Chapter 5

Maurice

Father told me many dangers of the world and HellFire was just one of many. I had no fear and I had no doubt. This was my time to unleash my strength once again as a Thompson.

HellFire crashed down to my level and gave me a look of a demon. If I didn’t unleash my strength there, me and the rest of the team will die.

“I’ve never seen someone call me out for a challenge,” HellFire said.

“I’m sure you haven’t,” I responded.

“Is there a reason, you wish to fight me?”

“My father and his fathers before him were Thompson. The strongest Rhinos in existence and I will be the one to unlock my power after hundreds of failures.”

HellFire laughed, “You may be a Rhino, but you’re still human. You’re very valiant for choosing to face a god like me. I’ve stepped on rocks harder than you, quite literally.”

“Then prove it to me,” I threatened.

HellFire shot his smile away and aimed his arm out to me. I began floating out of the ground and next second, I was facing a wall with sharp objects.

“I could have killed you there,” I heard him. “Make your second chance now and kneel before me!”

I struggled to move my arm and soon it was touching my chest. My heart was racing and my breath was stolen. It was time.

I felt a wave of wind flashing out of my body and it followed the track of his force of gravity. In seconds, the power met with HellFire’s arm and fire set off on it.

“Huh?” he ignored the pain but questioned it. “Interesting. I didn’t know blood could heat up that high?”

My heart stopped. My power was just a gimmick to him. I just set his arm on fire and he was just playing with it.

He blew the fire away and set me back on the ground. He said, “Is there a reason, I am facing you?”

“No,” I said with very horrifying regret.

“Okay.” HellFire waved his arm and lifted me up again. “I have a question for you. Where did you get that power?”

“I don’t know. It was a power sent from hundreds of generations of Rhinos. The only people who know about it today, are the Vectorians.”

“Ah,” he said. “The Vectorians. They’re quite a delightful species but I don’t imagine them holding that kind of technology. Whatever your father told you, was a damn lie!”

“Huh?” I questioned. “What do you mean?”

“Vectorians are highly advanced but they don’t hold gifts like you do. There are only humans with gifts like yours and demons who obsess over it. You're one of those humans,” HellFire said.

“There’s a special place where they teach you about those gifts and I want to see you go there, before I face you again. Actually, I’ll tell you where it is.” He put back on the ground.

“Your body is the center of the energy you hold for that power,” HellFire said. “If you don’t grow it wisely, you can’t use it wisely. That’s why your flame didn’t phase me.”

“But,” HellFire muffled. “I’m not your teacher.”

After that he grabbed my body and sent me crashing into a wall harder than Bod threw me. I damned myself to land on my back and felt blood seeping out of my forehead.

Then his feet appeared next to my head and said, “Look out for yourself. Don't let anybody get in the way of killing me because you’re the only one in this planet who can touch me.”

Next thing, he flew back to his airship and the sky was destroyed when it set off. Nearly every building fell apart in one blow and I realized, I failed. I failed yet again to be a great Rhino like Pontiac.

“Maurice!” Jacob’s voice returned. “I’m right here man. Stay still.”

Jacob removed the chest plate from my armor and injected a needle through my chest. In one flash of a second, I felt the motivation to stand up again and met hands with Jacob.

“Thanks,” I said.

“The others were hurt. We need to get ready to meet with Omega soon. I need you on your feet before we see them.”

“Jacob,” I whispered. “Who is standing in my way?”

“What? Nobody is, Maurice. What are you talking about,” Jacob said.

“I need to find out, who will be preventing me from murdering HellFire, next time I see him.”

The note of his voice echoed clear across my head. There are people standing in my way from using my true strength. I am the strongest one here. I could be stronger than Tony if I didn’t hold back.

“I’ve been holding back my power, Jacob,” I said. “I knew how to use my biggest strength but if we didn’t have this team with us, I would have killed HellFire before we met.”

“You can’t, Maurice. At least, not right now.”

“No, Jacob. I know why,” I whispered through his ear. “The man holding back my strength was, Tony this whole time … I need to kill him.”

Jacob turned me against a wall and held my arm back against my will. “Maurice, don’t say that. If you try anything crazy, I’ll have to act on it soon. We don’t want that!”

“You won’t,” I said. “You're my best friend. My only friend. You can’t kill me.”

“I didn’t say I was going to kill you, but you gave me the idea.”

“You wouldn’t. I know it.”

Chapter 6

Tony

“What don’t you understand?!” the voice echoed in my sleep. “Leave the sight and never come back!”

The voice was beginning to speak louder. The pitch black room around me trembled altogether like this one was facing an earthquake.

By then it was already clear, the voice didn’t want to leave me alone. There was no ignoring it any longer.

My armor didn’t exist. I felt so naked without it and so vulnerable, but that was what the demon wanted.

“What will it take to make you leave before the moon shapes into a crescent?” the voice bounced around my head. “There’s a lot of matter into this. You have a lot of worth as a Rhino. You can kill whatever you want, if you put yourself to it.”

“So,” I said. “You want me to let an entire planet get destroyed by the Lox?”

“Precisely,” the skull appeared dead center on my face. “Trust me, you’re going to lose too. You'll lose in ways you won’t imagine. In ways you wouldn’t believe and all you’ll be then is a sack a mule waiting to get stabbed in the heart.”

“Is that a threat?” I asked.

The skeletal fingers grappled onto my shoulders, and ripped my skin with sharp fingers. “You have a demon inside you, Tony. It's asking to be let out and you’re not the only one and I want to talk about that demon.”

The skull floated away and my own image appeared except I was appearing very dark. Blood was crawling down my armor and my hands trembled with trauma. My face said, there was no coming back and he gave me a look that destroyed my bones.

“Why are you looking at me?” myself said. “Nobody dares to look at me unless they want to die.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“You really want to know?”

“This Tony,” the voice said. “Has seen war more terrifying than you can imagine. He's watched hundreds upon thousands die in front of him and he’s come so close to death countless times and there’s more to it than just blood.”

“Tell me,” I said.

“Tell you?” the voice returned to my eyes. “I’ve been telling you. Leave Orson! Do you really want to see that future?”

I wanted to just snap out of it. Pinch myself and wake up, but something was off.

“Who are you? Explain to me why I should believe you.”

“I’d tell you, but then you’d have to die this second. I’m giving you a chance here,” he said. “Look at me straight when I say this. You're already feeling pain. You want to leave. You've been wanting to leave. What is stopping you from stepping away from the blood and call it a normal life ahead of you?”

“I … I honestly, don’t know.” I clenched my fist. “I’ve been training my whole life as a Rhino. If I am not a Rhino, I have no purpose. If I step out of my armor, I am just a human being who will be overrun by the real world that is treachery. I don’t want to be stop being a Rhino, even if I die!”

“Oh, well look at you.” His fingers met my face. “You’re so depressed and sad that you want to forget about having a normal life and continue to kill people. You're such a pathetic creature with a heartless soul. Way more than I imagined.”

“I don’t care if I keep killing. I don’t care if I die. I am nothing if I am not a Rhino. I will kill as a Rhino and I will die as a Rhino!”

“Don’t scream at me!” His voice shook the room. “You want to watch people die each day! You want to kill people each day! You want to see yourself as an even more heartless creature! Do you want to see a world burn hotter than the sun?!”

“Unfortunately, I do,” I said. “And I may sound selfish but I want to keep killing so I can watch terrible people like you burn.”

The voice laughed and threw me against a non-existent wall.

“You won’t get a chance to kill me, if that’s what you desire,” he said. “I’ve done you the favor and this is the respect I get? I’ll be happy to make you feel pain until the end. Even the heartless Tony in the future and I know you’ll regret it.

“And yes, you may kill terrible people, but you’ll even kill good people who don’t deserve it. I’ll watch it all set down as a standard. You know your own pain, but you don’t understand others.”

How long was I going to stay there? I didn’t want to keep listening. There had to be a way out.

“Are you eager to wake up?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay, since you’re not listening. Let's make it straight forward from here,” he said and stuck his fingers through my flesh. “You wanted to know who I was. I am deception and I am the justice that evil won’t want. I am Liam Darkson, and soon, your world, and everybody else’s world is going to be nothing but blood.”

“Liam?” I questioned. “You’re the guy Nancy killed.”

“Yes.” He tilted his head. “Just a friendly reminder, she’ll have her shot soon too.”

“No,” I said. “No! No! No!!”

His fingers sunk through my organs and it came out my back, only to wake up in the middle of snow.

“What happened?!” I shot myself back up. “Where is he? Where is he?!”

I noticed nobody was around me. I was in the middle of nowhere. No buildings. No destruction. Just a landscape of snow. As a matter of fact, it’s so empty, it’s scary, yet I still have my armor and my weapons with me. Where did everyone go?

“Maurice,” I said over comms. “Jacob. Nancy. Patrick. Anybody there?!”

No responses. All I can do now, is survive. I pulled my AR in my arms and stepped forward into the void. I walked and walked into an endless bridge of snow and ice.

It felt so real, yet I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming. My team wouldn’t leave me behind like this but there had to be a reason to it.

Actually, now that I thought about it, Nancy would never leave me alone. Something must have happened, but where am I supposed to go? I have no contact and no readings. How do I get myself back to Olytus.

“Ahhh!” a Lok roared from underneath the snow. “Black Knight!”

He shoved the snow off him, but struggled to stand up. I only aimed my AR down to him.

“I want to hurt you for HellFire, but I am weak and in despair,” he said.

“So, you’re just going to sit there?” I asked.

He looked so pathetic. He couldn’t do anything. He's been wounded somewhere in his body.

“The pack left me behind. They trampled over my body and made me bleed, and I just let it happen. The storm that destroyed your city, is ready to tear into the next victims.”

“Okay,” I said. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’ve lost faith, Black Knight. When Lox like us are hopeless, we help our enemies. Without our leaders. Without our pack. We are nothing but dead meat,” he said.

“So, you want me to kill you?”

“No, you can, but I want you to know, there are many Lox who don’t have faith in HellFire. There are few of us who don’t believe he will save us from our hunger. We want to rebel, but it’s hopeless against a God and his army of talents.

“Look at what happened to me! I was stepped on by own family! Do you really think this blood is worth it?!”

“See Tony,” Liam came back. “I know it inside you. He just gave you a deal, yet you asked him if it’s okay for you to kill him?”

“Shit, man,” I said. “I wouldn’t do this for any of you, but do you need help?”

“No,” he rejected. “I am a Lok. I can help but I will not take your help. Just call it a day and kill me.”

“If that's what you want,” I said. “I’ll just walk away.”

“Just hold on, Black Knight.” He pulled my leg. “One of you has to kill HellFire. If you don’t end this war soon before they reach the North of this Planet, HellFire will only reach closer to his goal. He will feed his Lox and he’ll tear into the next planets you have.”

“How can I kill him?” I asked.

“HellFire is protected by the force of gravity. Nothing can touch him, but even it does, it won’t hurt him yet he is weak against lightning. I’ve seen it happen. I know you Humans can craft a weapon stronger than a bomb.”

“How do you know?”

“I know, because you’re God is the one who cursed us with this hunger,” he said and it cracked my heart open.

“Where is he?” I asked about the God.

“Dead, with the rest of his followers,” he said. “But he left humans smart enough to craft weapons that can shatter planets. If you can find those humans, you’ll be at ease of killing HellFire soon.”

“Where can I find one?”

“They are called Gisene. It is said, there is a Gisene for each planet,” he said. “They could be at one of our own planets and we won’t know it. There should be one here, meddling with destructive weapons, in this snow trenched world.”

I kicked his arm off my leg and said, “Well, I think I know where to find him. One of them crafted my armor. Surely, they’ll craft me a weapon strong enough to kill HellFire.”

They named him, Atom Carter. Ryan and Romeo used him for whatever weapons we need on the field. I just needed to find a way to contact Ryan and tell him to start crafting a weapon that can fire lightning. Sounds stupid, but that’s what the Lok said.

“Can I kill you now?” I asked.

“Please,” he said and I packed lead in his forehead. I know I said I wanted to walk but it would be pretty fucked up to let him lie there until he died. That's not the pain I want Liam to see me inflict.

“They’re calling you Black Knight, now,” Liam spoke over my ear. “I’m sure one day, you’ll be named the cold-blooded killer.”

“Shut up, and let me walk in silence,” I said.

“Just say the magic word,” he said.

“Okay, shut up until I become the cold blooded killer.”

“What do you mean? Where are you, Tony?” Out of nowhere I heard Nancy’s voice in my comms.

“Nancy? What the hell? Where are you guys?!”

“I don’t know! Whatever Maurice was fighting, released a shockwave that blew everything away. You must have gone really far!”

“I know! I’m in the middle of nowhere right now. Can you send me coordinates, of your location?” I asked.

“I’ll try, but you’ll need to get here quick. In a few hours, Omega is going to drop off their Rhinos.”

“A few hours?!” I was gone for that long? How the hell?

I wanted to sit down and relax but worried over reminding myself, there’s a demon in my head bothering me every time I fell asleep.

“I’ve sent the coordinates, Tony,” Nancy said. “Actually, I don’t think you’ll get here before they come by.”

“I’ll figure something out,” I said knowing I probably have miles upon miles of walking to punish myself through.

I wanted to tell Nancy that Liam was in my head, but how would that affect her? It's really disturbing when you hear about someone you killed long ago, pop up in your dreams and speaking next to your ear like he was a being of undefined power.

“Undefined power is out of reach,” he said. I was expecting him to pop up again. I didn’t want to say anything because Nancy was on the line. I couldn’t bare to respond anyway.

“I told you,” he said. “You’re going to meet new friends and stronger foes. May I mention, who has died before you met these people?”

I bit my lip to stopped myself from speaking.

“I will bother you for decades and I will come in ways you wouldn’t imagine. I’ll want justice and the blood of destructive creatures like you. Murder is always unjustified.

“The only way to clean that blood is with the splattered blood of their killers. They must die in pain far more excruciating than their victims and deserve it all. Just like you will.”

“Nancy,” I said. “Cut the line. I’ll be there soon.”

“You’re going to kill more humans. Your own blood, Tony. How does it feel to be told to murder the people you were born with? How does it feel to explain that you don’t want to kill but you have to anyway? That's right. They won’t listen no matter what you grudge out, because they’re pathetic and soulless creatures like you.”

“Ahhh!” I aimed my gun at the air and ripped the sky with bullets. “Stop talking! You’re going to make me go insane!”

With the voice of Liam, I’ll go insane far quicker than I realized.

“I can tell you, how you ended up this far,” he said.

I was eager to shut him up but it was quite strange how I was suddenly in the middle of nowhere without anybody on my side.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Well, HellFire first smacked your head against a counter and knocked you out,” he said laughing. “Then the building around you collapsed from the fight you didn’t see and without your consent, you were blown away by his powerful gravity. It's quite impressive how you survived being thrown five miles away from the city. Rhinos like you are pretty durable I’d have to say.”

Even though I asked, I regretted that. That was my own fault.

“Oh! You know what this reminds me about?!”

I wanted to find a way to get him to shut up. The only reasonable way to do it was by shooting myself in the head.

“Remember the crucible training?! Those were the hardest times in your training. The hardest times for any Rhino in training.”

How in God’s or the Devil’s name does Liam know about the crucible?

“I want you to explain why you know a thing about the crucible.”

That took me back. The most horrifying times in Rhino training for anybody. The crucible training was like the final exam of training for soldiers. It test how determined you are to fight. It test each skill you learned and it does it in the most terrifying way possible.

Usually, other soldiers only get the crucible once in their entire training lifetime but because I was a Rhino, I was required to do it every year I was training. That meant, when I was eight, I received the crucible training every year until I finally got deployed to Orson.

This was what the training consisted of at the beginning, “You’ll all be assigned your own team each with their own squad leader! Here, you will enter a simulated experience where you’ll face multiple deadly obstacles!”

When I heard simulated experience, I thought it would be a lifesaver.

“You’ll be in there for a total of seventy-two hours. That is three days. Usually, we’d do fifty-four hours but we decided to toughen it up a bit.”

That was one thing they said before striking us straight into the room. We'd be in groups of five and we’d all separate into different rooms. It seemed from the outside they were disconnected, but there were passages that met us through.

I was with four men who were above ten years old. They said over the communications, “You must walk ten miles through a pine forest where you’ll meet the realistic battlefield. Please be advised, your enemies will look very real but they are just images. They will also shoot back and trust me, even though they’re not real bullets, they are going to hurt.”

I did my best by communicating. I was the youngest and least experienced of these four kids. Throughout our walk though, we barely talked because there was nothing to be afraid of. At least what they said.

“Did you hear that?” one of the kids said.

I thought we were being fooled but then I looked to one direction and the biggest animal I’ve ever seen in my childhood life appeared. I didn’t know if it were part of the simulation or if it was actually real.

A bear bigger than any of us taught fear into our hearts and made us question if we should be there.

“Is it real?” I asked.

They didn’t respond but next thing I knew, each kid fired off several shots and splattered actual blood out of the animal.

“Oh, just to let you know,” the speakers said. “We scattered real animals in the room. So be very careful of where you go.”

The commanders were actually insane. They grouped kids with dangerous animals. We would have died if we didn’t have guns.

“Continue,” they said over the mic.

By then the training felt less like a simulation and a real fight for survival.

***

After several hours of walking, there was no return. Immediately after reaching our destination, we were met with enemies popping in and out of cover and firing off ammunition.

We kept our heads down under whatever form of cover we had. I might have been trained for over a year now but I was unprepared. I was just a kid. Why were they making us do this?

By then I was ready to call it a day and get myself shot on purpose so I could get out of there. I jumped out of my cover and felt a powerful slap against my forehead then shook the ground below me.

I was electrocuted and a pound hit my head so hard, I nearly knocked out. It was so painful I felt the dent in my head for the next few hours.

Because I was hit so hard, I was technically dead and my teammates had to act like I was a casualty or wounded and carried me along the way. Even if I wanted to move, I couldn’t.

The bullets kept coming too and these fake enemies knew how to shoot very precisely. As they carried me, another bullet landed on my stomach and I wanted nothing else but to puke my guts out.

Then another bullet hit against my cheek and I swear I lost at least five teeth plus I could not feel my mouth anymore which I didn’t think was possible. I couldn’t even spit the teeth out.

All I could do was lay there, letting my teammates carry me through the process. That was my regret slapped in the face literally. Training could not be a lot worse.

***

After that first year, I knew what to expect of the crucible each coming year. Up until the third year, my commanding officers, Ryan and Romeo gave me a chart with a score of my training.

They were giving me points based off of my training and the crucible each year. The first year was the worst score I had.

They revealed to me how I would be ranked. Through each crucible is an estimate of how you would do in the battlefield based on your score.

When you reach a certain score, they let you know right away and send you into a different simulated experience, then prepare you for that one specifically.

“Okay, Tony. So, your last score was ninety seven percent which is passing. In order to reach the next level of the simulation you must pass each one over ninety five percent but there is a higher achievable score above 100,” Romeo said.

“The crucible doesn’t have to be seventy two hours. If you can beat it under sixty hours with your teammates, or on your own, you can pass that level and the level after.

“So, if you beat level three under sixty hours with a ninety five percent or higher, you can proceed to the fifth level automatically. We have at least twelve levels and we predict you can beat all of them before you get deployed.”

And his prediction became guaranteed when I beat Romeo. Even though there were other older Rhinos in base who were on a higher level than me, they sought after me to beat the system and I could say proudly that I only beat so closely to level eleven.

Although I did not beat each level, I became the only Rhino in history to reach level eleven. That meant I was a near perfect Rhino.

I received my own special rank never assigned to anybody else. I was known as a “Lethal Inhuman.”

On my armor I was given a badge with my own rank. A diamond crusted skull with five golden stars around it. Now that badge, the stars overwatching my rank. It didn’t matter.

All that training. All the stress of war. When you’ve been wide awake for so long and focused on one single task, you began reflecting on yourself. Thinking about your life.

All the pain that’s been induced, made me realize what really mattered this whole time. Maybe in all honesty, I should have gone back to my parents every chance I had, but unfortunately, it’s too late to do now.

Here I am now, with a voice in my head. Liam Darkson. The man Nancy killed long ago. I might have finally reached where my mentality has been destroyed.

I was waiting to hear Liam’s voice pop up again after my day dreaming, but that time, I got no disturbance. It was still unclear whether I was going insane or not. I might find out in the future if Liam Darkson really is haunting my head.