Good morning and I hope everyone had a fabulous fourth of July. There weren’t many fireworks out our way this year. The city cancelled it’s fireworks due to construction. I have to admit that is a first for me. Weather and excessive dryness I’ve seen before, but too much construction near the park is a first. But at least they are being cautions, even if it means I didn’t get a light display. So celebration over and the work week begins. Are you ready to start with a new writing prompt? Good then let’s go.
I fins this interesting. Not sure where it is going, but it is interesting. Something I may have to think about for a while before i do anything with it.
Tuesday, July 5th: Who exactly is the leader?
“Who exactly is the leader?” He asked as he sidled up to the waiting group. He kept his voice low. We were crouched behind a concealing pile of crates and trusting that we were far enough back from the gathered crowd not to be noticed. They hadn’t posted any sort of guards, but I still flinched at the sound of his question. To my ears it still sounded too loud.
Still he was joining us from command so he couldn’t be ignored.
“Calls himself Rocket,” one of the others told him. I thought it was Kyle, but his voice was too low for me to be sure. The man from command nodded as if this was a vital piece of information. It wasn’t. At least not as far as I was concerned. These gatherings were increasing in number and each one, no matter how peaceful it started out became violent. The violence was escalating, as were the size of the crowds. While there was nothing wrong with the gathering exactly, it was the violence in it’s wake that was concerning. We were here to keep the violence from spilling out of this place and into the rest of the city. If there was a way to keep the violence from erupting at all, we hadn’t found it.
This was my fifth time included in one of these containment units. This time the leader was called Rocket. Last time Striker. Before that were Gate, Wall and Stone. The names their leaders assumed were simply handles. As the leader always ended up dead. Their faces weren’t in the file. Their fingerprints had been removed with acid and the only identification we had were the names the few followers gave them. Their identity remained a mystery, no matter if we knew what they were called.
“This time we are going to capture the leader alive,” the man from command told us. “Those are your orders.”
We all nodded. Those had always been our orders. From the first containment mission I was sent on to this one, the first thing we were told was to try to capture the leader alive so that they could be questioned. Thus far we had been unsuccessful. He group started off as a casual, if large gathering, laughter could be heard floating across the air and conversation seemed normal. Yet at some point it would shift and those gathered would turn on each other, weapons would emerge and each person would begin attacking those around them.
At some point the leader would either be attacked or take their own life. I stumbled across the body of the one called Gate as we attempted to restore order. While we entered in when the violence was new, his body was almost cold. It was as though he was killed towards the beginning of the violence.
‘Or maybe it was his death that set off the rest of the violence,’ I thought. It wasn’t something I, or anyone else had worked out yet. Not that we worked much else out either.
Ten til Midnight 