Chapter Twenty One

Now, in the present, surrounded by the armed soldiers and trapped in the Infinite Cage. I’m as helpless as when I heard about the drug injection. Then I see Skye walking over. Skye is still on my side isn’t she? She certainly doesn’t look like so. Her eyes scan around and focus on me with a fierce stare.

“Ha ha ha AN128. Here comes the day you fall under our hands.”

Is she drugged? Why is she speaking like this? But didn’t she say that she’s immune to the drug already?

“What do you want from me?”

“We shall bring you back to the base. You are the perfect killer machine. Can’t you remember all what you’ve done?”

Images are pouring out in my head. I can hear screams and see helpless men, women and children kneeling on the ground. I smell once again the smoke coming out from the barrel of my gun and the sickening smell of blood. Then my memory shut down and I jolt back to reality.

“No! I’m not going back there with you again!”

“AN128, have you ever heard of a mental cage?” she says. I am paying attention to every word she said, desperately hoping that there would be some clues. “Do you know why they call it a mental ‘cage’? Because just like a cage, like any cages in the world, there are obstacles constraining your mind. All the obstacles are interconnected to each other in different vertices and points. When we bring you back to the base, we will teach you how to fully leverage the cage.”

“And what will happen if I break out of the cage?”

“You can’t. Nobody can break out of their mental cage, because they hinted themselves in their subconscious that the cage is where they belong. They don’t know where the crucial point is?”

The crucial point. Does she mean by a specific point? This is an analogy between the “mental cage” and the Infinite Cage.

“So I will find my crucial point, and break free from it.”

“Just because you know where you crucial point is doesn’t mean you have the capability of breaking through it. If you use the wrong method, you will still be trapped in your cage.”

“So you are saying there is still a right method.”

She smirked. “Stop playing games with me. There is no way you can find the right angle to break out of your mental cage.”

Is she making it too obvious? The soldiers will soon realize what we are talking about.

“How can you underestimate my potential? I don’t need them to teach me how to control my own mind.”

I still need to know where to hit. Where is the target? What even is the target?

“Stop trying to go into my head! You know what people say. If you can’t open the door with the key, then knock.”

Here’s what I’m waiting for.

“Maybe the one inside the room should knock first.”

The soldiers seem utterly befuddled with our conversation. They give up trying to figure out what it means. This is exactly what I want.

“Knock knock.”

Skye draws out her two pistols and neutralizes two soldiers immediately. The red dots dart off my chest, and I begin shooting my rifle too. Some soldiers are hastily grabbing their rifles while others are still transfixed in shock. Well how unfortunate for them. They are immediately taken down by me.

“Andrew! Face me! 278! 72! 190!”

I understand immediately. Use Skye as the reference point of 0 degrees, and rotate my body to 278 degrees, then 72, then 190. These are the x-y-z coordinates we learned in the camp.

I aim the rifle at that exact point with my enhanced calibration ability and pull the trigger. As the bullets advance close enough to that point, a force field suddenly knock the bullets off.

“Skye what is that thing?”

“The emitters have a force field to protect them.”

“Then how the heck am I going to destroy that thing?”

“Not destroy, just temporarily disable it.”

“With what? It’s not like I have an EMP bomb with me!”

“Figure out a way!”

So this is a forcefield that encompasses the shield emitter in 360 degrees. There is no point that I can break through the shield, so I can only destroy it. Think out of the box Andrew!

The force field uses an energy wave to warp the space and particles, compressing all the particles at one place together to form a hardened layer. When the particles are hit by other substances, the emitter’s energy holds them tight like a magnet.

Such a strong magnet would probably require a big battery.

“Skye, where’s the power source to this thing?”

“Light! It absorbs the light from the outside and transform it to energy.”

“If it sucked all the light from outside, then how do people not notice the change in environment?”

“The energy keeps the illusion.”

“I know! I know how to do this!”

“What Andrew? When did you become that smart?”

“It was actually Jessica who told me last time! I was helping her with some academic things.”

I am trying to draw up more memories of Jessica; it feels sweet to have Jessica’s memories to accompany me. But after a while the images are fading into an empty voidness.

“Okay! Tell me your plan!”

I took the flashlight from a soldier’s belt. The beam of the flashlight could reach at least eight hundred meters far. It uses a manual recharge button to provide the large amount of power.

“Shine this flashlight at the emitter.”

“What? Are you crazy? You are charging their weapons for them?”

“Just do it!”

The emitter begins glowing red as it hungrily devours the energy from the flashlight.

I unsheathed a knife and drove it onto the forcefield.

I am immediately thrown back, but the tip of my knife has penetrated the shield and touched the emitter.

Immediately the reaction began. Sparks are shooting out from the tip of the blade. I have successfully created a short-circuit for the emitter. With the overwhelming flashlight power, the emitter is overheating. It uncontrollably releases the energy to fortify the shield, but only to intensify the short-circuit. Soon I can see small traces of lighting wrapping itself against the emitter. Then more sparks. I am throwing another knife towards the direction of the cage wall, but this time the knife directly passes through and encroaches onto a tree.

Skye and I are immediately diving out of the Infinite Cage. The sounds of the jungle reaches our ears. But as soon as we have dived out, the flashlight drops onto the ground and the overheating stops, and we could see the cage coming up again.

“So, Andrew, what’s our next step?”

“Jessica left me this message before she escapes. It says ‘Day 17 shows the truth’.”

“Well, what’s day 17? And what is she referring to?”

“I don’t know, but this is a lead to start on.”