[Book One] Destined for More

Chapter Two _ A Dangerous (and somewhat weird) Situation

They gave Sam the car keys right after Ron paid for it. Not sure how the owner had them, he probably grabbed them when he tried to get Sam out of it. Anyway, Sam got home with his new car, and Ron gave me another lift home. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out what the fuck was going on with me. The two monitors were amazing, no complaints about that. Most of the stuff saved in there was pretty much the same I had before, nothing out of the ordinary except that little experiment with the military network. Which, yeah, not a great idea, but still. It happened, it's not like I could take it back, so I just tried to cover up what remained of my traces as much as I could. The weirdness didn't stop there, though. Every time I thought about doing something, the answers came to mind right away, and my body seemed to automatically respond to that. I found out that I had knowledge that I didn't remember gaining, skills that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and so on. I remember having a massive headache that evening.

---

The day after was a Saturday so, thankfully, no school for me. Mira let me sleep in a bit more than usual. When I woke up, I found myself in the exact same room where I fell asleep the night before. Which might seem a dumb statement, but for me it was a great deal. I wasn't sure how to feel when I saw that nothing changed this time.

That afternoon, after gingerly declining Sam's invite to a lake party, I was working on the computer again. I started noticing weird news about a destroyed military base and something about some sort of war attack against it. I thought about following a decent source, which meant digging either into the military or the government, but it wasn't exactly a good idea to hack the network again after this, especially after already doing it once two days prior. So, instead, I went to the living room where Mira was watching the news on tv. And that's when I had my confirmation.

The Secretary of Defence was speaking. "At this time, we can't confirm whether there were any survivors. Our bases worldwide are, as of now, at DEFCON Delta, our highest readiness level. We're dealing with a very effective weapons system that we have not come across before. But our prayers are with the families of the brave men and women-"

"So it's true?" Mira turned aroud to look at me. "I-I saw the news online. Something happened?"

"Yes, love. Something happened earlier today, that base is destroyed. No one knows if there even are survivors." The sadness in her tone was genuine. This could've had terrible consequences for all of us, but something else caught my attention that time. The Secretary's face looked awfully familiar.

I went back to my room and made some research. I figured that something must've been recorded from the site of the incident, and there was a chance that the video was leaked. After some time, I managed to recover a shocking video from the base's security system itself before it exploded. What I saw was a military helicopter that freaking transformed into a giant humanoid figure. But it didn't end there: it was the exact video sequence of that movie I saw a while ago, the one about the alien robots. Everything was the same, only the point of view was different, less 'cinematic' and way more realistic. Which made it way scarier.

I heard the Secretary's words again from the tv in the living room, and I paused the video. "We will hunt down this enemy. And when we do, we'll know just what to do with them." I looked back at the frozen footage on my monitor. Yeah, good luck with that.

---

The afternoon went by pretty quickly, although with some difficulties. The problems were mainly related to the messy mental state I was in. I got some homework done, I accompanied Mira on some of her commissions, I played my violin, though I couldn't really concentrate on it and eventually stopped trying. In the evening I just relaxed before dinner. I did all that I could to try and avoid thinking about my situation. Everything kept reminding me that something wasn't quite the same as I was used to. Buildings, people, places that I didn't recognize, habits that I didn't remember but felt as natural as breathing. The thing about the video also kept bugging me. It was chaotic to say the least. In between the knowledge I had on the so called 'string theory' and all I experienced during these two days, together with the 'dream' about the silver door (I wasn't really sure it had been a dream anymore), anyone could've put together a theoretical solution to this mess. But the theory was the easy part; believing it, well... that was a whole other story. How could anyone in their right mind believe to have been suddenly teleported to an alternative reality where events from a science-fiction movie were supposed to take place?