The man walks swiftly towards the door.

“Where did he go?!” the he demands.

“He just bolted out the door after you turned around!” the other man replies.

“Well, don’t just stand there! Help me find him!”

“Isn't there some loud speaker we can use to tell everyone else to search for him?”

“Oh yeah, just go ahead and start yelling over the loudspeaker! We’ll just hope we don’t wake up the hundreds of kids in conditioning and ruin the whole plan.”

The second man begins to feel uneasy.

“Well, can’t we at least get some others to help us search?” he suggests meekly.

“No. We can’t tell anyone about this. That kid was being injected with the Knight Formula. We can’t tell anyone! If this gets back to the king or queen, they’ll have our heads!”

“What do we do then?”

“We search on our own, find the boy, get him back in suspension, and act like nothing happened.”

Unlike all other standard chess pieces, the knight can 'jump over' other pieces.

--

The boy continues running down the dark hallway. What the heck is going on here? Who were those men? Why did they call him a pawn? Who said those things about quadrant 3 and security tapes? It had come out of his mouth, but he didn’t think of it. This is all getting too weird. The boy slows down and stops outside of the hallway with the beds. He takes a moment to catch his breath, and walks in as silently as possible.

Three seconds later, another cold chill hits the boy.

“Augh!” he cries out. This one is stronger than the last two. Suddenly, memories flood his mind. Thousands of people talk at once, each for only a second. They each say the same name: James Kanite. The boy remembers. That’s his name.

To his left, something shifts on a bed. Then, a curtain is drawn back. There stands a small girl in a paper-thin hospital robe, tubes still protruding from her forearm. She wipes sleep from her eyes, and stares at James curiously.

“Is everything alright out here? I heard someone yell.”