Endless War (Complete)

Chapter 20 "Sharon"

Sharon leads us through the dark without a torch, Grim has a death grip on my hand as he pulls me behind them. I wonder how they manage to traverse around the darkened corners. I manage to bang my knee on every stalagmite we come across, I would hope that the chip in my head could make a better map of this place. I swear that I will break my leg as I continue to hit every protrusion from these cavern walls.

We finally make it down to the room with the pool, I can see sunlight reflecting up through the water. "Ok, lets swim." Sharon jumps down into the water and swims down through the opening at the rear of the pool.

I look at Grim and sigh, "I was not planning on getting wet."

"It is the most secluded area we have around here. Basically you have to come through the dessert like we did or to traverse around the mountain from the only other exit to this cavern system. Traversing around the mountain is not such a great idea if you like to be alive." He explains. "Ready." He looks over to me before he jumps down into the water and follows his mothers lead.

"My turn." I sigh to an empty cavern take a deep breath in, then dive in.

Once I am up out of the other side of the pool I quickly see Grim and his mother. I swim to the edge of the water and Grim reaches down to help me out. Once out of the water I remove my excess clothing and slap it down on a rock. I take a deep breath of the fresh air, I find myself so tired of breathing the stale air in the cavern system. I couldn't imagine living in those caves for my whole life.

The tree canopy above is so thick the rain that is pelting the leaves barely makes it through down to us, though I can see the droplets falling in the pond. I move over to the large rock I placed my clothing on and sit on the ground leaning back against the rock. "So, we are alone now, so what do you want to talk about."

"I am sure that the two of you discussed some things as Sebastian here said we needed privacy." Sharon states then collapses on the ground beside me. "That swim gets harder as you get older." She runs her fingers through her shoulder length grey hair.

Grim joins us on the ground, "I witnessed something spectacular last night." He reaches up and rubs the small cut on his neck.

"Oh, sorry son. I meant to ask you what happened there." She leans over to inspect the wound and Grim quickly shoos her away.

"Leave it alone. You need to know how it happened. She has telekinetic abilities!" He exclaims. "She said she was experiencing a vivid dream where she was attempting to kill me. She screamed no and well apparently the apparition that she dreamed up had cut me. Imagine if we can develop this further."

Sharon nods her head, hesitantly. "Is this true, Phoenix?" She takes her attention away from her son and turns her gaze to me.

"Yeah, there about. I suppose my mind was acting out my pent up rage against your son. He can be quite infuriating, as I am sure you are aware." I defend my act, while biting at my bottom lip.

Sharon gives a hardy laugh as she glances toward her son. "Yes, I am aware of that."

"Hey!" Grim interjects. His cheeks redden. "No ganging up on me!"

I chuckle. "Alright, back to the plan. I have been thinking a lot about what we are to do, so that this war can end. The only thing is, why has this taken over a thousand years to do? What the hell have you been doing to try and end this war? Don't get me wrong, I am grateful that your son rescued me from that village, and to you for offering me food and shelter. I just don't understand. I come here and you see me as your savior, all because I was able to overcome this chip in my head. It seems strange, that until this moment there was nothing that your group could do about this senseless killing."

"I am sure that your arsenal has more compromised bullets by this point than good ones. What are you going to do about the gun powder or have you already made new powder? What kind of ammunition do you plan on using if you haven't? Your weapons are sub par to the soldiers weaponry. The fact that you have to stop and reload while your enemy is armed with Tesla Coil weapons that are ready to fire successive bolts of energy, ranging from the strength of a taser to the force of a bolt of lightning. Your people will be risking a death ten times worse than death by a bullet to the heart. I have seen the seizures, and pain that it causes! You ask me what my grand plan is, but where is your plan?" I ask.

Sharon looks down the back up and looks me directly in the eyes. "You are our plan. There are a number of sub-terrestrial communities like this one here. We keep in touch through old Ham radio technology, using Morse Code. We send out our youth just as the soldiers are sent out, however, we don't brainwash ours. From the age of eighteen to twenty-eight our youth go out to all of the villages that are not part of our world wide community. They have a small Ham radio of their own however they can only send messages, regrettably."

"It is funny Ham radio is one of the oldest forms of communication but the Council doesn't even monitor it. We are constantly changing our station that we communicate on however, just incase they decide to monitor it one day. Some of our communications are not even true Morse Code but a code we came up with on our own, to add complexity. The villages don't even know of our existence, they tend to be nomadic by nature. When they leave a location whether by choice or by force, our youth will contact us with the coordinates and we will scavenge the site for supplies that get left behind."

"Back to our plan, we don't have the technology much less energy source to compete with the Council and all of the other domed cities. That is why we have been in a holding pattern until we managed to get a soldier to successfully overcome their chip. It cannot be a malfunctioning chip like many have done before because we need the individuals mind to be strong so that they are able to handle the amount of information that they have to process. Then comes you. We need you to bring down the domes and cut their cities off from one another."

I sigh. "Ok, now I can plan. I thought you were the only ones. I am going to work on using my new found ability, and I need to train some of your men to fight the way the soldiers are trained to fight. Also you call the leaders of the domed cities the council, you should know they call themselves the Tutelary, and they rule everything. I have to find out more about them, but it is difficult to obtain." Finally, I have more of an understanding of what is required for me to do. "Grim, you and I are going to have to go over a lot of things then I will bring everything we go over with you, Sharon. I just want to come to you with the finished plan."