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A month passed with no sign of Lilly she just, vanished. It was impossible for Sin to find her. It was like she just vanished off the face of the Earth. He tried everything, he went to every place she’d been, searched every nook and cranny of the world, and even tried to feel his way to her—but all he ever felt was pain and suffering, agonizing day-after-day of relentless suffering. Her agony is what let Sin know she was still alive, somewhere, but it also blocked him from being able to actually track down where she was mentally like he normally could.
She’s been blurred by pain before like when she attacked the Egyptian fort, or when she passed out over the Atlantic ocean, but in both cases the sharp pain led him right to her, to save her. But both those instances had starts to them that he could go to, this time she went dark in Cario and by the time he got there to see where she went she was already gone. He then remembered her waking up in that same darkness, then needles, fire, scars which seemed to appear as fast as they could mend. She was hurting and he couldn’t do anything to help her.
It drove him mad. The first week or so he took it out on Thomas, almost killing the poor man for not being able to track her down, but he stopped that right before the last of Tom’s air was squeezed out of his throat, it really wasn’t Tom’s fault—and he could be more of a help than a nuisance anyways. It appeared Tom’s little pamphlet made him a kind of celebrity. No one knew who “T” was, but all he had to do was send out a few words through his venues of conversation and half the world would know what he said by nightfall.
Sure the first time getting it out was a bit difficult, but now people were actively searching for the next moment of news from “T” he became famous. By the time a month had passed “T” put out many notifications and letters, he made it clear over and over that Lilly wasn’t gone, she wasn’t dead—to always be aware. In doing so he created a sort of “Lilly Watch” a first alert sort of thing in where the first sighting of her—the entire world knew what she looked like by now—would be broadcasted out warning everyone she had returned.
Now this first alert to most people was a defensive mechanism to warn the world more death than what was already happening was coming, to tell people to hide and protect themselves. But to Thomas and Sin this first alert was meant simply to find her, to get her back into their fold and save her from whatever suffering she’s going through.
To the rest of the world her ghouls were after all still very active, killing millions a day. Even if Redeme found secret a way to kill them off slowly the country had no interest of helping the rest of the world—self-preservation they called it. But even with the semi-effective way of actually killing the ghouls tens of millions were still being killed daily. News reports filling in estimated at this rate the extinction of the human race in around eight months—her ghouls were still killing close to a billion people a month and there was nothing the world could do to stop it as far as they knew
On the twenty-second day of Lilly’s disappearance Redeme sent a 5,000 man operation into the heavily infested Indian territories on a field test of their ghoul killing strategies. This field test was already full proof, the country having killed off almost every ghoul within its borders, including the fifty Lilly created in the Italian orphanage some time ago. Their trial in India was more a show to the world of what they can do.
The 5,000 soldiers knew full well they were on a suicide mission, each of them having a tiny bomb planted on their heart before their departure. Even if someone managed to live the slaughter it was a well-known fact the body slowly broke down the implanted bombs releasing chemicals into the body causing death overtime after they had been planted. Now, most would see this as a pointless slaughter, but the small contingent of suicide soldiers did one thing, they were able to kill almost a hundred ghouls in the four days they were active. This proved to the world there was hope of survival after all.
But for whatever reason Redeme kept their heart bombs a close guarded secret. The world learned that explosives were the ultimate weakness of the ghouls—but found the ghouls would easily avoid bombs, landmines, and manual suicide bombers. No one quite knew what made the Redeme heart bomb so effective. Was it the reverse fuse, a fuse that went off when electricity stopped flowing? Was it because of its pin size, making it so hard to detect? Was it the chemical explosion instead of heat explosion that caused so much devastation? It was hard to say, and even if someone else figured out what made it so effective the technology to make it work could take months for another science group to put together, months they may not have.
On the thirty-sixth day from Lilly’s disappearance a declaration came out of the now relatively safe Redeme borders. It stated simply, “This is a declaration to the world and all remaining governments standing. We have the one and only weapon that can be used against the oncoming doom. We have manufactured this weapon in the quantities of the tens of thousands and are ready to distribute it against the hoards of the undead. We have one condition for being your savior, for preventing the inevitable doom to fall upon you.
“We ask for your land, your people, and your government. You want us to save you? We only save our own kind. Cede into Redeme, become part of our great nation and we’ll save you. If you chose to decline, if you refuse our generous offer to hold back the waves of undead then so be it. We will let you rot, let you be slaughtered day-by-day until there is not a single inhabitant left in your land, then we will simply walk in and take your territories for ourselves anyways.
“This is our ultimatum. Take it or leave it, your choice now rests in the hands of your leaders, if any are even left. Life under the Redeme rule or extinction. –Redeme Directive 38 signed by the council of thirty-one.”
Twelve hours after the notice was issued Lucas from Falu signed into it. A day after that airplanes were over most of North America and Redeme surgeons began installing heart bombs on volunteers. At first no one was expected to sign the declaration, what government in its right mind would just give up everything then use its own soldiers as bombs? But then Falu wasn’t some old society bound on maintaining ultimate control, no it was a fairly new order created only two months ago with its survival already in question. This merger with Redeme was more a protest to take the old regime further away from ever gaining control back than some humiliating surrender. But there was more to it that just that, there was something behind the scenes that Thomas just couldn’t pick out. Was this merger planned? It was odd two revolutions happened in close succession, Redeme peaceful and expected, Falu abrupt and violent—and both quickly found common grounds to merge into an even larger superpower.
World news was all that kept Thomas and Sin sane these days—every little move for world power Sin thought Lilly was somehow behind it, so when Redeme’s declaration came out and Falu quickly joined his mood brightened, but only slightly—her pain was still always there. Several more countries ceded into Redeme follow Falu, nothing major but enough to keep the Redeme doctors and shipments busy, but after the initial mergers the world went silent. Most refused to simply give up everything to Redeme, leaders had demands, questions, resolutions.
So a date was set, two weeks from Falu’s surrender, to have a world convention. This convention would be held in Redeme, but at a secret location. No one except those who were attending would know about it. This is where every remaining world leader would meet up to discuss surrender terms and the survivability of the human race in general.
Sin and Thomas never left their hideout in the two weeks leading up to the convention. It was the morning of the meeting, well, middle of the night for Thomas and Sin, when something odd happened. Tom got a hit on his first alert, it wasn’t a direct sighting but more a mention on a monitored line—Tom didn’t get into detail about how the line ended up tapped or who was tracking it—but it was someone well known in their neck of the woods—Lucas.
A script was printed out, a phone call that took place ten minutes ago—untraceable but the content of the call was undeniable. It followed:
“Who is this. How do you have this number?”
“Details, details, let’s not get into this. Let’s call me a supporter of your, cult.”
“You have no business here.”
“I know you have Lilly. I know where too.” This part of the transcript marked a long silence. What Lucas just said sure caught the attention of whoever was on the other end of the line.
“Go on.”
“I hope you’ve been paying attention to world news there, your chance at chaos to rule over is quickly running dry. The world isn’t going mad like you hoped is it? It’s holding on by a few strands of faith. Redeme is that faith—they found a way to combat the oncoming death and they’re taking your spotlight aren’t they? Everyone is looking up to Redeme as the saviors of mankind, enemies are literally binding together to cheer as Redeme walks into their lands and claims it theirs—and you know what, no one cares anymore—people are literally just letting this country out of nowhere take over the entire world.”
“What is your point with this?”
“That tread can be easily cut. You see, I don’t want them to rule as much as you don’t want them to rule. I just made my country, fought for it in the blood of my own people, millions have died and I’m not about to just give that up. My name is Lucas Brawl, I control a now safe-haven from the monsters that dominates the entirety of North America called Falu. You may have heard of us.”
“Go on…”
“I know where there little secret meeting is going to be, imagine it, every person of power left in this world in one place at one time. Every official, every Redeme commander, every damn person who still has control under his or her belt in one place. Now think what would happen if a certain, someone, appeared from a long slumber. Think what that would do to the balance of the world? Chaos, complete and utter chaos. You can have your inferno to rule over with your monstrous Queen of Hell and I, I can have my North American paradise.”
“Where is this meeting?”
“Germany, its—” The transcript ended, that was it—that was all that was intercepted before whatever normally encrypted his calls returned. That was all they could get. Thomas knew his man with the tap had the rest and was working as fast as he could to decode it along with one other phone call which occurred very quickly after.
But Germany was all Sin had to hear, he was already gone—no time to wait for the rest of the transcript or whatever the second call was.
***
Zee looked up at his board; it was now so big, so long and had so many numbers on it. He would spend half of each day looking at his sources and filling in the rows. Since Lilly was taken out of the loop prematurely the world had a chance—a slim one—but a chance. If she had finished the job she was told to do the planet would be empty by now, but luckily she was cut off two months ago.
To date about a third of the world population was dead—but the wizard was coming soon, very soon, and when he did the man would have no choice but to call a state of emergency, evict Lilly and the ghouls along with Zee and save humanity. Zee had no doubt this catastrophe Lilly caused would raise concern and that he would finally be taken off this hell-hole of a planet he’s been trapped on for almost half a year.
His home needed him much more than Earth, yes three billion people dead was a horrible thing, but the war he left at home was so much bigger—worlds, planets, and entire sentient beings. He was their leader, their man in charge and he was taken away from it all moments before he uncovered the weapon that could have ended the war, the weapon that could have saved millions, billions. The humans could rebuild in time, but what he left behind was so much bigger.
This world had no idea how close it was to being saved, no idea at all. The wizard would fix it all when he came. The humans had no idea today, the day of the convention in Germany, was the first day the blockade in space had an opening, and the blockade would be open for two weeks. This meant any time in the next fourteen days this horrible war on the Ghouls would be over, only two more weeks tops until he was finally taken home. He was on high alert now, ready to make his fort of red plastic disappear for a better world, for his home, for Hemerage so many many light-years away—back in the Light of the universe instead of stuck on the wrong side of the Ghost Fleet barricade, on the side so famously known as the Dark Side.
***
“No, no, no!” Thomas had the decoded message in his hand. It wasn’t the message he had earlier, finding out the end of that phone call had been deemed impossible to decode—the phone may have actually cut out and then got reconnected for such a short time the tap never had a chance to reestablish. But the second call. Oh that second call, transcribed:
“Lucas has it been done?”
“Yes, they believed me entirely. I told you I knew who had her, where she’s been all this time. Is everything set?”
“Yes, people think it’s safe, so far there haven’t been any declines, it seems everyone who is anyone will be there.”
“Perfect.”
“The trap is set; today we will kill the monster. Today we will show the world we are their saviors and they will bow down to us. Today is our day.”
“Today we will kill the stubborn competition, the monster, and save the world all in one night. Oh, we will be glorious heroes and her head will be there to prove it.”
The call ended at that—the call ended at “trap”. The convention, the call to warn whoever has been holding Lilly, it was a trap. It was all a trap. Worst part was Thomas had no way of warning Lilly—no way of warning Sin.