Alexie started laughing and turned around to lead him where she was supposed to. The doors of the hallway were notable in that they looked to be made of brushed steel while the space, as a whole, looked austere and lacked any sort of bright colors or decorations.
“It may seem a bit dull,” said Alexie, “but it has become somewhat of a home for all of us.”
“I’m sure it will suit me just fine,” said Jack. “Thank you.”
“Well, anyway, your room is the one in the corner over there with your name on the door.”
“Thanks again,” said Jack. “I appreciate it. Well, except for the part where you tried to kill me on the stairs.”
“You’re welcome. I enjoyed it,” said Alexie.
“Wait, you enjoyed taking me up here or you enjoyed physically torturing me?”
“There’s a meeting at 4 p.m. you’ll need to be at,” she said, ignoring the question. “It’s important for you to be briefed on what we know and what the future plans are.”
As Alexie walked toward the elevator to leave, Jack ducked inside his room and peeked into the hallway once more to catch one last glimpse of her. Upon entering the room, Jack observed the same mundane design that adorned much of the facility.
Although he began to feel drained from the events of the day, he received an energy boost when his hand rested on his father’s notebooks in his pocket. He remembered planning on riffling through them once the opportunity presented itself. After closing the door to his room, he dropped his bags and began flipping through page after page of his father’s drawings and handwriting. The information he tried to absorb was dense and not yet understandable to Jack. There were entries describing the progression of certain Searchers’ abilities. He saw recognizable names—Nigel, Garnet, Ferra, and the others he just met—but mentions of a Mark, Seb, and Freya were also peppered throughout his writings. The notebook with the latest entry dates also had references to someone named Rakiten and a man known as the “Archon.” The pages Jack most fixated on were those in which his father described the different known abilities the exos gave their users: a dominion over gravity and some aspects of physics, an increase in physical ability and reflexes (which likely corresponds to the manipulation of the gravity fields surrounding the person’s body and objects they interact with), control over morphacite, adept cognitive enhancement such as telepathy, an increase in intuition and mind control has begun to be observed, no reason to doubt there are other abilities yet to be discovered.
Butch began knocking on the door to his room.
Time for the meeting, Jack. Second floor conference room.”
He didn’t realize how much time had went by as he poured over the information in the notebooks. When exiting the room, he saw Butch walking to the elevator.
“Wait! Do you mind if I head down there with you? I don’t know anything about the layout of the building yet.”
“Well come on then, newbie. We ain’t got all day,” Butch said with a grin.
Jack picked up his pace to join Butch in the elevator before the doors closed.
“How do these things normally go?”
“The meetings?”
“Yeah.”
“Depends on what the topics are. Some people have stronger opinions than others, so they can drag out with a bit of arguing back and forth. But I think they’ll behave a little better with a new team member here,” said Butch, giving Jack a nudge.
As the doors opened to the second floor, Jack was surprised to see so many other workers walking about and shifting between different rooms with glass walls. It looked like a full-fledged science lab and research facility.
“Butch, who are these people?”
“They’re our technologists and scientists, tasked with learning more about the relics we find.”
“I didn’t realize there were so many other employees here. I knew John mentioned there were others, but this is a bigger operation than I thought.”
“We couldn’t do what we do without these people,” said Butch. “They do what needs to be done behind the scenes so we can go out and search for the precious relics we’re tasked to find.”
“Will I get to know them too?”
“In all honesty, I don’t even know everyone who works here,” said Butch. “Sounds bad, but training and everything else will take up a lot of your time. Speaking of things that take up time, there’s that meeting we need to get to.”
The Searchers situated themselves around an oval table while John conducted the meeting, pacing the room.
“Jack, it’s about time to catch you up on some things. First off, it goes without saying that anything you have heard so far, and especially what I’m about to tell you, is never to be said to anyone who is not with us in this room right now. Nothing about the relics, morphacite, what we do, your abilities, anything. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Jack, shaking his head in agreement.
“There used to be more members on our team, and not just your father and Nigel. There was an anthropologist that used to lead the group named Mark. He was employee number one of the entire Searcher division, hand selected by the division’s founder.”
“I thought you were one of the first employees,” said Jack.
“I’ve been here since the beginning, but wasn’t the one who started the whole operation. The main founder is an anonymous person high up in the AEB. I can explain further to you sometime later, but I don’t want to get too off-topic.”
“Okay, sorry. Please continue,” said Jack.
“A little history to start: The first relic was discovered on an archeological dig at Göbekli Tepe, in Turkey. Soon after its finding, it was acquired by the AEB for preservation. The anonymous founder I’ve mentioned knew how significant of a discovery it was. For generations, their family was secretly in possession of an exo—which they thought was the only one in existence. With the possibility of attaining more of the powerful objects, they created an entire division devoted solely to the research and discovery of these kind of ancient relics. As crazy as it may sound, the relics we find, including the exo attached to you, are estimated to be thousands of years old.”
“Thousands?” said Jack. “I was wondering why you referred to them as ‘relics.’ How can something so old be this advanced? The exo attached to me is the craziest, most futuristic thing I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s still the big mystery we’ve yet to answer. What we speculate about the exos themselves, however, is that they may be some sort of wearable quantum computers.”
“Do quantum computers that small even exist?”
“Not really. Most of the ones constructed around the world are giant in order to deal with cooling issues. The relics are a technology that, even at this moment in time, would be impossible for us to create. We couldn’t reproduce one if we wanted to, but we’re trying to study them and harness the power they provide. The technology within is so advanced that it’s hard to distinguish it as being different from magic.”
“How is it possible that these things are so advanced they could be from the future, but are thought to be thousands of years old?” said Jack. “Did someone go back in time and bury these things?”
“We’ve thrown that theory around, as well as it being an extra-terrestrial technology. The truth is, they’re both hypotheses we’re still trying to sort out. However, it should be mentioned that the likelihood of an explanation involving time travel is slim to none. Science has shown it still remains impossible to go forward or backward in time.
“Now, getting back to this division’s history, Mark became employee number one out of necessity. By chance, his hand was punctured by the morphacite container he found and his blood spilled onto it, causing it to open. He then attempted to touch the levitating sphere within, which an archaeologist should have known not to do. Ignoring all protocol, he reached into the container. In doing so, the exo began crawling across his skin and unwound itself when it reached his back, sending its metal
lic probes and wires throughout his body. The agony he suffered caused him to pass out. The field crew surrounding him was in frantic shock at what had happened. A medic was immediately called in to try and revive him from his unconscious state. Mark remained comatose for hours. When he came to, he was in disbelief at what happened and tried to find some way to remove the object from himself. As time went on, no one could figure out how to release the relic’s grip on Mark’s body, but he began to possess abilities that allowed him to manipulate the morphacite container the sphere was sequestered in for all those centuries. He also started to be able to influence aspects of the laws of physics, much like the Searchers sitting around this table. Only, so far, his abilities far exceeded many who integrated with an exo after him.”
“The same abilities I saw today, but just more powerful? Or different ones?” said Jack.
“All of the above,” said Alexie.
“That’s right,” said John, “He was the best at controlling morphacite and gravity fields. His physical strength, sight, and hearing were far superior. He could read minds better and from farther away than either Richard or Bridgett. But there was something else that placed him in a league beyond the other Searchers: He started to be able to control the minds of humans and animals.”
“He was becoming too powerful, even invincible,” said Marcel.
“He could perform mind control? Where is he now?” said Jack.
“That comes later in the story,” said John. “The Searcher division began with Mark as its first employee, privately funded by our anonymous AEB benefactor. Two more exos were soon discovered close to the original Göbekli Tepe site, but they wouldn’t unwind on anyone else. The only other person we knew of who had an exo attached to them, named Rakiten, was the right-hand man of Division 1042’s founder. There’s some speculation that the founder himself also wears an exo, but again, that’s just hearsay.
“After receiving permission to compare some sequences of Mark’s DNA to Rakiten’s, we determined they both had a special, ancient group of genes in common that wasn’t present in other people who tried to activate a relic. Once that was figured out, we ran the gene sequences we were looking for against the genetic data of millions of citizens to see if there were any matches. There turned out to be dozens of potentials. We shrunk the pool of candidates for joining the division down to nine individuals. Four of them were deemed too unstable to recruit, but the other five were contacted by the AEB to be further vetted before final approval.”
“Was my father one of them?” said Jack.
“Yes. It was him, Nigel, Freya, Sebastian, and Marcel. More searches were to be conducted to find others that could activate exos, but we found enough initial team members to start the division’s second phase of growth. I was hired soon after as someone to keep the everyday operations on track. When I joined, we went from finding two spheres to seven, scattered around Turkey and the northeastern region of Egypt. The lab research team we assembled, in addition to the Searchers, began to extensively study the relics at the facility. It wasn’t long after that when Richard and Bridgett joined the division.
“A few months later, Mark started to become fanatical about the exos, morphacite, and warp crystals we found, believing them to be relics of a forgotten civilization that could transcend space and time. He couldn’t provide any evidence of his claims, so we told him there was no way to know for sure if what he said was true. Our disbelief in his hypotheses began to drive him further into madness. Without my knowledge, he began to evangelize his ideas to some Searchers in secret. While most passed off his musings as psychobabble, there were two Searchers—Freya and Sebastian—who began to believe in his logic. Things took a grim turn when Mark professed that Rakiten and his boss, the founder of the Searchers, had malicious intentions in wanting to obtain the relics. I immediately alerted Rakiten about Mark’s psychotic break, in the hope he would help apprehend him before the situation got too out of hand.”
“Rakiten had abilities powerful enough to take on Mark?” said Jack.
“Absolutely,” said John. “He was at least Mark’s equal, but likely more powerful. He had lived with his exo in secret long before Mark integrated with his and the division was founded. But things quickly went awry before Rakiten was able to make it here.
“Hours after his erratic outburst, Mark’s rebellion began. Freya and Sebastian joined him in stealing various relics and other important equipment. Richard was the first Searcher to try and stop them, but he was overpowered and knocked unconscious. Bridgett, who had only just joined the team, ran with James, Marcel, and Nigel to where the brawl was taking place. They were all quickly subdued by Mark and his rebels. I came around the corner with an anti-riot tangle gun to try and put a swift, hopefully non-lethal end to the dire situation. Mark saw what was coming and got in my head. He made me fire the weapon at myself while Freya used one of the warp crystals they stole to open a portal. Before Mark disappeared with his converts, he denounced the Searcher division, its founder, its motives, and said that he wouldn’t hesitate to annihilate anyone who stood in his way and continued to support the evil of the organization they were a part of.”
“He sounds insane . . . Is he the man who killed my father?” said Jack.
“We believe it most likely was him,” said John. “Your dad was the strongest out of all the Searchers once Mark fled with the others. We didn’t know how much stronger Mark was getting outside of the division, but your father, before his death, was able to do more than Mark ever could.”
“So when are we going after Mark and making him pay for what he did?” said Jack, anger welling up inside him.
“What, you think we haven’t tried searching for him yet?” said Marcel. “You only just get here and think we can go toe to toe with someone as strong as Mark? You haven’t even seen what he can do. You know a handful of secondhand stories. Besides, being James’s son doesn’t mean you’ll be as proficient as he was with an exo. The half of your genes you received from your mother probably further diluted the gene sequences from your father that your exo would need to match his abilities.”
The cruel words seemed to suck the air out of the room, replacing it with a palpable, uncomfortable silence.
“There’s no need for that kind of talk,” said John.
“What’s your glitch, asshole?” said Jack, glaring at Marcel.
“I’m just saying that not everyone can come here, become a hotshot exo wielder, and save the world while fulfilling some kind of revenge fantasy.”
“I never said I planned on doing any of that! Like you said, I just got here. So I don’t know where all this animosity is coming from.”
Simmer down, Jack. There are things you don’t know about why Marcel’s acting this way. I’ll explain later, said Bridgett, telepathically speaking with Jack.
“I don’t have any animosity,” said Marcel. “It’s just better the sooner you realize how dire the situation is. There’s not going to be some savior that shows up out of nowhere and single-handedly saves us all, especially you.”
“You’re such a hopeless lump of excrement,” said Ferra.
Her hoarse words carried a lot of weight, considering how little she spoke.
“I may be an asshole, but at least I’m a realist and not some callow lone wolf that’s willing to get himself killed in the blink of an eye,” said Marcel, pointing at Jack.
Another long silence came over the room. Jack was hurt by what Marcel said, but he was converting his feelings of despair into hatred so that he wouldn’t become emotional in front of the other Searchers.
“I think that’s enough for this meeting,” said John, who let out a sigh of disappointment. “Jack, your training will start early tomorrow with everyone else. I’m sure your teammates will be glad to show you the ropes and help with your progress. Everyone but Marcel can leave. Hang out, get some food, and get good rest.”
Marcel sat in his seat, arms folded, while everyone filed out of the room.
“I was just making sure the kid didn’t get his hopes up.”
“Kid? He may be young, but you’re practically a goddamn child. You know how strong James was getting before his death—the incredible things he could do with his exo. And that’s his son you’re ridiculing.”
“Like I said, the relic gene sequences he needs could be less intact than his father’s.”
“Yet, he had full control of morphacite when we first met him,” said John. “And that was only after having an exo for a couple days.”
Marcel leaned back further in his chair, alluding to him being done with the conversation. “Still, you shouldn’t rely so heavily on assuming you’ve got another golden boy on your hands.”
“Let me make it clear to you by saying that if you continue to be a thorn in my side about Jack, and don’t play nice, I’ll sideline your ass faster than you can imagine. You’ll have to keep a box of tissues beside you to wipe away your tears while you’re forced to sit beside me and watch the video feeds on a screen as the Searchers go on missions without you.”
John exited the room, leaving Marcel to ruminate on what was said.
Jack was having fun watching a darts competition between Garnet and Ferra in the main room. Instead of playing the regular way—starting with a total of 501 and trying to be the first to reach zero—he observed, after watching a few games, the unique set of rules they developed: both girls stood about three meters apart from each other and seven meters away from the game board. They would each throw a dart at nearly the same time and try to prevent the other twin’s projectile from hitting the bullseye. The player to initiate the throw would alternate each time, while the opposing player would try and intercept the opponent’s dart. Three points were achieved by hitting the bullseye and knocking the other dart to the ground, one point for each player if both darts hit the bullseye, and no points for hitting outside the bullseye or a failed hit. And the starting player at the beginning of each game is decided by a coin toss.
The Relics- The Keystone Trilogy - Part 1 Page 9
