Chapter Twenty Five

Roger is exhausted. Skye lies there motionless — considering the fact that her body almost got ripped apart and shredded into pieces, she looks unusually calm. Then there are the dead officers. One has a fatal bullet wound on his heart, the other with a crushed trachea.

It’s not the first time that I kill someone, nor the first time I kill one of them, but this time it seems not horrifying but impressive in a sense. I can’t believe what my body — the physical, untelekenetic body — have just done. Judging from Roger’s bewildered expression, he is unable to comprehend it all either.

“Did you just…” Roger begins, but he is groping for the right words.

“Kill a telekinetic officer with physical means? Yes.” I also find it hard to take in what I just did.

Skye sits up slowly. She is regaining her consciousness.

“Try to do it again?” Roger says.

“Do what?”

“The ring.”

I push my mind, accumulating every synapse and gathering force, directing them at a uniform direction. Slowly my force levitates Skye upwards. Suddenly my force lets go as a loud gunshot fires beside my ear. I snap my head back and sees Roger pointing a smoking pistol towards the air.

“Andrew, be more concentrated. Don’t get affected by what is happening externally.”

This time I do not dare to use Skye for the experiment, and instead I pick on a piece of wood block that fell from the closet earlier. Once again Roger fires the pistol, and, despite my mental preparation earlier, I still let go for a little bit. However, I quickly reach back with the weak force. As if a gunshot is not enough to disturb me already, Roger sweeps with his ring and trips me on the floor.

“Don’t let go!” Roger barks.

It becomes increasingly difficult to perform a physical task and a mental job simultaneously. As I struggle to get up, the wood block is no longer rising, and I have to concentrate on that wood block again, but then I slump back on the ground in a pratfall.

“Sorry to interrupt, but why is this vessel still on the sky?” Skye breaks in.

This brings me and Roger back to reality. True. Why is it still flying, unless…

“Stay where you are!” Roger orders. He turns a corner in the corridor and shouts a swear word out loud.

“Roger?” I begin to worry.

Roger dashes back into the room. “Everyone…” he pants, “everyone is killed.”

Skye covers her mouth with her hands, and a muffled scream comes out. I am also scared. This is a massacre! Worst of all, we are the cause. Moreover, this means that they are piloting the vessel now.

Before I even ask, Skye understands, “We are now still flying to the Northern Metropolis, but not to the terminal we are supposed to be headed to.”

Roger takes control of the situation, “Plan A: Go to pilot cockpit, fight them. Plan B: Grab an emergency parachute and run.”

“How many hostiles are there?” I ask Roger. Jumping out of the vessel from such a high altitude is indeed a suicidal move.

“Usually it’s a squadron of five.”

“Right, now two down, three to go.”

“No. It’s three down, two to go.”

“What?”

“I’m also in that squadron. I am Skye’s sleeper asset. Now the time comes for me to wake up.”

“Right,” Skye says, “Two telekinetic fighters. They probably know we are coming for them.”

Now it’s a default plan B.

We run to the emergency door. The parachute case is already smashed, and all the chutes inside are torn apart by bullets. Someone intentionally destroyed all the chutes so nobody can live.

So now default plan A.

“Take out the cameras,” Roger commands.

“EMP? That might crash the plane too!” says Skye.

“No, use the ring.” Roger motions to me.

I raise my hand again and grasps for the invisible force. Nope, not there. Again. There’s a tiny stream. I compress them into a spherical shape and wait for the energy to build up. Then, I let go. I release all the energy onto that electrical box. An explosion ensues.

We rush to the cockpit, and the door is shut tight. Roger cuts the lock into half, literally. However, nobody is inside. The piloting system is switched onto auto.

“What is going on?” I ask Roger.

“It means an ambush,” A deep voice sounds behind me. It sounds mechanically altered.

The three of us are pushed against the wall, our hands are tied behind our backs, onto an iron pipe. They have removed Roger and my rings. Our cuffs are linked to a small bomb.

“You break the cuff, and this bomb goes boom. Your journey will then end here.”

Yes, this is true desperation. The only time I have felt so is five years ago…