Alyssa positioned herself in first place run with every member from the group following closely.
She noticed Yannick emerging from her right.
The two had another contest. This time around, Alyssa noticed a hint of a smile from Yannick, as if he was content he had Alyssa there to challenge him.
Hmm...
The two leaders distanced themselves from the others as fatigue set in. However, their contest was foiled by a male teen with brown mid-length hair, green eyes, standing as tall as Yannick. The guy blasted past them like an elite sprinter.
Alyssa watched the guy speed off. The air force from the speed he produced pushed her away. She looked at Yannick and found he was affected, as well.
The pair tried to catch up the leader but failed to gain ground on him.
By the end, Alyssa and the group completed the course under the time limit. Everyone celebrated this achievement, knowing that it guaranteed a position for them in the Space Academy.
Alyssa removed her vest, handed it to an official, and sat herself on the ground. She slowly caught her breath as the last few obstacles had drained her a bit.
‘Yes, we made it!’ Janice exclaimed. ‘In yo face!’
Alyssa noticed the guy who’d passed her and Yannick walking toward her.
‘Hi, I’m Arthur,’ he said, stretching out his hand. His voice was calm and welcoming.
‘Alyssa,’ she said, shaking it.
‘Pleasure meeting you. You’re a strong person.’
‘Not as strong as you.’
‘I’m surprised to have encountered other individuals who bear similar strengths to mine.’
‘We’re not similar. You literally blew me away. That’s quite something.’
He smiled in appreciation. ‘I look forward to more challenges with you, Alyssa. I believe this may be the first of many to come. Until then.’ He strolled away.
Alyssa nodded.
Eikichi approached Alyssa. ‘Who’s he?’
‘He’s the guy who came first.’
‘Yeah? I can’t believe that there’s a guy who can out-run you and Yannick.’
‘There’ll always be someone better.’
When the day came to an end, over three hundred participants had passed. Since the test was scheduled over a week, the space program was expected to have all its positions taken up by the end. Those who completed the obstacle course within the time constraint were asked to remain, while participants who failed were asked to leave.
A short speech was delivered to the first students of the Academy. They were congratulated and informed about their journey to Mars, where they would commence their training to become space voyagers. Everyone was enthusiastic and excited for their trip to the red planet. But there was no mention made of the bombing at Ascent University.
A person raised their hand.
‘Yes, you have question,’ the speaker said.
‘Is there anything you can say about the bombing at the university?’ the person asked.
There was silence. It seemed everyone was waiting for an answer revolving around the incident.
‘Aside from what has been shown on the news, and recounted by the detectives, no.’
Everyone was disappointed.
‘I would advise you not to allow it to stay into your minds. The investigation is still ongoing, and Interpol has its best crime investigators on it, so until we get an answer from them, I don't have much to say on the subject.’
‘I guess it’s for the best,’ Clara said.
‘What makes you say that?’ Eikichi asked.
‘It’s best to keep us focused on what’s to come for us, rather than fearful of what’s happening around us. It's best to let it be.’
Alyssa agreed. Apart from not receiving answers about the bombing, she was happy with her accomplishment today. If she had an exuberant personality, she would be jumping for joy, but she wasn’t.
Nevertheless, she felt this gave her a purpose, something to strive for. Up until now, she didn’t have much to look forward to, apart from her time with Eikichi and her peers, but she wanted more. She knew if she was successful, and graduated, it would allow her to contribute to the cause, something she felt adamant about since Oblivion.
CHAPTER 7
THE DETECTIVE WALKED through the underground, searching the passages nearby the area the Zoner found the suspect. She had her two colleagues and a team of officers search the passages for over an hour but couldn’t find anything. She returned to where she met the suspect and searched the walls. She remembered the man didn’t have a bag or weapon before entering the underground passage.
There’s something... I know there is.
She ran her hand along the wall and placed her foot on the floor, feeling the texture and sensing the thickness.
‘Got something, Evelyn?’ Mark asked.
She didn’t answer.
She continued to searched walls until realised the futility of the search, and she ended it. However, something felt off.
Why did they specifically come here? And how did they get their weapon and the bomb?
‘We’ll have this area search again later.’
‘You think we’ll find something?’ Mark asked.
‘I know we will.’
After their pursuit of the suspect, their next course of action was finding where the suspect had been living. Their search through their database yielded nothing as the detectives had no information despite having an image and fingerprints from the suspect’s weapon. Although the picture did help them trace the suspect’s footsteps to his last location.
But it was the same result.
The last sighting was their first sighting. He had magically appeared out of nothing in an alley before attacking the university.
Evelyn’s eyes roamed through the streets and in the sky, but there wasn’t anything interesting for her to see. She knew what was around. She knew there were towering buildings on her right and left with familiar hologram advertisements across them, and familiar faces entering and exiting them with the roads filled with vehicles.
‘We’re here,’ Mark said.
Moments later, the detectives were in the alley where the suspect was last seen. They scanned the area but found nothing.
‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Mark said. ‘I mean how can someone just magically appeared in an area full of people and at the same time be somebody who doesn’t even exist in the system. I mean this is some freaky shit. And on top of that, we have someone who has created a device that disintegrates anything into a pile of dirt. Who does that?’
‘Someone in need of tidying up loose ends,’ Luther said.
‘Well, that’s one hell of way of doing it. Turning into a pile of dirt.’
‘Indeed.’
Evelyn received an image on her phone of a contraption from Martha, captioned ‘Return to base. Report has been completed.’
Moments later, the three detectives were in a room with Martha in a lab, receiving an analysis report on the findings of the suspect.
‘Little, as it were,’ Martha said, ‘what was found on the remains of the suspect was blood and this contraption we have here.’ She pointed to the contraption on her table. ‘Fibre analysis picked up nothing on the clothing aside from specks of dandruff along the collar. There were no fingerprints, loose hair, or any other indicators that could points us in a direction to getting closer to this person.’
‘So, whose blood is this?’ Mark asked.
‘Unknown at this point. Searches were run several times in our system, but we came up with nothing. My belief is that it was intentional to have their identity and anything pertaining to them removed.’
‘What happened to the device?’ Evelyn asked.
‘It fired itself when our specialists were testing it and trying to understand it.’ She opened a hologram screen, showing two men carefully examining and testing the device. She skipped everything until the specialist placed the device on a piece of meat. ‘It
wasn’t responsive to anything except this.’ The device activated and turned the meat to dust before the device itself burst into flames.
Interesting. Evelyn looked at the contraption.
‘My belief is that it was designed for one use and only worked on the meat because it needed a little energy to do the conversion.’
‘The device is really something else, isn’t it?’ Mark said.
‘It is. I’ve never seen anything like it. Its outer region was made of titanium alloy and had a highly sophisticated design which enables this region here,’ She pointed to the circular region in the middle of. ‘to convert anything to a pile dust. And that’s really all I can tell you at this point. The design even baffled our specialists.’
‘Have you had a team do a search on where the materials came from?’
‘That’s happening right now. I’ll be getting a list of names soon of potential manufacturers. And I have a good feeling it’ll be small.’
‘There will be a small list of names as the materials composited in this device are rare.
‘Knowing this refines our perception of the individual we were dealing with.’
‘Are dealing with. Don’t think this is over. If anything, it’s only just begun.’
‘That’s concerning.’ Martha receded to a chair. She appeared tired.
‘Are you alright?’
‘Just a little drained from all this.’
‘Are you okay to continue working?’
‘Yeah. I’ll be okay.’
Afterward, Evelyn left the lab with her two colleagues. She pondered the findings. Materials composited inside the device were rare and she knew something would be found. Industrial material, perhaps, even government level. It was clearly advanced technology that no one had seen before except for those who’d handled it.
As she headed for the exit, a person called for her. ‘Detective.’
Evelyn turned to find a late thirties, black wavy hair woman walking toward her. ‘Are you calling for me?’
‘I am. You are detective managing the investigation on the man that attacked the university, right?’
‘I am. Is there something you know about this man?’
The woman paused. ‘He’s my husband.’
Evelyn didn’t blink. She led the woman to a private room where they could talk.
The woman sat with her hands firmly placed on her laps, eyes looking at the ground, while Evelyn sat opposite her and opened a hologram of the suspect.
‘How can you be certain that this is your husband?’ Evelyn asked.
‘Because I’ve lived with him long enough to know what he looks like. He might appear different from how I remember him before he went missing.’
‘Missing?’
‘He went missing two years ago. Did you not know?’
‘No.’
‘I raised my concerns with the police in the Tert District a day after not seeing him, but they couldn’t help me as they couldn’t find him.’
‘Did they look for him?’
‘They did. They spoke with people from his work, his friends, parents – anyone that we could think of that might have had an idea of where he was… unfortunately the police called off the search and deemed him as missing for reasons unknown.’
I wonder why his file didn’t show up on the system, Evelyn wondered.
‘How was he when you saw him?’
‘If you are seeking a comparison between the man I met and the man you knew, I cannot offer you a proper gauge. However, if I were to speak in a hypothetical manner, then I would say that he was a different man than the one you knew, considering he had a wife and a child before his disappearance.’
‘Why do you say was? Isn’t he in custody?’
‘No. That’s the narrative we wanted the people to believe while we continued with our investigation to avoid panic.’
‘Then where is he?’
Evelyn paused. ‘Your husband is... dead.’
‘What?’
‘He died as a result of a device that was attached to his neck during our pursuit.’ She showed the device to the wife. ‘This device disintegrates him into dirt.’
The wife was taken aback. ‘That’s not possible.’
‘I’m sorry to tell you this.’
The wife looked away. Tears in her eyes, but she didn’t weep. She returned her attention to Evelyn. ‘Show me what happened. I want to see.’
‘Are you sure? It’ll be the last thing you remember of him, and I don’t believe it’d be the way you want to remember him.’
The woman nodded. ‘I’m aware.’
Evelyn took a breath, taking a moment to consider if it was right on her part to show the husband’s death to the wife. She collected a cable and connected the ends to a port in the chair armrest and the other to the back of her head.
Once connected, she activated MEMORY RECALLER, causing the room to dim.
In an instant, she felt her neutral network electrify as the process slowly reached full synchronisation with her hippocampus.
SYNCHRONISATION COMPLETE.
Evelyn closed her eyes, focusing her attention on her memories, as if he was looking at gallery in her mind. She breezed through her memories before the moment with the man on the bridge after he rammed into the car door.
Here we go...
When the memory was visualised vividly in her mind, with the sound, smell, and colour of everything from that moment, she opened her eyes and the memory played with fluidity in the hologram.
She and the wife remained quiet as they listened and watched the moment between the detective and the husband before the man disintegrated into a pile of grey sand. When the memory had ended, Evelyn disconnected from the memory recaller.
The wife was silent.
‘Was your husband a religious man?’
‘No… no, I mean he was agnostic, but he was opened to the possibility of deity, if that’s what you meant.’
‘Was there anything different about him that you noticed from the memory?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was it?’
‘Everything… how he looked… how he spoke. There was something different about him. His eyes and his voice.’ Her brows furrowed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean the colour of his eyes were originally blue. Here they were black. And his voice, it was completely different.’
‘He could have undergone change during the time he was missing.’
The wife shook her head. ‘No, no, that was someone else. That wasn’t my husband.’
Evelyn was disturbed by the woman’s words. She knew people could change under specific conditions. But something about her encounter with the man made her doubt those conditions ever existed.
‘Where’s the device now?’
‘It’s with us. We’re trying to understand it and see if it’ll give us leads to finding how it was created, and more importantly why it was attached to your husband’s neck.’
She went quiet.
‘What was your husband’s name?’
‘Thomas Khoury.’
Afterward, Evelyn had the woman sign an agreement not to speak of anything regarding her discussion, which the woman agreed to until the investigation was over. With the agreement signed, the woman left, leaving Evelyn to her thoughts.
The detective regrouped with Mark and Luther to hear what they had to say, as they were listening to the discussion, as well, from another room.
‘Well, this definitely changes things,’ Mark said.
‘It does,’ she said. ‘But I want to know more about this man. She said he was different, that he wasn’t the husband she knew. I want to know how different and I want to find why and how any information regarding to this man was completely erased from our system.’
‘Yeah, I find that strange. Surely someone must know what happened to the guy before he went missing.’
‘Someone does, and we have to find them. Otherwise, we might have another
encounter like this.’
‘You’re expecting we might find more of these devices on people, sir?’ Luther asked.
‘I am.’ She didn’t find the idea of more encounters like this appealing. ‘By the way, where’s Martha?’
‘She left to speak with manufacturers of the metal used to create the device.’
‘She found something?’
‘Not much, but she did inform us of the finding before leaving.’
‘Good.’
CHAPTER 8
SHORTLY AFTER THE second entrance exam, many students including Alyssa and her peers were eagerly awaiting their trip to Mars. Their wait was over when an information package was emailed to them, providing a comprehensive guide to the course they would be undertaking at the Space Academy.
The package also included a list of items to pack for their stay such as clothing, toiletries, towel, pillow, blanket and bed sheets. The package explained that the Academy didn’t have sufficient funds to provide the necessities, yet, but would be expecting to stock up on provisions soon as students commence their studies.
A few days later, Alyssa along with the group and all the other successful applicants were taken to the army base, which was located outside of Interpol. The students were driven away from the city, through a tunnel which led them toward the base which was covered by a translucent barrier.
The area was vast with floodlights as a light source for visibility. Tall buildings, hangars and space transportation had their assigned spots for strategic purposes.
Everyone was dropped off at nearby white hangars and waited until it was time for departure. Most were chatting amongst each other, while the rest were sleeping, as it was early morning, and still dark.
Alyssa glanced up at the dome that enclosed the entire army base, surprised that the barrier hadn’t melted away.
Hmm...
She surveyed the area which was mildly quiet despite having several personnel moving about between hangars and large buildings. She looked up to the top and could see red lights moving about in the dark, though she couldn’t make out what they were.
Her attention came back to the groups around her as she overheard students talk about the trip and the subjects that interested them, along with others still talking about the recent bombing attempt at the city. Some expressed concern, some didn’t.
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