NationStates Jolt Archive

Kagabu, Adoki

Rafaela Madero stared down at the floor of her prison cell. It was caked with dirt and grime. She didn't think it had seen a broom or a mop in years, if ever. They didn't care much about the rights of prisoners in Adoki, not from what she'd seen in the last week. Her whole body hurt from malnourishment, lack of light, lack of excercise, the rather extreme lack of sanitation, and more than one beating. Somewhere in the same prison, over in the men's wing, was her partner Manfred Acklin. She'd only seen him once since she'd been locked in here and it looked like the guards had been much rougher on him than on her. His face had been swollen. He'd lost teeth. His whole body had looked like one giant bruise. They'd never been so rough on the female prisoners, at least not yet.

Madero knew that her court date would be within the next month. The court would have a semblance of modern judicial proceedings, evidentiary rules, even a jury. Madero knew also that, at least in rural areas like this, the court proceedings were often just a show for Adoki's Danaan and Pantocratorian allies. The evidence would have been falsified or illegally obtained. The police would attempt to beat confessions from her and Acklin. They would not have adequate counsel. And, in the end, the result was certain. Rafaela Madero and Manfred Acklin would be condemned to death for five murders they had not committed.

If Madero had been an ordinary citizen, consular access might have saved her but, in her situation, the Danaan Embassy had made almost no effort. Intelligence had likely asked them not to. The security risks were too great. It had to disavow any knowledge of her or her mission. And so Madero sat there, abandoned by her own people and trapped in the death house of alleged allies.

The sounds in the prison were one of the worst things. There was no view anywhere outside the cell and nothing to read so all you could do was listen, listen all day and listen all night. There were whispers and the jokes of guards. The sounds of booted feet and distant screams. And coming in from outside, the sound of children laughing as they played under the prison's walls. That was the worst sound of all. The sound of life going on as it always had, uncaring about one's inevitable fate.

Agwenberg, Thorlund

Dr. Ren Cai-fei frowned nervously as he stepped up to the porch. It was his first night in Agwenberg. Just a month before he had finally been offerred a full time physics post at the University of Thorlund at Agwenberg and already he'd been invited over to the home of the almost legendary Dr. Hagan Kaempher for a beer with him and some of the other professors. Ren pressed the doorbell nervously.

Kaempher opened the door with a warm smile. He was an eccentric but brilliant paleontologist who had had to flee Marlund for believing in normal paleontological theory decades ago. Although Ren didn't follow that field much, everyone who knew anything about Agwenberg knew that Kaempher was one of its star minds, a modern genius. The man before him, however, looked more like a confused grandfather. He was in his late seventies and had an unruly white beard as well as rather unkempt white hair. He walked with a heavy stoop and yet seemed full of energy. "Hello there! You must be the new physicist! Come in, my boy! The others should be here shortly. It's a terrible shame about your predecessor..."

"My predecessor?" Ken asked as he stepped quietly into the homey front room. "I assumed he simply..."

"We really shouldn't talk about it." Kaempher said. "But they say he was killed by wild beasts. Wild beasts! In Agwenberg. The whole thing makes almost no sense. The funeral, the coffin was..."

Kaempher was interrupted by the sounds of another car pulling up outside the house. Kaempher sighed and shook his head. "That'll be Dr. Bacht. Probably with some new health snacks for us to try. They'll be awful. They always are. Still..."

Agwenberg, Thorlund

The rest of the night went well enough as such things went. It was nice to just be an ordinary guy with several other ordinary guys who also had advanced degrees in the sciences. Dr. Bacht was an anatomy teacher who had brought them horrible tasting vegetable flavored chips. Dr. Idesheim was one of the most brilliant botanists in Thorlund and an avid hurling fan. Without any real opposition from the others, he had insisted that they watch the game as they drank. It made for a much better topic of discussion than their respective fields. At least tonight it did.

Outside the house, two women were parked across the street, dressed casually like a typical university student might dress. Hannah Cohen and Liz Shaw, however, were not typical university students. One was an agent of the International Law Department of the Danaan Ministry for Justice who had taken the unprecedented step of bringing an agent from a hostile nation into her own country's territory as part of a joint operation. Liz Shaw was that hostile agent, a member of the Iesian enforcement organization Occulum Dei. Both women were operating without the support or knowledge of local authorities and with questionable legitimacy. "Let's go over the case again. A student vanished without a trace a year ago. The local constablary concluded that she dropped out although they never found her. She was officially declared a missing person a couple weeks later. She was very active in university politics and even served a key role in the last elections getting the Conservative Democrats in power in Thorlund. That same year, someone launched an assassination attempt on Kanzler Baatz, the First Minister in this principality. Later, the victim's thesis advisor is killed mysteriously by wild animals. The professor is replaced this year by Dr. Ren Cai-fei who's worked as a security advisor to Baatz in the past. It's a slim lead but the best we've had since we got rid of that white supremacist trafficking network in Marlund."

Cobhda, Sanero

It was a day like any other. The fifteen year old boy was walking home from school, white sneakers pounding the pavement, worn green backpack tossed over his shoulder. Jenaro Rabal was a good kid in a bad school. That’s what everyone said. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t do drugs, and, most importantly, he didn’t run with a gang. Everyone knew it. He’d been beaten up a few times but it didn’t seem to bother him too much. He had his own friends. He had his part-time job at his father’s auto shop. He even kind of had a girlfriend. All was right in his world.

There were a couple of older kids from the neighborhood leaning against a wire fence marking off a private parking lot between a rundown convenience store and a Nilde’s. Cobhda might be known for its creative architecture, proudly displaying the proud Spanish heritage of most of its citizens, but not in Jenaro’s neighborhood. It might just have easily been the poorer district in Tarana or Narich or Zwingli. Janero’s father would have said it was a neighborhood with grit, with character. Janero thought it was dump.

The older kids, Janero didn’t really know them, although they went to his school. One was a finely figured but trashily shod blond girl, wearing cut-off jeans so short the pockets hung down below the cut. All the others were boys. A massive giant of a kid who looked like he was well over two hundred pounds seemed to hulk in the back. A short, muscular boy seemed to glare at Janero, looking almost like a wild animal that might bite. But the leader seemed to be a lean young man in a wife-beater and a pair of trousers with holes torn in the knees. “Hey, Janero, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me.” Janero answered nervously. He glanced to the other side of the street, seriously considering escape. “I actually need to get home. Mama’s expecting me.”

“Wait just a minute.” The other boy said maliciously. The giant moved in front of Janero, cutting off his route home. The nasty little guy moved around to the other side, blocking him from going back the way he’d come. “You’ve been pushing off some of my boys for a long while now. Janero. What’s up with that shit?”

“Look, I just want to go home in peace, man.” Janero pleaded. “I never made any trouble for anybody. I keep out of your guys’ way. You know that.”

“Maybe that’s not good enough anymore. Maybe a few people we might know have shown some interest in a pretty boy like you.” As his leader spoke, the little man moved up behind Janero and sharply planted a blow in his kidney. The big kid then moved in and landed another in gut. Janero felt bile rise in his throat as he fell to his knees. The pain shot through him, robbing him of breath and voice, but he wasn’t worried. Not really. He was just being beaten up again. The older kids, their words didn’t mean what it sounded like they meant. That sort of thing didn’t happen in the real world.

Rabal Auto, the neighborhood shop, was closed for about a week. The school had a brief service and a day off from classes. A missing persons report was filed with the police. Within a week, the local gangsters were behind bars but they had only links with much shadier and mush more dangerous organized crime figures, men whose names they didn’t know. Even though Janero might well have been still alive, in time the community simply made peace with his disappearance as they would have with his death, all except his mother and father. Beyond the borders of the Resurgent Dream, there were dark and dangerous places. From some of them, or so most believed, there was no safe return.

Akiimi, Kadoki

The nightmares always start the same way. Mum is just coming out of the community clinic where she volunteered every Tuesday and Thursday. She climbs into the car next to Dad and we pull out into the street. I’m in the backseat playing with a Powerman action figure. That might have been a formative toy, although I could never even look at anything about Powerman or any other cartoon hero after that night.

“I need to stop by the teller machine to get some money for the film.” Dad says. We’re going to see Roger’s Big Day, my parents don’t think I was old enough to see the new Nighthawk. I’m excited anyway. I’ve seen a few previews for the film during my cartoons and it looks funny.

The roads are pretty much empty at night. Dad pulls up next to a teller machine and gets out. He’s still wearing the suit he wore to work. He looks handsome. Perhaps, unfortunately, he looks wealthy as well. I see the two men coming up to him without giving it much thought. There’s just a couple more people around. I’ve never seen anything that made me mistrust strangers, just a few warnings from my parents. That’s about to change.

One of the men pulls a gun. It isn’t exciting like the movies. I see him yelling. Dad raises his hands in the air. Mum is screaming. She starts to open the door. Dad screams for her to stay in the car. I scream at her not to leave me. She starts to open the door. I hear a gunshot. It’s not like in the movies. Dad is falling and Mum’s running towards him now. There’s another shot. Mum and Dad are both on the ground. It isn’t real. I run out of the car. The men start to run. There’s sirens in the distance. I put my arms around Mum and scream for her not to leave me. She can’t leave me. I’m her little boy. She can’t leave me.

Blaise Wicky shot awake. His muscular body was covered in sweat and he was crying. No matter how much work he did, no matter how many criminals he stopped, the dream wouldn’t go away. It was part of him, something he had to live with but couldn’t. He pulled himself from bed and walked over to the small desk in his hotel room. If he couldn’t sleep her might as well work. He hadn’t even decided where he was going yet. On his desk were a dozen countries not in full compliance with standards on human trafficking: Iesus Christi, Vegana (although, given that Veganan intelligence had once mistook an internet poll for a real Danaan polling station and made extensive commentary without ever realizing their mistake, he wasn’t sure if they were capable of stopping traffickers if they wanted to), Midlonia, Central Facehuggeria, Infinite Loving… the list went on over two whole sheets of paper.

" A slim lead is better than none, I assume a slow and steady approach is called for? Do we know where the supremacists make their contacts?"
Liz listened carefully like she always had, Iesus Inquisitors and intell officers maybe stereotyped as heavy handed thugs but they werent in reality idiots. Besides Liz no longer had the full on 'torture them into confessing cos we know they are guilty' style. Hannah had shown Liz that it wasnt always the best approach....Liz wasn't naive and had quickly understood the new reality with the aid of Hannah...and for this Liz was eternally grateful, even if she quietly believed Hannah didn't trust her 'instincts' enough and could be a bit over careful....

Even with everything that had and was happening Liz kept in contact with her direct superior back in Iesus Christi, and even as much as Liz respected Hannah she didnt tell her.....Liz still had to keep some secrets.

Agwenberg, Thorlund

“I’m not sure they do.” Hannah answered Liz. “All these networks might not be connected, at least not organizationally. Or, for all we know, this might not be a case of human trafficking at all. It might be a murder or a disappearance or any number of other things. But it’s still the best lead we have that might get us back into the action.”

Hannah kept her eyes on the house. A few minutes later, a four-wheeler pulled up and a rather fat, blond man of about fifty stepped out, heading inside with a plastic bag that looked to be full of bags of crisps, snack bars, dips, and other items for the poker game going on downstairs. Hannah started to giggle slightly and fumble around in the backseat when he arrived, not stopping until he’d gone inside.

“Any idea how we should start this one? The wild animals seem to be as good a starting place as any. They were sent after someone close to the victim, someone who might have found something out, so they were likely sent by the abductor or someone working with him or her. So it’s a matter of finding out who brought trained, dangerous animals into Agwenberg. I doubt they left a paper trail or got any official permits so we’re going to have to follow the rumor mill. At least, that’s my first thought.” Hannah looked to Liz to see if she agreed.

Liz nodded, it was the best and only lead indeed....
Liz blinked "Well, we could check out public records...but ummm yeah....you're most likely right, they wont have left a trail." Liz paused and thought it over for a moment " you're first thought seems to be on target...as per usual..." Liz winked " So, lay on Boss."

Agwenberg, Thorlund

"I don't have any good follow-up thoughts though." Hannah admitted. "That's why I asked you. Unless you want to just walk around and look for strange stool?"