Project [New Life]: Episodes - Roleplay Thread

[Jack_Henderson]

There is a reason for everything we do
It is about the things we love
The people we care about
We are the only thing that matters
And we defend it against them

Jack Henderson was looking over the cargo manifests of Operation New Life and the reports from the Falkland construction site. The two week delay caused by the unexpectedly complex geology and challenging engineer work was annoying, however not a cause for major changes to the overall project. While project managers were getting nervous, Jack was not worried.

For him personally, the project was too important to even think about it failing. He had been waiting for more than 6 years. A month, two months, half a year… it wouldn’t matter. Eventual success was what really mattered.

His eyes shifted to the picture of his wife and daughter. Looking at them with a thoughtful look in his eyes and a furrowed brow, he leaned back, letting his thoughts go back to the place and time when the wish of destroying the Cardamine Empire became a personal agenda, and later turned into an essential aspect of his life.

Drifting off for a moment, it all came back. It all started when he met Anna. When he fell in love with the wild, passionate, untameable woman that captivated him with her charms. It was when he found out about the addiction that she was hiding from him in the beginning, fearing it would break what they were sharing. It was when he learnt about Anna’s mother being held hostage on Malta to keep her daughter and his wife in check. It was because of Anna that Cardamine became more than a statistical number in Guild interception reports. The destruction of the Outcast economy became as personal as can be, a matter of life or death.

The content, naive smile of his baby daughter Lisa reminded him every day of the burden that the child was carrying. An illness passed to her by her mother, deemed impossible to cure just a few years ago. Cardamine-induced genetic mutation with largely unknown, often unpredictable and erratic consequences.

Anna Blanca, Anna the White. The Pure. It has never been truer than in the photo of her and newly born Lisa in her arms. The proud feature of his wife holding the baby in her arms. That’s where his eyes turned. What a moment. The miracle of life. And it was just minutes before the devastating, yet expected diagnose was given that the baby’s genome had been changed by her mother’s addiction to the Orange Dream. There is no means of preparing for this message.

Jack remembered the moment when the doctors started to apply light dosages of Cardamine to the artificial environment that was keeping his daughter alive. The small cute nose and open mouth, breathing the poisonous air necessary to keep her alive. Love and hate, together so closely.

The happiest moments, so close to the deepest abysses of despair. As a consequence of suffering through these first weeks in which it was unclear whether Lisa would live or die, his determination grew to find a cure. To preserve his family. To protect it from what was threatening their happiness.

It led to the conclusion that there was a life-or-death necessity to destroy the enemy, or at least disarm him by taking away his weapon that inflicted the grievous hit on him and the ones he loves. Eventually, all the anger and fear merged into the passionate strive for revenge on those who wanted to destroy his family.

Without spending any more thought on the financial draft that presented seemingly exorbitant numbers in dark red to him and the treasury, he signed off on the Chief Engineer’s proposal to overcome the new obstacles.

If the Guildmasters or the Treasury objected, he would find a way. Years of Administration of Dublin Affairs full of shady high-risk high-profit business with the Mollys and covert deals with the Hessians and the Coalition had helped to accumulate a considerable amount of dirty money that appeared in no official Guild accounts and that the Guildmastery never asked questions about – for very good reasons.

He took a long, thoughtful look at the table. He didn’t have to search for the note that he had scribbled there years ago. It made him smile for a moment when he leaned back, repeating the motto to himself.

The things we do for love.
The actions we take because we have no choice.

He wrote the reply to the Falkland Chief Engineer in his concise style.

“Make it work.”, it simply read when he pushed the send button.