Chapter Twenty Four

A dark figure is sitting in the center of my room. He is wearing a dark suit and black pants. He slowly turns his face towards me, and it takes me no time to recognize him and to analyze the threat I’m in. The piercing eyes, the focusing ears, the bitter sneer. He’s the Higher Official who had monitored the injection of my drugs. I used to think he was from the polygraphic division. But after the conversation with Skye last time, I’m no longer certain. However, that doesn’t make a difference — him being in the division or not.

“Who actually are you? You are definitely not from the polygraphic division!” I’m trying to entice some information out of him.

“Last time you say I am; this time you say I’m not. It doesn’t matter anyways.”

“What did you do to my memory? Why can’t I remember anything after the injection last time?” I hit straight to the point.

“You will know eventually. Isn’t this why you are coming to the Northern Metropolis?”

Oh no. How does he know? My peripheral vision detects a pair of scissors lying near the bathroom sink. Scissors make good weapon sometimes if they are sharp enough. I suddenly lunge towards it.

It feels like a wall has slammed onto my face and a hook has clasped onto my ankles. The scissors slowly floats up and hovers in midair.

“Don’t get hostile please. I come for a friendly talk.” He reveals the ring on his finger. It’s the ring given to soldiers and officials with remarkable performance, myself included. I gave my ring to Jessica, right before I departed her in the village last year. This type of ring is capable of altering the positions of particles and atoms, moving them with a high velocity and creating fields of energy. Basically telekinesis. However, it is extremely hard to maneuver the ring, because it requires a lot of mental and physical strength. It is rumored that only the Higher Officials are capable of controlling the ring. Now this rumor is proven true.

“Hey, drop him!” Skye shouted. She rushed into the room.

The officer’s hand closes into a fist, and instantly the invisible wall dematerializes. I fall hard on the floor.

I turn my head back, facing skye, unable to comprehend her stance in this situation.

“You know him?” I am questioning Skye, because, in my memory — despite how incomplete it is — that we can’t trust that official because he was the one I met before the injection of drugs.

“He’s the source.” Skye replies.

I turn to that official, eyeing him with suspicion, and he immediately reads my thoughts.

“I told you I came here for a nice talk,” he said calmly.

“Why are you on our vessel?” Skye faces him.

“I know you will be coming for me, because of the incident in that Village,” his finger directs outside the window, down the village I just showed Skye, “and of course, you two would have figured out about some components of their strategies already.

“They never really considered the consequences of any possible incidents like this one, because you know, they are all brainwashed. You are different, AN128, since your birth you have been under our monitor.”

“Since my birth?” Curiosity strikes me, because I don’t even know so much about my own history.

“Are you naive enough to think you are actually born in the base, and has all those enhanced skills come by naturally? Of course, we took you in before you can remember much, earlier than SK807, or Skye, as she prefers me to call her.”

Well i never know about my birth or whatsoever. It seems like my life begins in the base. But that is just one of the thousands of secrets I yet need to uncover.

“So what is their grand plan?”

“I don’t know the whole plan either. Only the Overseer knows. Even though we are officials of a really high rank, we only know pieces of the plans. Each of us only know a fragment, and only when we work together, we can piece up the entire plan.”

“So what are you in charge for?” Despite all the shock and surprise I’m feeling, I can’t stop questioning him. I want to get more information, whether I want it or not.

“You already know. Establishing control and order for our soldiers, so they do not rebel like you did.”

“By injecting drugs?”

“That’s our last resort, against ones like you. Normal soldiers will not do that.”

“Why do you need the soldiers to completely obey your orders?” I feel angry and upset, partly because he is the one who oversees my brainwash, partly because he’s overseeing more brainwashes besides mine.

“They must be able to do things that normal humans can’t. By this I don’t mean die and sacrifice, that’s too easy. They need to be able to kill without mercy, to win with any methods possible, to commit crimes against humanity.”

So that’s why they need to inject drugs for me. Not so I will die for them, but I will do terrible things.

I’m surprise this thought hasn’t occurred to me yet, but now it just sparks in my head, “Why are you helping us?”

Before he can answer, the vessel suddenly tilts onto one side. Emergency sirens are blaring and blind lights flash across the corridors. The PA is shouting, to the passengers about some code blue or code black things, and I hear heavy objects fallen onto the ground and doors getting rammed open.

“It’s them.” The official says.

The door of my room flies open off its hinges, literally, the wooden board slicing into the wall, as two men enter my room. They carry pistols with them, but they are armed with a ten times more deadly weapon, the one I see on our official’s hand, the telekinetic ring.

“Officer RK, I can’t believe you are also working with them two traitors.” one of the two accuses.

“How dare you get into the business of your superior!” The official with us, apparently with the name RK, responds with a sense of authority.

“We are not going to take you back to the base. We will kill you right here.”

“Go ahead and try!”

“No Roger!” Skye shouts, but her voice cut off as an invisible force grasp onto her throat, and worst of all, the only thing I can identify is the small turbulence of air pulsating between the officer’s ring and her.

RK, or Roger, or whatever sees that and immediately pushes with his hand, knocking that force aside with his own telekinetic power. I run over to Skye, inspecting her condition, but my running stops abruptly as the other officer grabs onto me with his power like a puppeteer manipulating his puppet. I am thrown off my feet as he raises me up, just to drive me plummeting, headfirst, down to the hard floor. In just milliseconds before I crash, another wave of air cushions my head, and my rest of the body, free from the bonds of the other officer, falls down at normal speed and hits the floor in a light thud.

“Skye, AN, get out of here, and hide! This isn’t a battle of your level!” Roger cries towards our direction.

I grab Skye’s hand, and we are sprinting towards the door, but the door flies off the wall and sticks back onto the doorframe. Some pieces of the bed are ripped out to fortify the door. Seems like they don’t want us to go either. Skye and I can only crawl towards the corner of the room, watching the fight helplessly.

The two officers are circling around Roger, exchanging transparent blows and slashes with him. We can see the air vibrating and bending and cracking. The walls are scarred from air’s whipping, and the chairs are torn down to planks as projectiles. Roger ducks as one of the officer tries to seize onto his throat. Then he levitates a sharp piece of wood and flings it towards the officers. The speed of the wood is so quick that the officers barely have time to react, only to parry the wood a few inches off their throats. Then the blonde haired officer chops the wood into halves with his bare hand. I look closer and see the trembling air encompassing his palm.

The other officer, brown-haired, draws out his gun and points toward Roger, but Roger immediately wrenches the gun out of his hand with a stream of force. But the two officers are working together to aim the muzzle of the gun towards Roger. The two waves of forces override Roger’s solitary power, and the gun is gradually shifting and turning, the muzzle edging its way to point to Roger’s heart.

Skye suddenly gets up and scurries over to the other side of the room. I reach out to grab her, to stop her from making the stupid suicidal move, but unfortunately I don’t possess any telekinetic powers, and she’s already way out of my reach. She grabs two kitchen knives and hurls them towards the blonde officer. The officer sees the knife from his peripheral vision and immediately freezes them in mid-air, but the distraction is enough. Roger blasts the gun outside the trajectory of the other officer’s force and fires the gun at him.

That brown-haired officer sends a shockwave towards the direction of the bullet, but the bullet’s momentum overcomes and penetrates the shockwave, directly killing that officer. The blonde officer, witnessing the death of his partner, looks extremely infuriated, probably because the death is on him — his distraction and his carelessness. The officer creates a force that spins around in the center of the room, spinning and turning faster and faster. It gradually turns into a whirlwind, a tornado, and it sucks up everything around it, from the sharp wooden planks to the sharp knives. This tornado is a deathtrap. Once you get sucked in, you will endure all the slashes and stabs before you finally die out of pain.

Skye, now without her cover, loses her feet and gets pulled across the floor towards the eye of the storm. I lunge towards her and grab onto her hand. I have lost Jessica already, I couldn’t lose Skye anymore.

“Roger, do something! How the heck do you counter that thing with your power?” I shout to Roger.

Roger begins to send a wind revolving in the opposite direction as the tornado. He’s fixating onto the wind. Sweat beads drop from his forehead as his muscles tense rigidly against the opposing force. This room is getting ripped into pieces, stripped down to the original framework. Pieces of walls and other things I can’t name are flying across the room. Roger’s telekinesis seems to weaken gradually over time. He looks extremely exhausted after fighting the two officers.

We need to change the strategy. Once Roger is down, our whole team is down.

“Roger, stop what you are doing. Can you hold Skye and yourself from getting sucked into the wind?” I shout over the gushing wind.

“Yes, I can do that. Why?”

“Just do it!”

Even though Roger and I only meet for two times, and in one of the two times he left me a really bad impression, but now all I can do is to trust him. I let go of Skye’s hand, and Skye remains rooted on the ground.

“Do it quickly Andrew, I can’t hold on long!” I’m surprised he calls me Andrew now, instead of AN. Well no time to think about this.

I reach into the air and grabs a piece of brick. I throw it at the officer, aiming right at his face. It stops in the air a few feet in front of his face, as I have expected. I charge towards him, lowering my weight and rolling on the ground, ducking out of the way in the last second as he shoots the brick right back at me. I kick him hard on his shin from my position on the ground, immediately he collapsed. Even though he’s no longer focusing his force on the tornado, the tornado keeps on spinning from the inertia. He twitches his hand and the floor in front of me suddenly explodes into pieces and fragments. I lunge towards him, tackling him onto the ground, but he quickly lifts himself back up to gain a better vantage point. Now I lie helplessly on the floor as he aims his invisible choke towards my neck.

My hand can feel the solid, straight beam of force yanking on to my throat. With the last bit of strength I have, I kick off the ground and lands with my feet striking the officer’s stomach. The choke immediately stops. Now I get the offensive hand. I elbow him on the face and quickly pivot around my front foot to dodge his blow. Then I move to the position directly behind him and reach for his hand with the ring. I see a knife rising on my left, and I know it’s him trying to control the knife to stab me. I quickly grab onto the hand and drags that arm behind his back. I am twisting his hand and pushing up his elbow with my other hand. Immediately that floating knife drops as I hear the crack. Without his telekinetic arm, he can only fight me hand to hand, and I quickly strike a fatal chop onto his windpipe, ending his miserable life.

I slide the ring off that officer’s finger and puts it on my own hand. Then concentrating with all I can, I try to destroy the whirlwind. After a while — I don’t know if I have actually acquired the telekinetic power or it’s just the whirlwind losing it’s force and inertia — the whirlwind stops and everything falls onto the floor.