Flashback (Working Title) - Prologue
So after an incredibly long hiatus since the last piece of artwork I uploaded (sorry about that; life got in the way), here's a first taste of my preferred medium; writing. This is the beginning of a story of which the idea only came to me about two weeks ago, after the Conservative Government we had here in the U.K spun a terror attack into their political agenda by calling for, surprise-surprise, greater control over the internet, under the guise of 'Counter-Terrorism Measures'. I thought to myself, "if I was a government actively looking to control our citizens, what would be a sneakier, and even more malicious way to do so than that?", and thus, this story was born. Enjoy :)
Flashback (Working Title) - Prologue
"Hey dork, what's two plus two? Don't tell me ya' can't even work that out?"
"Merril...Merrill, look at me; I'm here to help you. Just lie back and relax; everything will be alright...."
"Fuck off under the hole ya' came from, ya' little stick-insect. Lights out!" A skull-rattling, overwhelming thud pinballed around the rat's woozy brain as his senses came flooding back with the same engulfing force as the stream of foul-smelling, clumpy liquid dirtying his fur; his lanky body flush against a gritty concrete floor the haphazardly supported it as he drifted in and out of consciousness. Spitting a thimble of saliva from his mouth, he let out a sustained, groggy moan as his lead-weight eyes were forced open against their will, protesting at the sudden requirement of their receptor cells. If only the pink interiors of his flappy ears had been as alert; the discordant cacophony of fierce roars and barked orders that emanated from somewhere far above him rammed against his eardrums with the physical presence of a slap, practically shaking his shivering body into life.
"Uuurgh...Jeff...No! Get the fuck away from me, you...you scum!" switching briefly to his native Hibernian tongue, Merrill planted his bony hands onto the cold floor below, only to freeze on the spot as a warm, viscous liquid rolled down his wrists and fell in droplets off his fingertips. A horrified yelp escaped his vocal chords as he recoiled back on his outstretched right hand, but it wasn't from pain; the blood in question was cloying, sticky and old, and carried with it the substance that was permanently bound to his body from the moment he'd pulled the trigger on the nameless Prison Guard who had attempted to subdue him; the sole obstacle who had tried, and failed, to stand in his way. A series of short, sharp bangs above him jerked his neck-muscles into life, pulling his wavy, unfocused vision upwards to rest upon the bottom of a dark sewer pipe that cylindrically retreated away from his line of sight before finishing with a minuscule circle of light at its top, only for it to be suddenly covered by the shadow of a contorted figure, at which point the banging was replaced by a hatred-fuelled roar.
"Where is he? You heard me; find that little fucker!" Though adopting a whole new tone to the one he was used to, the voice still managed to send shivers down Merrill's spine; the further away he got from the voice's owner, the better. Mustering up what little of his strength he had left, he planted his bare paws into the concrete, shoved against the floor with his shaking paws and stumbled to his feet, scrambling for the nearby base of a semi-cylindrical roof that stretched as far as the painfully limited light allowed his eyes to see. He took an initial step forwards-
"Aaaarghh!" he screamed, clamping his teeth together in a vain attempt to silence his cry of pain as a sharp, piercing throb pinballed through his skull; it seemed to be coming from the top-right corner of his head, just above his ear, but then again, so unfaltering and thick was the pain that Merrill couldn't've given less of a damn about where it was coming from; he only wanted it to go away. Clasping his head like a bowling ball and shaking it repeatedly did nothing, forcing the rat to shut it out of his conscience as best he could and stumble forwards blindly, led by nothing except his years of experience inside a sewer. He could only pray that the light at the end of the tunnel remained strictly metaphorical.
?
Jackson Kale was never a wolf who took savoury moments for granted, and he was keen to stay true to this reputation as his dinner-shoe-encased paw gently feathered the accelerator pedal beneath it for a final time, prodding the 5.2 Litre V10 engine into an expectant, waiting growl behind him. The repossession people would eventually catch up with him, no doubt followed in hot pursuit by the steely-cold, bony hand of the judicial system, but he took solace in knowing that with this Audi R8 at his disposal, he could leave them in the dust without a second thought. Besides, he somewhat incredulously chuckled as he contemplated, within the next few days their jobs would be rendered obsolete, and he would be rich beyond his wildest dreams.
"Enjoying the night air, are we now?" his passenger giggled, stroking his near-creasless jacket with a nail-paint capped hand, "or has this thing you're overdue on showing me still not sunk in, yet? Come on Jackson, you only had to take me out to convince me."
"Anything for you, my cupcake." Silencing the engine, Jackson elegantly contorted his six-foot-physique past the thick door before standing bolt upright and stretching his arms towards the crystal-clear night sky, swinging them back into action within his four-figure dinner jacket. Clopping his heels against the cracked concrete below them, he locked eyes through the windscreen with the radiant, bold pair of the slender fox gracing the Audi's passenger seat, undertaking the needless act of holding the door open for her and bowing courteously, though an onlooker would've felt his action had more than a hint of arrogance about it. There was certainly an eerie aurora to a deserted Car Park at night, though with this new-found love in his arms and the promise of the future that awaited him, Jackson felt not a hint of unease; he guided the duo around flickering, imposing street-lamps intersecting tufts of grass trying their hardest to rise above the concrete spaces, setting his near-perfectly-rounded, razor-sharp eyes on an unassuming brick wall that was gradually approaching them, with the words "Persona Ltd" proudly engraved in eye-catching, brass letters into a white plaque at head-height; it was the final barrier between he and the laboratory where the magic happened.
"Ugh, barbeques? At _this_hour? Jeez; someone oughta' cut back on their meat intake, am I right Laura?" he snuck an immature sideways glance at his fiancé and only just managed to contain a burst of self-centred laughter at this; it was, after all, undoubtedly rude to laugh at your own jokes. He had barely started contemplating this odd social norm when the first piece of paper-thin burning ember flew over the top of the wall and landed on his shoulder...then another, and another still.
"Wait a..." before his brain had even begun to contemplate the notion of maths, he had torn his paw from his partner's grasp and broken into a frantic sprint, leaping over a concrete kerb and flying around the edge of the wall to the scene that awaited him on the other side. Laura had increased her pace somewhat in anticipation, but stopped dead in her tracks as Jackson suddenly dropped to his knees and clasped his hands to his forehead, before exclaiming a pained, livid howl. What had, just that afternoon, been a multi-million dollar research and development institute was reduced to a stripped carcass of its former self, with only the frame remaining as the last licks of orange flame devoured their way through any flammable substances that happened to be on the ground.