The Attempt

jacob martin was leaving work at 9:45 pm on a Sunday. The week had turned into a swamp and he was still trying to trudge out of top-hat-high brack water. He still had work to do but the office was making him feel claustrophobic so he was heading home. He pulled on his jacket, slung on his bag and clicked off the lights as he got in the elevator. jacob pushed for the lobby and his body lurched into the wall smashing his hip into the bronze railing and his temple into the glass mirror. The elevator chamber was falling. After eight floors, it crashed with the floor.

Fortunately for jacob, air resistance and partially functioning breaks buffered the impact; the X-rays would later only reveal minor fractures in his left arm, which he collapsed on with the impact. The crash had knocked out the lights and jacob was slow to reorient himself. He had only just pulled himself up with the help of the railing when there was a thump on the ceiling. Then there was some scuffling followed by the whine of an electric drill. Someone a handshake away wanted him dead.

But who? Of all the people who wanted him dead, who was this? That must have been a mosquito buzzing around mr. martin’s ear. Was it the same assassin as the country mansion? Was it landers? Was it the magistrate?

The magistrate??? (That’s you, dear slightly confused reader)

Jacob’s latest publications had thrown up a set back that triggered the magistrate’s anger. He published a piece conjuring a story of a black mist creeping over the LosciousLock’s border and a missing family. The article was absolutely shocking. And all the more shocking if you thought it were true and most people did. The citizens of nilbmah were up and begging for arms, at least that’s how the media showed it. And to be fair the media was right. Even before skewing, polls showed that around 80% of the population favored retaliation. But the media didn’t show, or rather showed hidden behind the classifieds, the 20% who were skeptical. Mr. martin reserved the headlines for fever-inducing articles that fed into the nation’s craze.

So why was the magistrate irate? Well, some of the 20% were able to jump out from behind the classifieds. A few groups of journalists and academics sprouted up their own publications. But the day of censoring was over. The magistrate was clear on that. Dealing with these deviants was jacob’s job. So the nilbmah post butted heads with its rivals and for the most part, the post had the larger antlers. For the most part. The deviants had a trump card.

andrew garner was an extremely popular chancellor in nilbmahian politburo and part of the 20%. Praised for his beautification of the citadel and recreational advancement projects, admired for his charity work and loved for his dionysian parties, garner was the biggest name in nilbmah politics, below the president of course. garner owed his entry into politics to the financial backing of his sister, elizabeth garner, the chief of directors (nilbmah’s higher taxed and regulated version of a CEO) of the biggest cell phone company in nilbmah. That, with his popularity let him be a wild card. He didn’t need to please anyone and usually he didn’t, which made him all the more popular with the public. So when the time came to vote on the militarization of nilbmah and the declaration of war, garner alone backed the 20%. And more than that, he completely blocked the rest of the politburo by invoking a constitutional clause that prevented nilbmah from going to war without any shed blood. There was no evidence that the missing family was dead or wounded. Maybe they had just gone for a picnic and gotten lost. So war was waiting on evidence of blood or an amendment of the clause. The former would be tricky since the family in the article had probably actually moved to LusciousLocks just before it went dark (only martin knew that) and latter, even with the national frenzy, would be time consuming. In either case the magistrate was pissed.

The night after the vote, the magistrate broke into jacob’s apartment at 4 a.m., ripped him out of his bed by his neck, whispered with the same intensity as shouting “fix it martin or else,” threw him on the ground and left. The ordeal took no more than 30 seconds. Jacob might have confused it with a nightmare if his neck weren’t on fire. The next day, as he walked to work, he found his favorite statue of Daedalus over Icarus, the one to which he had an almost autistic attachment, that very statue had been demolished.

This had been on Friday and it was now Sunday. Maybe the magistrate was following through. But that wouldn’t have been so smart. 1st, controlling politicians didn’t really fall into his jurisdiction and 2nd, he was doing an exceptional job with public opinion. Even with garner’s popularity only 25% supported his recent actions. The magistrate would have a hard time replacing jacob.

So if it wasn’t the magistrate bringing the elevator to a crash, was it landers? Ever since jacob volunteered to investigate the mansion assassin, the tension with landers had condensed. Nasty glances, deconstructive criticism and worse were exchanged. The day garner blocked national armament was Christmas come early for landers. But jacob had a huge edge on discovering the country mansion assassin and jacob let landers know it every chance he got. Removing a rival might be easier than showing him up.

And speaking of the country mansion assassin, maybe the magistrate hadn’t been the only target and maybe this was the second strike. The assassin must have known how close jacob was to finding her out. (That’s right, I said her. But I’m also a jerk.) Considering his betrayal, martin had a surprisingly easy time slipping back into the underground current and re-establishing his old connections. Sure, he did a skunk’s job of covering his tracks, but even so you’d think his recent publications would be fertilizer for suspicion. However, his tale of government threats seemed to appease even the most cautious of his contacts.

In any case, the mosaic martin put together from all the sources he dug up showed a fragile smattering of resistance groups with static infested communication among groups. However, one group had begun grow but there was still a lot of uncertainty about it. None of his sources had any knowledge of the leader but there were suggestions that it had affiliations with all the major deviant publications and even with garner. The only clear thing about this up-and-coming resistance group was its attitude: immediate action. According to the person, who had heard from the person who had been lucky enough to get called to a meeting (that was as close as jacob could get), they believed the government was about to cut the legs of the people out from under them sending them rolling down a dangerous trench to war. Not that they were against war – that might be inevitable – but they wanted transparency. The government was trying to send the nation into a war blindfolded for what must be ulterior motivations. And the government was just about to do it. Only immediate, absolutely now, action could save the nation from tragedy.

jacob was almost certain the assassin came from this group and he was about to discover who. Going a step further than any of his leads, he traced the funds of all the different resistive activities. What he found were suspiciously numerous ties to mobile 9, the cell phone company directed by andrew garner’s sister. He knew he was narrowing in when, the company refused answer questions about these random financial trails. With a little more grease he would discover the assassin.

So that, more or less and more less than more, was what jacob was thinking in the three seconds it took the assassin the drill off the top of the fallen elevator. At least it would have been if those three seconds were stretched like a rubber band into three minutes.

As soon as he heard the thumps on the ceiling, jacob dropped to the floor, whether out of instincts or fear its hard to tell but it worked to his advantage. In those three seconds he decided to play dead. Drill after painful drill, mr. martin resisted the itching urge to look up at what was happening. Finally, there was a clanking sound and a tiny bit of light entered the chamber. The noises ended and there was a great pause of silence. His assassin was watching him. Not doing anything just watching. The wait played havoc with jacob; he suddenly became intensely aware of all the itches and aches of his position. Staying still was like torture. And not before he thought he couldn’t stay still any longer jacob felt more than heard the assassin land on the floor no more than a foot away. After another pause filled with weight shifting and as much pacing as you can do in an elevator with a sprawled out body, jacob felt two small hands flip him off his chest and onto his back. Right then he opened his eyes to a face he was not at all expecting and kicked as hard as he could.