Off the Grid Chapters 1-3

Chapter 1

There were always rumors flying around throughout the war about the manipulation of genetic material to perfect the art of the most undeniable force from each nation. There were always rumors about the children of war, but nobody and everybody would point their fingers at somebody else, and then move on.
"What is taking so long?" the doctor shouted to the teams of doctors and nurses residing under him.
These rumors, there had to be some truth to them, right? Of course they would be abominations to the human race as a whole, but this did not stop companies in secret. Labs were funded by privateers, those that had a hand in weaponry, biological, chemical and otherwise.
"Heart rate is rising."
"At this rate the flesh is not going to survive the transition!" the doctor hollered through the intercom system. He was up in an aclove that overlooked the operating room.
Rumors of children being made into weapons flew from faction to faction with one group pitted against the other. They could only try to convince the rest of the world that they were not the ones getting closer and closer to the perfect weapon, a perfect child, of war.
"Blood pressure is 120 over 80," a nurse announced.
"The heart rate should be normal now," the doctor spoke.
"Of course it is!" snapped one of the female doctor's in the room below.
On the operating table was a very young male, the body only a couple of months old. Tubes were attatched to the poor small body in every place imaginable. The wires and tubes took up more room than the tiny child. Not a single person questioned what they were doing. They knew that the price of a small child could be key to winning the war that seemed to not have an end in sight.
"Start the aclimation process," the head doctor told the team below.
One by one, the nurses pulled one tube after another from the body and put pressure bandages on the areas that started to bleed in earnest.
"Get that bleeding stopped. Add a coagulant to his system," the doctor urged. "We can not lose him after everything we have done," he muttered softly into the darkened room. This was his last chance if they were to have any say in how the war would turn.
Slowly, the body seemed to come to life before them. The young child's eyes opened, bright and fierce. The eyes were the color of a stormy ocean and were already taking everything surrounding him. There was an intelligence there that should not have been. A knowing that had no place in such a child's face.
There was an incubation tube to help facilitate its breathing, and it was one of the last things to be removed from his body. Even with the tube gone, there came no sound from its little mouth. Its limbs lay lax on the operating table, not having the motion one would expect from a newborn child.
This child was their last hope and everything they had was poured into this little creature, for it was almost definitely not human in the most basic of senses. The child had special proteins added to its blood to help with fast healing. Electrodes were implanted in his brain. They were used to stimulate even the most basic of senses to work at their very peak even at the tender age of a newborn. Simulated bone marrow was placed directly into the mass of the child.
There were no pain killers for this tiny one. They had found out from past failures that if the child did not feel every bit of pain that they inflicted upon it, when the pain killers wore off, then the child would not be able to handle what had been done to its body. But, even knowing this, the child in front of them made no movement that would show that it felt any kind of pain. The only thing that they regretted is still not able to give the child a vocabulary that it could use from this point on.
"Wash him down and put him in isolation," the doctor told them calmly. He was on the verge of being excited, but he did not want to jinx himself just yet. The child still had to make it through the next couple of days without going into cardiac arrest or have a major arterial vein rupture within its overstimulated brain.
They had a child make it to this point one other time. They thought it would survive, only to find the child the next day to have died. Of course it did not pass on right away to where they would have noticed any significant change. The child's brain ended up being over stimulated and had shut down one organ after the other until there was nothing but a vegetable left on their examination table.
This child was the one, he just knew it, but he had to let the young boy prove himself to the others. Already, the marks that this child made on their charts was beyong anything they have come across beforehand. The boy showed no pain. The doctor did not know if the child's nerves were shot to pieces or if he really just did not care. The doctor hoped it was the second one and not the first. The first was a sign of imperfection.
He left the darkened aclove to walk down to the lower level of which they were holding the child in complete isolation. The child would be left without any known light source, without any sound, or smell. The last child that had made it to this point did not do well in isolation. The doctor hoped that it would be different this time around.
As he walked down the hallway, the other doctors and nurses of the station moved well out of his way and did not meet his piercing gaze. The heels of his shoes clacked as he walked, echoing through the tiled hallway. He stopped at the window that looked into the isolation room.
What he saw surprised him. The child lay there on the table, completely unfazed by the total sensory depravation that was being inflicted upon him. His entire body was lax, no tension in any of his limbs. This included his fingers and toes, and even in his jawline.
"What is the temperature of the room?" The doctor asked one of the attending nurses.
"It is eighty degrees in there right now," a female nurse answered him.
"Turn it down a degree every five minutes and record any movement changes that goes on with the boy's body," ordered the doctor.
"Right," was the answer he recieved.
"I will be in my office for the time being." The nurse nodded as she went over to the dial and turned the temperature of the room down by one degree. It would only take a minute or two for the room to adjust to the temperature change.
Over the next several days, a whole slew of tests were done on the child. Allergy tests, pain response tests, ranging temperature changes. In each of these tests, it seemed as if the boy was literally not affected by anything entering his environment. They hooked the boy up to numerous machines and his brain showed responses to each test, but the outward body made no difference.
"I think we have our child," a younger doctor commented to the head doctor.
"Just in time," the doctor replied. "With growth hormones, this child will be ready in about five years."
"Only five? Won't that destroy his bone structure?"
"We have accomodations for that already," he answered.
"Poor boy," the younger doctor said with a sigh.
"There is no poor boy in this instance," the older doctor snapped fiercely. He would have to get this doctor removed from the case. There was no room for empathy here. If the doctor thought what the kid had gone through was bad, he had not seen anything yet. It would only get worse in the next few years.
"I just do not get why we have to be so harsh to one so young," the younger doctor said, not realizing his mistake and the ending of his career at this research facility.
"You are off this case, starting now. There is no room for sentiments if we are to turn the tide in this war," the older doctor told his associate.
"But-"
"But nothing. Pack your things and report to the main office within the hour." The younger doctor, finally realizing his mistake, gave a firm nod of his head and turned on his heel. He may be done at this facility, but there were plenty of other places that he would be taken in at. He was not overly worried as he had started to have second thoughts about what they were doing here.
The doctor walked into the adjacent room to where the monitoring machines hummed and buzzed as the doctors and nurses went about their business to record every little thing that went on in the isolation room. Today, there were tubes inserted into the each of the boy's upper arm and thigh bones. A reddish mass was slowly moving through the tubes to be placed in the boy's body.
"I take it that the growth hormones are being added to the bone marrow?" The doctor asked those waiting in the room.
"Yes, doctor. So far, the boy has not responded either favorably or not in favor."
"Time will tell. We can still lose him, even at this point," the doctor reminded everybody there that was listening intently to him. "Has there been any significant growth yet?"
"There has been a markedly decided growth in each of his limbs. Only the barest bit, but he is growing in minutes what he would have gained in years."
"We have to know that he is feeling some kind of pain. Bones just cannot grow that fast without some kind of issue," another nurse said. She was looking very intently into the isolation room, but still had a calm demeanor. The head doctor figured that she was still able to do her job with objectivity.
"He still has no signs of feeling any discomfort," one of the doctor's replied.
The head doctor thought this was still a bit strange, but decided there was not much that he could do about it. He would just have to wait until the boy developed vocal cords and the vocabulary to be able to explain such feelings to them outside of the little shell of a world that he was living in so far during his short life span.
Days later, the child was no longer a new born. He had grown from a young infant body to that of an earlyt adolescent within a week. The child still did not speak, even though each day, a new task was put to his mind and body. They knew that he could talk, but his speech was still very limited as he had nobody to mimic and very little interaction with anybody outside of his small cell.
For now, he knew that it was a cell and he was condemned to live inside those four walls. He had searched every inch that he could reach, but to no avail. The door was seamlessly woven into the walls to where he did not know where one began and the other one ended.
Lights had been added to his small world, and heat, but nothing so simple as those two words. It was either one extreme or the other and back again. He knew he was being tested, but he couldn't bring himself to care enough to voice an opinion one way. He went day by day, patiently waiting for the next trial that they would present to him.
Several weeks went by before he would really speak to anybody that he had to interact with. Most of the time he would just nod or give a short "Hn," for an answer. Nobody thought to try to interact with the child more than they did. The child was just another clinical trial that had to be seen to its end, nothing more, nothing less.
The child only had them to learn from, so he knew nothing different than what was presented to him. His knowledge expanded as fast as they could present new material to him. Physics, along with math and socioeconomics were drilled into his still growing brain. He learned how to fight in hand to hand combat, first through the use of computers and then through personal trainers. It was not long before he could best his teachers that came from all walks of life including those from the military and private sectors.
With the firing of the one doctor, nobody new questioned what was happening within the facility that the child was housed in. Each person went about their business, doing their job without thinking twice. The child steadily grew without any troubles and it seemed like he really was the one that they had been trying to create for many years.
Quickly, faster than they expected, five years passed within the facility. The boy would speak when spoken to, but that was the only time that anything was said. He looked like a teenage boy should look, even though he was only five years old. He did not know that this was strange, just that it was the way things were. He looked to be about sixteen at just under six feet tall. He had messy brown hair that spiked out in all directions and fell into his eyes which had stayed the same stormy blue color throughout his growth.
The child's features were a mix of Asian and American. His eyes were slightly slanted hinting at his Asian heritage, but the color was all wrong. His skin tone was a pale pale white, from staying inside his whole life and because of his American heritage. He had a fine bone structure that belied his patient strength. He had little to no personality developed, but still seemed aloof in the presence of the other adults.
On his fifth birthday, the head doctor decided to pay him a visit. He had seen the man over the years from a distance, but had never been in the same room as him before this day. The doctor was a bit tall, over six and a half feet tall, and thin of frame. His gray hair stuck out in small chunks and looked like little more than frizzy patches. He had a hook nose that looked like it had been broken several times before they had met. His mouth was barely there, just two bloodless lips that were in a firm line.
"Do you know what today is?" the doctor asked the boy.
"Hn."
"Well, I can see that they have worked on your social skills," the doctor said dryly with a roll of his eyes. He was not without humor, but he seemed strict and stern most of the time around his associates. "Today marks the fifth year that you have been with us." The boy gave a nod that was more of a jerk of his head than anything else.
"We need to give you a name."
"Hn."
"Well, you do know what a name is, right?" The boy gave him a glare that would have melted ice if it were so directed at it."With you, I had to ask. But first, will you tell me what you have thought about your training as such so far."
"What about it? What answer are you searching for?" the boy asked in a monotonous voice.
"I am not looking for a specific answer, just looking for your opinion."
"I do not think I have one that would be considered satisfactory," the boy answered.
"Fine. I have decided a name for you then. Your name is to be Gabriel." He waited for a reaction from the boy, but was disappointed when there was none, not even a slightest change in facial features. The boy just kept staring at him calmly, without a smile or anything like it.
"Gabriel," the boy said out loud, testing it out.
"Yes, Gabriel. I have set up your first assignment that will commence tomorrow afternoon."
"Fine," Gabriel said as he turned his back to the doctor. "I need to be rested. I will go to sleep now."
"I see," the doctor said, even though he did not see at all. He had worked on this child for five long years and he still did not know how the young boy ticked. He looked the boy up and down and thought he was rather scrawny, even though he had seen the child fight in hand to hand combat with some of the strongest people he had ever met. The child was also good with the firing arms that he was allowed to handle in a very closely watched environment. He sighed and walked out the door to go back to his office for the day.
As for the war, it raged on with no side coming out on top. Lives were lost as rumors of more than one child of war, as they had been coined, were secretly grown and groomed. The world was not ready for these children of war, but they had no choice but to accept them as they came. As they reached the maturity of teenage boys, they were no longer given growth hormones to speed up their growth. They were in the prime of their lives and lived life to the fullest, whether it was completing a mission or just trying to get by in a world that never understood them.
There ended up being three of them. Three vastly different personalities, training, and technique and little did they know that they would meet in extraordinary ways and have an impact that would shake the world.
 

Chapter 2

The blood was thick upon the ground, running in rivulets through the crevices on the ground. Bodies were piled high from a slew of factions with allegiences constantly in question and ever changing. Weapons, robbed of any left over ammo, lay upon the ground, broken under the force of thousands of feet trampling through the fields.
Not all of the bodies strewn about on the ground had passed on. Their cries echoed through the air, some begging for help while others were begging to be killed, or shown the mercy of a quicker death.
Suddenly, the air raid sirens screamed into the night air, warning those on the ground that another attack was on its way. Airships flew in overhead dropping their bombs and laying fire upon the ground. The cries of the dying could not be heard over the din of ships bellowing through the air.
Daniel waited until the sirens went quiet for the moment and jumped up out of the foxhole that he was in. Three holes down was where his commander sat on the radio giving out orders to the few of his men that were left. Daniel jumped down into the hole without a second thought or a warning to the older man that should have retired years ago.
"What the hell are you doing here, Daniel?" the commander yelled at the boy.
"What's up pops?" Daniel said with a cheeky grin. His long brown hair had been pulled back into a tight braid several days ago and was now coming undone in the places where the mud and blood could not hold it together. There was a gash above his left eyebrow that had long ago dried up, but had left behind streaks of caked blood down that side of his face. His uniform was more black from the dried blood of comrades instead of the tannish brown that they started out as.
Daniel's ammo pouch was almost empty and he only had one grenade left attached to his utility belt. There was not a bit of shine left on his black boots and the knots were caked with mud and blood to the point where he would not be removing the boots easily by hand. He, being who he was, had a large knife strapped to his outer thigh that had seen a lot of action, especially in the past couple of days.
They were nearing the resistance that was just to the north of their location. The resistance that held the world at an edge, the men and women that everybody else wanted to kill. That is why the three remaining functional factions were planning on banding together and try to overthrow those to the north. Daniel knew of their locations to the slight east and west of where he was standing.
"Do not what's up pops to me," the commander snapped. Daniel just grinned and gave a shrug of his shoulders, not caring in the slightest that the commander was actually an authority figure and not just some other random soldier. But, to Daniel, that is exactly what he was. There was no equal that he knew of. He was the best, this is what he was made to do, literally.
"I ask again, what the hell are you doing here?"
"Came to ask if you knew where the other troops were up ahead."
"At about two clicks north, there is another foxhole where I need you to find and hop your ass into. There are two more confirmed soldiers like you." The commander had to almost spit out the words. He did not approve of Daniel or anything of the like, even if it meant turning the tide of the war.
"Like me? There ain't nobody like me, pops," Daniel said snidely. He ran his hands down over his body and did a little shake. Daniel was completely confident in his ability to come out on top.
"That is what I am being told," pops answered. "Anyways, there is going to be two of them up there and you need to go and find them. They need a demolitions expert and that would be you." Daniel chuckled and popped his head out of the foxhole to take a look at his immediate surroundings. He saw the tracer before it hit right outside the foxhole in front of his face. He ducked back down into the foxhole onto his rear end, laughing all the while.
"Daniel, you are crazy as shit," the commander hollered as he hunkered down also.
"Yeah, but that is what makes me so damn good at this job while the rest of you wait for me to get things done."
"Do not push it Daniel. Now really is not the time to be acting like this."
"Uh huh, whatever. Give me the location and the place to pick up some more things I get to make things go boom." The commander told him where to pick up the additional explosives and the exact cooridinates of the foxhole that he was supposed to find.
"Time to zig and zag!" Daniel hollered as he jumped out of the foxhole in search of the others that were supposably like him. Just like he said, he zigged and zagged across the broken ground with bullets flying past him and hitting the ground at his feet. He felt a burn along one thigh and could only hope that the injury was not serious.
He came upon the small bunker that held what was left of their meager supplies. He packed his utility belt with as much C-4 and other various explosives as he could. Once loaded for bear, he managed to jump out of the bunker and zig zag his way over to the other people's fox hole. Without warning, again, he jumped on in unannounced.
What he got for his efforts was a gun pointed an inch away from his face and a rather large blade tip digging into the side of his neck.
"Whoa, guys. It is just me, ya know, your reinforcements?"
"I did not know that you would be here so soon," the boy with black hair said to him while removing the blade from Daniel's throat. "My name is Elijah."
"Well Elijah, nice to know that your reflexes are well honed and that you could also stop yourself from killing another being on such quick notice," Daniel told him. "My name is Daniel, your local hunter for hire and explosives expert. If it goes boom, I know what it is and how its made."
"Do you always talk so much?" the second boy asked Daniel.
"And just who are you? And what is your problem already?" Daniel asked.
"My name is not important, but if you need a name, it was given to me as Gabriel."
"Hiya Gabriel. Nice to meet supposably like minded individuals," Daniel rather chirped. He was grinning from ear to ear and looked as if nothing to bother him or bring him down from what looked like some kind of high.
"I am nothing like you," Gabriel snapped, finally lowering the gun that he had pointed at Daniel's face still. Daniel shrugged and looked over to Elijah. Elijah had eyes so dark they were almost black and were slanted severely. He had shoulder length black hair that was pulled back into a tight pony tail low on his head. His skin looked sun kissed, but Daniel figured that was the way he was engineered more than the boy being outside would do to him.
"Is he always like this?"
"I do not know," Elijah said softly.
"So what is the plan mi amigos?" Gabriel thought he was going to hit the long haired boy if he did not shut up soon.
"There is a control tower about a mile northeast of here. If we destroy it, then our troops will be able to move forward several miles without enemy resistance," Gabriel told them.
"What are going to be the problems that we are going to have to face?" Daniel asked, double checking the ammo on his pistol.
"What do you mean, problems?" Elijah spoke up. He had been busy trying to clean his blade on his soaked uniform to no avail. The blade actually looked a bit more bloody from his actions.
"Well, if this is the main control tower in the area, is it not going to be heavily defended?" Daniel asked.
"Of course it is," Gabriel snapped. "I do not see how that is going to be a problem."
"Wow, he does not see how it is going to be a problem. In case that you did not know, weaving in and out of a heavily defended area is a little more disconcerting than taking a stroll across the street," Daniel snapped right back. The other guy, Gabriel seemed oblivious to the problems that they were going to face.
"All we need to do is keep you safe long enough to lay down the charges and then we get the hell out of there," Gabriel said. Daniel's commander's voice came through on the coms.
"Daniel, what the hell are the three of you doing out there? We can not sit here all day waiting for you," the commander yelled loud enough to make the com link squawk.
"Right-o commander sir," was Daniel's intelligent reply. "We are discussing logistics," Daniel said with an emphasis on logistics.
"Logistics my ass," the commander growled. "Get the move on and get this done." The comlink shut itself off as the commander signed off for the moment.
"Okay, so lets get this show on the road," Daniel said happily. He lept up out of the foxhole, only to have to jump down to lay on his stomach as a line of fire shot just over his head where he was standing just a moment ago.
"By the way, are you two really like me?" Daniel asked the other two who were smart enough to not just jump out without checking their surroundings first.
"If you mean what I think you mean, then yes, we are alike," Elijah commented. When all was quiet again, Elijah climbed out carefully and followed close behind was Gabriel. Daniel threw one last look at his two comrades, stood up, and cackled madly as he started to run off to the northeast.
"He is going to get himself killed," Elijah said. Gabriel looked at him with a dead look in his eyes.
"If he does get killed between here and the place where we are to destroy the control tower, then we will rid his body of all the explosives that he has on him."
"Practical to a fault," Elijah commented. He carefully stood up and waited for return fire, but all was silent for the moment except for short bursts of rifles going off in the distance. He sheathed the large blade that he carried and started off at a good set pace following after Daniel's foot steps. Again, Gabriel followed not far behind.
As they entered further into the enemie's territory, a line of bodies could be seen from where they came from. Daniel had gone on ahead and killed any opposition that had gotten in the way. Gabriel had to admit even to himself that Daniel was not a total liability no matter what his mouth might say otherwise.
They made it to the control tower without much incident. Daniel had already been there for several moments and had already set up several charges around the base of the building. They were under an almost constant barrage of bullets, but there was sufficient cover for to stay safe for the most part.Without delay, Daniel was done, and met up with the other two.
"Sorry if I did not leave many behind for you guys to kill," he said inbetween laughs. He was not out of breath from running, but rather trying to dodge bullets while laughing at the enemies inability to aim right.
"Why be sorry?" Gabriel asked. The thought did not quite compute with the input that he had recieved since leaving the foxhole behind.
"It is just an expression," Daniel muttered. "We have about 30 seconds to get out of the blast radius," Daniel reported, finally looking a bit anxious. He was not one often caught in the blast zone of his own doing and did not want to start now.
"Why did you not say something sooner?" Elijah yelled and took off running in the direction that they had come from in the first place. The enemy must have known something was up, because they started filing out of the building and coming right for them and they did not look happy in doing so. Apparently them making it to the control tower was not part of the enemies plan.
"Time to go, Gabriel," Daniel shouted as he let off a couple of shots towards the enemy soldiers and was fast on the heels of Elijah. Gabriel only stayed behind long enough to finish off a few of the soldiers and then he ran to catch up with the other two. Daniel had the time exactly right, thirty seconds passed and they had to hit the ground running with their arms covering their heads as shrapnel rained down upon them.
The control tower was destroyed, more soldiers killed. The three remaining factions were able to move forward unhindered. Even though the factions had made major headway, it was only a month later when the war came to an end. The three children of war met only that one time and then went their own separated ways.
When the war ended, it could not really be said who was the winner or who came out on top. Tens of thousands of lives were lost over a dispute that nobody could remember clearly what it was. The New World Order government and military was created to try to appease all the nations of the world. It was a tenuous peace that seemed as if it was holding its collected breath. Militaries around the world were disassimilated and governments were treated the same result. There was now only the New World Order and that was the way it was going to be.
Nobody knew what to do with the children of war. There were three trained killers, the best they had ever seen, and nobody even knew how to control them. They were hardly older than five years old, but they looked as if they were fifteen or sixteen years old. They had no family, and the scientists and doctors that had created them were killed during the short time the children were used during the war.
The children really did not have a home to go to, and were basically left out on the streets to be homeless. Nobody wanted to celebrate their accomplishments, but of course the New World Order held a celebratory ball not too soon after the war came to an end. It was Christmas eve when all of the world leaders came together to try to decide what to do with these children.
They could not be left alone to their own devices. Too many splinter groups were vying for their attention, wanting to have the best minds ever created doing their dirty work for them. The world leaders had to come up with something to keep the children safe. Safe from themselves and safe from those that would try to use them, or so they told themselves over expensive wine and caviar.



Chapter 3

The courtroom was packed with everybody that wanted to see the final fate for the children of war.

Everybody that was anybody had shown up for this day in court. The hallways and all of the walkways teemed with people. All sizes of cameras were out and ready with their large flashes and special zooming equipment. Even the bathrooms were packed with people waiting to catch the slightest bit of news that would travel down the grapevine at a rapid speed. Recording devices were also out in force, and many people had their smart phones ready to catch a picture or a bit of a sound byte.
Not everybody that had made it to the courtroom was a reporter. Many people could be considered passerbies but there did not seem to be an end in sight. Most of those that had shown up were dressed to the nines, in their very best, because who would want to be caught on somebody elses camera and not be dressed properly.
Those that actually managed to get into the main courtroom were those that could bribe the most and called in every favor that they could think of. The three children were to be presented to the court without a trial. Of course this was not normal procedure, but these children were not of the norm. They were brought here to see the judge and be sentenced. Nobody really knew what was going on outside of the few that were in charge of the sentencing.
The courtroom itself was rather large. There was shiny wood paneling for the walls that gleamed in the sunlight coming through the stained glass windows that lined one entire wall. The ceiling reached up almost twenty feet with light panels allowed in the rooftop to allow ambient light into the room. The only electrical lighting that the room recieved was from the hanging lights along the length of the room hanging down from the tall ceiling. The floor itself was made of cracked marble and buffed to a briliance that it had not seen in many years. Rows of seats lined three quarters of the room, but could no longer be seen because of such a dense crowd.
"All rise for the honorable John Mathis," a court ordered policeman announced as he opened a side chamber door for the judge to enter the courtroom. The judge that entered was one of the youngest to serve as a magistrate in this league of courts. The New World Order had rid itself of any opposing judges and plugged in those that would rule in their favor.
Judge Mathis had shockingly black hair that was closely cropped to his head. He had black bushy brows that sat over liquid brown eyes that seemed to be set automatically into a scowl. His nose was thin and long, and reached a point that sat above two bloodless lips.
The only people in the courtroom that were sitting were the three teenage boys that had become the children of war. At the announcement, each of them stood. Daniel had a smirk on his face as if he did not have a care in the world. Elijah and Gabriel were a little more sedate in their expressions, but they still managed to look down their noses at the people that stood in front of them that were presenting them to the judge.
"All may be seated," the policeman announced to the crowded room. The only ones that would take a seat were the boys and the people that were sent to place the sentence upon them. The judge took a seat behind the bench. He glanced down at the papers in front of him and kept shuffling them back and forth as if he could not stay still for more than a short moment at a time.
"I will assume that each one of you know why you are here," the judge said to the three boys. The three of them stood as one and gave a sharp nod of their heads. Daniel was grinning from ear to ear while the other two followed suite at a more sedate pace. Daniel stood there and smiled as if nothing could phase him or bother him in the least, when as far as he knew nothing nor nobody could touch him.
"You have been found, by a jury of your elders, to be a lawful liability to the general public," the judge announced to the courtroom. As the words were uttered, the courtroom exploded with sound. Sound bytes were sent to those waiting outside and to their appropriate TV and radio stations.
The judge tried to shout over the noise for order and there was nothing to stop the uproar. He continued to bang the gavel and finally had to order the policeman stationed throughout the room to start escorting the loudest members of the press out of the courtroom. It took several minutes before order was restored throughout the room. The judge became short of breath and red in the face. The grin had finally fallen from Daniel's face, but all three of them retained an air of arrogance.
Once the courtroom finally settled in, there was only about half of the people that were allowed to remain in their selective spots and those that were further in the back of the room, slowly elbowed their way forward to get a better spot at seeing the looks on the faces of the boys. The judge finally called the policemen back to their stations around the room and normalacy ensued for the moment.
"If there is another outburst of such proportion again, I will have every single one of you removed from my courtroom without any chance of catching your precious newsworthy tid bits. Now, as for you three young men, I must report the decision that was made in everybody's good interest." The judge was back to shuffling the bits of paper like he was putting off the judgement until the last possible moment. It was not really clear if he was doing it to prolong the moment or he actually felt bad for the boys that he was about to pass judgement upon.
"I am obligated to tell each of you that you have been offered a spot in the New World Order military. Since you are still technically underage, you will be given a desk assignment until your commander has decided otherwise. If you do not take the offer of room, board, and meals, you will be sent on your own way.
"Before you make the decision you will first be taken to our hospital facility. There you will have an electronic tracker implanted onto the bone of your ankle. The fusion of this device will be permanent and there will be no way for you to remove it without causing debilitating damage to the ankle itself."
This announcement sent a flurry of action all the way through the courtroom. The judge had to bang his gavel a couple of more times to get their attention and get them to calm down to the point of normalacy again. Thinking that the most juiciest bits had been announced more than one of the news people left to go report to their respective agencies. Gabriel and Elijah took the news with solid solemnity while Daniel had a look of outrage on his face.
"There will be order in this courtroom!" the judge shouted over the crowd that was gathering at the doors. "Get those damn doors shut and the rest of these reporters out of this courtroom!" he shouted at the policemen that were already moving in the direction of the doors. "You three, sit your rear ends in those chairs until I say otherwise."
Daniel stopped moving mid motion from walking towards the doors himself. The other two, on the otherhand, did not seemed very fazed by this latest development. At the judges order, they each sat down. They had to wait a moment for all of the commotian to calm down once again. The policemen were finally able to rid the room of every last newsperson as the judge still fiddled with the same papers he had had this entire time.
He motioned for the main guard to come over to the bench to speak to him in tones that could not be heard away from the bench. The guard then disapeared through the door that was attached to the judge's chambers. The three boys looked at one another, but could not hazard a guess as to what was going on now.
It was only a few moments for the guard to come back into the room. Two people were following him, one male and one female. They each wore a starched uniform that was crisp and clean. The color was tan on brown with creased folds that looked like it had just come of the rack. There was no insignia on either uniform, but the man seemed to be of a higher rank since the woman was one step behind him and slightly to the left.
The man had a pleasant expression on his face that made him look more welcome to the boys, but they knew better than to trust anybody that they do not know everything about. The man was tall and long of limb. His hands had long fingers which he kept inward and close to the sides of his body. He had piercing blue eyes that looked to keep everything in the room within his sight. His nose was thin, but short, almost making his face look out of proportion. His lips, however, formed a perfect cupid's bow with which he smiled benignly with.
The woman, on the other hand, had a more severe appearance. Her curly hair was pulled back into a strict ponytail with no stray strands poking out. It looked like she either used a lot of hair spray or gelled it back into submission. Her skin was just the palest of tans which offset her dark brown eyes. She had a roman nose set above a full set of lips. Her face was set into a glare as if she was ready to meet any problem head on.
The boys looked at each other and gave a shrug because they could not see how these two people were going to affect them in the slightest. They were just two more people in the game of life and they could not wait until this little party was over. The two new uniformed people walked forward to stand in front of the boys.
"It is good to finally meet you," the man said to them. "My name is Commander Felton, and I am here to oversee your decision on whether you will be joining us within the army of the New World Order." He gave them a moment of consideration and waited patiently for their answers. Daniel, of course, was the first one to respond.
"Hell no, there is no way I am about to join up with you guys," Daniel pratically yelled with a full out glare distorting his facial features. "We fought for years against you guys. I am not about to switch sides and say that everything has become honky dory and let us all forget that we tried to kill each other during the war."
"Daniel, you must consider-" started Elijah who reached out to put an hand on Daniel's arm. Daniel shrugged him off and took a few steps apart from the other two.
"Do not tell me that you guys are actually considering this!" Daniel said in an outrage. He looked disbelievingly at who was once his two comrades, however short it may have been. He stared at Gabriel who just shrugged and took a couple of steps towards the two standing there in uniform.
"I do not think it really matters where I am going as long as I get there for the time being," Gabriel told commander Felton. He reached out with a hand, ready to shake hands with the other man. Commander Felton, with a grin on his face, reached out with his own and gave Gabriel's hand a good shake.
"I am glad that you have the sense to come to us," he said, arrogance filled his voice. He glanced over at Elijah, waiting for the kid to make the next move. Elijah, for his part, looked rather undecided, especially with Felton's change of voice that no longer matched the look on his face. Elijah did not know who to trust, or whether he should be trusting at all. But, life had to go on and it seemed like it would be better to have a place to call home rather than be on his own out in the streets.
"I guess I am going to also join with you," he said carefully to Felton.
"A wise choice, Elijah," the woman spoke. Her voice was like a rich honey that you wanted to taste and roll around on your tongue. She glanced at Daniel and sent him a fierce glare because he was trying to change the other two boys' mind. "You must realize, Daniel, that by not joining us now, you will never be able to join us again. This is a one time chance-"
"One time chance, my ass!" Daniel spit out at her. "All I know is that you guys are one of the main causes for the world that made me who I am. I do not trust you, bitch."
"Well then," she spoke calmly. She turned to the other two boys and also held out her hand for them to shake it. "My name is Une. And I am here to take you safely to our labs for the tracker to be implanted."
"Oh, piss off," Daniel said as he tried to make his way to the door. Felton reached to his side and pressed a button on the walkie talking that was attached to the belt at his side.
The back doors, or rather the front doors to the courtroom opened and a team of six soldiers came into the room, blocking Daniel's way of leaving. Daniel looked behind him, throwing daggers with his glare at Commander Felton and the woman that called herself Une.
"It is useless to fight us, Daniel," Une stated calmly. She had the utmost confidence that things will go the way that she wanted and was not worried about Daniel's little outburst. She looked down her nose at him as if he were a child, which seemed to make the young boy even angier.
Daniel, seeing as there was not a way out of the situation just yet, gave out an angry sigh. He knew he could not do anything at the moment, but maybe his chance would come sooner or later. The soldiers at the door surrounded Daniel, so that he would not have a route to escape from, or so they thought. Daniel knew that if he really wanted to, he was sure that he could get away from the courtroom without a problem. His biggest problem would be the media outside the courtroom and getting away from the media hounds that were still stationed outside the building.
"Fine, whatever," he said to the room. He would rather get the trouble done and over with now instead of being hunted for the rest of his life.
"Good choice," Une purred. It would seem as if the woman was more in charge of the situation than Felton was, as if she had more clout where they came from. "I really do not care if you join us, Daniel, but you will have a tracker implanted on your ankle or you will sit in one of our jail cells until you decide otherwise."
Daniel's eyes widened just the barest of bits at that statement. He knew he should not be surprised, but it was still a shock to know that these two would do anything to them to get what they want. He also knew that this is how they ended up on top after the war. Their group, or so called New World Order, would do anything and everything to see all of the people underneath their thumb.
"Cuff him," Une told the group of six soldiers that stood by the door. "I do not want anything to happen to him on the way to the lab facility." Doing as he was told for once, Daniel held out his wrists for them to cuff him. The sooner that this whole thing was over, the sooner he could go off on his own. The soldiers obliged Une and the cuffs were set tightly against Daniel's wrists.
Elijah and Gabriel looked in askance towards Une and Commander Felton.
"Do not worry, you two," Commander Felton told them. "You have chosen to come with us without being coerced in your actions. You do not have to be cuffed. As long as you do not change your minds," he added as a last bit of advice. His voice had slowly turned to ice in warning the other two. Elijah gave a nod of his head and Gabriel just shrugged his sholders. To Gabriel, it really did not matter what was going to happen to him anytime soon. He knew that this route he would get what he needed and apparently nothing was going to change that.
"Good to see that at least two of you boys could see some sense," the judge muttered. He had been forgotten, but he wanted to put his two cents in to the situation. The judge looked over each of them carefully, taking in each of their expressions from Commander Felton's chilling smile to Daniel's look of defeat for the moment. Satisfied, the judge left the room with a grin on his face, through the back door that would lead to his chambers.
"Let us move on then," Commander Felton said to the boys. Elijah and Gabriel waited for him and Une to pass and then fell into place behind them. Daniel, on the other hand, had to wait for the six soldiers to get in line behind the rest of the group before he could move.
"I can not believe that you guys would choose to go with them," Daniel growled out at his two passing once upon a time comrades.
"You will be silent, or you will be gagged," Une stated, once again back in her element of control. With that being said, Daniel figured that it would be better for his self preservation that he should shut his mouth for the time being. The commander smiled at Daniel at his wise choice and left the room first, followed closely by Une and the other two boys. The six soldiers with Daniel filed out of the courtroom last.