Rebellion (Zero Series)
Read Rebellion (Zero Series) Online
Authors: Jacob Huth
A lot of people don’t know how it was before the
attack. There was a large falling out between the USA and a terrorist group
made up of scientists and radicals from various countries. The group launched a
weapon unlike any that had been seen before. It was a weaponized gravity
machine. It completely fried much of the world’s technology, leveled a handful
of major cities and killed three quarters of the world’s population. When the
terrorists activated it, it altered the gravity pull of the earth and ripped
molten lava out of the ground. Lava enveloped cities, settlements, and people.
The people who remained after the attack were people who lived far enough
outside of the major cities or were in aircrafts or boats. There were some who
grabbed onto a large piece of debris or a fixed structure and rode out the
chaos. After the lava settled, the governments that were still standing used up
the remaining resources to build settlements to harbor the survivors. After ten
years, the peace among the settlements wore thin. People began forming their
own settlements with their own governments. The new governments had no way to
stop any conflicts since the military was essentially annihilated and only a
quarter of the world’s population remained.
Over the years the temporary governments fell to
organized crime. The crime organization “Kraken” took control of Marsh City, the largest city in what used to be America, and began running a more sophisticated
crime operation. They managed to rebuild the city to a semi-livable state. Most
of the city became slums while the crime lords built their own quarters and
meeting places to the highest standard.
My name is Zero. People don’t have their official
names anymore. When Kraken took over, they used the city records to find people
who still had assets or some semblance of power and took them out. Everybody
dropped their names and adopted a new name. Some people just picked a random
name, but others picked one that would be their codename in the Insurgency. The
Insurgency formed about 24 years ago when I was 5 years old. Kraken began
rounding up those who opposed them for public executions. The Insurgency
started out small, only a few people. Once they began sabotaging operations of
Kraken, people joined at a rapid pace. For a few years, the Insurgency made
progress against Kraken, but the success was short lived. Even rebellions have
problems. It turned out that there were informants within the group who sold
out the entire Insurgency. They were completely wiped out after being fed false
information that led them into an ambush.
I remember the day they were defeated. I was sixteen
years old. I felt hopelessness within the city. Kraken had destroyed the only
real progress anyone had made against them. I was only a few days away from
joining the Insurgency. I wanted to be part of the effort to take down Kraken.
I started training in secret. I tried to build my speed and ability to move
unnoticed. When the Insurgency fell, I had no idea what I should do. My parents
died in the demise of the Insurgency. They were scientists that helped build
weapons for the rebels. Growing up I tried to learn as much as I could from them.
When they died, I was lost. I continued to live in our house to stay hidden
from Kraken.
I recovered some of my parents’ more useful
technology and hid it before Kraken’s agents came to ransack our house. I also
made it a point to make myself scarce while our home was being taken out of the
system. Once Kraken destroyed agents of the Insurgency, they would send their
own people to do a sweep of the house and make sure it had nothing of value.
Once that was done, they took it off the list and it became just another slum
house. Luckily I was able to take some of our stuff and hide for a few hours.
Once my home was cleared, I returned and tried to make a new start. All my
training, all my knowledge… wasted. I kept the technology to keep it out of the
hands of Kraken. My parents had some of the most advanced technology that
anyone had ever seen. Even Kraken’s tech paled in comparison. I had to keep it
safe.
For thirteen years, I lived on. I was just a normal
citizen of Marsh City. I tried to stay out of the way of known Kraken agents. I
spent most of my time with my neighbor and closest friend, Frost. Frost is the
same age as me. His parents were killed in the Insurgency ambush as well. They
were field medics who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were the
ones who were leading the pack because the Intel they received said there were
injured members of the Insurgency that needed aid. The group decided that it
was the time to strike, but paid the ultimate price.
Frost chose his name because when he was a child he
had a debilitating disease that would raise his body temperature nearly to the
point of death. His parents worked with other scientists in the Insurgency to
help him. Gene manipulation was a popular method among Kraken when they first
took power. The Insurgency was able to steal some of the technology in a
well-placed tactical raid. They used the manipulation on Frost to alter his
DNA. They were able to keep his body temperature at a stable level, but there
was a tradeoff. He acquired a gene spike. This is the side effect of gene
manipulation. They come in many different forms and manifest themselves
differently. Some people call them gifts, but others think they are curses. To
keep his body temperature at a stable level, they had to manipulate his genes
to produce an ice like compound to keep him from overheating. Frost’s gene
spike allowed him to create ice and manipulate it. He also was able to project
ice shards from his hands. His eyes turned from a dark brown to an icy blue
color. His hair turned into a light blonde as well.
Kraken started manipulating some of their top agents
with gene spikes. It was the only way to ensure that their agents would stop
being killed off while on assignments. They had scientists come up with gene
spikes that would make their agents seemingly invincible. Things got bad in
Marsh City after they started making their elite squads. With the Insurgency
dead and an army of gene manipulated soldiers, Kraken gutted the city of what
little money it had left.
Gene spikes became hated among the normal people in
Marsh city. If you were unlucky enough to have a physical characteristic that
distinguished your gene spike, you would be shunned, insulted, or sometimes
attacked by people. Frost had to work hard to hide his. Only those closest to
him knew about it. Luckily for me, mine didn’t affect the way I looked. Oh,
that’s right, I have a gene spike as well. My gene spike is the ability to
alter gravity. I can create small temporal gravity alterations, send out force
bursts from my hands and send an explosion of force from my entire body. The
last one is extremely dangerous, though. I have only done it once. When I was a
child, my parents attempted to recreate the effect of the weapon that
originally started the war, but in me. They thought that if a person could hone
that power, it could be used in a more positive way. I don’t remember much of
the alteration process. When I came back to consciousness, the lab around me
was nearly destroyed. My parents worked hard to hide my gene spike as I grew
up. When Kraken agents came poking around, my parents just said there was a gas
explosion and apparently it was good enough for them. They took to calling me
Zero since I could create zero gravity-like bursts. Frost and I promised to
keep our alterations secret from the others.
The day that we made the decision to resurrect the Insurgency
sticks out in my mind more than any other. I was combing through some of my
parents old research one morning. My house was dismal ever since Kraken raided
and stripped it. I was able to acquire some meager furniture and supplies so I
could live relatively comfortably. All I was able to recover was three boxes of
research papers before it was all taken. I had only been able to go through one
of the boxes. Many of the notes and papers were very complicated and hard to
sort out. I tried to diligently look through everything and learn what I could.
It has taken me years to read through many of the papers. I know three boxes
don’t sound like a lot, but they were three large footlockers packed to the
brim with research. I could only read so much in one sitting. I cracked into
the second footlocker and started reading the complex formulas and plans. A few
pages in, a knock came at the door.
“Come in!” I yelled over my shoulder.
The door creaked open and Frost entered carrying a
bag. “How’s it going?” he asked.
“As well as it could go. You know how complex these
are,” I responded.
“I know. I brought a surprise though. I think you’ll
like this,” he said reaching into the bag. He pulled out a can and set it on my
table.
“What is it?” I asked looking at it.
“Open and smell it,” he responded.
I opened the can and instantly smelled a savory
aroma. “Coffee?” I asked in a surprised tone.
“Yes. Coffee. Actual coffee,” Frost replied.
“Where did you get this? I thought that this was a
banned item and only Kraken agents could get it,” I said.
“I was walking down to the market and saw one of
Kraken’s supply trucks was driving along and happened to lose a box when it hit
a pothole. I ‘liberated’ the contents and distributed them to people throughout
town. I kept the coffee for us though. I figured we could use it for our heavy
reading,” he said.
I chuckled and went to my stove to put on a pot of
water to make the coffee. After a few minutes, we sat at the table with a hot
pot of fresh coffee. I poured a cup and took a drink of the heavenly nectar.
Nobody had been able to acquire something as simple as coffee for a long time.
Kraken completely ran the supply trade in Marsh City and kept the “common”
people from having what they called “luxury amenities” or what we call simple
comforts. I felt the caffeine coursing through my body. We both dug into the
second footlocker. After a while, I came across some blueprints that I didn’t
recognize.
“Frost, do you know what these are?” I asked.
He examined them and replied, “No. I don’t know. I
have never seen anything like this before. Are there any other notes on them?”
he asked back.
“I haven’t seen any yet. I’ll keep looking,” I
replied. The plans looked like gauntlets, but what did they do? They had to
have some properties that made them special. Why would they keep these papers
with their research if they were just armor? I set them aside and kept reading.
Frost stopped me and said, “Look at this. I found a series of notes that
reference something called ‘spike amplifiers’. Do you think that’s what those
are?”
“Could be. What does it say?” I asked.
“Let’s see,” he said taking a drink of coffee, ‘Spike
amplifiers are a gauntlet product that have the power to take the power of a
gene spike and amplify it by ten times its original power. We have attempted
many prototypes, but to no positive result. All seven test subjects that have
tested the amplifiers have had negative side effects. Some powers were lost
completely and some of the subjects died. No possible solutions at this time.’
“Well that sounds bleak. Maybe if we come across more
notes we can try to figure out the flaws and build some of our own,” I said.
“Your gravity powers are powerful enough aren’t
they?” Frost asked.
“I could always stand to hone them. I don’t want to
accidentally blow an innocent house away,” I replied.
“Didn’t your parents recreate the core remover weapon
in your gene spike?” Frost asked.
“Yeah but they toned the power down. They didn’t want
me accidentally destroying life as we know it,” I said.
“That was smart of them,” Frost said going back to
his papers.
I continued to read and was fascinated by the work my
parents did. The papers outlined many plans for elaborate weapons. Most were
made of a disruptor technology that could negate gene spikes for a short time.
This would make the person vulnerable powerless until the effects wore off. The
only problem was that the research didn’t mention how long it would last or if
it would even work. We wouldn’t want to get into a sticky situation and have it
not work. We read for a few hours before there was a commotion outside. I
walked to the door and saw a crowd of people moving towards the city square. I
stopped a young woman and asked, “What’s going on?”
“Hades is making a public appearance at the city
square,” she said.
“Hades? In person?” Frost asked from across the room.
“Apparently. You’d better hurry or you won’t be able
to get into the square,” she said hurrying away.
“We’d better go. Let’s pack this up quickly,” I said,
almost running across the room to the table. Hades, the leader of Kraken, never
made appearances in person. He would only appear on a video screen to address
the public. His name came from a speech that he delivered a few years before.
There had been a string of public disturbances that had disrupted Kraken
operations. Hades gave an order to firebomb a section of the city to show that
Kraken was still not to be trifled with. He appeared after the bombing on the
large video screen in the square and delivered a fiery speech. In the middle of
the speech, he referred to himself as “the lord of the underworld that is Marsh City and the citizens are the souls that are damned and forced to remain in turmoil
forever”. People began calling him Hades and he adopted the name. He tightened
his rule after that speech and began publicly executing anyone who had an
unregistered gene spike or anyone who caused a public disturbance that could be
referred to as an “act of rebellion”. After that, nobody really caused any
problems. The city’s people had been pounded into submission by Hades and his
elite operatives.
