Chapter CLIV: Call For Help
5 June 1643 - Paris
“There's no one who can hear your calls for help,” Arturo said blankly as he looked down at the man on the table. Despite Arturo's soft intonation, the subject on the table just kept screaming. Arturo smiled a little. “This is what some might call a 'Silent Room'... It hasn't been used since the old days of French sovereignty, but you have to do what you have to do. You do know why it's called 'Silent', don't you?” Arturo asked as he slid his one finger across the leather strap that held the man down. “No... of course not. You're just a silly 'Wolf'... you don't know anything...”
“He's bleeding too much--” a voice interrupted opposite Arturo.
“Shut up,” Arturo snapped. “It's not my fault you couldn't hold him down well enough and he tried to kill himself against the wall. Where is that doctor I asked for? I want this one as conscious as possible,” Arturo demanded between his teeth.
Arturo's attendant, standing on the other side of the screaming man, looked nervously at the only door to that dark chamber. “I'll... go check on him,” the attendant said before walking off. The man's screams continued unabated. As the attendant looked back he could barely see Arturo smile again to himself while reaching for another jar...
---
“What is he doing in there?” Woodhouse accosted the attendant as soon as he emerged from the ramped hallway.
“You don't need to worry yourself about that. Arturo has it under control,” the attendant replied trying to sidestep Woodhouse.
“I only agreed to do this because I was told these men have answers,” Woodhouse stopped the man again, this time gripping the man's elbow even before he could walk away. “I should be in there if he's saying anything.”
“He isn't,” the attendant replied, “Arturo is only... starting. His interrogations usually last a few hours if not a day before he even allows the man to start talking. By then...” the attendant's eyes seemed to vacate and Woodhouse's grip loosened enough for the man to walk down the rest of the dark corridor where Woodhouse and some his new team were waiting.
Woodhouse turned back to the benches where Guy Fawkes Mcleod and Peregrin O'Hare were waiting with him. It was Fawkes who stepped forward and stood next to Woodhouse as they stared down the ramp that led to the complex below. “Whatever Arturo is doing to him,” Fawkes spat out, “I wish I could be doing it. I've got some tension in my fists that I'd like to work out...”
“I think Arturo is doing worse than just punching him. A man won't scream for half an hour straight if it was just punches,” Woodhouse pointed out.
“I don't care,” Fawkes gripped his fists, “No one messes with the Mcleod clan and gets a quick death,” the young one promised.
“Save it for O'Donnel,” O'Hare said from behind the two. Fawkes snorted and went towards the exit with heavy footsteps. Woodhouse watched him pensively as he disappeared around the corner. “You'll have to forgive him,” O'Hare sighed as he leaned back against the cold wall, “his youth is still with him. If only he had seen the seriousness in which his father contemplated giving his life on the days when we didn't have work, he might understand.”
“You can't blame him,” Woodhouse replied. “I know his pain in a way. My father—if what Arturo says is true—is also the victim of these people.” Woodhouse looked down the empty hallway to the exit on the far side. “I envy Fawkes in a way. Nowadays, I feel too old to get angry.”
“You don't need to explain,” O'Hare waved it away solemnly. “Aside from Fawkes, I was probably the most mad when I heard about what happened. I wish I had been there for him. James and I were friends longer than Fawkes has been breathing. I know what it's like to have to keep going despite your feelings.”
“That's the thing,” Woodhouse walked over to the bench and sat down a few feet from O'Hare, “I wish I could say I 'felt' something. It's been forever since I've thought about my father: it's been forever since I've thought about where I was in this world. Being a volunteer captain was not something I expected. England's plight was not something I thought I'd be caught up in or that it would happen at all. I guess all of these things have brought me back to thinking about my father, but I'm not used to feeling anything about him.”
“Take it from an old man,” O'Hare responded, “the body will remember. Just think back to those times and don't hold yourself back from feeling it inside of you. But I know what it's like to feel pain. Our head,” and here, the man tapped his temple, “wants to bury it all away so that we can move forward. But our body will still remember if we let it.”
“Let my body remember?” Woodhouse was a bit curious.
“Well, think about the whole ordeal... with your father dead and your family betrayed by these men. Think about what you used to feel before, even, about how you thought Spain betrayed your father. Don't you feel it? Something inside of your body? Something physical?”
Woodhouse took a moment and closed his eyes in that dark corridor. He leaned back against the cold wall of the hallway as he sat on the bench and let his body relax for a moment. He let the narrative run through his mind and in those instances he scrunched his eyebrows. “I feel... something in my shoulders... like a tenseness. All the way down my arms... it's in my fingers too... as if I want to—kill someone. I just feel... angry.”
“See?” O'Hare chuckled a little, “we tend to think our feelings are just in our head, but our bodies feel it too. So can you go back to—maybe when you were younger. Living without your father. How it felt like with him taken away?”
There was quite a pause. O'Hare watched as Woodhouse's expression visibly shifted and shuddered. “I can feel it... like someone's put a weight at the end of a rope and is hanging it from inside my chest. I almost feel like I can't talk, too. It's like someone's choking me...”
“What would you call that feeling?”
Woodhouse gave out a staggered sigh and gasped a little with his eyes now shooting wide open. “Sadness... just... sadness,” he admitted a bit embarrassed. He felt as if he had touched something hot after digging through the earth and was too afraid to show anyone his pain. “If you'll excuse me,” Woodhouse added and coughed as he stood up to walk out as well.
O'Hare was smiling warmly behind him before saying just to himself. “Don't worry, Mr. Woodhouse, we'll avenge your father...”
---
The dim red light hung over the sitting figure portraying half the face in a bloody hue while the other half of the visage clung to the shadows. A brief ring of orange lit up the other half of the face which grimaced at the small light before the fiery circle disappeared. A grey veil passed over the forward-looking eyes as another man entered the red zone.
“There's not enough of us to be wasting on these insane plans,” the man who had just walked in protested.
Another orange ring intensified into existence before disappearing once more revealing only for a brief moment the harsh face. The shadows along the sitting man's eyes seemed like shadowy sickles falling and the silver skull and crossbones on the man's cap stared obscenely towards the interlocuter. “Your dogs were incompetent,” the man said while letting out smoke from under his lips. “Five mercenaries ambushing them? Five mercenaries knew where they were? You're lucky I won't have you shot, Herr Kramm.”
“I should have
you shot for getting my men killed in suicidal—”
“Watch your tone,
Oberst. We may be centuries away from our Deutschland but I can still have my SS officers run barbed wire through your guts.”
Herr Kramm looked at the sitting man whose face only grew worse in the ashen cloud that surrounded it. Kramm's upper lip shuddered for a moment before turning and leaving the chamber, slamming the metal hatch behind enough to shake the bulkheads. “Your men are growing impatient,” someone from behind the sitting man grumbled.
“Almost a century of missions and we have very little to show for it,” the sitting man replied in a low growl. He put out the cigarette on a metal console next to him. “After a few decades, even these boys will only recognize violence to keep them in line. Iron erodes if left in the rain for years at a time but not without turning into harsh rust first...”
“So what do we do now?” the one behind him asked. “The Spanish have already made inroads into England. Fairfax and Cromwell have been captured, and they're drafting up peace terms in exchange for certain 'concessions' that the new governor-general is promising.”
“England was only a peripheral objective,” the one sitting said while taking off his hat.
“Peripheral? It's the whole reason why I'm helping you: remember that,” the man behind him reminded the man with half a laugh. “If it weren't for me—”
“No. If it weren't for your father is more like it,” the man sitting got up and turned at the young gentleman in the chamber. “If it weren't for the fact that your father is helping us, I would have put a hook through your ribs and hung you from a wall. If you really think you're worth anything, then stop your brother from interfering with my plan!”
“You don't get to speak to me like that!” the young man leapt forward with a balled fist, but an elbow from behind him pulled him back.
“Don't anger our guests, Gwyd,” the man holding him back said tiredly.
“But father—”
“Wolves are difficult to deal with,” Charles Woodhouse continued, “they tend to bare their teeth even though they know they need you, isn't that right, Herr Ackermann.”
Ackermann snorted and opened up his metal box for another cigarette, turning his back once more to the father and son in the room. “Just get that annoying other son of yours out of the way,” was the only thing out of that fiery mouth.
“Gwyd,” Charles Woodhouse addressed his son before another outburst from that youth could come out. “It's time you go find your brother again.”
---
10 June 1643 - Madrid
“Taking my knight again. You're always so hot-headed about this,” Cardinal Rimini commented out loud as he smiled at Alvaro.
“Honestly: these distractions can wait,” Alvaro complained as he leaned back heavily on his chair. “I understand the point of the game, but I've more important things to worry about.”
“That is why you always lose,” Rimini chided him with a click of his tongue as that prominent red figure leaned over the ornate table and moved one of his ivory pieces to seek vengeance on one of the ebony figures.
“I may lose at chess, Eminence, but England is being quelled and we've won a victory at Rocroi,” Alvaro retorted as he swiftly grabbed a piece and slid it across the marble gametop before stopping near the other side of the board.
“But Rome is still in the hands of the infidel and the Persians move on Vienna,” Rimini responded while sacking Alvaro's bishop.
“We'll meet their force with force. The Empire is on its way to recovery,” Alvaro replied though he let out a breath of exasperation as he shoved his rook to avenge the bishop.
“We can, but we must be careful not to leave ourselves vulnerable to traps in the meantime,” Rimini smiled and hopped his knight forward. “Check,” he announced as he forked the king and rook.
The doors to the parlour rushed open as someone, out of breath, nearly collapsed in front of the players. “My Lords... a call for help...”
“Catch your breath, Silvio,” Alvaro was quick to attend to the man, going down on one knee to help the messenger to his feet.
“A call for help... from one of our patrols out of Marseilles... the Persians—”
“They've finally crossed into France?!” Rimini got to his feet.
The man on the floor shook his head violently. “No... it was a fleet... heading west. They're coming here, Eminence! They're heading for Barcelona!”
“Barcelona is also one of the most heavily populated cities in the world. Its ports service nearly the entire Mediterranean economic zone and is usually the final destination of shipping lanes coming through the Suez canal. All this traffic makes it the third wealthiest city by GDP on the Peninsula after Madrid and Lisbon. Barcelona is a major hub along what's known as the Jormungandr Project. Two massive highways and three massive train lines run for over five thousand kilometers along the perimeter of the Peninsula with eight junctions that lead into the interior all converging on Madrid. The engineers from Iberdrola and the financial backers at the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria successfully petitioned the governments of most of the major cities on the Peninsula for the project.
“The design itself was based, at least as part of the domestic planning stages of the Basque companies, on the old provincial flag of Navarra. The jeweled center would be Madrid while the major rings starting from the top left and moving clockwise would be the major hub cities on the Peninsula: Santiago-Coruña, Bilbao, Barcelona, Valencia, Murcia, Malaga, Seville, and Lisbon. The chain links would represent the connective highways and railways including massive projects for superconductive monorails all powered by clean energy which Iberdrola had already great experience with at the time.
“In fact, it was this addition of a clean energy solution that tipped the bidding war in favour of the Basque companies as overpopulation was rampant on the Peninsula (with one billion being native citizens and another billion people being visitors or temporary workers yearly). Population density was greatest along the hubs and each had their own specific charms and purposes. While Madrid acted as the heart of the human network, Southern Spain was a heavily industrialized area with waste canals and pipelines pumping day and night into the Sahara while oil rushed in from two major pipelines from Russia through Europe and the Middle East via barges and a major North African pipeline.
“Barcelona, along with Madrid and Lisbon, served as the commercial intersection of the Empire. Barcelona was the gateway to the Peninsula from Europe and the East. Valencia served as the high tech hub connecting the heavy industries of the south with the commercial powerhouses of the north. Murcia and Seville was the industrial heart of the Empire. Everything from cars to ships to weapons to space materials, plastics, chemicals, and other heavy industries flowed from the rough areas of the former Moorish lands with cutthroat efficiency.
“To sustain their massive workforces (mostly poor immigrants from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and some of the former Islamic territories or from the Islamic province in South Africa), slums would be a common sight. Pollution was routed through underground and underwater pipelines to the Sahara for underground storage while compacting energy began to adapt to make waste disposal not only more efficient but as part of the industrial process.
“The human concerns of Southern Spain are still a major consideration today as it not only has the lowest life expectancy on the Peninsula, the highest instances of work-related diseases, and the highest level of crime but it also has the highest population density of the entire Peninsular region to exacerbate all these problems. However, it must be noted that most of these industries have grown to specialize in more sophisticated fabrication while such rudimentary business models such as steel production, bottle production, and other second tier work are done overseas at cheaper prices. Indeed, with Valencia as a model city, companies in Southern Spain are either switching to more high tech growth or moving overseas where labour is cheaper.
“While the Jormungandr Network transports people, it also doubles as the commercial circulatory system of the Peninsula. Currently, there are over 500 high speed trains which carry people and materials all along the Jormungandr Network with dozens of smaller regional or inter-regional rail and highway systems also available. On the Network, however, with trains traveling at average speeds of 380 kilometers per hour, a shipment could travel from Murcia to Santiago-Coruña in three hours. Air travel to the Peninsula is also very popular and travel to the Peninsula represents nearly a quarter of all air travel around the world.
“Most vehicular transportation in the city has since entered a new phase of development by private companies to streamline traffic control on major highways through automation at high speeds. New highways have been built specifically to testbed this premium service while these roads feature high-density high-speed travel for most cars hooked up to a local net spread out underneath the asphalt or bridge. Safety protocols by company cooperation have also led to reduced chances of crashes by implementing both network control, stand-alone individual safety fail-safes in case of a network failure, manual control by drivers in emergency situations, as well as human oversight over the network. It is estimated that the current progress of networked vehicles has fueled many automaker companies to begin investing in MAG-LEV technologies for higher end vehicles while ordinary networking becomes more available to mainstream customers.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Come,” was the simple command.
“Was I disturbing you, Obersturmbannführer?” the man at the door asked giving a stern salute.
“Not at all,” the man replied to him before turning to the computer screen that he was looking at. “I was just getting to know this city a bit more. Log off.”
“Thank you for using AVINA,” the system responded, “Logging you off, Herr Gehirn.”
“We've received word from our associates. It appears our new 'friends' have opened a way into the facility for us as they promised.”
There was a bit of a pause as Gehirn sat back in his chair. He reached over to a small device which resembled an old fashioned clock. “You know, technology is quite an interesting thing these days. The Spanish now certainly know how to make good use of it. Trains that can cover long distances quickly... pollution redirection... and military bases that house supercomputers and ancient artifacts.” Gehirn wound up the device slowly allowing it to tick every time he twisted the top knob. Eventually, it sprang open and a small bird-like caricature made out of gold was created from the interlocking flaps of metal. It played out a simple tune. “Do you listen to Mozart, Lindemann?”
“I'm afraid not, sir,” the one at the door replied. The tone persisted in the air and although it was created by metallic clicks and vibrations, both could hear the heavy persistence in the notes: the sadness and immensity of its composition.
“During the second of these Vatican Councils, the Roman Church did away with performing the
Dies Irae at their funeral masses. They said it was too saddening. They wanted something more hopeful. These Spanish nowadays don't know true beauty, Lindemann. They don't understand the beauty of such a thing as terror and wrath. I suppose that's why we're here.”
“Yes, sir,” the younger one replied.
“Have those charges on the Jormungandr Network ready. We'll give Madrid something more pressing to deal with than just a single military installation. Set them off as soon as we leave here.”
Chapter CLV: Beauty/Wrath (coming soon)
