Unknown: Chapter Two

It started that day. I led my brother to safety without flinching.

He lay for a moment without moving after his burst of conviction. Then he looked up at me with a melancholy. �Girlchild, this is insane. How can you possibly get me out of here? This place is a fortress.� He closed his eyes, and I knew that he had long since been broken.

�You have too little faith in me, Boychild,� I laid my hand lightly on his cheek. �Go ahead. Taste my�� I leaned down next to his ear, �Power.�

A surprised look covered his face. He got a blank look on his face, which, as I remembered from hacking into his POFnet files, meant he was absorbing my genetic information. Suddenly, his features became unreadable, and he looked up at me. �You�ve been keeping secrets.�

I smiled down at him softly, �For longer than you can imagine. But this is unimportant,� I helped him off the table he had been strapped to. �Now people�s eyes will pass right over you. You can walk out of here, a free man.�

So he did. The next few days were hairy, not so much because we feared capture, as he feared capture. The time I had before the rescue had been spent carefully planning all aspects of the escape, and, when I want to be, I can be an exhaustively thorough person.

He remained paranoid like this until I took him to the town where we once had lived, when up to my own mother, and asked her is she wasn�t the woman who had both her children mysteriously disappear within a week of each other. After she looked right at me and didn�t recognize my face, Boychild lost much of his paranoia.

The time following this was mostly spent preparing for the war we were to wage against the organization that hid behind the POF. It isn�t so easy to procure legitimate supplies when you are totally featureless, and even harder to make underworld contacts in these conditions, so this process took some time. Luckily, I had already acquired an old warehouse for our base before Boychild�s exodus. When I left the POF I made sure I didn�t just take my brother with me.

It was during our search for resources that HE first made his presence known.

I was setting up a computer network while Boychild was up in one of the offices-turned-living-quarters resting, when I looked to see a figure cloaked in a long, dirty green trench coat that swept the floor, with a shadow from his black and red ball cap obscuring his face. Though I couldn�t see his expression, I could tell he was smirking.

I stared at him, unsure of my action. He didn�t strike me as threatening, from his posture to his manner of dress, but I didn�t know what he felt his business was with me. I let him speak first.

�What do you think you know about the POF?� his voice was strange, almost inhuman, but utterly indescribable. I felt an immediate kinship with him.

�Why bother calling them that?� I turned back to my work, and kept an unworried look on my face, �That�s not their true name.�

Without looking at him, I could tell that he was smiling, as this feeling was carried on the air. I didn�t question this at the time. I had gotten used strange things by then. �What is their name? Do you even know?�

I frowned and put down the component I had been fixing. �It was whispered in the halls. Something I don�t know.� I looked at him, �Something� that isn�t a word from any language that exists��

He nodded, slowly, and I knew he was sizing my up. Such an odd thing. People never study my features anymore. He then spoke in barely a whisper, and the sound drove chills down my spine,

�Rakudo.�

One word. One word that changed everything. The interloper pulled something from his side, and threw it to me. �That will help you begin your war, Unknown-One.�

I looked down at the package he�d given me. It contained one small disk and nothing more. When I raised my head again, he was walking casually to the door. �Wait! Who are you?�

He snorted, but replied, �You can call me Erebus,� and walked through the door without looking back.

And so, our first mission was begun.