CHAPTER
Twenty
I can’t help but feel shaken up by what happened. Tormented on the inside but unable to show it on the outside when there are others watching. Since then I’ve been accepted into the society and it’s interweavings fully except for the couple of exceptions, Valde and Percy. Percy’s final test followed mine and it seems he too has passed with flying colors, much like me and Valde have. The more time I spend with them the more I see the corruption in their ways and their mob mentality. Valde’s brain process is completely inhibited by the brainwashing as is Percy’s. They are both like mindless drones fixed on only one thing, power over others.
Me and Cynthia have been working hard on honing in on our skills. We’ve got down short distance warping for the most part. We can pretty much warp to any spot we desire within sight of our position.
Our ability to lift and move objects has reached an all new level. The weight we can maintain a strong hold on is increasing day by day. The last thing we need to work on is our time jumping. Sending yourself through time has proven to be much harder to control and focus on than a clock.
Tristis has been hard at work researching everything he can about the history of the society and the technology. He has spent hours more than he would have wanted with Hansel to pick his brain and understand as much about the ascension room as he can before we all go rogue. We talk about it often, what we are eventually going to do.
“We will be fugitive's.” Tristis points out often like he’s the only one who understands the gravity of what’s to come.
After first meal we split up as to not draw attention to ourselves. Then Cynthia and I meet up out on the beach behind the large boulders that litter the shoreline. It’s become our sanctuary from the others. We spend much of our time there plotting, training and just hanging out away from everyone else. It’s nice to have this all to ourselves where we are safe to be ourselves and not forced to be like the others. Keeping up the desensitized brainwashed gimmick is getting old.
As I make my way through the sand towards the boulders. I hear some noise from behind the door I just left through. I freeze in the sand and wait to hear what the noise is. I decide to take no chances and manipulate the light between me and the door distorting it making me invisible. I wrap the light around me until I’m completely covered and completely invisible.
The door slowly opens as Valde steps out from behind it. He closes the door slowly behind his back as he scans the beach. He squints his eyes and begins to move down the beach towards where I am standing. My practice has obviously paid off since he has no idea I’m here and my shielding is working. The problem is I’ve never tried to hold the shield while moving around and Valde is heading straight towards me.
My heart is pounding and I’m working on some excuse that will explain why I am out here holding up a shielding force field in the middle of the beach without drawing unwanted attention, but I can’t come up with anything.
Valde gets close enough that I can smell the stench of his heavy breathing. I fight the instinct to pinch my nostrils shut, and keep my hands holding the warped screen up between us, masking my position. Valde stops just inches from me and I am dumbfounded as to why he can’t see me right now. I hold my breath knowing that he would surely be able to smell the onion bagel I stuffed into my mouth just minutes before heading out.
Valde stands there for a few minutes looking back and forth down the strip of beach towards the boulders and out into the ocean. He sighs letting out a breath that is formed just inches from my shield. As valde turns to head back to the building the cloud of breath is pulled into my shield and is wrapped around my body creating a spectacle that would surely give away my position.
Luckily Valde has already taken his gaze off of where I am and is on his way back to the door. He opens it giving one last look out onto the beach. His breath now cleared from my shield leaving me again invisible. He pulls his head back behind the door and it closes letting me release my gravitational hold revealing me standing in the middle of the beach.
I catch my breath and try my best to regulate my heart beat which has sped up as it was pumped full of adrenaline. I turn towards the boulders and continue walking when I hear the door open again. This time without warning.
I fling my arms around my body in efforts to conceal my position as I trip over some sand and fall to the ground. I scramble to get the shield up from the ground when I realize it’s Cynthia and Tristis coming through the door.
I relax and let my head fall back onto the sand and my arms lay outstretched. Sand is pouring into my clothes at this point but the relief of seeing them makes it not so bad.
“Geez man! Calm down! It’s just us,” Tristis says behind the tower of books he’s trying to pin between his hands and his chin.
“Whoa alex you look on edge. You Ok?” Cynthia asks taking me a little more seriously than Tristis did.
I nod to her, “I’m fine, just ran into Valde—well sort of.” I say picking myself up from the sand wishing now I didn’t lay so long in it. No matter how much I shake the sand just won’t stop falling out from my clothing. I quickly give in and just decide to deal with the discomfort of the sand.
“What do you mean ‘sort of’?” Tristis asks finally getting the books under control.
“I think he followed me out here, but I was able to shield myself from him hiding myself before he could see me out here. He came right up to me and still couldn’t see me.” Retelling what happened just moments before is getting me excited. Knowing that I was able to fake him out with my cover starts to make me proud.
“Thank God you were quicker than then you were just now. If we were Valde or Hilt your cover would have been blown sky high!” Tristis feels the need to remind me.
We all make our way quickly to our spot behind the boulders as we set up for our training period. Tristis decides to join us outside today with his research since recently he’s been getting some weird looks in the library with his impromptu curiosity in the Sumus Exitium story. It also doesn’t help when Percy is breathing down your neck. In hopes he can try not to draw anymore unwanted attention he took his research out with us.
Me and Cynthia are glad that he’s joined us today. It’s nice to have him around. He knows how to lighten the mood when I or Cynthia has a snag in our training.
“What’s on the menu today?” I ask Tristis nodding towards the stack of books he brought with him.
Tristis begins thumbing through one of the books, “This ones about the Angron. I found it deep in the library filed under a tower of dusty books.” He takes his other hand and begins to wave his finger over the stack of book spines, “ this one’s about the history of Sumus Exitium, gravitational physics, ascension room and its uses etcetera, etcetera.”
“That’s why he’s the brains,” Cynthia says sending him an overdramatic cutesy smile. Tristis’ face immediately turns a bright shade of red.
“Get a room you two!” I say giving them a hard time. I joke with them but am actually really happy to see them so happy with each other.
“So Alex, I’ve been doing some research as to what the specific jobs are in our placements,” Tristis says, pausing to make sure we are listening. I give him a nodding gesture, urging him to continue. “Ok so, the seekers are used as scouts sort of. They jump through the timelines scoping out highly resourceful ones. Then they mark it.”
Tristis pulls out one of the books from in the stack and opens it to a dog-eared page.
“That’s where the harvesters come in,” He looks up from the book at me. “As a harvester your job is to extract these resources and bring them back to the ‘home’ timeline.” He says seemingly getting caught up in his own explanations.
“What kind of resources are we talking about here?” Cynthia asks.
“You name it. Gold, copper, salt, oil, gasoline. Anything that could be sold or bought,” Tristis answers.
“So they’re hoarding every kind of resource her, but why?” Cynthia thinks out loud.
“Power or wealth most likely,” Tristis answers. “Then once the resources are all dried up, the abolishers are called in and they remove the timeline from existence. Once the Sumus Exitium has no use for a time line they just get rid of it.” Tristis falls silent signaling he is done with his little history lesson.
“They must be stopped. Whatever we have to do, we do it. No one should have that kind of power and wealth.” I add hoping to rally them a bit behind my words.
They both nod in agreement and that will have to do for my rallying speech.
“Wow. Who would have thought, saving the world would be such a gloomy affair,” Tristis says through a slight smile. His attempt to lighten the mood works as a smile finds its way on each of our faces.
“Ok Mr. Briggs, let’s work on some melee training shall we?” Her words slide through her crooked lips as she raises her eyebrow at me. She hits me with a ‘Mr. Briggs’ when she wants to get a rise out of me cause she knows it reminds me of Hilt.
“Let’s!” I return rubbing my hands together. “I hope you’re not afraid of a little sand cause you’re gonna be eating a lot of it.”
Before I can even expect a response she throws her hands up in the air and a wall of sand rises between us immediately hiding her from view. By the time the sand settles down she’s nowhere to be found.
“Oh this is gonna be a good one!” Tristis says closing the book he is reading on his thumb and leans forward scanning the sand looking for where Cynthia disappeared to.
“I’ll admit you’re getting better Cynth. Still not better than me though.”
I raise my hands pulling along with it the top layer of sand all around me. As the sand rises near the boulder where Tristis is standing the sand reveals her figure as the sand is impeded on its rise, forced to outline her position.
“Gotcha!”
I send a concussion blast her way as she narrowly ducks beneath it dropping her screen cover. She stands upright and throws her arm towards me as I half expect a counter blow, but she doesn’t send one. Instead she pulls her hand back into her body bringing my feet along with it. My feet slip out from under me and my body flips backwards as my back is heading straight to the ground.
I rotate my arms to speed up my spinning and tuck my knees into my chest to spin faster. I extend my legs out and catch my balance with my hands extended sideways as I land feet down. A puff of sand erupts from where I’ve landed adding a cinematic effect to my flip. Applause come from Tristis from where he sits on the boulder. I turn to give him a slight bow as I’m hit from the side by a forceful concussion blast.
My body is ripped sideways as I’m thrown down to the ground. A throbbing grows inside of my head as I attempt to climb to my feet.
“That was too hard Cynth. And a cheap shot,” I say turning to see both Cynthia and Tristis being held immobile by One of Valde’s goon followers and Percy. I leap to my feet and turn to face Valde who stands, smirking in the direction the concussion blast came from.
“I’ve waited for this day for a while now.” Valde says starting to walk a circle around me. Unwilling to sit and just listen as he rants on about whatever he’s going to chat about I look at Cynthia and Tristis and give them a slight nod. They reciprocate and I send to both their captors a hard concussion push forcing them to loosen their grip on them. Cynthia slips out of Percy’s grip and immediately sends a blast at Valde who is quick to step out of the way and return a counter blast that narrowly misses her and hits Percy instead. He now lays out cold on the boulder at Cynthia’s feet.
Tristis’ captor continues to hold onto Tristis but soon lets go after letting out a cry of immense pain and then rolling onto his back cradling his leg. Tristis must have gone for the classic leg break.
Valde begins to scamper a bit in the sand and is caught in retreat by Hilt who reveals himself from behind the boulder.
Before I can blink Hilt lifts his hand towards me and I’m caught up in a terrifyingly intense sand storm. I struggle to cover my face from the cloud of sand encompassing my face but it’s no use. I can’t breathe or see and I slink down to my knees.
“Alex!” I hear Cynthia scream as the sandstorm is slowly lowered around me just in time to see both Tristis and Cynthia knocked out by consecutive blasts. Without skipping a beat Hilt turns towards me. I fight to see through the sand burning my eyes.
I feel a concussion blast graze my shoulder and it makes me instinctively duck. I try my best to return a blast in the direction the other one came from but I have no way of knowing whether it landed. Realizing that my sight isn’t going to return to me any time soon I decide to send out as many concussion blasts as I can in their direction. I bob in and out of short distance teleportations to try to mix them up. I extend my arms out with such force that it knocks me back a bit. Blast after blast I let off until my body can’t do it any longer. I crumble to the ground fiercely trying to dig the sand out of my eyes. But it’s no use.
I choke through the sand in my mouth and throat to call out for Cynthia and Tristis. But no response in return.
“Valde! Hilt! Why are you doing this?” I ask not sure if I’d get an answer.
I smell his breath before I can see or hear him. “Because Briggs. You’re a traitor to the society. And traitors must be eliminated.”