Quarter City

Chapter 29: Le Dernier Combat

“How long ago did he enter into it?” Daniel Weever said, emerging through the French doors that separated the embassy’s VIP bedroom and lounge.  He was evidently stunned by what he woke to see.

“Roughly three and a half hours ago, sir,” Winslow Belgrade replied, standing up from the couch in the private lounge.  Though midday, a continental breakfast had been served on coffee table.

”Three and a… and you didn’t wake me?”  Ripe emotions of frustration and anger boiled up inside of Daniel Weever.  The gastric acid stirred in his belly forcing a wince, although his expression contained more fury than pain.

“I-I’m sorry sir.  I had just figured that you, you know, needed some rest before we flew back to the Americas.  You haven’t slept much since we arrived in the Asia-Pacific….”

The President snorted waking phlegm from the back of his nasal passage, a sourness clearly defined by the squinting of his eyes.  The television in the room displayed images that had obviously become global, and President Weever couldn’t help be aghast at what he saw.

“Do you really think I could sleep soundly with all this going on?  First the prisoners from The Box and now this?  It’s killing me, I’m petrified.”  He pulled a chair over and sat down, rather than sitting next to Winslow, his face inches away from the screen.  It was an old-style picture-tube television, the style of which Daniel hadn’t seen in years.  He laughed at it the first time he entered his bedroom at the Embassy in the China Territory, as it brought up distinct memories of childhood, of favorite cartoons and shows featuring furry puppet creatures.  These images were as far away from that as you could get.

The high-definition broadcast didn’t fit properly on the screen, and much of the movement within the shot happened off frame.  Watching it so closely, so intently, Daniel wouldn’t notice that he was instead staring at the resolution lines of the image, instead of the image itself.  His mind would drift off, as his eyes searched around, pausing periodically on a miniscule black square within the layers of glass.  His thoughts were heavy with thoughts of safety for both the people he did and didn’t know within the devastated city.  He searched for a reasoning behind it all, why it happened like it did and how it could have been avoided.  He thought of what he was going to tell the public when the time came, and no decisions could be arrived at – there was nothing to choose from. 

Most of all, though, President Weever’s mind went numb.  The events were too big, too graphic, too real, and he just couldn’t process all the thoughts he was having, so he found it simpler to have none.  He just stared, the occasional blink returning the greater picture into focus, and slowly blurring until he blinked again.

The feed was pulled from a Planetary Federation satellite feed, though the multilingual broadcast’s sound was muted.  The images were singularly spectacular and horrific at the same time.  The city’s backdrop to the foreground action was charred and ruinous, smoke puffing from unseen orifices everywhere, blurring a morning blue sky.  There were bodies on the streets, appallingly twisted, unmoving.  Some were almost unrecognizable, indistinguishable from the rubble of bricks and mortar, steel and glass.  Cars were mangled everywhere, and fires stirred, creating dim orange glows in dark places.  A dog moved hastily through the scene, pausing for nothing, navigating the wreckage, and was soon gone, a brief distraction from the torrent of movement in frame.

What the frame Daniel, Winslow, and invariably the rest of the world were so transfixed on was that of two human figures, engaged in a back-and-forth ballet of physical blows, blocks, and ballistics.  One was instantly recognizable, as he had become a centrifugal figure for the pains of a once great city, and vicariously, the world.  He was different than he seemed before, his hair longer, his physique less imposing, but it was unmistakably Geo.  His naked torso lean and cut was bearing a fresh pink scar across the left side of his abdomen, a landmark from his last battle, an instant reminder to many of the last time they saw him.  His lower half was still draped in pants made of burlap, although they seemed freshly made, as fresh as burlap can appear.  His unkempt face was still as rough as ever, the black stubble remarkably longer, practically a beard.  For the near four years in Quarter City it seemed as if Geo never changed, and now, he was so noticeably different. But it wasn’t that Geo never changed, it was the gradualness of it that nobody noticed.  The slight lines around his eyes, the crevices above his brow, the mysterious scar that appeared over his lip from an incident unrecorded, all changes so small that they went unnoticed.  Of course the personality change, what there was of a personality to change, was the greatest variation of all, and one only had to wonder which end of his spectrum he was at now, or whether he was even in the same spectrum as before.