Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ To Those About To Die ❯ Chapter 3- New Order ( Chapter 3 )

Author's Note:

That quote Berger found written on the desk was from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land, part I. The Burial of the Dead":

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Yes, I can easily imagine a young Brad Crawford writing this on a desk at Rosenkreuz. Writing very small. And using indelible ink.

Chapter Three -- New Order

Rosenkreuz refused to die.

Though the instructors and the structure of its world were shattered, it remained alive through the legacy of broken souls and violence it had instilled in each of us.

The students had become the instructors. We taught each other how to fight and how to survive. Those proficient in languages taught those able to learn. Those proficient in their talents taught the novices. And those proficient in the dealing of death taught everyone.

Determined to be owned no longer, we traded our masters for a new set and congratulated ourselves on our freedom. The irony was nauseating.

They say chaos is made up of change and opportunity. Change we had. Opportunity followed, in an unexpected form. We all knew that Rosenkreuz was part school and part laboratory. I don't think any of us quite understood the connection between the two. During the Purge, the main part of the labs had gone up in flames, destroying the experimentation ward and the punishment cells and everything within. But the clinic, located far enough from the labs to be almost innocent, housed the records.

A crowd of students paused by the clinic doors to watch as a healer, I don't know his name, went loudly and decisively mad. He planted himself in the hallway, screaming and gesturing like an evangelist, but instead of religious tracts he flung fistfuls of discs and papers in the faces of those who had come to witness. A thin green folder fluttered apart and landed at my feet.

When is a surprise not a surprise? When it is something done at Rosenkreuz. The papers and discs revealed part of the truth.

The school was the laboratory. Social controls, mind control, gene therapy, immunology, psi enhancement strategies: these were all part and parcel of the training of psionic operatives that was the cornerstone of Esset. The inoculations and other medical treatments we had all received at one time or another had served multiple purposes. I learned that not only was I immune to malaria, I was also carrying a low-level dose of radiation in my spine. Most telepath sorts were.

We found damn little documentation on the long-term effects of such things. I only knew that I wanted it out of me. I knew it was only imagination, but after learning what chemicals I carried inside my body, I felt increasingly sick. It was like discovering a time bomb in one's stomach.

Rosenkreuz healers were healers in name only, as they had the ability to heal but the training to inflict other effects. After a hurried survey of the experimentation documents, the healers closed ranks, expelled those unwilling to take the next step, and set to work isolating and removing the contaminants from one another. Once they had it figured out, they opened the doors for the rest of us. I suppose that was their way of seeking penance.

It was excruciating. But it was done.

Student after student submitted to the procedure in the hopes that it might reverse the damage already done. The healers spent nearly as much time cleaning up and decontaminating as they did actively pulling the poisons out of us. The substances they removed ranged from solvents to inert chemicals to radioactive elements. None could say what the long-term health effects of those toxins might be. We could all be walking dead men. It didn't much matter; Rosenkreuz never intended us to have long and fruitful lives: long was obviously not an option, and fruitful had been sabotaged. We were all effectively sterile. Somehow, the knowledge that they would not allow psi talents to breed made me wonder what else they had in mind.

The healers worked until they passed out from fatigue, then rested and worked more. Though we searched the records, we never did discover the intention behind the toxins, though many speculated that the daily "vitamin supplements" we had been given served to counteract any damage. Perhaps it was a way to keep us loyal. It had a certain dark logic to it: betray the fold and die a lingering death.

I tried not to think about it too much.

About two weeks after the Purge, some of the leader-elect students returned to the facility. But only some. I suspect that the widespread murder extended past Rosenkreuz, enveloping all layers of the Esset substructure. Of course, in the chaos, I am certain that some of the ones who did not return had, instead, escaped. Whether they would remain free depended on the judgment of the new lords of the manor. Esset, too, refused to die.

And we all knew that Esset owned Rosenkreuz, and every living thing within its foul walls.

It was a race against time. If we could prove to our masters that we were more capable than the dead had been, perhaps we would survive to taste freedom someday.

As for the leaders-elect, when they came they brought news.

The ceremony had, in fact, begun weeks ago, somewhere in Japan. According to the beliefs of Esset, the rite was to bring an ancient demon-god back from beyond death to rule a world of their making. But the ceremony had been foiled, and now the three High Elders of Esset lay dead and decomposing in the Pacific Ocean.

Eight men were responsible.

Eight men.

A mere eight men had torn down that which had taken centuries to build. They had broken the spine of Esset, and crippled Rosenkreuz.

And four of the eight were alumni.

Brad Crawford.

Farfarello.

Naoe Nagi.

And Schuldig, The Guilty One, the telepath with flaming red hair.

Inwardly I cheered.

Officially, the new rulers of Rosenkreuz proclaimed the four outlaw. It was whispered by some that Esset feared the four, that those capable of destroying the Elders would never stop until all of Esset had fallen. Others speculated that they had stolen the magic of the Triad and it must be taken back. I figured that Esset did not appreciate the bloody nose dealt it, and would slay them out of spite.

All available teams would be sent to find them and make them pay for what they had done. Surely they could not hide long from the coordinated might of Rosenkreuz.

In the end, it would take eight years to find them.