Chapter 1 - Running start (Side B)
"It's raining again." A quiet voice echoed through the box room, to meet no other ears.
Silence refilled the room, except for the rain bouncing off of the window and the ground outside. The world inside of the young boy's brain was not as silent, but he wouldn't dare speak a word. He knew that he was being recorded, as he had been his whole life. For protection, obviously, but it still lead to the fear of being seen as too emotional by his father.
From the time he was young, he had been taught that a good leader would show little to no emotions and would know the right time and place to show them. This would be easier to do, if the young monkey even knew what he was experiencing – the only way he ever knew was by comparisons to other things. His greyish blue eyes stood half open, as he was sitting upright, in a ball, on his cold bed. He stared at his window, almost completely covered by his curtains except for where he had slightly pulled them back. Rain hit the window repeatedly, leaving lines of running water and random drops.
"From streams, it returns to the ocean – only to be put through the cycle again. Even if it takes awhile, it will always returns." The young ape thought to himself.
This same thought ran through his head every time it rained, it would always distract from his studying. A biology book laid open in front of him on his black covers, where he had left it. The page showed the different parts of the human brain, annotated in a language that didn't exist in humans. The monkey's language, to be specific.
It was clear that he needed to understand which part of their brains controlled what, in case he needed to create a mind control device or something of the sort. Despite all the research his father made him do on humans, he had never actually seen one. That wasn't a bad thing, as humans were their biggest threat. He had specific orders if a human ever came his way – run. Don't look back, just keep running forward and don't stop to hide unless he was 100% sure it was safe. Simple enough orders.
His room was equally as simple. It was small, small enough where his metal bed frame reached from wall to wall underneath the window. The headboard and footboard were five centimeters wide and completely hollow. He had the same mattress without a cover for his entire life, with a black blanket working as his type of duvet. The walls and floor were both steel plates bolted together, the walls being a darker grey than the floor. Piles of different books laid next to the headboard, books of mathematics and sciences were the most common.
His room stayed the same no matter where they moved, and he liked it that way. His days would stay the same as well, waking up, studying in his father's office for a while, dinner in the conference room, and then back to his own room to study more. And yet, he longed for change.
He would often wonder what he would do if he was all alone without his father or the strange monkey six. That one would usually be terrifying though, and would lead him to more studying to ignore it. He would imagine how life would be like if the youngest member of the strange monkey six and son of Pink Monkey and Blue Monkey, Paru, wasn't so annoying and hadn't given him the nickname he hated so much. "Ian".
That wasn't his actual name, as his father would correct everyone in the group every time they said it – His real name was Phantom. The nickname seemed to stick, however, to the point where his own father would use both "Phantom" and "Ian".
He wanted change, but at the same time it scared him. It wouldn't be possible without the reality that things could never go back, which he was terrified of. These thoughts flooded his head, and his only response was to shake his head and get up. He was planning to get a glass of water and go back to studying, but the book would never move from his bed that night.
As his door slid open, his routine was broken by the echo of an usual sound. Something, or someone, had crashed onto the ground at a good speed. Ian's head turned to the direction which the sound came from. He didn't think about the possibilities of danger or anything bad happening.
"Was that Paru? Or someone else? What could they have done to make such a loud sound?" Ian whispered, as he turned towards the direction he had been looking at and began to run.
As he made it to the stairway, he made a guess that the sound came from below him. He walked quickly down 4 flights of stairs to the lowest level, grabbing onto the handrail for safety. He pressed his hand on the doorway's keypad scanner, resulting in it opening in front of his.
As he walked through the door, he heard quiet breaths coming from ahead and left of him. This struck him as strange, the only route there was through the monitor room's door to a rather odd hallway. Barely anyone except for his father or White Monkey would go through that hallway, so how could there be a crash or breathing? Despite this oddity, he still thought it would okay to at least check the hallway in case something had happened.
He ran down the hall he was currently in, reaching another door and pressing his hand on it's keypad scanner, opening that door as well. The monitor room was in the middle of the next hallway, and as he ran close to its door he noticed that it opened without him doing anything. Someone had left the door unlocked, which was extremely weird. This only furthered the idea that his father or White Monkey had caused the noise he had heard.
He carefully and quickly made his way through the unorganized monitor room, the floor was covered in a jungle of wires. He stepped out of the technological mess into the clean, hallway floor. He started to run again, he just wanted to know what made the noise and get back to his drink.
He followed the noises down the hallway and turned the bend, to be met with a horrible surprise. There at the end of the hallway, in front of a circular white light on the wall, were two humans. They were a tiny bit taller than Ian himself, but that was the only similarity. One of them had most of their head shaved with only orange hair in a strange style on top, something Ian had never seen before. But that one wasn't the one he was scared of. He made direct eye contact with the other boy, his eyes widening.
His attention was drawn towards the boy's hand however, where he was holding a monkey net. The hairs on his body stood up. A monkey net. The one thing Ian had been told and warned about his entire life. The advice he had been given from the time he was young was finally coming in handy. The orange haired one said something, but Ian didn't listen. For him, it was like a blank that was shot at a swimming competition. He started running.
Ian ran through a door that was on his left, opening it the same way he did with the others. It was a small supply closet full of boxes stacked on top of each other. He wasn't about to stop to look more into the room, as he ran straight to the opposite door. He didn't even stop to think about which way he should go, he just instinctively dashed to his left and around the bend in that hallway. He ran straight into the room behind the door in front of him. It was one of the many conference rooms in the facility.
However, the table was directly in the way of his path and he wasn't able to completely stop himself. The only thing he could think to do was to try to jump and slide on the table, and in a split-second decision – that's what he did. As he slid on the table, he realized that he was going too fast to jump off of it. He fell off and onto the ground on the other side, he whipped his head back to check his location. The brown hair human was hot on his tail, in the doorway, with a strange look on his face. Horrifying, in a way only humans could be. Ian got up with a sprint and ran through the door next to him.
After a few more rooms of running, Ian realized something. The bottom floor was only so big, meaning that at some point they would loop back around to the beginning. He recalled the strange white light behind the humans, is that how they broke into the building? It had to be, he thought. He came to the conclusion that if he made it back to the monitor room and ran through the same door with the humans behind him, they may decide to go back through where they came from. He turned into another room.
He started to visualize the level as well on he could in his mind. If he was correct, he had to go through two more rooms, then go down a hallway until he reached the monitor room on his right. He ran into another room, only one more to go. He knew the human had to be getting tired, considering that it was in arms reach multiple times and that Ian himself was getting tired.
Another door, the final room. He didn't even need to go straight through this room. He veered off to the side, running through the second last door on his journey. He could only imagine the human gasping for air behind him, as the chase itself was almost completely silent. After those few minutes of running, he had made it back to the monitor room he had gone through in the beginning. Everything was going fine, until his main senses fell apart. An ear-splitting alarm rang through the facility.
It echoed loudly in Ian's brain, disorientating him. He didn't even realize that it meant someone else was aware of the invasion, all he could think about was the alarm. He lost his footing, entangling it in the jumble of wires below him. He tried to keep going, not realizing his entrapment. He fell to the floor. Some of the wires had unfortunately been connected to computers nearby, resulting in them falling onto one of his legs. He didn't scream or shout, he just laid there with his arms attempting to push him up.
The door behind him opened. He didn't want to believe it. From all the warnings in his life, and yet he still managed to not follow them. It took him a few seconds to lift his head and turn around. The boy that had been chasing him the whole time, was behind him with the net over his head – ready to swing. The strangest part was his face. It wasn't full of malice or excitement, it looked as it the human felt bad for doing this.
He didn't understand, why would a human be…remorseful for this? He didn't have anytime to truly think on that thought, as the net swung down and he was left with a surprised look. It was around his head, and it took a second before anything happened. He started to feel a weird sensation go over his entire body. Suddenly, the world went black. As if he had suddenly passed out.
As quickly as the world around him went dark, it went back to normal. He could see, but that was the only normal thing about it. He fell onto the fabric surface, and lied on it for a minute – just breathing. He slowly sat up and looked around. He was on a hammock on what seemed to be a beach, surrounded by a jungle type area. He looked up to sky, to see the night sky with clouds moving by. All except for one cloud, it stayed in the same place.
He looked closer, he had never seen a cloud act like that. He realized that within the stationary cloud was a window. The paradise he was in was some type of containment chamber – and he could have been watched. His breathing quickened as he got up from the hammock and walked his way closer to the shoreline. What he was seeing was real.
Suddenly, he heard a soft, high pitch sound from a few meters beside him. He turned his head to see a blue shining figure materialize, before losing its shining blue colour and falling onto the floor. He realized the familiar figure immediately. It was Paru. Was…he captured by those humans too? He didn't see his brother-like figure whilst running but, how else would he be there?
After a second of lying still on the beach, Paru snapped into ball before jumping up. He was extremely angry, in a way only his mother and himself could be. His mouth was in a spine chilling frown and you could only see the whites of his eyes. His shoulders were high. Ian flinched, fearing he would be on the bad side of whatever Paru wanted to do. But Paru soon noticed that his original enemy was no longer there.
"Ian? What are you doing here?...Wait, where even is here? Where did that human go?" Paru shouted.
"Why are you shouting? Don't you realize we're both in trouble?" Ian snapped back, lifting his arm towards the window that was hidden in a cloud. He was standing stiff, shaking. Paru looked up.
"That's not answering my question, dude." Paru was getting more frustrated, and Ian was scared of seeing his angry form again.
"They, they got us with that ne….ne…net!" The smaller monkey stuttered out, not meaning to let his anxiety show. Paru looked at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. As soon as he realized, his eyes opened wide.
"You have got to be kidding me!" Paru shouted, turning and kicking some sand into the air. "This is bad. Really really bad. We need to get home."
Paru walked over to a nearby palm tree, quickly jumping and climbing up to its leaves. He grabbed a banana that was growing, opened and started eating it whilst inspecting the roof of the facility. Ian wasn't sure what to do, feeling a panic attack build up in his stomach. He took off his scarf, shook it a bit and put it back on. By that time, Paru was done and had his conclusion.
"We're going to have to build a ladder up to one of the lower panels." He said sternly. Paru jumped down from the tree, landing on his feet. He walked over to to the younger monkey, and leaned forward to let his head be on the same level of Ian's head. A smirk rose on his face.
"Well listen here, princey boy, you're gonna have to do some physical work for the first time in your life. Looks like being sheltered didn't really help you learn how to escape from humans very well." Paru made his smug comment before straightening his back up and beginning to walk into the enclosed forest.
"Wh-what did you say? I will let you know that I know how to make a ladder better than you do by following the real instructions!" Ian replied, annoyed, following his brother-like friend closely. He couldn't see Paru grin, however.
"Okay then, tell me how ya make it." Ian went quiet, he had never been called out on the spot like that before.
"Uh, well um…you first…uh." He muttered. In reality, he really didn't know how to make a ladder. He had fallen straight into Paru's trap to prove a point.
"I thought so." Paru turned and looked at the white monkey with light indigo tips. "Just follow me and my directions, and I think we'll be able to get out of here by midday." Being face to face with the person who just exposed him in his own web of lies led to only a mutter.
"Okay." Ian's greyish blue eyes veered to the side, he couldn't stand looking anyone in the eyes. Paru turned back and followed the dirt road that had clearly been created by use. Ian followed closely behind him, and didn't say another word. He didn't want to admit it, but it felt like he was internally screaming his lungs out.
The rest of the night would be mainly filled with work, with little time to rest. If they didn't get out as soon as possible, who knew what could've happened.