Chapter Two

Before I was drugged and this whole invasion thing, I was just a private under the training unit. The Higher Officials didn’t see me as the kind of person who would rebel, but now they know that I will only fight for what’s right.

That day I finished my routine two-hundred-pushup and ten-mile-jogging early, so I decided to take a walk outside the bubble of the camp, into the real world. I saw scattered settlements and some people, humans, walking around on the lush green grass. The sky was perfectly blue and the thick summer trees granted me a shade under the blazing sun. I heard a whooshing sound behind me and snapped my head back. There was a projectile flying toward me. The signal from my eyes immediately fired up my brain, and my hand automatically shot up to catch the projectile. I took a closer look at it. It was in the spherical shape of the body of a grenade, but the surface is a lot smoother and softer. “Hey excuse me! Can I have my ball back?” I heard a girl’s voice calling out to me thirty meters away, and I can hear her panting as she ran toward me. As I tossed the ball back, I saw the girl. She had straight brown hair coming down onto her shoulders; a few strands of bangs fell naturally and perfectly, covering her eyes as she softly brushed them to the side. She saw me and smiled, not those kinds of killer smile or high-voltage ones but a gentle smile, yet with so much beauty within. I didn’t know why back then but my heartbeat was racing and I feel blood rushing up to my face. She walked with elegance towards me and reached up in a swift motion to catch the ball. Her brown almond eyes winked at me. “Thanks,” she said, and she was about to leave. If my brain wasn’t able to operate so quickly to think of something to say she would probably have left. “Uhhh… Why are you throwing this sphere, no, this ball, around here?” Such an amazingly stupid thing to say from an amazingly smart mind. I did my best to attempt a smile. Lower the levels of my hostility, as they called it. However, the rest of the education I’ve received all life long came to me - humans should be our enemies. I must not trust her. She could be a threat to my life and I should be a threat to hers. If the first step of conversation I did was because of instinct, now it would be of consciousness. She looked at me, curious instead of puzzled or angry. She definitely saw past the walls in my heart, but she didn’t mention it. I quickly readjusted to conceal my suspicions. Making a conversation was something stored inside my human part of the brain, and I was supposed to be good at it naturally. Well exceptions could be made when the person you were talking to was both the prettiest girl you had ever seen in reality and the enemy you were supposed to destroy upon seeing. “I’m just playing baseball catches against that tree. Do you wanna join me?” It’s the first time I heard of the term “baseball”, and I have no idea why she was playing catches. The only time I train catches is when we catch projectiles flying at us from random directions. Then she smiled. Again. This time I saw it from so close up. Oh god. This smile completely crushed my barriers of vigilance, or more like melted them down. I had never seen anything like this. It reached inside my head, and before I could even take a second thought, I replied timidly with the first response that came into my head. “Okay. But um… I don’t know how to play.” When saying that, my hesitation was of fearing that she would laugh at my ignorance instead of being afraid that she would be hostile. No. AN128. What was the creed? Humans were enemies. By the thought of that, I flinched back a little. My eyes refocused from that dreamy state back to my sharp stare. She would probably think I was a lunatic or a psycho. She chuckled, but it was a friendly one instead of teasing. She probably realized that I wasn’t a normal human being like her, but she didn’t point it out or say anything. She didn’t even intentionally trespass into the territory of my heart, but she accomplished it with her every tiny gesture. Was this thing happening because I was too lonely in the base? Or was she a special case? Why did I feel another kind of feeling? I wanted to stay. I could leave immediately now, but I didn’t want to. “It’s alright I’ll teach you. By the way my name’s Jessica.” She extended out her right hand. I searched in my brain for my name, but I couldn’t find a result. In my whole life they referred to me as “AN128”. “I’m Andrew,” I said, using the first human name that came to me. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I awkwardly took out my right hand, but Jessica used hers to shake mine. When I extended out my hand, my muscles were extremely tense. In my head I unconsciously repeated the move of completely subduing a person from the wrist and fingers. Elimination of the threat before it turned too late. In case… In case anything happened. But when her hand touched mine, my muscles immediately relaxed. I never felt so free before. For the first time in my life, the habit of holding alertness and vigilance against humans became a burden. Screw that. There was no surveillance outside the base, so maybe I could just follow my heart. For once. We walked along the edge of the field. “Is it your first time meeting someone new?” Jessica asked me curiously. “Yes.” I answered honestly. I couldn’t reveal my identity to her, but I could still expose some not-so-important information to ease her suspicion. “It’s the first time I come out into the real world.” Was I finding an excuse for myself to share the story of my life with her? “Well how do you feel about it?” “I feel like the world would be pretty awesome if everyone’s like you.” She laughed. My skin receptors picked up the growing heat on her face. “Thanks. You really should come more often though and meet more people besides me, I couldn’t imagine staying home all the time.” “What other beautiful things are out here? Besides the flowers, the sky, and the first person that I met.” She laughed again. “Well, let me show you.” That day I felt a different kind of emotion. I couldn’t find the right word to describe it. It was more than “happy” or “joyful”, because I truly enjoyed every second together with Jessica, and she gave me a reason to come out to the real world again. “Pleasant”? It was a lot more than that. I found someone that I could truly open myself to, and she would accept me despite all my awkwardness and mysteriousness.

Only today I know that feeling is called love.