Spark of the Rebellion Chapter 5: Purge

RECAP:

After Troy visits a rural market in the south of Iassor, encountering a riot, he is saved by a mysterious figure called the Scorpion. From what he gathered, this figure had disappeared many years ago and was thought to be dead. 

In the main story, the Scorpion is an alias for Adrian Salacron, the main antagonist of the story. He is a former Alliance member but defected towards the end of the Third World War to form his own group called SEKT. 'The Interlude' takes place before the events of the main story.

It had been five weeks since the incident. Since then, several notable events occurred. The Chief of Iassorian Intelligence department, commonly known as Intel, had resigned. The water and food reserves were hit with a bacteria that caused mass food poisoning, rendering their stockpile of food sources nearly useless. Ester, his sister, was promptly recalled from her college and was now doing distance learning for the remainder of her degree. And perhaps the least surprising of all, a series of tumultuous civil protests were raging throughout the kingdom. It seemed Iassor was on the verge of collapse.

The news of a former war veteran and political activist Helena Faco was particularly intriguing. She had disappeared from the public eye, though rumours were rampant regarding her whereabouts. Some speculated she’d been kidnapped by the royal guard (which was untrue to Troy’s knowledge), and some believed she was a victim of an internal political conflict. In contrast, others thought she had abandoned her position out of fear.

Troy’s house had taken on an unsettling stillness in recent weeks, a quiet so profound it felt almost tangible. The kind of silence that pressed against the walls and made the faintest sounds—the creak of a floorboard, the whisper of wind against the windows—feel unnervingly loud. His siblings, Asher and Ester, were confined to their rooms, engaged in online classes. Their voices occasionally broke through the silence, a sequence of frustrated sighs and the rapid clatter of keys. As for his parents, their absence felt more symbolic than physical. Though they worked tirelessly just behind closed doors in the home office, their presence was a shadow, distant and detached.

Troy, however, had little patience for the monotonous rhythm of virtual learning. With an abundance of free time and no one to enforce structure, he had immersed himself in his own project: uncovering the truth about the mysterious stranger who had saved his life. Key features he looked for were the jade-green eyes, the dynamic exo-suit and the floodlights mounted atop its shoulders and on either side of its helmet.

His efforts, however, were met with endless frustration. He scoured the deepest corners of the internet, navigating forums, filing through conspiracy threads, and even attempting to breach encrypted databases (not that he had a chance at getting through). Each path led to the same dead end. No trace of the stranger existed. Troy had ventured into realms of speculation, researching combat veterans, secret operatives, and even urban legends, but his search yielded nothing of substance. Hours turned into days. Days to weeks. Weeks to a month. Nothing.

Troy woke earlier than usual, the pale sunlight creeping through his blinds. The faint hum of activity from the other side of the house told him his parents were already awake, likely immersed in their work. Uninterested in breakfast, he wandered through the hallways, his thoughts as unfocused as his steps.

“Troy!” his mother screamed from the dining room.

“Yah? What happened?” Troy shouted back.

“Troy! Bring my shoes from my room!”

Troy rolled his eyes. Why was it always him? “Okay, I’ll bring it!”

He made his way to his parent’s room which felt like a mile away. The door stood slightly ajar, revealing a sliver of the interior. He pushed it open and searched around for her shoes. That’s when his eye caught it.

At first glance, it seemed like an ordinary object, no larger than a credit card. But as he drew closer, a sense of unease settled over him. The device, sleek and metallic, bore an emblem—a faint, intricate design etched into its surface. Its presence felt out of place. His father’s meticulous habits made it almost inconceivable that he would leave something so significant out in the open. His digital access key. Arguably the most important card that gave him access to all of Intel’s databases. This was highly peculiar. But it was just what he needed. Free, unlimited access to government archives which included any censored content. The lead.

He hesitated, his hand hovering above the device. A knot of guilt tightened in his chest. His father had always taught him the importance of trust and honesty while ironically being a symbol of treachery and dishonesty. Taking the key would be a blatant betrayal of those principles. But the memory of the Scoprion’s face surged forward, and with it, a looping voice in the back of his mind. What if this is the only way to get answers? He clenched his jaw, torn between loyalty to his father and his desperate need for the truth.

Before he could decide, footsteps echoed down the hallway, growing louder with each passing second. Panic ran up his spine and to his hand which instinctively closed around the device. He shoved it into his pocket just as his father’s voice called out from behind the door.

“Troy?”

Troy spun around, his heart pounding in his ears. His father appeared in the doorway, his sharp gaze sweeping the room before landing on him. “What are you doing in here?”

For a moment, Troy froze. The words wouldn’t come. His mind raced, scrambling for an excuse. Finally, he gestured vaguely toward the dresser remembering his original purpose. “Uh, Mom asked me to grab her shoes,” he said, forcing a casual tone.

His father frowned, the suspicion in his eyes unmistakable. “She doesn’t keep it by her bedside.”

“Oh,” Troy said quickly, his face flushing. “I thought she said it was here. My bad. I haven’t looked in the closet yet.” He moved toward the closet, finding her shoes and promptly grabbing it. “I’d better get it to her.”

His father’s gaze lingered on him for an agonising moment before he stepped aside, allowing Troy to slip past. As he hurried down the hallway, he could feel his father’s eyes boring into his back.

“Troy,” he called out, making Troy freeze in his tracks. “You see my digi-key?”

“Uh…no. Why?” Troy replied.

A lengthy silence. “Can’t find it. If you see it, gimme a call, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. For sure. I’ll tell Ash and Essie to keep an eye out for it too.”

With that conversation closed, he tried to walk to the dining room as casually as possible, delivering his mother’s shoes and then promptly leaving without breakfast. It wasn’t until he reached the safety of his room and locked the door behind him that he allowed himself to breathe.

Closing the door behind him, he retrieved the key and connected it to his link with trembling hands. The screen flickered to life, displaying a secure login prompt. For a moment, doubt crept in. Could he truly bypass a system designed to keep people like him out? But the key proved its worth almost immediately, bypassing the login with ease and granting him full access to a terabyte worth of files.

Rows of classified documents unfolded before him, a digital treasure chest of reports, communications, and archival footage. The sheer scale of the information was staggering. Troy’s breath quickened as he scrolled through the directories. He was searching for anything—any thread—that could lead him back to the Scorpion.

It wasn’t long before he found something: two images and a flight path buried deep within the archives. The first image depicted a shadowy figure mid-operation, their face obscured by a helmet and goggles but their back exposed. The second showed a propaganda poster with the Scorpion and another similar exosuit beside him. The accompanying flight path traced a route from Southern Iassor, its coordinates aligning almost perfectly with the night of Troy’s rescue.

His stomach churned as he processed the immediate implication of censoring this type of data. But as he tried to open more files, error messages began to flood the screen. “File Not Found.” It was as if the archives had been or were still being purged. The evidence was vanishing, slipping through his fingers like water.

A knock at his door shattered the moment. He scrambled to close the link, the screen going dark just as Essie’s voice drifted through the door. “Mom says you must have breakfast. You coming?”

“Yeah,” Troy replied, forcing his voice to sound steady. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

As the door clicked shut, he exhaled, the tension in his shoulders barely easing. The key remained in his pocket, its presence a reminder of the secrets it had unlocked. But the archives had only given him fragments. If he was to understand the full picture, he needed help. But first, he needed to put it right back where he found it.

He pulled up his link and sent a message to Asher and Essie.

Troy: Sibling meeting after Mom and Dad leave.

Asher: Why?

Troy: Important + classified shit. Meet me in the panic room.

Asher: Why? Just talk in the dining room table.

Essie: Why must I come?

Troy: You got anything better to do?

Essie: 2 mins.

Troy: Ash?

Asher: Make it quick.

***

Troy opened up a file on the projector in the centre of the board room. Seated at the table were his brother, Asher, and his sister, Ester. Essie was still in her blue pyjamas, her hair still a mess. Dark patches formed under her eyes, a consequence of her frequent all-nighters. Asher was showered, groomed and dressed. He wore a black and white suit, and a striped tie and his hair was neatly combed to the side. Skirting the edge of his lips and joining his beard, his moustache was neatly trimmed. He wasn’t dressed for an occasion. He was just pedantic.

While Asher sat preoccupied with his link, Essie warmed her hand with coffee. Troy needed a few extra pairs of hands he could trust, and unfortunately, the only people who would actually treat him like he existed were his siblings.

“Tell me again why we need to be here,” Ester asked, rubbing her forehead.

“Yeah, this sounds like the kind of stuff Dad handles, no?” Asher added.

“No shit,” Troy said. “But I can’t just go to Dad with this and expect him to take me seriously when he’s dealing with a food and water crisis. I need something more concrete to prove this is important.”

“Mountain out of a molehill, Troy,” Ester shot back, her voice sharp. “You have a feeling this is important, and now you’re running around like a headless chicken trying to find evidence that doesn’t exist.”

“It does exist,” Troy said through gritted teeth. “You think I’ve been sitting in my room for five weeks making stuff up?”

“Why not?” Ester countered. “You’ve done it before. Like the time you tried to prove the guards were smuggling meth and wasted two months and nearly failed a course because of it.”

“That was different,” Troy snapped. “And for the record, I was right. They were smuggling meth. I just didn’t have enough proof.”

“Exactly,” Ester said, leaning back in her chair. “No proof. And once again, you’re chasing a phantom with nothing to show for it.”

“Would it kill you to take a look at what I found?” Troy barked, motioning toward the holodesk.

“I don’t intend to entertain the idea of crossing boundaries and bending rules if it isn’t worth it. Given the current state of the kingdom, nothing about the Scorpion seems worth it.”

Asher, who had been scrolling absentmindedly through his link, finally looked up. “Guys, this isn’t helping. Arguing won’t make this any less crazy. What’s your point, Troy?”

“My point,” Troy said, forcing himself to calm down, “is that the Scorpion’s appearance cannot possibly be pure coincidence. Aren’t you at all curious to find out why everyone has tried so fucking hard to hide everything about him?”

“And it’s well above our pay grade to go snooping around and finding out,” Ester interrupted. “Let the authorities handle it.”

Asher frowned and turned his attention to the holodesk. “Maybe,” he muttered, zooming in on two of the pictures. One was an Earthen propaganda poster, and the other a hazy image of the Scorpion in an alleyway. In the latter, he seemed to be exiting his exo-suit, though only his back and neck were visible. The images were dated four years apart.

“What are you doing?” Ester asked, her voice sharp.

Asher didn’t answer immediately. His brow furrowed as he tapped the screen, adjusting the zoom on both images. His silence caught Troy’s attention, who leaned forward.

“Asher?” Troy asked. “What are you looking at?”

“Wait a second…” Asher murmured, pointing at the first image and then the second. “Troy might actually be onto something.”

Ester frowned. “What?”

“Look at this.” Asher motioned to the insignia in the background of the first image—a bold mark on a banner from the propaganda poster. “This is an Alliance insignia, right? Now look here.” He zoomed in on the Scorpion’s neck in the second image. “That’s a SEKT insignia.”

Ester stared at the screen, her face draining of colour. “No… no way. SEKT was wiped out. Everyone knows that.”

“Yeah, that’s what we all thought,” Asher said grimly. “But somehow, someone survived.”

Ester folded her arms in apprehension. “Could just be some random guy who got a hold of a SEKT suit, right?”

“That is the most likely answer,” Asher replied. He scratched the left side of his head. “But what if it’s not?”

“It is possible that a lone agent may have just slipped through Dad and the authorities’ fingers and took up the mantle, right?” Asher said. “I mean, it isn’t that big of a stretch.”

“Either way, we need to take this to the Intel guys and run it by Dad. Have this exact conversation with him and then step away from this ASAP. We do—”

“I came to the two of you because I didn’t want them involved in the first place!” Troy interrupted his sister, his voice raising a few decibels. “Essie, I spent five weeks. FIVE. And all I have is two fucking pictures and a rough flight path. This shit should’ve gone viral! Every angle, every twist, and every story should’ve flooded the news for at least a month. But this in particular has been censored so hard I couldn’t find a damn thing!”

“So where did you find the pictures?” Asher said without removing his gaze from the holodesk. “If nothing was on the net where did you find these images?”

Troy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He hoped his siblings would not have caught on to that.

“Listen, this is going to sound bad…”

“Where, Troy?!” Ester demanded.

“I… may have used Dad’s data access key?” Troy whispered. “To get into Archives.”

“You broke into classified archives and removed information from the database under Dad’s name? Are you fucking insane?” Ester exclaimed.

“Yeah, but he’s the king,” Troy said. “If he removed something from there, they wouldn’t question it.”

“But you used his biometrics on your link, right?” Ester shouted. “Which traces it back to you anyway!”

Asher immediately jumped to his feet. “Give me your link. I’ll wipe it clean.”

Troy protested, "No, wait! Asher, listen to me—"

"I don't want to hear it, Troy!" Asher snapped, snatching the link from Troy’s hand. "You have no idea what kind of mess you've landed us in!"

"All right, all right," Ester interjected, her eyes darting between her two brothers. "Let's not lose our heads."

"I am starting to think our brother didn't have one to begin with," Asher muttered grimly.

Ester rested a hand on his shoulder, attempting to calm him down. “Asher," she said softly. "We need to think this through. Yes, what Troy did was reckless and stupid,” she said, shooting him down with a stare that could cause the tides to recede. “But he’s onto something. If there is indeed a surviving SEKT operative out there--”

“Then we report it,” Asher interrupted heatedly. “We don’t play detective and we definitely don’t break into Intel archives!”

“Aren’t you listening to me?” Troy shouted. “Intel are part of this. When I accessed the archives they were in the process of wiping the data from the archive. I could have grabbed more but the deletion process was already underway. The point is… Intel has hidden data about this guy in its archives and once he’s reappeared, they’re deleting it. Why?”

Ester sighed, rubbing her temples. "I don't know, Troy," she said. "Maybe they're trying to avoid a panic. Maybe they have their reasons."

"Oh, I'm sure they do," Troy replied sarcastically. "But are those reasons in the best interest of the public? Or just their own?"

Asher shook his head. “We can’t just jump to conclusions here, guys. We need more proof. There are at least ten other guys out there with the guts and the clearance to deal with this.”

“More proof?” Troy scoffed. “This is proof enough! A supposedly extinct organization’s insignia on who we assume is the Scorpion? Our own organization erasing evidence? What more do you need?”

“We need to be sure,” Asher insisted. “The wipe could have been carried out by a malware or a hacker. Old archive firewalls are weak and outdated because most of the information there is so archaic it’s basically useless.”

Ester glanced at Asher then back at Troy. She was torn between her pragmatic brother and her impulsive one. While Asher was right about not jumping to conclusions, there was validity in Troy's argument too.

“You’re right,” she said. “We can’t accuse our own without concrete proof.” She paused, looking at Troy, “And we also can’t ignore what’s right in front of us. If we deliver this information to Intel who we suspect are involved, we could be sending this thread do its death. It may never see the light of day again.”

Asher sighed deeply, running his hand through his hair. He looked defeated, tired, even as he nodded slowly. “Alright,” he conceded, “we need to investigate this further...carefully. I am going to take this link to a friend of mine to get the chip incinerated. Hopefully that’ll kill the scent Intel will inevitably try to pick up on.”

“And if it turns out Intel is involved?” Troy asked. “How serious is this?”

Asher exchanged a glance with his sister. “If Intel is involved… Evidence could be falsified, data could be manipulated, and citizen biometrics could be copied, erased or forged. The repercussions are countless,” Asher replied, listing all the possibilities on his fingers. “But worst of all, we’re no longer safe in our own fucking home. Because guess what? They have our castle CCTV footage too. The only sensible thing you’ve done thus far was make this meeting inside the panic room.”

He rose from his chair, leaning on the holodesk with both arms, intently examining the two images brought to light by his brother.

“In other words…We’re all fucked.”