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The first period bell rang like any other. Me and my friends, Blake and John, walked to first period in the Math building. Algebra. What a way to start the morning? What a class. Same boring thing over and over again, day after day. A second nap time for us and it wasn�t even nine in the morning!
My thoughts drifted back to the night before when I was watching the news. It seems that Jene DeVowe was more then a son to one of the people from that group. He was, in fact, and a scary, corrupted fact, an experiment in progress. A test subject that had moved from the Colonies, the basis of the group�s work, to our small area, as an escape from the men who, in the end, had actually killed him. And the more I thought about it, the stranger it became. Jene always wore sunglasses. The type that looks like a pair of goggles, black lensed and never had I seen him take them off. The only reason I knew his eyes were blue was because he told me once that they were. Second, he always seemed calm and focused on something, as if some sort of program were being run. Was he Hu-man? He looked it. Hell, he bled like one! But I wonder if he was now. He may have been care free, but his reflexes were incredible. And when ever anyone startled him, his hand snapped to his waist as if looking for something and it was never there.
But still that question remained: even if Jene was some sort of experiment, why did these men want him dead? And why were they so intent on killing him that they fol-lowed him from Colony to Earth?
Reality kicked in as a second teacher came into the room and spoke to ours. His face visibly dropped and so did the marker from his hand as the second adult spoke to him in quiet about something. With the second teacher walking out, our, now white as a sheet, teacher, spoke to us. �It seems�� he stopped.
Great; he really wasn�t going to tell us. Just let us look at him blankly as he tried to regain color to his face.
�It seems that Jene DeVowe, as you all know, was murdered last week, was an experiment in progress.�
Heard this. Stupid guy must not watch TV.
�But he was not just any experiment. He was in fact the result of a Cyborg ex-periment conducted a few years back.�
What?! Jene a Cyborg?! Now it makes sense. The next step in evolution and this unknown, unmarked group come up with it first! No wonder those two men were so in-clined and determined to kill him! They knew what he was!
�The two men who killed him are from the Special Forces. You all know about them. And they felt Jene was a weapon of destruction, unfit to wander free. A Biogenetic Organism, Jene was wanted by every one! Every country. He was a prototype Ne-oweapon.�
Neoweapons! Great what next?! First the Special Forces are after Jene to kill him because he might be dangerous. Every country in the world wants their very own Jene DeVowe and now he�s being called a Neoweapon. What next? The Colonies going to drop to Earth?! (If only I knew I would be eating those words that I thought!)
Our teacher left the room and at the same time, Blake and John turned to me. �Did you hear that?! Man you were friends with him!� Blake was always the one to find some-thing good in a bad situation. A quality I really enjoyed from him. �A fucking Ne-oweapon and you were friends!�
Jonathan on the other hand was a total pessimist. �You know they�re gonna come after you. My Dad was watching a show where the Special Forces came after a woman this guy bought his dog from. A dog. Can you believe it? A lousy four legged fucking animal.�
Blake rolled his eyes. �John shut up! Look at the bright side. Maybe they�ll want you alive.�
Oh of joys. I�ll get to be a living target. But Blake was right; I was good friends with Jene. Of all the ironic things in this crazy world.
�Do you know how many people are going to die now because of him?�
�No one�s going to die John.�
This is why I love these two. They have whole conversations and I don�t have to say a word.
�Yes-huh. Look, they are gonna kill every person who even looked at Jene. Hell lived in the same limits of a Hydrogen bomb probably! We�re all dead!�
�No we�re not!� Blake argued back. �You watch everything�s going to be fine.�
I have to admit it, I gave the Forces credit. They tired, and for the most part, suc-ceeded, to drop the Colony into an ocean to create a title wave. Part landed on the African coast closer to Australia and that was the end of the world, as we knew it.
Even though we were nowhere near the actual landing, or crash of the Colony, things grew deathly quiet around noon. About ten minutes later, we felt the first affects of the drop though. All coast cities felt the first shocks, all tall buildings crashing to the ground. Hell, any building crashed to the ground, leaving the land covered in a dark cloud of smoke, snowing ashes for miles around. I don�t think the death toll was ever counted. What was the point, by the time it was all over? People around the world had died. The population dropped drastically in a matter of a few hours! And why? All because a kid named Jene DeVowe was murdered.
But I�m just a kid and no one will listen to me right? An only child who has noth-ing better to do than hang out with his friends and wonder what the world was like a long time a go. And I mean a longtime ago. I mean last week we learned about the beginning of World War Three. The city of New York isn�t even New York any more. And the president hasn�t been in the Washington DC Whitehouse since the year two thousand four. He�s, or she, because our last president, who was assassinated shortly before Jene by the Special Forces also, was a woman. Very nice lady. Anyway. This is what the American society has come down to. The Special Forces are now in control of the coun-try. I can see them now. Sitting back in the chair behind the President�s desk, smoking a cigarette. What ever they say goes from now on. There�s no President to stop them. And low and behold, you�ll never guess. She was shot by the Vice President, a quote, un-quote �former� Special Forces Agent. I wonder what ever happened to the FBI? I hear they were bad, but Angels compared to the Special Forces. I think sometimes that all the Forces are made up of is former Mob Bosses and stuff of that sort. They are that heart-less. Amazing.
Blake and John fought like always and fought some more about who was right and who was wrong. Me, to me, both of them were right and both of them were wrong. I was still alive and no Hydrogen bomb was dropped. Only a Colony. The oldest one too, so in a way it was good. The President was thinking about destroying it anyway. If she were alive, it�d just be one less job for her to do now.
To be honest, I liked her; she was doing a good job. Kind and always thinking of the under dog. I can also understand why the Forces killed her. She�d just get in the way of their plans. Whatever they were. No one knows what they were going to do next. I don�t think anyone dared to ask either. Who knew if they�d live to tell about it or not if they did ask?
When the realization that the Special Forces were now in control hit John, he flipped out. Plain and simple. Point blank. I wish I had my camcorder. Shaking and al-most, if not, in a mental breakdown, he was positive we were all dead. But me and Blake had bigger things on our minds.
All around us people were dying of lack of air and we weren�t far behind if we didn�t move. So after Blake punched John to snap him back to reality for, at least, for the moment, we ran towards our old hiding place. It was a broken down, abandoned military base of some sort and to our surprise and horror, it was airtight and we were able to breathe down there. The only reason we could think of why it was like that was because in World War Three, there was germ warfare and unless you had the right type of ventila-tion system, you were dead. People were really mean back in the early Twenty First Cen-tury.
I was also thankful at this point that we had gotten canned food and stuff down there earlier that week for we had planned to spend Thanksgiving vacation down in our underground hole.
John stood in the corner, still shaking as me and Blake found a box we had stuck the flashlights in. The entrance point of the place was covered by a bush. The bush now was covered in ash and the smoke was everywhere, but it all above ground. We were un-derground and safe for the time being.
The hall was long and low, but it soon opened up into a three story deep hole in the Earth that was the hidden base. A ladder was close by and I walked towards it with one of the flashlights as Blake walked over to the first door and opened it. Inside the small room were all the base�s controls, including the main power box, which we had managed to get working with the help of Blake�s mother�maybe she was here! My fa-ther too! They both knew about this place.
I turned the flashlight off as the rusty old lights flickered on. I looked down to the floor; all dust covered and noticed a fresh set of tracks in the inch or so of dust and dirt. Once I was close enough to the bottom, I jumped, sending up a cloud of light brown around me. I coughed and Blake wasn�t far behind. I looked up to see John lean over the rail. �Come on John!� I waved him down, but he shook his head.
�No, I�m gonna stay up here for a little Petri. I really think the worst has yet to come.�
If only we had listened to him. I shrugged and turned to Blake as he looked up and smiled. �Mom�s here. I think your Dad is too. I can tell by the prints.�
�Where are they then? Dad!� my voice echoed around the area as Blake shoved his hand in his pocket and swung the flashlight in hand. �Hey Dad! Suzie!�
�Mom!� Blake followed right after. �Rich!� Each of us called our friend�s parents by their first names. �John is Mom up there with you?�
�No, Mom�s not up her Blake. I don�t think they�re here.� John�s voice sounded shaky. I really don�t know why he was afraid on this place. Okay, I understand that he�s afraid of the entire situation, I was too, but he needed to grow up a bit. Damn genius Freshman!
�Mom! Come on this isn�t funny!� I heard Blake�s voice crack. If Blake was loos-ing it, it was bad. Blake was the most laid back, calm one of us three and he was starting to act like John now.
�Hey,� I looked at him. �Get a grip man! We�re Juniors in high school! Snap outta it.�
�But�� he stopped as a door opened. It must have been on the middle floor. Nothing moved on the bottom floor and all John did was look over the edge again. �Petri!�
�Stop. Dad, Suzie that you guys?�
�Petri!� a man, who was my father, came to the rail, Blake�s Mom next to him. �Where�s John?�
�Above you Dad! You�re okay?�
He nodded. �I was just laying out my maps, Son. Come up here, John,� he looked up. �Come down here. I want you three to see this.�
�Mom!� Blake finally broke. I had to never seen him cry before, but he had the right to. Actually I gave him credit; he kept calm as long as he possibly could.
Once we were all in the room my Dad had set up for his maps, he started in. See my Dad is former military. The only reason he�s not in the Army now is because of me. He didn�t want to drag me around the world, changing schools and never having any real friends. So he settled in the place his last term ran out at and that�s where we stayed. Me and him. My Mom died giving birth to me, so the only female influence I�ve ever had is Suzie. I�ve known Suzie and her boys my entire life. Her husband worked in the same squad as my Dad, but ran off with a younger woman from the squad.
Me and Dad, along with Blake and John, helped her through it all and all five of us are like a family. We�re all waiting for the day they officially get together. But at this point, even that doesn�t matter.
Dad had maps of every country in the world. Things he had collected since he was little. And on one world map, cities and countries were high-lighted across the globe, the places where he had seen the Special Forces. All coasts, or well almost all of them, were scribbled across, showing that they were the fallen cities and towns of the fallen Colony.
�Okay,� he looked at me. I don�t know why, but he always seemed to. Maybe it was because my shoulder length hair had been Semi-rooted a dark blue a few months be-fore and he had never gotten used to the fact that my hair was long. �I�ve been able to contact my former commander and he said that he was working on a tem.�
Suzie nodded. �What about the Special Forces Rich?�
�That�s the problem.� My Dad shook his head. �The Military is supposed to be with the Special Forces, so he has to be real careful on whom he talks to, but as soon as he gets a team together, he�ll be here.�
�Why are they coming out here Dad?� I slammed my fist on the table, then opened it. �There�s nothing left out here!�
�No?� he raised his eyebrow at me. I hate it when he does that. He always has some sort of smart-ass remark or way to prove me wrong, it�s almost like that�s a fucking beacon. Yeah, beep, beep, got a remark to kick you with! �They didn�t call me Radar when I was younger for nothing. There�s a second military base a few miles away. A tun-nel I found leads from this one to that one. A bunch of military personal against the Spe-cial Forces are going there. It�s all been planned and worked out. Way ahead of you son.�
BANG! Yup, shot straight through the heart with some form of weaponry that I don�t know the name to.
Suzie looked over to another map. Blake turned to her as she tapped the back of his chair. He gave her a quick look that said, �What the hell?� and shook his head. �Did you get the old squad, or not? Actually�did the Colonel get the old squad?�
�Party Suz.� Dad nodded. �And partly no. We�ve both gotten the group together. They and the others we�ve assembled world round are gathering in different areas. I�ve known about this for months.�
Strike two. Now he�s shot Suzie with the same weapon.
�Then why didn�t you stop them?! Dad the Special Forces killed Jene, innocent people, the President and you knew! Why Dad?� I was yelling, slamming my fists on the table. �I don�t get you!� Man was he getting on my nerves.
�Listen to me Petri. I intercepted a phone call okay? What could I do? I called the Colonel and this is what we came up with. We were going to need an after attack force, son. Besides, no one�s been able to get close to the President�s residence for months now. Think, son, please.�
I dropped back to my seat as Blake and John looked at me. �Sorry Dad. I still don�t understand. Why does this have to happen? Why do the Special Forces want con-trol? Why did they want Jene dead? What�d he do?�
�You can answer that. Son, Jene DeVowe was an experiment prototype. A seven-teen-year-old boy who underwent a series of different things and became a Cyborg. The Jene you knew. The Neoweapon, if programmed the right way, is a capable killer. The Special Forces wanted the plans to them to build an army of them, but the group wouldn�t hand Jene over. So instead of getting the plans, or actually leaving them alone, they tracked Jene down and as you know killed him.�
All of us fell quiet. Dad was right, I knew it, we all did. But it�s still hard to swal-low the reality of it all. Then there was the matter of the other base. How come me, Blake and John never found it? And how come Dad knew about it? Were there really people there already? I had so many things running through my head as such a fast pace, I was making myself sick.
Dad looked at me puzzled. �Petri? Are you okay?�
I nodded. �I�ve just got a lot on my mind Dad. I was real close friends with Jene and now this! What�s going to happen next? I know some form of war, but why?�
�Things happen that can�t be explained, son, and no one knows why. No one un-derstands them or the actions taken. A time like this calls for what we�re doing.�
�What? World War Five?� Blake looked back at Suzie as she shrugged. She was about to speak when from down on the base floor, we all heard what sounded like a door opening�