Free The Covert Academy by Peter Laurent Page A

six years of tuition, safe from the control of the Confederacy. Perhaps even equip you with the skills you need to find yer sister.’ He paused to give Joshua time to process the idea, while Ryan took a seat nearby Sarah.
    ‘Here comes the history lesson,’ Ryan whispered.
    ‘ Around twenty years before you were born,’ Casey continued, ‘there was a third world war, both civil and between nations. The world had just recovered from the numerous wars of the savage 20 th Century, causing a gigantic population boom directly afterward and then again at the turn of the century.
    ‘Folks’ eyes grew bigger than their wallets, and they took out loans they knew they could never pay back. A huge market for cheap quality goods sprang up, and suddenly China controlled the global economy. Eventually, western governments defaulted on their loans unable to pay them back. China suddenly had no source of income for cheap labourers, and the westerners were unable to pay their public servants or beneficiaries. With no paid-up police force to stop them, people revolted against their governments, leading to mob rule and total anarchy worldwide.’
    Throughout his speech, motion graphics summarised his points from the projection table. It began with charts and graphs showing the mounting debt, but eventually showed newsreels and video clips from during the war. Joshua had never seen anything like it. Images of sleepy suburban neighbourhoods were displayed, and then devastated by 3D mobs of angry people. He saw a group storming a small bank branch in a rural community, and tear apart those unlucky enough to be caught inside. It was brutal.
    Casey indicated the display, nodding. ‘The banks were the first to be targeted. It wasn’t long before weapon stockpiles were raided. Many of the police force even helped the mob. Near the end, it was each nation’s army versus its own people.’
    The image zoomed out to show pitched battles between hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens against the tight orderly lines of an army. Joshua could see where the army’s defences would fail – tanks, planes and transports broke down without engineers to fix them, soldiers ran out of bullets without enough factory workers to make them, medics had nothing with which to heal the wounded. It was total anarchy.
     
    The display ended and Casey resumed.
    ‘After eight years, a number of people who had holed themselves up in self-sustaining facilities arranged to meet each other. They held a public conference. It was mostly made up of essential military personnel, Generals and the like, but there were also some of the top scientific minds, and a few clever billionaires. They announced the abolishment of national identities and granted themselves sole control over state functions, effectively forming a single planetary government. They called it the Confederacy.’
    He paused, but the table hologram showed nothing.
    ‘Apart from the two men who made the announcement, we have only guesses as to who is a member of the Confederacy.’
    The table hologram popped up again with two spinning heads.
    ‘General Withers, you’re already familiar with him,’ said Casey, with a grim smile. A new “deceased” label appeared over the General’s face.
    ‘...And this man, Simeon Warner.’ The display enlarged the second head. ‘He seems to be the spokesperson for the Confederacy, since it’s his face we see on those public speaker drones everywhere.’
    Joshua remembered the drones they’d seen before he and Sarah made it to the lake. That was the first time he had heard of Simeon Warner. So those drones weren’t just in Chicago then? Joshua found the idea chilling.
    ‘Anyway,’ said Casey, ‘t hey soon forced everyone to work in low wage jobs, which got a crude economy up and running again. You’ve seen how well that worked in Chicago. No middle class to hold everything together. Just the poor majority surviving on a barter system, a tiny minority with