CHAPTER 6

Instinctual Imprint

It was 4:00 pm in the afternoon. A black armoured sedan with tinted black windows arrived at the Deilburg Bureau of Investigation Head Quarters in the North Western part of Trinix state. The area was a large, fenced 6km square compound with well-trimmed green grasses, tiled walkways, patrolling drones and heavily armed soldiers kitted out in dark-blue coloured gear with Alsatian German shepherd dogs in leashes.

The doors of the sedan automatically opened themselves out, Max Hamelson stepped out of the Vehicle on one side, Galen Scillian came out on the opposite side and looked at the eccentric architectural marvel of the DBI main Head Quarters building. He was dressed in a dark blue turtle neck, black jeans and grey converse sneakers with white socks inside. Max had bought him the new attire.

“I never would have thought that I’d ever see this place,” Galen spoke as he stared at the building.

“You’ll get used to it. This is where you will be reporting for all mission-related issues and briefs,” Max replied.

“Come, we need to get you sorted out,” Max ushered Galen through the front door entrance.

The reception lobby was a large Oval-shaped room with an oval-shaped reception table encircling the receptionist inside it situated at the centre of the lobby. There were three pairs of double doors in that lobby with exception to the double door entrance, one pair to the far left end, one pair to the far right and one pair to the far front end of the room behind the reception counter.

“Max, always a pleasure,” spoke the receptionist with a smile on her face as she looked at Max Hamelson. She was a young woman in her early 30s with jet black Voluminous hair.

“May I ask who this is?” asked the receptionist as she used her left hand to stroke up the left side of her hair, her gaze shifting from Max to Galen.

“Hi, I’m Galen,” Galen introduced himself to her after their eyes made contact, he extended his right hand forth in an arm-shake gesture but she simply smiled at him and nodded her head without reciprocating the handshake. Her gaze returned to Max while still stroking her hair with her left hand. Galen retracted his arm.

“Well?” She asked Max, giving him that look of ‘what’s-galen’s-business-here?’

“Miss Gunther, we need to categorize this young man, he’s a Prymer,” Max spoke calmly. Immediately the receptionist froze in her pose, eyes shocked.

Her gaze shifted from Max to Galen and fixated on him for a few seconds of utter silence in the room before returning to the computer screen in front her, she typed something and hit the enter key, there was a click sound at the double doors to the far left side of the oval lobby.

“Welcome to the DBI Galen, we hope to keep you,” Miss Gunther addressed Galen. She gestured her right hand, pointing towards the double doors to the left end of the lobby while her gaze shifted to Max Hamelson.

“Shall we?” Max gestured at Galen and they walked towards the double doors to the left, entering a series of winding corridors before arriving at an elevator located in the left hand side halfway through one of the corridors.

“Where are we headed?” Galen asked, confused about the direction they were heading to.

“The Testing Arena,” Max replied as the elevator doors slid open. The two got inside the elevator and descended underground, arriving at another lone corridor with a sliding, metallic double doors at the end of it. Max placed his arm on a screen pad to the left wall of the corridor near the double door.

“Access, granted,” spoke a computerized voice. The double door slid open.

They entered a massive square shaped room with dozens of heavily armed soldiers.

“What are all these guards for?” Galen asked nervously as he looked at some of them.

“Testing of course,” Max replied with a smile.

“You don’t have to worry, nothing bad will happen,” Max assured Galen as he patted his right shoulder with his left arm.

“Due to the nature of your ability, I have prepared a custom test and made a few calls while we were on our way here, I never had to do this with anyone,” Max spoke as he gestured his hand, beckoning one of the armed soldiers who was holding a large bag full of military equipment to come. The soldier walked towards the two and stopped in front of them. Max nodded his head, signalling him to go on. The soldier dropped his bag and unzipped it and rummaged through some equipment and pulled out a strange metallic kind of hand-cuff with a screen in the middle of it and a remote control with numbers on it.

Galen got nervous as he saw the handcuff and the remote. His heart raced.

“It’s relatively simple, you are going to prove to me your powers,” Max said.

“Your hands please,” The soldier asked Galen calmly.

“No way! What do you want with them?” Galen rejected.

“It’s okay, nothing bad will happen, we only need to see the proof of your powers, besides, I’ve vouched for you, saved us a lot of paperwork” Max assured Galen. Galen hesitated for a bit before reluctantly handing over his arms to be handcuffed. The digital hand cuff auto-locked itself and the soldier turned around, his back facing Galen, obscuring what he was doing and pressed some numbers on the remote control. There was a clicking sound inside Galen’s hand cuffs as they locked into place. The soldier turned around and gave Galen the remote control. He walked away towards the sliding metallic double doors and returned a minute later with 2 chairs and placed one chair near Galen and another opposite the first one, facing it.

“Sit,” Max spoke to Galen.

“I think you already have it figured it out what I want from you, right?” Max continued.

“In case you still don’t get it, I want you to use your powers to access the guard’s experience and obtain the passcode and use it to open the hand-cuff .”

Galen’s heart skipped a bit, he swallowed some saliva as he stared at the thick padlock-like hand cuffs on him with a screen at the centre between them, his gaze shifted to the remote control he was holding and then shifted to the soldier seated in front of him, staring at him. The whole room was silent. He did not have proper control over his newly found powers and didn’t know how to bring them up. His heart began to pace faster as he wondered what to do.

He focused his gaze towards the soldier in front of him and imagined himself in his head zooming into the eyes of the soldier, the doors to the human soul, but nothing happened. The soldier gave him a weird look as if telling him ‘don’t look at me like that’. The soldier’s reached for his bag of military equipment and pulled out a magazine of naked women and started reading it. The rest of the soldier’s in the room laughed but Max Hamelson was silent, he was more focused on Galen who got distracted by the magazine of naked women as he stared at its sexually-suggestive cover.

“Is this part of the testing too?” Galen asked Max as his eyes gestured at the magazine the soldier was holding. The other soldiers laughed.

“Just a distraction, you focus on getting the passcode if you don’t want to be staring at images of naked women all day,” spoke the soldier whose eyes were focused on the magazine. Galen felt awkward as his gaze shifted between the soldier’s eyes and the cover of the magazine. Time passed, a minute, then ten, then thirty, silence.

“Look, I don’t have all day to sit here, there are cases waiting to be solved,” Max spoke impatiently as he stared at his watch. It was 5:15pm in the evening.

Galen’s heart paced rapidly now, he did not know how to control his powers. They just occurred to him without his consent. He never wanted any of that, all he ever wanted was to be a normal guy doing his college degree and yet here he stood, supposedly because he found new powers and got dragged into a world he thought was only a figment of someone else’s imagination and conspiracy theorists. And now that he got dragged into it and made the choice to join the DBI, he couldn’t prove what he claimed he was able to do. He thought this all to himself. He felt like he was given a lift by his powers to a destination and got dropped on the way, too late to return back, too far to his destination. He began to hate his own powers and blame the crystal capsule for the situation.

“I ….HATE!....this. I TRULY! DO HATE THIS!” Galen spoke in a quiet yet angry voice full of rage. Max Hamelson had turned and walked away from the room but he stopped and turned around and faced Galen after he heard him say that. The soldier who was reading a magazine of naked women with sexual articles stopped reading, his gaze shifting from his magazine to Galen, whose face was looking down his digital padlock-handcuffs, his emo hairstyle concealing his facial expression but his pale skin reddened in rage down to his neck.

“Look, stop wasting our time if you don’t have any pow-”

“I never wanted any of this,” Galen spoke, his voice suddenly changed as he raised his head up, revealing his face with tears coming out of his eyes, his irises glowing into a Magenta hue fixated on the soldier. The soldier froze in a shocked expression. Max Hamelson’s heartbeat skipped in cautious excitement as he observed the soldier’s reaction and Galen’s inhuman glowing irises. He thought to himself that, that was the moment he had been waiting to see for himself, his instincts were right about the youngster, the young man was definitely a Prymer.

The magazine dropped from the soldier’s hands, open on the floor.

“M-m-my hands! What happened to my hands?! Max! I can’t move my hands!” the soldier exclaimed. Galen had unconsciously remembered his state of being hand-cuffed and looked into the soldier’s eyes and ‘Imprinted’ that experience unto him.

“WHAT THE FUCK MAN! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!” The soldier cried out. The entire room was silent.

“HEY DUDE! STOP IT! OKAY? I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU JUST DID, BUT STOP IT! YOU GOT POWERS! YEAH WE KNOW THAT NOW! JUST STOP IT ALRIGHT?!” The soldier exclaimed at Galen but avoided eye contact with those magenta glowing inhuman irises.

“LOOK! I DON’T CARE! I’M DONE WITH THIS FREAK-TEST! THE PASSCODE IS 89305! JUST STOP IT ALRIGHT?!” the soldier confessed.

Galen shifted his gaze to the remote control and entered the digits unto it. There was a clicking sound within his hand-cuff before it opened. His heartbeat calmed somewhat but his glowing magenta eyes had not stopped yet. The soldiers in the room cocked their assault rifles and aimed at Galen.

Max raised his right hand in the air, gesturing the soldier’s in the room to lower their weapons.

“You passed,” Max spoke to Galen with a broad smile on his face. He walked to Galen and patted his right shoulder with his left hand.

“I was right about you, if anything, I may have underrated your abilities,” Max continued.

“I do not know how to categorize your abilities, there are too many uses to them and too many unknowns, we are going to need someone special to coach you before you are able to use your gifts to their maximum potential,” He spoke calmly.

Galen’s eyes reverted back to normal and the soldier’s hands which were hand-cuffed by an invisible handcuff Imprinted unto his experience loosened and he could move them again.

“That’s it Max! I think I’m done being the guinea pig for testing prymer powers, this is just too much!” the soldier spoke as he reached to the ground and picked up the magazine and stuffed it back into the bag.

“Do you know where I can find such a coach,” Galen asked Max.

“I don’t know, but I know someone who might know,” Max replied.

“So what now?” Galen asked Max as he curiously eyed him.

“When I was interrogating you back at the precinct, I made a promise to you that should you join us, we would take care of you and I would show you the most dangerous individual whom you should avoid at all costs,” Max replied.

“You mean the guy who can take away our powers?” Galen asked. Max nodded without saying a word. His complexion paled and he shuddered slightly.

“Come with me,” Max said as he started walking away towards the entrance door, Galen followed behind him. They walked to the opposite wing of the headquarters, passing through the reception lobby to the double doors on the far right. They went through winding corridors until they stopped in front of an elevator that took them up several floors before opening into a single corridor with double doors at the far end. They entered the double doors and arrived at a large rectangular office with bulletproof tinted glass instead of a concrete wall facing the outside. The glass allowed those inside to see the outside but those outside could not see inside.

“This is my office, make yourself at home…” Max spoke as he strolled towards a small refrigerator and opened it.

“What will you have?” He asked Galen, whose attention was diverted towards the immaculately, dustless clean office with an air conditioner running.

“Oh, me?...nah its okay,” Galen replied with a slight smile but Max tilted his head and gave him the look of ‘Oh-C’mon’. There was an awkward moment of silence between them.

“Alright, ‘Quda’ will do,” Galen gave in. Max smiled and turned to his refrigerator and reached for a can of soda and grabbed it, then tossed it towards Galen, who caught it.

“Thanks,” Galen said as he opened the can and sipped a dark brown liquid.

“You are welcome… alright, first order of business,” Max spoke as he sat on his swivel chair.

Max was about to start login into his computer when his cell phone rang. He reached for his trouser pockets and pulled it out and stared at its touchscreen for a few seconds.

“Give me a minute…” He told Galen with a smile on his face as he swiped the cell phone screen and answered the call.

“What is it?” Max answered the call with a calm expression as he stared at his computer screen while talking. Galen could not hear the words that were being communicated on the other line of the phone but he could make out the distinct voice talking on the other side. It was the voice of one of the police officers who escorted him to the interrogation room. The voice kept on speaking on the other side of the call while Max’s face gradually went pale and his eyes widened with shock. The voice on the other side of the call stopped talking, there was a moment of silence before Max sighed and massaged his forehead while looking down at his desk.

“My God….” He spoke softly, closing his eyes, his head still bowed down staring at his desk while massaging his forehead. He gave another sigh.

“We are coming to take them right now,” He answered the call, hung up and immediately stood up. Galen could tell from the reaction that something had just happened, something unpleasantly intrusive.

“I’m sorry, there is something I need to attend to urgently, I’ll ask one of our agents to guide you to your new place, wait for me until I return” Max spoke as he tried his very best to keep calm and conceal the graveness of the situation.

“What happened?” Galen asked, his gaze focused on Max’s eyes. Max knowing that Galen had somewhat sensed that something was wrong, he took a deep breath.

“We’ve run into a complication…an incident has occurred in the area you got your powers from,” Max spoke as he tried to keep a calm and composed demeanour.

“Incident?” Galen asked as he remembered the night he was arrested and how the old bum had accused him falsely. In the end, It had all turned out well for him. Without saying another word, Max turned and walked towards the double doors exit. He had opened it halfway out when Galen spoke.

“Can I come with you?” Galen asked. He had his reasons.

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” Max snapped as he held the door halfway open, turning his head to look at Galen. His face was completely pale with fright.

“Why are you so defensive?,” Galen continued as he gestured his hand at Max.

“I’m a prymer… you said so yourself. That place is close to my apartment. I could be of some help, you never know,” Galen urged.

“No, it’s EXACTLY because YOU ARE a prymer, that’s EXACTLY why you can’t come with me, if you were an ordinary human then maybe, but you are not” Max spoke as he attempted to keep himself calm.

“Besides you can barely use your powers at will until someone pressures you… no, we can’t afford to lose you,” Max continued. Max was about to walk out when Galen suddenly stood up and walked towards him and opened the other double door.

“You said it yourself that I can’t use my powers at will, if that’s the case, then how am I different from a normal person then? That place? Where I got my powers? Its close to my apartment, I want to get my things,” Galen argued.

“That can be arranged for some of our agents to break the door and get your things for you, I’ll sort out with your landlord,” Max argued back, he proceeded to walk towards the elevator. Galen still stood at the entrance to Max’s office.

“How am I supposed to master my powers if I don’t get real life experience? Of what use am I if I’m being overprotected,” Galen raised his voice so that Max who neared the elevator could hear it across the corridor. Max suddenly came to halt. Galen wondered if he had angered the man as an awkward silence fell between the two. Without saying any other word, Max sighed and waved his hand, gesturing that he could follow him. Galen smiled, quickly went back to the office and grabbed his drink and followed Max.

They left the DBI Headquarters building through the main entrance and entered into a black tinted armoured SUV. Three soldiers dressed in dark blue gear, armed with sub-machine guns, grenades and bullet proof vests entered into the back of the armoured vehicle and it left the compound.