Terminal Reset Omnibus: The Coming of The Wave Page 21

  She spent several days on her project and was seriously thinking about giving up and moving on when she spied him. He was walking with another girl, who was obviously not enjoying his company. Sophia hid and followed them discreetly. Eventually, they went to his house, where he and the young girl entered.

  Sophia waited for an hour, near the house. She knew the man’s routine, and his proclivities.

  She figured that he was plying the girl with some Russian vodka and fruit juice, and having her try on different outfits. He had a definite schedule he would keep, and she knew the timing and cues for what constituted arousing him.

  Sophia mentally timed him, feeling rather than knowing what was occurring in the house. Then, suddenly, she heard a muffled scream. This was new, to her. She made a decision and went to the back of the house. She made sure no one had seen her as she carefully walked up to a window. It was open, and she peered inside.

  What she saw nearly made her throw up.

  The girl was bleeding from her mouth and a pool of blood was beneath her naked bottom, and the man was in the bathroom, washing his privates, which were red with the girl’s blood. Sophia crawled into the room, through the window, being careful not to make any noise. The girl was sobbing but seemed to be having trouble catching her breath. She looked past Sophia, not actually seeing her. She screamed and Sophia started, looking at the man in the bathroom to see how he would react. He nonchalantly continued his cleaning up, muttering and chuckling to himself.

  He yanked his flaccid penis, splashing water all over it and his belly and testicles, trying to rinse the blood off.

  Sophia was suddenly completely calm. She knew what she was going to do. She spied a large vase with no flowers in it sitting on the nightstand. She crept over to it, and picked it up, then moved close to the bathroom door.

  She waited by the door for the man to come out, casually holding the large vase by her side.

  As the man walked past her, towards the bed, she brought the vessel up and over in an arc onto the top of his head. The vase smashed to pieces, and he collapsed with a “Whuff!” sound, onto the bed, next to the bleeding girl.

  Sophia walked over to the bed and grabbed the man’s penis and testicles. She castrated him, then amputated his penis, and left it next to his ear.

  Then, she stuck the blade into his left kidney. She twisted the knife, and the man groaned. She took the knife out and cut the hamstrings of both legs. Then, she stuck him in the anus and sliced a massive cut up his backside.

  She withdrew the knife and left. A few hours later, she tossed the knife into a river.

  Sophia then traveled into Somalia and found herself lost and alone. She managed to survive by stealing food and sleeping in abandoned buildings, or shacks, or the restrooms of public buildings. She avoided being captured by the police, in spite of some close calls. She watched as the United States military tried to instill some sense of order to the place.

  *****

  One day, she heard of a youth group that was seeking members for holy missions. A lonely memory, of her father, briefly surfaced, and was lost. She went to the group, mostly from hunger and loneliness, and decided to see what they were about. The group was Al-Shabbab.

  When they asked her name, she told them it was “N’yala”. They did not question her, and gave her food and shelter, with the stipulation that she must not tell anyone what the group was doing. She readily agreed and ate the first decent meal she could remember in months. She fell immediately asleep on one of the cots in the mission, not even bothering to remove her clothing.

  At first, she thought that the ideology and danger were not worth her time, but she reflected a bit on her situation, and the past events of her short life.

  She decided that her life was following its path and that she would see where it would lead her, with no regard for the effects of the trials and tribulations she had undergone. She figured that each new day might bring an interesting set of problems and that there may be some reason she had survived as long as she had.

  The religious fanaticism held no interest for her, but she found that one or two of the young men in the group did. She found she had an interesting effect on them. They fought each other to impress her. She could manipulate them easily, and would set them on each other at the slightest whim for her own amusement. When the leaders of the group saw this, rather than quash it, they encouraged her.

  “N’yala” was singled out for special training, and she became adept at psychological manipulation and taught how to play mind games. She was also given training in small arms and martial combat techniques. Pains were taken to not injure her, nor mar her features. She was growing into a striking woman, and the leaders saw her as an asset who could be relied upon to make inroads into the enemy organizations.

  They taught her how to read, and do mathematics. Over the course of several years, she became fluent in all the local languages, and English, French and German. Her father’s innate intellect was making itself known in powerful ways.

  *****

  N’yala was voracious, learning at a rapid rate and making up for all the time lost during her childhood. She was able to comprehend advanced subjects easily and had a knack for biology and chemistry. She was taught the essentials for making explosives and learned the intricacies of Improvised Explosive Devices.

  For her eighteenth birthday, she was given a mission to set charges along a road leading from Mogadishu. She executed it flawlessly and killed twelve United States Marines as they traveled in a convoy into the city.

  After that, her leaders decided to see if they could harness her intellect and prowess militarily.

  They agreed that her set of skills, combined with her appearance and ruthlessness, was a rare thing and that they should cultivate it further.

  It was a fatal mistake for them.

  N’yala rose to power, first by orchestrating skirmishes between individual teenaged boys in the unit. She was trying to find people to follow her blindly, and would isolate them by promising them sex. She would pay attention to a particular youth, and shower him with attention.

  When he began to brag to the others about her, she would shun him, and belittle him in front of the others. She started fights, with her as the prize. Several of the boys were maimed and one finally was killed, before the leaders took action. By that time, she had enlisted four of the teens to her side.

  It was enough. During a meeting of the group, she stood up and barked a short order, whereby the four boys stabbed each of the men standing next to them. The four, all leaders of the Al Shabbab, died staring incredulously at the girl who had outsmarted them. After all, they had survived attacks by military forces, other tribes, and other subordinates for decades.

  To a man, they died, holding in their intestines with bloody hands, listening to the taunts and laughs of a young girl far more worldly than anything in their imaginations.

  N’yala cemented her hold over the rest of the group by having several of the others killed immediately, by her thugs. They unceremoniously grabbed two girls and a boy and slit their throats in front of the others.

  “Now,” she said, “I am the boss.”

  “You will all know me by my secret name,” she told them.

  “You will all call me N’yala, which means ‘flame’ in my native tongue. You will follow and obey me. Or you will join these infidels,” she said.

  No one questioned her again.

  *****

  She began campaigns that would have most military leaders in awe of her abilities. She consolidated many of the outlying factions, avoiding the major militia groups in favor of alliances with the major strategic partners who strengthened her position. In turn, she eliminated competitors of these allies, mercilessly assuring there was no one who could gather enough resources to thwart her drive to power.

  Local warlords began to fear her and came up with a nickname – “Saaxirad” - “The Witch”.

  N’yala managed to create a tremendous p
ower base, utilizing the same techniques that had been taught to her. She moved often, never staying in one place very long, and learned the ways to avoid technological surveillance. She used body doubles, changed her appearance, and never wrote anything down. She practiced operational security at all levels and trained continuously with sparring partners to challenge her skills. Sometimes, these partners would become lovers, and sometimes corpses.

  Her followers felt it was an honor to be asked to her bed or the ring, but all felt trepidation and fear in her presence. While she made occasional examples of the weaker of her tribesmen, she also outlawed clitorectomies and other genital mutilation of females. She had no issue with ritual scarring for the boys but forbade it for the female contingent.

  N’yala developed a reputation amongst the intelligence community. Several overtures were attempted. Most failed, but a few did manage to arrive at some point of mutual respect. She could provide humint on certain activities but always demanded a quid pro quo arrangement, either by increasing her arms supply, or her leverage over her contacts.

  *****

  For the last four years, N’yala had been concentrating her power in Somalia. Having been instrumental in fighting insurgent actions with Al-Shabbab, she had mastered strategy and tactics for guerilla operations.

  In late 2011, one of N’yala’s raiding parties had intercepted a courier in transit to one of the other outposts. She was able to infer from the reports they had obtained that the companies were looking to perform studies on remote African villages far from the planned release areas.

  Initially, she felt that there was no real value to the intelligence and was thinking about giving it over to one of her Mossad contacts when a copy of a one-time pad arrived from another raid.

  She then spent several days working with some of her people to decipher the messages. When she was done, she realized that there was some real money to be made by parlaying with the conglomerate.

  She arranged, through a series of cut-outs, to meet with the head of the OMTSR unit, and attempt to meet one of the leaders from the conglomerate.

  Her plan was simple - she would recruit her fellow villagers, luring them with promises of great riches. She would tell them they were going to be heroes and gain much fame for their efforts in helping these important conglomerates.

  Then, they would be used as test subjects for the vaccine trials. The survivors would be rewarded and seen as blessed by the spirits. The others would simply be cremated.

  That many of those loyal to her would soon be dead was not her concern, and she actually thought that the potential of some of the villagers being successfully treated would bolster her position amongst the rest.

  She could always blame their deaths on bad spirits, or play upon the superstitious people in other ways.

  Her reality was that she was going to become wealthy and gain control of the area by eradicating her enemies and placating the corporate officers.

  *****

  She decided she would allow them unfettered access to the resources of the area and an essentially endless pool of slave labor from her people. In return, she would be made the de facto ruler, with a puppet government and a prime minister as a figurehead, who would enforce her orders.

  Testing in Somalia had commenced on human subjects in the Fall of 2013. In December of that year, international media began noting and reporting on cases of Ebola in other areas of Africa, unaware of the origin of the pandemic.

  Agents had gone to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia with vials of the modified Ebola and released them into local water supplies.

  They had been told the vials contained harmless bacteria, with radioisotopic tracer gene fragments, that would facilitate studies of the spread of Giardia in public water supplies.

  This was a standard practice in many countries, where the local centers for disease control and other organizations attempted to understand the transmission rates and factors for viruses and other public health hazards.

  Subsequent to their dispersal of the contents of the vials, each of the agents was summarily dispatched and buried in several pieces, in several remote locations, where they would not be disturbed for a very long time.

  When The Wave hit, other agents had just distributed and released the vials of the disease in major population centers around the world.

  These agents also were not told of the deadly content they were carrying and suspected only that they were assisting in a project to track the spread of potential pandemics with a non-lethal tagged bacterium.

  When The Wave was approaching, no members of the conglomerate had given any real thought as to what its effects on the trials might be. It was seen as an anomaly by the corporate leaders; few of them had any connections to the groups (such as SPARTACUS), who were studying it. (There were several Elite members amongst them, but they were taking their lead from the Queen of England, and Diana.)

  *****

  All the while, Amadu Mfala had diligently gone about his work, trying to save the lives of the infected villagers, and was totally unaware that his youngest daughter, Sophia, had survived the Rwandan Genocide.

  *****

  One morning, looking in on his patient, he was relieved to see she was responding to his treatments in a fashion he knew meant she was finally out of danger.

  He had been hydrating her and using a new drug treatment regimen being offered by one of the larger pharmaceutical companies.

  She was looking chipper, and actually eating food and keeping it down. She was still pale and tired, but this turn of events buoyed his spirits immensely. Her voice was still tiny, and she sipped water carefully while the nurses looked to her needs.

  Amadu was standing next to the bed, reading her charts when there was a commotion outside. He turned to look and saw a group of young boys, armed with AK-47s, surrounding the villa.

  Suddenly, one of them burst in and shot the nurse through the torso. The nurse gagged and fell over, dead. Amadu threw himself across the room, trying to shield the little girl from the others.

  He was struck in the head, and knocked to the floor. He got to his knees, swaying like a drunken soldier.

  Dr. Mfala found himself staring down the bore of a Chinese reproduction of the infamous AK-47 assault rifle.

  He looked around, not sure of what was going on.

  The young bully in front of him, stuffing the muzzle of the gun into his face, was only about thirteen. His compatriots were of similar ages, maybe as young as nine years old. The oldest child there was sixteen, but evidently hired only as muscle.

  The concussion he knew he had gotten from being smacked in the skull with an assault rifle made it difficult to concentrate.

  He took stock of his condition. Blood poured from his lacerated scalp and was drenching his white shirt. This was not really a big deal, he told himself, medically speaking, as head wounds always bled a lot. Although, he thought, dryly, that it was a pretty impressive amount of blood.

  “Listen to me!” shouted the boy. “You leave now, or you die! Now! You leave now or die now!”

  Amadu thought he just might be able to make some kind of headway with the boy, when a woman had walked into his room, and barked an order at the young thug, sparing his life.

  She looked very familiar, and for a moment Amadu Mfala had a brief feeling of déjà vu.

  He blinked and waved a hand across his forehead. His eyes were apparently deceiving him.

  The woman looked a lot like his long-dead wife.

  She was dressed well and showed presence of command. She did not look as though she fit in with the boy-soldiers, but they all deferred to her.

  There was a low murmuring, and he realized that the soldiers were in awe of the woman, but also afraid of her. And now, they were scared of him as well.

  He did not understand what had happened.

  He looked carefully at the woman’s face and saw hardness in her cold eyes.

  She glared down her aquiline nose at him.


  He began to stand and walk toward her, but she motioned for him to stand his ground.

  “Father,” she spat.

  “Who are you to call me that?” he asked.

  “Once I was Sophia Anderson. You may call me N’yala.”

  Amadu Mfala sat down hard.

  His youngest daughter was still alive.

  Amadu’s head began to swim, and he passed out.

  *****

  ROME, ITALY – WAVE DAY

  Dr. Giovanni Pasarelli was on his knees praying to God for forgiveness. Ever since The Wave had impacted the earth he had been lost.

  Giovanni Passarelli had come from meager beginnings to form one of the most powerful religious organizations in the world. Learning from evangelists such as Jim Baker, Billy Graham, and Pat Robertson he had built a small parish following into an international juggernaut.

  Passarelli had poured most of his life into trying to understand the workings of the Lord. He had seen misery and suffering of innocents hand-in-hand with the intense greed and lewd behaviors of the vilest sinners being rewarded.

  He had long ago given up trying to justify the mysterious ways in which God worked his creation. However, he had discovered a way to capitalize on both the generosity and gullibility of his flock.

  *****

  Dr. Giovanni Passarelli was not an evil person, at least to his mind. In fact, many charitable organizations benefited greatly from the millions of dollars he donated to their works. He was lauded as one of the most influential and progressive religious leaders in the Western world. Perceived as always being a humble man, he was welcomed into the company of many political and professional organizations.

  His charming manner coupled with a shrewd business mind allowed him to prosper. He managed to avoid scandal in spite of having been married several times. He always treated his ex-wives generously and none would speak ill of him.

  Dr. Passarelli had formed an organization called the Mission of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Ministries.