The Crimson Fall (The Sons of Liberty Book 1) (25 page)

He smiled back and informed me that the small army I speak of might happen to exist, and they might just be waiting for a man like me.

              ~Lukas

              September ‘07

I once believed the courage of the unjustly damned angels was with me in my darkest hour, but I now know their very essence and valor will continue to dwell within me forever.

Through a blood ritual which I care not to think of again—though I know its purpose was to ensure I never forget what was sacrificed on my behalf—I have become one with the gods of men. Suffice it to say, if any hint of Christ remained inside of me, from my eagerness to find him as a boy, I can finally rest assured knowing that I am now truly free of him. For as much as I have heard of his mercy, even I know there are certain things he would be unwilling to forgive.

I have now become a member of the Patriarchs. They are a society of men and women bonded together in a quest for global change. They were founded by a man named Sigmund Dietrich in the early seventies. He is our last remaining founding father and the strategist who guides us all, like a valley guides a river. We are devoted to the same radical change I so desperately desire. We are the whispers on the wind, and we are the puppet masters humanity knows nothing about. It is we who have begun to fasten our strings on the backs of nations, from which we mean to hang them. It is a carefully orchestrated ballet that will crescendo toward a new beginning.

That is, it is a dance of ages that will culminate with the Purge.

The Purge is the end goal we have banded together for. It is the day when we will purge all men of that which threatens them most. In the years that serve as a precursor to that most glorious reawakening, we will rise from within the greatest nations, becoming men and woman respected by all. Then, when the world is ready, we will use love, war, terror, and any means necessary to dissolve all nations and purge the world of its flawed ways.

It is a day I long for and it is a moment in time that I am truly humbled to be a part of.

              ~Lukas

January ‘08

Twice now I have met with the others, and twice my understanding of who they really are has grown. As of this past meeting, we number twenty-three; one shy of two-dozen men and women who stand united to meet mankind’s greatest need. Though they may be some of the most influential leaders of tomorrow, one of those twenty-three has stood out to me far above the rest.

Jacob Brekor is a cunning Englishman banker worth billions. Yesterday, I visited him at a sprawling retreat he is building deep in the Swiss Alps. He’s a quiet man who always seems lost in deep thought, and he is the father, I might add, of who I must say is the sassiest fifteen-year-old girl I have ever met. While we all hold fast to the same final goal, Jacob’s ideas on how we can achieve that goal are . . . interesting, to say the least. He believes that to bring about the change in the hearts of all men, we must first allow fear to trickle down from the world’s elite. And he sees no better place to begin our fundamental overhaul than in the United States of America.

As an outsider, Jacob sees that Americans are more reliant on themselves for prosperity than any other nation. He says their spirit of independence is a threat to the Patriarchs’ very ideals. His wish is for them to become so dependent on others to care for them, from the womb to the tomb, that they are forced to kneel before the hands that feed them. The good news is that the country is already moving in that direction. He claims their vocal concern for things like social security is a sign that Americans are already too lazy to plan for even one part of their future on their own. And it’s not just retirement that they are unprepared for. It’s the very food they eat, the very taxes they pay, and the very businesses that employ them that they so heavily rely on. It’s the system that they have become unable to live without. Take away that system and the entire nation would cease to function within a week. He also believes that with my help, we can be the iron rod that will strike, bend, break, and then forge a new America.

Most importantly, he ensures me that he and the others have already begun to attack Americans’ peace of mind.

As the CEO of Europe’s largest financial institution, he has been working for years behind the scenes at weakening the securities of the world’s great banking firms. He says that when the time is right, he will expose their weaknesses and pull hundreds of billions from the stock market in a single day. After that, he believes the very thing the United States trusts most for their economic prosperity will have nowhere to go but down. He assures me there will be panic and then plenty of opportunity to become wealthy beyond our wildest dreams when the stocks have hit rock bottom. He says that it will be the catalyst for Americans to demand a major change to the broken system. He says the man who rises up from the multitudes of politicians to promise a different America will win this year’s presidential election, regardless of who he was before. And he says that man—Democrat, Republican, whatever he may be—will have unknowingly begun to alter the fabric of the nation in a way that can never be undone.

At least, that’s what Jacob says. Whether it’s true or not, time will only tell.

              ~Lukas

December ‘09

He was right. The son of a bitch was right. He told me a collapse would happen. He said the American people were ready for dissention. He knew the very one who promised change would be elected. Now, with so many joining our cause and furthering our agenda without even knowing it, we see one more enemy we must unite our new allies against. An enemy born not of flesh but of ideals that symbolize independence and autonomy.

Capitalism.

Free markets, free enterprise, free trade; it is everyone free to do whatever they want, however they want. I may work for and be a product of that freedom, but even I know my true ambitions can never be achieved if those standards and that system remain intact. You see, America claims to have laws protecting these massive corporations as well as the consumers, but how many executives have gotten away with either bending or breaking those laws entirely. There is no higher authority than what they and an army of lawyers say they are subjected to, which is not much at all. With the right words, paperwork, and a bottomless pit of money, these top-level executives can get away with anything, to the detriment of the very companies and consumers they work for. But I, being one of them, know who they really are.

They are the links higher upon the chain than those who supposedly govern them. They are the ones who convinced the people that to live ‘free’ you must first buy their company’s worthless shit. So long as they are left unchecked, they will reign freely over the multitudes of naïve slaves. To go to war with them and their fortified influence would be suicide, but I don’t think it will be us who go to war with the business elite. To succeed, we simply need the people—those who can see themselves as the deceived ninety-nine percent of Americans—to rise up against the one percent who has enslaved them.

              ~Lukas

November ‘11

Almost two years ago the Patriarchs, with Sigmund at the helm, set out to free the European and American people from the corruption that has choked the life out of men. We understood we must first occupy the hearts and minds of the people if we were to one day begin to destroy those at the top of the chain of power. That day has finally come.

Occupy Wall Street is a testament to what we few brothers and sisters of fate have been able to achieve with our underground network. It started a few months ago in downtown New York City when a couple of foreign pawns called for an occupation of the financial district. With all the dissent that arose from the recession, the unemployed nation had nothing to do but march together and demand equality with the rich. But it didn’t stop with New York. Boston, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, and a long list of other cities already have their own protests in full swing. All across the nation, people have begun to rise up and revolt against capitalism and the system itself. The greatest thing about it all is that they don’t want to merely seize equality and make a better life for themselves as previous generations desired. They want to do away with the system entirely.

And the Patriarchs—we the joyful fathers of fate—are more than happy to assist them.

              ~Lukas

June ‘14

An army we can raise. Weapons we can make. Even a demand for both can be created, as we are finding out with our recent endeavors in Russia and the Ukraine. But land . . . land is a limited quantity; a commodity that cannot be conjured or replicated. It can only be exchanged.

We know that to gain complete control we must first own that which the population needs most: medicine, food, water, oil, knowledge, and even the news media. We must, in the end, own the very land that produces these resources. Therefore, we have begun to purchase it when and where we can with the fortunes we have created. As Jacob predicted, the economy he collapsed has restored itself to a level far greater than it was before. His billions have multiplied. Our wealth has exploded. Even the supposedly ‘hidden’ finances of Gaddafi—that curious fool who had begun to poke his head in where he was not welcome and prompted us to bring about a swift end to his curiosity—now line our pockets. The Patriarchs’ filtered and concealed holdings amount not in the billions, but in the hundreds of billions. All around the globe, including here in the United States, we have begun to anonymously use that wealth to grow our private empire. As that empire matures, we will not only police what their ears hear and their eyes see through the media, but we alone will possess their most primal of necessities.

Soon, when we have succeeded, we will truly control the people.

              ~Lukas

November ‘15

Eleven years.

Eleven years it has been since I last killed a man, and I can still see Buck’s face, still smell the gun powder on the wind. As it was with Buck’s death, I know I will never forget what was gained with the death of Mike Holt. I walked past his casket and said my silent goodbyes for the second time. The first was a day before his death when I handed him a drink laced with an untraceable and time-delayed synthetic form of cyanide given to me by Sigmund. After he collapsed and breathed no more, I had called Sue and her mother, Elizabeth, to break the sad news that Mike had died of a heart attack during a heated board meeting. The girls had gone on to cry, asking ‘God’ for answers, but I had remained a stone, refusing to shed a tear for the man. It’s not that I had come to hate him while he lived. In fact, I guess I had come to adore him in a way. I admired how much he had sacrificed for his company. However, I too had made sacrifices for something far greater than quarterly profits, and I refuse to let the deaths of those who must be removed drill cracks into my rock walls.

But if in his life I had respected the man, in his death I cannot help but loathe him.

I am the creator of what is now Holt Industries. I am the man that has shaped it into a business that will rival the world’s largest defense contractors one day. I am the one who guided the company to release the world’s first three-dimensional printed firearm for mass production. But Mike Holt, the man who rode on the wings of my success for a decade, saw it differently.

He wanted to make it very clear to the board in his living will that the man to lead Holt Industries in the unforeseeable event of his death was none other than Owen Chambers, my beloved father.

Pleas to the board for my consideration were not met with as much enthusiasm as were Mike’s final words. Jacob and the Patriarchs had not thought to purchase the shares of the company I guided and all but owned. Make no mistake, this setback will be short lived at most. What age and experience has taught me is that I must be a patient man if I wish to accomplish everything we desire. So I will join their choir and sing my father’s praises. For now, I will smile and continue to grow the company into what I need it to be, but I do not see my father as the next great leader of Holt Industries.

I only see my next target.

              ~Lukas

December ‘17

It is said that the Fountain of Youth is a legend; a story that will be forever told but never found. It is also said that when you discover a gold mine in your own backyard, you do not go proclaiming its discovery to your neighbors. Fortunate enough for me, the wellspring of life has been found and its secrets will remain only with Patriarchs.

A young man—the one responsible for Mr. Holt’s potent cocktail—has drunk of the blood and spoken the creed and become one with the Patriarchs. He has shared with us his formula for our own fountain of youth. He is a scientist who simply goes by ‘the Brazilian,’ and he has used the advances in nanorobotic pharmaceuticals to create artificial microbes that are injected into the body. Four months ago he treated us with his newest creation and the results are astounding.

My hair is darker. My strength and stamina have increased exponentially without exercise. The limp from my old battle wound has all but disappeared, and I feel better than I have felt since I trained as a Marine. He assures us that with a proper treatment every five years, we can effectively defy old age. Sigmund has taken such a liking to the program that he intends to expand the research and utilize it for much more than its current uses. Personally, I have little interest for more than what it has already done. For me, to become a king is one thing, but to be an ageless king is another thing entirely.