by Abhisek Basu
Natalie nodded. Little did Dr. Alice know that Natalie’s map on her screen pointed towards the same location she was now walking towards. And she knew very well that she couldn’t kill Josh, just like he wouldn’t dare to kill her. It was a perfect ruse, and although Natalie didn’t like the idea of lying to her, given how helpful and concerned she was, Natalie had no other choice. Winning the final quest was her top priority.
As she reached the three masked men, the man in front left the rope that was tied to the Vice President’s daughter. She remained standing, despite the man behind her giving her a gentle shove. Natalie realized that none of them were saying anything. It was like they had been ordered to not speak.
Natalie knew they wouldn’t harm her. She pushed the first man first, went inside the triangle and removed the blindfold from the teary eyes of the Vice President’s daughter.
“Go. Run,” she said to her. His daughter looked at her, then back at the police vehicle.
“My father, he’s still there,” she said, voice still heavy.
“I know,” Natalie said. “We’ll get him out too. Don’t worry.”
“You promise? I’ve not seen him in days. Only heard his screams from time to time,” she said, tears streaking down her cheeks.
“I promise,” Natalie said without a moment’s hesitation. She saw her turn around towards the entrance. Then she walked towards the police van. The two men behind the girl turned around and started walking back, demonstrating with their hand gestures that Natalie had to follow them. Natalie did.
Press drones fitted with cameras flew around her face, white lights shooting out of them in the dark, focusing on her from all sides as Natalie walked towards the center of Quanti Valley, the men turning and leading the way towards the pillar exactly as it was pointed out in her map.
Natalie looked at the press drones and wondered what kind of a man would specifically request them at the outskirts of Quanti Valley, but not near the pillar. The world was watching his control, and it was obvious to her that whoever Josh Bones was, he wanted to put on a show.
“Are you all ordered to keep your mouths shut or are you just this shy when meeting someone new?” Natalie asked while walking. The masked men didn’t respond. One of them turned around and glanced at her, before continuing to walk.
They stopped and stepped aside before the gates of a park near Quanti Valley. Two men walked towards Natalie and held a long, flat disk near her feet. Within a second, all her implanted energy weapons shot out from beneath her cleverly disguised makeup and attached themselves to the disk. Grenades ripped out of her jacket and attached themselves over it. Even devices which weren’t magnetic popped out, ripping off her skin and attaching themselves to the disk.
The men near her smiled, seeing the disk fill up with her hidden weapons.
“Where I’m going, I won’t need these anyway,” Natalie said to them. Their small smiles changed to that of indifference.
The men pointed towards the park and waited for her to enter it.
It was an empty park and from the outside, it didn’t look like anyone was inside. Then, from the center of the park, Natalie saw an old man walking up to her. He was wearing a red mask too, but his stride gave away his old age. He came towards the gate of the park and opened it.
Natalie saw the hands of the man shivering as he did so, and even though his face was covered by the familiar red mask, Natalie could easily see the drowsiness in his eyes.
She stood outside the gate as he opened it and waited for her to enter.
Immediately, she held his hand, pulled him towards her and held him by the collar. He stumbled and tried to maintain his balance, but Natalie held on to his collar firmly.
“You clearly shouldn’t be working here. What have they got on you?” Natalie shouted, but the man didn’t answer. Instead, he shook his head and stepped back, gesturing at her to enter. Judging by his age, Natalie was sure he was being made to do this against his will, and yet, for some reason unknown to her, the man didn’t complain.
Natalie walked inside the park. The old man closed the gate behind her and waited there, nodding at her to keep walking.
Natalie brought down her map again to see where she was going. The location of the pillar was still a mile away. She kept walking through the park slowly when 10 masked men entered the park from the opposite gate. They all carried a black cylindrical weapon on their shoulders and each of them lined up in pairs facing themselves near the exit.
Natalie stopped, not knowing what to do. She rubbed her forearms, wishing she still had those energy weapon implants. She thought about turning back, but again, she realized that they couldn’t kill her. For the same reason that she wouldn’t kill Josh Bones, they wouldn’t kill her.
Natalie kept walking bravely towards the men. They had aligned themselves- five on each row. They all turned to face each other, and as she walked past the first pair, all of them simultaneously raised their weapons and pulled the trigger. An unlimited amount of rose petals started flowing out of each cylindrical weapon, rising and falling at the same time from opposite sides as if they were creating a tunnel of roses over her as she walked through.
She stepped out of the park and saw no one. “Are you going to tell me where to go from here?” she said, turning around towards the masked men showering flowers. None of them responded. They kept their faces locked on each other, their flower-shooting weapons tilted on their shoulders, staring at each other like statues while lines of rose petals kept pouring out of their weapons.
Natalie turned around and opened her map. She kept walking towards the direction of the pillar, following the directions on her map. After a few yards, masked men popped out of corners at the lane with guitars and violins. From all over the buildings, she saw different masked men with different instruments popping up. All of them started playing their instruments, and the ones without an instrument started clapping.
They had rehearsed whatever they were playing. Perfectly in sync with each other, the melodies filled the street as Natalie kept walking.
She was unnerved by all this. She didn’t know what mind games her opponent was playing, but she knew better than to fall for petty tricks like these. She ran through the streets, despite them unanimously playing a soft foreign tune, and once she went round the corner, she finally saw an arena in the middle of Quanti Valley, inside which the pillar was supposed to be. Natalie pulled down her map again.
The map on her screen showed that the pillar was inside the arena. The center of Quanti Valley was supposed to be an empty circular space. There wasn’t supposed to be an arena there. At first she thought that it was a realistically projected hologram, but then she went closer and touched the white curved walls.
It was real. Natalie saw a large tunnel leading inside. She walked towards it.
As she did, Natalie felt a strange surge of power within her, a power that she thought she had lost when she opened her eyes on Earth. The surge of power felt familiar and real. As much as Natalie wanted to take all the information in, try to figure out how an arena popped up where it wasn’t supposed to be, Natalie couldn’t shake off the feeling of her familiar strength and clarity.
It felt like each step forward made her realize that she was in Tholos again. That she could still wield her power. Natalie instinctively pulled her screen down, but before she could see anything in it, she heard footsteps coming from behind her.
Natalie quickly closed her screen and turned around.
“Stop! Don’t go in there!” the silhouette of a man said from behind her. “We have found a way out. Come with me!”
Natalie didn’t walk towards him. He had a Guy Fawkes mask on his face.
She knew she had to go inside. Turning back wasn’t an option, ever.
“Who are you?” she shouted.
“I’m from CELIA. We are here to stop this. Come with-” the sound of a gunshot stopped him from speaking. Natalie saw the silhouette falling over and hitting the ground. B
ehind him, she saw one of the masked men with an energy weapon in his hand. He didn’t speak, but he was pointing at the tunnel, gesturing to her to keep on walking.
Natalie watched him for a slight moment, standing over the lifeless body. Then she turned around. There was nothing else to do. She didn’t want to go back. That member of CELIA risked his life for nothing. She felt a deep pang of sadness when she realized that she had been lying to everyone to get there. All because she wanted to convince Josh Bones to hand over his key.
She had no idea whether she would be successful in convincing this deranged man, but she was pretty confident that she would defeat him in combat. The tunnel arched and revealed an opening. The seats in the arena were occupied by masked men who were all silent and looking at the center. The masked men at the top seats in the arena were not standing still like the crowd below them. Most of them were busy running around with energy weapons, shooting down press drones that flew towards the top.
Natalie walked out of the tunnel and into the arena. The pillar was at the center, a large cement block almost 20 feet tall. Igloo-shaped domes were covered with exquisite carpets, three-domes on each end of the arena.
Then at the center, right beside the pillar, Natalie saw a man sitting down, cross-legged, wearing a mask, but his eyes were closed.
He was wearing a suit, and it was the same man who shot lasers out of his eyes.
Natalie knew instantly who she was looking at. That man was Josh Bones.
Chapter 14
Natalie felt a wave of relief run down her spine despite coming face to face with her last and final opponent. This final opponent was a human like her. Not a monster with extraordinary powers. Not a creature that would be hell-bent on killing her. But a person who couldn’t even kill her even if he wanted to.
Three masked men walked out from behind the pillar. As soon as she laid her eyes on Josh again, he opened his eyes and stood up on his feet. He was taller than everyone else around him, wearing a black suit that seemed to be grossly expensive, lined with tiny diamonds and rubies, and looking out-of-place in that arena. He had a similar red tiger-shaped mask on his face, but his mask was larger than everyone else. From his appearance alone, Natalie understood that he was the man who shot those white lasers out of his eyes. He was Josh Bones, the person she either had to defeat or convince to hand over his key, a key that was the same shape and size as hers hanging from an identical chain from his neck. He carried a small black box in his hand, and on seeing Natalie, he unmasked himself and threw away the mask. He had a wide smile on his face, looked no older than 30, and yet the dark circles under his gloomy blue eyes showed that he hadn’t had much rest.
He turned around at the three men and nodded. They immediately ran towards the end of the tunnel and went away from there as if they understood what he wanted them to do just from that single nod of his head. Then he turned his attention towards Natalie.
He walked towards Natalie taking long strides and right before her, he stopped and got down on one knee. Using his left hand, he removed his mask and Natalie saw a man with brown hair and blue eyes looking up at her and nervously smiling. He threw the mask aside, held up the box with his right hand and opened it to reveal a large diamond ring.
“Natalie White, you and I, we are destined to be together. Do you know what I’m doing?” he asked, the diamond ring still glimmering on the box in his hand.
“If you’re doing what I think you are, you are wasting your time.”
“We both have enough time now. It is an honor to finally meet you, and I hope that soon, you’ll feel similarly. This is a ring that my grandmother gave me, and I always believed that no one would be worthy of wearing this until I heard of you. My name is Josh Bones, and I want you to be my wife. Together, we will rule over the world, if you just say yes. Will you marry me?”
Natalie stood in front of Josh, utterly confused by what she was seeing. The last thing she expected was a proposal. The entire arena was filled with a deafening silence as Natalie stood there unable to decide what her next course of action would be.
“Is this your big plan? A proposal of marriage? If I say yes, and I can assure you I won’t, will that require me handing over my key to you?” Natalie asked.
“Yes,” Josh said slowly, “But it is not just because of that. We both know the main objective of this is cooperation, which I understand. But once you just think about it, then-”
Josh stood up to his feet and closed the box with a dejected look on his face.
“I know, I know. You need time to think. This must make no sense to you. You came here to fight me or convince me to hand over my key, and that’s alright. But you are the most powerful woman in the world, and I- the most powerful man. That statement has been objectively proven because we were the only ones to survive, while everyone else failed. We have the strongest minds, the strongest souls. We would make the perfect team and we would rule over the world. All I want is your patience and time. Can you give me that?” he asked. There was a strange sense of humility in his voice, as if he certainly believed everything he was saying.
“No!” Natalie shouted. “Stop whatever you are doing here and hand me your key. You’ve already killed far too many people,” she shouted.
“Natalie, don’t close your mind. You must understand my proposal. But understanding this takes time, and time is something you have to give me. We are all slaves to time and soon, we would all perish just like everyone who came before us. With us, our powers will vanish too, so let us make the most of it!”
“What do you want, Josh? I saw you killed 18 people here to keep this running for 18 weeks.”
“It’s at 22 right now, and that was necessary. And what I want is you. I have wealth and power, but I want love, and you’re the only person who would understand me.”
“I can’t believe this is your great argument to convince me.”
“I can understand your frustration and pain, your confusion and sorrow, but what I cannot understand is your resistance to the truth. If facts are true and here they are, you felt different when you reached this place, right? Sure, I killed people. I’ll kill many today, but you of all people shouldn’t chastise me for it,” Josh said, and his eyes briefly glowed. Natalie took a step back from him.
“Standing before me right now, you wouldn’t have given me a chance to speak, and would’ve attacked me right away- but you didn’t. Even now, you have a chance to attack me, and yet, something deep within here,” Josh said, pointing to his heart, “is stopping you. Something is telling you that this- me and you- feels right, isn’t it? Let’s cooperate. This feeling is power, Natalie. Don’t deny it!”
Natalie kept quiet. It was true. She did feel strange the closer she got to the arena, an arena that never existed, and now that she was near the strange pillar, she felt almost the same as she did when she was in the battlefield in Tholos, powerful and invincible, as if she could do anything she wanted if she put her mind and soul into it. “Did you give my proposal any thought?” Josh asked, his eyes wide and hopeful.
“You want me to marry you? Just based on the fact that we have been through the same world? You know nothing about me,” Natalie said, and then looked around, saying, “And you are a certified terrorist in my book. You’re keeping people hostage against their will and causing pain to them, their families and loved ones. With this reputation, you simply cannot afford a proposal like this. It’s already a no from me,” Natalie said dismissively.
“I only have one hostage right now and that is the Vice President. Everyone else in the Red Alliance joined without force.”
“Yeah, I saw an old man who could barely walk-”
“That’s Master Wyatt. He’s my uncle, who joined because he wanted to spend the remainder of his life doing something meaningful.”
Natalie scoffed.
“Hard men are created from harder reputations. The ones who reach the top are always unconcerned of what the masses think of him. You should know th
is better. The lower proles weren’t always on your side. They weren’t always ready to fight for the city they were busy destroying. Do you know why they joined you?” Josh asked.
“Because I convinced them to. They had to protect their own people!” Natalie said.
“No. Because they saw what you were capable of and feared you, even if they didn’t admit it. It’s a primal fear built deep inside us. We fear the species that is superior in every aspect. That is how homo sapiens succeeded and the rest were weeded out. In the same way, our world that you see today has the same power dynamics, with wealth and status being the prime difference between the one percent of people at the top and the world at large. Here, everyone’s a lower prole. The people just don’t know that yet,” he said.
“Yeah? And where do you fall into?” Natalie asked with a look of annoyance on her face.
“I used to be at the bottom too, but it took me a few weeks after I came back to game the system and reach the top. Without morals and loyalty, just by making the right choices at the right time, you’d be surprised how easy it is to reach the top. It took me one week to make my first million dollars, 5 days to make my first billion, and in the next two days I made more money than all the trillionaires on Earth combined. All because of this,” he said and tapped his forehead.
Natalie sighed. “What else do you need, Josh? What is the point of all this? Hand over your key to me, and I’ll try to convince them to lower your sentence.”
“The point is- someone needs to save the world, but to save the world, we need to destroy it first. It’s the only reasonable course of action. Think about my proposal, Natalie. We’re the same people from the same world. Think and you’ll realize that we belong with each other,” he said.
“We don’t,” Natalie said. She rolled her eyes and pulled down her screen. “And if we choose combat, I will crush you.”