Power Play (Book 2)

Chapter 18: Livestream of Consciousness

Now I sit on a rooftop, staring into the shiny black eye of a camera, and behind that eye the entire world will be staring back.

"Are you ready?" asks Tyler in my ear.

Not remotely, I think to myself.

"Sure," I tell him.

"Three... two... one... you're live," he says.

I stare at the eye. I start to read.

"Hello, world. I'm here to tell you the truth about what happened in Las Vegas, and set the record straight on a few things."

The text on the tablet screen scrolls along.

"I am not a terrorist. I am an innocent person who was captured, experimented on, and given incredible abilities. Since then I've been attacked and had almost everything I cared about taken from me. I'm here to tell you...

The tablet scrolls. "I'M HERE TO TELL YOU THAT I AM A VICTIM OF THE VERY GOVERNMENT THAT HAS BEEN TELLING YOU LIES."

I stop reading. The tablet stops scrolling.

Victim. As I'm about to say the word I realize that's where I've been stuck on this whole speech.

Am I a victim?

Technically, yes, I was the victim of a crime. I've been the victim of several crimes if I wanted to fill out a scorecard, but there is much more to the word "victim" than the technical definition. If you're not careful it can become an attitude. A view that things are out of your control. A belief that the world owes you something for being wronged. A focus on everything that you've lost.

For all the effort I've put into finding out what Agent Corrales and his team are up to, put into dismantling Area 51, put into stopping the insane crew in Las Vegas, I still keep focusing on what was taken from me. How much I've lost.

"Brandon?" says Tyler, with a bit of panic. "You ok?"

I snap myself out of it. I take a deep breath and start again. I need to go back to what I know.

"I'm here to tell you... a story," I say.

"Once upon a time there was a super-secret group of people who discovered how to do some amazing things. Think of them as... wizards. These wizards discovered a way to reach inside someones very bones and change them. They could transform someone so they became taller, stronger, healthier, or smarter. These wizards had a lot of faith in their own wisdom and thought they could make people better, make people happier. They knew better than everyone else."

As much as I detest Mandeville, calling his team wizards probably isn't too far off the mark. Plus it's a lot less offensive than the terms that usually come to mind.

"What happened next is what always happens: some people got jealous and scared and greedy. One group of warlords became jealous of the wizard's power. That's the thing about warlords; they always want to be the strongest ones around. They figured if they kept the discovery for themselves they would be so mighty the could keep the world safe entirely on their own. Or at least that's what they told themselves as they destroyed peoples lives and made powerful mutant creatures to command."

"There was also a group of incredibly rich bankers who saw what the wizard's created and were overwhelmed with greed. They calculated that there was no one more deserving to have this new power, and began using it to build their own workforce of genetic duplicates. People who were given enough power to be useful, but had all those pesky traits like originality and independence stripped away."

I take a deep breath, and hope this making sense. The teleprompter on the tablet is frozen where I began going off-script, the word VICTIM still staring at me.