This time, nobody ambushed me. The streets were completely empty, making Arcadia feel like a ghost town. It was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. It was as if everyone had perished. The situation didn't feel right in the least; it was strangely eerie. That's what's funny about silence, sometimes it's a great thing, but other times it means that something is seriously wrong. It's the calm before the storm.
As I walked around the seemingly abandoned town, my psychotic hallucinations came back to me. One, in particular, screwed me up mentally; this random gray balloon descended from the sky, popped when it touched my skin, and unleashed a bunch of giant ants that bit into my flesh. For every ant that I threw off, hundreds more came. I saw bite marks on my arms before the ants disappeared into thin air.
Another hallucination I experienced was just as bizarre; out of the air, there appeared this transparent skull with no body or anything, and it just laughed at me. No sound came out of its mouth, but I somehow knew that it was laughing at me, anyway. I wanted to crawl into a ball at that moment and just stay that way forever. In fact, I almost would have had it not been for a stranger's hand that grabbed me.
"You idiot, they'll kill you if they see you here!" a female voice hissed behind me.
"What...?" I asked, confused.
"No time to explain. Follow me," the woman said, grabbing me by the arm and leading me toward a shanty.
Just as we walked inside, I heard the stomping of hundreds of boots outside and heard a gunshot ring out from outside. Let me tell you; gunshots are far louder than you think they are; it's like hearing an explosion.
"What is going on here...?" I asked, shaking.
"Daily patrols. They don't let anyone out of the city, and if anyone tries to climb the Byzantium Wall, they'll get shot before they make it out. You don't look like you're from here," the woman explained before I heard the sound of a crying child. A boy of about seven asked if the soldiers were leaving soon with tears in his eyes.
"I don't know, sweetie," she replied emotionally.
"I'm not from here," I said, noticing that even the child had cyborg eyes. That's when the reality of it all hit me, Tobias was forcing people to become cyborgs. It was bad enough that he was totalitarian; hurting children is the evilest thing I know.
"Well, you'll be stuck here for a while. My husband tried to escape over the wall, but they caught him and shoved him into a van. I haven't seen him in weeks since that day, and I fear that the worst has happened..." she said with her eyes watering.
"No... this monster puts people in concentration camps?" I almost whispered in horror.
"That's what they say; sometimes, you can hear the howls and screams from a distance. Rumor says they're coming from the Northwest by Romana. Tobias wasn't the one who started this nightmare, it was Maynard who saw all unmods as unworthy of life; Tobias simply continued what Maynard had started. He asserts that humans must evolve their lifestyles to be relevant in the modern world; anyone who doesn't is considered to be a subpar being unworthy of respect. They can both suffer in hell," she said, shaking her head.
"Silence! You will not talk to our leader with such contempt," a soldier yelled as he broke down the door with a kick; the door came crashing down, and a squad of soldiers rushed in pointing assault rifles at all of us. What I thought was fascinating about their rifles was that on the side, it said exactly how many bullets were left in the gun in a bright red LCD. His rifle read 49, which likely meant that he was the one who fired the shot outside.
"This is your only warning, Audrey Hope; any more scathing talk about our leader, and you'll be joining your husband in Romana. Is that understood?" the same soldiers asked in an infuriated tone.
Audrey simply responded, "Yes, Sir," and went silent.
"Identify yourself, citizen," a different soldier gestured toward me.
"Clive Spencer Andrews," I replied, shaking.
I'm so screwed right now...
I saw him click something on the right side of his head and pause in place for a moment. Some sort of text ran through his eyes like with Maynard. After about ten seconds, his expression changed into one of confusion and annoyance.
"That name comes up with no results. I repeat, what is your name, citizen?" he asked, annoyed.
"That is my name, you dumb ape!" I yelled out at him without meaning to. His expression read, "You will pay for this."
"Show me your brand," he commanded, getting closer and still pointing his rifle at me.
"What brand?" I asked, confused.
That was when his eyes widened, and his mouth dropped to the floor. He looked at me with a look that said, "Well... isn't that something?" He pressed something on the side of his head and cleared his throat. I knew exactly what would happen next, dread filled my body.
"Cyrus Packton to Tobias Nobilis, we have a code 182830; I repeat, we have a suspected espionage," he spoke to his radio before hitting me full force in the stomach with the butt of his rifle. I crumbled down to the ground and groaned in agony; I couldn't breathe and genuinely felt like I was internally bleeding.
"Transmission received, Packton. Bring the citizen to me," his radio replied.
Oh, what have I done?