Episode 4 - The raid

Also see: Episode 1 (chronologically a much later part in the story) - Episode 2 (start) - Episode 3

The raid

She nipped her drink by the bar and watched the others dancing. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something made her feel very nervous. Maybe it was just that she could not shake the truth. She was the only one around who knew what was going on, what was going to happen, that everyone in the club was really in danger.

She held onto the bar to steady herself against the upcoming faintness and took a deep breath.

“Come on, girl.” She muttered to herself, downing the drink in one gulp. “You can do this. Just think of it as a game.” Looking back, her friend Michael was waving at her, motioning to come back already. She forced her lips into a convincing smile and set her foot forward to make her way back to her group on the dance floor.

Then a loud noise drowned out the music and froze her in her tracks. The sturdy door caved in. A squad of soldiers in all black suits, helmets and machine guns stormed through the gaping hole screaming ‘move, move!’

The DJ stopped playing, people stepped aside. She stumbled back into the bar. The place had a reputation for drug dealing, was it a raid?

They fired five warning shots in the dark, they lit up and echoed loud through the silence. This wasn’t a raid. Glass breaking, people screaming, scattering into the corners, tugging at each other and the horrible sound of so many heavy boots stamping along the floor after them. “Everybody out!” The commander yelled and they went about grabbing at arms, shoulders, elbows, pulling at hair and motioning the guests onward with their guns. Alice saw one haul Michael over the floor, thick with broken glass, by his clothes and rushed to help him.

“You’re hurting him!” She prised the man’s claw open, allowing Michael to scramble up, rubbing his sores. The soldier pushed her away so hard she fell backwards and took off his helmet. As soon as she saw his curiously gleaming eyes, she knew this wasn’t a raid but an invasion. They were Svarts. She gasped.

“Go home!” He spat at her and clutched the next victim. Michael helped her up.

“Michael, you’re limping.”

“It’s nothing, let’s just get out of here.”

Leaning on each other, they got out. The streets were full of Svart troops, going door to door in public places, hurling everybody out.

“What the hell are they doing?” Michael asked her, coughing.

Alice watched them for a moment. As it turned out, they hadn’t paused. Either that, or enough of them were already here in the first place. They had been fooled. “Establishing a curfew.” She said, feeling as if all life had drained out of her. “They’re taking over the city.” She looked up at the horizon. It would be many hours until the break of day. She should go look for the other knights and round them up for battle.

With a sigh, she whispered to herself. “So it begins.”

And that was the day they invaded our world.

(video that has a lot of screaming in it, but parts of it might give you a good idea of what is going on in this episode, so it is kind of appropriate and may have influenced this part of the story in a latent fashion)