"Did it not ever occur to you that perhaps all I want is to be left alone?"
"It has." Chantry replied calmly.
There was no budge in the old man's eyes and I saw what I had always respected about him most, courage. I sat back down contemplating him. I glanced around at the odd group gathered within my house. Temple was stoically unreadable as ever, my brother's hard-won control over his temper was barely leashed and the girl? She was brave, but unsettled.
I drank in her sensuous form. It had been a long five years without the one pleasure I craved most in life. Seeing her made the ach ten times more severe, but that was what her purpose here was for, to be a distraction. She did a good job of it too.
I felt the sharp pulse of a headache beginning in the back of my head. I had just been playing with them up until now, but anger wasn't far away now. I watched as Chantry worked on pulling the embedded dagger free with his arthritic fingers. Successfully, after much tugging, the blade came free and he turned it over in his hands admiring the liquid flowing design engraved into the dagger.
"Absolutely beautiful John, you missed your calling in life! You're good at being destructive, but your even better at creating."
I shook my head softly, "The world must be in an awful sorry state for you to be here knocking on my door wanting to play twenty questions."
Chantry nodded, "It is, in fact it's downright awful and I need your help setting something right. The job I have in mind requires someone with a particular range of talents and freedom of expression."
"You mean someone who's crazy." I added dryly.
Chantry's response was sharp, "I've never called you that John!"
"No, you haven't." I admitted softly.
"A wild force of uncontrollable nature would be a more apt description for you. John, the world that was before when you were brought here, is no more. In short it has collapsed in mass at the feet of a select few puppeteer masters and we're not sure who they are. They engineered a Code that controls everything mechanical and linked wirelessly the world around. Nothing happens or gets done without their say so. They have a virtual monopoly on the world's market and there is no freedom at all for those who oppose them. The United States opposed them along with Canada, Australia, Great Britain, France, South Africa, and Japan. As punishment the Code shut them down. Millions have died John and millions more are likely to soon follow. This has been the reality of the world for the last two years. I think you can full well imagine what has taken place in the absence of any governing order in the form of either local police or military presence. Many atrocities have been committed in these switched off countries and many more within the nations now serving the requests of the Code. Genocide of certain ethnicities is happening on a global scale. I said the losses are in the millions so far, but if this Code and whoever is behind it are not stopped the numbers could reach into the billions. We must stop and break the power of this Code so that order can be restored and the injustices stopped before any more innocent blood is spilled!"