The Timeservers

Chapter 43

New York City, New York

The Spire, Top Floor, Commissioner Floor

December 19, 227 P.F.E

0915 hours

If you're lucky there will only be good memories in your life where you can pinpoint the exact place, the exact time that you learned of it or that it happened. Something like being proposed to or proposing, the birth of a child, the day you start on the path you was supposed to take the whole time. Those are if you're lucky.
There are a ton of unlucky and terrible memories in a person's life where they can pinpoint the time and the place when they heard something or something happened.
9/11 was one. Most of the world remembered the exact heart-stopping moment when everything changed. North America had been so utterly changed by that one moment that it was impossible to go back. There are some stains too stubborn, too significant, to ever get out. People could tell you how they felt the minute they heard about the second plane hitting the towers. They could tell you for how long it seemed that time stood still. How utterly interminable every second was, because everything had just been altered beyond recognition, but in most of the world everything was the same.
New America's horror is today. Its communal unlucky and terrifying memory happens today. The New may not approve of history, but this moment will be history. Some things have to become history. This is the moment that any New will be able to point to and say I was in this place when I heard. I heard it this soon after it happened. I felt empty, but I was crying. I wasn't feeling nothing though. I was feeling everything.
Kelly should have been there today, Leo was the one supposed to be joining Via on the mission. It's just that if Leo slipped, even a little, and revealed a Historian accent or they saw his eyes, then things would go sideways really fast. The Ivory Tower was no world for him. Kelly not being Historian and being under orders meant that he wasn't the main target of the brawl on the street. He can get out of a lot more. He just couldn't get out of this.
Sophia feels lightheaded and like all the blood in her body decided to sit in her chest. Her brain is firing too fast and her feelings have just shut down all together. She'd seen her brother in mortal trouble before. She'd watched it on a screen while she couldn't do anything, even standing beside him as the same thing almost happened. This is different. This is a group of mad men who were in such a crazed state of mind that they thought attacking the Ivory Tower was a good idea.
"Kelly. Kelly," Sophia gasps out. She tries to reach for Leo, but he's moving just a bit faster than her.
"Sirs, permission to go and defend theTower?" Leo requests.
"No. We won't risk any more of our spectres. Evanesce and Phoenix will have to find a way out. Go back to your floor and wait this out," Commissioner Gray orders. He turns to speak to the other commissioners and then notices that neither of the spectres in front of him is moving. "Get out."
"Come on, let the commissioners do their work," Hound orders. He grabs Leo by the back of his collar and Sophia by the arm. She stumbles after him, her legs forgetting how to walk.
"They were in lecture hall two, four viable exits from that room. The west exit is closest to where they would have been. That only leads directly to five exits and we know Kelly would've been too stubborn to take those. He's still inside the building and is going to try to fight the guys off. If he gets himself ki- Kelly. The extremists would've gone through the east side of the building; it's less visible, fewer elite guarding it. Minimum successful charge would have to be twenty people, I think. Twelve if they were all trained. They wouldn't go in with twenty, suicide. Forty at least." Sophia works through the whole charge in her head. What she would do if she were Kelly, Via, what she would do if she were one of the extremists.
"Via's dressed like a chancellor. She'll be targeted. My brother's supposed to be her elite so it's not like he's going to leave her. Not with that dumb crush or anything."
"Sophia! Stop it! You're just going to drive yourself crazy!" Leo grabs Sophia by the shoulders just before they get on the elevator. He shakes her a little. She looks up at him and her vision is all funny, and watery. She's been crying and she didn't even know it.
"My best guess is an eleven percent chance of survival for my brother if he stays with Via. It goes down to eight without her. Those are the best-case scenarios. I'm already crazy. I should have been the analyst today! I should be there, talking in his ear and telling him not to do something stupid! He would ignore me, duh! But I would feel like I'm doing something! Why is the rest of the world not falling around us!"
"I should have been there," Leo sighs.
"Fourteen percent chance of survival with Via, eighteen without her but you wouldn't leave her, she wouldn't leave you either. They wouldn't attack a Historian though."
"Don't play that game. Get on the elevator," Hound orders.
The group steps on the elevator and Hound calls out for their floor. The elevator is packed, full of people having to rush to different floors since the attack began. Most people look stunned, and scared. Most of them are just talking in low whispers about the attack. It's like everyone is too scared to speak louder like that will make things worse.
When the elevator gets to the spectre floor Hound makes sure that they get off. He also extends a hand to Sophia for her screen. She gives it up, reluctantly. "I'm going to leave you alone out here for two minutes, in there you'll just be bombarded with questions and that will make things worse. If I hear of you getting on an elevator though, I will hunt both of you down and drag you back here by your hair if necessary." With that, Hound leaves them.
"How long has the attack been going on?" Sophia asks.
Leo checks his watch and sighs. "Since we've known about it; five minutes."
"He's going to be tiring out soon. He has to take a break. I know I should be worried about Via too but I'm just so scared for Kelly," Sophia admits.
"Kelly can handle himself. He's been through worse."
"That's exactly the kind of thinking that could get him- you still have your screen?"
Leo takes it from his pocket and hands it over. Sophia's hands shake as she looks up what's happening. She finds a news station where a young anchor is eerily calm.
"Reporting to you live from just a few blocks away from where we now know an attack is happening on the Ivory Tower.
"We've been informed that the elite who are on-site at the Tower are doing the best they can to defend it as standards set up blockades in the surrounding blocks to keep people from getting closer to the attack. More elite are being sent over from the Spire but only a few reinforcements are able to be dispatched.
"Candidates and chancellors are reportedly escaping the building, some running into terrorists that stayed on the outside or have taken sniping positions on the roof. If anyone inside of the building is watching this; Guardians are recommending that you run out of the building if it is safe, find a place to hide, and only defend as a last resort. There is little news about who these terrorists are and why they are attacking the Tower, but people have their share of theories. We now go to Brenden Chase, a former commissioner who managed internal security for NewAmerica, for his thoughts on the attack."
The screen splits in two and an older man appears. By the time Leo got to the Spire he was already retired, but Sophia remembers him. She remembers wanting to stay away from him.
"Mr. Chase, in your opinion, who is attacking the Ivory Tower?" the reporter asks.
"This is an act done by Historians to further their own agenda. They want their marks and strikes to be removed which simply cannot be done. They have fallen back on the only solution they know; violence. The Historians think that our nation is unfair to them. We give them everything, and they want more," Chase explains.
"So, you aren't a support of the clean slate bill proposed earlier this month by Chancellor Belova? This bill would allow for Historians to come into the territory with significantly fewer strikes and marks than they are currently given and allow them to be candidates for chancellorship, Guardianship, and governorship."
"The bill is ridiculous. If you allow a Historian into the government or to 'protect' the people, they will protect their people. They will not work in the interests of New citizens who do follow the laws, who are good, and who have not fought against our country."
"Are you aware that Chancellor Belovaherself is in the Tower at this very moment?"
"When you play with a scorpion you should expect to get stung," Chase says.
"It's the scorpion and the frog and the frog is helping the scorpion across a river. If you're going to use it, get it right," Leo growls.
"It's not Historians, right? It can't be Historians. They wouldn't attack with their champion Belova there," Sophia tries.
"It's not Historians. It's not like anyone will care though."
"Which one of us is the frog and which is the scorpion?"
"It doesn't matter; they'll both die in the end."