Hand of God

SECRETS

Contrary to what May had told them to be, the others had not relaxed one bit, they still had their guns pointed at Roger. Roger was scared but at the same time, in some part of his heart, he felt good.

Till now, nobody had even acknowledged that Roger was a person. In the past few hours, a soldier had considered him dangerous enough to hurt him and now these people were scared of him.

Roger followed May into the building with all the people who had been standing outside bringing the rear.

Insurgency.

Roger had heard wisps of it here and there, but never believed it. There was no particular reason for his disbelief but he just thought, why would anybody? He never found answer to that question and had ignored it so far.

But this.

Roger still could not completely believe that these people were insurgents but one thing he was sure of, was that he was definitely not on the right side of law.

May picked a chair off a corner and dropped it in front of Roger. As Roger took a seat, the chair wobbled under his weight but stayed. May stood behind him while the others formed a ring around them, all of them eyeing Roger suspiciously.

‘Welcome, Mr. Warner.’

The crowd parted for a tall man to enter.

Raul.

‘Hi, my name is Raul, welcome to the Valley of Doom.’

Greetings and manners were last on Roger’s mind.

‘May said you’d give me answers.’ he said.

Raul smiled, ‘Indeed. You must be so confused right now.’

‘Yes. Yes, I am. It would be really good if you could entirely tell me what the fuck is happening.’

‘Not only you. We too have been kept in the dark.’ said a man from the crowd.

‘Okay,’ Raul said looking once at Roger and then addressing the crowd. ‘Donnie, you are right, I did keep you in the dark but there was a reason for it. I was going to tell you all, I was just awaiting confirmation and Mr. Warner has provided us the confirmation that we needed.’

‘Confirmation of what?!’ asked Donnie.

‘That Felix can be defeated.’ replied Raul with a winning smile.

Felix.

Murmurs rang through the crowd.

‘What I ask of you all is to be patient,’ Raul said to the crowd. ‘Mr. Warner knows less about this than you. Let me talk to him for a few minutes so that he knows just as much as we do.’

Roger waited for Raul to continue.

‘You see, Mr. Warner, you, like all the other people in the camps have been kept in the dark. You have been denied information that does not just invade your privacy but conquers it. And even after doing that, it still does more!

As you know, in the Last War, men and resources died. But more than men, resources died. This situation posed a threat to humanity. We were on the verge of extinction. As scientists looked for solutions in history, technology, one of them found the solution in entertainment.’

Roger had no idea where this was all going, but his heart was by each second, picking speed.

‘Andrew Kristoff, a scientist from Pasadena found the solution in a Japanese anime TV series called Death Note.’

Roger’s heart dropped. From what May had told him and the name of the TV series, Roger could connect the dots now.

‘The concept of the show was that a boy finds the ‘death note’, a notebook in which if you write a person’s name, he or she dies. And Andrew had an epiphany. He knew what he needed, to save humanity from extinction, he needed a death note.