© Copyright 2011 Jeriel Ng – The Syndicate (Excerpt)

Prologue

Revolution.
What does the word mean to you? Ask any person on the
street. Anyone. His answer would differ completely from mine. I
can guarantee it. Why? Because I can guarantee he has never
known how a revolution truly feels.
I have. And that’s not merely a bold statement.
To many, I’m known as Damien Knox, the last member
of both the Bastion and the Syndicate. It’s not something I’m
proud of. In fact, I hated my life in the movement. Strict rules,
strict disciplines, strict conducts. For the most part, we had to live
in secrecy. We had to make sure we could tell friends from foes,
right from wrong, good from evil.
Caution became one of the main focuses in our cause.
Too many mistakes had been made during the early days of our
existence, and we weren’t willing to succumb to such accidents
any longer. However, once we got past that phase, we became
nearly unstoppable. But why and how, then, could we have
fallen? If I knew, we wouldn’t be in ruins as we are now.
Not a day goes by that I don’t mourn my former
comrades. Great people – that was how I saw them. Society
thought otherwise. To them, we were all nothing but soulless
exiles brainwashed and manipulated by the evils of the media.
People from politicians to preachers to regular workmen – they
despised us and cursed us. Worse yet, they hunted us. They
believed we were in the wrong and labeled us as “the Devil’s
henchmen.” But that didn’t faze us. We already felt like pariahs
of society from the beginning. It’s not as if anything had changed,
whether or not we were a part of the Syndicate. Looking back,
however, I can’t argue with them. But at the time, we felt that
what we did was necessary.
It all began mere months ago in a city so full of energy,
so full of electricity – the city of New Valley. But even after all
the buildings we demolished, all the people we terrorized, all the
laws we broke, we were still human beings, creatures with
feelings. We were creatures that experienced joy and sorrow, love
and hatred, comfort and pain. We had parents. We had siblings.
We had relatives. But they turned on us the moment they felt that
we could no longer be loved. They saw only evil in us.
Within an instant, the love they once had for us
transformed directly into hatred. All the memories of birthdays, of
family reunions, of graduations, of weddings . . . They were all
forgotten because of the sole fact that we had become renegades
with one and only one goal in mind: to maintain the liberties and
rights that we had enjoyed for the past decades of our lives.
Indeed, it was a rather vague concept, but our leader Violet never
revealed the exact thoughts that shuffled within her scheming
mind.
Keep in mind that during the time, life as we knew it was
being threatened. With a new leader rising to power, new reforms
ultimately began to emerge. The Bastion, the faction from which
the Syndicate later emerged, felt that we needed to do something
about these changes.
And what did society do when we tried to stand our
ground? They ostracized us. As I said, we were human, and we
felt that our actions were simply acts of justice. As part of the
Syndicate, we only committed crimes because we felt it was
necessary. We may have resorted to violence, but it was
necessary. Had they given us a chance to voice our opinions, it
wouldn’t have had to result in absolute anarchy.
 Uniform, we were, but each and every day, I continue to
ask myself, was I really one of them? To me, I was neither here
nor there. Keep in mind that I was only twenty-four at the time.
At that age, most people should have already had their lives and
goals figured out, but for me, it was my transitional phase.
The very fact that I was associated with the Syndicate
immediately exiled me from society. But even though I shared the
same beliefs and desires as the rest of the group, my motives were
not in the very least similar. Even after we broke off from the
Bastion, I continued to question our methods because I constantly
wondered whether or not they made a difference. Then again,
could our actions have been right? After all, the end justifies the
means, doesn’t it?
But then, in saying that, one would have to ask yet
another question: Was our final goal considered good? Was it
moral?
And even then, who would be the rightful judge of that?

***

How could anyone forget the incident that started it all?

To this day, I remember joining the rest of the world in tuning in
to the news and witnessing a chain of horrifying events occur.
“That Chancellor Hagan is a crook! He is a disgrace! It is
impossible to believe that we could have allowed such a lying,
conniving bastard to rule this city! He is taking away our rights!
He is taking from us what we rightfully deserve! Not only has he
banned such necessities, but now he even dares to violate our
medical privacy with these mandatory regular checkups? And it’s
worse to think that that no one has stopped him yet. It is
humiliating for us as citizens to realize what our nation has
degraded into while we’ve had our backs turned!”
 The crowd before the speaker erupted in agreement to
what he had said. Throughout the sea of citizens, men and women
of varying ages raised their arms in support of the bearded brute
standing on the roof of a crimson truck.
“As citizens of this nation,” the bearded man continued,
“we deserve the right to smoke whatever we want! We deserve
the right to drink whatever we want! Our bodies are our own! We
have paid our taxes! We have not slandered the government! We
should be able to do as we please! Let me hear you agree!”
Once again, the citizens roared their approval. Within the
crowd gathered in New Valley Central, alcoholics and drug
addicts alike marched in circles and shouted their protests, in the
hope that the city government would take note of their demands.
It didn’t take long before several squads of policemen
arrived at the scene. In their cars, they fired their bleating sirens
all throughout New Valley Central. Out they came with pistols,
handcuffs, and the intention on arresting the crowd of protesters,
specifically its leader. Readying their arms, they forced their way
through the civilians and navigated their way toward the beastly
man on the truck.
One policeman said, “Get down!”
“No!” replied the man, tears streaming from his bloodshot
eyes. He raised his steel baseball bat in the air and waved it
around. “I won’t-”
“I said get down!”
“I won’t succumb to your laws! If this is what authority
wishes, then I will resist it!”
Soon, the rest of the crowd began to chant along with its
leader. The group of police halted their duties and, almost as if in
a trance, stared speechlessly at the gathered throng, which acted
simultaneously as a complete unit. Stubbornness echoed
throughout the streets of New Valley like a pestilence ready to
infect everything and anything around it. The city officials
regained focus on the situation and turned back to the leader of
the protest.
“Hey! Listen . . . Listen to-”
“Shut up!”
“I won’t repeat myself!” continued the policeman. “Get
down! Now!”
The bearded man slammed his bat onto the roof of the
truck. “You’ll have to scrape our corpses from the ground if you
want us to obey!”
The policeman swiftly climbed onto the truck and pulled
out a pair of handcuffs. “Drop your weapon! You’re under-”
The bearded man raised his hands, but instead of
dropping the baseball bat, he tightened his grip on it. Frustrated
with his defiance, the policeman stepped forward to confiscate the
weapon by force, but the protestor pulled back and struggled to
retain the bat.
The two brawled atop the truck. The bearded man, being
the larger of the two, shoved the policeman off his feet. Disdain in
his eyes, he gazed intently at his bat and then at the policeman.
Shouting a multitude of curses, he began to bludgeon the
official’s back with the steel weapon. Several of the other
policemen rushed forward to halt the brute, but the rest of the
protesters had already begun to assault them.
Absolute anarchy had broken out in the middle of New
Valley City. But now, all of that just seems to be a vague memory
of the past.