The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2

by Michael Evans

  I find myself walking forward. In this weird dreamlike state I am in, it is hard for me to tell if it’s me who is doing the walking or someone else controlling me.

  Then, my state of being shifts entirely.

  I look around. I am now one of the kids inside of the tunnels on the playset. I hear the laughter of someone chasing after me and echo of their knobby knees slamming against the metal tube.

  I dash forward, unable to help but laugh too as the euphoria of living in the moment overtakes me. It has become a lost art in the modern world, and something I rarely experience in my life, but enjoying a moment for what it is and nothing more is the most freeing thing.

  It makes me feel exactly like I do with the Chimera Cube in my hands. Like anything is possible.

  The long tunnel on the playset leads to a slide. My short, uncoordinated body uncontrollably tumbles down it, giggling and smiling once I hit the bottom.

  Then, I see something that sucks all the joy from my mind.

  In the same place I was observing the playset is a man dressed in the same red uniform of the imperial guard. Behind him are a dozen more men who look exactly like him, all of them with their machine guns raised at the group of kids. The first one in the row of soldiers has their gun pointed right at my head.

  I don’t even have any time to scream before a bullet connects with my head, the only thing I hear before the blackness blankets my vision again being the terrified cries of the children.

  The scene of chaos melts away into the space of nothingness in my mind and out of the abyss I feel I am falling into springs a hot wall of pain. It doesn’t have a color or a texture to it. In fact, it appears to be nothing more than a wave of energy that overcomes me as the sensation of me falling grows stronger and stronger.

  Then, I hit the ground. The wave of pain I felt before during my fall pales in comparison to the new agony that overwhelms my nerves. I can’t even feel if my body exists anymore, all I can sense is an agony so intense that I want to puke out my guts until every last bit of me has been reduced to nothing.

  I enter a state of madness, my brain signaling every mode of panic in my mind to fire as I try to escape the torture.

  Except I have nowhere to go. In this weird, dark world I am in, nothing has a shape or color. In fact, I might be in a scary dimension of nothingness where pain is the only thing that exists. My body is nonexistent, my sense of self has faded, and the only thing that remains is a pain so deep that I can feel it dissolving my will to live.

  Something inside of me fights it. Whatever part is left of my mind ruthlessly attempts to suppress it.

  But it does no use.

  The pain only increases until I feel like my very existence is about to explode. In most cases, by now I would already be numbed out, my brain deciding it has had enough of the trauma.

  But it continues, and I’m past the point of not being able to take it anymore.

  Fuck. I exhale, which likely comes out in a harsh scream, but I can’t hear it. I am trapped in the world inside my own mind and there is no getting out.

  Then, I hear a whisper. At first the words are too low to be heard over the pain, which processing it is taking almost all my energy. The whisper then increases in volume, the same three words repeating over and over again in a demonic chant until I can finally understand them.

  “Listen to me.” Once I can finally hear the words, they fade away along with the pain. For a split second all I feel is the blackness weighing down on the essence of my being.

  Then it is all wiped from my mind like a curtain being pulled back on a stage to reveal the horrific show playing out in front of me. Now I have some sort of body again, or at least when I look down, I can see my hands, which is a slightly comforting feeling given that I thought I was trapped in a netherworld seconds ago.

  I am lying in bed, most of my body hidden underneath the heavy wool cover except for my eyes, which peer out at the silhouettes moving through the darkness. The only light reflecting into the room is the moonlight from the window, which illuminates the small charcoal stove and table in the kitchen. In another section of the room are two old leather seats and then a bed.

  Two people are standing right next to it, their hands being cuffed by another member of the imperial guard. Even without hearing them talk, I can feel their frightened energy. Their panic is contagious. It seeps into my mind, threatening to throw me over the edge. And by throw me over the edge, I mean toss whatever is remaining of my sanity off a cliff and force me into a psychotic break that may turn into a permanent vacation.

  These two people, albeit total strangers, feel familiar to me. There is something about the soft outline of their silhouettes and weathered gray clothing that brings back all the familiar memories of family and childhood.

  I want to hug them. I want to run forward and push the man holding the machine gun at their necks away. But I am out of control. The liquid injected inside of me and electrodes on my head have hijacked my mind.

  I am at the mercy of whatever Li wants.

  “You are worthless,” the imperial guard member says in English. He is turned away from me so that I don’t see his face, and something tells me that the moment he sees me, I will die.

  “You must be at the wrong place. This must be a mistake!” The silhouette with longer hair screams as the barrel of the gun digs into her neck. My small, bony body is hidden fairly well in the darkness. Only now do I realize my consciousness is embodying someone who isn’t me.

  This must be my family. My parents getting taken away by the imperial guard. And I’m going to be taken next.

  The guard’s eyes wander the room, his face devoid of any of the fancy goggles that all soldiers wear. It is just him and his flawed human eyes searching for something lurking in the darkness.

  “They said you had a son.” He ignores my mom’s screaming, a desperation and care in her voice that reminds me of my own mother. “Where is he?”

  “We don’t have a son,” the woman responds. She does her best to keep any fear out of her tone, but I can feel it radiating off her body. It takes an impossible amount of discipline to refuse the urge to cry and run away. “We were supposed to, but I had a miscarriage.”

  “You are a liar.” The soldier digs the barrel of the gun further into her neck. His body shakes from his anger. “I could end up dead if I don’t find this boy. It’s best you tell me where he is so that you don’t end up the same way first.”

  Before she even has time to respond, the tall man who is handcuffed to the side of her kicks as hard as he can. A bullet is fired. It connects with the side of the woman’s body and she falls onto the bed, blood gushing out of her in a thick stream.

  Without even thinking, I know this is my signal to run.

  The guard member is keeled over in pain, the kick nailing him right in his nuts. The tall man who kicked him isn’t able to do much to attack further. His arms are bound behind his back, and without any weapon besides his limbs, he stands in front of the imperial guard, trying to block his line of fire at me.

  At most, I have five seconds to break out of this house and run away as far as I can. I don’t waste any of it. I throw the sheets off me and dash barefoot across the dirt-covered, weathered wooden floorboards.

  The thin sheet of glass coating the lone window in the house is my only way to escape without having the guard shoot me. I slam my body into the glass, my small body having enough strength to shatter the window. Dozens of pieces dig into my skin, the pain of each shard of glass feeling like a bullet lodging itself into my organs.

  I jump out of the window, not knowing until my body is already plummeting to the ground that I have a two-story fall down into a pile of dirt until I hit the ground. The horrible sound of the gunfire reverberating inside that room fills me with terror as the ground approaches.

  That shot likely killed that man.

  Both of those handcuffed people that were nothing more than dark silhouettes yet feel like nothing less
than family are dead.

  And now I’m on the run.

  I collide with the ground, a sharp pain shooting through my already bleeding and injured body. But I never get the chance to get up. Stars in the night sky above and dark forest behind the apartment building switch to a movie theater screen. I have only been to the movies a handful of times in my life, but this screen’s definition makes the world look fuzzy in comparison, and it wraps entirely around me. The only thing on the screen is the face of Li Wang.

  “You asked me why I’m this way.” His voice reaches out and wraps around my body. Although he is whispering, his voice is omnipresent in a way that no scream I have ever heard is.

  “I’m this way because I am supposed to be dead. I am one of the Uyghur people. Every last one of us was killed in a silent genocide a decade ago. Everyone except me. When I ran away, I changed my name, worked as an illegal immigrant in Europe to save money for plastic surgery to make myself look identical to any ethnically Chinese person. I wanted to blend in so then I could manipulate my way to the top. And that’s exactly what I have done. I probably look old to you; the surgeries were designed to make me look like a middle-aged man. In reality I am only a few years older than you.” His face smiles, his teeth wrapping around me. I want to step back from him and his sharp fangs, but moving from the center of the marble floor only brings me closer to his wrath.

  “My family was one of the first ones to be sent to the camps about twenty years ago. Over the next fifteen years I watched my people be controlled, oppressed, and systematically killed by the Chinese all because of the fact that we were Muslim. You asked me how I could do such a thing to my own people. And the funny thing is that although I may be the ruler of China, these are not my people. I only wanted to become the ruler of China, the president for life now, so that I can kill them all.

  “This country took away everything I ever loved. It stripped me of my innocence at an age when most should be happier than ever, and all I want is revenge. I want to punish the West for not intervening when they knew millions were being killed, and I want to destroy every Chinese person who doesn’t conform to my power, and for the ones that do—I will make their lives hell all the same.”

  His voice takes on a physical quality of its own, emitting from all directions to surround me in a bubble of his anger that no matter how hard I try to mentally break, it remains, encapsulating me. Seeing this man’s face this up close makes me question how anyone could ever be attracted to him, but it also causes my stomach to twist and turn as I imagine his face eating me alive.

  It’s the weirdest sensation I have ever had, and no matter where I look or how much I run around to try and escape his gaze, his eyes follow me.

  “You can’t do this.” I stare at him, which isn’t hard—in fact, it is impossible to not stare at him. Tears drip down my face and land on the floor below. Once the water hits the ground, it evaporates into steam instantly.

  “I get to do whatever I want.” He smiles and the heat of the floor turns up a notch. I am not wearing any shoes, causing the boiling floor to melt through my outer layers of skin. I tense my body, doing everything I can to maintain my strength. I know the second he breaks me, my fists will open up. The second I allow him to gain full control of me and surrender to his power, he will force my body in the real world to give him the power that could end everything.

  “Unless you want to join the list of people that I will to drown in pain forever, you should tell me the truth. You should open your mind, open your body up, and let me have what is rightfully mine.”

  “No.” I cough, the pain hitting its highest level yet. I look down in horror and notice that my feet have been completely melted by the boiling floor. My entire body is going to melt slowly.

  Soon there will be nothing of me left.

  “If we join our powers together, we can take over the world.” A raw excitement creeps into his tone as my ankles melt away. The heat seems to be accelerating in temperature even faster than before. I am being thrown into the core of the sun. “We can make sure no one ever hurts our people again. We can make sure everyone who has ever caused us pain, who has ever tried to stop us, will be cemented in a pit of hell until the end of time.”

  “Stop this!” I holler, the magnitude of the torture only letting the words escape my mouth in a pitiful hiss.

  “I won’t ever stop. Not until you give me what I want. If not, then you will drown in this pit of pain forever. I will hook you up into this machine and let your body melt away into nothingness only to reform and start that cycle over and over again millions of times.”

  “Fuck you.” I exhale, the anger inside me only able to be communicated with the fury of my fists. But I can’t touch him. I am falling into the pit of blackness beneath me, my body melting at an agonizing rate. The pain is so intense that my mind can’t even process it.

  I am beginning to reach my breaking point.

  Soon, I will have nothing left to do but surrender.

  “Agh!” I scream, the torture worse than every trauma I have experienced in my life combined. Tears are dripping down my face, the horrible sensation of my body melting away making its way up to my neck.

  Once it gets to my head, I know I will break.

  I won’t be able to withstand my brain melting into the pile of gray goo surrounding me. I can’t take this pain any longer. I know my body is likely spasming out of control. Even if my fists aren’t clenched, there’s no way the guards are going to be able to place my finger cleanly on the scanner.

  But once my heart stops, they easily will be able to, and I can feel that moment overcoming me.

  Then everything comes to a halt.

  The simulation ends and the electrode cap around my head is thrown off. Two people surround my body, all working at a feverish pace to rip the straps off me. I grab the backpack on the floor that is right next to the metal table, in the very same place that it was placed before my mind entered that world of pain.

  Li’s body is shoved against the wooden wall behind me, two burly, suited men holding up a pistol to his head. The floor of the room is covered in blood, the bodies of several imperial guards devoid of life.

  I finally recognize the two people undoing my restraints. Noah keeps his head down, almost as if he is instinctually avoiding recognition by any security cameras as he releases the last metal clamp around my ankle.

  And Jake is on the other side of me, struggling a bit before he rips off the last restraint that was constricting all blood flow in my upper thigh.

  I sit up, gripping the smooth material of the backpack in one hand. My breathing is heavy and body still shaking in the aftermath of the horrors I witnessed and ungodly amount of pain I absorbed.

  Jake smiles.

  I have hope again.

  Chapter 13

  “If anyone moves, I will shoot them,” a woman yells, speaking in English without the use of a translating device. She has blonde highlights in her black hair and a long, slender face.

  The room is silent. I feel the blood from the dead members of the imperial guard sinking into my shoes and staining the cloth of my socks. It’s a disgusting feeling, but all my mind can think about is the children on the playground being gunned down.

  I feel their pain. I feel it in a way more visceral than I could ever imagine. I feel my body melting away into a magma-like pool, every memory I have ever had turning into a thick gray sludge as the legacy of my father, and the future of the world, disappears into nothingness.

  My brain isn’t stuck in the simulation anymore, but even in the absence of the electrodes on my head, all I can feel is the pain swathing all my nerves. I’m standing up now, but my body is still vibrating in the wake of the trauma, my brain unable to fully process what is happening around me.

  “You’re making a mistake.” Li coughs, the chokehold that the two men have around him squeezing the life out of him.

  He deserves every ounce of pain he gets. I don’t care what he has be
en through in his past. Nothing is an excuse to exude that amount of hell upon so many people as he has.

  “You should have never been in power in this country in the first place. Did you really think no one would ever figure out the truth about you?” Noah steps towards him. It is unclear whether he is the leader of this inner resistance, but all the eyes in the room seem to gravitate to him.

  There are eight men and women who appear to be rebels in here. Some of them have weapons and others have nothing other than the brute force of their own muscles to protect them. The woman with blonde highlights seems to carry the energy that a normal leader would, her young face and vibrant eyes a far cry from the weathered expressions of most of the others.

  Each person in this room is actively restraining someone except for Jake and Noah. Even with a number of the imperial guard dead, they still greatly outnumber us. And any minute dozens of members of the imperial guard will likely pour in. I can tell from the energy in the room exactly who these people are.

  They are members of Li’s handpicked inner circle. And they are all turning on him.

  “There’s no truth that matters,” Li responds, eyeing Noah. There is an emotionless character to his glare, but it’s still creepy all the same.

  “What matters is that you are an Uyghur who unrightfully stole the Presidency of the Party from the Chinese people and are now using it against them.” The woman with highlights speaks again, her face right in front of Li, who is pinned helplessly against the wall. “If this nation knew the truth about you, the entire regime would fall overnight.”

  “I was waiting for the day that you all found out the truth. I left little breadcrumbs in the documents of my life and dropped you all little hints until a group of people like the one assembled here today tried to challenge me.” He laughs, the translator device jiggling around his neck.