I had a girlfriend once when I was fourteen. Her name was Amelia and she was the truest friend that I think I will ever know. I found that she was absolutely adorable however she’d always get mad when I said so. She told me that puppies were adorable and that children were adorable and yet she was neither a child nor a puppy – she only ever accepted that she was a person. It was always so important to her that people saw how strong she really was, and she used to brag that she had never cried once since she was five. I pretended to believe her – but everyone cried when they were little, it was simply a matter of being small and weak. Even I cried when I was little – mind you, the reason for my tears usually involved the destruction of food, such as the time I dropped my doughnut on the floor and threw a tantrum for no reason and at nobody.
Amelia stood up for her own opinions. Once she had formed an idea in her head it was often very difficult to convince her otherwise – she was the most adorable stubborn little girl I had ever known, and that’s why I liked her. She had gotten into more fights with more people than anyone I had known, especially me. I was known for… well, not running from fights, but rather avoiding them – I was many things, however I wasn’t great and I sure as hell wasn’t strong. Half the time I didn’t care about anyone else’s opinion anyway – besides, they were most definitely wrong.
She used to enjoy fishing in a park where the river cut through the city to the north. It was a beautiful park, green just about everywhere except for the flowerbeds that were home to vibrant roses and fleshy purple tulips. The park belonged to the fluttering birds and laughing children that ran around for absolutely no reason in the world. Amelia was very good at fishing – it was almost her obsession. She made all her own hooks and lures and collected her own bait, and she made catching fish look so god damn easy. Of course, I had no choice but to try it, and that is how I discovered the extent of my absolute impatience. It seemed I was the kind of fishermen to use a net rather than a hook. When I asked her why she liked fishing so much she smiled at me and said, “I do it because fish are terribly foolish, and no matter how long it takes, they always bite the hook sooner or later, it’s in their nature. Trust me, Abigail, a fish biting a hook is about the most certain thing we’ll ever see in the world.”
Something told me that she also liked reading books with really long words in them.
I was the fool for believing that this park was certain, and that my friendship with Amelia would last forever, because the sad truth of the matter was that they barely lasted a year. The bridge was destroyed one afternoon during a firefight between the resistance and the capital. Amelia was there on that sad afternoon, and I learned that she loved the bridge so much that she was willing to give her life for it. She did everything that she could to stop the soldiers from destroying the bridge, and in the end she was killed in the crossfire, and I had lost my only truest friend in the world. As I said, nothing good ever lasts forever, and I expected exactly the same thing out of Aizel.
Now, Aizel was certainly a most interesting man, to say the least, and the longer I looked at him, the more I began to wonder why I had never met him, or why my father had never introduced us. Everything about him left me feeling unsure, and after learning about my father’s death, I saw this friendly stranger as a man who rested ambiguously over the line of friend or foe. There was something about his stance – a sort of sway to it that made me want to step away from him. At the same time, I was endlessly drawn into the gentle green of his eyes in a way that tempted me to take his hand, and accept his protection.
Either way, I was completely lost without the words of my father and the kindness of the professor. I guess this crazy plan of mine – to find out who had caused the both of them to die – was my only chance at retribution. But in order to do that I needed Aizel, and better yet, I needed this weapon known as ATLAS.
“I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the super weapon we call ATLAS…” he had said, “and I’ll tell you about the real truth behind this war.”
Aizel had taken me a few blocks away from where I had my encounter with Lace’s underlings, and then he unlocked the door to an abandoned building and checked to see that no one was inside. The city was full of abandoned places, especially in the southern end. The war had driven so many people out of their homes and their shops, either in fear of debt or in fear for their lives.
“This place should be relatively safe,” Aizel explained as he went about checking the rooms. “A lot of the other agents, including myself of course, use buildings like this as rendezvous areas.” He stood in the centre of the room. “There, now no one can hear us talk.”
This rendezvous spot was the darkest, gloomiest building I had ever been in. Everything was layered with dust – the furniture and the floor, and the wooden walls were cracked and broken. I think I’m about to die of an asthma attack!
Aizel, it seemed, didn’t appear to be too disturbed, in fact he was quite confortable as he leaned against one of the splintery walls. “So, you want to know everything there is to know about ATLAS?” he asked me.
I coughed out some of the dust and shot him a definitive gaze. “Yes,” I said, and then I blinked as the colours of more distant fireworks flashed in through the windows – followed by a sullen boom!
Aizel gestured towards an old couch. “Well, if that’s the case, you might want to sit down.”
I did as he said, and then, when I at least looked relatively comfortable, he began to tell his tale.
“To put things briefly, ATLAS is a chemical weapon that has the capacity to kill at least ten city blocks worth of people, and then some, and all the while leaving the environment completely unharmed – although I can imagine it’d leave a pretty bad smell for a while.” He saw that I didn’t respond kindly to his jest, and then he continued rather awkwardly. “The weapon was built by your friend, professor Adrian Sierra, under the orders of Arthur Benson, as well as your father. This all started about five or six months ago…”
Five, I realised. That’s why I haven’t seen Sierra in all this time… and to build something like this in half a year, he must have been working day and night!
“Inside the resistance,” Aizel continued to explain, “we kept the knowledge of ATLAS under strict conditions as best we could – only Benson, your father, the professor, and myself knew about it… and of course, now there’s you…”
Only four people knew about it and now two of them were dead. Could this really have been Benson’s doing? What if this was what Sierra was warning my father about? Also, how safe if Aizel right now?
Aizel glared at me with challenging eyes. “I know what you’re thinking, and I can tell you now that Benson was not behind this – their deaths, I mean. We, like every other military organisation, apparently have our leaks, and we suffered gravely for that mistake.”
I remained silent, not quite yet moved by his words. I needed to know more. “Tell me about the code,” I demanded, and again the numbers flashed before my eyes: 6573-4532-7710-2169-3490.
“Alright,” Aizel muttered, submissively. “The code that you so stubbornly refuse to reveal to me is a twenty digit activation sequence that, when entered into the right terminal – or into the device itself – will arm ATLAS, therefore making it viable to be used by whoever happens to have it at the time, and I might add that Lace happens to have ATLAS in his possession right now.”
ns 172.70.126.52da2
and then Add to home screen.