Part Ranger: Chapter 3

“I can’t believe this! You are telling me that I must have a child with YOU?” The woman was in disbelief.

“Yeah! The marriage is in five days. They said we have to be official before they can authorize this.”

“A CHILD NOW? In the middle of war times?” The woman started stomping away. The man chased after her. “They said it would help us! You know smart children are needed these days.”

“To hell with the UPBS! We can wait on a child for AFTER the war. Then we would have to find another female like us.”

 

 

A couple months have gone by since we entered the station. The Mind Soldiers have been acting differently. Ever since the day I killed that boy, none of them have tried to talk to me. The boy that slept next to me drew different pictures, my death. All of the images showed a bloody end to me.

Charles seemed to be dealing with buddy issues in the trainee room. He came up to me after classes and dragged me down the hallways. From what I heard while we ran, it looked like a fight was about to break out. We stopped running once I noticed these hallways were different. “So I have to go with you and other trainees to fight another group of trainees I don’t know?”

“Yeah! We need your help Ranger. They have one extra person on their team if you don’t join.” I was getting annoyed with him. He needs to learn how to use what is there at those times.

“Is that all I am now? One extra person?” It was probably easier being inside the room with the weirdos than to deal with Charles right now.

“Listen, if you want to go and be with the ones that want you dead, go now. But I need your help and whatever is going on in there can’t be much better.” There wasn’t much in there to keep me occupied now. I finished the book and threw it somewhere. The other mind soldiers probably destroyed it.

I followed Charles into the simulation room. No one enters this room unless it is to train for a battle-type action game. The officers would randomly turn on and off the gravity during the real battles.

The other group of boys that Charles mentioned was on the other side of the arena. We were up against a boy from the Middle-East, Canada, New Zealand and two from Russia. Our team consisted of Charles, and Asian, Egyptian, German and I. Do they know why we are here?

“Our goal is to stop the entire opposite team! Think you losers can handle it?” There are plenty of different games that can be played. The most popular, and only one played, is the battle. You need to shoot and stop everyone on the other team.

When you get stopped, it is suppose to feel like you are asleep without the benefits of sleeping. Your brain is still active and you body functions like you are awake. A stopped person cannot move or speak until their body leaves the simulation room or a reversal gun is shot at the stopped person.

“So what is with the deal with him? Did you do a prank or something on him?” I asked Charles while looking at our team. Whoever he had an issue with clearly wants to prove their authority over him.

“Being around and learning things faster got his attention on me.” Charles was glaring over at one of the boys. “His name is Ghadrony. He says that being tough is the only way to win a battle.”

The Asian kid was moving his eyes between our team members. The other two looked bored out of their minds. “Ugh! Let me try to handle this my way.”I started to walk over to the other team. “What does he plan to do? Call off the battle and make us seem weak?” Charles ignored the boy who asked him. I liked moving my hands and arms in specific ways depending on what I was saying.

“SO! You want to prove you are stronger than them, right? Why not just punch him instead of going through the trouble of this?” They all glared at me.

“Just punching someone won’t prove your authority here! You have to command a team and win battles.” Ghady, what I decided to call him, was standing inches away from me.

“Are you sure killing Charles wouldn’t do that easier? I mean, not everyone could kill another human easily to prove a point!” I started laughing. No one else there was joining in my laughter.

“Because killing another person can get you removed from the station. Not that you wouldn’t know though. Why haven’t I seen you anywhere besides the hall before?” Ghady looked me up and down for a place he could have seen me.

“That may be because I was placed with the mind soldiers who are some CRAZY m***********s that think only messing with your mind! I haven’t met any of you here, so you shouldn’t know much about me either.” The five of them huddled together and talked. I began to walk back, but they stopped me.

“How about we end your misery then? We could actually fix three things wrong with this place in one move that way!” I shrugged. In the corner of my eye I saw Matt in his fake uniform inside one of the observation rooms. His face was different too, but I could sense it was him somehow.

“No can do! I don’t plan to die now by people like you. I am needed hater on and there is only one person who could kill me.” Ghady raised an eyebrow. “Who might that be?”

“Why, that boy over there! The one who you hate enough to have an authority test with.” I pointed over to Charles who was still translating what my movements meant. He was the only one that understood my secret language. Ghady glared at Charles and then back at me.

“We’ll just settle this here in a battle. Same goal is as follows. Stop the opposite team!” I forgot to mention that being stopped also means you lose any memories of what happens afterwards.

“Shouldn’t we just let the last member of the opposite team be stopped by the leg only so the other team doesn’t leave them here?” They all started laughing. I could tell what they planned to do when they won. “ALL must be stopped completely or there is no winner.”

The word “GO!” appeared on what was for now our ceiling. Charles and I knew what the other was thinking when we fought together. We both ran the short distance to each other and jumped off our own feet to cover. That didn’t work like I planned when the Asian and Egyptian were standing still in the open, not moving.

Charles and the German were against a wall on the other side of me. I jumped up on top of the wall and snuck towards the group. There was no lighting up here so I was completely invisible to anyone that wasn’t a night owl. Foot steps came walking by when I jumped to another wall. Below me was the German, alone, with every side of him open.

There was a sound that came from the other side that came from a gun. It could have been Charles getting one of them or getting shot himself. I looked back down and saw that the boy was now stopped. On the other side of the room, the entire other team was together. Each boy was pointing in a different direction from the others. I jumped down and leaned up against a wall.

“Come out, come out wherever you are! All we want to do is stop you and win.” Ghady’s voice was coming from everywhere in the room. Could he be a mind soldier disguising himself as a normal person? There was another encounter with a second voice. This one seemed familiar somehow. “There will only be three of us who come onto the station. If he was the other one, there would be a significant age difference.” Who is “us” though? And how are you inside my head? Matt was talking to me through my mind.

“You don’t recognize this technique? For someone who mastered it years ago, you act dumber than I thought.” Calling me dumb doesn’t tell me what any of what you are saying make sense. Are you going to tell me now or have me find out myself? “We can talk about everything another time. Finish this first.” I looked out to see what was happening. One of them almost hit me with a shot.

“HEY MIND SOLDIER! Just give up already. All of your ‘friends’ have lost.” This could end in my favor if I wanted to take the time for it. We weren’t technically supposed to be having this battle at all. You don’t get stopped fully if you get shot in the arm or leg. Did these five know that yet?

I put the gun into my left hand and stuck out my elbow. If they didn’t start celebrating afterwards, I would have to try out Matt’s mind reading thing. Luckily my assumption was right about them. I looked up at Matt who was disappointed with me. He left the observation room now.

“I told you losers I was the best! Never mess with Ghadrony the Great again!” They all were laughing and left the simulation room. My other assumption of them was also right. They planned to leave us in here, frozen in time. I walked back to my entrance and my arm returned to normal. Matt was in there holding two reversal guns. He threw one to me and walked up to one of the stopped boys.

“You could have beaten those humans easily if you wanted to. Will you say why that didn’t happen this time?” I shot the German boy out. He looked around to see where the other boys were.

“The battle is over. Ghady and his slaves already left.” I saw him examine Matt shoot the Asian and Egyptian boys. Charles was frozen away from everyone else. He could have made his strategy work with a little more caution around him.

“They left, didn’t they?” Charles was glaring over at the enemy’s entrance. It was nice how we thought similarly on subjects like this. The Asian boy was looking at me. “How did you get out? I thought they stopped you too.”

The German and I both looked over at our entrance. Matt had disappeared when we weren’t paying attention. He still didn’t want Charles to know about him. “I have my own ways of doing things. You saw how my negotiation with them went.” We all went out of the simulation room and down to the hall for dinner.

I went into the hallway Matt talked to me in. He was dressed in the same uniform he hides in. We sat against one of the walls. All my questions about “us” could be answered here and now. I was afraid to ask though. Every time we met here, I would get a sudden feeling to drink something. “The Mind Soldiers here aren’t like the real ones. Whoever they tricked in the past were weaklings that failed their mission.”

“Were the ones that died like us then?” I was slowly curling my body into a ball. My arms wrapped my legs together. There was a feeling of emptiness entering my system. “They didn’t have as much training as us. Some of them only had the mind alteration of feeling alone. Their parents gave them to these people for money.

I leaned my head onto Matt’s shoulder. If what he was telling me is true, then we were related in some way. He wrapped an arm around me. “There is more to this story for you to know. Can you handle this now?” I nodded. “Only you can know this for now. Don’t tell any strangers about us, okay?”

Matt talked to me for a couple of hours. The hallways were dimly lit. I went back to the room and onto my bed. There were pieces of paper scattered all over the mattress. Every one of them was written so if I slept on top of them, I would feel the message on my body. The messages were things like “Just end yourself already! You’ve caused enough trouble killing him” or “You’re still worthless like he said!” and “JUST DIE!”

They were all about him and how I shouldn’t live anymore. I threw them all away and left into the hallway again. The trainee room wasn’t hard to find. Charles was there, on the first bed to the left, wide awake. He turned and was shocked to see me. We both went out of the room. “What are you doing here? Everyone is supposed to be asleep right now!” He was yelling at me in a whisper. I didn’t expect him to understand my reasoning.

“I’m tired of being in there with those inferior boys. They think writing threats to someone like me is going to do something. Only if there was a way to prove my… worth.” An idea popped into my head. Rules didn’t apply to us thanks to our contracts. “There is a battle coming up soon that a squad needs someone to go up against, right?”

“Yeah, but what does that-?” He got the same idea in his head. “The Mind Soldiers don’t battle as a squad though! You can’t possibly convince them and the officers now to let that happen.” He followed me down the hallways. “The battle is in one month and it is against the Arthromian squad. From what I have seen, no one has beaten them.”

I grew a smile across my face. The more Charles said about them made the idea even better. Knowing the Mind Soldiers like I do, everyone might refuse to let me attempt this. “No one has seen what The Mind Soldiers could do if they were together.”

We walked into the room and saw a couple awake. “What is the trainee doing with a friend in here? Are you trying to prove something to us?” The oldest one out of them stood up. He was twice the muscle size of me. It was intimidating to look into his gray eyes. His white hair kept getting into his eyes when he walked.

“I am, but my method may seem impossible if no one cooperates.” Everyone got up and the lights turned on. They were all grumpy from the sudden need to awaken during the night.

“You aren’t planning to accept the battle request saying we are a squad DO YOU?” The boy who drew all the time stomped forward. He had black hair and an eye patch on his left eye? That wasn’t noticeable the last time I saw him. “Yes. There is a reason why I am wearing the eye patch. You don’t need to know about that now!”

“I only said that it was an idea. No one has to accept the idea.” They were all ready to beat the crap out of me. Everyone huddled together and started whispering things. Charles decided to leave for his bed. The time was late and soon we would have to awaken again.

“Fine! We accept.” The white haired boy stepped forward. The drawing boy stood behind him. “I always wanted to try and manipulate and Arthromian squad member.”

“Do you think our tricks will work together against minds like they have?” I looked down at my feet. Uncertainty filled up inside my throat.

“I honestly have no idea. I may have been able to enter the mind of a killer before, but his brain probably wasn’t trained like theirs’.” Everyone went back into their beds and the lights had gone out. The white haired boy looked at me.”What are you doing trainee? We’re starting battle simulation training in the morning.” I felt like jumping off of the ceiling and walls. I ran so fast that I went into the wall when I returned.