“What the hell was that?” I say, pulling out my sidearm from my ankle holster. “Who were they, and who are you?”
“Do not let your eyes deceive you. They were not people,” he calmly says, unaffected by my gun on him. He continues to check the weapons that he pulled from the cabinets, pulling on the slides, dismantling them, and looking down the barrels. “They were Chimera.”
“Chimera?” I say, walking over to him with my weapon aimed. “You’re talking about a thousand-year-old mythical creature. Impossible!”
“Yes, Chimera, a creation of the Chariot. That device you have on your arm detects their low frequency communication, which we can’t hear, masking their messages like when whales communicate through water. And I am Rokie, a soldier of the Tempests and defender of the human race. I was sent here to be your shield and to bring you in.”
“This still doesn’t add up. Who are the Chariot, and why are they after me? Who in the hell are the Tempest, and where in the hell are we going? I need some real answers, now!”
“They wanted to capture you to bring you in because you are a very important piece to their plan. Just like the Chimera, you are also a creation of the Chariot.”
“What?”
“Everything else can be explained once we are at our destination. We will go by plane to stay undetected. We shall head to the Eastern Seaboard, where another plane is awaiting us to take us to our headquarters. Now, please holster your weapon.”
“And where is this headquarters?” I ask as I lower my firearm.
“Siberia.”
“Siberia? What’s in Siberia? I have friends that I have to protect.”
“Your friends have already been apprehended. They have important information we must extract from them as well. Now, come with me if you value your friends’ lives and the future of the human race, or you can go back outside and be found by those things.”
From what I have just witnessed, I am powerless to say no.
“Ahh!” I suddenly feel a sharp pain in my neck. “What have you done to me?” I say, pulling a dart from the side of my neck, looking down at his hand holding a pistol-like device. I try and raise my weapon, yet the left side of my body is paralyzed as I stumble into the wall.
“It’s a sedative derived from the cone snail. We took the killing protein out of it, and it puts you into a state close to that of hibernation. Something to help you sleep during the long travel. Besides, I can’t fully trust you yet, so the secret location to our base can’t be revealed to you. When you awaken, you will be in your new home. Rest well, chosen one.”
“Chosen one?” I say in a slur as things get black and his voice begins to fade. I remember the VP’s words. I guess the vice president was right after all. There was a price to pay.
Chapter 27: Of Gods and Men
Groggy and disoriented, I open my eyes and I see nothing but darkness. Am I dead? Then all of my senses come back to me.
“We must land now!” a man shouts. “The storm is too bad to stay in the air any longer.”
“Dwight, we are about to land,” the familiar voice of the Amish man, Rokie, shouts through the deafening sound of wind and engine noise. “We will take snow cars the rest of the way. It’s about a twenty-minute ride. Then I can take the bag off of your head.”
We come to a neck-snapping stop as the plane lands. I’m led by the arm and bound by my wrists with cuffs to the snow car, feeling the piercing cold as it eats its way through the black cloth bag over my head. The snow car tosses me around inside, and I hear the ferocity of the wind beating against the vessel outside.
“We are here,” Rokie says.
I hear knocks and bangs and what sounds like buttons being pressed, then a large whooshing noise and metal clanging, like a huge door opening, and I feel the warmth of the indoors as we enter. The familiar jolt of what feels like an elevator staggers me. Rokie takes the bag off, and I see that black-bearded Amish man, now in tactical gear, standing in front of me.
“Welcome home,” he says.
The elevator stops and the large door slides open. I see men, women, and children living in what looks like a silo bunker. “This is our living quarters. You will have your own room, and there is plenty of whatever you need. Come, you must meet someone first. There is much to learn,” he says, leading me through the corridors as the inhabitants pick their heads up and gawk at me like I’m an exhibit at the zoo.
Men with headphones and pencils and pads work on devices. Others look at machinery with dials and meters, collecting some sort of data. Others clean weapons and tend to heavy machinery or move supplies of food and stationery from one area to another. Heavily armed guards and century guns are positioned near the entrance. We come to a door and Rokie knocks.
“Come in,” says a deep voice from behind the door. Rokie and I walk in, and we are greeted with a smile.
“I’ve been waiting a long time for you,” an elderly man says. He’s standing over a table, looking at some papers and books spread about.
“This is our leader, Shundai,” Rokie says. “He’s a descendant of the Original Seven.”
The wrinkles and liver spots on his bronze face tell the story of wisdom, and the gray hair on his head shows knowledge, and his scars show experience. Though old, he looks spry. He walks over to me with no limps or labor, though he has a slight slouch. He wore clothing that someone from ancient Greece or Nubia would wear. It’s one-piece, multicolored, and layered. He’s above average height and solid framed, like a linebacker. He leans in, pressing his presence on me.
“Thank you, Rokie. You have done well bringing in our boy,” Shundai says. “But no need for restraints. He’s one of us.”
Rokie nods and removes the handcuffs. “That will be all. You can leave us,” says Shundai.
Hesitant at first, Rokie obeys Shundai’s command and walks cautiously out of the room.
“Things were in despair,” Shundai says. “Morale was low, and we were losing a battle that we have been fighting for a long time, that is, until you showed up.”
“What is going on? Why am I here, and who are the Chariots?” I ask.
“Your father, Magnus, was a very smart man. He was your teacher, your nurturer. However, he was a traitor.”
“A traitor?”
“Yes, a traitor. However, it was a planned betrayal. Smoke and mirrors. A white rabbit that was meant to be chased. He was a sacrificial lamb.
“He was one of us. One of the protectors of the world. The fighters of peace. We are the defenders of the human race, the last thing that stands between the Chariots and their evil. We are Uomini Della Tempesta, the Men of the Tempest.
“Your father was part of a plan to infiltrate the Chariot’s agenda by sacrificing his only son named Aairyk, which is you. It was a plan hundreds of years in the making. They’ve killed each one of our operatives that we’ve ever sent to penetrate their defenses. So, while you were in your mother’s womb, you were spliced with the superior genes of different species of animals, and your human genetic code was manipulated to make you faster, stronger, and more intelligent than any normal human could ever be. You were selected beforehand by the Chariot to be the new body for their leader, White Horse, also known as Lucrea’us. When you were very young, the Mockingbird procedure was done on you and was successful, but there was something that was done to help you resist the transformation. This is why you are still you, yet you have the memories of White Horse. This plan that you think you developed on your own was already ordained. It was implanted in you. Your father, along with the help of us, manipulated your path with a trail of breadcrumbs while the essence of White Horse is what guided you. You can see things that are hidden to others since you possess the remnants of White Horse. This plan would have never worked if we didn’t possess the knowledge of White Horse that you unknowingly have. There was information that we tried to obtain, but we could never get close enough, and White Horse was the key.
“It wasn’t about money at all. It w
as about hacking into the mainframes of important servers and getting codes from different defense systems around the world so that the last part of the Trident could not be executed. You and your friends unknowingly carried this plan out for us wonderfully, and now, now they have the last piece of the puzzle, or so they thought. You are the last piece of the puzzle. Without you, they cannot execute Trident.”
“What is Trident, and what makes me so important to them?”
“The Human Genome Project, the map of the human DNA chain, is the study of the building blocks of life itself. The project was started back in the fifties by a group of special hand-selected scientists and departments that were headed by the Chariot. They later hid the funding and buried the project inside of a company named Theoretics, headed by DARPA. The Chariots were looking for something that was the key to their ultimate rule over the human race. They were looking for their holy grail.”
“Holy grail?”
“Yes, immortality. However, in their search, they stumbled upon a destructive weapon more powerful than a hydrogen bomb. They found that the human body could trigger itself to self-destruct if the right genetic switch is tripped, a sort of biological off-switch that can be flipped by an outside trigger. They also found out how to prolong a human’s vitality by decades by slowing the aging process. It looks like tea, but it isn’t. Your so-called friends, Dutch and Mire, as they have named themselves, are operatives of the Chariot, and we have been watching them closely for years. They and other high-ranking members in the Chariot drink this elixir, this anti-aging serum. They are each over a hundred and thirty years old.”
“Impossible! No human can live that long. He looks to be seventy years old at the most.”
“Here, take a look for yourself,” he says as he slides a packet of photographs onto the table. “These were taken back in 1910. Do any of the faces look familiar?”
“This can’t be real.” Shaking my head in disbelief. “It’s Dutch, Mire, VP Kohl, Herring, and a man I’ve never seen before. All of them, all of them are grown men.”
“Now do you believe?” he says. “The power that these people possess is that of gods. The Trident was created to help them rebuild Atlantis, weeding out the weak humans, leaving the human race in desperation and fear so that they can regain control and reign again over humanity. There are three phases to the Trident. Phase one was to get the primer into delivery systems around the world. The innocent people that you see every day in some shape, form, or fashion put the primer into their bodies. They’ve gotten it into drinking water, with the fluoride act, and in everyday processed food, such as corn syrup and preservatives. Why do you think that governments around the world subsidize these food products? Cosmetics, such as soap, makeup, deodorants, and perfumes, over-the-counter medicines and the vaccines children are injected with—all of these products are protected by the government. A child can’t go to school in most countries without being immunized, and the foods that the children are fed in these institutions are laced with the primer. Phase two is to let the population saturate itself with the primer until it reaches critical levels in the human body for phase three. This was forty years ago. The primer can be adjusted to gender, race, age, and even economic status. It is placed in different products determined by the consumption patterns of each group, based on each subgroup’s socioeconomic patterns and character traits. Phase three is the implementation of the trigger catalyst, which we have not yet discovered. We think it’s going to be a chemical attack or some kind of substance that can be transferred easily through direct contact from one person to another. Once implemented into the population, it will seem like an unstoppable virus. It kills within two weeks, and once the process is started with the trigger catalyst, there is no known antidote. Any type of subgroup can be targeted around the world, depending on who the Chariot wants eradicated. No one is immune. However, the elixir not only prolongs life, but it’s an antidote to the Trident’s primer. It cleanses out the primers that are in the body before they have a chance to latch on to cells. We all drink it to purge our bodies of this pestilence. The side effects are not that bad, as you can see. Me, I had my hundredth birthday two weeks ago.”
Just two days ago I was nothing but a thief, looking to help out his friends, and now I’m supposed to save the world. “What’s this Atlantis they are trying to rebuild, and where is it? Why not just blow it up?”
“You were born in Atlantis. You were raised in it. You’ve walked on it, slept in it, listened to it, watched it all of your life, and you’re in it now. You’ve always lived in it. Atlantis isn’t a city, state, or country. Atlantis never has been a physical place that you can find on a map. It’s a consciousness, it’s ideology, information, and human thought. Atlantis is complete control of the human mind. They want to control the human race’s mind, to have them believe in certain things and to kill anyone who thinks differently. Half a millennia ago, everyone believed that the world was flat and that the earth was the center of the universe. This was law, and anyone who opposed it opposed the crown and was said to be treasonous and paid with their life. They’ve done it once and have tried throughout the millennia to do it again, but we have only slowed them down. We had almost run out of options. Our resources are dwindling and manpower is falling low, that is, until you happened. You, my child, are the affianced, the one who is betrothed to save the world. It is you that will put an end to them forever.”
“What if I refuse?” I say, “I never wanted this.”
“Refuse?” he says. “If you refuse, the world will be destroyed.”
“Sir, we have a problem!” Rokie says as he barges in.
“We will continue this conversation later. Until then, Rokie, take him to see his friends while I tend to this matter. Dwight,” he says as he turns toward me with a glowing smile, “I’m happy that you are with us now. Now it’s time to win the war.”
Shundai whisks away, and Rokie leads me to a different part of the massive bunker.
“Guys!” I shout as I see them in a holding cell, looking like they haven’t been fed or been able to shower in days. “Get them out of here, now!” I say to the guard at the cell.
“Do as he says,” Rokie commands. The guard quickly opens the cell door.
“Guys, it’s good to see you. Is everyone okay?” I say, rushing into the cell.
“First it was an old man’s house,” Ron says. “Then it was an abandoned mill, the military, a library in the middle of nowhere, where I had to abstain from sex, and then when I did get sex, I had to shag a fat woman, which wasn’t all that bad, and now, this takes the cake.”
“Ron,” I say, trying to calm him.
“No, wait, chum, this is the best part,” he says with a sarcastic smile. I fold my arms and listen to another one of his animated stories. “So, I’m on the crapper, and suddenly I’m knocked off as men flashbang me. I go freaking blind. They whack me on the head while I have a turd stuck in my ass, put a needle in my neck, and I wake up with a bag over my head and end up here freezing my balls off in freaking Siberia! Siberia, man? This is the longest running joke in human history, you know that.”
“It’s good to see you too, Ron,” I say, smiling at him and patting him on the back.
“They have her, too,” Steve says.
“Why didn’t you tell me this? Bring Lara to me at once,” I demand to Rokie.
“Very well,” he says, nodding to the guards.
I explain to the guys what’s going on. It seems like every time I have new information about something, they aren’t as surprised as I was the first time I heard it. I told them that the money is gone, our cover is blown, that we were being hunted by assassins and should be lucky that the people who have us in custody now got to us first before the other people did. Steve wasn’t so happy about the money being gone.
“So what’s the plan now?” Kim says.
“We’ll be briefed shortly, buddy.” Honestly, I have no idea. But from what Shundai told me, the messages will
just come to me.
“Dwight,” I hear behind me, the sweet voice that I haven’t heard in months. Turning around, my eyes fall soft and the ceiling rolls back, the floor falls from beneath me, the walls melt away—it’s her. I hug her and ask if she is fine. She tells me yes and begins to cry. Looking into her eyes, I gently hold the back of her neck and apologize for everything that she’s been through and tell her I will take care of everything.
“Hello, hello, hello, and hello. Sorry to break the sentiments here,” I hear behind me in a high-pitched voice. It’s a young man who prances into the room, wearing a lab coat, beanie hat, green scarf, and tattered stone-washed jean shorts. He has a scruff of brown ungroomed hair on his chin for a beard with lint in it. His face is weaselly, with a sharp nose, puckered lips, and his beady eyes look me up and down. “And you must be the man of the night, or day, or, hell, I don’t know. I can never tell in a bunker.” He giggles, but no one giggles with him.
“This is Keebo,” Rokie says, with a shared look of annoyance that everyone else wears. “He’s the head of our research and development sector. He doesn’t come out of the lab much.”
“All right, ladies and gents,” Keebo says, prancing around Lara and me with a weird wiggle of a walk. “Now that we have our reunion done with, I need you all to come with me.”
“Why?” I say. “Where are we going?”
“Weapons detail, my friend,” he says, poking his finger into my chest after every syllable, “weapons detail.”
We all follow him. Up stairs and down stairs, left turns and right turns. Through doors and between people eating their dinner and getting pissed off at Keebo as his clumsiness knocks over lamps and boxes and other things people have stacked as he says sorry every few seconds.
Chess Players: Atlantis and the Mockingbird Page 18
