by Noah Porter
“We replaced about 215 dispensers last night. The remaining 72, we saved for today. We figured we’d be bound to meet Tieryl City at some point.”
Forcing myself to eat a bowl of fruit, I almost gag. With my hand over my mouth just in case, I ask, “Are you sure we need to get Tieryl City, you know, before the zombies? Because if there are no zombies to worry about, then the remaining humans will just be turned superhuman by either us or the others.. and we could shut Tieryl City down after the remaining ones are superhuman.. then everyone’s happy and okay.”
“You forgot one thing,” says Ben. “We can’t turn back the zombies to human yet so we need time to finish the antidote. Unless you were planning on killing them and then having to worry about the human and the superhuman races dying out? Because, in case you didn’t know, the human population has been cut about 95% and the superhumans are the remaining 5%... and then there’s the humans that are about to turn superhuman that are in that category, too.”
Oh. Oops. Well, there’s that idea down the drain.
One of Penelope’s workers hands us all weapons, while Matthew gives me his suit (which I put on in my room) and Penelope gives me a hidden microphone. I hand it back to her. She raises her eyebrows at me.
“I have Arcya with me. She’ll just give me any thoughts, and if I transfer my thoughts to her, she can give them to people on board.”
“Right. Follow me, then,” she says.
We walk down to the door that will let us out. Anyways, I manage to make it through the first 33 dispensers without throwing up, just feeling like I was going to. It’s when we reach the 34th that we start to have difficulties.
We can see that Tieryl City is landing, so we go into invisibility mode (who knew, right?) and land as well. As soon as there’s a good percentage of their group out, the door opens.
Arcya looks at me, determined, and we step out together, pretending we had just been scouts and easily blending into the mass.
This is terrifying, I think, knowing Arcya can literally hear my thoughts.
You’re not the one that has a thousand brainwashed superhuman thoughts echoing in your head at once! replies Arcya after a while, like she had trouble picking out just my thought.
Can you shut them out?
I look over at her and I see her focusing intently.
Yes, thank goodness.
How are we going to lure them away?
What if I try to send 8 of them a message like ‘the box will help you find the superhumans’ and then you walk over towards the ship, saying, ‘I found this box and it’s sending thought messages to me!’ Then, when 8 or more come, we can just shove them into the vehicle and I’ll thought message the captain to take off as fast as possible, says Arcya.
Thought message the captain ahead of time, like NOW.
Okay.
I continue marching with the group until I hear one of them call, “Halt!”
Arcya and I stop.
“Lieutenant Borin, please bring forward your legion. The renegade superhumans are close. I feel as though, if I reached out, I could touch them.”
The lieutenant starts bringing forward the legion that Arcya and I must be part of.
“Wander at will, looking for the renegades,” growls the lieutenant.
Perfect. Sending the thought messages now, says Arcya.
Just like magic, 8 of the ones closest to Arcya and I look startled. I walk towards where the ship must be and beckon towards the 8 startled ones.
“Something’s sending me thought messages! I think there’s something here!”
They walk over and Arcya comes, too. When they (the soldiers) are bending over and everyone else is searching elsewhere, I rapidly and forcefully shove each of them in the back and they fall forward, on to what looks to be nothing.
“What’d you do that for?” yells one soldier at another, not even realizing that he’s suspended in midair by something invisible.
“We’re on something invisible! ATTACK!” bellows another.
I jump on board quickly, not even realizing that Arcya wasn’t right behind me. She jumps on a split second before the door closes, barely making it through.
Instantly, there’s a fight.
I grapple with the one who called for people to attack, ducking and attacking with my knife.
“Renegade superhumans,” he says as I keep on fighting, matching him blow for blow. I finally get him with a punch to the temple and he drops like a stone.
Arcya successfully hits the one she’s fighting in the middle of his jaw. For a fraction of a second he looks surprised. Right after, he falls to the ground.
Penelope just used a tranquilizer dart on her man, but it seems to be having the opposite effect on the one she’s fighting. I take care of him with a kick to the jaw. Jeez, these people seem prone to being knocked unconscious.
Ben and Matthew have already downed their men and are nonchalantly picking up the superhumans, using them as weights to show off their strength. Boys.
“Everyone pick up one person and follow me,” says Penelope.
Grunting, I pick up one of them and trip over myself, somehow managing not to fall. Luckily, no one noticed my struggle.
I drag him all the way to a small room where Penelope dumps the man she was carrying in. As I’m about to leave, the man that I believed I knocked unconscious jumps at me and begins throttling me around the neck.
Ben reacts as fast as possible, leaping at the man and kicking him multiple times where the sun don’t shine. He still doesn’t let me go, and I gasp for breath. Oh look. Deja vu. Almost like last time, except for this time it’s a crazed superhuman attacking me, not thirty zombies.
Ben manages to catch me when I start to fall yet again. I get one look into Ben’s eyes before everything goes black. Just like last time.
Chapter 6
I wake up in my normal bed, get changed into the suit, and eat breakfast. Everyone looks concerned about me. Must’ve been the fact I was knocked out. They do know I’m superhuman, right?
“Are you okay?” asks Lily.
“I’m fine, trust me. Just a bit of.. deja vu. At least it’s better than last time.”
“What happened last time?” asks Arcya.
I don’t really feel up to reliving the past - how many months has it been now? - so I disappear into my room quickly before just handing her the manuscripts of my previous journals. They’re usually kept hidden somewhere on me, but in this case, I’m at a safe place.
“Be very, very careful with these,” I say. “These may be the only records of what really happened.”
Ben looks at the journals, shocked. “You recorded everything that happened? How’d you get the supplies?”
“Firstly, yeah. Actually, right now, I’m mentally storing this entire conversation so I can write it down. Secondly, I had a bunch of paper and pencils in my house way back when. I wanted to have a record of what happened, so I’ve smuggled it in my bag since the beginning.”
“So if I said, for example, that you are totally insane and should go to an asylum, you’d still write it down?” says Ben, with a giant twinkle in his eyes and a grin. “Not that there are any asylums left, of course.”
“Uh, not true at all that I’m insane, but yes. I write down everything.”
“Cool.”
Aria clears her throat before asking, “Any progress on the antidote, Penelope? And how many dispensers left?”
“Yes, I think one more day and I might have it. It’s so much easier to figure things out when you’re superhuman. And there are only 5 left, but we need to be on our guard. I have a sneaking suspicion that we have a tracking device implanted in one or all of your bodies, which is good for the time being. Regardless, though, we don’t want you to have one. So today, you’re going to be scanned. If you do have one, we’ll remove it from you but keep it on board so they don’t suspect anything. If multiple people have one, we’ll throw off all the tracking devices except for one as we’re tra
veling from dispenser to dispenser, just to confuse them.”
I nod before a raven-haired woman comes into the room, calling for me. I follow her down many stairs and twisting stairways before we go into a tiny, dark, circular room. She has me lie down on a bed, which starts vibrating underneath me.
A giant black thing starts circling around the bed, and I stay perfectly still. I’ve had this done before, so I know what’s happening. When the black thing stops circling and the bed stops vibrating, I sit up.
“Please sit back down. I need to remove the tracking device from your left arm,” she says.
Ugh. Wait, I’m going to be awake? My question’s answered when she brings in a needle and tells me to hold out my right arm. She swipes my arm with something cold and wet (antiseptic, probably) before plunging in the needle.
Everything immediately goes all weird and, before I know it, I’m out.
And then I wake up, as refreshed as if I’d napped for about an hour or two. I’m sitting at the conference table.
Penelope is standing next to me, and she quickly tells me, “You were the only one who had a device. While you were sleeping, we took care of another 3 dispensers, so we’re down to the last two. Tieryl City’s either laying low or planning an ambush. Hopefully, the former. Logically, though, it’ll probably be the latter. So we’ve got a change of plans.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Oh?”
“We’ll get one of the last two dispensers first. After that, everyone will board helicopters and we’ll leave the tracking device onboard this ship, with an autopilot set to bring the then-emptied ship to the next location. Meanwhile, we’ll land just out of eyeshot and sneak into the enemy's’ ranks. When they discover the empty ship and removed tracking device, they hopefully won’t just blow the ship up and will just leave it. We’ll then execute the plan we talked about. The only issue is the potential loss of our lab, but it’s either that, risking ourselves more than necessary, or just leaving everyone to die or become a brainwashed superhuman.”
Arcya and the others murmur agreement.
“Hang on a sec,” I say. “What if they decide to use this ship for their own uses?”
“We’ve got a very convenient way to self-destruct the ship. Our autopilot is responsive to thought messages, so Arcya can send a message to it and it will self-destruct. If they want to use it, we’ll wait for people to board, and if our plan onboard Tieryl City doesn’t pan out, we’ll self-destruct the other.”
“Can’t Arcya just send thought-messages to the control panel onboard Tieryl City and execute our plan?”
“They don’t have enough recent technology. Their technology allows for a thinking autopilot, but the autopilot automatically rejects all suggestions that is not its’ own without it even registering them,” says Penelope. “Good idea, though.”
“And Old John?”
“We put him in his hiding spot. It was his request.”
I take a sip of water before Penelope quickly presses her hand to her ear and then down again.
“We just did the next-to-last dispenser,” she says quietly.
I go back to my room, grab some weapons (which I’ve kept hidden under my bed, just in case), the journals I haven’t given to Arcya, and follow my group until we all step into helicopters.
Taking slow breaths, I try to steady my nerves.
Ben and I magically end up on the same helicopter, and I stand there awkwardly.
“You might as well sleep,” says the person flying the copter. “It’ll be a while.”
I nod and sit down on a chair, quickly falling asleep.
When I wake up, I feel a nauseous twinge in my stomach and go straight to the toilet, throwing up.
Ben’s up in an instant. “Just nerves?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “This is torture. Never knowing if you’re going to survive another day.”
He nods sympathetically.
Just then, the pilot calls, “Time to change into your disguises. We’re coming up on the location.”
He sighs, turns around, picks up his suit, and goes into the other room. I quickly change before hiding various weapons inside my suit. A knife in my shoe, grenades and a gun set on safety mode in a pocket inside the suit, among numerous others.
Ben comes back out just in time to see Tieryl City landing. The helicopter touches ground and I quietly step out of the copter, preparing for a stealthy approach and a quick (and hopefully unnoticed) merging into their group.
I’m stunned when, as the helicopter is flying off, Ben comes up to me and gently (almost shyly) presses his lips to mine.
“Just for good luck,” he mumbles, shuffling away.
Ben. just. kissed. me.
I’m sure I’m blushing and my heart is racing, but who cares? Wow.
Chapter 7
Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to savor that memory, it’s time to get to business. The troops are starting to pour out of Tieryl City, and they look very determined (at least, relatively. Brainwashed superhumans don’t have many emotions).
I nod at the rest of my group and we all start towards the group. At this point, I figure I might as well share the rest of our plans.
Once onboard, we would go our own ways. Ben and one of the superhumans who worked for Penelope, who knew the most about where the control room was and how to use it, would shut down all security cameras and shut down the program controlling the superhumans, as well as making it so Tieryl City would start flying. Lily would get an escape hatch ready, and when it opens, we would parachute out. Matthew, Penelope and I would recover the files for DEK341 and grab the serum. Arcya and Aria would set up a bomb near the center of Tieryl City to explode it if our other plan didn’t work. That way, the program controlling the superhumans is obliterated either way. The zombie populations would die off on their own, and the superhumans would probably help with that.
Either way, it’s a win-win.
Anyways, if all of this magically went smoothly, we would all escape, then going around and saving the zombies with the antidote to the plague (which Penelope would make).
If not, well, at least the superhumans aren’t brainwashed anymore.
The first bit of the plan works well. We effortlessly merge into their ranks, following the directions of the generals in command to look for the ‘renegade superhumans’. The irony of trying to look for yourself was not missed by most of our group, judging by the loud ‘ha’ I heard in my thoughts from Arcya.
Luckily, we managed to be towards the back of the group and, after a mostly brief search, are the first ones to reboard the vehicle.
Stay safe, says Arcya.
I jump about a foot in the air when I hear a voice saying, “Private Protin.”
Then I remember that it’s my alibi name, and realize it’s Matthew saying it.
“Yes, sir.” I say.
“You and Private Laurd will follow me. I require your services.”
I nod. Brilliant improv by him, I thought we were just going to sneak off.
“Yes, sir,” I say, and the three of us set off.
When we’re out of earshot of almost everyone, he says in a thought-message to me and Penelope, The plans are in a small room. We’ve got to go this way. I was pretty high up in the ranks.
How the heck are you sending thought-messages to me? They didn’t experiment on you too?
Uh, Sarah, the mind-reading abilities were sent to all superhumans, excepting the brainwashed ones, says Penelope. We didn’t tell you that?
Nah, you kinda FORGOT THAT MINOR DETAIL!!!!
Focus guys, says Arcya. Keep your eyes on the prize. And before you ask, yes, I’m almost in position.
I’m already in position, says Lily extremely loudly, making me cringe. Sorry, was that a bit loud? I’m new to this.
We all are, except for Arcya, I say exasperatedly.
Ben, how about you? asks Penelope as we walk.
All things good here. A bit longer of a walk than expected, but other
than that, it’s fine, he replies.
This. is. so. weird. says Aria, and I can almost see her standing next to me, her mouth gaping and her eyes super wide.
Tell me about it, I grunt. All right, I’m gonna stop talking in this thing. I need to concentrate. I think we’re almost there.
This door right here, says Matthew.