Tuesday 27 June 2017

Two Lives - Origins (Episode V)

The gun started powering up.

As he heard the sound of my gun charging, he stopped on his tracks. He neither moved nor dropped her.

"Stay exactly where you are and put her down very slowly", I commanded him. He seemed to listen. He knelt down slowly and placed her at the ground with a hand to her head. He didn't want to hurt her but I wanted to know why he's trying to kidnap her. He stood up slowly and started turning around. I put my finger around the trigger.

The helmet he was wearing had a dark visor which made it impossible to see who's under the mask. But the next instant, like fog clearing out as the sun comes up, the visor turned color and I could see his eyes. They were small.

" Step away from her", I shouted and he listened.

"Hi John. How are you?"

I didn't know what to say. Maybe he's someone I know and I'm sure that he smiled under that mask.

"Who are you? How do you know my name?" I asked the first question that came to my mind.

"I know a lot of things, John. Doesn't really matter." He talked very slowly with a deep voice and a careless attitude.

"I don't care either. But I do want to know why you are trying to kidnap her? What do you want from her?" I've heard somewhere that history repeats. Is he an assassin sent by her political enemies? I wanted to know before I put him down.

"Only a few answers." He was now far from her. "That's not..." My sentences were cut short by a loud noise from where she was lying. I turned to her side with my gun still pointing at him. What I saw there was impossible to explain. There was a cylindrical device on the floor which I hadn't noticed before. It opened up axially into multiple parts, all parts flipping to the ground and creating a disc. The edges started to glow with a radiance and revolved around the centre plate, picking up speed with each revolution until it was very hard to focus with my eyes. I turned towards him to ask what it was. I jumped back a step when I saw that he was standing next to me. I accidentally pulled the trigger and he dodged it like it was nothing. Before I could pull another shot, he moved next to me in one sweep move and held the barrel by his left fist. The next shot went towards the sun and I saw his right arm holding my gun at the bottom. With a twisting motion he split the barrel from the gun. Continuing the same twisting motion, the barrel came right to my face and knocked my nose. He turned his body by a 180 degrees and swung his right leg with the collected momentum. Instead of connecting with my left leg, his foot changed course, went a little up to my hip and came crashing down on my right thigh where it connected with the knee.

I was suddenly kneeling on my right, which was paining a lot, I had to keel over to my left to have some relief. With no weapons and an almost broken leg, I was in no shape to stand straight much less take him down. I half expected him to pull me up and snap my neck but he didn't. I think he knew that I was no threat to him in this condition even before I knew, because he was already walking away from me towards her. He picked up the jacket that was lying on the ground on his way. Kneeling beside her, he pulled her up and put the jacket around her. The cylindrical object turned disc was still bright and it created a shimmering transparent wall. He stepped before that, still supporting her on his left shoulder. Before leaving though, he turned towards me and said, "I'll bring her back to you. I'm not going to hurt her."

"No, don't. Leave her", I tried to shout but my voice was run over by another sound burst from the device.

"Find my message", and he vanished into the shimmering wall.

Tuesday 20 June 2017

Two Lives - Origins (Episode-IV)

I heard the gun powering up.

It was in good working state. I powered it down and turned on the safety. Placing it in my case, I thought, 'Just another day at work', before starting towards the metro. My home was 30 minutes away from work. I love working for this woman. If there is someone in this world that I'd gladly give my life to trade for theirs' other than my family, it's her. She's known to everyone but only a few know what she really does for the good of the state. There was a time when I thought her actions were mindless but when I did realize that they were well thought ahead, I started truly trusting this woman. I work head of security for her. I wasn't sure why she would need security since she never leaves her room but then I knew the impact she had on the society. I've also stopped two separate attempts on her life before I became head of security. They were also a reason why I'm leading her security now. I've known very few women who could truly hold out amongst men. Whenever she's in the room, there's an air of confidence and power surging from her. Men leading the nation would call for her advice. She always thought about everything. What I didn't know, my life was going to flip today.

I got out of the metro and made my way through the streets which was empty. It would be another hour before they start bustling with people. There was nothing out of the ordinary from any other day. I used to do recon at the beginning stages of my career. If there's something I'm good about, I have a knack for noticing things. Small things, that otherwise would go unnoticed by all other people. I lifted my gaze towards the taller buildings and made a quick check. I noticed nothing different but then I thought I saw someone standing on the rooftop of the tallest building in the city, TeCorp. I focused my sight on that building for a few seconds but didn't see anything. Must have been a bird or something, but I told myself that I'd send someone to check it out when I reached my work place, Ramachandran Memorial Hall. The Hall is built in memory of the people's leader, Mr. Ramachandran, murdered by his political enemies and it's his wife that I work for now. The Hall was converted into a government office/museum, where she lived and controlled the office of the state.

It is said that she was there watching the whole thing when her husband was murdered. Before that incident however, she was a very quiet & kind housewife not known to many people. Now though, it's an entirely different story. She rose through power in a short period of time & no one ever saw that quiet housewife ever. She did get the people who murdered her husband after a couple of months. They were convicted after a year long trial and sent to prison. After a month or so, they escaped and were never seen. She was filled with anger for some time and soon that became her nature. The Hall was about three hundred and fifty feet tall with four exits for each direction in the ground floor, aside from the secret floor beneath which has twice the exits.

I reached the security office in the ground floor and started dressing up. I always wear my chest plate when I start from home, so I just had to change my shirt and put on the jacket. Just as I was about to finish up, I saw the night patrol coming in at their shift end. "Are the morning patrol up?" I asked them.

"We didn't see them on our way down", one of them told.

"I gotta task for you, Ram", I called one of them, "I need you to run up the TeCorp rooftop and report back. Check with their security if they noticed anything out of place."

"Yes Sir. Will do." He rushed out.

I took out my gun, put it in the holster and went out. The early morning patrol were on their way. I went to the control room to check with the surveillance team. When I reached there, they had the reports for yesterday ready. I skimmed through the reports and told them to be on the edge. I gave out commands through comms to the security to follow 'The Duck Hunt' protocol. It was a term we used based on the phrase, Wild Goose Chase. I started walking towards the elevator. I wanted to check all the security alarms we had set on the Duck Hunt floor. I stepped into the elevator. As the door was about to close, Catherine from Forensics came running, so I held the door for her. She was in her late twenties, black hair, almond skin, about 5' 8".

"Thanks, John", she said out of breath. She always does that.

"Why are you always running around? Don't you ever walk?" I asked her with a slight amusement.

"I do. When I'm sick." She leaned on the side walls of the elevator. I just noticed that she had a couple of files under her arm.

"A new case you working with?" I pointed at the files. "Ah huh", she just nodded. She never said anything about the cases that she was working with. I couldn't complain since I'd never talk about my security plans to her either. She said bye and got off at the sixth floor. I continued to the tenth floor where the usual patrol team were stationed. When I got off the elevator they were gearing up for their shift.

"You'll be covering the twentieth floor today. I'll be here if you need me."

"Let the hunt begin. Quack quack." Someone from the back made the noise and everyone laughed out loud. I smiled and walked past them.

I had the feeling that today's going to be the worst day of my life, when I heard my communicator warned me of low heart rate. What's worse, it wasn't mine but of Mrs. Ramachandran. It was a failsafe in case of an emergency that I installed myself. It took a lot of convincing from my side. No one knew about it except me & her. I can't trust the elevators right now, so I ran up the stairs. I alerted the patrol on the twentieth floor about the situation since they were closer than me. I took three stairs at a time. When I got to the twenty first floor however, I could see an open window at the end of the hallway. I saw the patrol on the floor unconscious. I knelt down and checked them for a pulse. Thank God, they were all alive. I noticed the explosion from the wall that took them out. There was only one way out from here and so, I jumped out of the window onto the fire escape. I looked up and saw someone dragging her to the rooftop. I ran up as fast as I could, since they had only one floor left to scale. Whatever escape he has planned, I must stop him. She was unconscious and so was the rooftop patrol on the east side of the building. He was wearing a coat or was it a long jacket, I'm not sure. His entire face and head was covered with a helmet. He was wearing gloves and had a communicator on his left arm. I took out my gun, turned off the safety and pointed at him.

The gun started powering up.

Friday 16 June 2017

Two Lives - Origins (Episode-III)

The sun was bright in the East.

I saw the fire escape on the north side. I took out the Trans-Beacon and set it on the rooftop with a 30 minutes timer. My communicator clocked it and I jumped on the fire escape. I met no resistance along my way except a few pigeons and a Crow. When I passed the fourth level from the rooftop, I came to the window opening marked on my map. From here on, there'd be security patrols guarding the floor. I have to be careful. I stepped in slowly and closed the window. I was able to tap into their security feed while climbing down the fire escape and noticed that the patrol was maximum at the northeast corner about a floor below. Unless my communicator was wrong, my target was there. I scanned the entire floor for any electromagnetic signatures which is quite common in novice security traps. I was quite surprised, well not really, when I found out that my target was on the same floor as me but at the southeast corner. No patrols but a lot of traps on the way, including motion sensors, thermal sensors and pressure plates, God, who uses them these days. Which actually caught me by surprise was the biometric doorway that was installed on the way to my target. It's not a simple biometric scanner you may have known but what it does is, it maps your entire genome to authorize your access. There's not much you can do against it unless you have a really fast supercomputer at your disposal. Luckily, I had one.

I disabled all the traps and set up a holographic projector at the end of the hallway so that if any of the patrol came this way, they'd see it only empty. I dialed 'A' in my communicator, which connected instantly.

"What do you need, Rogue?", said the voice from the communicator.

"Just a biometric doorway", I said. "I'm plugged in".

"Just a moment... and it's done", said the ultimate supercomputer that has ever existed or maybe I should say artificial intelligence.

I stepped into the doorway and without any scanning, the door to my target opened. As I walked inside, I could notice that the room was very spacious, luxurious & over the top, which only pissed me off more. Imported rugs decorated the floor with fine leather furniture laid out in style around the room. There was a dining table with fresh fruits, a few knives at the further end and a blender closer to me. I heard the sound of water from the far side of the room. Must be a shower, so I waited. After 15 long minutes, my target came out in her bathrobe. She didn't notice me as she was drying her hair. When she did notice me, there was shock on her face which turned into anger the next moment.

"Who are you and what are you doing here? How the hell did you get in?" She seemed calm when she turned into the nearby room and started dressing up.

Even though she was in her early forties, she had this commanding aura around her. Her voice was strong and she could take out a couple of trained and armed men. She was about five foot six, with flowing black hair with no silver, yet.

Once she was done, she put down the dryer on the dining table and set her piercing eyes on me. "I'll ask one more time. Who. are. you?" She emphasized each and every word.

"Doesn't matter. I'm here to take you away." She was wearing a tank top and a jean.

"No one is taking anyone away until you answer my question." She said with a finality to it.

"Mrs. Ramachandran. Or do you prefer Nameless?"

That struck a cord. She was taken aback when I said the name. She took a tentative step back.

"You have done great deeds for the state and to it's people, Nameless. It's only fitting I do the same to you."

She gained her composure, "If you're here to kill me, I'm putting you down." She moved closer to the dining table.

I smiled under my mask and walked over to the dining table. I turned my back to her, switched on the blender and put some oranges in. "And they say you don't have a sense of humor".

The next moment I felt a twinge of pressure over my shoulder. When I turned back, she was on the floor with a knife near her. I turned off the forcefield generator which took the hit. Good old move to stab me behind my back but she missed out noticing the metallic body of the blender which showed me a pretty good picture of what was happening behind me. I actually felt sorry for her. She tried to get up slowly as the knock back slowly wore off. Now I saw fear in her eyes.

"I'm not going to kill you but when I'm done with you, you'd wish that I did. I'm sorry for what I'm about to do but I need you to know that you made this happen." I knelt down beside her and put my right arm on her left shoulder. She was so scared, I could actually hear her heartbeat. I pressed her shoulder and the anesthetic solution entered her body through the hidden needle under my greaves. She slid down slowly as the solution started working. As her heart rate slowed down, I noticed the final trap. Too late. Alarms blared inside the building and I knew the guards would be here in the next 30 seconds. I wasted no time, grabbed the coat that was lying on the couch, pulled her to the exit and towards the window exit.

Before I could cross the hallway, a group of the security patrol came around the corner. I activated the projector's self destruct sequence and it went off taking out the entire group. It would take a few minutes for them to recover from the concussion alone. I put her arms around my shoulder and walked to the window. I jumped over to the fire escape and pulled her out of the window. It was difficult for me to pull her up four levels with my lean build. Very difficult, I had to drag her literally over the steps. Finally, I was over the rooftop and had about 1 minute before the Trans-Beacon was activated.

That's when I heard a gun powering up behind me.

Saturday 10 June 2017

Two Lives - Origins (Episode II)

I jumped off the building...

I could feel the wind rushing against my face, caressing my hair even though I was wearing a ballistic mask. By my calculations, it took only 6 secs to hit the bottom but as I'm falling, I felt the journey was long. I had balanced myself like a bird with it's wings & tail wide open, gliding through the ocean of wind, rising. Except, I was falling. The drag I created slowed my fall by about 2 second tops, hopefully. The coat I was wearing helped too.

Four seconds had passed and I was half way past the elevation of the building. I pressed both my middle finger against the bottom of my thumbs. Zap... The electromagnets went active the next instant. I'd already had my coat lined with metal at the free end and the magnets started attracting the metal. The tech wasn't that simple though. The magnets constantly changed their polarity and kept the coat stiff enough to hold my weight & glide along. I could've made it more efficient but this was more safer.

The sudden lift created by my coat helped me rise nearly to the same level as I was before. In just a couple of seconds, I had passed a third of the distance but lost half of the elevation. The glide path, however was stable after this. My communicator kept me updated through my earpiece. If this continues, I'd lose all the elevation in another 100 feet & then I'd be going for the walls. But I was glad that the plan was going rather well with no crosswinds which would otherwise stall me even further. I'm not sure if they weren't looking in my direction or if they mistook me for a bird, but the patrol didn't seem to have noticed me. I guess I was right about them being trained in horse stables. All of them were looking below to the streets, which were now beginning it's day.

I just covered another 100 feet and one of them spotted me from the other end. He alerted the others just as I turned off the magnets and went for the dive. I still had another 100 feet ahead of me, so I held my body at angle towards the building and the wind took care of the rest. Without any drag, I was gliding at an accelerated rate. Before they all gathered at the edge, I was already close to the building with just another 50 feet. I lifted my left arm towards the top of the building & closed my wrists tightly. The grapple hook shot off with rather a violent jolt which I felt in my wrist.

The walls were coming very fast at me. To avoid hitting the wall with my head, I twisted my body midair about a 180 degrees, with my legs facing the building now. Just as I was about to clash with the building, the hook had found a target and broke my fall. My legs hit the wall at about 60 mph which, if it wasn't for my rigorous training, rudimentary preparation & the heavy duty jumper boots I was wearing, I'd say would've mashed my legs like baked potato. Now though, I felt only a slight inconvenience.

I couldn't see what the rooftop patrol was doing since the extension slabs at the top limited my view. Without wasting any time, I activated the motor powered rappelling gear. With a great swoosh it started pulling me up. I was going in at an alarming rate, considering I was going headfirst to the top. It sorta felt like bungee jumping, only a bit fast forward in motion. It's pretty easy to run down the walls using this gear but a lot more dangerous when it's the other way. In only about 3 seconds, I was closing in on to the rooftop. With great effort, I pushed myself from the walls and tried to get a steady footing. Once I did, I jumped and the rappelling gear accelerated once more without me tugging down. I used that momentum, to shoot past the roof at a greater velocity.

I could see now that the grapple hook did find a strong target, armor of one of the rooftop patrol. The others were trying to cut it off with apparently no luck. Looking at me now, they decided to push my anchor down and wasted no time doing so. As I shot past them, my anchor was on his way down. I disengaged the rappelling gear and continued with my ascent. The momentum was enough for me to gain a good 30 feet above their heads. Thanks to inertia, I had a long second before losing the momentum. They were readying their guns to put me down but I had already reached into my coat pocket to get the Flinger grenade. They were clustered too close which was so not good for them right now. As I lost the momentum, I threw the grenade towards them just as two of them trained their guns at me. In just another second, I'd be close to the ground before which I'd have been peppered to death. In my left arm I had a disruptor shield ready which was powering up along as the guns that were being aimed at me. It's not a physical shield as you might imagine. As the name suggests, it disrupts the kinetic energy of anything that comes into it's vicinity. It's actually scary if you know the limits to which you can use it, what you can do with it.

Lot of things happened in the next 2 seconds. I was about 2 feet from the ground, when the two guns started firing and another two which would fire the next second. I pulled my left arm to the front and just when it wasn't too late, the disruptor shield came to life taking all the fire. I was now on the ground, covering my entire self with the shield, when the Flinger went off. The Flinger is an amazing piece of tech when you're the one that's using it. It looks like the perfect round shaped mollusk, polished, black in color and highly lethal. It consists of two shells arranged symmetrically like a UFO. Inside the shells is a tiny charge enough to take out a small group non lethally. What makes it lethal are the built-in bio-shards, engineered specifically to attack the central nervous system disabling all motor skills for a limited time. Once the charge goes, the shell explodes, scattering the shards in all the directions with high velocity. The impact shock puts a man down and before he could recover from it, the shards start working. Once the motor skills are locked, there's nothing you can do really, since that's what controls all your moving body parts. And that's exactly what was happening now as the rooftop patrol started falling to the ground one by one. I turned off the disruptor shield and put it back in my coat.

I looked to my communicator and I could see the building plan already. I could see my target, all the security entrances, the sneaky techs hidden and yes, the thermal imaging of the remaining patrol inside the building.

I looked to my left. The sun was bright in the East.

Friday 2 June 2017

Two Lives - Origins (Episode I)

One fine morning...

Isn't that how fairy tales begin? I can promise you that this is as close to a fairy tale as much a frog who won a talent show in singing. Well, it was morning but not a fine one really. What would you expect in a fine morning? A rising sun, singing birds, gentle breeze, a single ray of sunshine waking you up, coffee at the table, a loving face saying 'Hey, sleepyhead', a loving day... But no, this is not that kinda morning. This is the morning I'll be reborn. This is the morning, I'll start making a difference. This is the morning, that I act on my thoughts. This is the morning I wage my war on the Tyrant Humanity that is plaguing this world. My world. My world is called Planet Earth. Yes, I can hear you saying Earth belongs to the humans. Really? The right way of putting it would be, 'Humans belong to Planet Earth'. Not the other way around. I'm not an Outsider or an Alien as you might think, I'm human too but, there is a small line that divides human being from being human. You'll decide to which I belong based on my actions and their severity, but I ask you to judge basing the reasons and the results.

A great man told me, 'Tyrants don't understand peace but men of placid life understand violence'. I never really understood both. Standing on top of this tall building, also the tallest in the city, I can almost see the entire city or at least I was able to scale my target clearly. I started playing at the edge, rolling a stone. Push, shove, pull, I always kept it from falling over the edge. Violence isn't the answer, I've heard people say who wants peace but I bet they've never had to see first hand, a politician or a billionaire mow down life in the thousands and millions so they could make more money for them, their family and friends. Was I affected by one of them? No. I was affected by all around me. There is a saying where I come from. Everywhere is my city, Everyone is my relative. I come from a place which has a history of giving to people, helping them live, become great at it's own cost. I come from a place where a legend can rise from anywhere. My language is Tamil and I'm an Indian. This is the city of Chennai in which I'm standing atop the tallest building. My target lies ahead of me, the Black shade Manor as people have started calling it, where the head of the snake waits in the dark. Pretty much everyone knows what happens when you cut off a Hydra's head. The thing is, I don't believe in myths. You're about to find out what creative punishment I have in mind for this Hydra.

If you wanna know who I am, I'm just an ordinary man turned weapon. You can very well consider me a terrorist. What is a terrorist anyway? I always lose it between the sacrifice and noble sacrifice bullshit. The stone felt heavy under my foot. The time has come. I checked my communicator. With all the technology that's available in this 22nd century, this is the most sleek of all. It's the size of an A5 sheet with the thickness of 10 sheets bundled together. It'd fit anyone's arm just fine. Looking at it, I can see the date & time on the top left corner, ticking July 7, 2117, 6:15 AM. It had many inbuilt sensors to monitor a lot of things such as pressure, altitude, temperature, pulse and what not. Below was an empty screen where you can work. I looked over the Black shade Manor from where I was standing. The fog was beginning to clear. I could see the usual patrol on the rooftop. Armed, armored & extremely dangerous. The light was beginning to rise. From this angle, they won't spot my descent. I won't be casting a shadow any soon for them to notice anyway.

I let the stone drop under my feet. It went down and down for what seemed like a long time. It hit the ground just as the timer was about to clock 6s. If you know a little physics, you'd have guessed right. Yep, the building was about five hundred and seventy feet tall. I've already calculated the distance from here to my target which was just about 300 feet. Considering that I have the higher ground with more than 200 feet than my target, I'd say it was a scalable distance. If everything went right that is. I checked if the electromagnets are working properly. The rappel lines were good but I couldn't check the grapple mechanism I installed manually. It worked fine during testing, so I just have to proceed hoping it won't jam midway. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

What I'm about to do is wrong in all justifications. But when there is no right, you just have to go left. Having the heart to do what no one will ever do, is the first lesson to be learned, if you want to change the world. I felt the first light touch me, warming my coat, as the sun rose to it's full behind me. A new day has begun...

I jumped off the building.