Origins Unknown

by M K Hussain

  Time to practise…

  ***

  The Commander fires a gun repeatedly at his target, continually missing. He is at the local gun range, aiming and practising firing at the bullseye in front of him. His hands are shaking violently. The local Reds surround him as none of his shots find the bullseye, the bullets not even touching the target in front of him. The Commander begins to hear negative comments from behind him, whispers from the Red patrons who also meet here on a regular basis.

  “Look at him. He’s lost his nerve.”

  “Can’t say I’m surprised, not after yesterday.”

  “Yeah, but still. He’s only half the soldier he once was.”

  “Yeah, poor Commander.”

  The Commander stops and puts down the gun in front of him. He takes a look at his violently shaking hands before taking a moment to control them. He looks back at the Reds whispering behind him. Then while looking back at the Reds, he picks up his weapon with one hand, sighs and fires blindly again at the target. This time around, he manages to find the bullseye each time, unloading each of the bullets in the gun into the target and causing the hole in the bullseye to become wider than it’s ever been before. The Reds just look at him, amazed at his ability to still do what he can do, when they thought that he wouldn’t be capable.

  Not since the incident yesterday.

  The Commander is furious. He casts his mind back to recall the brief altercation he has just had with the Council.

  ***

  A little earlier…

  “This is madness, pure madness. Why does such a thing have to occur at all?”

  The Commander is at an unknown location, the main hall of a castle of some sort surrounded by a whole host of hooded individuals.

  One of them steps forward, potentially the leader.

  “What we decree must come to pass, Commander. The power that is has mentioned this to be so in various references to us and we are merely the undertakers of its will.”

  “But why capture them at all then? Why not destroy them when we had the chance? WHY DID MY MEN GO TO ALL THAT EFFORT? WHY?”

  “I suggest you lower your tone when you speak to us, Commander. For soon, you may not be able to stand here before us in the position you are in if we put in the right word to the right people above us. Apologise.”

  “I’M… sorry. But you must understand it from my point of view. It is absurd.”

  “It is what it is, Commander. Let it be and let it go. Stick to doing what is best.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Your job only.”

  “I’ll be back soon with an update and for a better understanding of all this. You mark my words, Council.”

  The Commander walks away with gritted teeth, muttering things under his breath…

  ***

  Back at the gun range…

  The Commander literally destroys his target with his gun before putting it down and leaving hurriedly, ready to continue doing what he does best…

  7

  COMPANIONSHIP

  After running for what seems a very long time, William, Rebecca and I chance upon an ideal resting spot deep within the orange desert.

  “Can we rest for a while? I don’t feel so good,” I whisper to them, out of breath.

  William sighs. “Fine. There is a cave up ahead. It would be best to get there first though before you slump on the ground – we’re not safe yet.”

  “We’ll never be safe, but at least it will keep us out of the view of any more guards if they happen to travel this way,” Rebecca adds. “Look there.” She points.

  “Good idea, Becca,” says William.

  I look up ahead to where she is pointing. The cave they both want to get to has many rocks jutting out at the entrance, a fine place of concealment and cover, away from prying eyes.

  “Lead the way,” I whisper again. The reason I’m not feeling too good is because my chest pain has started to flare up again; this time is the worst so far. I gently begin scratching as it is extremely itchy, yet I don’t want the others to know that I am experiencing this problem – that I could be a hindrance to them. They may start to think of me as dead weight and think less of me, when I don’t even know about myself properly. In the back of my mind, I think the main three reasons for us to stick together are:

  Strength in numbers against the Commander’s forces as well as any dangers lurking in this great but strange outdoors;

  These guys saved my life and I, being me, am grateful for that and am now in their debt – also I need to know why exactly did they save my life? and;

  I can feel something very wrong with me internally and until I find out what that is, I may need help – who knows, we may even become friends.

  We arrive at the cave and check it carefully so as not to stumble upon any previous tenants still occupying this space. Clutching my chest, I stumble forward in a graceful manner. Earlier, I had to tell them that I didn’t feel good by way of suggesting that I had become tired, which I am pretty sure we all were so that they would readily agree with me. From the size of the cave outside, there seems to be a lot of room inside it so we could easily space out if we needed to lay down for a bit. The only problem is that it is quite dark and difficult for us all to see properly.

  “Ow!” yells William. He trips over some sharp rocks. “Damn it! I can’t see anything in here!”

  “Calm down. I’ll see if I can do something,” Rebecca smirks.

  She suddenly starts to glow bright yellow. Her inner light shines all over the cave. I just stand there, amazed.

  I wonder what other abilities these two have.

  The wind has turned chilly making us all grateful for being inside, out of the cold. Rebecca notices that I am shivering slightly when suddenly a creaking sound is heard throughout the cave. Rebecca nods at William, who sighs emphatically as he had just sat down comfortably on the rock he was perched on. He stands up and outstretches his hands and uses his abilities to convert parts of the cave to become more solid and stable, covering most of the opening so as to keep the wind out.

  Rebecca uses wooden vines around the cave to grow and form a pile on the ground. She dims her yellow internal light and changes it to red, silver and brown, which I believe signifies her control over water, plants, the ground and wood. When the wood is neatly formed on the ground, she changes colour again to bright green and a blast of flame exits her hands to light a fire. However, the fire grows too strong and there doesn’t seem to be much air in the cave, thanks to William’s recent structural changes.

  The flames begin fanning out wildly when I suddenly find myself outstretching my hands to form a force field around the fire to protect us, and use my ability to let the smoke out through the now shrunken opening of the cave entrance, but hold enough heat in to keep us warm. Rebecca’s colour changes back to normal. I return to clutching my chest.

  “We complement each other perfectly with our abilities, don’t you think, Max?” Rebecca asks.

  “Yeah, but how are we able to do what we do?” I croak out, still sore from scratching my chest so much.

  “I think it could be the effects of the environment, this whole time fragmented thing…” suggests William.

  “Or… our DNA could be messed up,” Rebecca chimes in. “It would seem a viable answer that either of these realities could cause us to be more than even we thought we could be.”

  “What if it’s a combination of both or… or something else that made us this way?” I mention when William cuts me off.

  “Made us this way? Don’t you see? This habitat is riddled with mysteries that we haven’t even begun to experience yet. Oh, and another thing. Why are the Gems in letter form, anyway? How crazy is that? Do they spell out something? Anyway, I think whatever this is [he outstretches his fingers pointing outwards], could enable us to defend ourselves from virtually anything or provide us with a means of attack, giving us each an individual ability or abilities.”

  “Yes, but t
hat also takes us back to what I just said,” says Rebecca again. “How do you know that it is this place? We could have evolved to survive, adapted to strengthen ourselves and who knows… we could still be adapting and evolving as time goes on. Does time even exist here?”

  “Of course it exists. We wouldn’t have three days to complete our task to find Preb otherwise.”

  “How long does a day and night last here?”

  They continue arguing when a sudden thought strikes me; no, a fragmented memory of a nightmarish existence ingrained in my brain, an image that causes me to roll my eyes into the back of my skull and the pain in my chest to escalate.

  I see myself asleep on an operating table surrounded by what looks like scientists, one of whom looks like the Commander, holding a syringe filled with a mysterious transparent liquid. He turns and speaks to me directly, despite me being comatose.

  “Let’s see what you’re made of…”

  I open my eyes.

  “Guys! Wait, wait.”

  They stop arguing.

  “What if they made us this way? You know, the Commander. He could have done this to us. Maybe we are all test subjects, a crazy experiment not yet fulfilled.”

  “And how did you figure that out?” William shouts at me, turning his attention to me suspiciously.

  I don’t want to tell them both yet about the vision I have just seen, so I come up with the most logical explanation I can think of.

  “Think about it. We know we have to find this special Door, Preb, whatever. We know we may all be special, some more than others perhaps, judging by what we have seen so far. How we have obtained our powers remains a mystery to us all but, we have been imprisoned for… for who knows how long. What happened to us, what was done to us, we may never know unless we push ourselves to find out the truth, by any means necessary.”

  “Yes, but how can you say the Commander made us this way, unless you know something we don’t know?” Rebecca interrupts.

  “At least tell me it’s an option worth thinking about…” I counter-argue before a fast-acting pain sears through my chest, making me double over and scream.

  “Look at him,” says William, sneering. “Powerful, yet so weak. Do you really think the Commander gave us these powers? If I was him, I would have been the one to inject some sort of weakness into us all, something to finish us off like the disease we will all succumb to in three days, or whatever you are suffering from right now.”

  William kneels down before me, pity and sorrow crossing over in his eyes as I lay there, holding on to my sides.

  “But why would he give us abilities?”

  “To test us maybe, to see who is worthy enough to enter through the Door, worthy of the chase that we are in right in this instant. But whatever it is,” I reply through gritted teeth, hand on my chest, pain dimming inside temporarily, “I’m not going to rest until I find out the answer to these questions.”

  “I, we, feel the same way, Max.” Rebecca kneels down and touches my shoulder. “When William and I bumped into each other and decided to help each other escape, we asked each other something else as well – how did we end up in the prison in the first place? Can you think of anything prior to waking up in your cell?”

  All I remember is the scream. Had I killed someone and this was a sick and twisted game involving prisoners on Death Row? Was I framed and am now just a victim in the wrong place and at the wrong time? What if I, we, were all innocent? The answer is simple – I don’t know. I remember nothing. I remember as much as these guys probably remember.

  “No, nothing.”

  I look up at them both and I notice Rebecca gazing at me apprehensively; William, on the other hand, is inspecting his left wrist to find something attached to it.

  “What’s this? How come we haven’t noticed it before?” he asks us.

  With everything that had been going on, I’d be surprised if we had. We look at his wrist first, then to our own. The device attached there is slim built and silver in colour. It is embedded into our prison outfits and locked onto our wrists so tightly that just by looking at it, you could tell that it is near enough impossible to take off.

  The edges of the device are black in colour, with small golden buttons inscribed with numbers attached at the bottom. In the centre lays a small screen of the map of this world – Raeth, flat and rectangular, with its many continents and vast water reservoirs. Finally, one big red button in the top centre and two small bronze buttons lie either side of the screen, with the name of the device displayed above.

  William peers at the name.

  “From what I can make out, it says Cumulative Utility Transporter, or CUT for short.”

  “It could be a transportation device,” Rebecca adds. “See here.” She points to the buttons and flat globe. “Touching the screen or that part of the globe may allow us to get to that particular side of Raeth. Or we could input the destination using the numbered buttons.”

  “Are those for longitude and latitude?” I chime in. Just then, I realise that the more I am concentrating on the device and how it works, the more it takes my mind off my chest pain. This lessens the agony, somehow.

  “Look, look here. If you trail your finger across the screen, but don’t actually touch it, the names of the continents, cities, roads etc. light up.” Sure enough, the screen now shows us all manner of co-ordinates.

  “And the best thing,” Rebecca informs us, “is that we have the location of the Gems inside our heads. We can at least pursue them.”

  “Yeah, but how does it work? What button should we press first?” I ask, curiously.

  “How about this one?” William touches one of the bronze buttons labelled ‘P’ on the device and the picture of Raeth projects a 3D image of itself outwards. “Cool. But I think the other bronze button has ‘S’ and ‘T’ written on it.” He presses it and 3D writing appears in the air.

  It shows the words – ‘Speak’ or ‘Think’ your destination into the device.

  The red button has nothing written on it.

  “What if we press a button and nothing happens? What if we press the red button without selecting where we want to go?” I add.

  “Well, I guess we will probably end up in a completely random area of Raeth, probably one of the CUT device’s choosing,” Rebecca replies.

  “Yeah, but how can it choose at random…”

  William points to a random continent on the device and presses the red button.

  “Let’s give it a whirl.”

  “No, wait!” Rebecca shouts. “You don’t know…”

  A rectangular door appears in front of us, tearing a space through the fabric of this existence.

  The rushing snow and wind on the other side drags us through this gap of reality as it drowns out the rest of Rebecca’s words.

  We come face-to-face with a pack of snowy, hungry wolves as the door rapidly closes behind us…

  8

  RISK ASSESSMENT

  “Zzzz… Commander, come in… zzzz”

  “Zzzz… Come in, Commander… zzzz”

  “What is it, Number 1?”

  “Patrol troops 22 to 30 unsuccessful in recapture of high-end fugitives, Sir.”

  “Return to base, Number 1. Effective immediately.”

  “Affirmative, Commander.”

  The hangar doors of the prison open inwards as hover racers led by Number 1 enter into the facility, straight in through the garage compound and landing in formation.

  The Commander sits high up in his control room, fingers interlocking, analysing their faces as he watches them enter the base.

  “Number 9,” he says to the guard next to him at the control pad.

  “Yes, Sir?”

  “Record and transmit everything that follows down in the garage to the headsets of all the guards still out conducting the search.”

  “Agreed, Sir.”

  Number 9 brings up the video feed of the garage compound onto the main screen of the control panel. Quic
kly, the Commander jumps out of the control room, high above in the rafters of the building. His cape flows as he breaks through many floors of the prison, before landing heavily within the garage compound, the basement of the facility. The guards numbered 7, 8 and 22 through to 30 gulp and stand straight to attention as the Commander, ground broken and smashed where he now stands, makes his way to them. Number 1’s body tenses up with each of the Commander’s heavily thudding steps.

  The Commander crosses his hands behind his back as he stops and prepares to speak.

  “Being a member of the Militarial Guard division of the Raethian Army brings with it many perks of the job. You feel honour, respect, importance and the need, above all else, to carry out your orders to their full capacity. Am I right?”

  “Yes, Sir, Commander, Sir!” all the guards within the garage shout out in unison.

  “You are all brothers in arms and I, your father figure. Each of you is a vital link in the chain that makes you tough, durable and lengthy in service.” The Commander approaches Number 1, looks sternly into his eyes, before walking past. “Now you had your orders. Your orders being to locate the fugitives, escapees of this building of confinement. Yet with all your might, resources and training, why have you not been able to apprehend them?”

  “But, Sir, if I may,” says Number 1, accepting a sense of responsibility for his team as he steps forward to speak clearly to the Commander. “Many fugitives have been arrested from the time of escape up until now, and those that have resisted have been dealt with.”

  “But what about those assigned to you and your team, Number 1? Do you think I care for the common prisoners and what you have done with them?”

  “… No, Sir.”

  “No. Those types of prisoners, I believe, will easily perish over the course of today, either by guard patrol or by the harsh climate of Raeth itself. No, you know that I have assigned each class of prisoner according to the potential of their abilities, as we now know due to the tests performed on them prior to their escape. Those are the ones that are the most dangerous, not those that I myself wouldn’t waste any more time on.