According to both recently accepted, and anciently held beliefs, our civilization will soon crumble. This change will not be brought about by kings or prophets, instead, the meek will lead us. In this fully illustrated re-imagining of revelations, a genetically-altered homeless orphan seeks revenge on the society that snubbed him. Driven mad by his suffering, he follows a dark, brooding path. Along for the ride is a flamboyant starving artist, a promiscuous soldier, and a preteen raver with a violent streak.

THE I

By James Countryman

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 James Countryman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4678-7732-9

Chapter One

BIRTH

Darkness, silence, emptiness. Was I awake? I felt weightless. Time seemed meaningless here. Space; equally meaningless. How did I get here? I reached up to touch my eye. Nothing. I was not there. I wondered if I was anywhere at all. I started to replay Dias' life in his head. I had him think back as for as he could. The day they came for her. Every second of that day burned itself into his brain. Five years it was still fresh. It was almost sundown. Dias sat on high branch of a blooming olive tree, waiting for Lia to finish dinner. The smell of dirt and damp wood saturated Dias' nose. "Soup's ready!"

Lia was standing outside the doorway, her apron covered in broth. She obviously went to quite a lot of work to make it. Her hair was a light brown, just as his was, back then. She had just turned twelve, his older sister. From up here, Dias could almost see over the ridge of crumbling asphalt that surrounded their village. The tunnels they used to explore were visible beyond the turned over subway car they both lived in. Dias jumped down and rolled a little as he hit the ground.

"There you are!" She giggled. Dias blinked, not positive what he was looking at. They came over the ridge in a wave. Chanting, marching, and beating their drums. They wore black masks and body armor, with silver wires flowing out of their backs.

"Dias, get inside" Lia whispered. She was pulling on his arm roughly. The men were already ripping apart every house. They pulled the hatch closed and locked it. Everything was very quiet. Dias stared blankly at his sister. She was collecting their things and stuffing them in a bag.

He heard a clicking. It was the door. They were trying to get inside. There was a voice outside.

"I think I've found something, bring the ram."

Neither one of them knew what to do, so they just waited. A soft whirring sound came from outside. Dias' ears popped. Then they poured in.

"Why are you here?" He cried.

They did not answer. A silver wire shot across the room and stuck into Dias' ribcage. The electric pulse that followed sent him into convulsions. He hit the ground. Lia was screaming. He could not see at all. Dias grabbed at the cord and pulled it out. Everyone had turned around. He held the cord and lunged at the man connected to it. He wrapped it around the man's neck and tightened it, and then they both thrashed violently around the room.

"Get this bastard off of me!" The man choked. He was going limp. Then Dias felt a blinding fire rage up his neck, his back, and his skull. They had shot him with something. He fell with a thud. He lay there holding his wounds. He was cold, sweating, crying. The men were gone, but there was someone new. He was tall, and dressed in a white wrap. He was holding Lia! Dias looked at her, unable to speak, or move, or even blink. She looked back, tears in her eyes, completely silent. They shared that one moment, the last moment of his life.

Dias lay cold, fading away into the darkness of his own mind. I appeared to him as a woman. I was slender, with long blonde hair down to my thighs. I was nude, except for the porcelain mask that hid my face.

As he lay there unconscious, dying, I appeared to join him in this darkness.

"Don't be afraid," I said. Dias thought of how beautiful I must have looked.

"I want to help you. The man that killed Lia, do you hate him?"

I spoke from behind him, and wrapped my arms around him tightly.

He whispered, I hate him. I hate him more than anyone.

"Then let me inside your heart. I want to heal you. I want to love you" My lips were soft against his ear.

"Do you want me to be apart of you?"

"I need you to be with me."

Dias replied. I kissed his neck lightly, and he quivered. At once, he was awake. Dias was utterly alone. Dias sat up in his bed that morning and felt his neck; it was hard, and there was a large black blister in place of the wound. He found a high-powered sniper rifle left behind by one of the men that attacked his village. It was quite nice actually, the scope was precise and it had a simplified loading mechanism. Every joint, every muscle, every inch of his body felt stronger now. Dias felt like he was seeing the world clearly for the first time. He had never felt so empowered before. He knew how to make things equal.

Dias heard from a transit overseer that the Executive Director for the Central District ended the "rioting" between the civil authorities and the vagrant occupants of the tunnel. He climbed the wall of the courtyard and began closely observing the movements of the District Manager. He lined up his scope and fired, but his target had moved. Dias quickly adjusted for wind and fired again, but his target had casually stepped behind a pillar. He waited for the man to walk out into the open. A flash of white floated up from the pillar, so he blasted it. The District Manager walked from the other side toward the exit. Dias fired again, blasting the wall instead of his target. He took a deep breath and aimed right for the door. He saw the man reach for the handle and Dias pulled the trigger, his bullet piercing into the heavy wooden door. He was out of ammo. He made it into the newspapers that time. They called him the blind marksman. He moved effortlessly out of the way right before every shot. Dias knew he could not been seen from eighteen blocks away, and nobody ever discovered who had attempted this assassination.

Nevertheless, he was obsessed. This asshole had taken Dias' only family. He needed to be closer for his plan to work. Dias got a job working in the director's personal kitchen. Dias had to be trusted for the plan to work, and he was careful. Dias waited a whole year before he tried to poison him. Dias prepared him his favorate dish, a wild caught salmon slathered in the delicious poisoned butter. Dias could still remember the rage as he watched his sister's kidnapper eat around every drop of poison. Dias could not handle the vengeful hate I was brewing within him. He waited in the upper loft of the grand hall where the Director slept. About five minutes after the Director's scheduled arrival, Dias heard a voice ask, "What are you doing in Angelo's chambers?" Turning a second too late, all he saw before falling was a figure in a brown hood and its corresponding boot.

Dias felt his spine crack against the cold hard porcelain floor. His bones struggled to lift his frame, but failed. Dias lay at his feet, Angelo standing above him. Looking so righteous, Angelo felt no guilt at all. He ruined Dias' whole life and did not even care.

"Was it really worth it, Angelo?"

Dias could feel his body rising, the dagger concealed at his belt. He did not see it; in fact, he had not looked at him once. Angelo spoke, "You're very sick; but you cannot see it yet." The strength returned to Dias' body as he reached for his blade. He thrust it straight at Angelo's chest. As the light reflected off its edge, he grabbed Dias' wrist.

"You don't want to kill me," Angelo said calmly. Dias struggled against his grip and shouted, "Like hell I don't! You destroyed my life, my home. I watched you and your thugs take my sister away; you killed her!"

"Your sister is far from dead. I only wanted to help her have a new life. I would have taken you too, but I thought you-"

"Thought I was dead?" Dias interrupted. "I see straight through your lies. You're gonna wish I'd died that day!"

Dias took his only chance to make it up to Lia. With all of his strength, all his hate, he drove the knife at Angelo's chest. Years of waiting and planning were about to pay off. Dias knew things would be all right when Angelo lay in a pile at his feet, but his arm stopped short. As Angelo twisted his wrist back at him, he looked straight into Dias' soul. Angelo held the blade inches from Dias' eye. he said, "You're just a tool until you see the truth." and thrust the blade in.

Chapter Two

DISCOVERY

Dias awoke in a pile of garbage in a back alley with a thin figure squatting above him.

"How did you possibly survive all of those things? You're not just some drunken punk throwing himself out with the trash, are you? I think you smell better then that." Dias smirked. He had been talking in his sleep again.

"Name's Vermillion, pleasure to cross ways." "Umm, right. My name is Dias. Where am I?"

"Well Dias, you're currently in the maintenance district of Calypso. Let's see some gore buddy, show me that eye!"

Dias flinched as Vermillion reached to pull back his hair. A black scar ran from his cheek across his eye to slightly past his nose.

"Can you open it?" Dias cracked it open and felt light cut his brain into pieces. His right pupil quivered as it witnessed a flurry of neon holes spiraling around him like a tempest, flooding his vision. Dias let out a sharp scream and shut it immediately.

Vermillion danced around Dias like a schoolchild after too many pixie sticks. Dias gave the man a long, strange look. His red snakeskin skirt matched the red jacket that was far too short for him, the whole ensemble trimmed in white fur. He was so thin he looked like he had not eaten in a month.

"I knew it! I could just feel it, you're just like me! So if we are alike, maybe you can help." Vermillion mused. Dias was not sure what to say.

"What do you want? Wait, how are we alike? Who are you?"

Vermillion spoke, "Just another sleepless art demon living for nothing, on nothing. I just want to use this free will to earn my soul. What you should be wondering is who are you?"

"I never really thought about it." Dias mumbled.

"Well maybe you should, you don't have much time left, Dias." Vermillion warned.

A high-pitched cry came from a round the corner. A young girl with spiked blonde pigtails had been knocked into the gutter water by an enormous figure. She was crying and shouted, "Somebody save my stuffy!"

Vermillion leapt onto the chest of the colossal metal man. He grinned a little too widely, exposing every tooth in a way that resembled a deranged hippopotamus. Grabbing the cables coming from the giant's skull to his ribs, Vermillion rolled over his shoulder onto the ground spraying sparks, oil, and debris onto a completely stunned Dias. The girl in the short, pleated skirt ran up to the pile of sparking remains and extracted a stuffed bear wearing a bell collar from it's right leg. Examining the stitching on the bear's side, the girl pouted a little, then turned to Vermillion and kissed his cheek.

"Wasn't that a little extreme?" Dias said. "That thing had just as much a right to life as you or I! You cannot just-"

The girl giggled "Thanks! That was cool! I'm throwing another party tonight, you two want to come?" and tossed Vermillion two greenish copper coins, and then skipped away like nothing had happened at all.

Vermillion turned to Dias and said with resolute authority, "What about the animals we kill for food and the mosquitoes we kill just out of annoyance? They had a right to life too, until they forfeit that right."

Dias shivered at the sickening amount of sense it made in his mind. "You said you wanted to learn from me, now listen! You can't just off complete strangers whenever you please! It's ... its inhuman!" Dias retorted.

"It was just a drone worker, nothing to get upset about." Vermillion claimed.

"He was a what?"

"Hmm ... This is going to be harder then I thought." Vermillion thought aloud. Dias was a little afraid. What if he wronged Vermillion, if he ever got in Vermillion's way he might end up with his cords pulled out and his fluids sprayed onto the crowd. Vermillion smiled and said, "I'm sure God will forgive us. You need a change of clothes before we go to that party, c'mon!"

Dias looked down at his once white apron. Vermillion still appeared spotless. Dias knew he had never met a person as weird as him before. Dias silently followed his new psychotic friend, completely terrified, but very curious where a man like this would get a change of clothes. Were they going to rob someone? Maybe they were going to a stylish young seamstress or the closest dumpster. Dias stared blankly at his steel plated boots splashing one after another in the mud.

"This is it; we're home!"

Dias looked up. They stood in front of a short maintenance ladder to a large exhaust pipe. Vermillion had been carrying several mechanical parts that he began throwing into the pipe. Dias wondered if this is where he brought all the bodies.

"Do I have to go in?" He asked.

"You will if you want to look good for the party tonight."

Vermillion responded cheerfully. He climbed the ladder and went inside. Dias stood alone in the damp drainage ditch for a moment. He did not know where else to go, or how he had even gotten here. Dias sighed deeply and ascended the rusty ladder.

Chapter Three

INTRODUCTION

The boarded up sewer pipe was filled with scraps of metal about fifteen feet back. Behind a battered white leather couch, Vermillion was tossing scraps of clothing onto a stylish old coffee table an mumbling to himself. "This would look good with our blue hair, but I think it's a little small for you. The iridescent paint on these shorts would show up great under the lights but it hasn't been washed since-"

'I don't wanna know!"

"Heh, I don t kiss and tell anyway. Try this on."

Dias caught the white pleather trench coat and pants hurled across the room at him.

"What about a shirt?" "You've never attended one of the Lady Luna s parties before have you, Dias? Every night she holds a huge party. "Its invite only. "

"Well then I guess I should feel honored. Is this really what everybody will be wearing?"

"You'll fit in just fine.

Vermillion began grooming his mohawk in front of a shard of mirror hanging from a rusted nail above his weathered desk. Dias was staring disassociativly at the half-rotted floorboards beneath his feet.

"A bar fight perhaps? Get too spun out and talk some gash to the wrong people? That's a good way to make enemies, Dias."

"No, I've never been to a bar." Dias mumbled.

"Don 't feel bad. You can 'twin them all." Vermillion comfortingly proclaimed.

Dias was struggling to pull the tangled mound of fishnet tights over his head, but to no avail.

"Well, are you going to help me or not?" Vermillion asked.

"Help you what?"

"Become a little more human, weren't you paying attention?"

"Um, I suppose I'll try. I don't know what you expect me to do but -"

"Just be yourself, thats all. What is it you're looking for in this backwards world of ouse?"

"I'm trying to find my sister" Dias explained, ripping the mesh over his neck. "Was she cute?" Vermillion growled provocatively.

"What? No! Well, that's not important. I will find the man that stole her from me, and I don? need YOUR help." Dias shouted, breathing heavily.

"A kidnapping? Or perhaps they simply eloped together" Vermillion suggested.

"Shut up! Besides, you weren't there. You have no idea what I have gone through trying to get back at him. I just pray that what he said was true. That she might still-"

"Wait a minute, who is this guy?" Vermillion interrupts.

"You shouldn't get involved. This is a suicidal journey, and not any of your business!"

"Alright, a dangerous rescue mission, count me in! But who are we going after?" Vermillion cries.

"The Executive Director for the Central District." Dias stated coldly. Vermillion roared with laughter.

"Taking on the leader of the working world? You must be insane! Thats alright though, I'm a little crazy myself." "Maybe I am crazy, so what? I'm gonna make this guy needs to pay for what he did to my family, to all of us!" Dias vowed.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE Iby James Countryman Copyright © 2012 by James Countryman. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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