Tabula Raza

Chapter 1 - The Funeral (Revised)

It was the fifth and final funeral, and within the hour the last body would find its repose, locked and eternal in the rich loam of the cemetery, immortal in the memories of those who had known him. The slaughter had taken everyone by surprise, and no-one wanted to dwell on it, as hushed murmurs about the previous week filtered through the crowd. How sudden things could change, had it really been only eight days since their friend and colleague had celebrated his thirtieth birthday? Poor Jack.

The sympathy and remorse in the air was sickening and almost claustrophobic, everyone trying to cast him in such a good light, as if god cared what was said at the mans funeral, it didn’t change the fact that he had taken lives by the handful, but then, they all had; soldiers to the last attendant and pall barer.

Every last soul among them was looking for someone to blame, anger was the only step to grieving for this lot, forget denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance, every last one of the hundred some odd attendee’s wanted blood. They all considered the situation to be personal; after all the Purity Network was all the family Jack ever acknowledged having. Once when someone had asked him about siblings he had said “Yeah I have three sisters and five brothers…” proceeding to list his team-mates, members of the point team for the international squad, known only as Seven Virtues.

The team had been destroyed, the nine elite known for their speed and agility in the field had been torn apart, with five dead, three crippled, and one in a coma who wasn’t expected to ever come out of it. It was cold, bleak, and honest, simple but that was the way the Network had to view things, numbers we’re easier to shuffle than lives, and those in the know had to remind themselves of that.

Mikhail Sorensen stirred slowly from his observations closing the shutter on his camera several times on the faces of Jacks remaining teammates. He hadn’t even noticed that the pipes had started to play again as Jack’s body was lowered into the ground, and the guests began approaching to leave their offerings on the casket prior to its entombment in the soil. Hollow grey eyes set in a face too young to belong to a man with such dark thoughts and perceptions, rolling his shoulders inside his heavy overcoat, the tall man released a slow breath.

Hypocrites. God how he hated funerals.

Swiping a moisture laden fop of pale hair out of his eyes, Mike refocused zooming in close on the discrete Mexican girl wearing a simple calf length black dress and jacket leaning under a tree, dry eyed and held apart by silent grief, too palpable not to be genuine. Closing the shutter on the woman, she was familiar, but how? Where did she fit in?

A few more pictures accompanied by mental interpretation captured eternally the flowers and notes on creamy parchment that continued to fall on the mahogany surface of the man’s casket even as the gravediggers began unloading their shovels, allowing layers of dirt to separate the farewells of the other Network members. Snapping one last picture before the wood box was completely covered, carefully committing as much as he could to memory. It was after all, his responsibility to compose the memorial album that would be issued to the next point team, to be dubbed Eight Virtues.

It was a cold fact, the equality of life and death; all are born, and all will someday die, it was one of the very few things mortals didn’t have to vie for, because it came naturally and in its own time. Some would even say that the moment a person is born, their moment of death is recorded in some great tomb cared for lovingly by the render of souls until that moment comes on them. And somehow when that time comes circumstances turn on them, luck changes, with heart failure, freak accidents, and tragedies like the massacre that he was preparing to immortalize.

Coming to terms with life and death was something that was ingrained in all who crossed the barrier between ignorance and the Purity Network, and it was no easy task, most members were still trying to figure it out. Accepting that all life was as important as any individual was difficult for the common ego, as it meant that their problems weren’t important, their lives insignificant and expendable; however it also meant that they were all desperately needed and invaluable. A heady contradiction, too philosophical for most, but not Jack; within the Purity Network a man learns to lean on his comrades.

Mike himself had been touched by that influence, by Jack’s life as well as his death. He shivered and pulled his black over coat closer to himself, knowing his isolated thoughts were obscenely cold as he reflected on the field units of the Purity Network, but he had been there once, and was now on the American Purity Network Council, or the APNC, safe while others were risking their lives daily. What a wonderful and fun loving job it was hunting demons and rogue super-natural creatures. Shaking his head Mikhail closed his eyes and moving un-noticed through the gathered bereaved slipped away from the funeral to begin work on the memorial.

*****

It would be a huge blow to moral within the Purity Network if the APNC voted against reforming the point group Seven Virtues, so as planned the group would be reborn under the new designation Eight Virtues. Not a very original new name, but a reminder of what had transpired with the previous unit, and everyone agreed on it, so the subject had been dropped while preparations were made to begin replacing eight out of nine members from Seven Virtues. It was unheard of to replace eight people in a single draft, and yet that’s just what the Network had planned, summoning the top fifty from various fields and units on an international level.

Those invited had gathered like ants at a picnic, each one determined to receive one of the rare promotions. Most of the draftees were obviously uncomfortable in the required business dress, a few however stood out for their calm and ease as they idled and appeared content to wait. Gathered in small groups throughout the room or at the windows, gazing out the bank of bullet-proof glass onto the well manicured lawn of the formal rose gardens, the roses were lightly kissed by the gentle rain to a dewy perfection.

In the security room with the three conscious but crippled survivors of Seven Virtues Shiloh Fitz Marshal a rather forthright Irishman, with a robotic glove on his left hand allowing him partial mobility with the partially paralyzed limb. Daniel Lorne a brilliant soldier, once the poster-boy for the APNC bright green eyes that saw a little too much, now confined to a wheelchair. And Jesse Martinez the beautiful Mexican Mike had observed at the funeral apparently an ace with small arms, blades and getting out of a tight situation, like the mental hospital she had been deposited at.

Mike turned a clove cigarette between lean fingers, unlit, but impatient to remedy that minor issue, the waiting for the last of the fifty to arrive couldn’t end soon enough to suit him.

Finally Shiloh growled in his thick Irish brogue, sliding his good hand through thick red hair, “Alright Sorensen. Light it already, I think we’ve all inhaled enough smoke from bombs, and bars that one little cigarette isn’t going to even make us blink.”

Daniel and Jesse made identical affirming noises.

Smirking, Mike let a glance linger on the duo, “Sorry.” However without batting so much as an eyelash of remorse the clove was clamped between his lips and a red BiC that possessed a flame more suited to a crack pipe was touched to the end igniting the tobacco and clove fillings, it wasn’t long before the almost pleasant spicy sweet scent was filling the room.

It was however another thirty minutes before the traffic of draftees became satisfactory, and another forty-five after that before all fifty were assembled.

Looking down on them the four men observed the gathered members of the Purity Network with identical expressions plastered to their faces, observing and noting everything thing they could about those who would take the eight positions, it seemed like bare minutes before the note filled legal pads were collected to be taken before the council. Though the cramping of hands and mild aches in their bellies told them it had been several hours.

It was going to be a long week.