S1, E2 | Light the Sky on Fire

Fluttering as they open with the apparent need to shield themselves from the morning sunlight that pierces through her window, Jaime’s eyes hold themselves upon the ceiling as her hands slide out from beneath the soft covers. Groaning as she stretches her hands as far above her head as the joints in her shoulders will allow, the rested blonde remains staring upright at the ceiling, trying to keep her eyes open as far as they can manage in order to prevent them closing again.

“Did you sleep well?” a voice asks from across the room, startling the woman that immediately shifts her body in the opposite direction, her face looking toward the man that asks with exhaustion replaced by surprise. “What the fuck are you doing!?” Jaime questions aloud, covering her chest with the comforter despite already wearing a plain, white t-shirt as her unexpected visitor hangs his head and chuckles.

“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up for about an hour and a half now” Leon confesses, his hands wrapping around the edge of his plastic chair between both legs, resting their feet upon the metal support built into the seat’s legs. “I’m surprised that you slept in so late” he adds on, not having entered the room wit the intention of waiting around for as long as he had, “I know you had a long ride back from the west coast, but I still figured you’d have a harder time sleeping on night one than you did.”

“I spent the last year and some change living in exile. I got used to sleeping wherever there was an open space” Jaime replies, removing the heavy blanket from over her as she crawls off the box set-less air mattress. Nodding, Leon averts his eyes as best as he can whilst the woman traipses across the spacious hotel room, wearing only her colourless top and a pair of short, hot pink shorts.

“I’ll take it that you at least slept well?” Leon inquires, continuing to look at the ground before seconds pass without a reply, prompting him to look back toward the half-nude woman as she turns halfway toward him with a lone eyebrow raised. “I traded out the backseat of a truck for an actual bed” Jaime responds, turning back toward the direction she’d been strolling toward whilst finishing her statement, “I’m not even sure people in the NDF sleep as well as I did most nights.”

Hearing her footsteps round the corner in favour of the adjacent bathroom, Leon takes his sights away from the floor as he leans back in his chair, only waiting now for the woman to run through her morning routine. “What do those letters stand for anyway?” he wonders from afar, hearing the faucet start spouting water as the new arrival wets the end of her toothbrush, preparing it for the paste that she squeezes onto the bristles.

“The New Democratic Front” Jaime answers, doing so without issue as she prepares to attend toward the well being of her teeth, “they’re hold-overs from the old federal government.” Nodding to himself, Leon squints his eyes whilst staring out the nearby window, looking beyond his borders and toward the modest and comparatively-tiny Free Boston skyline.

Though faint, the man overhears the distant sound of the girl’s brush scraping against her teeth whilst he continues to admire the natural view he’d been afforded the chance to continue living to see. “Typically, we run most people through the process of starting to assimilate into our society. Signing documents, getting identity cards made, that stuff” Leon remarks, watching the west coast-native emerge from behind the doorway that she takes to leaning against, looking at the man whilst he speaks and she maintains her hygiene.

“I promised Velly and some others that I would get your papers signed and everything, but that I wanted to change up getting you really situated like we normally would” he concludes, watching the woman pull the brush from her mouth for only a brief moment. “Why?” she asks, keeping the question simple as she returns the bristles to her teeth.

“Because you’ve seen parts of this world that I haven’t yet. And in some cases, I hope I’ll never have to” Leon answers, wasting little time in offering his explanation to the set of open ears. “I think it would come in handy to get to know you a little bit more and answer some questions that you may not have gotten a good enough chance to ask yesterday” the figurehead comments, dressed in all black wear just as he had the day prior, only switching out his sweats and long sleeve shirt for a black trenchcoat and a pair of grey slacks.

“This isn’t a way for you to flirt with me, is it?” Jaime proceeds to inquire, again slipping the brush out from her mouth as it fills with the toothpaste’s foam. “I’m sorry?” Leon questions back, puzzled by the inquiry and how she’d come away from his comments assuming such.

“Last night, you said you don’t normally put new people into a room as nice as this one when they show up. And today, you’re changing the integration system you’ve set up just for me” Jaime explains, crossing her free hand over the arm that remains wielding the brush, “what makes me special?”

“The fact that you’ve been in my position before?” Leon replies with a tone as if he were asking a question rather than answering one, not seeing the sense in the conclusion that the woman draws. “I didn’t run a communist commune with an anarcho nuthouse next door on the east coast; I ran a federal capitalist republic with a nuclear-capable lunatic across the pacific on the west coast” Jaime corrects, shaking her head with doubt, “we’re not as similar as you think we are.”

“You won people over enough to earn their trust, and then you held the responsibility of keeping them safe” Leon corrects, setting their differences aside in the basic similarities, “from what I understand, you did that until the wrong people came knocking at your door.”

“Listen, buddy... Let’s get one thing straight. I didn’t earn their trust, I was just used as the face that rebels banded behind because I was a semi-celebrity before the catalyst” Jaime responds, shaking her head as she begins turning back for the bathroom, “and I clearly failed in that responsibility since I faced multiple rebellion groups myself.”

“Hold on... the what?” Leon questions back, his bewildered stare catching the eye of the woman that turns back just as she’d attempted to step away, “you were a semi-celebrity before what?” Pausing for a moment, Jaime lifts a finger toward the man as she dips back into the bathroom, spitting the paste into the sink’s ceramic bowl.

“The Catalyst. Y’know, the thing that happened when the water went bad all of a sudden?” Jaime rebuttals, speaking from within the bathroom as she rinses her brush and returns to the doorway, “why, what do you guys call it?”

“We just call it the tragedy” Leon responds, squinting deeper at the woman as he fixates on her comments, reading into them for the information that hides within what’s left unsaid like fine print in a contract. Without replying, Jaime looks at the man’s face for a second before the muscles within her visage ease, her head pulling back as she comes to a revelation she’d yet to connect the dots of.

“Wait, had you guys up here ever figured out what happened?” she wonders aloud, watching the man’s chin dip lower as his head shakes in refusal, the answer not necessary to be vocalised. Immediately falling, the woman’s eyes take toward the ground before the man’s voice carries onward, searching for information that appears to be hiding within plain sight, but appears to require a finer vision.

“People started burning up like they were getting eaten from the inside. Then an alert went out telling us not to drink the water and everything stopped working. The internet, cell service, satellite service. You name it” Leon responds, watching the woman walk through the hotel room as if she were harbouring something incredibly harrowing and worth refusing to speak aloud.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” he questions, resetting his focus from recollection toward discovery as the woman journeys toward her near non-existent belongings, “what are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, I...” Jaime responds, shaking her head from one side to the other before standing upright, turning toward the man with a dejected look on her face, “...I never really thought about whether or not other people found out what actually happened.” Pulling his head back, Leon looks at the woman with wild eyes as her face turns toward his own, being able to offer the question he wishes most to ask in so many ways that he can’t bring himself to pick one.

“Before we took over Los Angeles, we ousted what was left of the local government. The mayor had died, so his lieutenant ended up taking over. He couldn’t keep the public contained” Jaime remarks, watching the man slowly lean closer toward the edge of his seat. “Before we ran him out, he told me a few things about what happened” she concludes, visibly disheartened at having to be the one that informs the man, who has admittedly provided her a wonderful welcome, “to say the least, the water going bad was never an accident.”

Looking away, Leon’s eyes take toward the ground as the woman stands in silence, allowing him to digest the information that- whilst not fully explained- leave little to the imagination. Eventually guiding his line of sight toward the phenomenal view that lingers beyond the woman’s bed, Athens’ leader sets his attention back upon the skyline across the modest river, a sudden thought dawning upon him internally.

“Go through your morning routine and meet me at the stadium” Leon calmly remarks as he steps off his chair, making for the door without having much more worth noting to offer, “we’ll take it from there. But first, I need to make some calls.”

“Am I in trouble?” Jaime questions aloud, instinctually asking the question that prompts the man to stop in the now-open doorway, looking back toward her as he prepares to leave. “If you’re in trouble, then so am I” Leon responds, letting go of the door as it begins to shut behind him, “we’re going to Free Boston.”

= Athens of America is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

“Hello, Ruby!” Sidney remarks cheerfully, patting the top of the service counter that the professionally-dressed, glasses-wearing woman of equally-youthful age sits behind. “Do you bury your face in a bowl of sugar each morning?” the clerk questions aloud, visibly tired and worn down by the day that hasn’t even truly begun yet.

“Nope! I make it through the day out of appreciation to still be alive!” the peppy brunette proclaims, drumming on the wooden desktop with a smirk as she shakes her shoulders, allowed to do so until Ruby begins softly swatting her hands. “It’s almost ten in the morning, Sid. No one is excited to be awake” Ruby remarks, putting a grin upon the woman’s face as she stands across from the worker, “you coming here to put in an order or is this a Leon thing?”

“What is a Leon thing, Ruby?” Sidney questions back, resting both arms atop each other as she leans against the countertop, genuinely curious in her search for an answer. “Anything that Leon wants for the most part” Ruby responds, wasting little time in offering a direct answer that prompts the girl opposite her to scrunch her nose and wag her head from side to side.

“You seem a little grumpy-grump today” the brunette remarks in a playfully low voice, finally earning a smirk from the labourer that goes anything but unnoticed, “there’s a smile! There it is!” Shaking her head as she gives into the woman’s enthusiasm, Ruby leans back in her seat and crosses her arms with a grin, “what do you want, you little bottlerocket?”

“I’m just here to pick up the order sheets” Sidney responds, gently patting the countertop once more as the labourer climbs out of her seat, curling a finger toward herself to gesture the joyous sprite to follow her to the back. “How’d the trip go?” Ruby questions as they enter the mailroom, her hands immediately reaching for a box that sits atop a leatherbound notebook, placing it aside.

“I wish it went better. We found the answers we were looking for, but it just didn’t go our way” Sidney replies, graciously accepting the notebook into her arms as she carries on the conversation. “I heard you found a camp that blew up. Is that rumour true?” Ruby inquires, watching the slightly disappointed hanging of the girl’s eyes provide an answer in lieu of any speech.

“I think we all wish that weren’t true, but we can’t always get what we want I guess” Sidney confesses, watching the disappointed nod that she receives do the telling of what such news means overall. “I feel bad for those poor people then” Ruby responds, letting out a sigh as she shakes her head, “to survive what happened with the tragedy and make it so far? All for it to end like that.”

“Wait, how did you find out about that?” Sidney soon questions, unsure of how the news would have travelled beyond her inner circle with how little time has passed since their return home. “Word started getting around that a fight broke out and a bomb ended up going off” Ruby responds, dragging her feet along the ground as the messenger follows her back toward the front desk, “everyone died and the place was destroyed from what I heard.”

“Well, I mean... kinda” Sidney responds, rounding to the patron side of the service desk as a pair of women standby and wait for their opportunity to place an order. Returning the book to the clerk, the visitor allows Ruby to jot down a pair of extra orders on a sticky note that will inevitably end up in the notepad anyway whilst she speaks.

“We’re pretty sure the place was destroyed, but it wasn’t because of a fight. And nobody died” the mailwoman corrects, watching as the clerk collects a pair of index cards from the customers that wait, handing over their list for her to include into the binder of notes. “How did a bomb go off without anybody dying?” Ruby queries, finding it to be suspicious that such devastation could be seen without fatality.

“Because Jaime evacuated the city before the bombs fell” Sidney replies, answering the question as if it were any other, only for her friend’s puzzled visage to turn toward her. “I thought you only went with Jay? You had a third person with you?” Ruby inquires, immediately watching the clerk’s head shake whilst the patrons remain standing by. “No, Jaime was the person in charge of the community” the brunette awaiting her opportunity to depart responds, “she got everyone out before we took her back with-”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but did you say they fell?” the woman who’d been standing first in line asks, having handed off her order before overhearing the conversation that unfolded. “I’m sorry?” Sidney asks back, unsure of what she’s being asked about without context. “You said the city was evacuated before the bombs fell...” the second woman in line clarifies, regaining the messenger’s line of sight as her eyelids grow slightly further apart, “were the bombs dropped on the city out there?”

“No! No! They...” Sidney responds, shaking her head with a nervous smile, trying her best to reiterate before the patrons fail to allow her the chance to. “Are there people dropping bombs on each other in the west!?” the original patron inquires, cutting the woman off before the brunette who’d spoken out of line continues to shake her head with the worried grin as her anxiety begins to build.

“Everyone stop! Hand me your order card and then both of you get out!” Ruby proclaims, climbing out of her seat with a slightly-raised voice as she collects the second woman’s slip, waving toward the front door for them to leave before waiting through the silence as they walk out. “What just happened?” Sidney wonders aloud, still holding her hands out as the hush in the air becomes too great for her not to speak through.

“Sid, listen. I’m going to tell you what I made out from the information you just told me and realise that those other two women just came up with the same conclusion” Ruby explains as she takes the girl by the shoulders, “if something I say is something that I’m not supposed to know, then you may have just said more than you should have, alright?”

Nodding with great worry, Sidney looks the clerk in the eyes whilst the labourer takes a pause, pulling in a deep breath before speaking. “I’m of the belief that there’s a woman named Jaime- who you may or may not have brought back here- that was in charge of a city on the west coast” Ruby explains, already seeing the slight widening of the eyes in the woman at her hand’s reach, “and that city had proceeded to have bombs dropped on top of it without there being any actual fight or fatality.”

“There weren’t multiple bombs, there was just-” Sidney attempts to correct, only for the woman that holds her by each side to immediately shake her head and disregard the explanation. “Sid, it doesn’t matter what actually happened, what matters is what I and those other women heard” Ruby recalls, seeing the same, stoic visage looking back to her as she corrects the conversation, “out of everything that I just said, is there any part of it that I was not supposed to know?”

Unchanging, the plastered look of concern presents itself to the face of the brunette messenger that fails to pull her eyes away from the labourer’s own. “Oh no...” Sidney whimpers without tears, taking notice of the slip up that she’d made before fearfully looking back toward the building’s exit, knowing it’s already too late to tail the women down and address what had been said.

|

“Why are so many people watching us?” Jaime inquires, wearing the same heavy jacket that she’d picked up along the journey from one coast to the other, glancing at different faces joining together in the leaf-covered park that separates the two countries as they follow their trail. “Because it’s one of the presidents taking one of the five crossings to the other side” Leon answers, still dressed in his casually-presentable, dark clothing as he journeys the stretch of roadway, “that’s not a common occurrence.”

Shrugging her shoulders, Jaime continues to venture alongside Athens’ leader, trying to avert her eyes from the speculative crowd before taking the man’s comment into consideration. “You call yourselves presidents?” she wonders aloud, watching the man’s amused face turn toward her and beam.

“The United States had a president, and now Athens and Free Boston have presidents, too” Leon responds, watching the woman look back toward the border wall they journey toward as she shakes her head gingerly, “why? What title did they give you out west?”

“Chancellor” Jaime answers, only turning to look at the man’s reaction once she’d given it, his intrigued squint being provided. “Like Hitler?” Leon questions aloud, earning a chuckle from the woman that again turns toward the fortress-like entrance only a few yards ahead. Offering no reply, the pair continue to journey forward with eyes on the uniformed soldiers standing atop the entrance to the separate nation.

With little issue, the pair are granted entry to the domicile that appears behind the heavy, iron doors cutting Free Boston off from the neutral zone between themselves and their neighbouring faction. Just as any other, the buildings they find when they enter appear like the ones they leave behind in favour of addressing the leadership of their capitalist contemporaries, only their streets are lined with vehicles and homeless civilians sleeping beneath whatever artificial shelter they can scavenge.

“Free Boston is a strange experiment that everyone here is sort of feeling out as they go” Leon explains, walking the streets whilst flanked with the armed detail that still answers to the central government. “They wanted to live somewhere with individual liberties and wanted a more capitalist approach, but we disagreed. We told them to start from scratch and make it themselves, so they did” he admits with hands reaching forward, “they welcomed whatever failure or success was to come, and for that reason- we get along.”

“I thought you had to defend what you had from them?” Jaime challenges, looking toward the man she joins in a casual stroll through the streets. “We gave them what they wanted without demanding they fight for it. It’s allowed us to stay friendly enough with each other to endure each other’s existence opposite the river” Leon responds, pointing toward the side of a brick building, where a colourful poster is plastered upon the red backdrop.

“Free Boston has elections every two years. If you have the power to run, you’re allowed to by the few laws that this place has” he explains whilst the new arrival to his community reads the scrawlings plastered upon the advertisement, “people constantly talk about the idea that there should be even fewer laws, but there are always enough people here to out-vote those few.”

Splashed with purple and golden yellow streaks, the public display presents a young man with shaggy hair and a pouty lip staring toward the camera that had snapped his illustration. Beneath him, the name that he carries is written in bold letters just above a tagline of nearly-equal size, its stretch reaching from one side of the poster to the other.

“Dean” the top line reads, the first name of “Blake” sitting just above it in far smaller letters than the rest of the poster, both crowning the tagline of “Light the Free Boston Sky on Fire.” Carrying a squint toward the advertisement, Jaime lets her concerns over it pass as the man she travels alongside continues to speak.

“Some of the only rules on elections are that you can’t keep anyone from voting or else it’ll be illegitimate, you can’t form parties but you can form voting blocks, and you can’t stake claim to forming a government if you don’t win the election” Leon proceeds, holding his arms out at either side the further they walk, “other than that, it’s pretty much everyone for themselves.”

“There are a lot of homeless people” Jaime quickly points out, taking interest in them as a car speeds from one end of the road they travel and down the opposite direction, kicking up dirt with no one to stop them. “If it weren’t for the agreements that Spence made, I’m sure the president would be out here too” Leon responds, checking around every corner they stroll past in preparation for a mugging, “the president gets only the essentials. A home, three meals a day, clean water, free aid at whatever health centre is closest, response from any firehouse and police station, and a private security made up of ten bodies from each servicer.”

“I’m going to assume that Spence is the president here?” Jaime questions, inspecting each building that she passes the longer their journey continues. Tapping the once-chancellor on the shoulder, Leon points toward a towering building in the distance, its presence amidst the Free Boston skyline standing tall within their sights, only joined by a few other, less-impressive or more-distant skyscraper peaks.

“That’s the old Prudential Tower. Once they took over everything south of Fenway Road, they claimed it as their version of the White House” the Athens president remarks, spotting out the tower that sits just a few dozen yards away from the only one in the city that reaches higher into the sky. “Ken Spence took over as president after he got elected. He was the person that fought me on wanting a place of their own and the people rewarded him” Leon recalls, “but he couldn’t control who owned what. People ended up losing out, monopolies formed, and now he takes the blame.”

“So why are we going to him with this information?” Jaime inquires, looking toward the Athens leadership for clarification on the odd act, “why bother going to anyone here with this information to begin with?”

“Because Ken’s a good man who just happened to be terrible at keeping his populace in check” Leon responds, tucking his hands into the pockets of his long coat at the sudden strike of the frigid, winter air. “If I tell him what happened, I’m hoping he’ll be able to win enough credit from the people by playing it off like he’d uncovered some truth” the Athens authoritarian explains, “maybe he’ll get enough good will gathered together to avoid getting slapped by the two guys looking to run him out of office.”

“So what makes that dude I saw on the poster back there such a rotten apple to deal with?” Jaime questions back, intrigued by the idea that any figurehead in the utopia of free economic movement would be a better alternative to another. “Well, Wallace Sparks is interested in massive expansion. He wants to cut down on the presidential security clause and breach our agreement not to expand north of I-90” Leon answers, shaking his head with a curled lip, “that won’t go without ruffling some feathers.”

“That’s not the guy that I saw on the poster” Jaime replies, earning a displeased grin from the man she journeys alongside, his head shaking without pleasure. “Blake Dean’s the real troublemaker here. He’s trying to use the homeless population to send the other two into a political coma” Leon responds, gritting his teeth with disgust at the man’s name, “he wants to strengthen the central government’s power and force the really wealthy to throw some of their wealth down to their level.”

“If the emergency services are privately owned, what’s stopping the wealthier amongst these people from just putting a bullet in his mop hair-head?” Jaime questions back, amusing the man that begrudgingly shrugs with refusal. “The fact that he isn’t actually interested in any of that mixed with how he’s purchased protection from every single security agency here” Leon answers, scoffing as they come across another poster of the liar’s face, “he’s practically got more protection than the actual president did.”

“I know you seem to want what’s best for the people in here, but why concern yourself so much with this Dean guy?” Jaime proceeds to wonder aloud, staring at the same poster whilst fixating on his impossibly unserious visage, “he looks like a tool and sounds like a tool, but I don’t see how he’s your problem.”

“He’s our problem because one of the things he both campaigns on and actually wants is to legitimise their central military” the Athens leadership responds, drawing closer to the tower with each passing step. “Since they only have their monopolies as long as Free Boston is standing, all of the people that run the private militias voluntarily employ some of their soldiers to fight together as part of a force meant solely to fight for the country” Leon continues, “if someone like us were to invade, their collective force would keep us from ruining their fun.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question, and it doesn’t even make any sense” Jaime responds, pressing opposition to the man’s claim, “if Dean wants to make the volunteer army seem legitimate, how does he plan on getting the people that fight for these other monopoly men- and not him- to act on his orders?”

“Because he’s not getting them to act on his orders, he’s getting their employers to act on his orders” Leon corrects, looking toward the woman as they cross the street mostly-empty of actual vehicles. “He’s dangling fruit in front of their faces and telling them to order their men to act on his will so they won’t have to concern themselves with groups like us anymore” the Athens spokesman continues, making it to the road’s other end before looking toward Jaime, “they’ll all work together at his call if it means their investment in this partnership works out.”

“What’s that fruit then?” Jaime questions back, nearly reaching the door before the Athens leader stops his advancement, turning to look at her before answering her question. “His plan is to have their armies invade Athens on his order and kick us out of power” Leon replies with little hesitation, his conclusion surprising the woman that journeys alongside him. 

“Getting rid of us means getting rid of the threat they’re wasting men on preparing for. Doing so on the president’s order means the people in charge of these agencies don’t have to be blamed by the public for starting a war they didn’t want and won’t have to worry about coups knocking them off their privatised pillars” he continues, looking the woman in the eyes before marching for the tower’s entrance, opening the door before looking back, “you coming or what?”

Remaining behind momentarily, Jaime stares at the distance of the Free Boston commons area whilst taking the information into her mind, quickly attempting to clear it from her conscious as she steps forward with hopes of avoiding distraction. Following Leon, the Angelino founder ventures into the skyscraper with the flanking security force behind her, setting out on the same mission as the man that is as adamant about protecting his own community’s leadership as he is their potential aggressor’s.

== Athens of America ==