Being jolted from sleep by a night terror isn't the most pleasant way to wake. Sadly, in these times, it had become commonplace.
The young man jumped out of bed, grabbed his pistol from his bedside table, and aimed it around him, searching in vain for whatever it was hunting him in his dream.
Just a dream, he realized. Another one, a night terror, among many. A daily ritual to be sure. The man was a deserter, a sergeant of the Union Army. When the war began, he sided with the Confederacy, as he wanted to preserve the old Constitution. Sadly, the Confederacy, he learned, only stood for political self-preservation--there were no ideals. Still he felt it better to remain disenchanted than to join the militaristic Sonyfornians. However, the choice between a dictatorship and the shell of a democracy was enough to drive him out of public service altogether.
The man went AWOL. On a whim, he'd simply abandoned his station and kept walking. On and on for miles he continued, stopping occasionally for what sustenance the tainted water of nearby creeks would provide.
One afternoon, he collapsed from exhaustion. He woke up with his first of several night terrors. But aside from the instinctual need to defend himself, he couldn't remember a thing about his dreams. He knew he would be hunted down and killed for desertion, but his fear was deeper than that. It wasn't his life he was afraid of losing. It was something dearer to him.
After regaining his bearings, he noticed that he'd woken in what appeared to be a room in old farm. Outside his room, the land stretched out for as far as he eye could see. They sky was blood red.
There was someone standing in the doorway behind him.
"I see you're awake."
The deserter turned suddenly at the sound of the voice and saw a stout older man, in his sixties, with a grave face.
The young man said nothing.
"You're safe here, for a while. You've slept fitfully for days. I don't blame you for what you did, but you're a marked man. Stay quiet, you'll have food and rest here for as long as you can stay hidden. Though, I don't imagine that would be long."
The young man barely managed a weak, "thanks."
Since then weeks had passed. His memory was returning along with his strength; memories of when the war began memories of the espionage. And, there was the time in which the people finally stood up for themselves. It was a weak effort, but it was a start.
The Sonyfornians and the Confederacy had been infiltrating each other's military to gain intelligence for years, but both had finalized plans to unleash a devastating attack that was dependant upon one last intrusion. Somehow, knowledge of these attacks were leaked and become public knowledge. The infiltrators were in hiding, not amongst the soldiers in the armies, but rather among the citizens. Neither side believed the other would resort to harming the citizens in an effort to destroy the other. Sadly, this was not the case. The lives of the citizens became collateral damage.
The citizens themselves took action. Several states, commonwealths, and provinces elected leaders to represent them. They would gather and meet every day. At the end of the day, they would decide on one man for whom they believed might be a member of the Confederate or Sonyfornian spies.
The citizens had the strength in numbers, but they had no idea how deadly their plan would truly be. Nor were they truly prepared for the backfire.
Vote now, polls close at 12AM Eastern
Topic: Mafia V: Day One (Read 11600 times)
