Opus Veda

A bouncer hurried them in, jittery and rushed with paranoia. Sermon and Kasia eyed each other sceptically as he scanned their bodies.

They entered a storage room caustic with the smell of surgical spirit. Bar mats covered the floor, hiding the blood stains of a murdered London mayor. They took seats and watched the bouncer lock them in. A minute passed in silence. Kasia starting drumming her fingers on the table.

"Stop it."

"What?"

"That," Sermon growled through a whisper, "you're like a child waitin' for a GP."

"I can't afford a GP…" she looked up at the lights. Why were they buzzing? Even her one at home didn't do that. And she could change their colour. She started biting her nails.

"Don't do that either!"

"Kurwa what do want me to do, hide under the table?" she searched him for faults, "why'd you wear that silly hat then?"

"I wanna tell them I'm loyal to my roots!" he lifted his head petulantly and patted the zebra print kufi atop it.

"Maybe they'll give you a special red one when we join," Kasia snickered, "with a little gold lion on it."

"Don't dis the kuuf Kash…"

"Iss a claseec sistah! Iss a claseec!" Kasia flared her nostrils and puckered her lips, imitating her righteous ally.

"Well it is a classic!" he thumped the table in protest as Kasia giggled at her own joke.

"Izzeet fam izzeet!"

"Oh yea!? And what about you Kash? What will you be wantin' from our captain?" Sermon flashed his teeth at her, "after he gives me my special red kufi of course."

The door swung open. They gripped the table and bolted upright.

The recruiter checked them over. The panther guy looked angry and militant, ready to run for Africa at first chance. The girl, typical and average - a bleary phone drone with zero offline social skills; who probably wore a hoodie all day, then slept under it.

The former looked too confident. The latter, not enough. He would have skipped them, had they not already proven their worth against the vagrants.

"At ease," he pointed at their hands, "no need to pin the table down, it won't run away. Sit."

He sat opposite and laid a tablet on the table.

"I am not affiliated with anyone. You are not here to join anything. You are interested in activities which may be seen to align with certain groups, if you are found eligible."

He offered silence, waiting to see how they'd fill it.

"Uh… yeah... sure thing mate sounds good." Sermon winced.

The recruiter kept quiet. Neither of his guests knew what to make of him. He was their age, almost imposing in his bouncers uniform, but undermined by a well-kept, boyish face. He looked too cute for Kasia. The twinkie sort Sermon would swipe in a club. Not someone to take orders from in a fight.

He took their phones and hovered one over the tablet, waiting for consent before resting it on the tablet's screen. Sermon's history poured out - all the educational, medical, criminal, and social data from the day he'd gone online.

"You had a stint in prison?" the recruiter lifted his chin.

"Yea... a couple of fights when I was younger."

"How long have you been selling drugs?"

Sermon stuttered. The host continued.

"Fags? Or harder stuff?"

"Fags."

"Still a dealer then. Did you use your time behind bars to rethink selling to minors?"

Sermon grit his teeth and tried to meet his accuser's eyes.

"Every second of it."

The recruited stared at Sermon until he blushed and looked away. Kasia went next. She clutched her chair and watched her life scroll under a stranger's fingers. He found something to lean on.

"When you're under pressure, with people counting on you, won't your anxiety get in the way?"

She stuttered just as Sermon had. Stupidly she had assumed her past deeds would let her straight in. Again the recruiter pressed.

"Your superiors give you a job you can't handle; you hide away and self-harm. Now your mates have to help you on top of their own tasks, and you're holding them back. You're better suited to office work, aren't you?"

"Well like… plenty of people self-harm. Doctors don't even bother with it…" she searched for excuses, "kids have been doing it as a fashion statement for years -"

"Right those rich daddy's kids, flashing their slashes online for clout. Why should my employers be interested in a rich kid's fashion statement?"

And now it was he misjudging her. Nothing unravelled Kasia's shyness like the indignity of the rich appropriating the stuff of the poor; especially the stuff she needed to cope. She leant in.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"I don't know, but if I were you I'd recruit from all backgrounds to cover the most perspectives. Whatever we're doing that 'may align with certain groups', those things will be difficult, and one of the ways 1 in 5 people cope with difficult, is to self-harm."

"And your anxiety?" he raised an eyebrow, as a teacher might to an improving pupil.

"That would be 1 in 3. I'm sure you've got plenty of us, and a way of managing it."

"How will we manage your anxiety?"

"I can handle it myself. I proved it when I saved... when I found Joey and those girls. Anxiety's unique for each person. Mine's less about conflict and more about..."

"Powerlessness."

She nodded, "it's scarier when I can't fight back, like with work."

"Your find your manager scarier than Opus Veda?"

"Opus Veda don't pay my salary. HR does."

"I'm HR right now, what must you think of me?" he eyed her, making her fight back a grin, and slid her phone back across the table.

"Sermon and Kasia. Viral child rescuers. The handshake of captain and concerned citizen… let me give you your first lesson. You've just handed over your life's data to a stranger who, for all you know, could be a government agent, or a terrorist."

The guests went gormless. He scoffed and motioned to their phones.

"From now on no one will ask you for your data, and you will ask for none from anyone else. It's for bigger people than us to show their faces and take on that risk. Your backgrounds are good enough, but I do have one final question," he leant back and folded his arms, "why'd you both want this?"

It was a question that should have been simple. Kasia didn't want to answer it. Fortunately, Sermon puffed up with his lofty principles.

"Boss I been pro-Red since before it was cool! Spent my childhood findin' food each week, saw the queues outside hospitals, beggin' for pro-bono while the rich got escorted round back. Always seein' them trillionaires online, some of them a hundred years old still lookin' like us! No one does fuck all about it! Too busy escapin'; games, nightclubs, fuckin'... shite superhero films...

Problem is you don't change shit by escapin'. You can't just watch films that criticise the elite and clap along! They're throwin' the gesture out so we don't feel we 'ave to! There was a time, when England - Britain - was the greatest nation in the world! Now we're slaves. You know our most popular export is? Sex workers! Oligarchs wantin' young English 'maids' as a power move... You wanna be a trillionaire's trophy-slut to get abroad? Fuck that! I am a resource to no one, and that is why I'm 'ere. I ain't gonna run, I'm gettin' us back up that pyramid. Guys we can be great again!"

Sermon frowned with solemn concern. The recruiter was visibly impressed.

Kasia should have gone first. Her host had mentioned her anxiety, he was going to see it in action. 1 in 3 sufferers indeed. The stats weren't making her feel better, nor was Sermon's triggering speech. The thought of a pervert oligarch giving Eva a better life than Kasia could petrified her. She still wouldn't insult her daughter by using her as a prop in this interview.

Both men turned to her. In her head she told the world she hated it and everything in it, and she dived in.

"I uh... I just agree with Sermon really... he's a bit better at explaining it than me… about the oligarchs and that, I think they should go. And like what happened to Misha and Joey was terrible. Sermon is much better than me at this part! He knows I'd have him in a fight though, he still wouldn't admit it to anyone. And… well. Yes."

She burned with shame. From the side she saw the whites in Sermon's eyes, glaring into her. The recruiter scratched his eyebrow with his little finger and smirked.

"Why would you want to help Kasia?"

She hunched her shoulders. He tried again.

"What… would you expect to get out of it?"

Kasia needed to speak, but her brain fogged everything beyond her desire to escape this building. She gave up.

"I thought you didn't get anxious with conflict?" the recruiter squinted at her, "if you can't handle me how long would you last with a terrorist screeching in your face, burning your eyes shut and piercing your eardrums? I don't pay you a penny and you're not powerless with me, so go on, fight back! If you can't, fine, but this is as far as you're getting."

She breathed deeply and grounded herself, feeling how the chair made contact with her body. She had to regain control. A list of unresolved traumas stood ready, landlords and bosses and self-centred matches. Things she could deploy when attitude mattered. Bad people didn't just sometimes win, they tended to.

As best she could, she faced him.

"I'm… nearly 30. If I stay in my job I'll either never be secure, or I'll get promoted when my boss fancies some sexual assault. Or I could work twice the hours in gig-work for half as much, lose my flat, and be grateful that my landlord's a straight woman. My mother was a drunk; my grandma - the only stable family I knew - left for a country I can't even visit on holiday. Apparently any problem I have is on me to fix, though I seem to have twice as many problems because I was born a girl, though I can't afford to feel like one.

Apparently there aren't even races any more. So why is everyone screwing us over a pink skinned, pony faced cousin-fucker? Sorry to bring race up Sermon..."

"You keep on it!" Sermon rest his chin on his hand, watching proudly as his old schoolmate went off on one.

"Do you seriously believe the reason's we're here actually matter? Every story has a thousand opinions I'm told to feel angry about, and I don't know which one is true. Was the General's speech real? Was it written by AI? How long did it stay in people's heads before something else did? One day I'm told the revolution is Fascist, the next day it's Marxist - how the fuck should I know what either of those words mean! I just wanted to get on with a meaningful job and give my girl a better future than mine, and apparently I'm not even good enough for that.

And that's where I disagree with Sermon! Of course I fucking escape, because escaping is always easier, and nothing else has ever worked. It feels like… if I don't distract myself, I'll suffer more, and it will be my own fault. I know I'm not a selfless brave fighter like Sermon, but the one time I felt like I had a purpose - like I made the world a better place - was when we rescued those children. And if someone gave me the chance to do that again, I'd take it in a heartbeat."

The recruiter considered their answers. Sermon fit the guardsman profile well, if he could be tempered. And Kasia... He'd met a hundred Kasias. Could such a girl raise the union flag? He did feel for her. He was there in the tunnels, fighting his first melee, earning his first promotion. Kasia alone had pursued the hostages, and handled it. If steered properly, whatever led her to do that might surface again.

He smiled.

"Not everyone wants to save the country, or change the world, but whatever people tell you to want, we all need to mean something and belong somewhere, and that's always a stronger pull. You won't be getting any of that from a podcaster."

Kasia composed herself, feeling her spirits lift as she heard something relatable given to her in a friendly way.

"So!" the recruiter pulled himself up, "I get where you're both coming from; I've got no concerns offering you a trial. Call me Luca, and remember: you work for me and no one else. Don't ruin this now with a data breach. Check your phones. We'll talk soon."

They took the tube to Brixton Station. An anonymous account messaged them. Attached were compressed folders, locked behind fingerprint scans. Sermon found a discreet corner outside the station and scrolled over the files. The 'readme' note said when and where their first assignment took place - two weeks from now. The rest were training videos.

Neither of them spoke walking home, but as they parted ways on the estate, for the first time in their life, they shook hands.

Kasia leant on the walkway outside her flat and listened to the lives around her. How would they change? She imagined her own future: a member of the Revolution, turning into something she could do them proud by, impressing the captain as Sermon and Luca cheered her on.

And her daughter looked up to her, never leaving for a future where Kasia wasn't needed anymore.

The fantasy began to come alive.

Eva was asleep. Kasia kissed her forehead and tucked into the lower bunk. The time hit 1am. She equipped her headset and began training.