The Quppis’ ground was a whole kingdom of its own, spanning a hundred kilometres in the centre of cliffs and tall, impassable mountain and dense, endless plantations making it well safeguarded. Out in the Meadow Hills – the exterior surroundings of their barracks – were thousands of rangers moving around, so that no one would come close to discovering where the Quppis’ domain was.
The whole land area included two parts: The Spheres and The Circus divided completely by a tall, great wall known as the Partition. The Spheres contained eight giant spherical geodesic domes that housed different phalanxes of their army. Behind them was a glassy dark tower with a pointed peak, no one lived there but Sawer himself. About thirty kilometres from there was The Partition and after that was The Circus was a concoction of funny-looking buildings, countless numbers of them in different shapes and heights. There was an onion-shaped building, a pyramidal-shaped monument, a plank house with a doll as its face, and an English-styled duplex that was painted conspicuously in all the colours of the rainbow. While they might induce a chuckle, they were in the least just architectural works of art, Sawer had a way of making the most dangerous places less creepy. In one of those buildings was a nuclear plant. Where a nuclear bomb was being built.
But where was the whole place really?
Right in the heart of the unexplored, dense and convoluted forest of Singalort lay the settlement of the Order of The Quppis and that was the underground that all the members of authority have decided to discuss about the prevalent insecurity. They had actually gone there to celebrate the twenty-sixth anniversary of The Blazing Empire that other people called The Order of The Quppis, twenty-six years to commemorate a job well-done by all its members across the sphere of the country. The forest had become their headquarters and it housed the eight hundred thousand members of the sect, a number twice the number of military in the state – that now even didn’t exist anymore.
General Owen Sawer marched proudly across the columns of his battalion as the drums of the ceremony beat on. They lay out in long rows and columns, in their uniforms with their weapons in their arms, staring up and straight, the pin that had been attached to their collars would not let them do otherwise.
All the Quppis soldiers were coordinated, coordinated not in a way that usual soldiers were but in a way that androids were, moving under one single program. Like a school of fish. The soldiers had different logos on the left side of their vests. The leaders of the matching procession had the α and those who followed had the β and the final group had ω-sign on it.
Sawer kept marching around the rows of his men. There was a special bodyguard who was walking right behind him. He had an alpha logo on him too but it was engraved in probably, gold dust. Just behind him was the president of the country, President Pilot Hundred; all the seven governors that led Dexter and eighteen other big politicians whom Sawer had successfully initiated into his team.As the marching procession was over, they went over to their canopy and Sawer smiled to himself.
He remembered how everything had started and it showed of how much a resilient man he was. When he recovered from the hospital and had set up his mind to do terrible things to the entire country of Dexter, he started with corruption. As a top general in the armed forces of the country, he diverted the billions that had been set aside for the country’s army which included; extra bonuses and allowances for the soldiers and manufacture of ammunitions. Two years in, he resigned and started to plot his plan. At that time, the terrorism group was only being prefabricated between him and nine of his other allies whom he had managed to bring to his side. The plan had been set from the beginning: To end Dexter mercilessly and with alarming speed.
With trillions of accumulated cash with him, he drew in more soldiers as mercenaries and from them on, the only way was up. Those of them he managed to brainwash he did, those of them they had to initiate forcefully were forced in and the mercenaries made up the largest option. He gained more power and they began operations everywhere and the lives of the people served as a constant retribution for what they had done to him. Brutality, torture, torture then death had been the aim. Making the rest of the people fear to know that the next day might be their turn to get wasted.
Then later on, he did what he believed was the wisest thing to have been done. Three years ago, some months before the general elections, Sawer checked through the list of all the party candidates who were going for the primary election, starting from the gubernatorial. He had picked a random person who really wanted to be in power but was also dumb enough to forget why he wanted to be in power in the first place and his instincts helped him to pick Pilot Hundred.
Pilot was one of those leader elites of congresses in the People states, who have managed to garner a little more wealth and recognition, who had a thick voice screaming for diplomacy and led movements for rights and freedom. For Sawer, those kinds were the easiest to lure because those kinds of people wouldn’t expect that they would make it into power.
So, he invited him to his house. ‘What if I tell you that I can make you the president of this country?’
‘How?’
‘That shouldn’t be the question. The question is which way would I pay back?’
‘Okay?’
‘Hmm’. General Sawer cleared his throat and then explained. If Pilot ended up in getting into power, Sawer was going to be the de facto power-holder who was going to be behind the curtains ordering him around like a puppeteer and his puppet. He was going to be a part of their group and he was going to look away when evil was perpetrated.
Pilot hadn’t replied, it was obvious in his eyes that he really wanted to say no to it and just leave but he seemed afraid of him, he had just learnt that he was the mastermind of The Order of The Quppis. Which kind of person said no to such kind of person and again, he wanted to be in power, so he threw caution to the wind and joined the group.
‘Once these acts are performed, there is no going back. You have been one of us’, he had told Pilot.
Pilot joined the group whether he was completely pleased with it or not and then, it was time for Owen Sawer and the rest of his men to perform their own part. The job was simple, no dilly-dallying around. Eliminating the rest of the people and leaving him has the only likely player in the game. Elimination didn’t necessarily mean dying but it did for most of them, the rest of them were threatened and told to lay low, some of them were slandered with despicable acts that left them knocked out of the pack. One way or the other, Pilot Hundred was made the president with most of the votes, as there were few potent candidates with him.
Sawer continued with his ploy to gain more power which he did, successfully. All the people who had refuted his offer were killed off in the twinkle of an eye. While those who had gotten in his good books were well rewarded, he had managed to bring them into power through coups and the assassinations of the incumbent holders of those positions. When they were in, Sawer retrieved the power back from them. This kept him in charge of Dexter and he controlled everything with only the voice from his mouth, and the life of everyone in the country lay in his palm.
As they got more superior citizens to their sides, their gunmen also increased in number. They abducted children and trained them in a different way, brainwashing them, training them to be evil and dangerous, to be completely deaf to the cries of people and blind to their tears, they were trained to do despicable things to people. Little by little, as they grew older in the den, they were made into bears, the humanity in them steamed off and they became full-fledged cold-hearted killers. If any of them tried to escape or misbehaved too much, they were stopped in only one way. Death.
The databases of everyone were stored in a flash drive in the archival chambers of the Singalort Forest that the Quppis was rooted in. And they watched the movements of everyone, they had satellites all around Dexter connected to them from which they kept their eyes on everything and everyone they wanted to keep track of.
And they were all here now. About fifty-two of them, including the new minister of defence who had replaced Chuck Hawthorne in the inner room of the Quppis’ secretariat, all seated round a giant table with the logo of Quppis in its centre. It was a circular maze made out of brass or some dark metal and then in the centre of the maze, there was a ball that was on fire, in raging fire.
The room they were all seated in was utterly dark and in the front of each of them, a candle was set on the table representing the only light in the table. It was like a coven of witches and this was what they meant when they told the press that they were going to discuss about the prevalent insecurity of the federation.
The morning ceremony was over, it was really brief. Ever since he was in the army, he didn’t believe in elaborate processions or long meetings, what needed to be said was to be said.
‘I believe that we have accrued all the power we need. We have all that it takes to make this happen. It’s been a rough twenty-six years and now it is for what I have toiled for to come to reality in my very eyes. It is time for us to see Dexter burn and for my hands to crush the ashes. It is time’
‘It is time’, the others echoed.