I look around the cabin as Becca has gone into the bathroom to get ready. I notice on a table near the cockpit there are a bunch of weird looking electronic devices. Becca comes out of the bathroom in her armor and walks over to me. “Do you know what any of these are?” I ask.
“They’re the gear your father was telling us about,” she says picking up a small device about the size and shape of a phone with no screen just all black glass with a single blue streak across its face, “this is a hard drive I believe, the wuxing order calls them uplinks. They connect to the wristlet giving you complete unencrypted accesses to any part of the internet. They are standard issue for major missions like this one.” She turns her forearm over and reveals a small band that the hard drive fits into snuggly in her armor. When she fits it in blue lines of energy flow from it connecting to her wristlet and her helmet/mask in her hand. I do the same inserting it into a spot on my shoulder and feel the data moving in volumes through my armor. The other devices are standard radar, trackers, and special ammo for our standard issue 9mm pistols. We each put the gear in the belts on our armor and put on our mask. As soon as the mask has clasped itself to the rest of my armor a flood of information seems like it is being thrust into my cornea. Just looking around the room the hard drive is already working, telling me all information possible on the type of plane, the type of wood and where it was manufactured, where the alcohol on the plane was manufactured and how much it cost and even how much I would have to consume to be drunk. All the lights in the cabin turn off and red arrows along the ground lead us to the exit. We get to the door and it slides open revealing the cold night 14,000 feet above Mozambique. At that moment, I realized that I didn’t have a parachute. I have jumped out of a plane plenty of times before training but never without a parachute. As my mind starts to panic, a green light comes from above the door illuminating our faces telling us to go. I turn to Becca “Umm Becca where are the parachutes?” I ask trying to restrain as much concern as possible. I can’t see her face through the luminescent blue eyes of her suit but I could feel her smile from her. She sticks her hand out putting it on my chest.
“Have fun,” She says cheerfully, I try to protest but feel my body knocked off balance and suddenly falling into the night below. The sensation of falling through the air at a high rate of speed is the most blissful feeling, to my belief, a human can experience, but I wasn't feeling bliss at the moment as Becca and I were falling through the air with no parachute. The impending doom came over me in a wave of anguish as my eyes were locked on the ground, it also didn’t help that our mask were showing us a display of our altitude falling from 14,000 feet, to 13,500, to 13,000 and onward. At about 12,000 feet Becca ran into me and was laughing so loud I could hear it through each of our mask and the speeding wind around us. Is Becca crazy? Why would she find this fun? While I am trying to determine the condition of her psyche she puts her hand to her wristlet and a blue hologram comes up of a wing suit. She pushes it and wings attach from her shoulder to her waist. She almost immediately catches the air and is thrusted upwards quickly and I start to lose sight of her as I drop. I reach for my wristlet and the blue hologram appears on mine to. Through the air resistance I slam my hand into the wristlet and feel the cloth wings extend attaching themselves to different parts of my armor. As soon as my body catches the air wave I am thrusted upwards like I have just been punched in the stomach by Zeus himself. At about 10,000 feet Becca comes down to my level and points down. At first I didn’t understand what she wanted but then she twisted her body forward and clamped her arms to her side and started to dive at, according to the speedometer in my helmet, 88 mph. I waited for a second letting my body get use to the suit before I overcome the fear and dive. I feel the resistance in my soul and head telling me not to try and head towards the ground faster but the thrill of the moment of takes me and I find myself pulling my arms in and falling. The sensation feels like being on a roller coaster that has gone off the track. At first I feel terrified, feeling the gravity of the rushing at high speeds towards the ground, but then I start to enjoy it. The speed overtook me and I started to try and find ways to go faster and try and beat Becca who was now visible in front of me. My altitude was dropping rapidly falling from 5,000 to 4,000 to 3,000. The city became visible at about a mile above the ground. A jungle spread into a large accumulation of lights as the capital city was thriving at night. I was struck with admiration of the city and the beauty I could feel from it at this height. Right below us was the ocean leading to the coast of the city and melting in with the moonlight streaming down from the sky. At 1,000, feet we opened our arms and started to glide across the ocean. We reached the coast and then were flooded with a sea of white buildings and tiny people looking like ants moving around and going about their lives without the faintest idea that I am flying above them, watching over them, like an angel of death, ready to take those unworthy or unwilling to continue in the world of the living. “He Chanel,” I hear Becca through my mask, I turn and look at her feeling the wind currents in my bones “We have to land there.” She points forward at an abandon warehouse not far from us and for the first time I realize, how do I land. I feel my heart race as cortisol enters my system, my mind starts to race imagining all the horrible things that could happen trying to land and the reports back home ‘commander King's son, Chanel, dies after having head force trauma from flying into a pole before the mission had even started’ the thought of that literally made me sick. As we come to the place Becca wanted us to land, Becca gracefully pulls back her body letting herself slow and roll onto the ground below like a pro. Seeing what she did I give it a try and instead of a graceful landing like hers I find myself flipping backwards in the air. I try to control my movements as I am now fall/gliding and having to listen to Becca laughing below me. I finally stop spinning but not in time to stop myself from running into the side of the warehouse with a loud thud. The helmet takes most the impact but I still feel the daze as I plummet to the ground below and blackout, I awake a mere few seconds later and find myself covered in trash and being laughed at by Becca. I take a banana peel and throw it at her but the peel just slides down the front of her armor.
“Your are enjoying this way too much,” I say exhaustedly she pulls me out of the trash can and leads me to the back of the warehouse. We quickly hide behind the warehouse and rest our backs against it. Becca takes off her mask and I can see the cold sweat running down her cheek but she has the pure face of bliss shining off of her. I take off my mask and sit there for a second, just taking in the night air and embracing the humidity around me. I pant a bit, trying to get my breathing back to normal before I even try to form a sentence. she is next to me trying to silently laugh to herself after my acrobatic debut in the air but failing miserably, obviously her breath is fine.
“You looked majestic up there,” she says smiling while looking forward. She gives me the chance to reply back with something funny but at the moment my mind is blank and confused in a mix of embarrassment and knowing we have a lot to do with little time to do it. I completely sidestep her comment and move forward with the task at hand.
“So,” I say to her, “Where to from here?” Becca on this mission is known as the specialist. She is more of the one who is good with tech and thinking on the spot, while I am the strategist. I have more knowledge about combat and forming a plan to infiltrate and complete the mission with the least amount of disturbance to the area.
“We need to get this armor off and blend in first off,” She says, “You have clothes on underneath your armor right?” I nod looking at her questionable. She take my arm and swipes through a few holograms on my wrist before coming to one with a hologram of glasses and a backpack. She taps the wristlet and steps back quickly as my armor starts to hold and compress seeming to almost get smaller until it forms two simple black straps around my shoulders and a black and gold backpack on the back.
“What the...” I yell out looking around dumbfounded at how my armor just broke the laws of physics and conservation of mass at the same time.
“Pretty cool right?” Becca says as her armor does the same. I look at my arms in my shortsleeve black t-shirt and khaki cargo shorts and realize all my weapons are gone to.
“Wait, where are my armbands, my pistol, and all the equipment?” I ask her.
“It’s a real backpack Chanel,” she says taking off her backpack and opening it showing all of her equipment inside, I do the same and find my armbands, pistol, and equipment along with a pair of glasses inside. I take out the glasses and put the backpack back on.
“What are these for, I can see fine,” I hold them up looking confused. She laughs a little.
“Gosh I thought with your armbands full of citadel you would know more about the metal,” she says, “Citadel is rare on its own but there is a more rare form of citadel that is actually black. It is lighter more flexible and can be manipulated to turn into almost any structure, even more so than gold.” She holds up the glasses, “These glasses are made from the harddrive which is constructed from black citadel,” she says putting them on. “When you put them on, it will act the same way it did inside the mask just on the glass instead, your armor did the same thing just transforming itself into the backpack.” I take the glasses and put them on and find that Becca was right. The whole world around me looks like the first time I put on my mask in the plane, with little facts and information about my surrounds everywhere. “Huh,” she says looking at me strangely.
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“Whats wrong,” I say checking myself for anything weird on my body.
“Nothing you just look cute in glasses,” she turns around and starts walking away from the warehouse. I can feel my cheeks burning bright red and try and play it cool as I follow next to her. The GPS in the glasses shows us the safe house set up for the mission is only about two miles west of our position. We start heading down the street as African people pass by us looking at us strangely. Becca and I are brown like the people here but unlike the people here we are both light skin and they are extremely dark. We definitely stand out from the people walking around the streets with our western clothes compared to their multicolored african garb or their t-shirts showing football championships for teams that didn’t win. Becca puts her arm through mine and gets close to me as we walk.
“What are you doing,” I say as my body tenses up.
“Just go with it, we will blend in better if it looks like we are a couple who are touring Maputo, act like a tourist.” She says as she gets into character, pointing at different buildings and restaurants as we walk. I start to make small talk with her about the great food we have gotten to try on our trip and things normal tourist say to each other. The people walking around don’t give us a second thought, assuming we are just tourist enjoying the capital city of this impoverished country. We walk for a while losing track of time before a beeping sound comes from our wristlets. We change our attitudes and untangle ourselves from our tourist personalities. The GPS tells us we have reached our destination. We look up and find a tiny two story white house on the corner of a street with a blue dome roof and two small windows, one on each floor. I look at Becca.
“Well,” I say, “Welcome home.” We walk up to the door and find that were the keyhole should be there is a black pad with a green line running up and down its face. Becca reaches her hand out and puts her thumb on the pad. The green line illuminates her finger then we hear a click come from the lock and Becca opens the door. The first floor is completely empty with dust and spiderwebs occupying the space. The entire first floor itself is very small, only big enough to hold about five or six people. The white walls are rough and prickly with little bumps along protruding from the wall. A white concrete staircase leads up to the second floor, but it isn’t the clean smooth concrete you would find at Eyre, it seems like it was homemade by the people in the town and almost seems familiar to me but I can’t place where I would have seen concrete this uneven before in my 19 years of life. We walk up the narrow staircase and each steps seems to be a different size. When we reach the top of the stairs, there are leaves across the floor with a large glass door opening onto a balcony looking over the city. There is a ledge next to the staircase looking down on the 1st floor and there is a room off to the left leading to a bathroom and a tiny kitchen. In the right hand corner of the room is a single bed with an end table next to it with a small touch screen phone and a lamp on it. Becca heads over to the corner of the mostly empty upstairs and starts getting things out of her backpack, I head over to the bed and start doing the same checking one more time to make sure I have all the items I need for the mission, I take off the glasses and let my eyes adjust to the room and the absence of light besides the moonlight coming through the window. Becca heads into the kitchen and I hear her cooking and making wonderful smells that float through the stagnant air filling my senses and making my stomach yearn to find the source. I walk into the kitchen and find Becca roasting all kinds of meats and roasting vegetables, she has so many ingredients they almost don’t all fit in the tiny kitchen. “You can cook?” I ask her as I rummage my nose through the symphony of smells.
“Oh no not at all,” she answers back to me, I give her a confused look realizing there wasn’t any sarcasm in her tone. She taps the glasses on her face with her finger. “These things have been showing me what to do, its pretty cool actually.” She pushes past me and starts putting large amounts of vegetables on the tiny table next to the wall beside the refrigerator. A single light bulb hangs down from the ceiling giving the room a sort of orange hue. “Sit down, Chanel,” she says while concentrating on the frying meat, “It will just be a couple more minutes on the meat and then we can eat.” I sit down looking around at the tiny room, in our tiny safehouse and can’t help but feel the reality of my situation. We are in Mozambique and are about to save the president from a group of rebels that want him dead, in which some of them might be remnants, and we have to do all this before we are extracted from the country on a plane that is owned by a secret clan of warriors that does operations around the world to make sure everything stays in order. This is insane, this is the kinda stuff characters in cartoons or science fiction novels should have to deal with not real people living in reality. In fact, I am even in a room right now with a woman who has abilities beyond that of the normal woman. It is incredible and terrifying, it is like I am in a book myself, almost at the cusp of that dramatic realization, but this isn’t a book, and the world is cruel. If we fail tomorrow we won’t be welcome in the clan anymore and my journey ends here, some book if it ends near the beginning when it is getting good. Becca breaks me from my contemplation with plates of fried food drizzled in weird sauces.
“Where did you find all this food?” I ask as I take my first bite of the fried meat and feel as if I have been a beggar on the streets, getting his first taste of something luxurious in a long time.
“It was in the fridge and in the pantry, I guess they had this placed stocked when the last Garroters came here,” she says while enjoying the food as well. We talked for a while about nothing in particular before Becca brought up the subject we had both been trying to figure out what to do about. “What do we do if we fail?” She says looking at me with gloomy emerald eyes.
“To be honest I don’t know,” I tell her, “We have no idea what we are facing, whether it will be remnants or a bunch of humans, I honestly...” She interrupts me.
“So remnants aren’t humans?” She says with a silver tongue catching me off guard.
“Well I mean they are I just..” I stumble around trying to figure out the right words to to say. I wish she was making her sarcastic face but her eyes are piercing through my defense and I am shoved into a corner of no answers. She obviously sees the surprise on my face and figures it is the right time to push me over the cliff I am teetering over at the moment.
“Does that mean you are going to kill me like you were ordered to?” She says the words so blatantly, with a very matter of fact tone. Although she tries to disguise it in her voice, I can hear the hurt and pain in the question. She is afraid of my answer, but I can’t tell if she is afraid of me saying yes, or no.
“Becca,” I say trying to gain a little bit of ground back, edging away from the metaphorical cliff she is holding me over. I planned to assure her and tell her I would never hurt her, again, but I found myself telling her the truth. “I don’t know,” I say freezing as the words slip out with a surprise to my brain, but now that I have started the words can’t stop coming. “You and I have grown really close to each other and I feel inside me that I want to protect to you at all costs, but I don’t want to betray the clan and my father. My biggest fear is that if the time came and I had to kill you at I would choke and let you go, not because I wouldn’t want you to live, but because I know that if I didn’t I would leave the clan to keep you safe.” The words surprised me just as much as it surprised her. I hadn’t realized that I felt that way because that feeling hadn’t come out until just now. Would I leave for her? Would I betray my father? Is she worth it? Before I know what to do she leans over the table and kisses me. My heart starts to race, and my blood starts to pump. I had been kissed before but I had never felt anything when I had before. This time I actually felt the warm sensation and the buzzing of the electricity running through my body, it felt tingly and in that moment I realized I had never really felt anything before, my emotions had always been a block and I never felt much, which I thought gave me an edge in fighting, but it felt strange. Even though I felt it, it felt numb. It seemed as if as the emotions came something inside me was trying to keep the emotions back in the blockade. The feeling scared me and although I knew I wasn’t suppose to, I opened my eyes in the middle of the kiss and what I saw scared me more than anything I had ever seen in my life. A young boy was standing beside Becca, no older than six or seven with a raggedy Aladdin shirt on. There were many things about him that scared me like the blood across his face and clothes and the machete in his hands, but the scariest part was that he looked like me, but I had no memory of ever being covered in blood or holding that machete. I pull away from the kiss and almost immediately the little boy, me, disappears. Becca and I look at each other and I am brought to reality. I hadn’t realized it but the kiss lasted for almost two minutes, but it felt like thirty. I was stuck with this dumbfounded look on my face trying to grasp everything that I had seen and that had just happened. Becca was the first one to speak releasing the tension from the room.
“I am going to go to bed,” she said smiling a little then getting up and walking out of the tiny kitchen.
“K,” I said with wide eyed and looking forward, “I’ll do the dishes.” She comes back into the kitchen and kisses me on the cheek the time. She looks at me, but I don’t look at her but I can feel her stare against the side of my face.
“We have a long mission tomorrow, you need to get some rest,” she says.
“I will,” I say still trying to register my surrounding, “I just want to clean up a bit first.” She doesn’t push, and she doesn’t say another word, she just walks out of the room and I hear her get into the bed in the corner. I stay in the kitchen for a while doing the dishes just thinking over everything that has just happened. I think about the conversation, the sudden outburst of feelings, the kiss, but mainly the hallucination. If I am right, and I believe I am, hallucinations are the first stage, I am becoming a remnant.