Chapter 1 - Hunter ~ Wordcount: 1922
Dusk had faded into a
starless night as the last of the sunset’s light bled away, replaced by a haze
of streetlights. The city was unrecognizable after dark, the pounding of our
feet against the pavement seemingly the only sound for miles. Grey lead me down
abandoned sidewalks and across empty streets until she stopped abruptly.
We stood at the
entrance of an unremarkable alleyway, which was partially blocked by a large
dumpster. Then, she reached out and touched my cheek. In the time it took to
blink, her face morphed into a mask but not her typical mask. It was pure
white, had no mouth, but had a place for two blue eyes to peer back at me. I
assumed she gave me something similar because she immediately walked into the
alley. I followed.
Shadows quickly
enveloped us as we moved deeper between the buildings. Once my eyes adjusted, I
noticed a burly man propped up against the backwall, smoking a cigarette. He
gave a side glance to Grey as she approached him and puffed out some smoke. He
must have known from the masks what we were here for because he shuffled a few
feet to the right and kicked up a sheet of cardboard to reveal a trap door on
the ground.
As Grey opened the
hatch and began to lift herself inside, the man said, “Bold to already be
wearing those. Police might think you’re actually one of them.” Another cloud
of smoke left his lips as he continued not looking at us.
Grey gave a slow,
mocking response as her lips curled into a grin. “Even the police are too
scared of Splinter to come out at night.” She continued down as if the
conversation hadn’t happened, and I moved to follow her. The man tried to hold
his nerve, but I could sense he was shaken. As soon as I had made it to the
bottom of the trap door, it slammed shut above us.
We were thrown into
darkness, the only light a faint outline of a doorframe several feet in front
of us. The hall was damp, dark, and empty, and the air felt cold against my
skin. Grey pressed her mind against mine and urged me forward. I strode past
her and listened to my footsteps on stone echo around me.
As I walked, I
reminded myself of the mission: find the target and bring him to the docks.
Grey came to control any external variables, but it was my job to collect the
man.
It took about a
minute to reach the glow of the doorframe, and as we approached it, I paused to
listen. There was complete silence from the other side, but there was an uproar
of thought and emotion. There was an energy of excitement and dread as a crowd
of people waited for the event to begin. I knocked on the heavy wooden door as
Grey had instructed me to.
There was a soft click
and another white mask identical to Grey’s greeted me. He had brown eyes filled
with shock as he looked at me and then at Grey directly beside me. He opened
his mouth to speak, but she moved in and forced the door open, saying quietly, “We’re
newcomers, just interested in the cause. We won’t cause you trouble.”
He swallowed hard as
she moved past him and replied, “Oh. Well, alright. We were just about to
start.” I followed Grey inside and found a cramped room packed with a small
crowd of a few dozen normals. Wooden crates were stacked up beside mossy stone
walls. I quickly noted that there was a second entrance to the room besides the
way we’d come, which was a thick metal door in the back-right corner of the
room.
No one spoke as we
merged with the crowd, but there was a new ripple of thoughts, most of which
were concerned about not just one, but two new masks joining the meeting
tonight. I tried to comb through the thoughts, looking for any distinguishing
traits, but I was drawn to a normal woman hanging towards the back.
Her essence reeked of
fear and desperation that pooled into the room as she tried to hold her thoughts
close to her. She had the same mask as everyone else in the room, but she had
another mask of confidence and ease that tried to cover everything else festering
underneath. I caught glimpses of disgust, at herself and all the other people
here, which was equally matched by the hopelessness which had driven her here
to begin with. She thought of the promises of a better world, of a comfortable
life, and of a cure to her son’s illness. She waged an internal war between her
morals and us, and it seems as if we were winning. I wanted to reach out and
tip the scales a bit in her mind, noticing the strength of her thoughts as
perfect recruit.
Grey’s presence surged
into my mind and blocked my current thought. Her tone was sharp as she said, Hunter,
you have a target to collect. As quickly as she had appeared, she
retreated, and I had control of myself again. She was right, I had gotten
distracted from the objective. I moved my mind away from the woman and
continued scanning the crowd for signs of the target.
A man jumped on a
crate on the opposite side of the wooden door. His mask resembled that of a
captain, with an outline of white lips and opened white eyes that covered his
own. I could not feel any thoughts or feelings radiating with him as I could
with any normal, and as I tried to sense his thoughts, I was met with an eerie
silence. I tried to reach into his mind without detection, but I was met thick
wall which did not easily crumble as I pushed against it.He was
prepared for someone to use influence. This must be the target.
He began to address
the crowd as he conjured a broad smile underneath his mask. “I’m happy to see
you all back tonight, as well as the two new masks in our midst.” His voice was
not muffled by the mask he wore. Did the target also have influence? I
tried to reach out to Grey for an answer, but she blocked me with a wave of
irritation that was directed at the target.
He continued. “We all
have our reasons to don Splinter’s mask tonight, and I would like to begin by
saying that our Great Leader appreciates the support you give, the sacrifices
you make so that magic can be in everyone’s hands. The history of influence is
tainted by its beginning, but we all know that in can do incredible good for
the people.”
There were murmurs of
agreement throughout the crowd as several people looked around at those
standing around them. None of them could even think that two real members of Splinter
stood so close to them.
The target lifted his
hands and said, “I want to begin this meeting with another story of miracles,
to remind you of the cause we are all fighting for.”
Grey’s presence sat
in my mind, and I could feel her anger rising as the man continued to speak. I
shuffled a little closer to Grey, as she had settled just behind the first row
of people. I noted that his words had an oddly compelling quality which
encouraged my mind to keep looping back to him. This was the use of influence.
I attempted to breach the target’s mind again, this time with a bit more force.
I was surprised at the resistance again, especially as he was occupied with his
use of influence and telling of his grand story. No normal had this much
mastery over his mind and influence naturally, and our target was
decidedly not a member of Splinter. So, who was he?
Someone forced the
wooden door open, which slammed into the man who had stood by it. A gunshot
followed, and the same man fell to the ground, blood dripping from his arm as
he clutched it in pain. Three normals in DAI uniforms stormed into the room,
guns pointing towards the crowd as one yelled into the stunned silence, “DAI!
Nobody move!”
The woman in the
center aimed her gun directly on the target as the other two beside her swept
the crowd. I didn’t turn around so that I could keep my eyes on the target for
his reaction, but I noted there were three other agents in the hall lingering
not too far behind. Now, a wave of intense fear wafted from the target as he
stood frozen in place.
Grey decided she’d
had enough. She spun around to look at the woman who had made the command. One
of the agents noticed her and trained his gun on her, saying to the crowd, “You
are not to resist your arrest for conspiracy against the government with a
known and dangerous terrorist group.”
I felt elation surge
through Grey as she pushed her way past two bystanders to directly face the
agents. She did appear to be an intimidating woman, currently short with small
frame and the blank mask hiding her real identity. “Or what?” she asked.
A second agent
pointed her gun at Grey. “Ma’am, step back or we will be forced to shoot.”
As Grey took the
attention of the agents, I noticed our target begin to compose himself, his
fear dissipating as he replaced his carefully crafted barriers, perhaps even
strengthening them. Still, his mind moved fast, and his attention turned to the
iron door not a few feet away. He would be waiting for his chance to run.
Grey did not stop,
didn’t even flinch as more guns were trained on her. She made it to the edge of
crowd and into the small space separating the agents from everyone else. She
stopped. And she waited. All eyes were on her as every other normal in the room
stood shocked and terrified of what would happen to them.
The center agent
dared to open her mouth, probably to demand Grey stand down again, but before
she could speak, her jaw snapped shut. Her body stumbled back as she was shoved
with an invisible force, knocking into the agent beside her. His immediate
reaction was to pull the trigger. Three more bullets followed.
Time froze. Or rather,
the millisecond after the bullets left their barrels was stretched and pulled
into the space of one second, two seconds, three seconds, and more until I
couldn’t register the passing of time. It felt as if time coiled in my brain instead
of running linear and pounded against my skull, demanding to be released, but I
was not the one holding it still. Grey was.
She had bent the
fabric of reality to her will and held that millisecond in between her fingers
and waited for the pressure to keep building as thirty seconds, a minute, two
minutes passed. The pain in my mind grew louder and louder, almost like
screaming behind my ears.
Grey let go, and time
snapped back into place, exploding with enough force to shatter the bullets
into shrapnel. The metal fragments flew back towards the agents and shredded
through their body armor and exposed skin as if they were paper. All six agents
fell to the ground, and chaos erupted in the room.
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