24-Hour Short Story Contest | Us and Them
Celestial, Mateo Andrijanić | Source
The beep of the intercom in my desk drew me out of my sleep.
‘Sir. The prisoner is in the briefing room as you requested, sir.’
I tried to sigh in a way that was not audible through the intercom, but I had no success.
‘Thank you, lieutenant.’
The full moon was fucking up with my sleep patterns, as usual. I fell asleep reading the file of a certain new arrival whose presence was already stirring rumors and chit-chat across the whole Izsak Base. As much as I saw it as just routine, it was the first time we had such a young prisoner in these parts. There were no precedents as for how to restrain him or how to attend him properly; but, if Ifrit’s intel was right, he could be easily the highest-profile criminal we ever held around here.
Nevertheless, I still could not believe how a ten-year-old boy was brought here with a security retinue large enough to make it look like Charles Manson just stole a candy bar. Either way, if the High Command decided it, it was our mission to hold him here; if he was supposed to spend the rest of his days here, rotting himself beyond any hope of escape or release, I was not going to be the one lifting a finger against it.
After having a nice sip of whiskey, I took the folders on the desk and walked out of my office to meet him.
I did a quick recap of everything important I had read in the files while I walked down the halls of Izsak, on my way to the briefing room. The name of the kid was Tim Brent, codename Eclipse. Born in Plymouth, Mass., son of a retired high-ranking CPN officer who participated in countless operations in and out of the Earth. His wife was a civilian, a neurologist of some renown in the medical and scientific community whose breakout studies in the field of advanced applications of the human mind made her close to some obscure think-tanks and non-ethical organizations that, for some strange reason, the CPN had a prolonged interest in funding and supporting.
The boy had been brought in two weeks ago by an elite team consisting of three Death Dealer assault marine squads and a medical team in charge of monitoring his health and mental condition for reasons that were, up to that point, classified. Back then, Cpl. Hastings, my aide, said he must have been one of the rampant experiments that the CPN occasionally funded in their non-ending search to best our allied races; tests that, in time, she said, would cause the doom of all mankind. As alarmist as I knew she was, I dismissed her words as nothing more than paranoia and sensationalism, caused by the continued isolation of living in Izsak.
After reading Eclipse’s file, I wasn’t so sure about that anymore.
As I finally arrived at the briefing room’s doors, a bad feeling started to grow inside of me. I tried to breathe, taking a moment to look through the reinforced borosilicate windows that covered the hall. The reflectors outside clumsily tried to illuminate the Moon’s surface, losing their battle against our location’s darkness in the same way my relaxation routine wasn’t helping at all in defeating the hard, unspeakable truth growing in my mind.
That little something, telling me that this kid shouldn’t be here.
It was hard to tell that the boy waiting for me, sitting in an inconspicuous chair on the other side of the room’s automatic doors, had been classified by Ifrit’s intel as an Omega-level event. Wearing a red sports jacket to make him somewhat distinguishable of every other inmate, by express request of the medical team that brought him here, he looked as if a school-grader chose a serial killer costume for Halloween. The prison suit obviously didn’t fit him at all, and he was rubbing his arms out of the sheer cold that remains as a collateral effect of surviving a stasis prison. Not that our base’s life support system helped at all in making him feel warm and fuzzy.
After I entered the room, the doors closed behind me, silencing the outside noises so much that I could hear my own heartbeat. Appropriate, given I would need solace enough to conciliate the fact that this kid had bombed an entire district only with his mind. I took the only remaining chair left in the room, carefully putting it at the recommended distance, and sat on it putting the folders in my thighs as I kept my sight at all times on our newest inmate. I noticed his forehead and temples were bandaged, probably as a result of the tinkering that his doctors made in our medical pavilion before waking him up from his stasis cell.
The kid even had a teddy bear, for God’s sake.
I began the conversation the only way I could think of.
‘How are you feeling, kid?’
The boy shrugged, rubbing his arms a little faster as he spoke.
‘I feel cold, sir.’
Obviously.
‘As we all do around these parts. What’s your name?’
‘T-T-Tim, sir.’
‘Tim what?’
‘T-T-Tim Brent, sir.’
At least his memory wasn’t impaired by the procedure.
‘Do you know where are you right now, Tim?’
The boy shook his head in negation. I chose to overlook this, as I knew that I couldn’t expect anyone to know that the CPN had a top-secret prison facility on the dark side of the Moon.
‘I’m going to ask you some questions, Tim. And I’m going to need that you answer said questions sincerely.’
‘Where is my mom, sir? And Dad?’
Quite fast, he was.
‘That was exactly the first question I was going to ask you, Tim.’
‘I… I don’t know. I… I want to talk to Mom.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible, Tim.’
The kid hugged his teddy bear in response to what I said. It was kind of unusual to see him as bonded with a stuffed animal as he was for his age. And unsettling, as well.
‘And that’s not going to be possible because, well… We currently don’t know where they are. We thought that you could tell us about it. That you could give us any clue regarding their whereabouts.’
The boy remained silent. I opened his file, doing the usual good cop-bad cop routine usual in this kind of interrogations. Not that I had applied that trick to a pre-pubescent psychic terrorist, though.
‘Where were you last time that you remember, Tim?’
‘I… I was at home, sir.’
‘Do you live in Paris, Tim?’
The boy tried to babble an answer.
‘… No, sir. I live… We live in LA.’
A fact I was already aware of. Indeed, the Brent family had their main home in Los Angeles according to their tax reports and medical insurance’s files. But Nathalie Brent was something of a globetrotter herself, constantly traveling to labs and medical facilities around the world. And the circumstances behind Adrian Brent’s retirement from the CPN meant that he had a lot of free time to spend. Suffice to say, he was a very active supporter of his wife’s career as a lecturer and associate with various scientific organizations…
… as well as a possible handler of Eclipse’s other activities.
And the folder I had on my hand contained extensive information regarding the Brent family’s trip to Paris, one month ago. The dates were too close to the attack not to make a connection.
‘Were you on a vacation trip to Paris then, Tim? With your parents?’
The boy nodded with his head. I was making some progress after all.
‘Do you remember exactly where you were staying?’
The kid shook his head again. But I noticed he started to tremble. Slightly, but the reaction was there.
‘Were you and your parents staying near the Passy district?’
Interesting. The boy didn’t produce any response. He just stayed there, hugging his teddy bear tightly. I decided to change my strategy.
‘Did your… mother gift you that teddy bear, Tim?’
‘… yes, sir.’
The stuffed animal in question was in pretty good shape. Either he was very careful with his toys, or Mrs. Brent had been a very good and disciplined mother.
‘When did she gift you that bear, Tim?’
‘… on my sixth birthday, sir. She told me I could pick any color I liked.’
He picked black. Quite a strange color for a stuffed animal, to be honest.
I noticed that the bear had a strange, prism-like object hanging from its collar.
‘May I see your bear, Tim?’
The boy nodded. I decided to take the risk.
I put the folder in the floor and walked slowly towards him, trying not to appear hostile to him. As I got closer to him, I felt something awkward in my head, very much like what you feel when you use a high-speed elevator or when you are on a high-G simulator in the cadet school. Nevertheless, I kept walking until I was at arm’s length of him, carefully kneeling to watch Tim’s bear.
The kid looked me like a terrified animal. I did my best to smile gently to him, but it’s difficult to appear nice and gentle when you have one or two war scars covering your face. As I detailed the object hanging from the teddy bear’s collar, I felt mesmerized by its texture and surface, which seemed translucid and reflective of the various lights in the briefing room.
‘Can I hold it for a moment, Tim?’
The boy shook his head, hugging his bear even tighter.
I tried to touch Tim’s teddy bear… And then, it happened.
Just when my fingers touched the bear, I heard a very piercing, troubling noise that made a concussion grenade feel just like a breeze. I felt a violent force pushing me away, launching me and sitting me hard on the floor; my head barely avoiding to be hit against the chair.
I checked quickly to see if I had been hurt in any other way but, apart from the hard landing, I was perfectly fine.
But my nose was bleeding.
I took the folder from the floor and quickly left the briefing room, without even looking back at the kid. After a quick check at the infirmary, Dr. Chani, the resident MD at Izsak, told me I was in good shape but that, given the… unique abilities of our new guest, I would have to keep in touch for the following weeks. Our good doctor said that, for the moment, I had no symptoms of brain damage or similar conditions.
I asked myself, silently, if the families of the hundreds of people who mysteriously had their brains liquified a month ago in Paris received the same kind words.
Two hours later, I was back in my office. I had to report to my superiors, after all.
The holographic projector quickly produced the face of Vice Admiral Ellison, who seemed somewhat stressed and borderline irate. It seemed that the great gig in the sky wasn’t going as smoothly as I pictured.
‘Speak to me, Major Gilmour. Tell me you uncovered something useful in that interrogation.’
After lighting a cigar and pouring myself another glass of whiskey, I answered as best as I could.
‘Ifrit’s intel is right, Vice Admiral. The boy was in Paris in the month the attack took place.’
‘Fuck me, Gilmour. Of course Ifrit is right. Who the hell was behind the attack?’
‘The boy doesn’t seem to recall it, Vice Admiral. I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with that… operation your men did when he arrived.’
Vice Admiral Ellison laughed ironically.
‘Please, Gilmour. It was a necessary step. You felt first-hand what that kid is capable of doing. We needed to put at least a way to control him. To control the beast that his mother unleashed unto the world and the galaxy.’
‘I’m not sure we can actually control that, Vice Admiral. I think we’re losing time and men protecting that kid from the outside world. Sooner or later, who is going to protect us from him?’
‘As long as he keeps thinking his parents are on the run, we shouldn’t have any problems with that, Major. Not worse than the ones we’re having with France and Germany right now.’
I took a sip of whiskey, letting the ice blocks gnash against the glass of my vase.
‘I’m not sure he’s buying it, Vice Admiral. Besides, he’s a kid, for God’s sake. He should know what happened.’
Vice Admiral Ellison laughed. Again.
‘For fuck’s sake, Major. Do you think I give a single shit about he’s a kid? That little thing is a monster. He’s solely responsible for the greatest terrorist attack registered in the story of mankind since the Commonwealth was formed, right at the very heart of our dominion. Who cares if he melted his parents’ brains along with the other 45,596 people that he killed? What I need to know, what you need to know, is who did this and why.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And one last thing… If I were you, Major Gilmour, I wouldn’t put your money on touching that bear ever again.’
This short story is participating in the 24-Hour Story Contest Short Story by @mctiller featured here!
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