ARISEN : Operators, Volume I – The Fall of the Third Temple by Fuchs Michael Stephen

Author:Fuchs, Michael Stephen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Complete & Total Asskicking Books, London UK
Published: 2023-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

Silent Night

Ledra Palace, Buffer Zone, Cyprus

Ten minutes later they’re standing up on the rooftop. In the center of it perches an open military tent with a small radio communications operation inside – folding table, couple of chairs, two big set radios, headphones and mics, two laptops.

“We’re in touch with home every day,” Nigel says.

“How?” Yaël says.

He looks confused. “By radio?”

“No. How did the UK survive?”

“Oh. The terror attacks. Whole country locked down – planes, ferries, holiday-makers coming back, immigrants coming in. No one to bring the infection in, really. Or almost no one. Still a few little outbreaks reported, but they’re getting tamped down. Touch wood. Also everyone just having a few extra days to get ready.”

Yaël nods. “To know what they were dealing with.”

“Yep. Sheer luck, really, with the timing. Also, it’s early days yet. Word is half of Europe’s trying to get across the Channel. Not sure what they’re doing about that.” He nods at the radios. “Giving us the mushroom treatment on that one.”

“Feed you shit and keep you in the dark.”

“Right-o.”

Yaël looks off to the west, where the sun is starting to get low on that side of the island, the water beyond too far away to see.

She moves to the south side of the roof, where she’s got a look back at the south edge of the buffer zone, the one she came in on, and beyond which lies her ride out. Sure enough, dead are still thronging the whole border wall on that side. She remembers the mob outside the hospital, and presumes it’s the presence of the living inside that keeps attracting them. She thinks how these ones weren’t there until she drew them, fleeing her one-sided gun battle – but then remembers the moaning, and how it seemed to get louder, even after she disappeared over the wall.

Could the moaning of the ones there be drawing more?

Either way, she doesn’t relish going out that way.

Though, for that matter, she also isn’t wild about staying here. Two more contradictory impulses battling for dominance inside her. She tells herself there’s a chance the siege will clear up by morning. And that trying to go all the way around it, particularly after nightfall, would entail its own risks. But really what she needs is more time to sort through her feelings.

Mainly about Avi. That he not only might still be alive…

But is someplace she could join him. A place she could be.

Albeit trapped with sixty million other people. On an island.

Her initial feelings about that prove to be a wild miasma of conflicting emotions, starting with an unfamiliar one, namely hope, then moving quickly to something like dread. With even deeper ones lying under the hood. She really needs to sit with this awhile.

She turns back to Nigel. “If I stay the night, I say where.”

He smiles. “I’m sure that’s fine. But I should bunk with you.”

Oh, God, she thinks.

“Just, you know, this is a secure British Army base, and UN facility. Staff wouldn’t like it if I just left you wandering around.

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