Proudly hosted by

December 20th, 2043The Nod Inner Circle met again today. We are a year, perhaps two, from resurrecting the Brotherhood in the open again. I keep thinking about how different it will be this time, to be so close to Kane when the war breaks out. Years of planning, of sitting in the shadows in silence, will reveal their purpose soon enough in a strike so devastating only Kane knows all the details. Perhaps he will entrust me with them soon. He has been looking favorably upon me recently.Yet I am troubled. To be in the Inner Circle is an honor and privilege worth every sacrifice I have made. But to be so far removed from the grit of war is unsettling. Of course, the Inner Council is sometimes no less peaceful—Vega found that out the hard way during The Second Tiberium War—but much less appealing. The Inner Circle is a place of politics, not camaraderie. It was my former intelligence partner, Salvadore Trogan, who could best play the chords of human psychology, not I. I just wanted to blow stuff up. There's serenity in the simplicity. I think that's why Trogan and I complemented each other so well.His defection worries me still. I'd feel a lot better if he were still with us, or even if he had given his life in some against-all-odds operation. But his choice to leave—dare I call him a traitor?—hurts me and confuses me. I feel like the Inner Council has forgotten his story, if it ever knew it at all. I was the last one from Nod to see him. It was more than a decade ago, back before I was in the Inner Circle, when we were both spies in from the cold. He had been growing more distant every day. Maybe that's what the end of the war did to some people, but I always thought Trogan believed war was just psychology by other means. He looked as young as ever then--maybe his Tiberium condition revealed some false youth. I still don't understand why he left, yet I will never forget the last thing he said to me: “No Brother should believe that Nod occupies a unique position in the universe.” I knew it was over then. I've heard that line in my head a lot recently. At the time, I was tempted to get up and follow him out of Nod, wherever he went. Trogan is like that. He knows the right words, the right emotions, the right moves, to make you want to believe so desperately in him. Every time I listen to one of the Inner Circle spouting about their individual loyalty to Kane, or their grip on the Black Hand, or some such nonsense, I hear Trogan's parting words. We are not as unique as we think we are.But Kane is. And that is why I stayed with the Brotherhood. Trogan is no Kane. I think he knows that. He may deceive those around him—he could do that better than any spy we had—but he never deceived himself. Why did he feel the need to leave? His Tiberium condition had been worsening for some time—maybe he thought he had no future in Nod. That is our greatest failing. We were once willing to work with anyone to achieve peace. Indeed, we once welcomed Trogan. He saved my life more times than I can count, and I even saved his once or twice. I've already written more than enough about that incident in Prague—truly my proudest moment.But today we have our standards. I doubt a person with Trogan's conditions could have a future in the Brotherhood now. With Kane, maybe—Kane has always been too smart to judge us on the accidents of our birthplaces or backgrounds. Yet with the Inner Circle, or those below it—the sad sprawling mess that makes us look like GDI bureaucrats—being a Shiner (Trogan hated that term) meant irrelevancy. Even as it was, his successes were never really recognized in the Brotherhood, probably because he was too different. Perhaps this arrogance cost us our greatest spy.Trogan had a favorite expression: “The future is to be invented.” He said it often, as if it were his way of combating whatever turns the world threw at him. It was the rallying cry before our most daring missions, and our celebration after. It captured the glory of Nod in those days: powerful, confident, and hopeful. That glory was truly ours, and every time we plucked a secret from the bumbling fools at GDI, we proved to ourselves what we could do. We knew the power to change the world, to bring about peace, was in our hands. In adventure after adventure, Trogan and I returned with truths about GDI, hard facts that saved lives and changed battles. I would trade the arrogance of today to relive the audacious past. Will our arrogance cost us a war? I cannot speak up to change Nod's course—I am not yet close enough to Kane. Dissent is not welcomed in the Brotherhood. I've heard rumors that Trogan is still out there, fighting for the control of the masses. Maybe he is having success—I saw his mantra carved in a wall in a German territory. We will soon see how effective he will be. If it were not for Kane, I would worry. Our strike against GDI must mobilize the people if we are to succeed in the next conflict. The day Nod loses the Yellow Zones is the day we lose the war. If it is Trogan who takes them from us, I will feel a bittersweet rage. He and I worked too well together to be on opposing sides. Shiner or not, we weren't—aren't—that different.But if I have to—if Kane tells me to—I will kill him, if only because he left me to invent the future on my own.Raven