CHAPTER FOUR: RESISTANCE
Another drop of cold fluid had seeped out of the needle to come running down the bridge of Mirage's nose. The harsh smell of the liquid, similar to formaldehyde, irritated her nostrils. Mirage had closed her eyes, exhausted in her struggle to escape. Her body had become numb with terror, as the restraints held her firmly, holding her down. The doctor stood beside the operating table, looking on impassively.
A distant rumble suddenly caught his attention. The floor of the room had shaken for a second. The tremors happened again a few moments later, but this time much stronger, almost throwing the surgical tray to the floor.
The sound of the rumble had now become the sound of an explosion. The doctor had become alarmed by the ruckus and looked nervously at the closed door of the operating block. Another explosion then rocked the laboratory again, but much closer than the previous ones. The doctor looked panicked now. He turned to stare at Mirage. The needle still had not touched her yet.
A violent blast, making a deafening sound, ripped the laboratory's steel door off its hinges to send it flying across the room. The force of the blow had thrown the doctor to the ground and he lied there, amongst the debris. Smoke had filled the operating block.
A man came running through the demolished door. The doctor cursed as he saw him, to then frantically reach under his lab coat to pull out a weapon. He aimed it at the man and fired, but the intruder had seen him and had ducked, avoiding the shot.
The intruder outstretched his arm and pointed a finger at the doctor. A beam of intense blue light, like a flash of electricity, shot out from the end of his extended digit to reach the doctor and engulf him in what appeared to be a force field. The doctor let out a muffled cry as he had been instantaneously paralyzed by the beam that hit him. The man then raised his arm, lifting the doctor effortlessly inside the ball of energy he had created and swung him effortlessly across the room to make him crash hard against the wall. The doctor now lay unconscious on the floor.
The man had approached the operating table. Quickly glancing at Mirage, he hesitated for a second before speaking.
"This is Zeta One. I'm in," he said. He held out a small device and pointed it at Mirage. "I've got a positive I.D. She fits the description and, it's confirmed, she doesn't have a Marker."
Mirage was not sure what all the commotion around her had been about. She knew the doctor had been put out of commission as she did not hear him anymore. She could barely see the intruder from the corner of her eye through the smoke, as her head was locked into position and forced to look upward. She felt another drop of fluid fall on her forehead, yet another reminder she was still in grave danger. She let out a loud gasp.
"Oh, yeah, hang on," the man said, as he suddenly realized the needle was about to enter Mirage's forehead. He pointed his outstretched hand towards the console that controlled the mechanical arm. A blinding flash, crackling like an electric bolt of lightning, came out of his hand, crossed the room and entered the control panel. It immediately blew open, sparks flying everywhere as all of its circuits had been melted down by what had appeared to be an intense power surge. The needle mechanism immediately stopped moving.
The man bent over the operating table. He quickly pushed the arm up and away from Mirage. He reached under the table. Mirage heard a clanging sound as she felt her restraints being suddenly loosened. Her body was weak, shaking. She could hardly believe she was free again. The man quickly helped her to her feet.
"You are going to have to come with me now, we can't stay here," he said to her in a very pressing manner. "I've managed to block an outer door, but they're on us... We have about a minute."
Mirage saw the unconscious doctor on the floor amidst the rubble. She then looked at the man who had saved her. She didn't say anything, as what had just happened did not quite make sense. For all she knew, this could have been one of the Baron's devious games to milk more information out of her.
"We have to get out of here," the man said again as he reached into a small backpack he had been carrying. He ran to one of the laboratory's wall and placed a small palm sized object on its surface. He pressed a combination on the small keypad that was visible on top of the device. It started beeping. He ran back to Mirage. "Get down, quick, and cover your ears."
Mirage took one look at the device and did not hesitate. They both kneeled down quickly behind the operating table.
"We are pretty high up, there is going to be decompression," he said.
Just as he finished his sentence, the device on the wall exploded, sending rubble flying everywhere in the laboratory. Mirage felt her ears pop as the air pressure dropped suddenly. A rush of cold air enveloped them, the atmosphere in the laboratory filling with a fine mist, as one would see in an airplane that had suddenly lost cabin pressure at a high altitude.
There was a gaping hole in the wall now. As the air settled in the laboratory, daylight now filtered through the dust and haze. Mirage's breathing had become more difficult. She felt her body weakening again.
The man grabbed her by the arm. "Follow me," he said. "If we stay here, they are going to kill us."
Mirage hesitated, as the man was pulling her towards the hole. "You have to come with me," he said in a more urgent tone. "Look sister," he added as he now seemed annoyed with Mirage's reticence, "they were about to take a sizeable chunk of your brain... Now that's a pretty good argument to say goodbye to those losers."
He lifted his left wrist. It had on it a small control panel. He quickly typed in a few commands.
"Wait for it," he said, looking at the gaping hole. Mirage heard a strange, humming, electrical sound.
"Here we go!" The man grabbed Mirage's arm and pulled her hard towards the opening. She tried to resist, but to no avail. They both jumped out.
Mirage's heart leap out of her chest as they fell out in the open.
They did not fall for long though. Mirage had barely realized she had jumped out that she had crashed unceremoniously into the seat of a waiting vehicle. The man had already taken place in the driver's seat and had taken the wheel.
Mirage had just then noticed she was a passenger in a convertible sports car. A flying sports car, which had hovered to a complete stop in front of the hole they had made in the building, high enough that they were above the clouds.
The man did not waste a second. The vehicle jumped forward. Mirage had just the time to grab the dashboard to hang on. It accelerated to a vertiginous speed.
"You can breathe normally now, there is a force field around the hovercar," the man said. He looked at her. "Buckle up, we are going for a ride." Mirage knew by the look he gave her that he obviously meant it and that it would be wise to do so.
Mirage had barely strapped herself in, that she gasped in surprise: The pilot had brought the hovercar into a steep dive, almost to the vertical. They quickly reached the cloud cover below them and entered it.
Mirage had been shocked by everything she had seen up to now. But nothing had prepared her for the spectacle she now witnessed as they burst through the bottom of the cloud cover. Mirage's eyes widened, her mouth gaping in amazement.
They were now flying over an immense city. A metropolis so gigantic it spread to the horizon. Kilometer wide avenues were aligned with colossal skyscrapers, perhaps thousands of stories high, that reached to the sky to disappear in the dense cloud cover. Directly below them, multi-leveled streets and passageways, that seemed to reach deep down under the surface as far as the eye could see, were tangled in a maze-like web that bustled with life and activity: In every direction, flying vehicles of all shapes and sizes, from the smallest to the enormous, flew fast in what seemed to be a frantic and almost insane ballet, although tightly choreographed.
As they got closer to the ground, they did not slow down. The pilot leveled the craft. Mirage could now see sidewalks flying by now, filled with busy pedestrians going about their business, and the fact that some of them did obviously not appear human did not bother Mirage, as she now was too overwhelmed by all the scenery that flew by before her.
The whole city around her was a three dimensional multi-media orgy of the senses: Everywhere, gigantic holographic images, layers upon layers of entangled and overlapping information, were spewed out like a flood of colour and sounds. They reached out to whoever was there, trying to grab their attention, and between streams of breaking news, -some of the headlines written in mysterious and illegible alphabet- tried to sell products and services Mirage had no idea what they could be.
"We've got company," the man said, as he had looked at a small screen that served as a rear view mirror. They were now being followed by a pair of what appeared to be law enforcement vehicles. The hovercars behind them had flashing lights and sirens on. They were coming in on them fast.
The man cursed as he looked at a control screen. "Oh, damn, the cloaking system has just failed." He looked at Mirage for a second and hesitated before reaching out in front of her to open a small compartment. "Here," he said, as he dropped a rather large gun into her lap.
Mirage stared at the weapon. Like everything else around her, it looked like nothing she had ever seen. Heavy and chrome plated, its cannon was a solid metal piece with no opening. It would obviously not fire a conventional projectile.
The man became impatient. "Look, help me out here. Shoot them, please."
Mirage was getting more and more tired of being bullied around. And shooting at what seemed like law enforcement agents was something she was not keen on. She grew more and more impatient with what was going on.
The man insisted. "Sister, this is not a time for debating. Trust me," he said, as he looked at her from the corner of his eye as he kept a watch on the incoming traffic. "You don't ever want to fall into their hands. They are the Secret Police. We call them the Eradicators. Their primary job is to hunt down and kill Supers. They are from the Government, and they're also under Zordel's orders." He pressured her again. "So, do me a favor: Take the gun, aim, shoot, and bring them down."
Mirage was enraged now. She had had enough of being pushed around, forced to act against her will. "Don't you dare tell me what to do," she said to him, her fists clenched in anger against the weapon.
"Moresso," he added, irritated by her reluctance. "Take them down, or we're dead meat." Mirage looked at him for a second, taken aback by the fact he knew her name. She looked behind her again. She then capitulated, knowing now she had no other option.
Mirage twisted herself around. She lifted the heavy weapon, steadying it on the edge of her seat, and aimed it at the car on her right. A blast, neither laser nor bullet, shot out of the end of the gun to make a visible trace in the air. The hovercar she had shot at made a quick evasive manoeuvreand came immediately back behind them. Both cars now opened fire on them, barely missing, but every shot getting dangerously closer.
"This is bad. There will be more and more coming at us," the pilot said. "We'll have to do something more drastic. Get back in the seat, quick, and hang on..."
Mirage looked ahead. Her teeth grinded together as she grabbed the dashboard, her knuckles turning white. For in an effort to lose their pursuers, the man had taken their hovercar directly into the oncoming traffic.
Mirage watched helplessly as they entered a flow of fast flying vehicles that rushed towards them, their collision warning sirens blaring wildly, frantically trying to correct their trajectory. The traffic that flew around their hovercar was as dense as red blood cells flowing in a large artery.
"Well the traffic isn't too bad today," the man said in a rather relaxed manner, wearing a coy smile on his face as he expertly manoeuvred their car in and out of the flow. Mirage turned to him and thought she might be dealing with a mad man with a death wish. "Just a little while longer and we'll be, whoa…"
Mirage's heart leaped out of her chest as she gasped. They were flying fast towards a group of rather large cargo trucks huddled together so tightly there was no space for them to fly through. They were close enough now that they could see the other driver's terrified stare. Mirage shut her eyes tight.
The pilot suddenly pushed the hovercar hard to the left and down. It flipped over completely, banking out of the traffic in a graceful spiral, passing right underneath the screeching mass of trucks that were blocking their path.
They now headed straight down again, to reach one the multitude of underground levels. They were vast openings filled with galleries of shops and apartment blocks that had even more activity than on the surface.
The man gave a sigh of relief, as he stabilized the hovercar into a flow of slower moving traffic. "We're going to be okay now, we've lost them and we've got our cloak back on. That means we have vanished from their GPS. They can't find us now; we're fooling their sensors by pretending to be security cleared." He looked at her, concerned. "But I what I don't understand, is that they broke off the pursuit rather quickly... Whatever the reason, it's to our advantage right now. But we still have to get out of the city; we are too easy to, hey!"
The man had been somewhat interrupted. Mirage now sat with her back against the passenger door, her arms stretched, nudging her feet against the side of the pilot. She had the weapon aimed directly at his head. He turned cautiously to see her staring back at him, her eyes filled with anger and exasperation.
Out of frustration, she rammed the gun hard into the man's temple. "Now you listen to me, and listen very well," Mirage said, through her clenched teeth. "I don't care who you are. And I don't care about the fact that you probably saved my life earlier, but I am telling you this: If I don't get a clear explanation about this charade very soon, I will not hesitate, and I will blow your brains out. I've seriously had enough of this."
The pilot settled back uneasily in his seat. He said nothing for a second. "All right, all right. It's true you deserve an explanation. I'll give you one, okay? Just be careful with the gun, please."
They had reached the outskirts of the city. Skyscrapers had become scarce and now had given way to refineries and automated processing plants that spread out like a blanket over a reddish desert of burning dunes of sand that reached the horizon. Acrid smog fouled the air, colouring it in a greenish yellow. The dense cloud cover had thinned out to nothing.
"Look," the man said, we can take a break now, we're safe for the moment. I'll just pull over around here."
The hovercar had stopped on the top of a windy sand dune. Around and below, large pipes from the surrounding refineries went in every direction.
"Get out of the car," Mirage said to him, as she had already done so. They now faced each other, a few meters apart.
"Look, I'm sorry about the introduction and the ride," the man said, the palm of his hands turned up. "I can give you an explanation, but you'll have to be patient."
Mirage looked around her. "I've got time," she said, dryly. She gave a quick nod towards her gun.
"Moresso," the man said, with a strange smile on his face. "One of the first rules of survival is…" He slowly pointed his finger at her. "Guns made of steel are conductive."
A bolt of lightning shot out from his finger as he said that. It went right towards the muzzle of Mirage's gun.
It felt as if she had been punched hard the stomach. The force of the blow pushed her violently backwards, the gun flying in one direction, Mirage in the other.
The man then made a sweeping motion with his arms. A metallic blue force field shot out of his hands and it engulfed her. She was instantaneously paralysed. Mirage could still breathe and move her eyes, but that was all she could do. He effortlessly lifted her up a few meters. She was now hanging in the air, totally immobilised, slightly above him.
Zero Point, she thought. That has to be Zero Point... But it's not a device, he's creating it...
The man obviously had not been pleased by being taken hostage and having a weapon aimed at his head. "Now look here, Moresso," he said, "let's be clear on this; I am not going to hurt you." He seemed to have calmed down as he said that, for his tone of voice lowered. "Look," he said a bit hesitantly, "if I had wanted to, I could have killed you just by snapping my fingers." He straightened up and took a deep breath. "I'm going to let you go now. No funny business, and I promise, I'll explain everything. At least, as much as I can."
He lowered his arm very slowly, gently putting Mirage on the ground while keeping an eye on the gun. It was far enough for him to feel safe. The force field enveloping Mirage faded.
Mirage was free to move again. She was still very angry at him. "Well, start talking. I'm listening," she said, impatiently.
The man did not do so. Instead he nodded slightly, tilting his head on the side, with a sly smile on his face.
Mirage suddenly understood why he was staring at her like that: The sun was setting and was now low upon the horizon. Its rays were almost horizontal, illuminating the little sand hill they had stopped on. But they also happened to go right through Mirage's translucent dress. She was almost fully revealed to him now. She quickly stepped aside into the concealing shadow of a nearby refinery pipe.
The man sighed. "Mirage," he said, in a low quiet voice, as he held out his hand. "Do you know where you are?"
Mirage realized she had not taken a good clear look at him yet: He was a young man, barely older than her. His face had thin and angular features that were well defined but delicate. He had a long aquiline nose, and piercing green eyes of a darker color than Mirage's. His disheveled hazel hair, cut not too short, fluttered around his forehead, moved by the gusts of the desert wind. Taller than Mirage, he was thin with a developed athletic build. He wore a fitted dark blue suit that had two small steel dots on the collar. His left ear was pierced, and through it a small platinum ring was visible.
Mirage hesitantly answered. "My conversation with Zordel was rather short. He did not tell me much," she said. "He only told me I had been taken to the future." Mirage looked around her. "And for what I have seen up to now, there is not doubt that this is true."
The man approached her slowly. "Yes, Mirage, you are in the future. How far into the future might come as a surprise to you," he said.
"Zordel did not say," Mirage said again, backing cautiously away from him. She stiffened her body as she crossed her arms. "Go ahead. Tell me. I am a grown up."
The man took a deep breath. "Mirage, the year you are in now is twenty-eight sixty-five." He sighed. "You are about eight hundred years after your era."
Mirage did not expect to hear such astonishing news. She felt her legs weaken slightly and she wavered a bit, but she recovered her equilibrium quickly. The man had stepped forward, ready to catch her if she had fallen.
"I think you should sit back down in the hovercar," he said. "You're having a typical reaction. It must be a big shock." Mirage looked at him again, her arms still crossed, her lips pursed. She stubbornly refused to give him reason. He looked like he felt genuinely sorry for her.
Mirage did not want to show her uneasiness. "As I expected," she said, her voice pitched slightly higher than usual as she was flustered, "the future is riddled with flying cars and impossibly high buildings... I'm not in any way surprised by that." She cut him off. "Oh, don't read me wrong," she added, "for I am still in awe. It's just that..." She looked at the horizon. Her voice lowered. "I was hoping that in the future, society would have had shown some form of progress. I hoped that we would have had finally come to our senses..." She sighed. "It seems to me that we have not."
"There is still hope, Mirage," the man said. "We just have to work a little more at it than we expected..."
Mirage looked at him again. "I would appreciate it if we were to properly introduce ourselves. That would be a start," she said after a second of silence.
"Of course, where was I...? Sorry about this," the man said.
He smiled as he stood straight in front of her. He slightly bowed his head. "My name is Lieutenant Jack Thompson. I am a member of the Resistance. I am involved in the Fight."
The words had piqued Mirage's curiosity. "The resistance? The fight?" she asked.
"I am a Super, Mirage," the Lieutenant said quietly. "These are very dark times we are in. Supers have been declared completely illegal, enemy number one of the State, centuries ago." He pointed a finger at her. "The events that have led to this started in your era by the way..." Mirage knew too well what he talked about. He went on. "Things have got even worse: The authorities have launched themselves into a witch hunt, as the Government has seen fit to conduct an all out campaign of extermination," he said as he frowned, looking at the ground. "A lot of good people were lost in the sweeps the Government had ordered," he added quietly. "Things have now reached a critical stage. There are only a few dozens of us left around the world, and we can't even be sure of that. A lot of our efforts are centered on trying to regroup. We are in hiding, constantly on the run, constantly avoiding traps set for us."
He looked angry now. "We live in a world where it is very hard to be invisible. The Government has eyes and ears everywhere. Everyone is a potential spy... It's becoming harder and harder to stay ahead of the game. Everyone here is marked, tagged, G.P.essed, processed, formed, reformed, sent to work, sent home, and if you're not happy about it, you take a stress pill... If you don't, you become a nuisance and then, you disappear." He turned to the horizon. "Welcome to the future, Mirage," he said with his arms outstretched. "Welcome to Hell."
He walked over and picked up the gun. Mirage did not mind, she instinctively knew he was not lying. The Lieutenant went to sit back in the Hovercar. He started the engine that came to life with a gentle hum.
"There's a lot more to this, but we have to leave now. The cloaking mechanism on the hovercar is very unreliable. If it fails, we won't be seen as Security Cleared Ordinary Citizens anymore, but we'll be fugitives again and they'll jump on us." He looked at her. "Well, at least, just on me. For you see, you don't really exist, Mirage."
Mirage looked back at him, incredulously. He waved at her to come forward. "We have to go." He understood her inquisitive look as she had sat down. "What I meant by this is that you don't have a Marker. A Genetic Marker. It's a unique identifying pattern based on a person's DNA. No two are alike... It holds everything there is to know about you. It can tell if a person will get sick with a specific form of cancer at a certain age or if they'll lose their hair, or, if they're brilliant or idiots. It can determine if a subject would be able to become an Olympic caliber athlete, or if it can be afraid of heights, you name it... It can also tell if you're as Super, or not..." He frowned. "The Government holds all the records of the world's population in a centralized database, in a building so heavily guarded, it is like a fortress."
They were flying again, out in open, low and fast, following the sand dunes of the desert. Mirage looked around her. There was nothing to see but an endless ocean of dry sand. The Lieutenant seemed to know were they were going though, as he checked his instruments from time to time with a relaxed glance.
"War is peace, Mirage," he suddenly said, out of the blue, after some time of silence. "The government seems to have figured out that the best path to prosperity was to create a permanent state of war, with a permanent enemy." He turned to her. "Every action they took, however ludicrous was now justifiable. Supers were the perfect excuse."
"Orwell," Mirage answered. The Lieutenant glanced at her. Mirage went on. "You quoted George Orwell. He wrote a novel called Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was about a gloomy vision of the world of the future, set in that year. Considered a futuristic date when the author wrote it in the late nineteen forties."
Mirage's eyes darkened as she focused on the horizon. "It spoke about a totalitarian, heavily bureaucratic society, permanently at war with its neighbors. They spied on their citizens with cameras installed in their homes. They had miserable lives. Anyone criticizing the Government was found guilty of committing what was called Thoughtcrime and was quickly disposed of... The Government justified its means by using the pretext of a perpetual war against an ever changing, but not clearly defined, permanent enemy: Therefore every means of gathering information, -spying on their own citizens being one of them- would be allowed, for the cause of National Security."
The lieutenant smiled. "Thanks, I read my classics. It's unbelievable though, how fiction can become reality."
He looked serious again. "Concerning the Database," he added, "the most critical thing you should know is that you are not in it, Mirage. Being plucked from the past has given you an advantage. An advantage we plan to use."
Mirage had too many questions for him now. But one burned her more than the other. "How did you find me?" She asked. "I mean, Zordel had made most of his intentions clear… It was his men who came to pick me up. He wanted me to collaborate with him. He knew a lot about my peculiar situation. He obviously seemed frustrated by the fact I wouldn't."
Mirage leaned over to him. "Why did I have to go through all this? I mean, why not just materialize at the Castle, explain yourself and ask for my cooperation? Why let Zordel get to me first?"
Lieutenant Thompson interrupted her. "Time travel, Mirage... This may be the future to you and as you can see, we've come a long way... But there still are certain things which are excruciatingly difficult to achieve. Time travel is one of them. Zordel is with the Government. He has his own agenda, and it's tough enough to try to figure out. The machine he used was built and is controlled by the authorities. It takes an incredible amount of resources to operate. Nothing like the resistance can even think of obtaining without exposing us in the open, like sitting ducks."
He looked at her. "We have a plan, Mirage. We'll explain it to you soon. But, back to Zordel. We had no choiceTo pick you up we had to let them get you first."
Mirage became annoyed at that last comment. "You mean your organization knew about my kidnapping?" She snapped at him. "You knew about what they were about to do to me?"
The Lieutenant laughed. "Whoa, relax, your Highness," he said with a smile. "Look, I'm sorry we were introduced that way... You have to understand, we only had a very limited amount of information concerning your arrival. I didn't even know until I saw you that you were about to have a needle poked into your brain..."
Mirage still had so many questions to ask, but she felt numb now from all the turmoil she had experienced. She settled back in her seat, feeling the wind in her hair. The sun had set behind the horizon, the glare of the light on the sand had faded. The foulness of the air had disappeared.
"Where are we going?" she finally asked the Lieutenant, after a few minutes of silence.
"We are going to rejoin with the others. We'll explain to you everything in more detail then," he said. "We are going to Ishtaar."
"Ishtaar?" Mirage asked him.
"Yes, Mirage," he said. "The last city of Supers."
The Baron watched the fire's embers glow in the large fireplace. He had been alone for a moment now. A soft beeping sound, echoing on the stone walls, took him out of his reverie. With a light tap, he touched his communicator wristwatch. He listened to the incoming message.
"Sir," a voice said. "We've lost their tracks near the outskirts of the city. We have broken pursuit with them like you requested. We could easily capture them if we had more men, but..."
The Baron interrupted the voice. "It's alright. We'll get them some other time. You can recall all your men."
"Very well, sir," the voice said before ending the communication.
The Baron looked at the fire again. "You see, my dear Romulus, I've told you, everything is going according to plan," he said to the man who had quietly appeared beside him.
"But, your Lordship, what about the Prophecy?" Romulus said. "The Book of Auz never lies," he added, a note of subdued anguish in his voice.
The Baron looked at him. "Superstitions, my dear Romulus. But, like I have said before, when the time comes, you can have your thrill. All is in place now. All we have to do is wait."
The Baron's eyes widened a bit as he stared at the fire again. "She will lead us directly to them, Romulus. Yes, we'll just have to wait."