Ace gave a long sigh and pulled back his sleeve to check the time. He’d been sitting in his bunk bed for nearly eight hours, after enduring twelve hours of interrogation. They had captured him, placed a bag on his head, stripped him of his clothes, and taken a blood sample so large it made him dizzy. Afterward, they gave him a white jumpsuit and shoved him into a ten-by-ten room whose only furniture was the small bed he was laying on right now. Every hour all day yesterday, a woman in a military uniform would come and ask him various questions.
"Where did you grow up? Who are your parents? Did you bring anything back from that world?"
She repeated these questions endlessly, despite his consistent answers. She warned him to be honest, claiming they had his best interests in mind. The woman mentioned that the task force in charge of him was preparing for whatever the countdown would bring, and his cooperation would make it easier for them to keep him safe.
Ace noticed that the question about whether he brought something back was asked twenty percent more often than the others. The woman’s tone even seemed particularly pleasant when she asked that specific question, like a mother trying to get her child to confess.
When nightfall arrived, the woman stopped coming, and the lights turned off automatically at ten o’clock. He could only tell it was night because of the countdown, as they never provided him with a means to track time, and there were no windows in his room either.
In the solitary dark, he obsessed over the possibility of his treasure being confiscated. Why would the woman ask that question so often? This question lingered in his mind, but eventually, he drifted to sleep.
Ten minutes before the countdown struck twenty-four hours, he woke, but his worries still remained. He hadn't even noticed that he slept through the night without his insomnia waking him. Even if someone pointed it out, he was too concerned with the wolf meat to care.
Suddenly, a loud noise blared in his room. A continuous high-pitched sound made Ace cover his ears for the better part of a minute, after which a voice came through a hidden speaker.
“It is six AM. All new cadets report to the mess hall. Comply with your superiors or be treated in accordance with martial law.”
A calm but authoritative woman repeated the message five times, after which the door to his room opened automatically, and the lights turned on.
“You have one minute to comply!”
Ace noticed two guards in full-body armor that covered them from head to toe, standing outside his room. They were pointing large blocky rifles at him, and he could tell they would fire on him at the smallest sign of resistance. While reluctant, he clicked his tongue but got out of bed nonetheless.
Outside, he was greeted by a long corridor with dozens of open doors, identical to his, lining both sides. The walls were painted a dull gray, devoid of any decoration. It reminded him of a prison documentary he'd once seen, but the he shook his head thinking that the walls there were painted blue. Much better than this.
He paused in front of the guards and calmly inspected the other individuals that had exited the rooms tied to the hallway. All of them looked confused and wore the same white jumpsuit while groggily stepping outside.
He smiled when he saw no one else was escorted by guards, and only then did he give the two armored guards in front of him an indifferent look. One of the guards pointed toward the exit at the end of the hallway, and Ace began to walk.
After ten steps, he looked back and saw that the guards weren’t following him. One of them quickly waved the rifle at him. “Keep moving, cadet!”
He frowned and continued, disliking being referred to as a cadet. Ace had no plans of enlisting and thought the military was a waste of time—wars fought for no reason, or worse, for the gain of wealthier individuals. He did not mind dying, unless it was for others.
When he passed through the hallway door, his eyes squinted, adjusting to a bright light assaulting him from high above. At first he thought it was the sun before his eyes adapted, but when his eyes opened, he was left stunned. He stood on a catwalk hugging a massive wall, overlooking a three hundred-foot-wide chasm. Another gray-painted wall, with dozens of catwalks stacked on top of each other, clung to the opposite wall, and when he leaned over the edge and looked down, it was the same case on his side.
Both walls had countless holes continuously spewing people dressed in white, intermingled with countless guards in black armor.
In between the walls was a huge open plaza filled with countless tables and chairs, a couple of sports fields, and even several weight-lifting areas.
“Everybody, exit your quarters!”
A wave of people pushed him from behind, and he walked, still marveling at his surroundings. As he exited the hallway, he went left for a hundred feet, encountered many other corridors like the one he came from, and at the end of the catwalk, he took a staircase that led another hundred feet down to the plaza.
Within minutes, the enormous space filled with what Ace believed to be thousands of people, and he began wondering who could have built such a place. When he looked up, he saw that it wasn’t a skylight but actual artificial lights providing illumination. The electricity bill alone, he thought, would go up to the millions.
He was thinking about finding Norman and Mira when he felt a tug on his shoulder. He turned to see who it was and saw a head full of lush alabaster hair, framing a beautiful face.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
Mira smiled. “We were placed on the same floor, but you were ahead of me.”
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“Have you seen Norman?”
Ace hoped that maybe Norman was housed similarly close like Mira was, but his hopes were dashed when she shook her head.
“We should look around for him,” Mira said, and they began to wander through the crowd.
While scanning the massive gathering of people, Ace couldn’t help but ask, “So, did you tell them anything?”
Mira looked surprised and confused, as if she didn't know what he referred to. “About what?”
“What do you mean about—” But before he could finish, Mira grabbed his hand and squeezed.
“What, that you’re interested in me?”
Ace was befuddled and wanted to pull his hand away, but she pointed with her eyes toward a pole with cameras on top, not twenty feet away from them.
“If you wanted to keep that a secret, you should have kept quiet. Those things can hear a mouse from a hundred feet away. Come on, let’s find Norman.”
As they walked, Ace scanned the area and found not one but many such surveillance stations. A shiver ran down his spine. If Mira hadn't stopped him in time, he might have revealed everything. He'd been so preoccupied with whether they had discovered his secret, that he forgot to keep it safe.
They kept searching and combing the crowd with their eyes, but even after a long time, they couldn’t spot Norman in the sea of people. Everybody was dressed the same, and both thought it was luck that allowed them to find each other in the first place.
They sat on a bench to think about their next step, and Ace couldn’t help but say, “They asked me if I brought anything back. From that world, I mean.”
Mira frowned. “And, what did you say?”
“I told them the truth. I brought nothing. You?”
She nodded and smiled. She didn’t know much about Ace’s character besides his ruthlessness, but Mira knew that sometimes, ruthlessness was a front for cowardice. Hearing him deny confessing, made some of her tension dissipate, as she too had become enamored with the meat. After almost twenty four hours of continuous digestion, she could feel her body brimming with power. She had felt so powerful this morning that she thought even punching a hole in the wall wouldn't be a big deal. She didn't tested it because she didn't want to draw any attention, otherwise, she thought her cell would have turned into a beehive.
“I told them the same thing.”
Ace looked around and, even after scanning the place thoroughly, couldn’t spot an exit. There were countless opened doors in both walls of the massive chamber, but it would take a whole day to find out which one led outside, even if the thousands of armored guards allowed him to walk freely, which he didn’t want to test.
“When do you think they’ll let us leave?” Ace blurted.
Mira cackled and gave him a look that told him he was way off the mark. Ace pursed his lips and got the message instantly, not needing her to say anything. In all honesty, he already knew the answer.
He noticed that everyone with their sleeves rolled up had the same countdown on their arm as he did. That meant the military had rounded up thousands of individuals with the ability to teleport to a strange world that could grant superpowers. Why would they let go of that?
After about fifteen minutes, a group of soldiers formed in the middle, erecting a wooden platform made of the various tables lying around. An extremely well-built individual, dressed in an ordinary military uniform, was ordering the guards to stack the tables on top of each other.
One would think he was just a common soldier from his outfit, which was nothing special compared to the rough-looking black armor of the guards. But everyone could see the guards’ staunch demeanor disappear, replaced with kitten like behavior whenever the man passed by them.
What most people didn’t notice but Ace immediately discerned, was the tension surrounding the man. Despite feeling invincible in front of most people, Ace would hate it if he had to approach the man. A primal instinct inside his brain told him to stay away, as if he was a viscous predator that could rip him to shreds.
When the pile was twenty feet high, the man squatted slightly, and under everyone's shocked eyes, launched high into the air, jumping straight onto the improvised platform.
But of all the people in the room, Ace's shock ran the deepest, as he realized he himself couldn’t do that even with his enhanced body.
A shocked murmur traveled to his ear, and he saw Mira mumble something that made him understand he knew nothing about the world, “Genetically enhanced soldiers.”
Only now did he understand where the apprehension towards the man originated. He had hoped that his body was mistaken in fearing him, but his hopes were dashed when he heard Mira’s whisper.
Before the crowd could recover from their shock, a loud voice boomed through the large indoor plaza, “I am Colonel Biran, the commander of this base and research facility. From the moment you stepped through the front door, you became cadets, subject to military law.”
The loud voice stopped there, but his powerful echo continued to reverberate in everyone’s minds. Were they soldiers now? When did they enlist, and who gave this man the right to order them around?
The room, previously awash with voices, exploded as many began voicing their distress. They had first been yanked to another world, then kidnapped at gunpoint and brought here. They didn’t even know where "here" was, and now they were expected to become soldiers.
Someone close to the commander shouted, “You can’t keep us here. It’s against the law to kidnap someone. I want to leave right now!”
Many around the person who said this couldn’t help but agree, having voiced the opinion of most of the people present.
“Silence!”
The commander boomed again, this time so loud that many felt their ears ringing. Seeing the commotion die down, the colonel smiled and looked at the person who shouted at him.
“You wish to leave?”
The man who had spoken, seeing himself stared down by someone who had jumped higher than a tiger, suddenly turned meek, bowing his head to avoid eye contact with Colonel Biran.
The colonel smiled and nodded, satisfied with the lack of a response. “Under military law, desertion is punished with utmost severity. Let me show you what happens if you desert your post.”
He waved to a guard standing to the side, and one of them threw him a three-foot-wide square of concrete, reinforced with steel bars.
When the colonel caught it, the whole improvised stage creaked as if it was about to collapse. Ace squinted when he saw this. The guard who threw it was dressed no differently than the rest. He estimated the piece of concrete to weigh at least two hundred pounds and for someone to throw that kind of weight like it was nothing...
He suddenly had a thought and looked around at the thousands of guards interspersed throughout the crowd. A chill ran down his back at the thought that they might all be enhanced.
Even with the commander being so strong, he thought he could at least run away if something happened. But if thousands of enhanced humans stood in his way, would he still dare?
“Pay attention to what happens to deserters,” the colonel shouted, and a guard below pointed his long and blocky rifle at the concrete, that the colonel was now holding off to the side of himself in mid air.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Loud and rhythmic thunderclaps filled the large cavern as fist-sized chunks of concrete disappeared from the square. A rain of small chunks pelted the crowd on the other side of the tall stage, and everyone felt their innards tremble with each shot.
The fire rate wasn’t high, but the power was unlike any rifle they had ever imagined. Calling it small arms fire was laughable, and many thought that kind of projectile would work on armored vehicles.
Ace looked at the rifle, bellowing fire and smoke, and knew that even he would have trouble holding it steady.
The colonel held the plate of concrete until it had all but disintegrated, then lobbed the small piece left in his hands at the man who demanded to be released.
“Now, does anybody have anything left to say?”
Seeing the fifteen thousand cadets quiet as newborn deer, he nodded. “Good. Let’s begin!”