The next day, 1:20 pm…

Alejandro is at home with some friends, watching the television when the news channel says that two dangerous criminals assaulted the army at the mall yesterday…

“How pathetic they don’t say anything bad about the Red Confederacy,” Alejandro says.

“As long as those minerals and the money keep flowing into their pockets, all the government’s bigwigs will continue licking the boots of the confederates and live as kings. They didn’t spot you, did they?” Roberth looked worried.

“No way, everything went according to the plan we talked about.”

“How I envy you, I wish I had superpowers too, a shame that none of those meteorites fell in my backyard,” says Luis.

Maria says, “You think more will crash in the future?”

“Damn I hope so, being so ‘normal’ is... boring.” Luis laughs.

“Better sit down and wait then,” Roberth says.

***

6:00 pm,,,

Alejandro went to his aunt’s house to run some errands in the neighborhood. Lately, he has heard rumors about the government performing “discreet surveillance” efforts in different residential zones; still, he continued to do his tasks without worrying too much.

Alejandro stops by a childhood friend’s house and rings the bell. As he waits for a while without receiving an answer, he starts to get concerned for her.

“Where is she? I shouldn’t do this but whatever…”

Alejandro climbs up on the house with dexterity and without calling attention to himself, reaches the roof and goes to the backyard. He notices a hole about 70 centimeters in diameter in the house. Suspecting that someone here could have powers, he looks at his old friend scratching a tree with her bare hands and performing a few striking maneuvers like a martial artist, although Alejandro finds it odd watching her fighting like that; she has never stepped in a dojo or received self-defense classes.

“Hey Valeria, who taught you to fight like that?” Alejandro calls out.

“What the, how did you get there? Forget it just come down already,” Valeria calls back.

With a big jump Alejandro lands steadily, and before Valeria says something Alejandro speaks first.

“I don’t remember that you enrolled in a martial arts academy, also how did you scratch the tree without hurting yourself?”

“Have you seen the news about those meteorites that fell all over the planet? One of them just crashed above my house, luckily there wasn’t anyone where it landed, still it was next to my room so I went to find out what happened, my parents found me unconscious and I woke up in a clinic. They said I don’t have any visible wounds or illness, but when I was released…”

“You discovered you have powers too…” Finished Alejandro, clapping once in approval.

“Something like that, I can scratch the wood without hurting my fingers, and I want to know what else I can do… By the way what’s up with your eyes? Don’t tell me you got the big prize too…” Valeria grinned.

“Yeah, I can do some tricks with my mind, still there’s a lot to learn…”

“Mmph... before you ask, the National Guard took away the meteorite, they have been requisitioning those things, who knows what they are plotting…”

“Well I hid mine just in case. Anyway, why there is no one at home? I rang the bell several times and nobody answered.”

“Oh right, my parents and my brother went to a meeting and I made up an excuse to rest a bit just to explore my new powers. Great, isn’t it?”

“Definitely.”

They spent time talking and testing their skills, after almost three hours Alejandro decides to go home.

“That was fun, see you tomorrow, call Roberth and we’ll see who’s the tough guy here.” Alejandro says with a smile.

“Sure, bye.” Valeria gives him a hug before he leaves.

While Alejandro heads home, he notices from far away a lot of people and vehicles, like ambulances and police cars, at the front of his aunt’s house. His stomach flips. Something really bad has happened there, so he runs to the scene to find something which will mark him forever; the house suffered a violent break-in. Entering inside, he sees several bullet holes everywhere and the worst part, many family members lay on the ground with gunshot wounds, very few of them survived the slaughter, thankfully his aunt is one of them. He quickly approaches to her while she’s being mounted on a stretcher.

“What the hell happened here!?” Alejandro asks, touching her hand.

“Some men… with strange uniforms and armed… entered the house and… began to shoot everyone, one of them threw a grenade...” said his aunt weakly, being placed in the ambulance. That would be the last time he would see her alive.

Most of his family died that day, despite the best efforts of the doctors.

The only organization capable of executing an act like this is the Red Confederacy. Seething with rage, and needing revenge, he gets his pollaxe and trench knife from their hiding place in his parents’ house. He had no faith in the justice system, where a case like this would be treated as an isolated incident, filed away and never investigated.

That night, Alejandro heads to what appears to be a Confederate outpost at the outskirts of the town.

***

12:25 am…

On a small military outpost of the Red Confederacy, one of the watchmen detects something moving very fast in the distance. “Intruders!” he calls out.

Immediately the base enters into a state of alert against a possible threat.

Alejandro strolls in. The watcher shoots at Alejandro with his sniper rifle, and two of three shots hit him but don’t manage to stop him. Alejandro quickly climbs the watchtower and manages to dispatch his attacker, then he jumps and lands at the main area. He calmly stares at the soldiers who arrive and take a defensive position, waiting for the firing order…

“You are going to die, all of you!!!” Alejandro yells.

All the guards discharge their ammunition. Alejandro manages to deflect a lot of bullets with his psychic abilities but some of them hit him, despite this he charges forward and reaches the soldiers, killing them one by one, after almost two minutes of bloodshed a few soldiers begin to fall back and prepare to employ explosive weaponry, specifically grenade launchers. The blasts injure Alejandro considerably, still, it doesn’t stop his relentless assault until he finally finishes off the last soldier in the military outpost, then he spots a helicopter leaving the area, presumably high-ranking officers thinking the situation compromised, and the base becomes desolate.

Alejandro falls to the ground from the severity of his wounds, feeling like he hadn’t really achieved justice for his family.

“What a way to waste blood…” With that thought, he falls to the darkness.

***

5:46 am...

In an unknown place, Alejandro manages to hear some voices speaking in English near him, thankfully he knows that language. He’s half awake, and feeling hazy.

“The Red Confederacy will be more wary after this incident…” a voice says.

“Then you know what must be done.” Another voice says.

“Shall we wake him up?”

Alejandro slowly regains his senses, feeling stunned from the blood loss. He is laying on a bed, with bandages over his body and intravenous tubes in his arms. Before he can rip out the tubes, a shady human figure appears…

“Look who comes back to the world of the living, you almost died out there.” The stranger chuckled a bit. Their voice was one of the voices that had spoken a moment ago.

“Where the hell am I? Who are you, VOA people?” Alejandro felt somewhat uneasy.

A woman approaches. “I am Eve Grant, an officer of the VOA, we saved your ass from that base you ravaged, 47 confirmed casualties, not bad for an amateur with powers.”

“OK Miss Grant, what do you want, to pat my back and congratulate me?”

“No, I come to offer you work, we dragged you out of there for a reason…”

“What, just like that? I’m nothing more than an average 26-year-old guy who hasn’t finished college yet.”

“Average? Check this out,” says Eve, handing him a folder with a big red stamp saying “Classified”.

Alejandro examines the contents, there are pictures of dead soldiers of the Red Confederacy from the base he attacked. He remembers everything.

“Raze an entire military outpost with heavily armed soldiers using only a melee weapon and survive to tell the tale, that is average for you?”

With a sigh, he says, “Ok, I may have gone a little crazy but still it doesn’t answer my question at all, what exactly do you want from me?”

“I’ll explain. Venezuela is the South American country with the most valued Bellusaxum, but its government only shares the resources with the Red Confederacy, not the people. This is a disadvantage which we can’t ignore, besides global tensions are increasing and it will be a matter of time before World War III will happen. With the appropriate training you could help us to kick out the confederate presence in the country. But if you don’t want to accept, you can leave safely.”

Alejandro’s thoughts race in all directions; his first reaction is simply reject her offer, claiming he is not a soldier, but then he has an epiphany; before the meteorite incident he was a reserved and easily intimidated person, now he has a developed a thrill for any kind of combat. Suddenly a phrase he heard a long time ago and buried deep inside his psyche reverberates like a sledgehammer hitting a large bell:

If you see a good war, don’t doubt, go for it.

Snapping back to his senses, he returns his focus to Eve. “I accept the job but I have one condition.”

“And what is it?”

“I need you to give shelter to my family and some friends’ relatives.”

“That I can do, we can arrange for them to have asylum in the United States until the conflict in Venezuela ends.” Grant says with a nod.

“Then we have a deal. What’s the first step?” Alejandro offers his hand.

She shakes the proffered hand and says, “Before we can begin you must take us to your family and friends so we can guarantee them total safety, you will find your belongings inside that locker next to the door. Take this radio, contact me when you are done and I’ll give you more instructions.”

After the conversation ends, the VA medics remove the intravenous injections and get him discharged, he takes his gear and goes first to his parents’ house…

***

11:00 am…

Alejandro is on his way, in a VOA transport disguised as a civilian vehicle, his parents and sister waiting for him outside as he called them by phone without telling them who he was bringing. He arrives at home trying to think of how to tell them everything that happened plus the delicate issue of his powers, it will be a pain in the neck.

His worried mother reaches to him, giving him a tight hug. “Oh my God, Alejandro where have you been? Why haven’t you told us you are okay? After the attack on my sister’s house I have been worried sick.”

“What the hell have you done, are you in trouble? Who are those people?” His father says angrily.

“I’m not gonna argue now, I need you to see this…” Alejandro shows them his psychic skills.

“You have powers, and did not tell us anything?” says his sister.

“And how the heck would I know how you would react? For me it was better to keep this a secret. I’m sorry about what happened to my aunts and the other relatives who rest in peace.” Alejandro says.

“Those powers only brought you problems, if you weren’t so foolish none of this would have happened,” his father says.

“That’s why I left home, you are so stubborn and annoying! Now pay attention, these are VOA soldiers, due to a couple of things I did during the past few days I don’t want to risk what happened my aunts happening to you too, so I made a deal with them and they’ll give you asylum in the U.S.” Alejandro kept a serious look on his face, trying to make the case that they should trust him.

They were baffled. His mother spoke first:

“Wait a moment, wait a moment, what’s this all about? You say you got in trouble, and now you are working for them?”

“I don’t care what you did to get in trouble, I’m not leaving my home just because you are a reckless—” His father says.

Before he ends the sentence, Alejandro lifts him up by the shirt.

“Listen to me right now, I can’t explain everything. I care a lot for my family but if you want to die here I won’t stop you. I won’t even look for your lead-filled carcass once the confederacy comes.” Alejandro spoke with a defiant tone.

His father was speechless. His mother and sister looked scared. They pleaded with Alejandro to put him down and stop fighting.

“At 1:00 am you’ll depart with the rest of the family.”

His father raises his arms angrily, and Alejandro does the same.

Alejandro looks to his mother for help. “You see? There’s the grateful father who receives help from his unruly son.”

“He’s your father and you have to accept him how he is, nobody is perfect.”

“Of course, I like that flawless logic of yours, bloody... I’ve had enough of his long-time antagonism, I should have been living with my aunts since the beginning,” He stops to take a breath. “I will see you tomorrow, I have business to attend.”

Alejandro leaves grudgingly and gets inside the vehicle. His next stop is Roberth, and then Valeria.

***

3:02 pm

Alejandro arrives at Roberth’s home, it shouldn’t be a problem convincing him to go to the U.S. with his family.

“Sup partner, hey... sorry about what happened to your family, those damned reds are only thugs in service to this regime.” Roberth gives him a pound-hug.

“At the end what happened can’t be reversed, I almost died assaulting a military outpost of the Confederacy alone.”

“What!? You alone against an army? Have you lost the little sanity you had?”

“Perhaps... listen, after that incident the Confederacy is looking for me, and I don’t want something to happen to you or your family. I got the VOA to offer you safety. I’m going to do some work for them.”

“Go to the north? No, thank you.” Roberth is firm.

“So you want to be the next on the list?

“Look, I hate those bastards as much as you, to see my homeland infested by this red plague is a disgrace, I prefer to stay here and fight rather than flee and see the Confederation get away with it, I can take care of myself.” Roberth crosses his arms.

“Then we are speaking the same language, at least let your family and friends get some protection there so they will be safeguarded.”

“That works for me, I’ll speak to them, better you give me hand with this.”

After talking it through, Roberth’s family and close friends agree to take protection in the U.S. His last stop is Valeria’s house.

“…Tomorrow at 1:00 am a VOA transport will come to pick you up on this location.” Alejandro says to Valeria’s family and friends.

As everybody leaves the dining room, Valeria speaks to Alejandro and Roberth. “After all this, what will happen next?”

“I don’t know… I have a deal with the VOA, they say that they will help me to push the Red Confederacy out of the country, I have to give them a call.” Alejandro intends to follow through with helping the VOA.

“Go then, and tell us what happens,” says Roberth.

Alejandro moves away from the group and contacts Eve Grant. “I’m done with my business, what’s next?”

“The next step is to train you, you’ll be in the VOA Superhuman Special Forces Division, it will be six and a half months of intense conditioning, we will pick you up at 13:00 hours and give you the coordinates to the extraction point, Eve out.”

The transmission ends and Alejandro returns to the group.

“Well? Spit it out.” Valeria says.

“Tomorrow I’ll go to the U.S., I’m gonna be trained to face the reds on equal terms, six and a half months there. Then I’ll see where they are going to drop me. What about you?”

“In my case, I’ll continue working out, I feel I can get stronger but I have to figure out how, anyways have fun with your training, make sure to call me once in a while,” Valeria says.

Alejandro and Roberth leave the house while they chat on the way.

“…And you never told me you are a couple, and a good-looking one, you fortunate rat…” Roberth says.

Alejandro laughs. “I’d rather be a Confederate slave than be her boyfriend, besides, she thinks the same, nevertheless we get along very well, I can always trust her, now I won’t be here for a while it’s your chance.”

“Hah, we’ll see, in any case I’ll train on my own and see what I can learn. Well, end of the line, see you soon and show ‘em who’s the boss.” Roberth looked at him with worry in his eyes.

“Right.” Alejandro says his good-bye.

***

Alejandro waits at the extraction point when suddenly a helicopter slowly materializes from thin air, it turns out to be a VOA chopper and his ride to training camp.

Eve Grant greets him as he climbs in. She hands him a headset so they can talk.

“Surprised?”

“That’s... an understatement, what was that?” Alejandro says into his mic.

“Stealth technology, advanced enough not only for the naked eye but also to electronic scanning, let’s go.”

The trip will last some hours, meanwhile, Eve gets Alejandro up to date to the current events.

“While we are on our way we’re going to make you aware of the situation. The public knows the Red Confederacy is an alliance of many countries on Eurasia and some in Africa, it has its headquarters in North Korea. Its objective is simple, get the Bellusaxum and use it to get political power over the whole world. So we created the Vanguard of the Atlantic to stop them.”

“Would you just use nuclear weapons?”

“In the 70s, the Soviet Union was working on a top-secret project called ‘Flyswatter’, the ultimate nuclear defense system, back then we found some information about the program, but due to the technology in that time and the resources that demanded, the project was deemed ‘Suspended until further notice’... until now, after discovering the extraordinary capabilities of the Bellusaxum the project was resumed and decisive results were achieved in terms of ultramodern electronics, first-generation optical computers, superconducting materials, strong metal alloys, both for us and the Confederacy. With the exception of breakthroughs and development in bioenergy, we excelled in that field, unfortunately, when World War 3 begins, it won’t be fought with atomic weapons but by warfare based on Bellusaxum.

“‘Stone of War’... I think that’s how called in Latin, the new lifeblood of every army.” Alejandro sighs.

The helicopter lands in a large military base, where he is enlisted and prepares for the first day of training. Alejandro also notices the other recruits have different abilities, after dealing with the paperwork he is called to take formation and the drill instructor arrives.

“Welcome to the training of the VOA Superhuman Special Forces Division, unfortunately for you, I am the drill instructor John Simmons. Don’t think you are so important just because you can do cheap magic tricks, you are all equally worthless, but all that will change. You are going to be subjected to the best workout that will turn you from lambs to soldiers, all this will last six and a half months and I demand positive results for the final test. The training begins NOW!”

“And it so begins…” thinks Alejandro, as he waits for this loud American to hopefully help him.