I
lie in bed, thinking. Not thinking about anything in particular, just thinking.
I was going to sleep, but something in my gut told me that I was better off.
Even if I wanted to go to sleep, I was too restless to anyway. Since I couldn’t
sleep, I took the necklace from earlier out of my pocket. Something was
peculiar about it. I ran my hand over the ruby, and I noticed something. A
crack. I grabbed the necklace and smashed it against the floor. It shattered
immediately, and something small fell out. It was a note.
Ms.
Devourne
19956
R Street
Come
to me. I need to talk to you in person. Notes and phones are not reliable.
Everyone is watching.
The
first word that I thought of was weird.
Who writes old fashioned notes and hides them in fake jewels? But yet, there is
a piece inside of me, a piece that is curious. A piece that wants to know what
this is about. Why not? I have nothing to lose. They cannot threaten me if I
have nothing. They cannot make me more miserable than I already am. If they want
to kill me, so what? Others that are better than me deserve to live. If it
means me dying instead of them, hell, I’ll die. So on I walk, to the R Street
and find the address that was listed. I knock. Unlike the J dorms, these are
apartments. There is no hall of several rooms per floor. Just small houses,
separated by the ground and air outside. I knock on the door, suddenly
cautious. All the other facilities I know of for the communities are dorm
houses. Why is this one so special? Why apartments? What difference do
apartments make? I keep knocking, but no one’s coming. Annoyed, I start
frantically banging on the door. A girl finally answered.
“WHAT. COULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT. AT
THIS TIME OF NIGHT?!!!!!!!” she looks at my face, and her expressions softens
and molds into a look of confusion. “Wait… you aren’t…. what’s your name,
girl?”
“Umm…. Syndromei. And I was asked
to come here. I’m busy during the day, so I decided to come during the night.”
The girl smiled crookedly. “What an
odd girl. Alright then, come in. Just so you know, I brought you here, and I’m
Lily. The person who you should be talking to is in that room.”
She points across the hall to a
barely lit room. Its main light source is candles, which is weird, because we
have electricity. No one has used candles since hundreds of years ago. I walk
into the dark room, and I see two cushion chairs and one wooden table. There is
someone sitting in the chair nearest to me, so I sit at the one across the
table from it. I can see the boy’s face clearly now. He has a dark blue
sweatshirt with white writing on it. He has black hair and brown eyes, with tan
skin. I’ve never seen anything like him before. It reminded me of the mystery
little boy who used to visit me when I was in the hospital.
When
I was little, I had weak bronchial tubes. I was hospitalized many times, and
was bullied a lot. That was when I used to cry, and the doctors always told me
I was under too much stress. I would cry my eyes out until my stomach hurt and
my eyes were so swollen I couldn’t see anything. I would scream and yell at the
nurses who would come to “help” me and throw things at them. They always left,
and not a single one was the least bit persistent. I knew no one could help me,
and I didn’t take any time trying not to show it. Three times I tried to kill
myself, until they had to put me in a “special” room. I never believed in god,
but I always prayed that the entire hospital would burn and go to hell. I was
miserable. Why would I let myself live if I had nothing to live for? But one
day, I had a mysterious visitor. He was from room 313, and he had a broken arm
in a sling. He was wandering, trying to escape the annoying nurses, when he saw
me in my room. His face lit up when he saw me, and ran into my room. When the
nurses ran through the halls trying to find him, they wouldn’t dare come into
my room. He had pale-ish skin and a broad smile. I always tried to get him to
leave, but he was stubborn. He would talk to me, and laugh. He didn’t laugh at
me, but at himself. When he finally left, I thought he wouldn’t come back, but
he did. He visited me every day and listened to my pain, my opinion. He never
teased me, and he didn’t call me stupid or psycho. Many times I had asked his
name, and he always told me he would tell me the next day. When he was fully
healed, I thought he wouldn’t come to me anymore. But then, he purposefully
broke his other arm, and then came to me the next day, saying, “Guess you’ll
have to deal with me for a little while longer!” with an idiotic smile. That was
the first day I learned what “happy” felt like. But then, the Paranas were
elected as the superiors, and I was dragged out of the hospital, and forced to
become strong. He was the one person in this world I was convinced I missed. If
I was living in a different world, I might have even loved him. I swore never
again to cry, and that one day, I would see that mystery boy again. Sadly, so
far, I haven’t succeeded.
I stare at the boy now sitting in
front of me. He looks a year older, but looks can be deceiving. I decide to ask
the first question.
“Who’re you?”
He looked up from the book he was reading. “Will. You’re
Syndromei, right? What do you want?”
“If you
have any, I guess I want answers.”
He shook his head. “If you want answers, ask the damn
Paranas. I’m not their pawn, like you.”
I
ignore him. I don’t believe he won’t help me. “Who exactly are the Paranas?”
He stares at me hard. After a long pause, he sighs and says,
“Tell me what you know first. I don’t want to just be repeating old news.”
I
think, racking through my brain. “Not much, just that they were elected by the
special community. They make the rules, and they are as powerful as-as some
legends.”
For the
first time, I see a thin, small grin appear on his face. “Some legends, yes.
Like the Greek gods, perhaps? The Paranas are cyborgs, in a way. They are made
of computer generated robots, creating the perfect leader. They are supposed to
erase all imagination, all thoughts people think of on their own. All
personality, all individuality, gone. They are our worst nightmares. No one can
stop them.”
Psht.
Tell me something I don’t know. “And you know this……..how?”
He stares at me so coldly; I think
my eyes will freeze if I don’t look away. “I’m not supposed to say this, but I
don’t see any harm, since they’ll kill you anyway. I wasn’t raised like you were. You were raised by
nurses and robots. I was raised by my parents. They were killed when I was ten,
and I was dragged to this facility.”
I don’t
even try to stop my jaw from dropping onto the floor. All my life, I thought it
was 100% impossible to be raised by your own parents. They live in a completely
different community than any of us, and we never get to even meet them after
birth. So how…how can this be true?
If he
is bothered by my confusion, he didn’t show it. Instead, he said, “I’m an R,
which means risk, another word for threat. It’s a name for people with special
powers. I can transfer things into other’s heads. I’m going to transfer
something into you. It may hurt, but bear with it.
Without
warning, he sends me into a pool of darkness, which I assume is in my head.
Suddenly, a setting appears in my head. I’m in an old fashioned house, full of
couches and tables. It’s black and white. I’m guessing he erased all the color
from it. There is a small kid in the corner, crying. Two older people, a girl
and a boy, probably in their thirties or early forties, are standing in front
of the door. They’re screaming, yelling at something to stay back. I follow the
terror in their eyes to something….horrific. There’s a fire exactly where the
monster is standing, but it’s unaffected. It looks human, but the skin over the
thing’s neck is ripped, showing computer-like technology. Now the parents are
crying, begging the thing not to touch them. The thing shoots the parents, and
the boy screams and starts shaking mom and dad, uncontrollably crying now. The
boy passes out, probably from loss of oxygen. The thing steps out of the fire.
I lock my knees and fall at the sight of it.
The
monster is a Parana.
