“Glad you could come,” Sarah said.
“Glad I could make it,” I replied.
We talked, danced and had a pretty good time. I had fun, and it helped get my mind off the attack. Katie even took pictures of us with her Polaroid camera. Everything was fine until Emily came over.
“Well, Alex I take it you still like to hang out with losers,” Emily said.
“Say it to my face,” Katie replied aggressively. Mark and Max pulled her back.
“Look, we don’t want trouble. Why don’t we call it a truce tonight and have a good time?” I said.
“Fine,” Emily said. “I’m on to you. I know you had something to do with the attack two days ago.” Emily turned around and started walking away.
Emily turned back to us.
“Do you think Sarah is pretty?” she asked.
I started getting butterflies in my stomach. I turned to Sarah and then back to Emily.
“I guess why?” I said.
“Just wondering,” Emily said as she smiled and walked off.
Sometime later, a slow dance song played and most of the students got into pairs and danced slowly. Sarah approached me.
“Did you want to dance?” she asked.
“Sure,” I replied.
We walked onto the dance floor. I grabbed her waist, she rested her arms on my shoulders and, we just slowly moved from side to side. I was looking around a lot, barely looking her in the eye while she kept her eyes on me.
“Are you having fun?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Me too,” she said.
“Did you come with a date?” I asked.
“No. No one asked me,” she said.
“That’s too bad,” I replied.
“You look nice.”
“Thank you, so do you,” she said.
“As you can see, I’m not the best dancer,” I said.
“It’s fine,” she replied.
We slow danced until the song ended. When the music stopped, I kind of wished it didn’t. She went to use the restroom, and a few seconds later, some party poppers went off. I started having flashbacks of the attack; it felt like it was happening all around me. I could hear the sounds of gunfire and people being beaten up everywhere. I started to see the bathroom fight everywhere I looked. I even saw some of the days I was in training, and I didn’t know what to do. Pretty soon, it started to overwhelm me, and I had to get out of there.
I went outside for a bit to sit it out. I sat on the side walk with my legs crossed, and my hands folded. I overheard the homecoming king and queen winners; they were two seniors whom I had never heard of. As I sat there, I stared into the distance alone, deep in thought about everything that happened recently.
When I got home, I got undressed and into pajamas and sat outside. Mom approached me.
“How was the dance?” Mom asked.
“It was fine at first, but sometime later in the evening I started having flashbacks of the attack from a few days ago,” I replied.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
“No, not really. Besides I have other things on my mind.”
“Like what?”
“Everything. The attack, the past, school. I don’t even know where to start. I mean, I just wanted to have a normal life, but at the same time, I want closure. I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“I think you should focus on having a normal life for now. We’ve worked so hard to undo all the things the Omega Project did to you,” Mom replied.
“Do you think I should join the STR?” I asked.
“No. I just don’t want to see you get hurt or killed, for that matter. You are my son and I love you. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you,” Mom replied.
“But I still want to find out what happened to the Omega Project and if anyone survived,” I replied.
“I know. Maybe someday you will find closure. But for now, focus on school, okay?”
“I understand,” I said as I got up and went inside.
I was torn in half on what to do. When I went to bed, I laid there for hours thinking about what to do next, and I wound up staying up all night. Luckily, I didn’t need as much sleep as normal people, so it didn’t bother me that much.
Chapter Eleven
I resumed life at school the following Monday. I went to my classes and hung out with my friends, except this time I felt like a black sheep. Most of the students were different in their own ways, but at least they were born to parents. I was just born in a lab to a surrogate mother.
Could I do this? Would I be able to live a normal life, or would I have to live a life I was genetically engineered for? I didn’t know.
As I went to class, Derek came and pushed me into a set of lockers. The angrier he made me, the more I wanted to rip his spine out of him with my bare hands.
During math class, Emily came up to talk to me.
“Hey, can you still help me with math?” she asked.
“No. Sorry,” I said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Why don’t we start with the fact that you were super rude to my friends at the dance,” I said.
“You mean those losers?” she replied.
“They’re not losers. Now, leave me alone.”
“You know what? Fine. I really don’t want help from someone as pathetic as you anyway,” she said.
“Why are you acting like this? I mean, what gives you the right to treat people like this?” I asked.
“Do I really need a reason? I was nice, helpful, and you blew it off. As far as I can tell, you’re the problem,” she said.
I walked closer to her with my chest out.
“Ah yes, displacement. Just another old psychological trick. Sorry, but you are going to have to do better than that,” I said.
She seemed stumped. She folded her arms and tried to think of something else to say.
“Yeah, well, maybe we should see what people think when I tell them that you like Sarah.”
My heart jumped into my mouth. She smirked at me and then walked off.
Later in class, the math teacher was lecturing when he once again had us do problems on the board. One problem no one could seem to figure out.
“Come on, guys. Someone has to know how to do this,” the teacher said.
“Alex might know,” Emily said.
“Alex, would you like to come up and try?” he asked.
I gripped my pencil hard, almost breaking it in half. I reluctantly walked up to the board and solved the question. While I was up there, I purposely made a small mistake.
“Nice try, Alex,” he said as I sat back down, and he fixed the mistake.
After school, Max and I went to the library after class to do some studying on a math test we had coming up. We sat side by side with our math books, and notebooks scattered about the table.
“And that’s how you do these kinds of problems,” I said.
“Thanks. That last test almost killed my grade,” Max said.
“Really? What did you get on it?” I asked.
“Ninety-five percent,” he replied.
“So? That’s still good,” I said.
“Yeah, not good enough.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I just want to keep my grades up,” Max said.
“But you are. I mean, ninety-five percent is not the end of the world,” I reassured Max. “Besides, it’s still an A.”
“Just don’t worry about it.”
Max shoved his books into his backpack, and left. I never could understand why he was so hard on himself when he didn’t get a good grade; he would never tell anyone why he was such a perfectionist when it came to his grades. It might have had something to do with his home life; I was not sure.
Later that night, I went home and did all my homework. After I finished my homework, I read all of my textbooks to get ahead of the semester. I literally went through all six of my textbooks a
nd memorized all of the information in under a couple of hours.
After I did all my reading, I did some research on the Union. I spent hours searching for anything on the Union across the Internet, and it appeared to be nothing more than a conspiracy theory to the public. I saw numerous videos online about myths regarding the Union, like they were some kind of satanic cult, or how they were founded thousands of years ago, and other theories that may or may not be true.
I was able to find some blogs about people who worked for the Union but escaped. One blogger in particular talked about how he was selected because he was in financial trouble and he needed money. He claimed that he had to do favors, like steal money or kill a whistleblower, or something to prove his worthiness. One of the ways that the Union keeps people loyal is to hold any evidence of any crimes that they did. For example, if someone killed a guy, the Union would have video evidence of him killing the person. And if that person did something to upset the Union, they would reveal it and ruin their lives.
He also mentioned that he had to go through all kinds of psychological torture, such as water boarding, as a final initiation. After enduring the torture and completing the task, he was able to join the Union. They also mentioned a lot of people escaping from the Union only to disappear sometime later or they were killed.
I ran out of places to look. I browsed the web, and I came across a deep web browser. It said it could find information normally not available on the Internet. So, I downloaded it to see if I could find anything else. The browser was mostly used to test websites before making them live, but it was well known that deep web browsers were mostly used for illegal activities, such as human trafficking or illegal arms dealings. After I downloaded it and installed it, I did some more research on the Union.
As I did more research, I found even more things that Mathis told me about. One site posted a mock agenda of the Union. It showed a plan to plunge the world into chaos to the point where humanity would unknowingly and willingly exchange their own freedom for security, or in this case, enslavement. They would also keep us distracted with other useless things, like movies, music, reality TV, sports, and other forms of media. They could also scare and intimidate populations with terrorist attacks, increase brutality by law enforcement, and manipulate the media to keep people divided by political means. It sounded crazy to me, and it was a little hard to believe.
All of a sudden, I got a download link for a file called “the_union.zip.” I clicked it and downloaded the file. I clicked on the folder, and it required a password. I searched it, and I could not find anything. I left it until I could find a way to crack the code.
I continued to do some more research. The websites I looked at contained mostly more rumors, like how they control all the worlds’ wealth, from banks to energy and other powers that be.
Finally, I tried to look up information regarding the Omega Project. I first started by looking on the regular internet and found nothing. I then looked on the deep web and came across nothing until I was redirected to a site with a video. I clicked on the video, and a woman appeared on the screen. She had black hair, and she was filming in what looked like a cheap hotel room. I recognized her; she was one of the nurses that worked in the Omega Project. Her name was Anna Esmeralda; she was nice and warm hearted. Seeing her blew my mind. The website looked like it was made two years ago, which made sense because the facility was destroyed two years ago.
“Hello, if you’re watching this, then I’m probably dead,” Anna said in the video. “My name is not important, but what is important is who I worked for. One day, I was looking for a job in nursing when I got a phone call for a job watching over children. I accepted the job. I went to the location, which was some kind of training facility, as they instructed. I did a classified interview and was employed. My job was to assist the children in any way they needed, including medical. It turned out it was something more than a simple nursing job. The government was conducting experiments to create super soldiers. It started when twelve women were brought in to give birth to the children, they were paid off to not disclose the information.”
“Our first job was to raise the children and teach them basic skills, from walking to learning how to read and write, until they were about five years old. The scientists and trainers observed the children’s physical and cognitive abilities, which were breathtaking. They possessed all kinds of remarkable abilities, like the ability to learn at an incredible rate that not even gifted humans could learn at, and physical capabilities five times better than that of an Olympic athlete in peak physical condition. Little did we know, they were planning to turn them into highly-intelligent killing machines. The trainers were extremely hard on the children, always yelling at them. At age seven, they began their training program. They were trained to do anything that the military required them to do.”
“One day, I went to talk to the head doctor about the program and even he seemed to disagree with some of the activities going on. He had plans to create honorable soldiers instead of cold-blooded killing machines like the government wanted. He tried to convince them otherwise, but they would not listen. The children mastered the entire program by age eleven, and they were almost perfect super soldiers. When they turned twelve, the training got even more brutal. The children were forced to do things that not even most Special Forces would do. They would force the children to run through obstacle courses with people shooting at them and detonating bombs. They were also forced to fight and kill people. They were mostly prisoners with life sentences.”
“The testing would begin at age fourteen, but things took a turn for the worst. One day, a group of unidentified terrorists attacked the facility and took all the research and killed everyone there. The children were captured. I didn’t know how they were captured so easily. If I had to guess it was because of the lack of actual battlefield experience. Several other nurses and myself tried to save as many people as we could, but we failed; only I made it out. The terrorists are probably after me now, and I don’t have much time left. I just hope that whoever watches this knows what happened in that facility. I’m probably the only survivor, but if anyone else did survive and is watching this video. You must find the people who did this and make them pay for what they did.”
I looked Anna Esmeralda up, and all I found was a news report saying that she was found dead in a hotel room from apparent suicide from a bullet to the head. The government wanted to keep the Omega Project under wraps so other organizations like the Union would not find out but they failed.
Chapter Twelve
The attack still got to me. Every day I walked past that bathroom, all I could think about was the fighting. I was also still hearing all the screaming and gunshots as well. Was this what war was all about? I just couldn’t get it out of my head sometimes.
I could still hear the voices of the other attackers, and the gunshots going off, and it felt like I was still there. I was so wrapped up in the moment; I barely noticed the things going on around me. While I was in deep thought, I stood a few feet from the door staring at it while squeezing my books as I held them on my side. I also noticed some students looking at me like I was crazy as they walked by. I was trained to manage stress during combat, but I didn’t learn how to stop it from coming back to me. And if that was not enough, the high school drama was catching up to me. While I was staring at the bathroom, Sarah and Melissa walked up to me.
“Hey, Alex. You okay?” Sarah asked.
I snapped out of it and turned to Sarah.
“Uh, yeah,” I said.
We started walking to our classes together.
“What classes are you guys off to?” I asked.
“Well, I’m onto math class. I have a test today, and I spent all night cramming in,” Sarah said.
“I swear math tests always get me. One time I was taking a test, I almost passed out,” Melissa said.
“Were you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. I was fine. I got a C on the test t
hough,” Melissa said.
Emily and a small group of her friends approached us.
“Well, hello there, Mr. I-am-too-shy-to-show-people-how-smart-I-am,” Emily said.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just wondering how you’re so good at math, and why you don’t want anyone to know,” Emily replied.
“Just back off Emily!” Melissa snapped.
“Or what?” Emily replied.
Emily and Melissa stood in front of each other with their chests out. I thought they were about to fight.
“You know, I was always better than you. Just ask Derek,” Emily said.
Derek and his friend, the guy who Mark was secretly dating, walked up to us.
“Well, hello, Alex. What’s going on here?” Derek asked.
“Nothing. We’re just talking about how he gets such good grades,” Emily said.
“What’s going on?” Mark asked as he walked up.
At that point, Sarah, Melissa, Mark, and I were on one side while Derek and his friend stood to one side, and Emily and her friends stood on the other side of the hallway.
“Oh nothing. I just talking about our special friend, Alex,” Derek said as he walked closer to me. When he did, I was starting to think about my training days. I could imagine my superiors, yelling at me to fight. I was trying to ignore it.
Sarah tried to stop the arguing.
“Okay, you guys can’t we just…”
“Shut up, freak!” Emily interrupted.
“You know, I have a question. Why is it that during gym class, you never seem to break a sweat no matter what we do?” Derek asked.
“Maybe because I like to work out. Not to mention I study a lot as well,” I replied.
“Oh, okay, right. He likes to study and work out, I see,” Derek said sarcastically.
“Guys just leave him alone,” Melissa said.
The Omega Archives Page 7
