As sozzled as I feel, I still can comprehend Zoey mumbling for attention. Though it’s not me she’s talking to. And it’s weird ‘cause I’m the only one lying next to her on the booth. Who would she be talking to anyway?
I’m just trying to adjust my head and perceive whatever kind of conversation she’s trying to spark with whoever.
Although I’m still too scotish to feel anything, it still pinches me like a thousand needles at the same time when I realize she’s trying to make up with her ex-whatever.
“Caden…” she mumbles.
I try to open my eyes and focus to the guy in front of her.
Her words lose up as though we’re in the middle of a hurricane and the air ransacks everything. He just ignores her. He’s only doing his job and seems encumbered at her electrodes, but doesn’t meet her eyes.
One of the other possemen says something to him that I cannot comprehend. He nods and I can hear them leave.
But he stays.
He’s been ditching her all along.
“Caden, I cannot take it anymore.” She mumbles.
I see him approaching his head near her and whispering close to her face.
God! Even in the current circumstances I still can’t bear with that image. I don’t want him to do anything nice to her. I mean, of course I want Zoey to be safe and not struggling, but not when it’s from him.
Soon enough I realize how egotistic this thought is.
I mean, I should be glad he could help her anyway he can.
I should be!
“I’m reducing the intensity of the molecules interacting with your genetical code. I’m sorry that’s all I can do right now. Otherwise they’d notice on the monitor to the other room.” He tells her and presses some buttons on her conductors.
“This is wrong.” Zoey mumbles. “I know you think it’s wrong too. Why in the world are you tangling with them, anyway?”
He sighs for a moment. “It’s complicated.” He says after pondering.
“I know whatever it is, you can come through it. Please, Caden, help us. I know you want to.”
“Ugh, Zoey.” He seems to be struggling with the thought. “It’s not that easy. I mean I know this isn’t right. But there’s nothing I can do to help.”
“Of course, there is. You just pluck all these electrodes off of us. It is that easy.”
“And then do what?”
“We can escape together. We can get back on Earth again.” She seems so optimistic at the thought, even through her scraggy voice.
This idea, on the other hand, seems to link him to something unpleasant. It’s like he’s got some unfinished business underneath us, on the Earth that he’s not ready to face up to.
“How do you think we can get down?”
“We can use the spaceships.” I barge in to the conversation. I mean, it decently felt like a private chit-chat, but I can’t help it. I mean, it’s our lives on the line here. All of us.
“That’d be risky.” He ponders.
“What isn’t?” I ask.
“Come on, Caden.” Zoey mumbles. “This can be like a new start, even for you.”
For the next couple of minutes, he seems to be weighting the idea. I just hope he’d join. And God, never in a million years would I have thought to wish for such thing.
The shattering sound of the door sliding open almost gets him as if detaching from a parallel universe. He tries to adjust himself and act as if he weren’t interacting with us.
“Caden, is everything okay here?” says the man who just entered the room.
“Yes, sir. I was just getting the final touches here before the experiment initializes.”
The man seems to not be too convinced by the comment. He approaches Caden and looks at Zoey’s conductors suspiciously.
God! I’m just praying he wouldn’t notice. Otherwise he’d get it over with Caden right away. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I give such a hoot about Zoey’s ex-something. It’s just that he’s our only hope till now. He could get us out of here if he wants to and is willing to collaborate.
The man stands there for a couple of seconds which are filled with anxiety and prayer.
“Come on,” he tells after that.
Pfew. That was close.
“We gotta take care of the transponder. The experiment starts in less than an hour.”
Caden is leaving the room and together with him is going even the last hope that we got.
What are we gonna do now?
I just decide to say silent for the next few minutes, being so hopeless and desperate at what is about to happen to us.
“Greyson,” Zoey mumbles. She looks as though she’s having a hard time breathing as it is. I don’t know how she could take in the experiment. I don’t know if she’ll last until then. “I’m sorry.”
“What? God, Zoey! What do you have to be sorry for? None of it is your fault.”
“I just hoped he’d help.”
“We all did. But there’s nothing we can do about it anymore. He made his choice.”
If only I could push forward and unlink those electrodes! Zoey solely is a tremendous motivation for me to keep up and flight to the end.
“I wish it were different.” She proceeds.
I don’t know what to say anymore.
On the other part of the booth, I hear Avery trying to shout. I can tell she’s holding up better than all of us, solely by the intensity of her voice. Goddamnit, Avery! Where does this fervency come from?
“I cannot feel my toes anymore. My fingers are all frozen.”
That’s weird. I mean, the experiment hasn’t just yet started, and other than feeling so drained off and dull we still can make out of our body parts.
Meanwhile, the others seem to have lost their last glimpse of faith and energy. I mean, we ran across an entire made-up planet and were ever so ferocious all along, and all it takes for the crew to drain that off it’s just a couple of hours on this very booth.
I’m panic-stricken, but it feels like I cannot manage even to feel horrible about it. It’s like everything freezes at the moment and I can’t comprehend the reality anymore.
27
A month ago
It’s the test day.
After having been subsuming our attention to all kinds of enhanced equations and geometry, we are told to gather on the main foyer of the school and have a little thirty minutes’ break.
“I feel like I’ve been partying all night and can’t gather myself the morning after.” I tell them. Really, that’s how complicated this test was.
“Me too.” Cody explains.
“There’s just something about this test.” Zoey interferes. “It isn’t like the others we’ve had so far.”
She made a good point.
The test consisted in progressive logistics and algorithms. Like, why was this all necessary if you hadn’t made up an agenda for yourself to get admitted in an enhanced technology course?
“I don’t see the point why this test would interfere our final scores. I mean, it’s all nonsense.” She frowns.
We stay a little moment soundlessly there, until Brianne seems to join after having freshened up herself in the toilet.
“It has totally consumed me. I don’t think I can take in anymore.” She explains.
“What?” Zoey asks shocked. “Brianne, it’s your future we’re talking about. You can’t just get it over with that easily.”
“I know. It’s just that all these enhanced equations have made me so fuzzled.”
“I feel you.” I tell her.
“We all do.” Cody is lying on a taboret and leaning against the wall.
“Like, we’ve come this far, not to give up just yet.” Zoey grabs her hand and squeezes it for support in a we’re-with-you manner.
Josh, our other mate joins. Now he’s not the type of guy to be into normal school days, let alone test days. I don’t think he’s been given it much of a thought until now about his future. But I think
that, on the other hand, he’s got some pretty good resources to tangle with even after high school. He’s parents are really well-adjusted. They own an entire coffee franchise that operates all over the states. I think that’s even why he got accepted to an elitist school in the first place.
“What’s up with your faces?” he mocks up.
I think that at this point, he’s the only one that could bear up with mocking. We were so drained off and seemed to have lost up all our energies. But then again, this was because we cared. He, on the other hand, didn’t.
“What are our faces like, mate?” I ask.
“Long and desperate.” He smiles.
At some point, I wish to have owned some of his vigorousness on a situation like this.
We all seemed so exhausted while he was ever so fierce.
“It feels like my head’s spinning as though I’m being hypnotized.” Zoey explained how we all felt like.
“That’s if you decide to give a hoot about something not relevant.” Josh tells rumbustiously.
“How is this not relevant?” I ask.
“Well, don’t you think you’d make it out of high school safe and sound even if you didn’t do great on this test.” He explains. “I mean, even I feel so confident and secure about the future, and let’s be honest I don’t usually give a damn about school. Now, I would expect the same thing, if not more, form any and each of you.”
He’s just putting things into perspective.
And it all seems so… reasonable.
I didn’t expect Josh would be puzzling this out so brilliantly.
But let’s be honest. He did.
And I can’t believe it wasn’t me to think of this first.
“I think he’s right.” I tell them. “This is not on the official school records to oblige us and interfere with our further plans. I mean, it’s all some kind of private, experimental entity stuff. And that is not the type of stuff to ever matter.”
“I think you are right.” Cody barges in, as though from another dimension.
I take delight in my little motivational speech.
“No, I mean about the entity stuff.” He says as if he’s noticed my moment of taking in the glory. “I don’t know if you’ve gotten the time to look up at it, but I flipped the last page on the other side and there’s the Resurrection Eatonii logo attached to the bottom.”
“No way!” I scowl.
“That weird gaming manufacture?” Josh frowns.
He clearly hasn’t got a clue about it.
“I don’t think it’s gaming that entity is about.” I tell him. “And it’s not a manufacture.”
He frowns.
“Anyway,” Colin decides to let this concern go and drench into another one that imperceptibly is linked up to the current. “What level are you on?”
“I think I’m about to fetch it up already.” I tell him. It’s just that I still can’t get to that last level where the true motivation of the tree and the game for that matter is shown.”
“Wait. Me too.” Cody howls excitedly.
“What?” Josh scowls furthermore. “Are you talking about that crappy shit that was sent to us? That game was nonsense.” He reasons.
It was a logical game.
I don’t want to sound bias, but I don’t think Josh would have ever been into that.
“I’m just decoding the last encryption of the main motivation of the miniature world.” Brianne says. “I guess as far as that game is concerned, I’m the one to have gone furthest with so far.”
“But what has this weird entity thing got to do with the test?” Zoey decides to bring us all again back at the main point we were all willing to escape from.
“I think that’ll remain a mystery.” Josh mocks.
Like, seriously how could he be so carefree and untangled in all this?
And I don’t mean that in a bad way!
The intercom fills the room and we’re told to gather into our rightful places and get ready for the second and final section of the test.
28
The screams are unbearable and killing us slowly even though the pain it’s not concentrated on us, at least for now.
“Stop it, you monster,” Zoey howls as loud as she can to the man in white who brought us here. “You’re killing her.”
“I guess that’s the point.” He smirks.
God! If only I could tear that smirk of his face! I don’t think there would have been a vaster pleasure.
They had already initialized the experiment. Avery is the first one to go being that they’ve decided to run according to our juxtaposition and she’s the closest to the door. So according to their plan they’d run the experiment on Colin, Brianne and then on Carter. Zoey obviously should be the last to go. But for some reason they’ve decided it should be me they should run the experiment lastly. They think it’s been me who’s been fueling all this in the first place. They think it’s me who’s bee stirring all this trouble. And they think I deserve to witness the pain of each and everyone of my friends and they’ve promised that my end would be way more hurtful and aching.
Maybe they’re right.
But I regret none of it.
If I were faced up with the same choice again, I think I’d have done things just the same.
Avery’s screams for mercy infuse the room.
It’s painful hearing her like that. Not only because that’s indicating the fate of all of us for the next couple of minutes.
They’re just so cruel.
The electrodes are messing up with her brain and body at the same time. They’ve running intensified dose of energies towards her and she can’t take it. The high frequency is unsupportable. How could they do this to another person and not feel a bit sorry about it?
“Please, stop it.” I see Zoey whining now like never before. She’s shedding tears that are suffocating her. She’s struggling for air.
“Stay still, sweetheart.” He approaches her and runs his fingers through her hair. I wish somebody would just cut those fingers off right now. “Save your energizes for when the final moment comes over.”
I struggle to release myself off of these conductors and knock this man down.
Other people are taking notes over the process of Avery’s experiment. They share notes with each other but so far seems like everything is going according to plan.
There’s nothing I can do at this point but wish for a miracle.
I’m waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
But nothing happens.
If only I could get myself off these electrodes.
There are five men in the room but I think that with all the rage that has captivated me right now, the fate of them would have not been so pleasant.
“We’ve got all we need of her.” One of the men who was taking notes over this process approaches and tells him.
“Just keep it going a little longer. I think she has more to offer.”
The man who was taking notes obliges.
After a while, Avery’s screams seem to fade. They get weaker and more imperceivably any passing moment.
Until we don’t hear of her anymore.
God, I just can’t comprehend what’s going into me right now. It’s anger, and hurt and rage.
All these feelings are swirling inside of me and I don’t think I’m capable to deal with this much stress.
It’s hurtful knowing that I’d be dealing with that pain after a couple of minutes, but what’s more hurtful is that I’d be suffering the pain of all my friends at the same time.
“Good.” He says. “We’re done with this one. Get her out of the room.” Two of the noting men oblige.
The two other noting men start initializing the experiment on Colin.
His scream fills the room as soon as the first vibration tangles his body.
It’s consuming and unbearable.
The door slides open and through all that muddle of feelings I try to realize, through
all the current hopelessness, what is going on. I mean, I didn’t expect for something unpredictable to happen at this point.
Avery’s fate had left me—all of us—speechless and befuddled in the most enhanced way.
I would have never thought to be this excited to spot Caden’s presence waddling inside the room.
The three men left here in the booth frown by his presence which clearly was not required. They basically had strict rules they needed to follow on.
Caden hoists one arm towards the main guy who dealt with the experiment (the guy that was killed in the Eatonii and somehow had managed to get back safe and sound) to reveal something that looks like a gun on his hand but isn’t. That thing that Caden’s holding, with a press, releases a current of energy that keeps trembling the man in front of us until he stops fighting and falls into the ground. Before the other two men can do anything to fight again, Caden shoots (or whatever it is that thing’s doing) towards them one by one.
God. This is a miracle!
And never would I have thought that Caden would be a part of it.
After all the three men are lying quietly on the ground, Caden grabs a tablet that has fallen of one of the hands of the men on the floor and presses some commands there.
Colin eventually stops screaming and all the electrodes pluck off of him at once. He releases all of us and approached Zoey to help to hold herself up.
“I knew you’d come.” She whispers, trying to spark off a smile towards him, but after all the lack of energy the smile doesn’t come up properly.
“Come on, we gotta hurry.” He says and help Zoey waddle.
“What about Avery?” she asks him.
He just shakes his head for a moment and tells her, “Your friend cannot be saved anymore.”
We run out of the booth, hearts racing excitedly, and pray we’d get out of this safely.
29
A month ago
The test scores are about to come out this morning and we’ve all gathered around the school foyer, while catching up with friends.
Faking Apocalypse (The Apocalyptic Games Book 1) Page 17
