The smooth silverish white walls of the small office building reflected the shimmering orange flames and acrid black smoke that poured out of the rubbled remains of the asian market across the street as gunfire, both distant and close, echoes through the street. Suddenly, in the reflection of the office building, one of the few buildings still left unscathed in the wreckage of this once illustrious and vibrant cityscape, the squat image of a GRT-61 Grunt efreet walks into the combat zone.
Marked in the white and red pattern of the Lunar Wolves mercenary group, the Grunt advances to take cover behind the burning wreckage of a city bus in the middle of the street. Short but sturdy, the Grunt kneels behind the bus for cover as it scans over its crushed roof for signs of danger. All clear?
Without warning a bright burst of red laser fire zips past the Grunt’s shoulder, narrowly missing it with a hellish red glow that bores a hole into the small silver office behind it, unscathed no longer. Taken by surprise, the Grunt whirls around to face its attacker. Far in the distance, at the other end of the city block, what appears to be the silhouette of another efreet, a CPM Dune Cat trudges out from behind the corner of a parking garage for a clearer firing point. Fully exposed to incoming fire, the Grunt throttles up to full speed as it darts to the opposite side of the street to break line of sight as it returns fire with its own arm mounted lasers that briefly bathe the street in more red light. A small explosion on the Dune Cat signals a hit, though with its heavier armor it’s doubtful the Grunt’s lighter lasers would inflict anything but superficial damage from such range.
A burst of laser fire answers from the Dune Cat which zips down the long cavernous corridor of the city street. This time it finds its target and blows off the right arm of the Grunt cleanly at the shoulder as the severed appendage flies up into the air and lodges into the silver office building as if it was a thrown dart. Tumbling back from the impact in a shower of sparks the Grunt attempts to recover its footing only to disappear behind a volley of missiles that screech past and slam into it and the bus in a thunderous explosion that shakes the ground.
The TV station broadcasting the combat footage cuts to a smartly dressed anchorwoman, safe and sound in the brightly lit newsroom of GGN’s Rio De Janeiro studio before a large satellite image of the Red Sea that zooms into the city of Neom along the Saudi Arabian coast. “This extraordinary footage was captured earlier today by one of our camera crews in the downtown district in the city of Neom. A city ablaze as the forces of the United Nations of Earth and its allies still find themselves struggling to stop the stunning advance of the Crimson Pact of Mars and its forces. It has been three days now since the attack was launched back on June 3, 2061 on what has become known as the Battle of Neom. We now go to our on the scene reporter, Hector Rodriquez, live at…”
“Oh man! Did you see that? The way that efreet’s arm blew off? Woooosh, then BAM! That was so cool!”
Jumping up and down in front of the live newscast in his living room, young Lucas Cortes pumps his arms pretending to fire his own arm mounted lasers before playfully grabbing his shoulder in pain as one was blown off.
“Easy Filho,” his father calmly exclaimed sitting nearby at the dinner table. “War isn’t as great or glamorous as you think. There are real people in those machines. With sons and daughters of their own too.” Reaching out to pull him in, his father plants a small kiss on his young son’s head.
The sentiment lost on him, Lucas continues to watch the news, wide eyed and in awe. “I wonder if Fortune is fighting there! I bet he could clear out that entire city all by himself! Lorena, check his profile! See if he’s updated it about the fighting! Do you think he’s there?”
Laying on the couch nearby, Lucas’s older sister Lorena does her best to tune out her little brother as she scrolls her phone. A popular mercenary with a large social media following, Fortune just happened to be Lucas’s favorite efreet celebrity at the moment. And though she did follow Fortune because she thought he was a hottie and could check his status in a matter of swipes, Lorena had other pressing matters at the moment. “I seriously don’t believe it, Jenny just posted a video of her dog sleeping in a laundry basket and it already has forty-nine views!”
“Lorena! Check his profile!” Lucas begged.
“No!” Their father spoke deeply as he got up from the table towards the TV. “I won’t have any more talk of this horrible war under my roof while it still stands. All this fighting. Innocent people dying and losing their homes. It never ends. But in my household it does. At least I can control that here. No more.”
“With the UNE on the defensive and losing territory by the hour, many experts are now saying it is only a matter of time before Neom fal…” CLICK! Their father silences the reporter as he turns off the TV then turns to survey his annoyed children and smiles to himself.
“Speaking of conflict… About those chores. Lucas, did you clean your room and feed the dog as I asked?
“Yes, Papa. I did it like an hour ago.” Lucas bragged back.
“And Lorena,’ their father continued, “did you take out the trash and make it to the market for dinner?
Caught up in her phone, Lorena swipes aimlessly without reply.
“Lorena.” Their father asked with a deeply stern tone. “Did you do as I asked?”
Running to her side, Lucas pulled back her hair to yank out a hidden earbud tauntingly. “Of course not, she’s busy wasting time with her friends!”
“Hey! Give that back, creep!” Lorena shouted.
“You two. Enough!” Their father declared, finally raising his voice though slightly. “Lorena, take your brother and Gringo to the market before they close or else we’ll have nothing for supper tonight.”
Agitated, Lorena stood up to snatch the earbud away from her little brother and contest her father’s instructions. “Papa! Really? The market doesn’t even close for another three hours! Why do I need to babysit on top of it?”
“Hey! Gringo isn’t a baby!” Lucas shot back.
“I wasn’t talking about the dog, loser.” Lorena said with an antagonizing smirk.
“Because I asked you to, Filha.” he resigned. “Lord help me, I have one daughter who only sees the world through her phone and one son who sees it through the filter of war and efreet fantasies. I swear on your mother’s grave, the only level headed one among you all is Gringo. Here boy!” Their father taps his leg as he looks around for their german shepherd. On cue, Gringo, dutifully answers the call and trots in from the hallway. “See, at least this one listens to me.” he said as he roughly scratched Gringo behind his ears.
Once more, in protest, Lorena cried out. “But, Papa!”
“No complaining. Had you gone earlier when I asked you’d have all evening to waste online with your friends. I’m not going to repeat myself again. Comprende?” her father answered back.
Sullenly, Lorena lowered her head and grumbled. “Yes, Papa. Let’s hurry and go already before it gets dark.” She popped the earbud back in and went to go grab Gringo’s leash.
Running down the hall and into his room, Lucas rummaged through piles of clothes, a mix of dirty and clean, intermixed with his toys to try and find his sneakers. His room was small, as was their house, but it looked even smaller thanks to the amount of clutter scattered about. For as stern as his father could be about chores, Lucas knew a clean room was never high on his list of priorities as there were some battles that parents understood were largely unwinnable.
His walls were covered with efreet posters of all the latest models which Lucas knew by heart along with some detailed drawings he had made of his favorites. He even had a small army of models made out of LEGOs which were proudly displayed in a parade formation on his dresser. Ever since their invention nearly a decade ago, efreet culture had become widely popular among the youth. Giant walking robots bristling with guns and missiles made real, the mechs from countless sci-fi movies and video games in the past were no longer science fiction anymore and Lucas, like so many of his friends at school, was totally obsessed with them.
He found his old pair of sneakers buried under a bath towel and threw them on. Going to the market was always boring, on that he and his sister agreed. One of the few things they actually did. But if there was ever any money leftover from their shopping list, they would try to sneak in a mango ice cream bar to share on the way home so at least that made the trip worthwhile. He tied his shoes loosely and ran outside before giving Lorena a chance to yell at him for taking too long.
Now finally on their way to the market, Lucas did his best to hold onto Gringo’s leash as the bloodhound in him loved to run around and stick his nose into every new scent he discovered along the way. The road to the market wasn’t more than a twenty minute walk along the main road in their small village, located forty-five minutes south of the city of Ipatinga in the Brazilian hills. Since the majority of the Brazilian government had fled in the great exodus to the stars nearly three years ago with the rest of the BRIMEA nations, the people left behind did their best to carry on as best they could. Yes, the forces of the United Nations of Earth had stepped in to try and provide security and services, but as they were also trying to assist every country that was abandoned in addition to fighting off the forces of the Crimson Pact of Mars their help was at best superficial. As they always had, the people in Lucas’s village were left to fend for themselves so daily life had changed little. Despite his young age, Lucas tried to keep up world events as he found them interesting if a little confusing. The Solar War between the UNE and the CPM had been raging since he was born but the battles taking place in exotic cities like Neom and others along with the colonies on the Moon and Mars excited his imagination far beyond what the jungles of his home could ever do. Lucas knew enough that he felt that if the Battle of Neom went poorly for the UNE, it could still mean bad things for what was left of his country and his family. Though he knew his father wouldn’t approve, he had been sneaking in views of the of the efreet battles being fought in the streets of Neom before bed since the fighting broke out and was actually well aware of just how dire the situation was for the people of Neom and the UNE. And if things were bad for the UNE, it might mean things might become even worse for his home. He wished Papa understood that too.
As they walked, Lorena passed the time by live streaming the trip from her phone, sarcastically documenting each of Gringo’s scratch and sniff stops with a negative comment or two. She had all of three viewers watching by the time he found a piece of a blown out knobby tire on the side of the road. Some wet mud on the piece of tire made it clear someone had driven by recently. Or maybe it was the fresh tire tracks imprinted into the road they walked that gave that away.
“This dumb dog acts like he’s never smelled a dirty old tire before. Seriously, the store is gonna be closed by the time we get there if you can’t keep him moving and, Papa is gonna blame me for it. ” She uttered as she played with the camera controls to frame and blame Lucas for the constant scratch and sniff stops.
“Keep sniffing boy. Get a good whiff of it.” Lucas grinned back at her camera.
“Do you see what I have to put up with on a daily basis?” she narrated to her minimal livestream with disgust. A single thumbs up from her trio of viewers floated up on her screen in agreement.
Lucas tugged at Gringo’s leash to get him going again, but the old dog wasn’t having it. Instead he started sniffing a trail along the ground near the tire and then into the air with interest.
“He’s acting kinda loco.” Lucas observed. “What’s up with this dumb tire? He must have smelled someth…” Before he could finish Gringo leapt into the lush brush roadside and disappeared out of Lucas’s hands. “…Oh no! Gringo!” Lucas quickly darted after him.
“Not again! Gringo! Get back here!” Lorena demanded.
There was no response from the brush.
“Lucas! Lucas? Great, Papa’s gonna kill me.” Reluctantly, she jumped into the vegetation to chase after her wayward brother and dog.
As she ran after her brother, Lorena remained vigilant in continuing her livestream as she held the phone in front of her and used her free hand to brush aside the multitude of tree branches opposing her path. She jumped over a small stream and climbed up a small outcropping of rock, all while staying hot on the trail of the muddy paw and sneaker prints in her path. Focused on following their winding trail into the jungle, Lorena was oblivious of the growing viewership that slowly began to increase with every hurdled tree log and puddle she jumped over in chase.
By now the sun was beginning to set as the footprints had taken her deeper into the jungle than she ever had been without her father. The dense canopy of the trees hid everything in deep layers of overlapping shadow with only small beams of sunlight breaking through in places. It would have made an excellent backdrop for a post worthy selfie if she wasn’t desperate to find her Lucas. After an exhausting half hour of chasing and finally out of breath, she had come to the side of a large ravine.
No more tracks.
No sign of Lucas or Gringo.
Anywhere.
“Lucas!… Gringo!…” she called out.
And no response either.
Exasperated, she turned to her livestream to give an official update of the situation. “This is Lorena Cortes and I have been chasing my loser brother and our stupid dog through this stupid jungle after he ran off on the way to the stupid…” as she spoke, the viewer count in the bottom corner of her phone caught her eye. “… and holy cow, I have three-hundred and two viewers! Three. Hundred. Viewers!” A trickle of thumbs up and heart emojis fluttered to the top of her screen in support. Caught off guard, she wiped the sweat off her brow and fixed her hair in the camera to look more presentable to her newfound audience.
“Hello! Um, thanks for watching my stream.” she continued as she panned around the edge of the ravine. “As you can see my little brother is in big trouble as he lost our dog and now has gotten me, completely, totally lost, and he’s probably going to get grounded. For at least a month. It’ll be too funny. I can’t wait.”
“Hey, Sis!” a faint voice echoed from the bottom of the ravine excitedly.
Startled, Lorena turned around to the ravine. She peered over it with her phone but could see nothing through the dense foliage of the angled tree limbs she stood over. “Oh my gosh, I found him!” She narrated to her viewers. “Where’s Gringo? Where are you? I can’t see anything through all these trees!”
“You gotta climb down here! You won’t believe your eyes!” Lucas hollered back. “Hurry!”
Appalled at the thought of getting dirtier, Lorena turned her phone to address her audience and inform them that the scaling of any dirty ravines wasn’t on the menu today.
But that was before she checked her updated viewer count and comments. Her stream was now up to five-hundred and fourteen viewers with many commenters actively encouraging her to climb down and see just what Lucas had discovered. She looked over the side of the ravine again. It was very steep, though not entirely unclimbable, as large rocks jutted out from the dirt as possible foot and hand holds for a climb. And there were a few vines and roots growing down the side that could be used as ropes to help her descend. Reluctantly, and with a deep breath she psyched herself to scale down the ravine so as not to disappoint her fledgling fanbase or worse, risk losing them.
“You all better follow me after this is all I gotta say.”
Lorena cautiously approached the side of the ravine and found a divot with enough of a foothold to start climbing down. Mindful to give her viewers a decent view so as not to lose any, she held onto her phone with a death grip while her free hand held onto the thick jungle vines for support as she lowered herself down. Slowly, carefully, she made her way to the bottom eventually jumping off and into a small stream at the base with a dramatic splash. Wiping some of the water from her screen she checked her viewer count again. Six-hundred and fifty-one viewers now! Perhaps, in the future, more jungle adventures like this were in order if they generated this much interest, she thought.
“Hurry!” Lucas beckoned impatiently ahead of her.
Lorena ventured forward to find Lucas holding onto Gringo as he hid peered over and behind a fallen tree log into the distance. With her camera out in front she walked towards him keeping her eyes on the screen to keep Lucas and what he was looking at in frame. Gradually the jungle thinned out to a large clearing in front of the log to reveal what Lucas had discovered. And what it was… she couldn’t believe her eyes.
Here, in the middle of this clearing, in the middle of nowhere Brazil, was a massive yellow efreet, powered down and motionless. It held a slight hunched over posture as if it had fallen asleep while standing up. But this one wasn’t like the ones she had seen on the news earlier or was like any of the models she had seen in her brother’s room. It lacked any sort of weapons and instead was equipped with a large drill on one hand and a large crane like claw on the other. It didn’t appear to her that this was a military machine as it had more in common physically with a tractor. Though she wasn’t paying attention, her phone’s display lit up with a stream of emojis and comments as her viewership kept ticking higher.
“I think it’s an Argus!” Lucas chimed in, eyes wide and grinning from ear to ear. “See, that drill? It’s used for construction. Or maybe mining. I saw a video of one just like it on the internet. How freaking cool is that!”
No sooner had he finished his analysis than he gave Gringo over to Lorena and hopped the log to run up to the efreet for a closer look.
“Get back here!” Lorena yelled at him. “You don’t know if anybody is here!”
“Here! Just take my picture in front of it quickly. My friends won’t believe any of this unless we can take a picture!” He ran up to the large blocky foot of the Argus which was caked in thick wet mud. Lorena had never been this close to an efreet in person and struggled to keep it all of it in frame, as it was too big to film all at once from where she stood. She had to zoom out to keep it and Lucas in the shot as it was easily as tall as some of the older trees in the jungle which in turn were as big as a two or three story apartment from back home.
Lucas posed with his best gangsta impression in front of the Argus while Lorena held down her camera button to take some quick appeasement snaps to get him to come back all the while commentating to her fans. “And there, as you all can see, is my dorky little brother living his best life at the expense of my worst life.” The photos now taken, she panned around the efreet to show her viewers more of its mechanical details like the piston actuators behind the drill and the large torso mounted flood lights located on either side cockpit. As she did, she noticed the inside of the cockpit suddenly illuminated by a soft glow, followed by the reflection on the glass canopy of control panels inside powering up. “Lucas!” she shouted. “Someone’s coming!”
In a hurry, Lucas darted back towards the log as Lorena hid behind it and peeked her camera above it to keep tabs on what was happening. From the right side of the clearing, a pilot came walking out of the jungle zipping up his trousers and wiping his hands on them. Oblivious to the children spying on him from the edge of the clearing, he reached into his bright orange safety vest pocket and pulled out a set of keys attached to a small remote. With a “chirp” “chirp” the lights inside the cockpit of the Argus fully flashed on as he powered up the machine with a combination of button presses on the remote. With another button press, the canopy popped up and out before elevating on its top hinge for entry. Approaching the same leg Lucas had posed in front of just seconds earlier for his photo shoot, the driver grabbed onto a small handhold above the efreet’s calf and hoisted himself up, clambering over the exterior of the efreet and into the cockpit. With the flick of some switches the low hum of the machine’s cold fusion reactor powered on. Suddenly, the inert efreet jerked to life as it straightened out its posture and began turning around in a slow trot away from them, the canopy slowly closing. Proud, Lorena caught the entire startup procedure on her stream perfectly.
“Wow! This is so cool! This has gotta be the best day of my life!” Lucas exclaimed to Gringo as he shook the dog by its shoulders in excitement. Gringo barked back at him in loyal agreement.
“Guys, this is amazing.” Lorena turned the camera back on herself processing what she just experienced, “Some large efreet…”
“An Argus” Lucas chimed in to correct her.
“…some large Argus, whatever, just powered on, like twenty meters in front of us without even knowing it. That was so scary! I can feel my heart beating out of my chest. Here, let me show you again in case you just joined and missed it.” She turned her camera around to zoom in on the Argus already near the opposite end of the clearing. “Wait a minute… what’s that?”
With her finger she drew a box around a portion of her screen to magnify and zoom into the area that caught her eye. It took just a second for the camera lens on her phone to realign to the new magnification level with the same amount of visual clarity as when the Argus was before them moments ago. In full view was a fleet of transport trucks, and a small army of even more efreets, all of them yellow in color, except for the bright red “Drihl Co.” logo emblazoned on some of them which was impossible to miss.
Lucas grabbed the phone from his sister so he could see for himself. “No way! There’s a ton more over there! There’s another Argus! No two! Wait, three! And a pair of Haulers! You can tell by their giant pincers. I don’t know what that one is. Is that a Starcane too? There’s a truck in the way, I can’t see it clearly.”
“Give that back, creep!” Lorena reached out to take her phone back.
“Easy! I just wanted to take a look.” Lucas defended himself as he noticed her livestream was blowing up as he handed her back the phone. “Wow. Over a thousand viewers. Good job, Sis!”
Taken aback by the compliment but proud of it, she smiled to herself and focused back on the mass of efreets to continue sharing their discovery. Just then, a small SUV pulled up to a group of men huddled in front of one of the efreets. No sooner had it stopped, than a red headed woman in a business suit stormed out towards the men, raising her arms frantically and screaming at them.
“What’s that angry woman saying?” Lucas asked.
“One second, let me see.” Lorena replied as she zoomed in on the woman with her phone and activated its digital lip reader. The AI in her phone was able to read and transcribe the lips of anybody in focus with a fair amount of accuracy. It was a useful feature that she and her friends often used to spy on the boys during school lunches, as it also generated speech on the fly.
“Ssssh. Be quiet.” She instructed as she slid the volume control up to the max level.
An angry woman’s voice came through clearly from her phone’s speakers. “…on’t care if the country’s biggest orphanage and animal shelter nonprofit was located there! It’s getting Extracted! Do you understand? Do you?” The digital voice of the woman emanated with a shrill tone generated to match her animated body language
“Extracted? What’s that?” Lucas wondered out loud.
Lorena tried to get a better focus of the woman with her phone. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s glitching on the translation cause she is so far away. Let me try and get her centered better.”
“Bullshit.” the angry woman came in again over the phone.“If you understood the amount of ore under that drainage ditch of a village back there you’d have already cleared it out this morning. On schedule! On time! On agreement as you were contracted to do! Now get your equipment out there and start plowing that village under before I spot promote another foreman who can read a schedule and send you all back home empty handed to your families where you can explain to them how you expect to pay the bills with your cheap morals!”
Her tirade over, the men and their crews around her cowered into their waiting trucks and efreets and began leaving in a hurry down a nearby dirt access road. Satisfied, the red haired woman dusted herself off, straightened her hair and got back into her waiting SUV to follow behind.
Before the last efreet left, Lorena had already pulled up her phone’s map to see where they might be going. Disregarding her increasing view count, she double tapped on her location in her map app, which zoomed in on a small clearing in the jungle where they were. She found and highlighted the access road, then scrolled and zoomed out to follow its winding path around some hills that led directly back… to her home.
“No. That can’t be right.” Lorena said with a lump in her throat.
“Check it again!” Lucas urged her as he spied over her shoulder. “The GPS must be off!”
“No. It’s right. That’s the road, remember? The one Papa would take us to go fishing when we were younger… Papa!” A sickening feeling welled up in her stomach as Lorena suddenly feared the worst.
Turning the phone back on her, she addressed the situation to her viewers. “Guys! This is like, really bad! That road leads back to our home and we have no idea what those big machines are gonna do when they get there. Ok, maybe some idea…”
“…What are you doing? Call, Papa! We gotta warn him” Lucas yelled at her.
“Ok! Ok! You’re right!. Call, Papa!” she ordered her phone to dial with a voice command.
It responded with a few rings interrupted by a familiar monotone voice when it finally picks up. “The subscriber’s inbox you are calling is full. Please call bac…”
Frustrated, Lorena hung up and turned around to find Lucas was already back at the side of the ravine and climbing up alongside with Gringo as fast as he could. “What are you doing?”
“We gotta warn, Papa and the others!” He shouted back.
“For once, he’s right!” she confided to herself out loud as she ran after him.
The three of them raced back through the woods and towards home as the evening grew darker. Using her phone’s flashlight and map to show the way, Lorena and Lucas made a beeline towards their village fueled by equal amounts of adrenaline and fear.
“Just ahead!” Lorena shouted while gasping for air. “The map says we’re only two minutes away!”
“I can see it!. Look. Lights!” Lucas pointed at an array of bright lights, their streaks of illumination shining through the dense foliage of the dark jungle ahead of them.
“Oh no! We’re too late!” Lorena cried out as she ran even harder in the home stretch towards home.
Trapped in the open center of the village, the children’s father stood with the rest of the residents surrounded by the swirling fleet of work trucks and efreets that had invaded only a minute ago. Bewildered by the force and noise of the heavy machinery’s arrival, the villagers all looked on, scarred and helpless. The powerful efreets wasted no time in cutting down the surrounding trees with terrifying speed amid the horrifying screech of power saws and cries of splitting timber.
“What is going on here? You can’t do this! This needs to stop immediately!” Papa stepped out of the crowd to confront the workers just now getting out of their trucks. “Who do you think you are? People live here!”
The same company foreman who had been dressed down by the angry woman turned to face Papa and the crowd. “Sir, this site is now a Drihl Co. officiated dig site. You and everyone else have one hour to pack your belongings before we begin demoing the town.”
“One hour? Who allowed this? On what authority?” Papa shouted back at the top of his lungs incensed with anger and to also make himself heard over the shrill screaming of the power saws.
“By authority of the market.” A feminine and condensing voice answered from the darkness.
Rebecca Smart, young heir to the Drihl Co. mining empire, emerged from behind her parked SUV to confront the the crowd. “This location has been aerially surveyed to contain large deposits of the ore niobium and is now under control of Drihl Co. as a mining operation. As my foreman clearly instructed, you all have fifty nine minutes to gather your belongings before we begin excavating the work site. You best start packing.”
“Who are you to come here and force us out of our homes? The United Nations of Earth won’t stand for this! You are the ones who better start packing up and leaving our land!” Their father shot back.
“Ha! The UNE?? Rebecca answered smugly. “My Dear, the United Nations of Earth is our number one buyer. Wars like the one we are in are tremendously resource hungry for rare earth metals and the UNE can’t fight unless we feed it. Besides, they are a little preoccupied right now if you’ve seen the news lately. If you even get the news way out here.”
Feeling sick to his stomach and powerless, all their father could do was ball his fist and hold back the anger building up inside of him as he stared down the loss of his family’s home in the face. Cocking his fist back to throw a punch in anger at the foreman, he stops as Gringo suddenly jumps in front of him and began growling and gnashing his teeth at Rebecca and the men around her.
“Papa!” Lucas and Lorena both screamed as they ran to their father’s side dodging the horde of efreets at work.
“Filho! Filha!” Their father kneeled down to hug them, briefly relieved if but for a fleeting moment.
Lucas recognized Rebecca immediately and charged at her only to be restrained kicking and screaming and thrown back at his father. “You! We caught you on video saying you were going to tear up our town! We got to stop her and her efreets!”
“Or you’ll what? Make me wish I was sorry? Kick him in the shin?” Rebecca gleefully taunted back as Lorena held her camera’s light on her. In the rush to get back home she had forgotten to turn off her livestream which had now ballooned to over three hundred thousand active viewers and was increasing rapidly as a flurry of shocked and outraged comments scrolled through her feed too fast to ever be read.
Held tightly in his fathers arms, Lucas couldn’t hold back the tears welling up inside him as he looked on in disbelief at the sight of the mighty efreets he had so idolized ruthlessly tearing into the trees he had grown up playing on.
“Tell you what,” Rebecca said slyly as she scanned her hand across the village. “Start packing now and we’ll save, which one is it, your house to be used as a lounge for my crews between shifts.”
Without thinking, their father turned to face their small home behind him only to find his gaze returned by Rebecca who spotted his flinch.
She held up her radio and barked an order out over the channel as cool and calmly as if she was ordering a coffee shop double shot cappuccino. “There. That one. Plow it.”
As soon as the order was given the children and the crowd were caught in the massive floodlights on a nearby Argus which turned to face them. Lorena held her phone up to cover her eyes from the bright lights and haphazardly broadcast the towering efreet walking towards them. Instinctively she ran towards her home to try and get in front of it in hopes she might be able to get the attacker to halt in its heavy footsteps. Only a few meters away from her front door she waved her phone’s light at the pilot behind the controls of the Argus to try and get their attention but to no avail. The mighty seventy-five ton efreet simply walked over her with caked muddy feet before plunging its claw down into the roof and swiping its walls away with its drill equipped hand. In two swift motions, her childhood home had become nothing but a pile of rubble.
Devastated, Lorena dropped her phone and fell to her knees. It fell facing up to record the tears streaming down her face uncontrollably in front of the over six hundred thousand witnesses watching live.
Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!
Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!
Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!
The morning light from the new sunrise had only just begun their daily breach through the heavy blinds of the darkened Las Vegas penthouse suite. The orange light crept through the room slowly illuminating it to reveal ample evidence of debauchery from the night before. Empty champagne bottles littered the floor among discarded pieces of clothing and trays of half eaten room service. Left on mute during the night, the morning newscast ran intense footage of efreets fighting live to take control of the famous Neom World Stadium, now ablaze and pouring out smoke from all sides.
Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!
On the bedside nightstand next to a spilled beer bottle a cell phone violently shakes off the shredded lettuce and cheese from a half eaten taco on top of it.
Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!
“Computer, turn off the damn notifications..” A groggy voice, half asleep, with a heavy Mexican accent groaned out from under the sheets of the bed.
Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!
“Stupid pendejo phone.”
Wincing in pain from a top ten hangover, the usually dashing and charismatic efreet pilot known to his fans as Fortune pushed himself up just enough from his slumber to reach over the woman sleeping on his right to grab the buzzing phone out from under the taco. With a quick shake he flicked the beer off his phone then reached over the woman sleeping on his left to grab a swig of cerveza from an unspilt bottle to clear his head.
With a quick tap of the controls he silenced his morning agitator only to have the screen light up to show he had over ninety-nine notifications waiting for him. Horrified, Fortune’s mind raced back to the any number of his inebriated actions from his night out on Vegas strip that might have been caught by an onlooker who recognized him and posted online.
“Can’t wait to explain this to the boss.” He muttered to himself as he began thinking of alibis and excuses.
Fearing the worst, Fortune looked again at his phone. Unapologetic, his phone kept lighting up as message notifications kept rolling in, two and three at a time. Any publicity was still good publicity he thought to himself.
With a deep breath, he opened up his messenger app and instead of seeing a shirtless photo of himself in the Bellagio’s fountains he instead was greeted by a starred message from one of his bosses and closest friends. The message was from, Fool Killer, co leader of the Shamrock mercenary group to which Fortune was employed, and highly paid, by. It simply said, “Wake up. Check the news.” and came with a link.
With a sigh of relief, Fortune clicked the link expecting another news clip about the worsening conditions happening during the battle for Neom. Just yesterday, Fool Killer had put all of Shamrock on yellow alert, for if things didn’t turn around for the UNE soon there was a high potential Shamrock may be contracted out to ship out and help fight alongside them to stem the bleeding currently inflicted on them by the CPM’s brazen offensive. Every hour the situation seemed to worsen as more of the city fell and the UNE kept reeling in retreat. Fortune knew Neom was a mess Fool Killer wanted no part of unless the price was right and he feared even that wouldn’t be enough.
But instead the link took him to a crowdfunding website?
“Revenge For Brazil!” was plastered atop the campaign page in big bold letters. Again, feeling confused and with his headache still pounding, Fortune could only manage to skim the page. At the top was a video feed of what seemed to be a small village getting absolutely demolished by a large group of industrial efreets as the shrieks and cries of the onlookers drowned out the carnage. He muted it immediately so as not to wake the girls but kept watching. The village, he thought, was not unlike the one where he had grown up in rural Mexico. Fortune shook his head clear and kept scrolling with increasing interest. The video, it seems, was taken only yesterday night but had quickly gone viral with over five million views. Upset at the lack of attention from any news sites, condemnation by world leaders, and lack of an official comment from Drihl Co., a group of good samaritans came together to organize a crowdfunding campaign to help the distraught villagers. If the UNE was too preoccupied with events in the Middle East then the internet was determined to fight back against this atrocity by raising a boatload of money to send in some hired help to rescue the defenseless and overpowered people currently under attack in Brazil.
The campaign had launched only three hours ago but had already raised over seventy million in credits from over eight-hundred and twenty nine thousand pledges behind the trending hashtag of #JusticeforBraziNOW. As Fortune kept scrolling the page in awe the funding continued to refresh at an unrelenting pace. Next to the comments, a recent update from the organizers only thirty minutes ago said they were already in advanced talks with a well known PMC with the money raised so far to deal with the situation and bring justice to those affected by Drihl Co’s attack.
Suddenly the website disappeared as a call came in over Fortune’s phone. Fool Killer.
Fortune answered and held the phone to his ear. In his familiar and humorless voice, Fool Killer simply said. “Back your bags, Hector. We’re going to Brazil. Oh, and no more fountains.”
