Contradicting Worlds

The jeep shakes a bit as it moves on an uneven road. Neither one of us is speaking throughout our ride, but our hearts speak for ourselves. We can hear them beating inside us, nervousness, and excitement interweave with each other. The jeep stops and we all hold our breaths, afraid that even by doing so, they"ll hear us from the outside. "We are by the gates," Juliana said through our links. I forgot to tell you the part where Juliana can speak through our minds because since she can sense our powers, it"s like we have a connection with her too. "They are checking us. Brace yourselves, someone is heading there too." We all look at each other and nod, readying ourselves for the worst part.

We all hear the door unlocking and creaking as it was being opened. I squinted and duck down when light pa.s.sed us. My breathing turned labor and my heart is pounding so hard in my chest. Sweat breaks in my back while I keep my stare on the floor. Then the locking of the door made us all sigh in relief and the jeep started moving again.

Soon we are being hugged by darkness as we move inside the dark tunnel I precisely remember. Then the jeep halts and we sneak out through the side of the jeep, as the boxes were moved out. We quietly make our way out and to the small cave-like opening. Carefully avoiding being seen by the warriors, we move in the shadows of their tents. Although I pretend that their numbers don"t bother me, it does. They"re so many and they are scattered even though I am sure that we could take them all down, they are not worth the risk.

Thankfully, we didn"t meet any hindrances in the way because when I see what"s waiting for us on the other side, I know that crossing the borders is one h.e.l.l of a challenge.

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*NATHANIEL"S POV*

"We aren"t in the north yet." I turn to see Juliana emerge from the opening. "This is still part of the South." Gradually, my friends are coming out of the opening. I return my attention to the vast ocean of sand in front of me.

The things I"ve encountered when I was on my journey to the South came running back in my head. The sand storms, the thirst, finding an oasis, and every other thing I"ve encountered.

A hand encloses in mine and I turn my head slightly to the side to find Rebecca smiling up at me. Her smile shows nothing but determination and her eyes mirror the fire in her soul. Her energy is contagious and I find myself returning her smile. I snake my arm around her waist to pull her closer and I press a soft kiss on her lips.

I feel her lips smile against mine as she puts her hands on both sides of my cheeks. "I love you," she whispers at my lips and her eyes find mine. A smile blossoms in my lips and my heart got filled with joy at her confession.

"I love you too," I replied, inhaling and memorizing her scent through her head. I miss her so much it makes my heartaches. The time we spent apart, when I was in the North and she"s here battling for her life, I"ve always felt empty like something was missing all along. That moment in the woods where I found her, everything felt right all of a sudden. Though there was still missing inside me that day that I found her, now I know what it was. With my memories back and her in my arms, I am complete. And I won"t let go, ever again.

"Hey!" She jumps a little then laugh when she hears me groan. "Get your a.s.ses here and change your clothes. We"ve got a lot of walks to do. We cannot idle all day." Sneakers and laughs broke out. Right now, there"s nothing I hate more than Avery"s voice.

"Right. Right." Becca said, moving away from my arms and to the other. "We"re coming." She shouts. And I shake my head while following. A small smile playing on my lips.

Then all the playfulness died in our group when we heard a swishing noise in a distance and we all look at the direction to find a sandstorm forming. We all look at each other, one thought in our minds. Crossing the borders was never easy.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

*STEWART"S POV*

Clain and I patrol the borders as ordered. I thought that we were going to have complications in my ident.i.ty or maybe I was sorry about a problem that would arise but nothing happened. It was so easy as eating cake. We were nervous coming from the house to the border just for the warriors to nod and go on their other way. But of course, we continue to be attentive. It was the first rule when we were training as kids. You do not let your guard down no matter how easy the situation is. Something might always come in the way.

I snap my head up when I heard a small susurrus din came from the woods just across the border. Clain heard it too because I saw his hand making it"s way to the hilt of his gun. Our eyes darting everywhere, our breathing slogging. We wait and wait and wait but nothing came out and we start to loosen up but then we heard an "oww" not far away now.

Our stance change all at once, our guns pointed in the way where we heard it. "Whoever you are or wherever you are, put your hands up behind your head and slowly make your way to us. You have crossed the borders, you violated the code...code...code number 315," I turn to him with a questioning look. He just shrugs as if to say, better than nothing, to which I rolled my eyes. "You are allowed to--"

"Really? Clain?" A familiar voice said. "Code number 315? We both know that that code only exists in your imagination." His expression is priceless as he tries to look everywhere but found no one.

"Who are you? And where are you? I mean, come out now!" I shake my head at his attempt to sound authoritative.

"We both know that I can take down both of you, Clainy." Snickers filled the open s.p.a.ce. Clainy? Why does it feel like I"ve heard that nickname before? And why does it feel like we are missing something here? Then the voice of Roderick echoes in my head. He had said that our friends will come on this side of the border wearing their invisible powers. That means...

I lower my gun and Clain whirls his head to me. "What are you doing?" Seriously? He can"t tell who that voice belongs to? Can"t he remember the nickname? Right, I forgot to tell you, Clain has the lowest IQ among all of us. I rolled my eyes once again and put my hand at the barrel of his gun.

"Lower this Clain," I told him. "You don"t want to mess with her."

"Really? No. They wouldn"t want to mess with me. If there"s" I was already shaking my head at him when a piece of paper flew between us but we both dodge it easily. "What the---Isabella?" I look again at the field before us that is now bearing our grinning friend before us. And he is right, Isabella stands there, hand on her hips with an eyebrow raise.

I look around and found all of our friends here with three new others. "They"re our friends. We met them in the South." Becca said and I nod in acknowledgment.

"Still the investigative type, Stew?" I smirk at the familiar voice.

"Hardly ever change," I said, turning to look at Avery. "Erm, why do you look that?" I motion for their head and clothes. Because only then that I realized that they look like they"ve been in a battle and just got out from it. Wait, did they?

"We kind of went to a battle," Juliana sheepishly said. We all groan, just recalling that she can read our minds. But we can never read hers, well except for Becca because for the reason that I don"t know. "What? If you don"t want me hearing your thoughts, block me out people." And the shift of her att.i.tude is a wonder too.

"What? We just going to stand here and talk or do you have any idea on how we are going to survive the night without Sarah"s minions behind our backs." Isabella said. Clain and I grin at each other. He reaches inside his pocket and presses the b.u.t.ton on the "remote" Roderick gave us.

"Come on, let"s get walking. Someone wants to see us." I said and we all head to Clain"s house.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

*REBECCA"S POV*

"Settle down, settle down people," Clain said and he pushed the door close.

"This is your house?" Aimee said, mesmerized by the insides.

"No, it"s my friend"s and we"re only staying here until they got here and turn us to Sarah." Sarcasm is dripping on his voice in every word. "Of course it"s mine." He scoffs and I rolled my eyes.

"Be nice with my mates," I told him.

"Sarah? Who"s Sarah?" Aimee asked, startling us all and reminding us that the three of them do not know what"s happening. We all glare at Clain and his stupidity.

He holds his hand up and said, "I didn"t know you haven"t told them." I sigh heavily and told them to take a sit.

While they are choosing where to sit I rake my eyes over the house. It"s like any normal house but with less furniture. And the wall is parched with different colored wallpapers. The stairs face the front door and there is a doorway on the wall before it, which probably leads to the dining area.

I took my seat beside Nate and his arm went around me almost instantly. I wonder my eyes and see Juliana and Riley sitting next to each other mimicking our position. Stewart and Avery sit awkwardly with each other while Clain and Isabella are leaning on each other"s shoulder but other than that, no other body parts are touching. We let Aimee, Dani, and Lia take the small couch of Clain"s.

"So, who"s Sarah?" Aimee persistently asks. All at once, we all shift uncomfortably, not knowing where to start. I open my mouth, but the sound of the door opening stops me.

We all look at the door to find a man standing there, looking as regal as Sarah and he said, "She"s who you called the Head."

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Silence weaves its way into our group and the man went to stand before the television. "You can all call me Roderick. You probably don"t remember me but I remember all of you. But I don"t expect companies right now," he gestures for Aimee, Dani, and Lia.

"Should we get out then?" Aimee said, with a slight att.i.tude.

"No, you don"t have to. Sooner or later you will know so it doesn"t matter," he looks around the room. "So where should we start?"

"How about you telling us who Sarah is?" Aimee said, cutting all of our replies.

"Sarah is the real name of the person you all know as "The Head." She practically runs the whole world. She and I are the only persons left in the world with our memories of the past still intact with each other."

"How--" he puts up a hand to stop us all.

"I know you have a lot of questions but you need to listen to me first before you bombard me with that. Can you give me a chair? This is going to be a very long talk." He said. Clain stands up to get his chair from the kitchen. Once he"s seated, he faces all of us. "Decades ago, before the world was divided in two, a pandemic broke out. This results in the death of millions and millions of people all across the world. No exception is included. The kids and the elders were the ones who most likely caught the virus. Countries declared lockdowns, state of emergencies, and no one was allowed to come out of their houses. The medical experts--doctors, nurses, and everyone in that field--were considered as the frontliners. They cured the patients and the patients were cured using normal medicines. With that, hope sparks up, and we were given light in the darkness. They thought that they can defeat the virus, that it was killable. But the thing is, the more they use the same medicines the more immune the virus becomes. Soon, no medicine can cure a patient. And the disease became deadlier, the only way that we can prevent the virus is to stay at home but we can"t."

"Why the h.e.l.l not?" Clain asks and Isabella elbows him, telling him to stay quiet.

"Because the economy was plummeting to the bottom. And people are starving to deaths. Without their works, they have nothing. We had nothing and the government only cared about their own. They didn"t even think about giving us help... Well, let me rephrase that one. They did help us, but the government was corrupt, they put the money that was supposed to help us inside their pockets. The only thing they could give us was 10kilogram rice." He releases a bitter laugh. "I was just 5 years old back then. I was so naive. I thought that what they give help us. But the thing is with the family of five, and with your mother and father unemployed, a mere 10kg rice won"t help. My mom and dad did it in every way they can just so we can eat that 10kg of rice within a week. If G.o.d blesses us, we can lengthen it into two. The government deciding to open work was the best blessing we can ever have during the pandemic. They gave us rules though that we are too happy to obey. But it didn"t help us, the virus still spreads, soon we have to stay at home once more and starve." He sighs deeply and closes his eyes as if the memory pains him. "That was the worst year of my life. I have to watch my parents get sick because the government"s help isn"t enough. I am not exactly blaming them, I mean they can"t feed all of the country"s population, right? I just...I wish...I don"t know what I could have wished for." Silence envelops us and we all shift in our seat, waiting for him to continue. "And when they ran out of medicines to test, they thought of experimenting." He looks around the room and he stops when his eyes find mine then Juliana"s. "It"s us. They conducted ma.s.s testing for kids and elders. They called us the brittle ones. I didn"t understand them or what they doing at first until one day. They knocked on our doors, armed men and medical frontliners. As a kid, of course, I got scared. But my parents seemed to know what was happening so I thought maybe it was something good. But the only good thing was me. I remember--"

"Them killing your family." I cut him off. I can feel everyone"s eyes on me but I keep my gaze on the floor. "You were dragged out from your own home and they killed your family. You, along with many others, became specimens for their experiment because they found out that you were immune to the virus. So they thought that there"s something inside you that may help them fight the disease. They experimented on you like guinea pigs. They killed your family so no word would be out about what they"re doing." I keep my tone as lifeless as possible but the anger inside me is boiling into new food. I raise my head to look at him and he studies me.

"I see," he said. "Like mother like daughter." He mutters under his breath but I still heard him. I narrow my eyes at him daring him to elaborate but he just shakes his head and continues his story. Later, I"ll know. "Yes, that"s true. They killed our family. They experimented on us. They put different kinds of viruses on our veins and see who"ll stay alive at the end of the day. Each session, different kind. Every different kind results in hundreds of us being dead. Then before we knew it, the session stopped and only thousands of us were left out of the million people they brought in. All of us were kids. And then I thought finally, finally, I can get out of this h.e.l.l. But they wouldn"t let us. Because something happened to us during the experiment. Something in our DNA changed causing our abilities or powers or whatever you call it to surface. They trained us, how to control, how to use, and how to conjure our abilities. And while we were inside that facility, the people outside were starving to death and were dying because of the virus." Collective gasps come from our groups. He nods gravely. "Because we weren"t the cure the government hopes we were. Yes, our immune system can fight all kinds of virus but it seems like it only works for our bodies. So when they found out that something happened to our DNA, they were afraid to let us walk into the new world. At least they didn"t kill us like I hope they would."

"And how is that connected to Sarah?" Avery asks. I look at her to see her leaning on Stew and his arm was around her shoulders.

"They categorized us based on how strong we were. From there, 8 children were picked to lead us all. Why? Because they are the strongest. These 8 children were called as the Gammas because their strength can penetrate anything. I was categorized as one of the Alphas, the weakest group among all. But neither of us complained because we became a family. We treated each other equally. Even the gammas, they became the perfect leaders for us. Then one day, the gammas found out something that changed the way we view things. We thought the government was protecting us, we thought that they were doing this for us because we were the future but no, we"ve got it all wrong. They were no longer finding the cure, instead, they were using the disease to lure people, to fool them. They were training us because they wanted an army. An army wherein people will be afraid of. An army where people will learn to cower. An army that wasn"t meant to protect or save lives but rather to kill. They were planning to rule the world by using us." He spits the last words as if they have venom on them. "Your mother--" he nods at me--"Allianah together with your father Cade and Sarah and along with the other five planned an escape for all of us. But of course, not all of us agreed to their plan so some still stayed."

"Wait," Riley intervenes. "Who were these 8 Gammas?"

"Allianah and Cade are Rebecca"s parents, err, Ellie I mean. Sarah, the one you"re calling as the head, was their best friend together with Jacob. Then Maisey, Troy, Luke, and Reenah."

"Err, sorry I asked," Riley said. We all just smile rea.s.suringly.

"We managed to escape but then our group got divided along the way. I stayed with the Gammas, not because they are strong but because they became my second family, especially Sarah and Allianah, they became the sisters I have longed for. Days later after our escape, we found our faces being displayed everywhere. We became running fugitives from being their specimens. It was such a long journey. There"s nowhere in the world where people don"t want to turn us in or kill us. Then we run and hide until we finally realized that there"s nothing for us to hide from. Because we can take the government down. We can beat them so we began gathering allies all across the world. Our late friends joined us on our revolution and soon our group of 9 became a group of hundreds. We told the world about the government"s dark secrets in every way we can. Shortly, a war sparked up but it wasn"t a b.l.o.o.d.y war, it was more of the people"s war. It was messy because people rallied everywhere, most towns look like ghost towns but then it wasn"t b.l.o.o.d.y in the least. After that war, the government knew that they can"t fight the million people going against them so they stepped down. The aftermath was that there are no leaders left because they all stepped down. So the people elected the gammas. They became the 8 leaders and rulers of the world while I became one of their advisers. Their reign was the most peaceful and most beautiful reign the world had ever had."

"And then? How did it become like this?" Riley asks.

"They found the cure to the pandemic and it saved millions of lives around the world but then after four years of peaceful ruling, we received a report from the countries that their people are falling ill again. We thought it was the virus again but it wasn"t. It was a whole lot different, it was somehow deadlier so we investigated it. Then we found out that it came from Antarctica, the continent of ice. Climate change and global warming play major roles in unleashing this virus. We didn"t know that the ice in Antarctica holds the diseases that are way deadlier than any virus we have ever encountered until then. We went to Antarctica to study these diseases. We didn"t tell anyone that there is a newly found disease because people will panic. We tried our best to find a cure but we couldn"t. Because somehow just like us, these diseases are immune to any kind of medicine. Once again, the world fell into darkness and we were forced to declare the state of emergency. We were quick to respond in the disease so it didn"t spread like the late one. We lockdown the countries that were affected. We built facilities for the patients. Then our dreaded day came. The 7 gammas fell ill except for Sarah. Just then, we found out that we weren"t immune to this virus too. Their sickness was kept hidden. We tried every medicine, every herbal plant but they didn"t do a thing. Once you caught the illness, there"s no way you can ever come out of it. Then one day, I just heard gunshots, they woke me up from my slumber. I ran out of the hallway to find the gammas being slain in their sleep. Then I found out that it was...it was..."

"Sarah. It was Sarah who was killing them." I said closing my eyes.

"Yes. I was angry at her, I wanted to kill her but then I remember something. If she was killing the gammas then that means--"

"She must have seen something happening in the future that has something to do with the virus." We all look at Juliana and her eyes find mine. What does she mean by that?

"Yes. But she can"t tell us what she saw because she said telling it wouldn"t change a thing. Then I realized if the gammas can"t survive the virus--"

"Then no one can," Nate said beside me.

"Can you just tell us how deadly this virus is?" Avery asks. There"s only seriousness in her voice, no Avery like left. The silence that follows indicates the worst so we brace ourselves.

"It can wipe the world out."

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

"Like, all out?!" Clain was the first to speak among all of us when we were rendered speechless.

"Yes," Roderick whispered. "But I know we can stop it. We can still stop the spread."

"Wait, it"s still spreading?" The shock in Aimee"s voice surface.

"Yes. That was the reason why Sarah is doing this. And the reason as to why there"s no word that something as big as this is happening is because Sarah is killing whoever gets the disease. At least that"s what she told me but I know that there is something more. Something bigger that"s going to happen in the future and somehow all these killings and whatever that is connected. And that"s what you, the 8 new gammas are going to find."

"What? We"re just like going to bang in the city walls and demand for Sarah"s answers?" Stewart asks. The first time he speaks ever since Roderick started talking.

"No," he shakes his head. "I know you are very well aware that Sarah is now looking for all of you. She has her minions roaming all around for her. I don"t know what she"ll do when she finds the 8 of you. Now, I want you to prepare an army, gather all the allies you can gather all across the woods. I don"t want you to be discreet about it. Let her know that you are starting a revolution."

"It will only conjure war. And it will not be as clean as the one you told us. It will be messier, bloodier, a lot of lives would be wasted." Riley said. Her elbows resting on her knees.

"I know. But it"s the only way we can stop Sarah."

"No," I said. All of them look at me and I square my shoulders at them. "No. We can create an army without having a b.l.o.o.d.y war. Just to show her that we will fight. Just to show her what we know. Then maybe I"ll talk to her."

"You don"t understand." He said, cutting me off. "This won"t be solved by talking--"

"Then I won"t play a part of it. I won"t just go all around the world, gathering allies and waving their lives for Sarah to slay. I won"t risk them."

"I agree," Nate said, putting a rea.s.suring hand on my shoulder to tell me that he is in this too.

"Me too. We can"t just risk them. The world"s population is already hanging on a thread and this will only result in more deaths." Juliana said. A chorus of "yeah" and "I agree" rang out from our group.

Roderick shakes his head but with a smile displayed on his lips. "Just like the former gammas. Very well then. If that"s what you like."

"It is." We all said all at once.

"Fine. Then," he shrugs his shoulders. "Let"s start planning."