, waving for Sibylla to stand.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, rising to her feet.

  Murdock buttoned his sleeve, rubbed down the front of his jacket, and met her gaze full-on. “You might not be willing to do this for yourself, but I suspect there may be someone you’ll do it for.”

  5

  The Sandman

  Outside, a squad of soldiers were waiting in the hallway. They were muscled men in dark-green t-shirts, their bodies lined with the titanium frames of black exo-suits. Armed with VK-26 assault rifles, they carried foot-long knives at their waists and Piercer handguns in their holsters. Written over their tattooed biceps, were a myriad of cuts and scars—most likely the trophies that they’d earned while on tour in some dangerous battle zone in the Ukraine. They were beasts. All of them. And they were at Murdock’s command.

  They snapped to attention as he appeared before them. Without a glance, he nodded, and they fell at ease.

  “We have to hurry,” he said, checking his watch.

  “Why?” Sibylla asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. She was still trying to figure out who the general had referred to in the cell. At first, her mind turned to the idea of another prisoner, perhaps a peace protester who’d been captured attempting to break into another facility. But then her worries exploded into a pounding fear as the thought of Dillon being held in a cell nearby burst into her mind. No, she thought. Please….

  “No time to explain,” he said. “There’s something you need to see.”

  The hallway was a dimly-lit stretch of concrete walls and metal doors. The reek of urine and feces was heavy in the air, while the rattle of pipes clanked ominously from the ceiling. Sibylla felt as if she was in a horror movie.

  “What the hell is this place?” she asked.

  “An old military prison. Division uses it sometimes. It’s mostly empty, though.”

  Mostly? Sibylla shivered as she heard a low moan coming from somewhere close by, and her mind was filled once again with the image of Dillon chained to a chair.

  “Which way?” Murdock asked.

  The soldier at his flank, a large Asian man with a sleeve of tattoos, gestured with his gun, and they quickly turned the corner.

  Up ahead, Sibylla saw a group of security guards dressed in black uniforms leaning against the walls. They spoke in low voices, as they cradled their assault rifles against their bodies, seeming completely relaxed, like a group of hoodlums slumming in a back alley.

  Division guards were private soldiers, mercenaries contracted by the government. They worked outside of military jurisdiction, allowing them the freedom to indulge in whatever civil rights abuses they saw fit.

  Sibylla remembered seeing them at a peace rally back in El Paso. Arriving in black trucks, they shoved their way through the crowd of protesters, even batting a pregnant woman in the face with the butt of a rifle as they rushed to arrest the main speaker.

  Their voices died down as they noticed the General and his men.

  “Sorry, old man,” one of the taller guards warned with a raised hand as he strode out to meet the General. “No one goes past this point.”

  "Under whose orders?" Murdock asked.

  "Mine,” said a low voice from the darkness.

  Sibylla looked to find a stocky man with thinning, gray hair lifting from the shadows. Dressed in a custom, white suit and black turtleneck, there was an air of sophistication about the man, the smoothness of his gait, the sparkling watch at his wrist, the way he grandly spread out his arms as he glided out to greet the general in a cultured voice. “General Murdock!”

  Murdock’s jaw tightened. "Director Connor.”

  Director Connor? Sibylla’s skin rippled with fear. This was the Director of Division? For years, she’d heard stories about the man, the horrific tales of warrantless arrests, the endless prison stays, the seemingly impossible task of locating loved ones after they’d been detained.

  He was one of the most well-guarded secrets of the government. No one she knew had ever even seen him before. If she could only get a picture of him, she could give it to Dillon to disseminate over the old Blockchain, or over what was left of the Internet.

  “It’s so good to see you again,” the director said.

  Murdock frowned. “I wish I could say the same. But it seems you always show up where you’re not wanted.”

  “But I’m only here as an observer,” the director said, feigning a look of surprise.

  “I’m sure,” the general replied.

  From one of the cell doors behind him, a male voice screamed out in pain and Sibylla’s worst fear came to life. “Dillon!” she screamed.

  The director grinned as he watched Sibylla struggle to break free of Murdock’s men. They were holding her back, keeping her from jumping out toward the door. “It looks like the lovebirds recognize each other’s scents,” he said, stepping under the under one of the yellow lamps along the ceiling. The stale light casted a dark shadow over his face, hollowing out the sockets of his eyes and making him look like an empty skull. “It’s very touching.”

  Sibylla stilled. How was this possible? How had they found him? They must’ve known about him from the start, surveilling their operation for months in advance. The sudden realization made her feel stupid, misled. Balling her hands into fists, she shot the director a hateful stare. “You bastard,” she seethed.

  “I gave strict orders,” the general said. “No one was to touch that young man.”

  “And we followed them!” Connor declared defensively, turning to his own soldiers for confirmation. “But my men…” He shook his head in disappointment. “They’re like dogs, General. In the end, they do what they want.”

  Sibylla’s blood was burning. It was like fire; roaring and unceasing. She wanted to shove the guards aside, rip off the metal door and save Dillon from whatever torture was occurring. But she was helpless.

  "You don't need to remind me of what your men do, Connor,” Murdock said. “It's sickening.”

  Connor threw his head back in annoyance and rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, yes. Revolting, horrific, I’ve heard it all before, General. But in the end, it’s still effective. Just like your campaigns, only we don’t have the burden of honor and duty.”

  “So, I’ve heard.”

  “From whom? Your superiors?”

  “My superiors ar
e blinded by your fear mongering. But your time will come. That I can promise you.”

  “Oh really?” Connor asked, his interest suddenly peaked. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

  Murdock replied with silence.

  Squinting an eye at the general, the director began to laugh. “Oh, you military men, and your secrets. How I would love to strap you to a chair and ask you some questions.”

  “I’m sure you would,” the general agreed. “But right now, I’d appreciate it if you’d get the fuck out of my way.”

  Connor’s eyes widened in surprise. “But of course!” He waved out an arm as he stepped aside, gesturing for his guards to create a path for the General and his men to cross.

  Sibylla waited anxiously for the general and his men to move. But they didn’t. Instead, they remained still. Sibylla didn’t understand what was going on, but then she realized. It was a message: We don’t take orders from you.

  Finally, after a few seconds, Murdock offered his men a curt nod, and they began to advance up the hallway, when, all of a sudden, the director said, “Take her.”

  Sibylla flinched as she felt one of the guards grab her by the wrist. He tugged her into his body and banded an arm around her waist, holding her against his body as she tried to break free. Panicked, she tried to fight back. But her fighting skills were limited to clumsy slaps and wild kicks.

  “Uh oh, boys!” the guard joked. “Looks like we got ourselves a fighter over here!”

  Sibylla heard the guards’ laughter as they joined in his amusement, stripping her of what little dignity she had left.

  “Hope you’re a strong one,” he breathed into her ear as his hand reached for one of her breasts. “Cause you’ve got a long night ahead of you.”

  Before Sibylla could spit in his face, she felt the breeze of a fist flying past her head.

  The guard flew back and slammed against the wall, his eyes glazing over as his body uncoiled to the ground. Sibylla looked up and found the Asian soldier with the sleeve of tattoos standing over the guard’s body with a grin.

  Astonished, Director Connor turned to the general. His face was heated with blood and his eyes looked as if they were about to explode. Behind him, just as shocked, the rest of the Division guards rushed clumsily for their rifles in retaliation.