Fox Wilde - Variant Exchange - A Punk Rock Spy Fiction Novel

To the real Lena: I will never be able to use your real name, as you were every inch the quiet professional. You were as much an example to women as you were a leader of men. I’m honored to have been one of your secrets, and you will forever remain one of mine. You will always be loved, and never forgotten.

To my Editor Liz: Thank you for convincing the world that I’m a decent writer. I’ve officially replaced the semicolon with the em-dash for ‘punctuation mark that Fox misuses the most.’

To the Six Underground: never perform an extraction in your bathroom with gasoline and an ice bath after ‘Nair’-ing your ‘down there’-hairs. The feds are still confused by that one. Thanks for the birthday present, but you are never getting your ten dollars.

Amanda, Eric, and Elizabeth S. Cullen: you are better beta-readers than I deserve. Eric, you are right: my German is terrible.

Talanton: Thank you for finally naming the book.

Pawn to D4

Lena Schindler screamed at everyone. The crowd gathered inside the tiny church was small; perhaps only twenty men and women in total, if you didn’t count the few greasy and leather-clad couples making out in the confession booths near the back of the room. Yet while the crowd was small, the godly little auditorium they prepared to unleash ungodly hell upon was practically bursting at the seams with the steam of bodies preparing for war.

The tattoo-covered confluence stood aghast as the young woman, battle-clad in graffiti outlandish and greasy hair, catapulted her minute frame headlong into the crowd. She didn’t need to push her way through. The motley bunch that stood in wary attendance had seen this before, and quickly stepped out of the way. When Lena got like this, her fists flew; and she was well known for her flailing uppercuts among many other things.

“ Das ist mein fickin lied!” she howled and right on cue the band began to tear the crowd apart note by note.

Instantly, as if a military claymore had been set off sending steel, shrapnel, and dastardly-otherwise careening through an unsuspecting crowd of innocent onlookers, the small auditorium became a seething mass of mangling humans dead set on mutilating one another. They pushed and shoved against each other as Lena, a one-woman wrecking ball, jumped right into the middle of the carnage. She gave no quarter; she didn’t need to. They all knew the rules. She was the dominant alpha in this relationship, and by the end of this song, everyone who didn’t know it already most certainly would.

Riff by riff, beat by beat, and shriek after bloody shriek the music took its pound of flesh while the musical equivalent of a bazooka exploded its way into the chests of the attendees, filling them with the lifeblood of chaos and carnage. It was latent lifeblood perhaps, but it was now exactly where it should be; mixing dangerously with adrenaline and booze, pumping furiously in a sadistic serial of serrated hearts. Lena called, they answered. She assailed them, intentionally insulting their capabilities with a vulgar display of power. Like the miscreants they were, they seemed quite keenly bent on reciprocating. Thus, clothes went the way of the buffalo as sweat, bruises, and worse formed in equal measure.

What had begun in the burgeoning tumult as a tentative shuffle became a roiling pit of disaster as the beat drove faster, faster, and (if you could believe it) even faster. Accuracy was hardly the goal. This was neither a precision strike nor an assault with a particularly well-thought-out plan of action. This was a show of force; a retaliation. Its only intent was to send a message violently conveying pure disillusionment while aptly describing the consequences of what happens when the immovable object of ‘The State of Things’ collides against the unstoppable force of youth and puberty.

As individuals they were weak; mere refuse in a world that spun faster than their heads struggling to wrap around it all. But together they were the reckoning and resistance, the bullet and the powder, the hard-cocked middle finger to the system and the coup d’etat to all that was sacred. Behold, one and all, the discarded ideology of the stale and staunch overlords at the feet of human pressure-cookers who were just fed-the-hell up.

Dogma, fervor and hubris. Maybe it didn’t have religious significance… eh, fuck it.

The drummer blast-beat his utterly damnedest while no less than three guitarists pounded on their instruments as if they were attempting to bail a sinking life-raft. They had no bassist—the venue had forbidden it after their last show when a rafter collapsed. Perhaps it was best the church never found out how many attendees were hanging from it during the last song of that night.

Undaunted, the (now former) bassist was casually tossed a spare guitar and was fully content to beat on this poor block of wood and copper-windings to songs he barely knew and couldn’t be bothered to learn. That would have been missing the point. The art of social retribution was one of exhibitionism, and revenge was a dish best served cold. Just as a tree falls in the woods, both only existed if they were on display with as many witnesses as possible—and these punks had a lot riding on the exhibition they desperately craved.

“ Wie lange muss dieser Kampf weitergehen?! ” Lena howled, and the crowd responded in kind. They all knew the words by heart; even the few stragglers seeing the band Lebensmüde for the first time, resonated with their meaning. This was an anthem of discontent with lyrics that connected with the oppressed and uninspired alike. Lena knew this, so she howled it again, beckoning all to join in.

“ Wie lange? Wie lange muss dieser Kampf weitergehen?! ”

Amplifiers were cranked far past what their components could dish out. Drum-heads threatened to cave in. Strings were pushed ever-closer to snapping and speakers clipped heavily. Even the throats of the crowd were rent raw with passion as they struggled to be heard over the dissonant cacophony. Lena herself remained completely undaunted, however, beckoning with a raspy voice characteristically unaffected. She vowed to change that. If her vocal chords weren’t torn to shreds by the end of the show, then the show would continue until they were. She would outlast the power in the building if she had to.

Time had become a malleable thing for her to control. Murderously, she spun the crowd around the room the same way she twisted the microphone cable around her neck, attempting to choke herself as she screamed. The band only played louder and faster as if to call her bluff. They knew the rules; if she actually died it would be a good death. And if she lived… better luck next time.

Seconds later, as if by divine intervention, the first song ended. Lena, clad in graffiti outlandish and hair soaked through with the sweat of no less than ten people, stretched her arms out to receive the tribute of her public. Fists churned, chests beat, feet stomped, and voices raised to show their approval of the massacre. Out there on the streets she was nothing special. But in here she was a gladiator; a prized cage-fighter and victorious champion of the underground. Anyone who said otherwise, well, they were welcome to challenge her for dominance. This was her stage, her Colosseum, and in here, she was a God.