Chapter 11

Read from the start here: Chapter One


The knocking ceased.


All of the furniture that somehow remained intact, including the bed, a cabinet and two small chairs, had been stacked very clumsily against the door, while a lone light bulb swung restlessly from the ceiling. Two partially shredded curtains billowed gently along the window with the glass inside the frame cracked but still intact.


As the silence continued, a feeling of peace began to trickle into the room, like a soothing tributary from a raging river, particularly now the thumping and shouting had stopped. The room was decently sized, consisting of a rectangular main area with a small corridor leading off to a bathroom and the only entrance, which was now blocked. The occupant, anticipating a second assault, considered this a good thing as it would allow him to put up a good defence. The reality was that he didn’t want to face that unless it was absolutely necessary. He just wanted to get out.


It was never meant to be like this.


Zidane, for that was the name of the boy currently sat hugging his knees beneath the windowsill, appeared distressed and panicked. Never before in his short life had he felt so in control of his own actions, but just as gorging one’s self after weeks of starvation brings on a stomach ache, he had evidently overdone it and was now feeling some undesirable effects, including a roaring headache and weak, shaky limbs. As a result he had almost destroyed this place and yet even if he had done, one thing stood firm in his mind; they deserved it.


Exactly fifty eight minutes had passed since he had woken this morning, in a room seven floors down and around five hundred feet away. Zidane knew this, because even at eleven years old, the boy’s mental capabilities far exceeded his peers, though without any recollection of ever meeting any, this was a gift he’d yet to realise the significance of. To him, whoever and whatever he was, he was just a normal boy, but this rather ironically was not the case at all.


The day began in the final remnants a dream in which Zidane recalled fleeing across a luscious grassy field in the hazy dawn sunshine. Who he was running from and where he was headed to had been subsequently forgotten; the details slipped away as soon as he heard the deafening footsteps that came from outside his subconscious cocoon. They originated from the white coats, simply named for the uniforms they wore, who were coming to check on him like they did every morning, leading him to wake up in the same gaol cell where he’d spent most of his entire life. It was more than likely not a prison, but it certainly felt like one.


Immediately upon awakening, something in the room felt… different. He looked around as far as he could from his position strapped to the bed, but he couldn’t see anything amiss nor was there anybody else around. The room itself was bare and windowless except for a single strip light on the ceiling and the bed, and though he wasn’t able to see underneath his bed, his gut told him there was nobody there either. Zidane had worked out many months ago that the white coats were always watching him even when they weren’t in the room, but as for how they were doing it he was clueless.


That particular revelation occurred shortly after a regular visit, when he had seized an unlikely opportunity to steal something from them. It was only a small metal disk, inscribed with a script of some language and an image on both sides, but it excited him immensely. The best thing was, they hadn’t noticed at all. After waiting for them to leave and adding a few minutes of idling time just to make sure they weren’t coming back (an unscheduled return had never occurred during his entire stay here, but it never hurt to be sure), he opened up his hand and tried to examine the object from his restrained position. Zidane had absolutely no idea what it was, or how it could be used, but he was certain it wasn’t going to help him get out of here. Intent on keeping it regardless, he tucked it between the mattress underneath his buttocks but only a few seconds later, he could hear the white coats coming back. No sooner had they entered the room, had they snatched it away from its exact location without hesitance, saying nothing to him and then leaving just as quickly. The only explanation was that they had seen him put it there and he just couldn’t work out how it was being done. Zidane felt completely and utterly violated after that, and the feeling hadn’t changed much since.


This morning he experienced a similarly inward sensation, but this had the complete opposite feeling. No other emotion he had experienced came close to this. It filled him with hope.


Distracting Zidane from this thought, the door was opened firmly by two white coats. With their large builds and grimaced faces, their only mission at this time was to check that he was alive (if he had still been sleeping, they would’ve forcefully but silently woken him up) and look for contraband. They were never purposely aggressive, but it was clear they didn’t care much for their job and so whenever they looked under his mattress, he always found his elbow knocking against the side wall, and a few times his head too. One minute and thirteen seconds passed before they both left. Immediately afterwards, the female white coat came in.


Zidane called her ‘the bitch’. It was one of those curse words he remembered in the days before this room, and his mother had always apologised to him whenever she’d used it in his presence. Since it was the worst word he knew, it seemed appropriate for her.


“Are you well?”


It was the exact same sentence she had asked a thousand times and more before. This was incredibly frustrating to Zidane because she never said anything else, no exceptions. It was ‘Are you well?’ or nothing at all. It didn’t matter what his answer was, or whether he responded at all, she never made a peep. He’d asked questions of his own, about why he was here, why she was here, who she was, where they were. He tried to get her on his side, appeal to her personal nature, tried to anger her, to upset her.  He faked illness, faked unconsciousness, faked death. Gotten angry at her, lashed out, tried to bite her, touch her, hurt her.


No matter what he did, the result was the same; complete apathy towards him. ‘Why does she ask if she doesn’t even care?’ He thought, and had been pondering ever since. To add to his hatred, every morning and afternoon, she injected him with a mysterious liquid via a small, sharp syringe. Most of the time, it appeared to do nothing, and he would lie awake in his bed, overthinking or using his imagination to pass the time. Sometimes it would make him very tired, very quickly, even if he’d just woken up. He didn’t like to think about what happened during these infrequent blackouts, but he never felt any physical changes had occurred after he’d woken up. A small relief, he knew.


The bitch had asked him again today, same as always. Zidane didn’t respond. Instead he stared at her muddy green eyes. She never returned his gaze, probably to feel less guilty about what she was going to do. Maybe, just maybe, if she had taken one look at him that morning, a display of her humanity and recognition, a notification that what she was doing was more than just a task, things would have turned out different for her. He quickly shrugged that off. He knew he would’ve done it all the same.


She rolled up the sleeve of Zidane’s thin paper gown, prepared the syringe, releasing a trapped pocket of air from the tip by smacking it against the bed frame and lowered her hand as she prepared to inject him in his upper arm.


Before the metal touched him however, a slab of wood, torn from a section of the walls midriff that decorated the otherwise plain room, flew from its fixed position and straight into the bitch’s head. For the briefest moment, she looked right into Zidane’s eyes, finally acknowledging him with a look of complete terror, before crumpling into a heap of arms and legs below his field of vision. The distinguishable clatter of a syringe echoed around the room as it skittered across the floor. Zidane finally realised what was different about this room today; it was full of possibility.


Just enough time had passed for him to unstrap himself from the bed, get up and reach the doorway when the two male white coats burst into the room. Upon this extraordinary sight, their brains were trying to figure out just what the hell had happened and how to react so they could prevent further damage. They couldn’t. Zidane had already snatched up the sharp vial of mysterious liquid and plunged it right into the first guys neck, pushing it down as he’d seen the woman do every day of his life. The result was one of his captors going into a brief but manic rage, ending with his collapse onto the floor as he failed to overcome the ‘poison’ contained inside. While that was going on, Zidane had swept up the piece of wood again and launched it side on towards the second guys face, but this one had the sense at least to raise his arms and deflect most of the blow into his hands. The bar shattered into several pieces, and the man quickly came to his senses. Ignoring the pain he was feeling, he started running for Zidane. That’s when the boy realised he didn’t need the weapon at all, and with only a thought, lifted the man up and slammed him against the wall with a loud crash. This dented both wall and man, and after letting him go, the last remaining white coat slumped down against the wall and fell straight into the land of nod.


Zidane surveyed the scene. From the looks of it, all three had taken quite a beating, but would likely recover maybe with a couple of headaches along the way, which relieved him a little. After all, no matter how much he hated them for their part in his imprisonment, he didn’t want to become a murderer. However, there were more pressing matters, mainly how he was able to achieve all of this today when he’d barely been able to sit himself up for the past few years. Something about this seemed amiss, but then it occurred to him that there was a much more important issue that needed resolving; his escape.


* * * * * * *


Everything since then had gone smoothly enough, right up until he had made his final break for the exit. The mysterious people who had been observing him from behind the curtain must have cottoned on, and finally sent back up to prevent him getting away. Feeling incredibly weak and not ready to take on a group of six guards, Zidane dived into this room and with his remaining strength barricaded the doorway.


The room finally felt at peace, but it was only going to be a temporary measure. Zidane realised that there was never going to be a second attempt at getting out of here, and to him there were only two options. One of them involved climbing or even jumping out of the window behind him, which hadn’t been locked, but it was two floors up and he didn’t know if his abilities included not getting crushed by gravity. Besides, he wasn’t in a fit state to experiment. The other option was to fight his way out, but he faced the same dilemma there.


Zidane was about to pull himself up when he was halted by two things; a crippling stab of pain somewhere in the frontal region of his brain, and a noise that sounded like metal crunching directly behind him. He froze in his half stood stance, trying not to make a sound even though for a moment his head felt like exploding.


The window cracked open from the outside and Zidane began to panic. He didn’t know if he had the strength to fight another battle with his arms and legs still shaking and his mind in so much pain, so he slumped down and tried to hide from the intruder.


A cool breeze suddenly swept into the room, shortly followed by a shiny metal box which crashed onto the floor in a manner which appeared to disregard its contents fragility. The next thing through was a pair of long, strong arms quickly succeeded by the head of a dark haired individual. It wasn’t long before the stranger found himself lifted up into the air as if he were weightless and pinned against one of the walls.


“What the-“ Was all he could spit out before he saw the pale young boy standing defiantly before him.


“Who are you?” Zidane asked.


“Same question to you.”


“I asked you first.”


The stranger took a strained breath and stared piercingly at his adversary.


“My name is Dane. Now tell me yours.” The man didn’t seem too bothered at being held against his will. Either he was either used to circumstances like this, or he could sense that Zidane didn’t intend to murder him.


“Are you helping the white coats?” He responded, ignoring the demand.


“I’m not helping anybody, I’m here on business.”


“Do business people usually try to break into buildings through the windows?”


“Look kid. I don’t know who’s after you but I’m not one of them. I don’t even know you.”


“Wouldn’t somebody who was after me say stuff like that?”


Dane’s lips curled ever so slightly. Was he impressed?


“What’s in the box?” Zidane asked.


Dane let the question rest for a moment, considering his response. Zidane couldn’t wait.


“I could just open it if you don’t tell me.”


“No point. You wouldn’t know what it is.” He looked serious. “Go ahead.”


Now it was Zidane’s turn to think. While it could’ve easily been a trap, something about the intruder had him feeling pretty relaxed. The man’s casual response to what was such an unusual, dangerous situation somehow made the youngster at ease.


“I don’t want to know.” He lied, resisting the urge to look at, let alone open it.


“So how are we going to settle this? You can’t keep me up here all day. It’s taking a lot out of you and you’re visibly struggling. If you’re going to kill me, then do it. Otherwise, let me go and you and I can both go about our business and walk out of this hospital alive.”


“Wait,” Zidane’s voice suddenly sounded really weak and he appeared taken aback. “What… what did you say this place was?”


Dane looked a little confused.


“A hospital. You didn’t know that?”


“Hospital?” His voice cracked, struggling to even push the whole word out. He was now definitely a boy broken. “This can’t be a hospital…”


Without warning, Dane felt the hold upon him ease up and he slid rather clumsily down the wall to the floor where he ungracefully stumbled. Zidane’s eyes were now so wide they were almost circular and moist to boot. The boy knew somewhere in the back of his mind that the hostage situation had prematurely ended and that he may be in danger from this stranger, but now he could only focus on the horrible truth he had learned; that the place he had been kept prisoner, where his wellbeing had been restricted for most of his life, this prison was actually a building for helping people. On top of that, all medical facilities in Natalos were controlled by the Governors, meaning that whoever had been keeping him here, they were working for the highest possible tier of government. If that didn’t frighten him down to his very core, he didn’t know what else could.


Punctuating this thought was a low murmuring of voices outside the door. Dane heard this first, and determinedly walked over to the barricaded entrance. Noticing the lackadaisical attempt at an obstruction and the verbal clues, it didn’t take him long to guess what was going on.


“What’s your name kid?”


“Zidane.”


Dane brushed off the coincidence between their given names. “You’re going to need to get up to stand a chance at getting out of here. Can you do that?”


Zidane stayed put. He barely even heard the stranger speak at all. Dane reached down and picked him up by the shoulders, leaning him against the wall.


“Listen to me. I can help you, but first you need to help me.” Dane wrenched the boy’s face towards his, and forced him to look him right in the eyes. “I know what you are, and that’s ok with me. But I need you to do something for me before I risk my life getting you out. Do you follow me?”


Zidane nodded, but only mildly.


“Good. I need you to bring me today’s inpatient records for the A&E department.”


Zidane once again nodded, fear and distress written all over his face. Then, as quick as a flash, the presence in his eyes was gone and mentally he was somewhere. To Dane, the boy looked like he had suddenly entered a sort of coma. He waved his hand in front of the boy’s face and got no reaction.


Dane had read plenty of the mythology behind Psionics, all from stolen library books he had acquired from a fellow Nomag called Squatch, so named for his grizzly appearance. Psionics could move anything with their minds and get into people’s heads without the target ever knowing. There was pretty much nothing they couldn’t do and this scared people. They had first been sighted before the Dark War, but nobody knew exactly when, the same way nobody really had a clue where or when everybody else came from. They were extremely rare and mysteriously they all died very young. The experts concluded this was probably because the power, so strong and so vast, became too much for them to handle and eventually destroyed their brains. Some theorised that the Governors set out to kill them all while they didn’t pose too much of a threat, for if someone really got a grasp of such an ability, they would be unstoppable. However, in the past thousand years give or take, not one had been publicly acknowledged or recorded down. Even rumours were sparse, and it was believed they had simply vanished or never existed except in the words of fools.


Without a word of warning, a large smashing sound came from the doorway area behind them both, cutting through the silence like a lightning bolt through the night sky. Dane stared at the youngsters face. There was no reaction.


Another crashing sound, this time with voices added to the cacophony.


“Ok, it’s coming” A small sounding voice suddenly sprouted from Zidane’s mouth. “It’s just… there.”


Now outside the window, hanging in mid-air as if it had been glued to an invisible wall was a large blue folder with the words INPATIENT LOG printed clearly across the front. Dane couldn’t hide his surprise at how quickly he had done this. The kid sure had something special.


“Now we get out of here.” He strolled casually over to the briefcase that still lay upon the floor and scooped it up. He returned towards the window, grabbed the boy by the shoulder and spoke clearly. “You need to trust me.”


Disrupting the end of his sentence was the biggest and loudest smash yet, and Dane knew instantly that this was the one the assailants were waiting for. Shouts of ‘freeze’ and ‘don’t move’ came through the newly created hole around the corridor. Zidane freaked out and began to back further away while Dane stood still.


“Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”


Dane walked directly in view of the entrance and faced at least five well-armed men staring directly at him. They were all pointing their arms toward him, ready to unleash everything they had. In a confused chorus of similar commands, they all shouted at him to get down in some manner and put his arms behind his head.


“Make me.” Came the words so coolly out of his mouth, especially from a Nomag.


Without waiting, one of the guards sent a trail of fiery energy his way, and Dane quickly raised the briefcase up in front of him.  The heat deflected off the metal case and bombastically returned to its sender in the centre of the group. A number of them seemed utterly shocked and didn’t quite make it out of the way, but the rest scattered quickly. The barricade also caught fire.


“That’s for the kid!” Shouted Dane above the commotion. He turned around and went to Zidane. “Come with me.”


Zidane still looked upset and was struggling to take everything in, from the revelation, to this stranger, to the white coats returning.


In one swift movement, Dane wrapped his arm around the youngster and made a defiant leap towards the window. Before the ‘intruders’ even had time to get through the door again, the two of them had fled the room and the escapees were making their way as far from it as they physically could manage.


With a young but wiry kid in one hand and a briefcase that wasn’t much lighter in the other, it wasn’t too long before Dane had to slow down, despite his athletic prowess. He took some shelter in an alleyway close by and set Zidane down.


“Are you OK?”


“I think so. My head hurts and I feel weak, but I think I just need to rest for a bit.”


“Good.”


Dane slid out the folder that he had tucked away in his jacket and flicked it open. Determinedly he scoured through the latter pages, trying to work out if there was anything in here that would help him.


“Damn it.” He muttered to himself, but apparently not quietly enough that the kid couldn’t hear.


“What’s wrong?”


He’d never been one to share much, and this was just an eleven year old child, there was no way he was going to burden him with the knowledge that-


“Who’s Sara Freid?”


Dane looked up from the folder. Before he even had the chance to speak, Zidane responded.


“I don’t know. I just knew I guess.”


Dane stayed quiet.


“Was she a friend of yours?”


“She is… was my daughter.” He responded, in a muted tone. There was no reason to lie to the kid.


“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosy or anything.”


“It’s all right.”


“Wait a minute, I’ve just thought of something. Hang on a minute.” Again, without warning, Zidane slipped into a sort of mini coma. Approximately thirty seconds later, he resumed full consciousness, this time with a proud little smile on his face. “Does this help?”


Slipping through the air, creating a quiet swooshing sound as it went, was a very small piece of plastic. It stopped right in front of Dane’s empty hand, and he immediately reached forward and took it. How Zidane had located it, Dane would never know, but he was now holding an ID card with Sara’s face, name and registered address printed on it. He had been handed somewhere to start looking for her.


“Yes, it helps. You did good.” Dane grabbed the boy by the shoulder and gripped it gently. In return the kid smiled a little more, grateful and a little pleased with himself. “You need to get yourself some clothes, and hide out for a while. They’ll be looking for you.”


“Oh, um, yeah. I’m going to do that right away.”


“I can’t take you with me, I’m sorry.”


“I know, it’s OK. I’ve got somewhere to go.”


“With your abilities, you’ll be fine. Take care kid.” After nodding one final time, Dane turned on his heels, and with case in hand fled from the location.


Zidane felt a rush of cold run all over him as he let go of all the bravado he had been putting on in front of the stranger, and all the weakness and shakiness he had held off came flooding back in one huge crushing wave almost knocking him out. The boy had no place to go. He had no plans. Nothing. He passed out moments later, lying in the empty alleyway as a chilly breeze blew over his motionless body.


Next Chapter: CHAPTER TWELVE