Chapter 3

Junshin was dismissed from Setsuna’s office. He was left brooding in a room that he had to himself, wondering what he should do. It seemed like everywhere he went, he was enslaved to someone. He understood the importance of having control over his powers, but the odd things that happened was because of the Id, not his own doing! He couldn’t help that the Id would get irrational and threw temper tantrums like a child.

They couldn’t seem to sense the presence inside his mind or manifested out of his body sometimes. He knew that this being was very dangerous, but he felt like he had no control over his life whatsoever. And no he had no control over himself, either. Why did life spiral deeper and deeper into a darkening depression that told him everything was hopeless? Why wouldn’t he just give up? Didn’t Kazuki say that life was cruel and unfair and only the survival of the fittest stood on top of the others?

He didn’t want anyone to get hurt. Junshin hurt someone before; he saw that in his memory. But suppose that this happened on a wider scale/ What if it was an entire neighborhood, a city, or even a country? Suppose the whole world fell into darkness because he lost control? But Kazuki taught him from an early age on that control was a mere illusion, and that Junshin never had any control to begin with. Ever since the day that Junshin was born, Junshin admired his brother fiercely and wanted to be just like him. However, when Kazuki backstabbed him, betrayed him, Junshin’s entire world fell apart, and Junshin didn’t know what to do with the shattered pieces.

Reito looked towards Junshin in concern. “Listen, Junshin. You don’t have to go through this if you don’t want to.”

It would’ve been easier to say no. He should have said no. But damn it, Junshin felt some kind of responsibility over this, and he couldn’t just turn a blind eye towards it. They did save him, after all. But he would not blindly trust them just yet. He needed to observe them, the people that surrounded him and their dynamics. To see if anyone of them had the potential to betray him.

“I think I need more time,” Junshin said, to which Setsuna looked towards him sympathetically.

“I’m afraid that there might no be much time we can give you,” Reito said. “But we will try to provide it all, teh same. Though let’s review your memory, from what we saw. I promise that all of this will be confidential and won’t be shared with anyone else besides Setsuna, myself, and you.”

Junshin nodded. His tongue felt numb. He still didn’t like the idea of his memories being probed like that.

“You have a lot more potential than we’ve originally thought,” Reito noted to Junshin, who was half-listening, too absorbed in his own thoughts about the situation. How was he going to escape from Kazuki’s control? Will Kazuki send more soldiers and scientists and assassins after him? Could the ANGeLS really protect him from all this? “What do you think your powers can do, Junshin?”

“It seems like…I can memorize anything that I read or hear or see once and commit it to long term memory,” Junshin said, wondering if this would be all right to share. He supposed that knowledge was power, but no one could possibly understand what it was like to have such power.

“Right,” Reito said. “That’s one aspect of your powers. But we believe that there’s so much more to it than that.”

Junshin watched as Reito formed his hands into a steeple and then pointed it towards Junshin while he contemplated.

“It may seem like the power of just memorization. Thus far you demonstrated your academic abilities by being in one of the top colleges at a young age. You’ve been put under observation for a while now from the ANGeLS team when your father showed potential for a gene that could produce Psions…and it was coincidental that Taka Fujimoto ended up with two sons that were Psions.”

Reito paused, before he continued on again.

“Both of you had a lot of potential. In fact, the two of you were created in the APOCALYPSE program that involved a legendary psionic hero named Minoru. Both of you received his genes to become ideal soldier in that program. I imagine that Kazuki’s bitterness and resentment lies in that.”

“APOCALYPSE?” Junshin asked, his attention piqued. “What kind of program is that?”

“It stands for Advancement of the Potential Caliber of Yielding Psychic Energy. It’s a shadowy group where Kazuki’s mentor that taught him everything that he knows about psionics is leading. Kazuki is also part of the SOLDIER program…and was assigned to assassinate you, Junshin.”

Junshin’s heart leapt in his throat. What did all this mean? Why were these shadowy organizations after him? What did they k now about him? And why did they target Junshin specifically? Just what was It about him that made them want to kill him?

“You were originally of their creation,” Reito explained. “But your genes started mutating in a way they did not foresee. You were actually a weapon that was designed form a blueprint for newer psionic soldiers on the battlefield.”

Junshin took this all in, wondering about it silently. He was a weapon, only a tool to be used. He honestly had no control over his life, or his powers, or anything else. His birth wasn’t an event to be celebrated or cherished; instead, he was a weapon. Who was supposed to have no emotions or human feeling. Just a tool, a piece of furniture in the background.

“So…” Junshin said. “I was originally designed to be a blueprint for other psionic soldiers trying to replicate the best psionic soldier in history, Minoru?”

“Correct,” Reito said. “You also had an interesting mutation that far surpasses Minoru in some ways…though they deemed you too dangerous and have too much self will to under their control. They tried to brainwash you for one purpose only; and that is to topple over the current political climate in Japan by seizing power for them once more.”

“That’s just my life, isn’t it?” Junshin said, knowing that he was reacting like a child but he couldn’t help but feel that everything was spiraling out of control and he had no choice in the matter. “I never got to live like a normal teenager.”

Reito pinched the bridge of his nose. “True, you aren’t a normal teenager. You never will be. However, Junshin, like I said, we’re here to provide leverage and we will provide you with therapy sessions and train you in your powers so that you can reintegrate into society, hopefully. You’ve had a hard childhood, I understand, and it feels like you don’t have much control over your life, but you need to do this. There is a concept of enduring and waiting things out rather than going through a rash decision.”

“What if I just give up?” Junshin said. “What kind of life is it to be enslaved to others, constantly serving others and never going with what you truly want?”

“What is it that you truly want, Junshin?” Reito said patiently, and Junshin faltered.

“I…I don’t know,” Junshin finally said. “But at least a life other than the one I have right now. But complaining about it won’t do anything, so I guess I’ve made my choice.”

He turned to Setsuna.

“Setsuna,” Junshin said, bowing his head respectfully towards her.

Setsuna nodded at him. “Hm?”

“I voluntarily decided that I would get more memory work done today,” Junshin said. “I…really want to get to the bottom of it. I need to learn how to control my powers and also discover my memories. They play an important clue in all of this, I think. All of it is connected somehow. I need to learn more about my powers, why I have them, and why so many organizations are after me. So in order to protect myself from people who might wish me harm, I think I’m going to train in my powers to defend myself.”

Setsuna clapped her ahnds together delightedly, before saying, “You came to that decision on your own, Junshin-kun? You’re rather mature for your age, aren’t you? Though yes, iimagine it’s a scary experience and it wasn’t an easy one, but we’re very glad that you’ve decided to trust us. We’ll try not to break your faith in us.”

“All right,” Setsuna said as she linked hands with Junshin and started to chant the necessary meditation for him to relax and slip into the memory reconstruction phase. “Your thoughts are my thoughts. You will relax and gradually, muscle by muscle, breath by breath, become calm and serene. We will take a peak into your memory when you awakened your telekinetic powers. You will keep in mind that it’s only a memory and it cannot harm you. All right?”

Junshin nodded, and before he knew it, he was at the memory reconstruction scene again with the whirlwind of silverware dishes and food items whirling around him ni a telekinetic swirl. His expression looked pained as always, and he still couldn’t see the shadowy figure that he had been talking to. That part of his memory wasn’t clear yet, though maybe with a little deeper digging, he can discover who it was.

“Your telekinetic powers were brought upon stress,” Setsuna finally decided. “Stress is a trigger for your psionic powers, I think.”

“Stress,” Junshin said, before that uneasy feeling started to creep up on him again, like a monster waiting to pounce in the dark. He looked towards a doorway, and something peeked through. Junshin jumped.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I see something over there!” Junshin said in a shaky voice, and Setsuna turned and looked towards the doorway that Junshin was looking at.

“I don’t see anything, Junshin-kun,” Setsuna said with a frown.

“It’s there…” Junshin said, struggling to breath again. “It’s…can’t you see it or feel it? Something’s there, something’s watching us, and it really doesn’t want us to be here.”

Setsuna frowned, though she noticed the enormous amount of stress that Junshin was put under. “Remember, Junshin, it’s a memory, and it can’t hurt—”

Junsin suddenly jerked into reality once more, and everything within the room revolved around him. Books, paper weights, paper clips, papers all revolved around him in a monstrous swirl, and Junshin tried to direct a paper cutter away from Setsuna while it revolved around them. Setsuna’s eyes widened, and she tried to bring Junshin to a calm.

“Junshin? I want you to listen to me very carefully. “You need to learn a calming meditation to bring yourself to reality and stop your powers if they ever got out of control. Okay?”

“I can’t…control it…” Junshin said in despair.

“Listen to me, Listen to my voice. Only focus on the sound of my voice,” Setsuna said, trying to direct him thorugh the procedure to calm himself down. “

Okay…okay,” Junshin said, trying to keep a tight rein on his emotions. “What should I do next?”

“Take some deep calming breaths, and try to retreat into your mind to a safe place. A happy place. We’ll go there together, okay? Think about…when you were a child. Where did you hide so that no one could find you?”

Junshin closed his eyes, trying to imagine his secret hiding place to run away from…whatever it was that stalked them in his mind. He went through a ventillation shaft and went into the small crawlspace that concealed him from view. He tried to keep Setsuna’s chanting meditations in mind. To aclm his breath. To release tension muscle by muscle until his body was in sync with his mind in relaxation. When he breathed, teh revolving whirwind of items settled down and all dropped to the floor.

Reito was there.

“What happened?” Reito asked, and Setsuna looked shaky.

“Junshin-kun had a telekinetic burst of stress,” Setsuna decided. “So I think that we’ve got a clue to one of his memories, which was that his telekinesis was caused by stress. But what could have triggered that stress? Perhaps this was a defining traumatic childhood memory?”

“Who knows?” Reito said, before he frowned and put a hand on Junshin’s shoulder. “Maybe this was too much to ask of him.”

Junshin shuddered. The memory of that thing stalking them seemed too real.

“Junshin, you’re trembling,” Setsuna said, putting her hands on his shoulders to calm him down.

“There’s something lurking there,” Junshin said with a gasp. “Something…terrible. I don’t know how to get it out of it’s hiding place, but it’s definitely there. It was watching us. And it almost could’ve hurt us.”

Reito frowned.

“So before we can do memory reconstruction, we have to encounter this…thing that you’re mentioning, Junshin?”

“I don’t know what it is,” Junshin admitted. “But I don’t like it, and I feel like I know it. It’s something that defies reason and logic…and it instills a deep fear inside of me. But it only seems like it’s getting stronger the more we revisit that memory.”

“Like a Minotaur in a labyrinth,” Setsuna murmured. Junshin perked up. He heard about teh Minotaur myth plenty of times from his Grecian literature classes.

“We’ve got to find a solution to this,” Reito said. “But why can’t Setsuna or I sense the thing inside your mind? You’ve mentioned that something was watching us before, though we’ve found no signs of its presence.”

“I don’t know,” Junshin said while shaking his head in frustration. “All I know is that…it sees you guys as enemies.”

“Hm,” Reito intoned, before he put a hand on Junshin’s shoulder. “I think we might have to take drastic measures and perform psychic surgery on our young charge here.”

“But wouldn’t that scramble up his memories even further?” Setsuna said in shock, and Reito nodded.

“We have no other choice. There is a deep fracture within Junshin’s mind and he senses that something is there that shouldn’t be. Maybe if we separated the entity from Junshin’s mind, we can get answers out of it.”

“How do we even know it’s real?” Setsuna said, before Reito tapped a finger against his cheek.

“Junshin should know his own mind better than us,” Reito said. “I think he’s onto something here, that there’s something that is watching us when we try to touch that memory. It must be a very important memory, and if it’s the first one that we encountered, it must be a clue about Junshin’s mind and how his abilities work.”

Setsuna turned to look at Junshin, worry cast her in her eyes. “Oh, Junshin. I understand that all of this is too much to take in. We think we can help you if we do psychic surgery, though there are certain risks involved. Are you willing to take that risk to discover the truth, Junshin-kun?”

Junshin swallowed and clenched his hands into fists. He didn’t know if he had the resolve to find out what that terror was that nestled deep in his mind. But he knew if he didn’t find out the truth, then it could literally destroy him and bring him down to his knees. Or drive him to the deepest kind of despair that drove him to suicide. He couldn’t let that happen, he needed to save himself from himself first, before he thought about saving others.

“I’ll do it.” Junshin said with finality.

Reito looked grim.

“Let’s get to work, shall we?”

—x--

Reito strapped some electrodes to Junshin’s head and neck, the machines gauging Junshin’s brain wave lengths. Setsuna wrung her hands together.

“To do psychic surgery on someone so young…” Setsuna said.

“It might not be just one psychic surgery,” Reito said. “It could be several psychic surgeries that we’re talking about here.”

Junshin looked at the various apparatuses that he was attached to by the electrodes. He suddenly felt like a lab rat once again, though he wondered if this would really hlep him. After all, they were talking about performing psychic surgery on him, and the prospect frightened him. What if they did find something wrong with him? What if the thing that watched them wanted vengeance or blood? He knew that the entity or whatever it was didn’t harbor any friendly feelings towards Setsuna and Reito—and possibly towards the entirety of SeRAPH. Junshin wondered then, if, it was really safe for him to stay in SeRAPH at all. It seemed that once again, he’ll have to be on the run again and never establish something as his home because of that darkness that lingered inside of him.

“All right,” Reito said, before speaking through a screen that overlooked the room where Junshin was in. “We’re monitoring your vitals and we see something curious. There is brain wave activity going on your brain as though you’re speaking, though there’s no one there but you. What’s going on here?”

“I don’t know,” Junshin said truthfully, clenching his hands into fists. Though the thing was, they were monitoring different brain wave patterns than his normal conscoiusness. Something about the subconscious rising up from underneath.

When Junshin peered into the dark corner of his mind, he let out an ear shattering scream that reverberated across the walls and ceilings like a curse, before he lost consciousness.

—x—

Junshin collapsed after screaming. Not good. Reito wondered if he should turn off the apparatus and not go thorugh the psychic surgery after all, though something curious happened. Junshin’s hair and eye color began to change, and instead of the red haired gangly teen with green eyes staring back at them, this was a fine haired boy with almost white hair and glowing red eyes staring back at them.

“What…just happened…”Reito said, and he guessed this was the entity that Junshin was talking about. The scourge of his nightmares.

The entity grinned before them.

“I am the Id,” the entity said to them. “You could say that I’m a defensive mechanism that Junshin created to protect him from the Mind of God. To prevent him from going insane.”

“So we finally speak face to face,” Reito said, frowning. He didn’t like this Id, and a sinking feeling in his stomach told him that things were going to get much worse than they were now.

The lights flickered on and off, and the machinery started to malfuction. Reito cursed, before making his way into the other room where Junshin lay, wondering if he could get into the boy on time an dhelp wake him up, though the Id easily knocked him aside with a powerful telekinetic force as though he were only a leaf blowing through the wind.

“You are probing into things that are none of your business,” the Id said to Reito. “Though remember this. If you try to eliminate me, then you will eliminate Junshin as well. We are interconnected—one cannot live without the other. As much as I despise this weak stripling of a boy, I am obligated to protect him out of self preservation. But know if the tables were turned, I would show no mercy.”

“Bring him back,” Reito said in a fierce tone. “Junshin is not you.”

“You’re right,” the Id said. “And Junshin is a mere false personality that I have created. I’m his subconscious, his primal thoughts and fears and deep psyche of the reptilian brain. Junshin considers himself rational and enlightened, but I know things that even he doesn’t know.”

Reito swallowed, before approaching the Id cautiously. “Tell us what you know.”

“I don’t give up secrets that easily. And I believe that I’m the one in the position ot be asking you questions. Are you really looking after Junshin’s best interests? Or is this mankind’s greed to have divine knowledge that they weren’t meant to know?”

“What kind of knowledge,” Reito said warily.

“Don’t tamper with this boy’s memory,” The Id growled towards Reito. “There are things in there that aren’t meant to be shared. I’m the protective mechanism that he created to keep his secrets.”

“There’s more to Junshin than we originally thought?” Reito said, considering the Id’s words. It suddenly started to make sense. Why Junshin sensed the Id’s presence within him and Reito and Setsuna weren’t able to. Though if the Id were a protective mechanism to prevent them from getting further access into Junshin’s memories, then what other kinds of powers did Junshin develop as a result of harboring the Mind of God within?

“Reito Kazuyuki,” The Id breathed. “I will kill you if I sense you inside Junshin’s mind again.”

“But you wouldn’t kill Junshin, would you?” Reito said warily.

“He and I are one and the same,” the Id mentioned. “Though I could always put his consciousness on the backburner and make myself the dominant part of his personality.”

A sadistic grni spread on the Id’s face.

“Soon…I will have complete control…and the boy that you’ve grown attached to will become nothing but a faded memory.”

With that, the Id suffered convulsions, and Junshin started to return to his normal colors. His white hair turned red, and his red eyes turned a vibrant shade of green again. He woke up, shuddering, before he said very warily.

“What just happened?”

Reiot shook his head and started to take the electrodes off Junshin. “There’s a long explanation that is due. But right now, Junshin, just focus on getting rest.”

“You talked with it, didn’t you?” Junshin said, and Reito’s throat tightened.

“Junshin, there’s more complexities to your mind than we originally thought. The Id…or whatever it was…was trying to protect you. I’m not sure if this is a separate entity or a self defensive mechanism that you’ve created to repel people from your memories, though the Id mentioned something interesting. That you’re the ‘false’ personality.”

Junshin pt a hand to his head, before saying. “I really…really don’t know who I am. Why I’m here. But that thing, the Id or whatever—I’ve always sensed him lurking deep inside my mind. He haunted my dreams and gave me nightmares.”

“What I know is this,” Reito said. “The Id is trying to take over your consciousness. What we need to do…is work on your mental shields so that the Id can’t breakthrough whenever he pleases just like that. It says that it was protecting you, though I don’t trust teh Id any more than I trust the scientists that have been experimenting on you.”

“I wouldn’t either,” Junshin said.