Fractured
Reality
Chapter
1
The
New Earth Coalition
January
17, 2339
Settlement
0012
It was a sunny day in
January, and I was at school. The air was brisk and frigid, but the
school was warm and unaffected, which was a rare blessing. Not many
people nowadays could afford heating. I was just beginning to fall
asleep when my teacher, Mr. Browndon, caught my eyelids drooping.
“Mr. Turner,
perhaps there’s something more worthy of your time than
history?” he asked, slapping his pointer stick against the
concrete outer wall.
Pure fear revived me,
and I threw me head back so hard I nearly got whiplash.
“No, uh, sir.
Sorry. I was paying attention, I swear.”
He sneered, gesturing to
the holoscreen behind him.
“Then perhaps you’d
like to elaborate on the Great Catastrophe?”
At least it was
something I knew about. In fact, there wasn’t a single person I
knew that wasn’t
familiar with it. I sighed and proceeded to recite the stories.
“The Great
Catastrophe was a massive nuclear war that erupted on Earth somewhere
around one hundred and twenty years ago. It wiped out much of Earth’s
natural wildlife, and whatever survived began to mutate over
succeeding generations,” I snickered a bit , “Clearly, we
survived.”
“And how did we
discover our new home?”
I’d apparently
missed that part. As he glared at me through his small bifocals, I
raised an absent hand in defeat.
“I don’t
know.”
“Luckily for
humanity, a physicist by the name of Kurtis Bontrager survived. He
and a few other survivors from the scientific community banded
together to unite our scattered people. Eventually, he scavenged
blueprints from a long-dead military experiment known as Project
Whiplash. It was supposed to be able to allow humanity to travel
through time, so to speak. We were able to discover New Earth after
the machine was built, and immediately began to colonize it. Sixty
years later, here we are.” He returned to his desk quietly.
It was a simple story, a
fact that had always bugged me. I hadn’t been alive in 2277,
over sixty years ago, but it was odd to me that such a terrible
catastrophe had, in the long run, basically been solved by packing up
and moving. Sure, it was across planes of reality, but still.
Shouldn’t there have been more?
However, I wouldn’t
be getting my answer from the simple-minded Browndon. I knew that
because he was the kind of teacher that taught straight from the
book; always had been. I figured he didn’t actually know
anything he was supposed to be teaching. It wasn’t his fault,
though. There were no colleges established, no actual places of
higher learning to attend. The history book itself barely had enough
to fill its measly two hundred pages. It was vague and generalized,
which was annoying.
I slumped back into my
seat and sank a few inches, yawned once, and then closed my
holodesk’s screen and prepared to take a nap.
Just
as my eyes began to droop, a shout from the hall woke me up. Then
another one. Browndon stood up, setting down his holotab, and walked
to the door. He was looking through the window when it opened,
slamming into his face. The
door opened, and in the doorway, in full dark blue Coalition attire,
was a man. He was tall, built like a brick, and had the face of
someone who’d seen more interesting things than the inside of a
low-class school building like mine. Behind the man was my red-faced
principal, Mr. Parson.
“Mr. Gra-,”
started Parson.
“You’d be
smart to keep your mouth shut, Parson. You know as well as I do that
the Coalition wouldn’t take too kindly to anyone denying them
their soldiers,” said the man, holding up a hand to silence
him. His mouth stretched into a fine line.
The entire room, as well
as Parson, immediately became silent. Even Browndon, who now stood
nursing his nose, was quiet. The man looked around the room quietly,
nodded, and then took out a holopad and peered at it.
“Turner, Matthew,”
he said, his voice gravely and rough. My entire class turned to stare
at me, but I sat still as a stone and said absolutely nothing. Surely
there was some mistake – The Coalition couldn’t be asking
for me,
could they?
His lips turned down
into a frown, and he stared at me from across the room.
“Speak when
addressed, son. I ain’t got all day.”
“Sir, there must be
some kind of mistake. Check your pad, I just turned sixteen last week
– The draft surely isn’t that desperate?”
“That’s the
concern of the Coalition, not you. You’re being called upon to
protect your people, and you don’t really have a say.”
Quiet chatter broke out
amongst my classmates, but all I could do was sit there, paralyzed.
Parson gave me a look of pity, then quietly approached my desk.
“Matt, there’s
nothing either of us can do. You’re going to have to go with
Colonel Grant. You know the rules,” he said quietly, placing a
hand on my shoulder in what I could only presume to be a comforting
manner. I peered over Parson’s shoulder at the Colonel, who
stood in the doorway, holopad clutched in both hands. He stood
straight up, to the point I probably could’ve run a knife down
his back and not cut a thing. It was almost disturbing how
conditioned he looked.
“Fine. Let me get
my stuff.”
Chapter
2
Fresh
Meat
January
17,
Project
Onyx Testing Facility
My delivery to the base
didn’t stop at the end of the car ride. After arriving at a
military airport and boarding a slim jet, I was sitting in an
uncomfortable seat with an X-shaped seatbelt strapping me in. I took
a deep breath and tried not to think about the possibilities of a
crash.
“Feelin’ the
nerves, kid?” said the man. He raised a single eyebrow.
“Yeah…”
I said, “Just a little scared of flying, that’s all.”
He chuckled. “It’d
do you good to get over that quick.”
We sat in an
increasingly awkward silence. After what seemed like an age of being
quietly regarded, the huge man put a hand on my shoulder and turned
me around. “Listen up. The place you’re going to is the
finest military testing facility on the entire continent. Sure as
hell won’t be easy, but you seem tough enough for a runt.”
He patted me roughly on the shoulder. “Louis Grant, former NEC
Lieutenant Colonel. Y’can’t contact me when you’re
in there, but I figure I should put a name to the face for you,”
he said, winking. I had the immediate feeling that he wasn’t
actually as cheerful as he let on.
I considered my options.
This man knew more than anyone else I knew. He even knew about my
father, from what I’d eavesdropped on while I was packing. What
did I need to ask him more than anything else? What had been nagging
at me since I’d first heard him speak of my dad?
The jet fired its
engines and began to move, and it became increasingly difficult to
keep my cool. I glanced down at my knuckles and was not surprised to
see that they were white on the sides of the seat. Looking over at
the Colonel, I finally decided what I’d ask to get my mind off
of the flight, if not for the little closure it might provide.
“Colonel…
Did you know my dad?” I asked, scanning his face. I saw the
wrinkles on it, the frown lines. There was war on that face. I’d
heard from my father that there’s nothing like a war to make a
man value living.
We’d been taught
the normal subjects in school: History, Math, Science, English, all
the normal stuff. Throughout the entirety, though, and especially in
recent years, it had never been made truly clear who the enemy was.
Everyone I knew talked about them like they were commonfolk,
simpletons; a minor problem that we should pass off and forget. The
military gave off this message especially. I’d watched an
interview with the General of the NEC once, and throughout the entire
thing he never gave a name, nor even an accurate description of them.
I remember that it always felt wrong to me. If they were such a
little threat, why were we at war for the fifth year in a row?
Shouldn’t they have been defeated by now?
My father had been a
great man. He was a kind father, a strong soldier, and a dedicated
husband. He’d been all those things, and for the longest time
I’d considered him invincible. When I’d heard the news of
his death, I remember thinking it was all just a dumb joke. “Nothing
can kill MY dad,” I’d said as my mother sobbed, still
clutching the ID tags she’d been given, “My dad’s a
Captain! He’s the finest soldier the NEC’s ever seen!”
The Colonel looked down,
wringing his hands. I forgot my momentary daydream and focused on
him.
“I didn’t
know him personally, no,” he said. His face looked like it
could’ve been carved from stone. I could detect something else
behind the tough exterior, though: a softer, more vulnerable part. A
part that could quite possibly have been sad. He looked away.
“Go on,” I
said.
He cleared his throat
and looked at me. I could see the cogs in his head turning, weighing
whatever it was that he was about to tell me.
“Did you ever see
your father’s body?” he asked.
I struggled for words.
What kind of question was that? Of course I’d seen my father’s
body. I’d seen the bag. I’d seen the bare outline of him
against that dreadful black plastic. They’d told me he’d
been killed in action saving a man’s life. I knew it had to
have been him. It sounded so much like something he’d have
done…
My eyes widened.
Realization struck me like a bowling ball.
I’d
never seen my father’s body. The
implications that the Colonel had subtly revealed were staggering,
but I had no idea what it meant.
“I… I…,”
he looked at me for a long time, his hand still on my shoulder.
Realizing I hadn’t taken a breath for about twenty seconds, I
sucked in a lungful and shook my head to clear the fuzziness. I
nodded to myself, removed his hand from my shoulder, settled into my
seat, and closed my eyes.
___________________________________________________
The flight lasted about
an hour, and I slept for none of it. When we landed, I gave a nod to
the Colonel and quietly exited. I didn’t say anything to him
because I had nothing else to say; it was enough that he’d
given me something new to think about, no matter how unsettling it
was.
Exiting the jet, I
walked slowly to ensure I’d cleared my head before I entered
the giant compound. It was large, built of concrete, but I got the
feeling that it was reinforced with something far stronger. I saw
very few windows, and the few that were there were barred on the
inside. It gave off the vibe of a prison. I didn’t like that
vibe.
The weight of the
Colonel’s words made the walk to the entrance nearly
intolerable, and it didn’t help that the doors were almost
four-inch-thick slabs of steel. As I pried them apart, the smell of
stale air entered my nose, and a long, white corridor stretched out
in front of me. There were doors on either side, alternating sides as
they went along, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of a
prison once again.
I was immediately
greeted by a thin, disheveled man. He was wearing wide-brimmed
glasses and a white labcoat with a black shirt underneath. The
labcoat was unbuttoned and his glasses were placed oddly. He’d
obviously dressed in a hurry, and his wispy blonde hair was in no
particular style.
“Turner. Matthew
Turner, right?” he asked quickly.
“Yeah, that’s
me.”
“Then I guess we’re
both late. Quickly, follow me.” He turned and set off at a
brisk pace down the hall, and, not knowing what else to do, I
followed close behind. I made sure to wipe my eyes a second time,
hoping they hadn’t turned red.
“I’m Doctor
Sevelyan, by the way. I get to brief you special recruits on Project
Onyx,” he said, turning a corner into a similar-looking hallway
as he did.
“Project whatnow?”
I asked, “What’s Project Onyx? What do you mean by
‘special recruits’?”
Sevelyan chuckled,
turning his head to the side. “Nevermind, then. You’ll
find out when we get t– Ah. Here we are.” He turned into
a large door that was labeled ‘BRIEFING ROOM’. I looked
tentatively between the sign on the door and Sevelyan, but he ushered
me in with a reassuring nod. I stepped in, discovering a room that
was darker than the well-lit hallway. There was a row of five chairs,
and all but one was taken. The others were occupied by two girls and
two boys, each looking to be the same age as myself. Out of the
corner of my eye I spied two men, both very large, carrying slim
assault rifles. They were held casually, but I knew they’d have
no problem whipping into action.
“Please sit, I’ll
be ready for the briefing in a moment,” said Doctor Sevelyan,
who was typing into a laptop and writing notes into a small tablet.
He switched rapidly between them, his stylus moving furiously across
the screen, his fingers skimming across the keyboard, and it
surprised me how well he seemed to be able to multitask.
I looked over at the
others, taking them in one by one. Closest to me, poised in his chair
with no care for the personal space of others, was a boy that seemed
to be a bit older than I was. He had shaggy, thin, black hair that
reminded me of feathers, but besides that he looked rather average to
me. He had no discerning marks; no freckles, no birthmarks, nothing
that I could see from my position looking at the back of his head. He
was turned facing toward the next chair.
In that chair sat
another boy, perhaps a bit younger than me, that had red hair and a
scatter of freckles on nearly all of his visible skin. He was talking
in a hushed voice to the older boy, but he seemed to be rather shy.
His slightly chubby body was huddled together as tightly as could be
without curling into a ball, and his brown eyes darted from person to
person in the room, although he never skipped a beat in his
conversation.
“Why do you think
we’re even here, though?” asked the black-haired guy.
“I-I don’t
know, but the two guys behind us don’t look like bodyguards,”
he gestured with his eyes toward the two men, still standing in their
spot toward the back of the room, “I-I think they’re here
to make sure we don’t run or something.”
“You guys are
stupid. They’re just here to watch us, they’re probably
evaluating us or something. Besides, who’d be crazy enough to
run from the NEC?” asked one of the girls.
I stopped listening and
leaned forward in my seat to get a look at her. She was on the
thinner side, and had straight shoulder-length brown hair. Her eyes
were green, and she was clearly the most intelligent member of the
conversation.
Just as I was about to
address the girl, the black-haired guy turned in his seat to look at
me. “Aaah. You’re the late guy. Took ya’ long
enough, we’ve been sitting here for thirty minutes.” He
gave me an inquisitive look, a single eyebrow raised. His eyes
scanned me in much the same way that the Colonel’s had. “What’s
your name, anyway?”
I frowned. “Yours
first. And the rest of you, what’re your names?”
The black-haired guy
considered it for a moment, then smiled. “I like your style,
kid. My name’s Andrew. You can call me Drew,” he jerked a
thumb toward the redheaded kid, “His name’s Brandon, but
he’s a bit shy, so there’s a slim chance of him telling
you himself.” He turned around and looked at the brown-haired
girl, and I followed suit.
She promptly held out
her hand. Each of the three of us shook it in kind, the slightest bit
perplexed. “Just call me Emma. It’s nice to meet you
guys.”
I smiled at her, shaking
her hand firmly. “I’m Matthew. You can call me Matt,”
I looked at the three of them, “I guess we’ll be getting
to know each other pretty well.” I frowned, took at glance at
Sevelyan. “What’s this all about, anyway? Any of you know
what ‘Project Onyx’ is?”
They all shook their
heads. “All I know is it’s some super-secret NEC thing,”
said Drew. Brandon and Emma nodded, and all I could do was sigh. We
all knew pretty much the same thing. The vagueness of the name didn’t
help in the slightest, either.
At that moment, I
finally registered that the other girl hadn’t said her name
yet. The way the chairs were angled, I couldn’t get a good look
at her face. All I could see was the curly blonde hair that splayed
around her like a curtain. It was long and dangled freely, keeping
her face hidden from the side. I was about to say something to her
when Sevelyan cleared his throat, calling for attention. Everyone
immediately stopped what they were doing and glued their eyes to him.
“As you know, you
were recruited by the New Earth Coalition to fight. However, you
don’t know enough about what you’re fighting,”
he looked briefly over at the two soldiers, “The NEC made sure
of that. Regardless, your enemy is one that mankind has never faced
before. They utilize magic that goes against all known laws of
physics and science, and our weapons have only been able to keep them
back for so long. Eventually, our defenses will fail. It’s an
inevitable outcome.”
He paused for a second,
looking at each of us in kind.
Emma raised her hand
quietly, and Sevelyan nodded to her.
“Sir, if I may ask…
What do you mean by magic? I’ve read books and fairy tails, and
they all have magic, but you’re telling me that’s all
real?”
She shook her head softly, “That’s a bit too mu-“
“Like I said, Mrs.
Thompson. Science can’t explain. Science says magic can’t
exist, but it does.
Something about this world allows it.” He lifted his tablet and
held it in one hand, pointing at the screen with the other. Images
began to appear. “This right here is the most common usage.
Manipulation of the elements.” The images showed a man in
shining armor, riding atop a large, gleaming white horse. The man was
brandishing a large warhammer above his head, his face contorted
because of the hectic frenzy, but that wasn’t the most unusual
part.
Lightning was striking
his hammer, but the sky was nearly cloudless. His eyes glowed bright
white, and the lightning spiderwebbed out from his hammer, striking
an entire line of rifle-clad men in front of him.
“Those men were
electrified so intensely that swatches of their muscle and inner
organs disintegrated. There were holes burnt from one end of the body
to the other,” he looked Emma directly in the eyes, emanating
confidence, “So. Explain that with science.”
Emma lowered her head
quietly.
He continued. “There
have been reports of men who can make fire from thin air and
manipulate the wind. This gives them an enormous advantage in the
war, and we simply won’t be able to hold out. So, as you can
imagine, we need changes to our military. We need to adapt. That’s
where you five come in.” He swiped the screen of his tablet,
and a picture of a five-pointed black flower popped onto the screen.
“This is a plant known to the locals as ‘Ebonmyre’.
We call it Onyx. While it may look like a regular, old, everyday
plant to you, to the locals it is a mystical and revered plant,
growing only in a few remote places. When consumed, the plant bestows
its user with increased neural function and higher energy efficiency.
Basically, anyone who crushes this plant into a paste and eats it is
able to think faster and with increased accuracy, to run for longer,
etcetera.”
Sevelyan winked at the
five of us. The blonde girl looked up, but her face was still
obscured. I exchanged a glance with Drew; his expression said
nothing.
“We have obtained
samples of Onyx and, through two years of rigorous testing, have
isolated the few chemical products and genetic traits of the plant
that create this effect. We believe we can make it permanent.”
He paused for a moment,
and I remember thinking, rather cynically, that we’d been
recruited to become lab rats.
“And you expect us
to let you… What, mess with our DNA or whatever?” asked
Drew. He was sitting forward now, his smirk gone.
“I don’t
expect you to let
me do anything. I’m afraid you have no choice in the matter.
You were all chosen for specific character traits that you have,
because Onyx strengthens strong characteristics in both personality
and in physique. I’m not at liberty to say which any of yours
were at this point in time, but I can assure you that it must
be you five that undergo the assimilation process.”
We all sat there in
silence, not sure of what else to say.
“Will it be
painful?” asked Brandon, who had somehow managed to scrunch his
body up even further without snapping the chair in half.
Sevelyan gave Brandon a
look of pity, and then nodded gravely. “It’s likely to be
one of the most painful processes you’ve ever endured. The
forced re-coding of DNA was not what nature intended; it’s only
natural that you get punishment for it.”
“That’s
ridiculous. You’re saying we have to endure this pain because,
somehow, our being forced to go through with this is our
fault?” I snorted.
The doctor narrowed his
eyes, but said nothing. Then, slowly: “We will begin procedures
tomorrow at 08:00. Be awake by 06:00 so that you can bathe and eat
breakfast. There will be no breaks,” he waved a hand to the
door, shooing us out, “One of your officers will be waiting
outside; he will lead you to your dorms.”
The five of us exited
the room quietly, still stupefied at the massiveness of tomorrow’s
events. A man who introduced himself as our supervising officer took
the lead and began leading us to our bunks, forcing us all to
scramble to get our things. I let Brandon, Emma, and Drew take the
lead so that I could drop back to talk with the mysterious girl, who
was walking rather slowly. Taking a closer look at her, I saw that
she was wearing a dark leather jacket with a plain gray shirt
underneath. There were slim blue jeans on her legs and black sneakers
on her feet. The most striking feature, however, were her eyes. They
were a deep, dark grey. They wouldn’t have been directly
striking to me if they weren’t so deep; there was a quality to
them that reminded me of a finely polished piece of granite, and I
found myself getting lost in them as we walked.
“Like what you
see?”
I stopped dead in my
tracks, my mind ramming into the brick wall of the present. The girl
was staring at me, her face – a finely carved, well shaped face
– was questioning me all on its own.
“I, uh… No?
Wait, yes?” I said. I’d had dealings with attractive
girls before, but never one so straightforward as her. I straightened
up. “Sorry. Just a bit flustered, is all. My name’s Matt,
what’s yours?”
She snorted, then asked:
“Why are names so important to people? It’s honestly kind
of annoying. They hold little more meaning than the word of a
politician.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Pretty strange analogy.”
“Doesn’t
change how accurate it is, now does it?” she asked, “Still,
though. Why do you want to know?”
“Just for the sake
of curiosity. Otherwise I’d have to make up a nickname for you,
and I’m not very good at that.”
She narrowed her eyes at
me, crossing her arms in the process.
“Listen, we’re
gonna be put through this crazy stuff together, we might as well have
names to put to faces. Names are valuable things.”
“Fine. Just call me
Lou. Simple and easy to remember for a flustered guy like yourself.”
The sarcasm practically dripped from her words, and I felt my cheeks
immediately catch fire.
“Lou, huh? Alright,
then. Lou it is,” I said, fighting to maintain my calm and
collectedness.
She nodded her silent
approval, then sped up and passed the others. I caught up with them,
and Drew elbowed me roughly, chuckling.
“Tough crowd, eh?
She doesn’t really strike me as the cute ‘n cuddly type,”
he said.
“She didn’t
strike me that way, either,” I said, rubbing my arm, “She’s
kinda weird. Do you know anything about her?”
Drew shook his head,
then laughed. “You shouldn’t let one girl get to you like
that. As the saying goes, there’re plenty of birds in the sky,”
he frowned. “Or something like that.”
I smiled at him. “Sounds
like you’ve got some experience in that area.”
His eyes practically
glinted. “You could say that. I was pretty infamous as a
ladykiller back in my hometown.” He grinned mischievously, then
put a hand to his chin, adding: “I can still remember Alys
Brown. Man, the things we did...”
“I think I’d
rather avoid the details.”
The officer stopped at
an open door, turned toward us.
“These are your
bunks for the entirety of your stay here. Since there’re only
five of you, and six bunks, you’ll all be able to choose your
own bunks. Just be ready to wake up whenever I tell you to,” he
said, giving us all a hard look, “Oh, and my name’s
Jacobson. You can call me Sir.” With that, he left the room,
leaving us all to get our things in order.
I chose the bunk in the
middle row on the right. Brandon chose the one to my left, and Drew
took the one to my right. Emma and Lou chose the two farthest from
the door on their side.
It was about 8:00 PM by
then, and I figured it would be a good idea to get some sleep, with
such a huge day tomorrow. After arranging my single blanket and
pillow, saying good night to everyone else, and shoving a sleeping
pill down my throat, I fell into a light and generally unrewarding
sleep.
Author’s Note:
I fully intend to continue this story, and will be posting updates
repeatedly. It is a long project that I hope to get to novel length,
so bear with me while I get it up to par. Please feel free to review
and critique now, just, y’know, be gentle. It’s my first
time.
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