Silence. Silent. Silenced. Silent.
Silence is how everything begins really. No noise, no shudders, no explosions. Just an everlasting vacuum of silence. And then you as you grow you might become silent. Might. Who cares really? It's just a figure of speech. And then you grow older. That's when you get silenced. When every word you learned, every theory by-hearted, every instance applied; everything, becomes nullified into a simple stasis. Learn the rules, follow it. And after that is when you become silent. You chose to be silent and stay silent. Just fading into the backdrop like silence always fades into noise.
Or maybe noise just fades into silence.
And maybe noise is how it always starts.
Maybe. Just maybe.
The journey was silent. But then again this wasn't such a good journey after all. Perhaps it was the people journeying, they weren't good either.
"What's eating you partner?" a stiff and orderly man asked from the person sitting across him.
"Nothing White." was the man in questions reply.
"You seem even more silent Six. Kinda like you're off your game." White probed.
"I said nothing." Six said and he stood up to leave to a more secluded seat. Just as he was about to go, White gripped his hand.
"Got something for you. Happy birthday, partner." White presented Six with a delicately packed item that was cylindrical in shape.
"How did you know?" Six asked. Surprised? Well yes he was. Six never shared the more "private" details about him with his colleagues or "partners". Must have gotten it from my file Six thought.
"Your my partner. I know stuff." Was White's reply. Six clearly didn't look happy with that reply, but nonetheless White shrugged it off. Who cares right?
Here he was stuck with a "job" that not many people on Earth would ever do. At least not if there sane people. Here he was, a top of the class student who could've gotten a high pay job, a real job at any big firm. But no. No no no no no. No. Here he was risking his guts for some guy that was beyond the veil of hope. Here he was going off with "partners" to carry out tasks that would just make normal people run and hide. I had to save the world didn't I? White thought to himself about his brave decision to join a newly established organization that was formed to help the world rid itself of a pandemic of the most massive scale you can imagine.
Hell, I could've married White thought.
He couldn't remember his name. Not in an instant. It's like it had been erased off his brain. If you ask him his name you'll probably have to wait for an hour or two before he can remember it. But then again, he won't let you hang around that long.
You'll probably be dead by then.
"Hayashi", he remembered. His first name. Hayashi. The second name. What was it. Something Japanese sound. He wasn't sure of his descent but it had some blend of Japanese in it. He thought for about fifteen minutes and gave up. Who cares about surnames right? Who cares?
They had arrived at the kill-zone. Six and White got off while the rest of their team stayed onboard the cruiser. Six looked at the sky. It was too dark to deduce the time.
"Nearly ten past seven," White said.
Sometimes that man just gave Six the creeps. It's like he could read his mind. And it was a well known fact to Six that White was not an ordinary foot-soldier. Six pushed that thought aside and surveyed their surroundings.
A recent event had caused an explosion to blow the entire town into smithereens. Las Cruces was now just an overheated patch of permanently uninhabitable desert. No man was left alive. No building was left unshaken. Nothing stirred. Nothing was heard.
Only the silence.
But the man who was used to silence, who grew in silence, who was bred to be silenced and who learned to be silent, just couldn't bear this silence. It was too chaotic. It was to destructive. Like the silence just devoured everything and anything that it felt like devouring. Like the silence would engulf him too at any second. This wasn't silence.
This is noise.