I sat myself on the platform outside of the room, and stared blankly towards the trees and dark surroundings in front of me. Well, I did not exactly have my mind blank since I also began to think what might have caused the serious miscommunication that fell upon Billy, as well as the sudden disconnection between me and Nest.
Since our gadgets transmitted and received messages from the same place, which was the Special Forces Command's Base, there could also be a possibility if something had happened there. Still, however nothing occurred on my mind that could guess what that 'something' could be. I wondered if something had occurred on the internal of the E.X.T.I.R.T as well, especially since it had yet to be completely established as an official global organization.
Also, something else then occurred to my mind shortly after. Supposing that the meteorite was indeed the source of the current aliens' invasion, I wondered if everything would be solved and ended once we gave the meteorite back to them. But that being said, I also felt like we definitely needed to know what it was about the meteorite that the aliens craved so desperately that they were willing to chase it all the way to the planet it had crashed to not only once, but twice.
If my watch was working properly like it had before, I would tell all of those thoughts to Commodore Quentin for certain, and he would no doubt considered them very seriously into his mind. Since my mission within E.X.T.I.R.T's scope were to find out the root cause of the incident and to prevent further harms by any means necessary, I knew for sure that what I had just thought fell in as one of the possible final solution.
I was not really sure on how the Special Forces Command would react upon such suggestion, since their primary objective was to assist E.X.T.I.R.T in investigating the incident. If anything, I would rather say that they might end up not wanting to give an opinion about the matter. On the other hand, the National Board of Archeologists would most likely ended up disagreeing with me, since that meteorite would obviously be the country's ancient heritage even though it was of extraterrestrial origin. Since Billy and Jessica represented each of the different affiliation, I supposed I had to mind my words more from then on.
Nevertheless, that was all for then that I wanted to think about. Since I was sure that there was nothing else to do at that time, I decided to try to contact Nest once more, although I did not have my hopes up for some reason. I waited for about ten minutes after I tried to contact Nest again, and apparently I made the right choice to not think about it too much since my watch was completely mute. There was no reason for me to wait any longer, and thus I headed back inside to take the bread and water bottle from my backpack.
As I went back inside, I noticed that Billy had been fast asleep, using his backpack as a pillow and had himself lying on the floor. He seemed to be sleeping better than he had been back in the second cave, and so I shrugged my thoughts on having him as someone to talk to later on if I could not sleep, especially since he had a serious injury on his body. I opened up my backpack very carefully to not wake him up and picked out both my bread and water bottle before closing it up again. Jessica was nowhere to be seen, but I assumed that she was upstairs, maybe since she preferred more space for her own.
The bread and water bottle that I had taken out were the very last portion of my meal and that would mean I had no more meals for the next day once I had eaten them up for dinner. As I began to chew down the bread, I started to think if I should hunt for wild animals to provide myself some food for the next day. If I could find some sort of a wild fruit, I supposed that would work. A wild animal however, would be a whole different case since that would mean I would need to first roast it by fire, which would then create smoke to rise up to the air, and very possibly got detected by the aliens.
'Oh well, there is no use in overthinking about it for now I suppose…' I thought to myself as I shook my head and continued with my dinner.
When I had finished, I rolled up the then empty bread pack and picked up the empty water bottle as I stood up again and went back inside before putting them inside my backpack, since I did not want to litter the nature by man-made trashes. I then sat down right beside my backpack, and slowly leaned myself against the wall behind me as I took a deep breath and released it slowly and silently, wondering what else that I could do next before going to sleep.
'kssh-ck'
Suddenly I heard a faint sound from the outside. I could not tell for sure where it was coming from, but I was very positive that it was not that far from the temple. I quickly grabbed my submachine gun, but I did not head outside right away since it could just be in my imagination, although I already knew that there really was a sound.
I waited for about three minutes, and then once the second sound was heard again I immediately got my feet up and headed outside as I had my submachine gun ready to fire to whatever it was in front of me. Once I had gone outside and to the opposite side of the wall that I had just leaned against, I knew for sure that the second sound was coming from the side of the wall that I was currently taking a cover at. I counted to three silently just before I aimed and had my finger ready on the trigger as I rushed and turned towards that side.
"Oh! Travis!" said a very familiar voice… and face as soon as I turned.
"Wha- Jess?" I quickly lowered my submachine gun. "I heard a noise from inside just now, so I thought that-"
"I was too loud was not I?" she sighed and smiled. "There is obviously no bathroom around, so…"
"Ah… right… my apologies…" I quickly responded as soon as I realized that it turned out to be her all along, who was in urgent need to take a leak.
"Phew, good thing I did not accidentally catch you without your pants on… um…" I continued as I stumbled upon my own words?"
"Hmm?" she replied as she chuckled, "What about my pants?"
"N-no, forget I say anything, sorry…" I ended my words as I shook my head and looked down a little.
"Haha… oh… you are so sweet…" she laughed as she leaned her right shoulder against the wall and looked me in the eyes.
I only rolled my eyes a little as I tried to put up a straight face, to which I strangely struggled to. Shortly after that, she asked me if I still had my thoughts on the sudden strange situation both Billy and I had entered, to which I admitted that I would be lying if I said that I did not. She continued by asking me if I did not mind to accompany her sitting outside for a while longer since she also could not sleep at that moment. Since I believed that it would at least ease my mind off that exhausting thought, I decided to talk some things with her.
"You know…" Jessica said with a soft voice. "I have to thank you for being able to calm Billy down like that earlier on…"
"I guess I also have to think more carefully on what I should say to other people based on different mood and situations." I responded and sighed rather heavily.
"No…" she replied very quickly as she moved closer to me and looked me in the eyes. "There are only very few people who can prevent him from going explode, especially when it comes to people who he has just known for a few days…"
She proceeded to tell me that it had something to do with his late brother, as he had not been like that prior to his late brother's unfortunate death. Indeed, he had changed in a drastic way especially when it comes to decision making, discipline, and attitude. However, since that day he had also become more emotional and prone to anger.
I asked her if she had known about what had happened to the radical group leader that had taken his late brother's life, to which she said she had fully realized it right at the moment when the news about it came out. The news that had been officially released to the public said that the Special Forces Command had no choice but to dismember both of the radical group leader's arms because he had been holding the triggers for the bombs that had been planted all around his final hideout on both of his hands, however she had already known from the start that it would most likely not the real truth.
It was actually because of that news that she could draw out the conclusion about very few people who could deal with his anger management issues. Even though she could not provide her proof, she was completely sure that among those people were his commanding officer, or rather the current Commander General of his force, then herself, and lastly to her surprise, me of all people.
"Are you serious?" I asked her in complete disbelief as I bugged out my eyes. "I would not be so sure, though…"
"Well, maybe you do not. But I am…" she said as she smiled and moved a little closer to me again. "Because… your words were more or less what I would say to him too if I was in your place…"
'Wow… I had no idea that what I had said earlier before we found this temple was actually the best words to say to him back then…' I thought to myself as I nodded twice.
But then again, right at that moment, something else also started to make me a little nervous. It was her, who had been sitting too close to me that slowly made me felt like my heartbeat was beating a little faster. I was somehow also excited by it, but I tried my best not to show her that I was nervous in order to not give her a wrong impression.
"How about you?" she continued by asking with a soft voice as she then moved yet a little closer to me again. "What made you decide to join the military?"
At that rate, I was already able to detect her good smell, despite what she had been through and it somehow made me a little more excited and nervous at the same time than before. Thankfully, I was still able to make myself calm and hide those feelings inside me as I responded to her question, which was actually the very same question that had been asked to me by Kyle Monett, one of the survivors back in Chicago three years earlier.
"It is going to be a long story…" I said to her, trying to find out if she really wanted to know about some of my past.
"Well, it is also going to be a long night." she responded as she leaned her head against the wall on her right side, before I eventually began to share my past to her.
I started by saying that my whole family had originated from when my grandfather and his father immigrated from Messina, a city in Sicily Island, Italy in 1941 to Chicago in order to get a better living. They lived a simple and humble life by opening a small local bank named 'Italiano Amerigano', but only for a year since a mafia group of the Armenino Crime Family robbed and bombed the bank, resulting in its total destruction and a permanent stop to its operation.
All of the staffs, my great grandfather, and even the clients that had been present there all fell victims to the crime family's raid. The sole survivor of the attack was none other than my grandfather, who was barely ten years old at that time and who had been hiding inside the smallest safe that could be opened from the inside. The bombing attack not only created a permanent trauma for my grandfather, but also to the local neighborhood since the bank had technically provided some sort of need for more workforce, and many of them came from the local neighbors.
As a result, my grandfather had to be sent to an orphanage, where he would then spent his next seven years there before he had to move out again and made his own decision for his life. Since there were no choices, he forced himself to do odd jobs, but mostly as a mechanic for trucks, tugboats, and barge ships from 1948 to 1951. It was also during that period when he came to get acquainted with Bastiano Cremisi, a young man who would become his longlife partner.
Then, in October 1952, something happened to the both of them that would forever change the course of their own lives. The makeshift barge ship workshop that they had built by themselves by a river was unfairly forced to be demolished by a large local bank, saying that they had to pay more taxes to the bank if they did not want the workshop permit to be revoked.
Unable to accept the unjust treatment that they received, Bastiano urged my grandfather to break into the house that belonged to one of the senior bankers that were present on the day their workshop got demolished. At first, my grandfather had a serious doubt about it, but Bastiano kept on pleading him that he eventually agreed to him with the condition that it would be the only time that they had to break into someone's house.
The pair then followed one of the senior bankers back to his house, which had a basement and two floors, and became a little more relieved when they found out that there was no one else besides him inside. They then broke in through the house basement, and made their way into the first floor of the house before they decided to take some cash money. They split up, and my grandfather broke into the banker's personal room only to find out something that made him enraged beyond words.
It was the connection and cooperation that had been made between the banker, the bank he had been working at and with few other large local banks with the Armenino Crime Family to dominate other smaller banks and business places for their own. The allied banks would slowly expand their business as they gave the crime family some portions of their profits, while the crime family would give them more protection as their business grew larger.
At first, my grandfather did not want to believe his eyes. He immediately ransacked every pieces of paper on the table where he had read the banker's agenda, and to his shock, he found out an old agreement about the decision that Italiano Amerigano had in fact, become one of their first targets to raid in the past.
Just then, the senior banker found him in the act. He tried to grab his shotgun which had been hung on a wall inside that room, but luckily my grandfather was able to prevent him from doing so by swinging his machete that he had taken in secret from his workshop before it had been demolished, cutting of two of the banker's ring and pinky fingers in the process.
Bastiano then rushed to the room, and quickly grabbed the same shotgun before aiming it to the banker Finally having the banker cornered, my grandfather asked him about the agreement. In an instant, the banker cowered in fear and begged the pair to spare his life and told them that they needed to do what was necessary in order to fully recover from the effects of The Great Depression in the past, which would mean to aggressively expand their business, also stating that 'it would not be much of a problem in sacrificing the fates of the immigrants'.
Unfortunately for the banker, the words 'sacrifice' and 'immigrant' were the last two triggers that he would need to pull to make him lost his life. In his complete rage, my grandfather impaled the banker right in the middle of his forehead, resulting in his instant death. Just after that moment, my grandfather pulled out his machete and as his blood dripped down from the blade, he suddenly went back to his senses and went completely shocked to what he had done.
Realizing that there was absolutely no turning back and completely in a total panic, Bastiano suggested to him that they should just burn the house down and hauled as many cash as they could, before escaping out from the basement and through the yard before going to the dry canal near the house to go to the other part of the town. My grandfather agreed in a panic, and they hauled an amount of no less than thirty thousand dollars before they used every gas that they could find inside the house and burned it down as they made their way out of it.
They then decided to lay low inside a motel near a small diner for the rest of two days once they had arrived to East Side. As expected, their actions two days prior made an uproar on the whole town, but not because it was the house of a senior banker from a well-known local bank. Instead, it was because the house had been burnt down to almost nothing, even leaving the corpse that had been found there completely charred to the point that it had become extremely hard to get an autopsy.
Having no idea what else to do with the amount of cash that they had hauled, Bastiano suggested my grandfather to alter a few amount of the cash to help his old neighborhood free from bank debts, since it also had been struggling since the destruction of Italiano Amerigano exactly ten years earlier.
My grandfather agreed, and just when the neighborhood had been finally freed from their overwhelming debts, he decided to use the leftover cash to build a barge ship workshop and transportation services, with the permit of not from the local banks, but directly to the government bank. By the end of 1954, he began to have his workshop and transportation services running, officially named as the 'Verelli & Cremisi River Transport Company', or abbreviated as 'V&C River Transport Co.' with the local neighbors as most of its workforce.
That did not stop both my grandfather and Bastiano right there, however, since they still felt the need to rid of the corrupted local banks and the Armenino Crime Family somehow because they knew for sure that the alliance would definitely not like the arrival of new local business. They spent the first next four years stabilizing the company first, and with much less challenges and obstacles since it was registered as an official small business by the government, before they began to make a bigger move on one of the local banks after an unintentional event took place in March 1958.
My grandfather came across a new customer mentioning about 'six crates of goods that must be accepted in two days', all the way in Jackson, Mississippi. At first, my grandfather was not so sure about accepting his request, but since Bastiano and many of the locals who worked at his company saw it as an opportunity to expand the business, he ended up agreeing with the condition that Bastiano and few of the locals were to go with him as well.
Four people from the locals went along with the pair the very next day, and arrived at their final destination the day after at dawn. The man with the request were already there, and as all of his six crates had arrived by midday, he thanked the group by giving one of the crates to them as the payment since he barely had any cash with him.
The locals who went along were rather upset about it, but Bastiano urged them to just take the crate back to the workshop. Before they went back however, the man gave Bastiano his two telephone numbers and two addresses in case they were willing to 'do more businesses with his products'. Strangely, he also urged the group to not open the crate unless they were inside a closed room.
By the time they had gone back to the workshop, it was already midnight. All of the locals had become exhausted by the long and tedious journey back, but Bastiano was too impatient to open the crate inside of their garages. As he opened it, they were left completely shocked when they found out that the crate had in fact contained a dozen of battle rifles and carbines combined, together with active rounds of their respective calibers, and several dynamites.
It was at that moment when my grandfather finally figured out that they had just met with a potential firearms supplier – which turned out to be the case in the future, and knew the next step that he had to take in order to take down the local bank alliance and Armenino Crime Family as well. They then held an important meeting to discuss about it about a week later.
My grandfather suggested that they should first intercept some of the banks' cash flows for a few times by raiding one of their trucks the next time they decided to move either their gold or cash money. Obviously, the truck would be seriously guarded and therefore they would need serious firepower if they wanted the raid to be successful, but thanks to their firearms supplier, he felt quite confident in attacking the truck.
Eventually they decided that their raid would be conducted early in the morning exactly on April 1st of the same year, since the local banks had the tendency to move in and out their supplies of cash and gold during the early dates of every month. My grandfather was also rather touched by the full support of the local neighbors regarding his plan, with their collective statement of 'we would not go through so much hell if they had not destroyed your pop's bank in the past.'. Six people would raid the truck, with each three inside a car and both my grandfather and Bastiano would join the raid.
The day of the raid had finally come, and exactly at 03.00 a.m. in the morning they departed from the company and headed for one of the local banks with all black suits and balaclavas. They waited there patiently until it was 04.30 a.m., and the money truck began to move out from the bank with two police cars protecting it at the front and back side. The first car, which my grandfather was in, tailed the cars from behind. The second car, which was where Bastiano was in, followed shortly after and sped up as it approached the first car.
The second car acted like it wanted to overtake the lane, but as soon as it had become parallel with the police car on the front, Bastiano fired his battle rifle from the back window, quickly killing all of the police inside it. The sudden attack made the police car in front of it to quickly slow down and resulting in the money truck crashing directly to it. The police on the back proceeded to get out of their car and were about to return fire to the second car, but my grandfather and his two local neighbors had quickly shot them to death as well before they were able to respond.
The group immediately surrounded the truck, killing the police beside the driver but not the driver, since they knew that his job had nothing to do with the corruption of the allied local banks. They only forced him to get out of the truck and flee as they hauled all cash inside the truck until it was empty before they hurried back inside to the car and split up along the way.
When they returned back to the workshop, they quickly burned away all of their suits and balaclava, as well as spreading out all cashes, weapons and contents of the crates inside to all of the neighborhood's houses. The burnt wastes were quickly mixed with the rest of the other wastes that would be transported into a nearby incinerator.
The next time my grandfather and Bastiano contacted the man who gave them the weapon crate again, it was revealed that he had actually obtained and smuggled the firearms in secret, and obviously illegally as some sort of the leftovers of the Cuban Revolution's spoils of war. Nevertheless, he immediately agreed to keep supplying them with weaponries in exchange of delivering him secret crates that he had to receive once in every three months.
My grandfather would then keep on slowly but steadily weakening the local banks' alliance and exposing Armenino Crime Family more to the government's eye while at the same time, he also expanded the business of his company. By the time the year turned to 1961, my grandfather had had two branches and the alliance of the local bank had weakened seriously, forcing one of them to do a desperate attempt of recovery, which was to make some of the Armeninos to attack my grandfather's growing company.
Unfortunately for that bank and also Armenino, the company had more or less anticipated their attacks. In November 1961, they raided the V&C River Transport Co., which ended up in their utter failure, resulting in the bankruptcy of one of the bank, the arrest of many of the bank's personnel and mostly charged with money laundering as well as corruption for the few others, and also highlighting the Armenino Crime Family to the public eye, in a bad way.
However, the company's complete success of counter attack also had a drawback. It was the Bureau's immediate realization that another crime family must have backed up the V&C River Transport Co. or else it would not have possibly survived the raid. Nevertheless, they were then still so far away from their realization that the V&C River Transport Co. had in fact, dealt with illegal firearms smuggling activities with tugboats and barge ships transportation as its front.
Since the Bureau had yet to know more about the 'crime family' that had provided the river transport company their protection, they nicknamed the family as 'Verelli Crime Family', with regards to the owner of the company that the family protected. Both my grandfather and Bastiano had been initially rather discomforted by the Bureau's official press release by the end of December 1961, but the locals instead celebrated the news, and said that the Bureau had actually unintentionally 'provided the company with one more blanket to hide with'.
The bankruptcy of the second bank took place three years later in 1964, which was also the year my grandfather had his first child, a daughter. The third and the last bank went bankrupt in 1971 when two of the bank's leaders committed suicide due to countless blackmails from Armenino and piles of debt bills. With no more banks to support Armenino's backbone anymore, the Bureau finally had almost no obstacles to uncover the dirty truth behind their alliance to the public mass. Although, the Armenino was still extant at the present time, but far less active than they had been in the past.
Even though my grandfather's children, and their children no longer had to get involved with such similar chaos anymore, I felt like I did not want to inherit my family's terrible history by lingering in that company. I would definitely throw them away if I could, but since I knew full well that it would be completely impossible, I decided to join and served the Navy instead, hoping to somehow I could atone the sins of my family's past that way, especially since I already had several technical knowledge in Naval Engineering.
"There… I hope I did not bore you with my story…" I ended.
"What are you saying, that is a unique background if you ask me…" Jessica responded as she held my hand and looked at both of my eyes with full fascination… and also moved closer to me yet again.
"You… did not think differently of me when you now know that I was born and raised by a mafia?" I asked her with disbelief, and having my heart pounded a little faster as well because of her good smell.
"No, silly…" she replied with a chuckle. "If anything, I have to thank your parents and grandparents for having raised you as an honest and trustworthy guy…"
"I… I see." I said to her nervously, as I did not know what else to say and smiled as I looked down a bit.
"And you know…" she continued with a soft voice, and moved her face a little closer to mine. "I easily fall for a guy who does not mind opening up about his family and his past."
At that moment, I felt like the wall that had held myself from breaking out of my composure was barely able to hold anything else. Her good smell, her shiny black eyes, her tempting lips, and her dark brown hair seemed to force myself to keep looking at her. I fully realized that it would be such a shame to waste the mood and turned the atmosphere awkward, but since I did not know what to do, I just go ahead with some words that seemed appropriate.
"Thanks… you really made me feel better…" I responded slowly as I looked at her eyes again, and stroked her hair by my right hand as gently as I could… since I could barely hold my nervous feeling inside me anymore.
Almost instantly after that, I could see her clearly had her face suddenly reddened and quickly looked down. I finally lost my composure and reacted to the situation, but strangely by holding her hip by my left hand. She then suddenly rushed towards my left shoulder, making me all the more nervous and my heart beating even faster.
"Uh… Jess..?" I asked her, since I began to have both my hands trembling for a brief moment before I held her arms with them.
"No… I just…" she quickly responded in stutters as she laughed a little and proceeded to hug me. "Please… just let me… be like this for a little while longer. You do not mind… do not you?"
"No…" I said with a voice as gentle as I could, and proceeded to hug her as well as I slowly released my breath and closed my eyes. "Not at all…"
I had initially thought that the night might be long and dull before I would have to get myself to sleep. But I supposed it turned to be one of those very few nights where I hoped that it would last longer… much, much longer…