The spring came when Alex was long done with the preparations. All this time his foster parents were completely confused why they actually let him leave with a strange psychologist of even stranger interests, but at least until they were still in sight, Alex managed to manipulate their thoughts enough for no one to cause trouble.

The parting at the airport was more than awkward, but in the end Alex went the easy way and made both of his parents cry and right afterwards – ashamed of their action, while using the timing of the weird atmosphere to leave. On the other hand, the flight was much easier to manage – he made professor Stevenson pass out and the eight hours passed by uneventfully.

The annoying part began when they landed in Zurich and professor after the long, refreshing nap wanted to satisfy his scientist’s curiosity. It was too tiring to control his thoughts all the time, therefore Alex was forced to make up stories about what he remembered about the city and point out what has changed. The main problem was to keep the lies in line what he made up previously – months ago when they first met, but in the end when he felt he was going off the rails, he just pretended to be a confused child.

Unfortunately professor’s curiosity was not easy to satisfy and in the end Alex had to use his natural advantage. Even though he could be taken as a second-grader, he was barely five years old and when he suddenly became moody and started sobbing about missing his foster parents, the poor professor had no other choice but to bring him to a hotel – he was a normal empathetic human after all. From there on Alex was finally able to act freely.

After knocking out Stevenson and making sure he wouldn’t wake up for at least a day, Alex spent the rest of the afternoon and the night in meditation. He replenished the Qi reserves as much as possible and went over the simple plan several times.

He did not intend to go in openly, fighting and killing everyone – his physical body was much too weak, but against the mind techniques even Fritz or Franz, or whatever the name of the Old Tony’s bodyguard was, would become a helpless toddler. Therefore the idea was to approach the villa, let any of the guards bring him in by holding his hand and in a similar fashion find the old bastard. If needed, he could kill a few guards on the way to speed up and simplify the process. The plan seemed fool proof.

In the morning Alex left a note for the poor professor and left. Unfortunately his conscience kept bugging him and he dropped by the postal office to send a message to his foster parents. The couple genuinely cared for what they tried to accomplish and even though they wouldn’t be able to save the world, even Alex had to agree that their effort was admirable.

Thus he sent a simple letter, apologizing for his disappearance and telling them to not worry about him. In addition, he added another note describing a couple of places where he stashed money in his first life and explained how to get it. Knowing that the two were proper law abiding citizens, he strongly advised them to not show the second note to the police and use the money to help more kids. Of course, he suspected there was a very small chance they would actually follow his advice, but at least he tried.

After coming out the post office, Alex shook all the unnecessary thoughts from his head and jumped in a taxi that just stopped at the red light.

“Wo willst Du den hin, junger Mann?” The taxi driver asked in surprise, noticing the young age of his passenger.

“Fahren Sie Richtung Süden!” Alex said and, under the influence of the mind technique, driver followed the command.

The first ten to fifteen minutes went well, but the traffic was slow and most of the time they spent in traffic jams. Only now Alex remembered that Zurich had one of the worst traffics in Europe, but it was not like he was in a rush. Under his order the driver turned off his phone and the radio and they spent a nice quiet time without anyone disturbing them.

They left the city only two hours later and the first thing Alex noticed was the difference in the Qi density between the urban area and the rural part of the Swiss Alps. He already suspected this to be the case, but it was not like he was going to complain. Especially because the driver became jumpy.

Apparently his regular train of thought did not fit with the orders Alex gave and driving a strange boy to who knows where without any contact to his operator made him over-agitated on an instinctual level. Luckily Alex noticed the strange behavior on time and switched the techniques.

This was where the increased amount of Qi became handy, because from now on Alex had to hold his hand on the driver’s shoulder to maintain the physical contact in order to properly control his thoughts.

Unfortunately half an hour later Alex was forced to realize that he overestimated his own capabilities. In the previous life he could’ve gone like this for days, but now his body was not even close to a Qi warrior’s level and the amount of Qi it could absorb from surroundings was pitiful. The fact that the Qi was already scarce, made everything worse.

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Soon Alex began to loose the control over the taxi driver who started to periodically have light seizures. The situation continued to worsen and ten minutes later Alex noticed that even though the man’s eyes were open and he still drived mechanically, he was actually unconscious. When the blood began to seep from his orifices, in order to not cause a car crash, Alex had to make him stop at the roadside.

Luckily few kilometers earlier they left the highway and were now on a less crowded road. Old Tony’s villa was around fifteen to twenty kilometers away, but there was no chance the current driver could make it. Alex thought for a moment and decided to replenish his own strength first.

Meanwhile it was highly likely that the police would notice their car soon enough and that way he would get a new driver. With the amusing thought of a police officer driving him to the Old Tony’s place, Alex fell in a light meditative trance.

He returned to reality only in the afternoon. The lack of Qi didn’t allow Alex to alleviate his fatigue within half a day, to not speak about regenerating him to full strength. He couldn’t even imagine how it would be if he was at his top form and intended to perform a real Qi technique. Would he ‘dry up’ a region only to deliver a punch?

The taxi driver was unconscious, but still alive, although there was no way he could drive. After assessing the situation Alex cursed the normally vigilant Swiss police force and got out the taxi in order to find another means of transportation.

For a while the road was completely empty, but then a couple of limos passed by at a high speed, ignoring the little boy waving his hand in distress. Alex didn’t think much of it, until he saw another one and then one more. He suddenly began to have a bad premonition and then he felt his scalp go numb – a regular taxi passed by and in it sat a young man, around thirty years of age. It was him!

Alex didn’t even have the strength to curse. It was normal for him to not remember when the Tony’s birthday was, but why the hell they couldn’t arrive a week or a day earlier? He could’ve even come here last night!

Pissed at the world and himself he tried to stop the next car that bolted by, but either the driver was immune to his mind technique or he knocked out the passenger, no one stopped.

Only several minutes later he managed to stop a minivan whose driver got out genuinely concerned.

“Was ist passiert, Kleiner?” He asked.

But Alex didn’t intend to chat. He directly commanded the man to throw the taxi driver out in the grass on the roadside and sit by the wheel. Then sat behind him, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder and ordered to go at full speed.

The next part went even worse than the trip to this point. The new driver had either too feeble mind or it was resisting Alex’s control too much, but the poor guy began to have seizures already a couple kilometers later.

In all honesty, Alex was in not much better condition than him. His vision slowly began to blur and he already noticed the familiar signs of the Qi deprivation.

Ignoring everything, Alex pushed his own and the drivers mind to their limits and soon in the distance he could discern the hill and the pine trees that were hiding the Begano villa. The only thing he could pray for was that he from the first life didn’t met the old guy yet.

After taxi took a couple of turns barely staying on the road and narrowly avoiding flipping over, the new driver finally passed out or maybe died when his head hit the wheel, but Alex didn’t care. He felt he might loose consciousness any moment, but there was no Qi pond in this life to guarantee his recovery. That meant he would remain a cripple till the next death, but it didn’t matter. As long as he killed Tony, the experiment was a success, therefore he simply got out of the taxi and ran towards the entrance to the villa.

Despite his blurry vision, Alex saw the small crowd of people around the gate. But it was a completely normal situation – Old Tony loved to have many guards. He thought it made him look more important.

And there he was! Right at the gate! Right next to … the previous Alex!

Realizing he won’t be able to peacefully get to through the guards, Alex pretended to play the role of a helpless kid.

“Hilfe! Hilfe!” He screamed.

Apparently it worked, because the guards paused in confusion, but it was all Alex needed. He was already close enough.

“Die, old bastard!” He shouted, hysterically laughing, and sent a Qi stream strong enough to fry Tony’s brain, but to his great annoyance was forced to realize he didn’t have enough Qi left to finish the mind attack!

Cursing to himself, Alex focused in order to gather all his Qi reserves and on the way knocked out two closest guards who intended to grab him, and locked on Tony again. He sent every last bit of Qi he had to complete the technique and it seemed to work – Old Tony screamed in pain, dropping to his knees.

But the next moment Alex heard a guard shouting, “Du Kleiner Scheisser!” and saw the guard’s enormous boot landing on his face.

For a split second Alex passed out, but regained his consciousness the moment a terrible pain assaulted his senses after hitting a three on the roadside.

‘F*ck!’ Alex cursed falling to the ground, but still laughed through the pain, ‘This was embarrassing!’

He lie in the bushes with a broken spine, unable to move. Even though the pain was excruciating, he was not sad one bit. After getting kicked in the face he remembered this scene – he witnessed it during the first life, but back then he was standing next to Old Tony! It already happened once, but at the time he couldn’t know the boy was actually him.

The whole situation raised even more questions than he had before, but it was only right – this time Alex properly concentrated on the ‘plan b’ when the guard’s boot smashed his head like a melon. Except now he had an additional wish – he wanted to understand how the time actually worked, that is, besides the all reincarnation crap.