It is Well

It had come to this. All his exertions, all the years of toil and effort had come to this time. He stood facing the edifice. It was no mean feat getting here. This was thought out by someone who didn’t take kindly to anyone trying to do him in.

The path to the edifice itself was laced with several sprinklings of security devices that were triggered off by motion sensors which were expertly interwoven across the perimeter of the edifice. When triggered, some gave off toxic gases to choke any intruders; others blew up, spewing shrapnel in all directions while some simply gave off a signal to automatically extensible precision-based sniper rifles. Anyone who managed to scale these hurdles had to contend with four hyena-esque creatures that should not be mistaken for dogs irrespective of the likeness.

However, these were just icing on the cake.

Beyond these, stood the edifice he was now facing which was manned by foreign-based security agents with the appropriate training to keep suicidal nosey miscreants like him off. Permanently. But he knew he wasn’t suicidal. Bleeding from two places, one just above his left rib cage and from the calf of his left leg, he still told himself that he wasn’t suicidal. He had a mission and it was the motivation that kept him going. He owed the higher wound to the shrapnel from one of the devices he unfortunately triggered – he had lost his footing and made a wrong step – while the calf injury was from the claws of one of the carnivores. He hoped it was not going to go gangrenous on him before he was through. Their mangled bodies were behind him now. He had to focus on the agents next. Summoning all his training and tactics for this next step, he dropped from his vantage position from whence he was scanning the area in front of the edifice proper. Contact with the surface below did not even make a sound.

Stealthily, he approached the façade of the structure. As he came close to the illuminated area in front, he wore his night-vision goggles, activated a device that threw the entire structure into pitch blackness and stepped in.

No alarms were raised. Power cuts were as normal as daybreak. Standby supplies of electricity were commonplace. However, by the time the switch to backup was done, five of the eight guard agents were at different stages of death. The sixth, who’d just turned around from switching to the generating sets, was trying to adjust his eyes to the light when the sight of a man in front of him got his adrenaline pumping. Too late. The hand that swiped his throat with a military-issued dagger had passed for all of two seconds before he reached for his weapon. He felt the warm blood seep into his collarbone before he felt the pain. His legs buckled under him as he dropped, crumbling to the floor.

That was the sixth agent and it was all like clockwork. His training suggested that to keep to the anonymity required, he should don the uniform of this last guard to blend with the others. Then, do them in while they were not watching. That never appealed to him. He always felt queasy in other people’s apparels. He thought of knocking the lights out again but knew it’d give them a cause to be suspicious. And the switcher only worked twice and he had cause to believe he could still have need for it. He was also aware that in another five minutes the guards would switch places with each other in their regularised schedule to keep them all attentive and sharp. Time was not his ally. He had to move and keep to the practiced out-of-the light tactics. As he turned to move towards the door leading into the corridor of the edifice, the impact of a blow smashed the side of his head.

The severity of the blow was intended to incapacitate him. But for the turn he’d made, it was to come down squarely on his head. That would have been the end of his intrusion here and there was no hiding the intent as it was delivered with the butt of a sub-machine gun. His slightly bedazzled but attentive mental adroitness had assessed the danger he faced even before he engaged it. The attacker must have chanced upon him at the switch, wanted to take him alive for questioning but did not want to risk a counter attack, thus the severity of the blow. He was not taking any chances. He ducked as the swipe of the gun whooshed past his head, clipping his ear slightly and combing some of his hair. He used that same ducking motion to power a punch which he applied to the assailant’s solar plexus. The speed of his attacker’s motion with the gun and his efficient right hook gave the punch all the force it needed to make the gun wielding agent topple over.

The agent must have sensed the danger he was as this was not just any intruder. Rolling over to allow his pain subside some, the agent released the safety of the gun as he gained balance again. But that was as far as the little fight lasted. He felt the hands on his neck before he saw the blur of motion. His neck snapped. The crunching sound was muffled. His finger on the trigger dropped as the gun fell from his hands. The seventh agent was dead.

This had caused him to lose three minutes. The fourth minute had gained thirteen seconds before he got to the corridor. He knew his way around the edifice with his eyes closed. Even in the dark. He knew where the abductors were being held unable to help themselves. Today was going to be their Day of Liberation. Today was Judgement Day for those who had held them captive for so long benefitting from what should accrue to the abductees, promising them so much yet constantly reneging on the deliverables. All that was going to end today. He had taken it upon himself, prepared for this. If no one was going to, he’d seen it as his mission. His goal. This people had seen too much suffering, he was not going to stand aside just because he was not the one suffering. No, their day for liberation had come and he knew how much they yearned to be free, to be liberated, to be rid of the shackles. Yes. He knew well. And he’d come for this and was going to give them that which they wanted.

A rapid movement at the end of the corridor leading to the stairs caught his attention. It was the last agent. He gave chase. When he gained the space of the reception at the upper floor, he surveyed the expanse of the area. The open door at the right could be a decoy, so he approached it carefully. All the hairs at the nape of his neck must have been erect. His entire frame had become a receptacle waiting to hear any sound, feeling for clues to reveal danger. He heard the motion before he saw it. A thrown dagger. He spurn downwards using his weapon as a shield for his body. Fortunately, his training accounted for the move. The danger was parried as the dagger came in contact with the metal casing of his gun’s barrel and clanked to safety behind the upholstered chairs. He’d had it easy with the other stunned agents he’d silenced but here was one prepped for a showdown. The dagger throw, though intended to be fatal, only disguised the one that followed. A stick attack.

The agent had divested a mop of its handle which had become his weapon of choice. He was beginning to gain his feet to face the agent again after parrying that dagger when the agent delivered three expertly timed stick blows with the handle of the mop that communicated to him the agent’s expertise with hand-held weapons. Another blow to the temple at this time could have been his reward for overthinking but his reflexes were a match for the agent’s deftness. As he swerved to avoid that blow, he smashed his foot down hard on the agent’s left shoe with all his might. Had the shoes been any softer, the toes could have broken but some metal casing at the top of the agent’s shoes softened the blow, jarring his own heel.

He took a blow to the stomach, one on the left wrist (to block his nose) and pushed back his stomach with a lurch back to avoid another timed for his ribs. Only his sharp reflexes were keeping this battle even. Such was the sublimity of his attacker that he could only focus on defending. Each time he thought of attacking, his defence suffered and he got smacked by the wooden weapon. He had a feeling the agent could do this all day until a weakness in his defence were spotted and the killer blow will follow. He’d seen someone bludgeoned to death with the wooden handle of a kitchen knife before, so it was not exactly far-fetched. Once more, he had his training to thank as he came to notice a pattern in the seeming arbitrary mode of the agent’s attacks.

When preparing for any attack, the agent spurn the stick around and as soon as the attack’s decision was made in his mind, he stopped, moved his right foot in front, the left to the back and moved in from the left, supporting the blow with his obviously stronger right arm while wedging his frame with his right leg. This modus operandi meant forcing this agent backwards could either make him drag his feet to keep from falling or force him to counter with his weaker left foot. Both implied the agent’s attention will switch from his skilful stick attacks to maintaining his balance. That temporal loss of attention was all he needed to bring an end to the standoff. He’d take the agent unawares. He bided his time. The stick spurn in slow motion before his eyes as they both sized each other up, waiting on the next move. He calmed his breath. Felt his muscles go taut. The spinning stopped. The agent attacked. He attacked. But the agent had changed his tactic.

This time, the agent’s blow was a direct chest hit which the agent switched, on impact with the chest, to an upper cut follow through. Luckily, he observed the alteration just in time. He changed the direction of the agent’s first strike to his chest which served to minimise the impact of the blow by hitting the stick sideways with his right elbow as it grazed his chest. That forced the stick’s upward swing to miss his chin leaving a thin line of scratch up his face to his left ear. The force of the intended upper cut carried the agent forward and closer to him for the first time allowing him to time his own response to perfection. In a slicing motion, he angled the edge of his palm, with all his might as the blow could carry, down on the intersection of the agent’s neck and shoulder. He heard a crack before the agent crashed into the centre-table and rolled lifelessly unto the marbled tiles. He walked around the sprawled body and bent down to check for pulse. It was faint. Tough one to kill, he acknowledged and buried two bullets in his head. Muffled by a silencer.

Then, he felt all the pains. Head, nose, temple, wrist, ribs, under the ribs, and the entire length of both legs that had taken most of the blows from the agent’s skilled stick. But, he forced his mind to defocus on himself and back on his mission. He found his way around to the back of the house where, far from public view, the people were kept subservient. There was only one part of the mission he did not envisage.

As he rigged the lock open to free these people, it triggered off another set of alarms which were loud enough to wake the dead. Momentarily taken aback, he knew time was of essence and began to methodically unstrap the people he came to free. It took a while before he noticed something was amiss. They were not excited to be freed. There were no jubilations. No happiness nor gratitude for liberation. In fact, they just stood there looking at him, wondering what he was doing.

He was numb. Awestruck. The bedlam around him created by the alarm froze for a fraction of a second as he realised why. If it did not register adequately in his head, the action of some of them told him the full story. They had started putting the shackles he’d unlocked from their bodies back on. These were not people who wanted to be free. These were not people who asked for liberation. They showed no interest in his mission here. He was ON HIS OWN. His eyes widened as reality dawned. They were already retreating into their cells and pulling them back shut. All by themselves without compulsion.

Why had he bothered? Why risk everything? The dangers of explosive devices, toxic fumes and automatic rifles? The date with the mongrels? Those eight guards? Bleeding and sore, he stood transfixed. Try as he might, he couldn’t move a muscle. Too absorbed with what he was experiencing, the movement behind him didn’t register, nor did the people he was staring at signal him to duck as someone knocked him from behind. He rolled with the punch to the floor as his training again kicked in. He feigned unconsciousness to enable him come to grips with his predicament.

The sounds of booted feet and voices screaming commands told him what he needed to know. The alarm had brought in a new cache of guards. They must’ve been close by to have arrived so quickly. It was a strategy for which such a loud alarm was installed. But he knew had these “slaves” been willing, this would not have been too much of an obstacle to scale given their number and his skill set. He was just beginning to hazard a plan of escape when a strong boot met the low of his back with severity. A scream escaped him as he rolled into another boot. Then came the batter of stick blows. What was with these people and sticks?

As he turned around and twisted in agony from the kicks and blows, he opened his eyes and they fell on the sullen looks of those for whom he was being pummelled. Their shackles were not locked, their cages still lay open. Yet, not even a muscle was moved in his defence. They just bore looks of calm disinterest – not even of sympathy. It was a sombre enervation. He could’ve brought himself up to put up some sort of defence but those looks made his desire for his own defence anaemic. The blows were hitting tender spots, causing him to let out involuntary screams when he made up his mind that it was enough. He was not to die with this lost generation. These VOLUNTARY SLAVES. Enough!!!

He hit his switcher. It blacked out the entire edifice for the second and last time. He donned his night-vision goggles, emptied the bullets left in his pistol silently in three of the men who dealt him the toughest blows and was out of the detention area by the time their bodies hit the floor. The time it took for the light to be restored was enough for him to be far from reach. As he made good his escape, he could still hear the words one of the shackled whispered to him before refusing his help – “God dey” It is well.