Devolution Read Online Free Page A

hostages when the captain stomped back into the room. “Why us?”
    “Don’t flatter yourself.” Stopping in mid-stride the mighty soldier turned. “It’s not you we want, it’s your position.”
    “How’d you even get in here?”
    He smirked. “We have some friends who share our interests. Be calm, you won’t be hurt, we just needed the audience.” He gestured towards the window where thousands of people and hundreds of media waited. “And you gave us a global one.”
    “Who are you?”
    The captain grabbed a black backpack from next to the windows. He unzipped the top and pulled out what appeared to be a rectangular pamphlet. The backpack contained thousands. He counted out four.
    “My name is Captain Erik Brooks.” He crouched down next to his hostages and cut their hands loose. “I served in MI6 for decades. Many of us have,” he nodded towards his colleagues. “But you know nothing.”
    The hostages listened intently; void of the fear that once paralyzed them.
    These pamphlets highlight some of the worst I saw, and did. Torture, extortion, embezzlement, mass murder.” He handed them the pamphlets, one-by-one. “Everything you need to know is in there. You will see pictures of our most beloved politicians making crooked deals with terrorists and dictators. You will see the bodies, the drugs, the weapons, the money. Our work over the past few decades spelled out before the world. The people must know the truth.”
    “Why all this?” asked one of the hostages.
    “We needed a big impression,” the captain sneered. “We had to separate ourselves from all the nonsense. This is no conspiracy, my friends. This is real.”
    “Oh, my God,” uttered one of the MPs as he scanned the material. He looked up at the captain in shock.
    “The government’s been on to us for a while.” The captain walked towards the windows with his hands folded behind his back, chest out. “They wiretap our phones. Read our messages. But it’s hard to catch the people who perfected those strategies.”
    “If this is true, it will ruin us,” warned one of the MPs as he read. “You’re a damned traitor.”
    The captain smiled. “History may judge me however it wishes, gentlemen. I am a patriot of the highest order.”
    He looked at his watch, then peered outside. “First Lieutenant, it’s time. Head to the roof and enlighten the world.”
    The MP on the end whispered, “He’s going to throw those pamphlets off the roof while the world watches.” He looked down at his copy. “And we’re his legitimacy.”
    The lieutenant snatched up four backpacks and threw them over his shoulder. After one step towards the door, he stopped in his path. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped.
    With great intensity, the British military burst into the room and opened fire. Though the sound was deafening and unmistakable, all the masses saw from the street below was shattering glass and the flash of high velocity rounds.
     
    *
     
    “You’re going to have to go out there eventually,” said Colonel Levanetz to a somber Commissioner of the London Police Department. The men stood looking out a small window at a swarm of reporters.
    “I know,” he acknowledged. He turned to the colonel with sympathetic eyes. “I deal with some of the worst scum you can imagine, and those people scare me most.”
    The colonel patted the commissioner on the upper back, then made his way down the hall. The four MPs sat alone in a guarded office. They were visibly tired, stressed, and traumatized.
    “I gather you remember your mission?” The colonel’s question sounded more like a command. “Your country is counting on you.”
    Although the situation was over, the four men still felt like hostages. Yet, being in no position to ponder the consequences, they followed the colonel’s lead.
    When the ornate doors of Westminster opened, the hostages, military guards, and Police Commissioner, emerged into a media frenzy. The flash of cameras and screams