The Party

President Clay glanced back at Mire and the man Mirus as they continued into the garden and shook his head. Mirus, he thought. He seems… familiar.

Dismissing the thought, he continued into the ballroom. He was going to enjoy this party; why shouldn’t he? They had the upper hand against Rylie, didn’t they?

He made his way to the banquet table, where his wife, Martha, was waiting for him. He smiled at her as he approached and took his seat at the center of the long table and looked out over the array of different foods before him. He felt his mouth watering as he loaded his plate with all manner of meat, vegetables, and other foods.

He was particularly excited to try the stuffed duck, the rest of the Named were talking about it and he wanted to try a piece. As he crammed his plate, Martha set her arm on his shoulder. “Isn’t that enough, John?”

John glanced at her for a split second, before turning back to figuring out how to fit both the duck and another cake onto his plate. In the end, he decided to stack them. “We’re supposed to be celebrating, are we not?” he said sternly.

A faint glare flickered across her face before vanishing. “It just seems to me that we should celebrate after signing the Charter. I feel like you’re all going to be too drunk to actually put a pen to paper.”

She sighed, sitting back in her chair as he pulled his utensils from a napkin they’d been wrapped in. “Speaking of drunk,” she continued, “I’m sure you saw Mire stumbling around. Is he okay?”

John shrugged. “We got in a bit of an argument earlier, he’s probably just trying to forget about it.”

“An argument?” Martha asked. “What about? You two haven’t argued in years.”

John took a bite of the duck; it was as delicious as everyone said it would be. He savored the butter, the herbs, all of it. “Don’t worry about it,” he said through a full mouth, earning a glare from Martha.

“Tell me,” she said.

He rolled his eyes and swallowed. “Look,” he said, “It doesn’t really matter. He’ll get over it.”

Martha grabbed his leg, pushing her nails into his skin through the fabric. He yelped quietly, trying not to draw any attention to himself, then set about the task of trying to pull her hand off his leg, but to no avail. “Tell me,” she said, leaning close.

He sighed and settled back against the chair. “Does it really matter?”

“Yes,” she said unflinchingly.

“Fine,” he snapped. “It was about the Revived.”

“What about them,” she said, releasing her grip on his leg and sitting back in her chair.

“Well,” he replied, calling over a nearby waiter for a glass of wine. “He didn’t like the idea of detaining the uncooperative ones.”

Martha cocked her head quizzically. “Did he offer a different plan then?”

“No,” John said, shaking his head. “Just told me I was wrong.”

“Well, what did you do?”

John bowed his head shamefully. “I kind of stormed off, but don’t worry about it,” he replied quickly after seeing Martha’s accusatory look, “I’ll figure it out with him later.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good,” she said, reaching for the stuffed duck and pulling a small portion onto her plate. “And just in case you’re wondering,” she continued. “I think you did right with your decision about the Revived. They’re a threat and need to be treated as one.”

He smiled as he took a sip from his glass. “Thanks,” he said.

“To the Charter,” she said, raising her glass.

“To the future,” he replied, raising his own.

***

The crowd that poured into the church was not the crowd of wounded Ralis expected. Pouring in instead was a crowd of the Revived— children, some younger than Maki, some slightly older. They were held by their mothers and in some cases, grandmothers or grandmothers. Ralis pushed past the rushing crowd to one of the men holding open the church’s doors. “What’s going on?” he asked the man.

“What does it look like,” the man replied, helping an older woman up the steps. “We’re saving them.”

“Who?” Ralis asked, trying to raise his voice above the crowd.

“The Revived,” the man said as if Ralis should already know. “Didn’t you hear the announcement? They want everyone. Age doesn’t matter to them. Those bastards would stick a child on the front lines to save their own necks.”

Ralis looked out to the sea of bodies pushing towards the church. Several men and women held improvised weapons at the ready, on guard. “You plan to fight them?” Ralis asked.

The man grinned. “Of course, we do. We’re Revived.”

Ralis gasped, looking at the crowd again. There had to be almost two or three thousand people between the church and the roads pouring into it. “All of you?” he asked, incredulous.

The man nodded. “Us here and all across the city. A few of the other folks have joined us too and we’re willing to protect them, but it's us they want. We’re sick of being their slaves, and payment? You want to know what I heard?”

Ralis nodded.

“I heard they aren’t even paying us if we join them. They came last night, took a bunch of us already. I tried to find my buddy Jax this morning, but he’s gone.”

“But surely they wouldn’t do something so stupid,” Ralis replied.

The man laughed. “But they did! I’ve been in contact with people all day trying to figure this out. We planned to go save them, but then someone went and started this,” he said, gesturing out to the city beyond.

Ralis bit his lip as he noticed how bad things were for the first time. He had been so fixated on the crowds that he hadn’t really looked out over the city. Everywhere he looked, smoke was rising into the sky, combining with gathering storm clouds, creating an eerie red glow as the Lower District was bathed in ash.

As he looked, the cacophony he’d been hearing separated itself into distinguishable parts. Above the cries over children, above the sounds of thousands of bodies moving, he heard the sounds of war.

***

John settled back into his chair, feeling full. He glanced over at his wife. She was resting her head in her hands, elbows propped up on the table. “You alright?” he asked as he watched her struggle to keep her eyes open.

She glanced at him lethargically. “I’m fine, just a bit full,” she yawned.

“Now that you mention it,” he replied, “Everyone here looks a bit drowsy,” he said.

The band was playing slowly. Waiters were leaning against walls, trying their hardest not to pass out. Those who were dancing were doing little more than stepping back and forth. John stood, surveying the room.

Beside him, he caught Martha start to tilt and lean sideways before out of her chair and towards the floor. He lurched forward, catching her before she did. He kneeled beside her, examining her. She seemed to be awake still, just unable to move.

He waved over one of the waiters, who took only a step towards them before collapsing himself. What the-

He spun around. Everywhere, the party guests were collapsing. He jumped to his feet, trying to figure out what was happening. He took a step forward then felt his body freeze. In an instant, he was unable to move, and his momentum caused him to teeter forward and fall to the ground.

All he could do was watched as the room’s inhabitants collapsed around him and everything fell into silence. That’s when he noticed from his viewpoint, looking under the banquet table and out onto the ballroom floor, that one man remained standing, the man John had seen with Mire. What’s going on? He thought.

The man reached into his coat, removing a small handgun from inside. As John watched, multiple guards rushed into the room. Before they could do anything, the man shot them, each with deadly accuracy. As the last shot rang out, the man looked down at the gun.

“One shot left,” he announced loudly before raising it at a seemingly random collapsed individual and firing.

John could only watch as the induvial bled out in front of him. The man tossed the gun aside and began to clap. “Isn’t this great?” he said, “I have all of you to myself. The most important Named individuals in the entire country, at my mercy, at least, for a few minutes.”

The man waltzed over to the open garden door and stepped out, producing another, different-looking gun from his pocket. He raised it straight into the sky and fired. A bright, white flare shot into the sky. Again, the man discarded his weapon and marched back into the room.

As he did, the ballroom doors opened and a guard ran in, one of the Revived by his uniform. He fired at the man, who didn’t react in any way as the bullets tore through him. “I’m surprised you’re actually able to move,” he said to the man. “Must be a fluke, oh well.”

The Revived guard rushed toward the man. “What did you do to them? Tell me!” he screamed before suddenly collapsing.

“There we go,” the man still standing said. “Much better.”

He stepped into the center of the room and cleared his throat. “I have a little story for you all,” he said. “The story of a man who was dead and came back.”

“This man,” he said, casually walking around the room, “Went by the name of Mirus. He was a hard worker, always trying to do best for his family and his workers.”

He started towards the banquet table, looking over all the food there. “One day, Mirus did something he shouldn’t have, that is, something the other Named thought he shouldn’t have, though he didn’t know it at the time.”

John couldn’t see but he could hear the man picking apart the food at the table, eating. “You see,” the man continued through a full mouth. “Mirus treated his workers right. He gave them good wages. He looked after their families. He helped those in need. But the Named didn’t like that, did they? Helping the Nameless? Shame on him.”

John saw the man grab the table from underneath and was surprised as he heaved it into the air and flipped it across the room against the wall. In his other hand, he held the stuffed duck. He smiled and looked down at John. “So, what did the Named do to poor Mirus?”

He turned around and marched back across the room. “They burned his factory down, knowing that he would try and rescue his workers. Mirus, of course, died. What they didn’t count on, however, was Mirus coming back twelve years later. Of course, things had changed by this time. The Named had been forced into treated the Nameless a bit better, not much more, but slightly.”

“Anyway,” he said, stopping in front of the ballroom entryway. “Mirus didn’t know he had been murdered, but he did know one thing. Fate was cruel. Just a week after his miraculous return, he was taken from his home, forced to become a science experiment for his demented and barbaric country.”

He grasped one of the doors with his free hand and pulled it from its hinges. He smashed it against the side of the staircase, causing it to splinter and shatter like glass. “Mirus was finally freed after some time, but do you know what happened as he returned home with his wife that night? He was met by the Named who had murdered him twelve years ago. They threatened him and his family; told him he should have stayed dead. That they’d kill him again if he said anything.”

“Of course, Mirus went into shock upon learning that his neighbors, people he thought he could trust, had killed him, but then he realized something. He couldn’t die. So, do you know what Mirus did? Lashed out.”

“That turned out to be a mistake,” he said, wiping the other door off its hinges and destroying it in the same fashion. “While Mirus couldn’t be killed, he could be held down, and that’s when they did it. In front of his eyes, they murdered his only child and his wife. Then, they bound him and tossed him in one of the rivers, expecting him to drown.”

“But Mirus didn’t drown. He lived. For a whole day, he sat in the river, scheming for revenge until someone came along and pulled him out. That man’s name was Tez, and he became Mirus’ god. He offered Mirus a chance for revenge, not just on his family’s killer but on all the Named. All he had to do was kill a few of them and incapacitate the rest.”

He smiled, biting into the duck. “I killed the bastards who slaughtered my family this morning. Now it’s your turn.”

He fell silent, chewing the duck. From outside the ballroom, within the estate, clapping emanated towards them. Out of the doorway stepped Tez Rylie, supported by a dozen armed soldiers behind him. “Bravo, Mirus,” he said. “Great speech. Let’s hear it for Mirus!” he said, clapping by himself. “I hope you all are ready for a real party.”