It started with a question. The way it always does.
"Do you believe in fate?" Blake heard as he stood there looking at the crack of dawn. Brilliant gold and orange hues bled like fire in the east over the rivers and beyond the city. The first slither of the sun peeked over the skyline in a radiant, white form. Gradually it raised, a defined circle in a vibrant backdrop. The rivers were liquid gold and silver, leaving the mighty City dull in comparison. As the sun fully revealed itself it seemed to swell, losing its focus and spreading in contrast to his contracting pupils.
"No", Blake found himself replying looking at the girl beside him.An easy breeze picked up and lifted to his vantage point, caressing her face and softly blowing loose strands of her hair.She looked, lost in the awe of everything. her long hair flowing with the wind. The girl looked nothing like Sarah, but Blake was sure that it was her.
"Why not?" she asked casting her bow and arrow, looking ahead, her muscles tensing.
"Because I don't want to believe that something out there controls my actions", he replied, unsheathing his sword, going ahead to fight.
Everything turned black , he couldn't see anything and he felt like he was bound in chains, but the chains covered his whole body.
For a moment, the world was a blur of dull colours. Then, as he properly awoke, everything came into focus. No shackles were tied around his ankles and wrists, none that he could see.
He tried moving, but it felt impossible to move, somehow, even his powers didn't seem to be working.
"Remember! What do you do if you get captured in war?" a part of him said while the other part was too busy panicking and deciding between screaming or screaming.
Suddenly, his battle instincts kicked in.Observe, he answered. He looked around. He seemed to be in a room, completely white with a lot of people in lab coats; he looked around to find a lot of different creatures in it, each of them having a different type of cage. One of them, screaming as the white coat guys did something to it.
"I've been through worse". Kate had said. Was this what she was talking about?
Ghost sample missing was logged onto the computer.
So they didn't know that he was here...He could use that to his advantage. Not that he had many advantages.
"Deep breaths", he heard himself saying. He had to remember...Something
He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths.
Sarah opened her eyes, taking deep breaths. The first thing that occurred to her was that it opening her eyes didn't help at all, since it was too dark to see anything. The second was the scent. It smelled, natural, and nothing synthesized like the colognes in the market or anything else she had ever smelled. She was sitting in some sort of a soft armchair.Her mind felt fuzzy.
"It is a Chrysanthemum, a flower, white, originally found in China, it symbolizes truth, you know ...",a voice came from her left, it sounded familiar ,like she had heard it today....
"Please let her go. I take full responsibility for her actions, I promise ..." she heared the voice that was definitely her fathers.
"Don't worry; we are not planning to do anything just yet. Though we can't just let her go after the stunt she just pulled", said the voice. Now that she was partially aware of her surroundings, she knew the voice, "Sam?" she said, surprise evident in her voice.
Sam stopped midsentence while talking to her father and she felt her eyes on him. Then she felt some kind of goggles, which she seemed to be wearing, being removed. She blinked a few times and looked around.
Her father looked angry but he would be fine. She loved her father and he loved her, so she knew that her father was just worried. Then she looked at Sam. He looked completely different from the way he looked in college. He looked like an adult. She couldn't move much so she decided to just look around.
The place was weird for an office, one thing was that the floor was grass and there were beautiful things all over it. Those must be flowers, but she had never seen a real one in her life so there was no way to be sure. But wasn't planting flowers outlawed? All the land that was left fertile was supposed to be used only to grow crops...Sam was looking at her.His eyes were the one thing that remained the same.
"I am a special man at a special place. I can plant anything I want as long as it's in here." Sam said.
Did I say that out loud? she thought.
"Yes, and that too", Sam said, a small smile tugging his lips.
He looked at her father, "Trust us, we don't plan on hurting her but I need to talk to her alone", his voice had an authoritative tone in it,like it was not really a suggestion but an order. Her father looked at her and nodded slightly in Sam's direction as he left.
Sarah felt some strength returning to her. Sam took a cup sort of thing with holes in it and started watering the plants. It felt like hours went by and her strength kept returning, her head growing clearer. She could hear the clock tick and after a point it started driving her crazy.
"I am not sorry", she said before going completely insane.
"I know", Sam said.
"So if you plan on killing me..." whatever she was going to say was cut off by a staunch "I don't", by Sam.
"What you did today ,was surprising ,to say the least", he gave her a quick glare as she started opening her mouth, then continued.
"You had some kind of an unknown force acting with you and there is no point hiding it. You seem to...Do unnatural things, something that hasn't happened for a long time and has never been a good thing", he paused and glanced at her, "help me make it a good thing"
Sarah tried to remember all she knew about Sam. He had been transferred to her college right after she had come back from the library. In that one month they had become quite good friends. They were nothing alike, except they shared the same exuberance towards adventure and danger.
"I know I don't have much of a choice. But tell me this, coming to our college was just a ruse, I know that. Was our friendship the same thing to you?" Sarah asked, looking at the flower since looking at him felt impossible. She had liked how he had followed her to the library two days ago, even though he had been scared and he was the one who had taken her back home when she had lost consciousness. Her step-mom had liked him and she had grown to like him too, the first real friend she had ,was only there to go after her angel, it made her feel betrayed, even though he had done no such thing.
"No", he whispered with a voice filled with so much sincerity ,that her eyes shot up and stared into his explicit honey coloured eyes,honey being something so rare that she only knew about it because her mother owned an antique shop.
"What do you want me to do?",she asked ,standing and almost falling ,then taking support of the table.
Sam gave her the flower, "You can start by telling me the truth".
Sarah trusted him with her life, not her angels'.
"We can exchange secrets"
"You are in no position to ask for mine!"
"Then ,I will give you my secrets, nothing more, nothing less"
She went ahead and told him about her real mother, till her angel saving her but that was it.
"It still doesn't explain what you were doing here, fighting my guards."
"I only promised you my secrets" ,she stated.
Sam looked at her, "Show videos" he said and suddenly, the wall in front of her showed a list of videos. He was right in front of it, as he moved towards her, so did the screen .
So the video is displayed according his position in the room,she registered.
He touched a video. She had seen it a thousand times, the reason the war started in the first place.
Death of the president.
The way the war had ended was also suspicious, since there were so many stories surrounding it. The president got on stage and suddenly died.
She kept looking at the screen when the camera zoomed in on the president ,he was acting rather suspicious. He kept moving like the body was not his.Moving his hands oddly,touching his hair and moving like he was carrying some weight.Then he dodged a bullet, then looked back and then died on the spot. All these years, she and everyone else had thought he died because of the bullet. What was this supposed to mean?
She voiced the question."You tell me", Sam said, and "What does this look like to you?"
To her , it looked like an angel had started the third world war which had almost destroyed the planet and would have completely made all creatures go extinct if.....It was not mysteriously stopped. Her thoughts leading her to the new angel,the one that she was admittedly scared of.
The angel,ghost,in question ,Kate went to touch the shiny box thing in the room but it went right through her. I thought I had solved this problem a long time ago, she thought as she kept looking at the changing colours of that thing.Somehow,it made her feel uneasy.
Humans came in the room next to it and started experimenting on the shiny box.So,that thing was radioactive.
Some of those Capricious Trolls took some readings and left the room while others stayed. Another person ,older and wiser looking,came in through the same door but unlike the others, he showed some emotion on his face.
"Worried", she read. These Trolls were difficult to read, they were like robots, for this one to show an emotion, something big must have happened. She looked at the guy closely. He has the same brown eyes and brown hair as Sarah. Maybe they are related. Sarah is in big trouble but she already knew that and that burning box is so interesting.
I'm curious , Kate thought as she went ahead to the room where Sarah's relative stood, looking at the papers he was reading. The conclusions to the research up until now were:
1.That burning box was more than three dimensional.
2.It used to stop and start existing at seemingly random instance of time.
3.It was an inexhaustible power source
4,Sometimes, it sounded like someone screaming.
Well, all in all ,that thing was interesting.
Now, to find Sarah or Blake. She looked at the walls, then placed her ear on it.
"You tell me", a guy said, "What does this look like to you?"
"So all the stories about how the war ended are false too?",Sarah's voice said.
"No, it did end when the machine was stolen and the little kids death was broadcasted all over the world", the guy replied.
"So only the machine remains a mystery"
"No, it doesn't.Not to us"
Kate stopped listening. She didn't need to hear this conversation. She concluded Sarah was in no immediate danger and decided to practice something she had stopped concentrating on a long time ago, using technology.
She looked in through all the CCTV cameras in the building. Most of the things were boring except this burning box.
A Troll observing something, another taking down readings, an interview going on, Sarah talking to a guy, corpse breathing, a robot making coffee, a dog peeing on a toilet seat, a baseball match going on. She paused, she had just missed something very interesting, a dog peeing on a toilet seat? No, wait, corpse breathing?
She decided to teleport there.
The room was same as all the others, completely white with one bed, also white.
It was definitely a corpse, though a normal person would mistake him for a normal person and it was definitely breathing. She placed her ear on his chest. No heart beat. She got up and looked at him, wondering what had gone wrong with humanity.
The corpse opened his eyes and looked at her. For a moment, she was sure of that but then he got up and went right through her. If having a person go through you was bad, this was a thousand times worse.