Smoke and Mirrors [HIATUS]

Chapter One: How To Attack a Figure of Authority and Get Away With It

Okay, I know what you're probably thinking: who the heck are you and why are you about to storm a city that is making your friend be an incredibly unencouraging pessimist?

The answer to the first question is this: my name is Eagle, and I'm an Unspeakable. Winter calls me Echo, which was the name that I was apparently born with, but I tell him that I prefer Eagle, for the sake of argument.

What's an Unspeakable, I hear you ask! It's simple, someone who had committed either treason or a crime and was wiped from the records of the splendid city of Insigne, which is the capital of what used to be called Earth. After that, they're basically unspeakable, hence the name. Very creative, isn't it?

(Yes, every single country on Earth is now condensed into one big state/empire. It happened around 2120 C.E and has stayed that way for the last hundred years or so, but we don't have time to get into really fascinating details, as much as I would like to.)

There's one other way to become an Unspeakable: to run away. Usually this happens before someone can actually face the punishment (usually death), but it can happen when someone is unhappy about the rules and wants them to change.

Of course, this fact is precisely the reason why the rebels were so skeptical when we arrived on their doorstep, seeing that both Falcon and I were training to become Investigators.

Fine! I get the point, stop giving you terms that you have no idea of what they mean! Essentially, an Investigator is someone who has been trained almost since birth to act as a sort of police, except that they work in pairs and are much harsher in their punishments. Usually, they're only called out in extreme cases, but any case could, technically, be called extreme, so the demand and use of Investigators has risen over the last twenty years or so.

Besides, the general population would usually prefer to work with humans who have trained to be like robots rather than actual robots.

In any case (no pun intended), an Investigator is connected, or linked, with whomever will become their partner. This process starts at age fifteen and ends at sixteen, when a pair will be selected by an existing Investigator pair to be trained until they both are twenty, with tests along the way to evaluate their progress. Called the Choosing Ceremony, orphans pairs who have passed the preliminary tests are then chosen by their to-be mentors.

Now, you might be wondering why I said "orphans". Not "children", or "kids", but "orphans". Well, this is supposed to be so that no one can really threaten the ones in charge by using those closest to them, thus (mostly) preventing bribery, blackmail and any other form of persuasion that might come to the Investigator. It's also one of the reasons why an Investigator is linked to another, so that the other could offer a second opinion or just act as a balance.

Because of this procedure, getting a date, falling in love, marrying, et cetera, are all prohibited and forbidden. Those who break this rule either, A, have to de-link with their partner before dying, or B, watch their partner die while they are linked and go insane and/or commit suicide from the experience. The latter has happened before (more than once, actually), and the footage of the surviving partner (either them committing suicide or descending into something less than human) is sometimes shown to remind us to stick to the rules and not cause trouble. That's more likely to happen when the offense is caused by both of the partners falling for each other, so the newbies will learn to stay two-arm's length from each other.

To sum it up, you work with your partner, you help them and support them, but everything else is strictly forbidden.

So, I guess that answers your first question, so onto the second: why are you about to storm a city that's making your friend a pessimist? Well, the answer to that is really complicated, so I guess I should start at the beginning.