Alloy Soul Chapter One

Chapter 1: The Spark of Revolution

“I can’t fail now…”

A man sitting in a dark furiously beats on his keyboard, waiting for the bar on the screen to finally complete. “They’ll find me any minute now” he whispers to himself, he can feel himself fidgeting, waiting for the dim glowing pixels to inform him the operation is done. He looked down at his uniform, the rough material, the heavy boots, the Velcro name tag, Maj. Davids, had never shirked from his duty, never hesitated on an order, it all came naturally to him. He was a calm wall of a man, never shaking, never crumbling, but here, in this room, his nerves felt like an earthquake. He’s shaking in his seat, he’s never felt the restlessness hes feeling now, his whole body is moving in his seat, except for his eyes, his eyes never move from the progress bar ever slowly moving forward, a slow soldier marching. The bar lasts just long enough to give the Major a second thought, is what hes doing right? What if the consequences are worse than he pictures? Before hes able to think too long about these questions, the computer dings, the download finished. He frantically grabs a USB drive from the front of the computer, stuffing it into his pocket before speeding to the door. He reaches for the door but his hand is shaking, he won’t fool anyone. A single deep breath restores his composure, inside he is still shaking, hes racing 100 miles a minute, but you now couldn’t tell by looking at him. He exits the room into a cold almost featureless building, full of long hallways and offices. He passes doors with names he knows, wondering what they’ll think of him after all this, will they understand? Probably not. He decides to not care, he needs to do this. He makes his way out of the building, slipping on his uniform hat, taking a second to steel himself again in the warm sun before his mission continues. He steps onto the pavement, his boot stops feel like thunder in his ears, “why did I have to park so far away? I should’ve parked closer” the thought crosses his mind right as he turns to step into his car. The nerves are starting to hit him, it takes a minute to steady his hand to get his keys into the ignition. He finally lets himself relax as the engine hums to life. Making sure to not drive erratically takes almost all his strength, but its finally over right? He just needs to get off base, get home, then upload. Three simple steps, easy enough. Then he sees it, the gate guard waves him down, the though of blowing through crosses his mind, but he stops almost on instinct, trying to find what to say to a question he knows is coming. The guard motions for him to roll down his window. “Where’re yah going man? Its the middle of the day?” The guard leans on the open window. It takes everything in David’s body to stay calm, a lie flows from his lips, unable to think twice about what to say, “You know that sandwich place off of South Second street? Word got around the office and I offered to pick it up for lunch”. “Assumed someone like you would have something better to do than pick up everyone’s lunch orders, don’t they got yah on something important” The guard relaxes a bit. “Ah, not that important, and its good to get out of the office for a little while, you know? You want anything man? I can drop it off on my way back.” Davids knew he wouldn’t be back, and it killed him inside to lie anymore than he had to but he had to get off of base. It can’t have all been for nothing. “awful nice of yah to offer, but wife made me lunch and she’d get mad if she found out I ordered out, but yah better get goin’ can’t have all those important people waitin too long now can we?” The guard steps away from the car and motions for the barrier arm to be raised, letting the car through. “Yeah, thanks man, hope that lunch is good” Davids lets out as he rolls up his window and continues on his way. After checking his rear view mirror 20 times on his way out to make sure he wasn’t followed, he slumps down into his seat, this whole ordeal has been more exhausting than any deployment, any late night project, just anything Major Davids had ever done before. The road to his home was uneventful. He let an optimistic thought cross his mind for the first time all day, he might just be able to do this. A hour later, he sits in a dark room again, in front of a computer, waiting on a progress bar. He had done everything he could. All the information he made off with, including encrypted files he didn’t have the rank to access, was being uploaded across the web, to every place he could think of. There was no way the government could shut this down before at least one person downloaded it. His work was done. All he had to do was wait. He wondered if he would live to see the fire this spark lit, but he figured he wouldn’t. They would track it to him quick, and he didn’t have the energy to run, running was a young man’s sport, he thought. Davids looks down at his hands, finally naturally steady, he closes his eyes. Downstairs several agents park their cars, meet at the door, and immediately break it down. They rush upstairs where they find Davids in his dark office, turned to face them. “What have you done Davids, do you even know?” and before he can answer them, 3 shots ring out in the calm suburban neighborhood. The computer screen, now stained red, reads out [UPLOAD COMPLETE]. His work was done, and the flames were lit.

Jack Hathaway was a pretty normal 15 year old. He would listen to his parents even if he talked back occasionally, he did alright in school, even if he got into fights every now and then, and he felt pretty alone, even if he hung out with friends every once in a while. It was a warm June afternoon, Jack always felt the worst at the beginning of summer break, being thrown out of his habits, his schedule, just emphasized how alone he was. His parents were off doing something, a work trip or vacation he wasn’t invited to, but he didn’t much mind that. He prepared to spend his time watching TV and playing games, with some light reading before bed, anything to keep the void he felt filled for long enough to get to bed. Many days, even weeks would be spent like that every summer, slowly falling into another rhythm so that he could once again enter the auto-pilot he spent most of his life in. This summer had other ideas. Jack would wake up late on the 5th, his house still empty and quiet. He dragged himself out of his room to the same indention on the couch he spent yesterday in. Turning on the TV, Jack was met, not with the normal Sitcom reruns or morning cartoons, but with basically every channel reporting on the same thing, government documents. He disregarded this as boring quick and just put on music while he made himself a breakfast past noon. After eating, he made his way back to his room to get on his computer, surely there was something there that wasn’t boring government news. But upon scrolling every social media he had he discovered it was all anyone was talking about. Jack, annoyed at the totality of this conversation and its propensity for interrupting his oh so important habit forming, unplugged for the day, reading out side until the sun went down, just so he wouldn’t have to see or hear the news again. He woke up the next day, again with his schedule of getting up past noon, sauntering into the living room and turning the TV on, he braced to here more of the leak, but hoped less channels were talking about it. The TV turned on to the news, and…they didn’t mention it at all. Jack sat, confused for a while, waiting for any words even associated with yesterday’s story, but they never came. No “leak”, no “government”, no “new information”, no anything that could even be construed as even maybe reminding someone about yesterday. Flipping through the channels, this proved to be true everywhere, as far reaching as the story was yesterday, its absence was just as total today. The same would prove true online, no matter how far he scrolled, how many profiles he checked, none of yesterday’s posts stayed up. No forums talked about it, no videos talking about that news would come up in search. It was gone. As frustrating as its presence was yesterday, its disappearance was twice as annoying, Jack felt like he was being pranked, like he was crazy. He texted almost every number in his phone, none understood what he was feeling. Some admitted to seeing the news, but disregarded it as a hoax since it went away. No one could find the documents or files that were “supposedly” uploaded, so it might as well have not been real. No one agreed with him that is was strange, no one save a girl named Naomi Rose.

Naomi was a project partner with Jack a couple years ago, they shared numbers to keep in touch and make sure they were doing their respective parts. Not a single message was shared between them between the end of that project and today. They both couldn’t understand how everyone was so insane about this? How can you ignore an 180 from literally every single piece of media like this?

[I texted everyone, they said it was a hoax, but wouldn’t they be talking about it being a hoax?

-Jack]

{Same, felt like I was stupid. My parents did the same and got more of the same. How bout ur parents?

-Naomi}

[don’t know, they re gone and didnt answer

-Jack]

{Hell of a time to be alone

-Naomi}

[don’t know if id want them here tbh. Feel like it would be more of the same

-Jack]

{Ooft…

-Naomi}

They kept in touch for the next couple of days, wondering what the leak was about, was it actually a hoax? For the first time in a while, Jack was interested in something. There weren’t any habits, no schedules, no two days were the same. That proved especially true when before the sun came up about a week after the leak, he was woken up, not by a text, but a phone call. He answered and was met by a voice that was vaguely familiar

“Hey man, sorry about the early call, I texted but you didn’t answer.”

“Huh? Wait Naomi?”

“Yeah man, what you still asleep? Well wake up, we got it.”

“Wait, what? Got it? Like it it?”

“Yeah, it. I’ll text you by address, get your ass over here.”

Jack sprung out of bed as quick as he could, he planned on just sprinting out the door as soon as he got shoes on, but decided he should probably brush his teeth and get dressed, a shirtless teenager sprinting out of his house and down the street at 4 am would probably be a strange sight. Jumping around on one foot trying to get a pair of jeans on, Jack scrambled to brush his teeth and get ready at the same time. He finally got his jacket on and got to the door, ready to find out a mystery he was told didn’t exist. He grabbed his bike from the garage on the way out, it was caked in dust and the tires were half empty, but it allowed him to move faster than on foot, so it worked fine.

*Knock Knock Knock Knock*

A rapid knocking on the door startled the Rose family, only for Naomi to jump up and say it was for her, which only served to confuse her parents more. She hurries to the door and swings it open to find Jack, sweating and out of breath on her doorstep. “Hey man, what are you doing here?” she grinned. “Ha..ha..ha” Jack gets out in between deep pants to try and compose himself. She brings him inside and introduces Jack to her family, and her family to Jack. Her father was an information technician, and was always dealing with computers in one way or another, and her mother wasn’t much different. The other member of the Rose family was the recently born Jade. In contrast to Jack, they were interested in this leak from the beginning. As soon as the news broke, Mr. Rose would spend every free hours scouring the internet for a link or an upload or even just some of the raw data that was leaked. The government had people working to do the opposite, to delete and hide, and mark for investigation anywhere that the files popped up, but they could never be quick enough, no matter how fast they got to a download link, someone had downloaded it and uploaded them elsewhere. Eventually Mr. Rose got lucky and found one of those links before it got taken down. He immediately took his home off of the internet as soon as the download was complete and gathered his family to read through everything. They had been at it for less than an hour before Jack got there. Mr. Rose was frantic, printing everything that came across his screen and making several copies of the data to various drives. Introductions were quick, everyone understood each other when it was revealed they all felt similarly to what had been happening, and Jack was eager to help with the work.

Hours past going through mundane reports and graphs, looking for anything that could be interesting, anything that would prompt the response it did. The sun rose, and eventually set again, small references to secret projects and weirdly inaccurate numbers all the pay off they had found so far. They highlighted and connected, eventually the living room looked like a conspiracy theorists idea of simple fact, papers taped to walls, yarn connecting them. It took almost a week of cycling who sleeps, ordering food, and never leaving the house to put together a simple fact, the important stuff was encrypted, they could make guesses on the project titles and budgets they’ve been going through, but would only be guesses. They needed to focus on the stuff in the vault, behind a bank door of ones and zeroes. Mr. and Mrs. Rose were the only ones capable of even attempted to crack that, so Naomi and Jack headed to his house so he could grab some stuff and check in on the suburban home he abandoned more than a week ago.

After gathering some changes of clothes Jack checked the landline, a voicemail was sitting, waiting to be heard. He had no idea how long it had sat there. Jack looked at the glowing button and pressed it, intending to let it play as he collected a couple odds and ends but as the voice started he froze. It was his father, and he was angry. Jack’s father was a stern man, the only lessons ever imparted onto Jack by him always boiled down to “don’t rock the boat”. He didn’t need to yell, his scarcely heard. deep, gravely voice demanded enough attention. Jack stood in place, head instinctively down listen to his father explain that he was on his way home and the house better be in a presentable state. Jack reconsidered his actions, was he more afraid of his father than he was motivated to see this through? He stood there for a minute, his mind racing with every answer to that question he could think of, looking for the one that felt the most true. Naomi, returning to the living room after looking through Jack’s room, she found him scared. She didn’t know why, the voicemail had finished, the house was quiet. She put a hand on his shoulder, hoping to reassure him from whatever had shaken him this much. She didn’t know Jack that well admittedly, but she had seen him throughout school, and everyone heard of fights he would get in, even catching one herself. It was Jack up against 3 upper class-men, he had beat up one of them a week prior and they wanted revenge. Even against that, he hadn’t shrunk the way he has now. Jack didn’t feel the hand for a moment, but then look at Naomi, yet not really seeing her. “Are you okay man?” She asked, almost whispering. Anything louder seemed like a yell. Hearing her voice reminded him what they were doing. He shook it off as best he could “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks”. They headed out the door and back to the Rose household, reaching for the door they heard a crash and a scream. Jack and Naomi dropped what they were carrying and rushed through the door, unsure of what they would find. All they found was a distraught Mrs. Rose and a fuming Mr. Rose, and a single new file open on the desktop. The two adults couldn’t speak, just pointed to the screen before either of the kids could ask a question. They rushed over and read like their lived depended on it, and perhaps it did. It was a document detailing one of the projects referenced in the other files. Mr. Rose had encrypted one of them, the kids were ecstatic, though that only lasted a second as they read on. A darkness spread over the two of them as they sat and read. The government had been lying. Now that wasn’t new in and of itself, as long as there’s been governments they’ve been lying, but not like this. Not to this extent.