May 2014, Liverpool
Jack ashed his spliff into the half empty Stella can, his eyes fixed on the burning air traffic control tower in his monitor. Russian-backed separatists had begun their assault on Donetsk Airport. Inside the terminal building, a few dozen Ukrainian soldiers began what was to be a desperate and legendary 252-day defence. Jack was thinking of the future. A thought bubbled to the surface; an inkling that his fate was somehow linked with this country, which had risen from the ashes of the Soviet Union into a nation where young people had confronted the geopolitical might of the largest country on Earth, and won. Jack had watched them fight and die on the streets of Kyiv for a brighter future, turning away from their historical oppressor and towards hope in a time where hope seemed to be a diminishing commodity. He was now watching, live and in full HD, the events that would define a century of humanity – if humanity could last that long. Mi-8 helicopters buzzed the tower, rockets screaming towards their targets. Jack’s screen flickered. The feed was cut.
May 2014, Donetsk
Lena stood at her window, drizzle falling softly outside. She should have been thinking about her prom dress, which she still hadn’t chosen despite her graduation being only a few days away. For now though, her eyes were fixed on a burning air traffic control tower. The planes had been coming and going for so much of her life that she stopped hearing them, now their absence was deafening. It had been a month since the strangers had arrived in her city. The language on the TV had changed, the news reporters had begun saying things like “Ukrainian Nazis” and “the Kyiv Regime’s desire to keep us in cages”. She didn’t know what it meant yet, she was a sixteen-year-old girl who wanted to graduate high school. She had no interest in politics, but politics was fast becoming interested in her. For a second, a presence invaded her mind. Something from far away, an awareness of something looking at the same thing she was…in an instant the Mi-8 smashed through every single one of her senses simultaneously. The rotors roared, the hulking mass of metal lunged over the tower block and into her field of view, the acrid taste and smell of fuel as the rockets screamed towards their target. Two seconds after the orange bloom burst silently from the tower, the glass in the windows shook, as the thunder of the blast reached her. Lena stayed where she was, unafraid. She did not yet know what bombs could do.
Jack Of Albion 