S4, E1 | The Burning Tower

Season 4 Premiere

Made to endure the wrath of excessive force, a small cluster of civilians stick to their position, wearing their disgust for the government in power like a badge on their chest. Shoved away by the armed militants, the small group put up the fight that those around them simply wish to steer their nose away from, not wishing to drive the acting general of the Angelino Republic any further from a course they prefer than she already has.

“Keep the peace!” the small group howls, maintaining the posture of people simply cooperating with the demand of their immediate authority, stepping back each time the thrust of an armed soldier’s hands pushes into their chest. “Keep the peace!” they continue to cry, their collective voices louder than they had been before Ryan’s blood had been spilled in the public square, though- not by much.

Squeezing through the wave of people moving in the direction opposite him, Chevy slips through each part in the sea of equally-uncertain civilians, his pregnant fiance’s hand held in his own. Following the line of the blood that trickles from the body near the stair top, the pair climb the steps with sights set on the double doors, the centre point in which they meet blocked by the bodies of two well-suited men.

“Sir, turn around and leave” the first of the men calls out, stepping away from the door with his hand extended, his other resting on the weapon that sits on his hip. Calmly, Chevy keeps his eyes forward, not slowing his progress the slightest amount as he continues walking forward, “move out of the way.”

“Sir-” the man reiterates, continuing to hold firm in his position, the extended hand still stretched forward, the opposite still resting its palm against the firearm’s grip, “-I can’t let you in this building.” With the shake of his jaw, Chevy continues marching forward, the distance between himself and the guard closing quickly, “fine then, go get her” he replies, not budging in the face of adversity as the crowd continues to dissipate below.

“Sir-” the man responds, taking one final step forward as he and Chevy finally cross paths, his extended hand pressing into the approaching gentleman’s chest and keeping him back, “-please leave.” 

Looking at the hand still placed against the place between his pecs, the mop-headed, clean-shaven, Colorado-returned man stands in silence for a moment, having failed to release his fiance’s hand once having made it through the crowd amidst the heat of the moment. As if surprised at the display, Chevy’s annoyance takes a turn into anger, which he displays in taking his newly-freed hand and pushing the armed man back with it.

“He told you to leave!” the second guard responds, unholstering his weapon with the intent of taking aim at the aggressive survivor, only for the redirected hand of the first guard to impede him, forcing the gun away from readied position and back to the second man’s lap. “Stand down, Wilfred” the first sentry orders, immediately drawing a confused look from his subordinate’s face.

“Blake, he just-” Wilfred begins to argue, only for his attempt to prove futile, the voice of his superior cutting him off with a tone equally calm to that of Chevy’s. “I don’t care. I don’t care what he did” Blake replies, turning his eye away from the annoyed guard before setting it back upon the man before him, locking eyes with the aggravated survivor, “the last thing we need is to start firing shots with an angry mob just a couple steps away.”

“That won’t be your biggest problem if you don’t move out of the way” Chevy quickly responds, purposefully remaining directly between the placid man and his pregnant love. “Sir, I understand that you’re close to the chancellor, and I mean no offence when I say this-” Blake begins, continuing to maintain the armistice-hopeful demeanour he’s met the man before him with thus far, “-but I think it’s best that you and your wife leave while there’s still some sort of peace intact.”

With the slightest scowl, Chevy looks at the man before him with a brief curl of his lip, keeping his voice as unimposing as he can manage to make it. “Well, as much as I appreciate your concern for the well being of my fiance and I- I honestly couldn’t give a shit” he remarks, switching his glance between Blake and Wilfred as he continues to speak, not wishing for either man to miss out on his response.

“My fiance and I just got back from a mission that gave your chancellor the ability to broker that deal with Lancaster, and there’s a pretty good reason for me to believe she needs a few friends to talk to” Chevy remarks, getting closer to Blake’s face in a confrontational manner.

Stepping out from behind the father to her child, Kayla looks at the increasingly irritated guards and interjects herself before they can be provoked any further. “We really don’t mean to hassle you- I’m sure there’s already plenty for you to worry about- but Chevy’s right” the woman remarks, watching the pair of sentries slowly join her fiance in turning their attention toward her, “she just lost Jordan and has to deal with- that.”

Jutting her shoulders in the direction of the increasingly-lessened crowd, Kayla sets the source of her point on the events having just transpired, “I think she needs someone right now.” With his lips pressed together, Blake looks at the woman for a few moments, inevitably returning his attention toward a more-composed Chevy, calmed from his confrontational presentation by his fiance’s more approachable bartering.

Turning his head to the side, Blake lets his attention fall to the shoulders of his less-aggravated partner, putting a frown on before nodding, releasing his hand from the weapon on his hip as he steps aside. Letting a deep exhale leave through his nose, Chevy continues to look at the foremost guard with apologetic eyes as Kayla takes his hand into her own, taking her turn to lead the man through the now-parting doors to the new central hub of the Angelino Republic.

“Come on in” Jaime exclaims, listening to the door open whilst keeping her eyes toward the window of her office, a vast sea of the charred remnants mother nature has fallen victim to. “Chancellor?” Chevy remarks, following his fiance into the office as his voice prompts the woman to turn around, “what’s all that about?”

Shaking her head, Jaime returns the glass to her desk and strolls to the corner of her room, setting her attention on a shelf full of books, all hardcover and all in excess of two hundred pages. “I don’t know what you’re talking about” she replies, flipping through the first few pages of a novel with a bright red cover before returning it to the nook.

“And you don’t really need to ‘cause it’s not that important” Kayla intervenes, standing the closest to the woman’s desk as her husband-to-be resides a few steps behind, his hands dangling by each side. “I’m gonna assume that’s because you think what I just did is?” Jaime responds, departing the wooden shelf in favour of her desk, her hand held out to reclaim the glass as her friend replies.

“You just shot a man in front of, well- everyone” Kayla answers, not waiting long before the actions find an expected voice to defend them. “I shot the man that killed Jordan” Jaime corrects, a statement that doesn’t change the issue her close acquaintance takes in the situation.

“It doesn’t matter who you killed, it matters that you did it in front of- what? Thousands of people?” Kayla replies, attempting to continue before Jaime interrupts her the moment her question is finished being raised. “Come here” the proclaimed chancellor remarks, curling her finger toward the couple before walking for the back of her office, “come here” she repeats, doubling down on her gesture before taking a stand beside the large window, leaving the floor for them to occupy.

With a passing look to each other, Kayla and Chevy silently gesture to one another in search for a response, one that the gentleman provides by stepping ahead, leading the pair toward the destination they’ve been requested for. “Take a look for yourselves. Take a good, long look” Jaime mutters, pressing her shoulder into the wall as the couple stand before the sunlight, peering into the distance to see a seemingly-endless ocean of burned trees and charred plant life.

“You wanna see a world where the people matter? There- you’re looking at it” Jaime proclaims, able to notice the look of shock the couple take from the picture even though they try hard to hide it, neither having anticipated such a bleak, hopeless illustration to be the backdrop of a once massive city.

“That’s what the old world led to. Corrupt people taking advantage of the system, sucking every last drop of money out of it, and then literally leaving the people to die” Jaime remarks, stepping away from the wall in an effort of returning to her desk, looking down at the heavily-marked calendar that rests atop it. “The people elected them. They were gullible and easily manipulated and it led to this” she continues, motioning her hand to the window before lowering it to her desk, “-and this.”

“Just as they put those people in charge, they put me in charge” the chancellor recalls, again setting her glass down as the engaged couple pull away from the blackened, discarded old guard left in the Angelino Republic’s rear view mirror. 

“If they want to protest me? Fine. They don’t have to like what I have to say anymore than I have to give into their every-goddamn-demand” Jaime remarks, pressing her leading foot hard into the ground as finger points to the floor, “but I’ll be damned if I have to fall because they’re so eager to repeat the same mistakes that got us here in the first place.”

“And what mistakes are those?” Kayla quickly asks aloud, challenging the woman not to leave her statement open-ended, wishing for her friend to leave the discussion off with a declaration instead. “The mistake of forgetting how we got here and what exactly all of this is” Jaime again proclaims, motioning her hand throughout the final resting place of a once-American democracy, now an Angelino fortress.

“They can blame me for whatever they want. They can say I’m this, or I’m that- whatever. But they do not get to lose sight of the bigger picture” Jaime concludes, pulling back to stiffen her posture, looking at the couple with determined eyes, unwavering in the stance she takes under any circumstances, “there is no Angelino Republic without Jaime Morris.”

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

Walking past her former security detail’s blanket-covered body, Jaime walks through the dungeon with purpose, her hands hanging freely by each side as she sets her attention on one specific room. “She’s all yours, ma’am” Blake remarks, stepping aside as he opens the door to the interrogation room for his chancellor, “she came in willingly.”

Coming to a stop just past the doorway, Jaime stands in attention at the woman that sits before her, the willing participant sitting with her hands folded atop a metal table, wearing an approachable face. “Thanks for coming in” the chancellor remarks in a calm, low voice as she watches the shoulders shrug on the woman ahead of her.

“You were gonna bring me in anyway” Julia replies, voluntarily positioning herself on the opposite side of the table from what she’d become accustomed to, “I figured I’d save you the time and get on with it.” Remaining still as a statue, Jaime continues to look the woman in the eyes as she reads her person, investigating her expression just as she does the woman’s posture, eventually finding little reason not to step closer to the table and occupy a chair of her own.

“Tell me what he was right about” Jaime cuts to the chase, sliding a chair out from the corner of the room before seating herself in it, both eyes held firmly upon the prominent doctor. “Not much clearly” Julia mocks with a slight smile, her head tilting to one side before she quickly drops the amused grin, reclaiming her serious-sounding demeanour.

“He was right about Lazarus” Julia confesses, earning a mostly-unchanged squint from the woman ahead, the secret she hides already anticipated by the woman across from her, “but he didn’t tell you why I killed him.” Trying to regain her composure, Jaime sits in her seat with a silent anger, its rise somewhat halted by the unexpected admission of guilt she’s been presented with, almost too honest to be truly enraged over.

Taking the chancellor’s silence as the nod of approval to continue speaking, Julia twists her tongue in ways that craft the neatest tale to spin, filling the holes her story presents with pieces- whilst they fit- don’t belong to the puzzle itself. “I’d been supplying the peacekeepers for a few weeks- trying to keep them content enough so they didn’t pose any bigger issue than, well- the one they did” she begins, interrupted by the sound of a surprisingly calm voice across from her.

“Supplying them with what and why?” Jaime inquires, sitting back in her chair as she slowly crosses her arms, too interested in the guilt-ridden web being spun, though anxious to see if a metaphorical spider still occupies it. “Nothing more than what they needed. Insulin, epinephrine- one guy had asthma, so I threw in an inhaler prescription” Julia explains, “it was never anything hard like what Ryan must’ve been taking. Where he got that stuff I have no idea.”

“Get on with it” Jaime interjects, steering the conversation down the route it appears to have been leading, unwilling to let the discourse veer away from its inevitable destination. “The point is, they didn’t like you and I was afraid they’d try their hand at something that would mess things up for everyone” Julia continues, shaking her head as her recollection persists, “I figured that- as long as I was giving them the basic shit to keep themselves going- they’d keep to themselves.”

“And this all leads to you murdering my security detail because-?” a sceptical Jaime curiously asks, finally guiding the experienced doctor back toward the initial question, one she doesn’t hesitate in answering. “Because Lazarus took the fact that I kept supplying them after the fact to mean that I was the one that called for them to hit Jordan” Julia replies, a disheartened and insulted tone carried in the weight of her voice, “he branded me as the bad guy and wouldn’t let me explain myself.”

“So you killed him” Jaime concludes, the result she’d arrived at immediately argued against amidst by the medical professional, who looks her in the eyes with a slight lean forward. “Only after he pulled a gun on me” Julia responds, finally beginning to circle back to where her web first began spinning, “he tried grabbing me, I knocked the gun away, he lunged and my flight or fight kicked in.” 

Silent, Jaime remains sat with her arms crossed, looking the woman in the eyes without a single ounce of malice, nor sympathy for her hassle, only interested in hearing the story through to its completion. “I told him to stop, but he didn’t. He came at me, the blade went in and I just kept going until he stopped” Julia admits, shaking her head as what’s been said is left for interpretation, “he dropped to the ground and then Ryan grabbed me by the hair, so I gave him one too.”

“And that’s the story?” Jaime quickly responds, hearing all she needed for the chapter of the events to be concluded, though still curious as to her motivation, “why not just let him take you in and explain it to me without bloodshed?” Letting out a chuckle, Julia looks to the table and shakes her head with a grin, an apologetic expression held on her face as she continues to look at the chancellor in refusal.

“You’d just lost Jordan, and- even though he deserved it- went onto execute Ryan in front of everyone just a couple hours later” Julia replies, biting her bottom lips as she expresses her dislike with having to say what she does, “if you hear that I helped the people that killed Jordan?- I’d have been killed this morning too.”

In utter silence, Jaime continues to lean in her seat as her right leg crosses over her left, bouncing atop her thigh as she stares into Julia’s eyes, reading the woman’s expression for all it’s worth as she, too, remains silent. With the squint of her left eye, the Angelino Republic’s chancellor looks down at the table before repeating the woman’s response in her mind, sorting through what was said before pulling free the most captivating line spoken.

“Why are you still supplying them?” Jaime inquires, able to find sense in everything she’d been told other than that, it’s existence not only added where it doesn’t belong, but done so purposefully. “Because it’s the easiest way to keep you in power. It’s just another way of keeping natural self-preservation in line” Julia explains, her eyebrows lowering closer to her eyelids as she speaks, implying the question drives her down a new line of thought.

“Granted, there aren’t many of them left- but they’re a group of people you can stick a name on” Julia continues, watching Jaime’s interest draw closer to her court the longer she speaks, “call them ‘the peacekeepers’, paint them out as the bad guys, and give the rest of your Angelino’s a villain to waste their time fighting against.”

“Why do they need to be fighting each other?” Jaime responds in question, watching the smirk emerge across the doctor’s face. “‘Cause if they’re busy fighting each other, they won’t waste their time fighting you” Julia answers, no longer satisfied with the web she’s spun, but wanting to add luxuries to the same little home she’d effortlessly constructed.

‘I know the U.S doesn’t have many examples we can take from it in good faith anymore, but let’s try for a second” Julia continues, pulling back in her seat as she explains whilst Jaime leans slightly forward, her back no longer pressing against the metal support behind herself. 

“The leaders built two different sides, both argued that the other was the bad side, and they constantly feuded with each other instead of the people in charge” Julia persists, “meanwhile, the people at the top kept making millions, getting all buddy-buddy with billionaires, and screwed them over while all the rest watched- and they never paid the price for it!”

“What are you getting at?” Jaime queries, looking Julia in the eyes as her arms uncross, placing themselves against the table as she leans into it, “we started off talking about you killing Lazarus- how did we get to this?”

“Because what Lazarus zoned-in on me for was trying to keep the peacekeepers in line just enough for them not to make a mess of things” Julia explains, “but now that they have, all you need to do is remind people that they’re the bad guys, and keep everyone else happy and fat. Then you’ve got one side screaming at the other, and you can keep yourself as untouchable as you want while they all think the way to take you down is by crushing the other side.”

“That’s ridiculous” Jaime retorts, making peace with the confession in her own way whilst quickly coming to a refusal of the woman’s efforts. 

“Is it? Alright then, chancellor- how else are you going to keep them in line?” Julia asks, challenging the woman to think through the environment she’s laid out, “on one side, you’ve got a group blaming you for murdering one of their members. On the other, you’ve got the rest of the republic looking at you as the woman that just murdered a man and gave the most-dictatorial speech to them since fuckin’ Hitler.”

Parting her lips, Jaime quickly lets out a sigh before lowering her head, staring at the floor whilst Julia continues, not allowing the woman a moment of reprieve to think her way out of the circumstances. “As far as right now goes- you need a bad guy” the medical savant remarks, matching the chancellor’s posture by leaning forward, both hands pressed against the table’s smooth surface as the leader’s eyes lift toward her, “both sides are angry right now, and that bad guy is you.”

Nostrils flaring, Jaime keeps her head slightly lifted toward the doctor, remaining entirely silent as she keeps her body leant over the table, listening to the quiet, soundproof room overcome her, not an ounce of sound to be heard from beyond the sturdy walls. Swallowing the spit in her mouth, the chancellor scowls whilst maintaining the locked-sight with Julia, letting the thought float through her mind as options find themselves becoming increasingly limited.

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Gripping the wheel tightly, Chevy manoeuvres his truck around a fleet of Jaime’s militia, their arms taken against a rowdy crowd stationed near the makeshift border of the former West Los Angeles. Rolling to a stop, the vehicle parks to the side of a mostly-empty road, the vehicles that had lined the curbs long since removed, left with only a handful of military vehicles and crates of food and ammunition.

Climbing out from his seat, Chevy slams his door shut in favour of joining a familiar face at the gates, the woman’s uniform worn with the old flag of Los Angeles on its extension. “They’re not going away” Carly remarks, stood atop one of the walls as her mentor ascends the nearby ladder to reach her, both eyes held on the increasing cluster of survivors simply looking for sanctuary, “they grew by nearly double overnight.”

“Where the hell are they all coming from?” Chevy asks in astonishment, finally reaching the platform to look out at a vast sea of desperate civilians, all waving their hats and paper currency in the air with hopes of being picked out of the crowd. “Everywhere” Carly replies, not providing much in the way of hope for the insanity to settle down.

“It’s not a secret that Los Ang- I mean, the Republic is still standing” Carly replies, hearing a few sparse voices from within the borders shout as her end of the conversation persists, “whoever got a hold of Jaime’s speech earlier knows we’re up and running.” Confused, Chevy shakes his head at the large gathering of hundreds, each occupying a plot of land amidst the charred rubble of what still stands of the former city that remains beyond their control.

“No offence to Jaime, but if I didn’t know any better- I would think what she did earlier would’ve kept me as far away from this place as possible” Chevy remarks, a declaration that Carly refuses. “People are desperate. There’s no government, no order, and no civilisation beyond us” the young woman proclaims, shaking her head as she nudges her shoulders towards the mass horde just beyond them, “at the very least, we’re the last beacon of a functioning society left.”

Unsure of how to reply, Chevy opts to remain silent, instead looking out at the large mob as their focuses redirect, slowly but surely silencing their pleas for entry and replacing them with utter bewilderment. “How many more people can we hold? We don’t even have enough food for the people we already have here” the man inquires, slowly watching the eyes of those beneath him continue to pull away, yet to truly strike him with any amount of concern.

“I’m sure we can hold as many as we need, we just can’t feed them” Carly replies, keeping her gun at waist-level whilst turning back to look at the man beside her, “we’re already pushing our limits with what we can give to the people here. If this wall falls, or the militia falls, or- whatever- this place is coming down with it.”

“Well I know that, it’s-” Chevy begins to reply, matching his friend’s efforts by redirecting his attention to her, only for the sight his eyes fall upon to drift beyond the wall they occupy, his breath taken just as his ability to speak is. “Wh- what?” Carly asks, watching the man’s face slowly lower into a look of disbelief, unable to understand the change in his visage without looking to the source herself, spinning around to take her eyes toward the distance.

As the sun begins to set, turning the sky into a shade of solid blue, Jaime leans against her desk beneath the light of a nearby lantern, her hand guiding the tip of a pen over a stack of loose papers, writing out one, long note before her hand begins to cramp. Tossing the instrument aside and placing the letter atop a stack of other, similarly-long stretches of text, the chancellor reaches for a glass of wine as she leans back in her leather chair, called to attention at a rapid set of knocks.

“Yeah” Jaime exhaustedly calls out to the figure on the other side of her door, watching the woman who’d raised her enter with her younger sister alongside. “They’re burning it!” Kennedy exclaims, breaking the news before her mother has the chance to, the vague statement putting a confused look on the chancellor’s face. “They’re burning the tower” Alex proclaims in a much more calm tone of voice, the words she uses however do little to lower the confusion her daughter’s had.

“What’s going on?” the bemused republic leader queries, watching her sister sprint past her desk in search of the back of the room, the action alone drawing the chancellor’s eyes toward the depth of her office. Soon subsiding, the look of puzzlement on Jaime’s face turns into one of shock, her eyes wandering to where Kennedy resides and where her mother soon descends upon, the target of their attention not remaining a mystery for even a moment longer.

Slowly spinning her chair away from the desk, Jaime leaves her glass of wine beside the pile of notes and embarks for the window in the back of the room, her sister standing by one side whilst her mother soon occupies the other. In silence, the woman’s feet carry her toward the unoccupied space in the centre, the Morris family coming together to stare out at the first night the Angelino Republic has to offer.

In the great distance, flames soar through the sky, lighting up the evening that soon turns into a dark, starry night in the unoccupied half of Los Angeles. Rising out of the assortment of abandoned, permanently-dark skyscrapers stands the single tower in the heart of the city centre, its once-windows now empty holes that a raging inferno bursts through, setting the entire structure’s length in a flurry of untameable flames.

Without the words to say, Jaime stares with wide eyes just as her mother and sister do, the display dawning a new, unpredictable era over the self-proclaimed sovereign nation. Pressing her lips together, the chancellor’s teeth press into each other as her jaw clenches, the hands she holds by each side balling into a fist. 

Reflected in her eyes, the cylindrical superstructure burns without stop, the presentation not one calling the chancellor to action, but one displaying the impossible task of stopping the ball she’s already put into motion. Letting out a deep sigh through her nose, Jaime continues to stare intensely at the burning high-rise, taking in its ongoing destruction whilst taking her own mental note of the anger that courses through her, ready to take the crisis actor involved head-on.

== Dire ==