I woke up to the smell of blood. My eyes were covered with blood, which I presumed were my own. The slippery liquid clung to my skin as I tried to rise from the floor. Falling again and again, my exhausted frame could take it no longer. I didn’t even know where I was. I collapsed on the floor into a pool of my own blood.
My head began to spin, I felt like I was going to die. My hands were numb. I knew I had to escape, and quickly. From my wounds, I calculated an estimated time of four hours before Alec came again.
We were best friends at college until he took away all my best ideas and disappeared. Now he reappeared, swearing vengeance against me for reasons that to this day I don’t know. I could not understand anything, my mind kept connecting the avalanche with him. I knew that the connection existed, but I could not understand how he could create an artificial avalanche that actually did not exist. I could not risk another meeting with him, at least not in the condition I was in.
Three and a half hours later, I woke up feeling refreshed. The blood no longer covered my eyes. All the blood had dried up, and I knew I looked disgusting. I stood up and surveyed my surroundings. I was in a tiled structure. There was a window at one side, and I looked through it and looked down. As far as I could judge, the distance was over fifty kilometers down. I felt sick. What had he done to me during the period I was in the room I would never know, but one thing I knew, I could not go by the window.
I turned to the solid wood door. It was made of plywood,-that was fortunate- suddenly I felt hope surge through me. Then it left as suddenly as it came as I heard footsteps at the other side of the door. In desperation I ran and jumped through the window to “land” in midair. Fascinating I thought, he really wants to keep me in.
Unknown to me at that time, Alec was in a room adjacent. He was controlling a machine whose functions I will explain later. He was laughing uncontrollable and pointing at a screen on which I appeared. I speculate that if I was there at that time I would probably have killed him. However, I was actually looking at illusions. I did not know it then. I tried to get up, but instead I started to fall even more.
I can never correctly describe the feeling I had then. Something like awe, horror, dread, and hatred mixed together. Then I saw him walking towards me with that sickening smile on his lips. He came and stood right next to me and commanded me to sit.
Stunned, I did as he ordered, and was surprised to find myself sitting on a chair. I wondered how it could have gotten there. As far as I knew, my prototype teleportation system was not yet functional. Then I looked at him as calmly as I could. I was hardly surprised to see him laugh in my face as he took another seat indirectly in front of me.
He began droning to me about his very great accomplishments. I was so bored by his boasting I actually nodded of, only to be awakened with a needle. Ingenious. He smiled into my face as he began questioning me on an unexpected subject: Mathematics.
I looked away from him, puzzled. He turned my head with his hand to face him, and asked the question again: What is two plus two? I told him he knew the answer, whereupon his face grew serious. He told me I had my weaknesses, to which I readily agreed. “But”, he said, “I will make your weaknesses my strengths, and when you are useless to me you will be terminated.”
Terminated? I smiled, not so easy, by that time I would have become a bag of bones. Then I knocked him cold. I stood up, and walked shakily to where he had appeared. Weird, as I got closer, something in the wall began to show up. Door? No, portal? No, I ran towards it, but collapsed just as I reached and pressed a button which had appeared.
The walls immediately separated, revealing the room I told of previously. I was intrigued by the computers. It was like none I had ever seen. The walls behind me closed. On a screen to the left of me were the words “Session: Terminate?” I typed in with speed, “Yes”. The room began to morph into a single-story house.
I smiled. Never in any of my experiments had I tried to do mind illusions. My discoveries were more suited to my tastes. I never thought mind domination was even possible, but I knew that the card in my pocket housed the key to the answer.
I grinned, took down a cloak I found hooked up in the house, and walked out of the house. At his garage was a car much like those my company sold. It had several modifications to it. I didn’t care. I had a car right in front of me, and the key to stopping Alec. That was enough. I smashed the window with my bare hands and crawled in. And then I realized I needed a key to start the car.
After rummaging through the cloak, I found the key in a small pocket at the bottom. Starting the car quickly, I could see Alec in from on the drive; I rode over him, leaving him in black smoke and car waste. It was enough to wake him up. He jumped up and tried to hold onto the rear of the car. I just accelerated, leaving him on the road as I sped off.
Continued…..
