Chapter 26
After about five minutes of searching I had come across information from the previous owners of this place, who just happened to be whitecoats working on some experiment I couldn't gain access to, so I took the file for later attempts at hacking. The search for information on the funding for this place was taking ages. I had to find it soon, before someone realized I was here.
I was searching for the funding within the past few weeks, to see where it was coming from, although, I had a good idea where. The Secretary's presence here was disturbing. If The Information I had so far was correct, this base was responsible for the creation and outbreak of the virus, and now, to stop it and to cover their 'mistake' they are trying to find a cure for it.
There. I had almost flashed past the file, but something told me to stop. I was looking at a string of files, all of them given a date for which the funding was received. I opened the most recent one, dated at the beginning of March. I opened it and ran through the list of payments, most were irrelevant and didn't mean anything to me, but what caught my attention was the brief absence of payments around the time of the Installations collapse, then more funding beginning again around the time four weeks before the outbreak of the virus. Didn't the file Shadow had say the longest person infected in the tests was three weeks? Here was the proof I needed.
I copied the files over onto the data stick and logged off the mainframe. I had already spent too much time in here, more than I wanted to. The security would be twice what it was; now that the Secretary was in the compound. I moved back into the elevator and back into the chaotic work area of the new whitecoats running the facility. The chaos was dying down and people were preparing for the arrival of the Secretary. I had to hurry. I walked past the whitecoats and out the door, people only giving me a brief look before returning to their work. I raced back to the changing room and switched back into the soldier uniform I had borrowed. I stepped out into the corridor and walked right into the Secretary and his personal Guard.
Chapter 27
Great, I thought, just what I needed.
The soldier at the front of the group stopped and looked at me. I stood straight and threw him a salute, showing he was of higher rank than me, which he was. He returned the salute and was about to turn away when he saw my ID tag. I saw the tense of his muscles as he reached for the gun holster on his hip.
Darn, I thought, I knew I could pass as this guy if no-one looked closely, but this guy got a good look. He's seen the difference.
I sensed rather than saw the other guards doing the same when they saw their captain move, shoving the Secretary into the middle of the group to protect him from me. I reacted fast—grabbing the first soldier, the lead one, and shoving him into the group, throwing them off balance—and raced down the hall, tearing the uniform off to reveal my civilian clothes and my Wings. I heard the crackle of radios and as the soldiers reported the intruder, I heard their statement.
"We have a possible carrier Altered on the Premises," the lead soldier reported, "Seal off all exits, use tranquilizer guns only. We want him alive."
Great, they want me alive, I want me alive. I don't fancy being killed in a place like this. I raced along the corridor, charging down anyone who stood or rushed in my way, until I reached the exit. Guess what? It was blocked by about three to five soldiers, all with—yep you guessed it—tranquilizer guns. I dodged into a nearby open door to find myself in an elevator. I pushed the door close button and watched as the door closed, right before the guards reached them. I hurriedly pressed a button to get away from them. Yeah I know I'm going deeper underground, but what other way can I go? The exits are blocked off. Then it hit me, underground they would have air vents, and therefore my escape route. I began to fit my escape together in my head and had the formation of a plan.
The elevator came to a halt and I rolled to the side, expecting a volley of tranqs to hit the inside of the elevator, but was sadly disappointed. I crept out of the elevator and into a large storage area. Large crates were lined along the walls and shelves of the room, reaching up to the roof of the large room, probably about five meters in the air. I walked up to one and read the label on the box and nearly fell over from shock. Here, right in front of me, were the boxes of suppressant that were going to be used. I could destroy them right now; I was about to when I remembered what Dark had said.
Having the ability to know the future, I recollected, doesn't give you the power to change it. Sometimes all it allows you to do is prepare for what is coming.
I didn't know what would happen if I would change the future. It could get better, or it could get worse. I didn't know and I didn't want to find out, as much as it tempted me to at least try and stop what I saw from happening. I looked around and heard the clatter of elevator doors from the other side of the room.
Darn, I thought, I should have seen that.
It was a cargo lift, used to transport the crates from down here to the surface. Now being used to transport soldiers down to flush me out, and as you guessed it, there was no other way out, except the air vent which was over by the cargo elevator. I was trapped. I stood in the centre of the room, making sure I had a clear view around me to spot any attackers that may come at me. A large crack emitted from somewhere in the room and hands grabbed me, then the room began to dissolve into bright colors until I reappeared outside in the sunlight with trees around me. I looked down at the person who had grabbed me and looked Falcon in the face…
Chapter 28
"Hey Blaze," Falcon said, "Looks like I just saved your butt."
Falcon shut up as soon as he saw my face change from shock through thankfulness to rage. I was furious he had shown up. Sure, he helped me out of a tight spot, but he didn't realize what the heck he had just done.
"You idiot!" I shouted, "Falcon, do you realize what you just did? You've just risked yourself to infection and disobeyed me in coming here! Do you realize that if you are infected, you cannot go back home! I cannot risk any more of our family getting infected."
"Do you seriously expect me to come here and get infected?!" Falcon shouted back at me, "You should be thankful that I was here. Otherwise you would have had a load of trouble on your hands! I saw who that was, the person in the helicopter, it was Secretary John Marsten! This thing is bigger than all of us Blaze. I can't sit around home waiting for things to happen. I have to protect my brother!"
Brother?! What was Falcon talking about? We had all seen each others files and there was no mention in Falcon's file about a brother. So what was he talking about? I had no clue.
"Brother?" I asked quietly, "Falcon, you have a brother? How did you find out?"
"Oh, now you're interested!" Falcon said angrily, "Now you want to know, after you've finished shouting at me. The file you found, the file on me was only part of the full file. I found more. There was more to my file. According to the rest of the file, I've had my teleportation ability since birth. Whenever I sensed I was in danger, I teleported out of harm's way, that's what the file said. It also said that when I teleport, my mind memorizes what's being teleported so once I reach my destination, the objects are reconstructed. The file said that due to the fact that every atom in my body gets separated during teleportation, no virus or disease can survive the teleportation process. That's why I knew it was safe to come here for me. But I cannot allow my family to be destroyed by this virus. I know now what you have felt since you found out about all this, Blaze. But I have to do this, not only for my family, but for my brother as well."
"Falcon," I replied, "I'm sorry I shouted. But now you understand why I didn't want anything to happen to you? I consider you my little bro."
I was silent for a moment, letting that get through to Falcon and then I spoke.
"Falcon," I asked him, "Who is your brother?"
"It's Drake," Falcon replied, "My brother is Drake…"
Chapter 29
"He's been brooding on it since a little while after you left," said Rei as she stepped out of the trees. "Man, Blaze. When you go ballistic, you definitely go ballistic. And before you go off your tree at me, I'm immune as well. I still don't know what my power is, but I'm one of the rare ones that have a natural immunity towards the virus not based on my powers."
"Unless it is your mysterious powers that give you immunity," Nathan replied, "But you don't know it yet."
"True," Rei replied, "That's true. We better get going before they decide to search the area for us."
"I'll take you back to the apartment I've been hanging out in for the past two days," I replied. "We can lay low there for a while."
"I could teleport us there if I had a mental picture of the place," Falcon said, "But since I've never been there..."
"I can give you an image," I replied. "Close your eyes; I'll transfer it by telepathy. It's something I've been working on."
Falcon closed his eyes and I placed my hands on either side of his head, focusing on transferring the mental image to his mind. A moment later he opened his eyes.
"I've got the place," Falcon said. "It's nice, for an apartment."
He grabbed my arm and then grabbed Rei's arm in his other hand. The world began to blur and warped before it came back into focus and we were standing in Dark's apartment with both Dark and Flame looking surprised at our sudden appearance.
"Afternoon," I replied. "Don't happen to have any leftovers from lunch, do you? I'm starving. Oh, Dark, allow me to introduce you to Falcon, another member of my family, and Rei, she's the daughter of the whitecoat that gave his life to protecting us to the end."
"Umm," Dark replied confused, "Nice to meet you Falcon and Rei, I'm Dark, Shadow's brother. Blaze, just how did you suddenly appear in the middle of my living room with two more people than when you left?"
"Oh," I replied, "Did I forget to mention, Falcon is a teleport. He's also immune to the virus because of it. Rei is also immune, although I don't know what her power is."
"So what did you find out there?" Flame asked, "Was there anything that you could use to prove what's been going on?"
"I saw Secretary of Defense John Marsten at the base," I replied, registering shock on Flame and Dark's faces. "I also found financial records that show the change in funding from when the place was shut down to when it was opened again four weeks before the outbreak. It said in the file Shadow had that the longest a test subject had lasted while infected was three weeks. Shadow caused the outbreak without meaning to, but he found this girl, the one that was infected, that's how he contracted the virus. She can be related to this place, where the outbreak started with her. If I can find out where the funding is coming from, I can find the person responsible for this entire mess. And I have my suspicions it might very well be the Government itself."
Chapter 30
Journal
Entry: 20th March 2021 :
I'm
having a hard time keeping what I'm writing civilized. The anger I am
feeling towards a government that swore to protect us, who swore to
protect those who had never lived in the outside world. I can't
believe how much they have lied to us. All along they were monitoring
us, making sure our population never grew too big, and always keeping
us under control. Although I suppose I saw the controlling part, but
as long as I got to live a normal life, I didn't really care.
But all along they were afraid of us, not sure what our purpose was. They weren't sure whether we were just innocents caught in the middle, or if we were the replacement to humanity. Most of my anger is at the fact that I have traced the funding, all the way up the chain, to the president of the United States. The man we all placed our trust in, was the one who wanted to kill off a few thousand of us, just to keep us under control. I can't take this any more, I need to vent my anger before I do something I will regret.
I have the information revealing what was going on; to show the world to what lengths the government is willing to go to protect themselves. But in revealing all this to the world, I could tear apart the country, probably starting a civil war within America. God it is all so confusing and I don't know what to do.
I stopped writing in my journal because my anger and confusion had started to make the edges of the pages smoke. My anger was majorly out of control. I had been betrayed by people I believed could help the Altered. I held myself partly responsible for everything that had happened since the destruction of The Installation, but what could we do? Just sit around in hiding for the rest of our lives, always running from those that made us? Just let the whitecoats continue creating more experiments, letting those kids experience what I had? I couldn't let that happen, they deserved some freedom.
I had stepped out onto the balcony to cool off. The room had become warm and the first signs of me changing into the fiery spirit I had changed into what seemed like years ago, began to appear. I focused all my anger, frustration and confusion into a large ball of fire and launched it off the balcony and into the air, letting it explode and the small embers falling harmlessly to the ground below, already dying on the wind. Hopefully some Altered kid saw that somewhere and it made him happy.
