- Oct 9, 2005
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This is the story I have rewritten as the pages of my first chapter. You might recall them as parts of a story I pasted before.
Please Please Please review it and give me fair comments so far I pasted here.
Many people I need to show more than tell, please tell me if this is the case here....
Here is the extract. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CRITIZE IT TO YOUR HEART"S CONTENT!
THANK YOU! I WANT NOTHING BUT THE PERFECT BOOK!
[FONT="]Chapter One: The Reluctant Rebel. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“….of all things, experience sculpts men the most. We are what we have undergone and this wasn’t any more different for our savior Cherin, as he prepared on that terrible day to undertake the first of the steps towards the abyss as the price of our deliverance...[/FONT]
[FONT="]
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[FONT="]It should be a matter of record of how the experience shaped Cherin the man into Cherin the Savior. It is our right to know his thoughts through those desperate moments, his hopes even as he lost almost everything and everyone close to him through that trial of fire.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The first standard day of solar cycle: 2200 AD. So what happened from this terrible moment onwards? And how did it invoke the divinity in one man, Cherin Veld, our redeemer who shepherded us from eternal dusk to dawn.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]This question has many meanings as it has answers. Ask it to his faithful and they shall celebrate it as the beginning of his ascension. Ask this to the vanquished soviets and his mortal enemies shall rue it as the cataclysm that destroyed their realm. Demand the answer from that fiend Reinhard and the demon shall surely mourn about being dethroned on the verge of godhood. Ask this question to me, his closest follower and then I can only say it all began with the tendermost part of his soul dying forever….”[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="] ... Perth Dost[/FONT][FONT="]: The journey from darkness to daylight. [/FONT]
[FONT="]For Doctor Cherin Veld, the countdown to his martyrdom began ticking with the arrival of a visitor at the asteroid colony Veld called home. The doctor, now thirty three years old would live for only one more year and would be dead before his next birthday.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]
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[FONT="]The year of the Cataclysm they would call it and thus the time left for the doctor to live began decreasing with the arrival of a rebel admiral at an asteroid base named Brezhnev, the suspected residence of the Veld family. The two men, the doctor and the admiral would meet each other in an utmost peculiar manner, the events rolling the dice for the future ahead of them.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“We found him in the shafts. I think he was trying to sabotage the vents…” A guard said, one amongst the group that had captured and marched in a prisoner inside the security station.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Interesting, I’m sure he has a lot to tell.” The chief smiled as the captive was pushed before him. The superior was the head of this colony’s division of the political security agency, the KGB. Obviously he was very pleased with the turn of events. If the prisoner proved valuable enough, he could even get a promotion out of this miserable lump of rock called Brezhnev, perhaps even a posting back in Russia on Earth.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The guard continued. “When we got to him, he was peppering the floor with this powder. This was on him.” The man handed over to his superior a small brown sack filled with grey ashes.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“You tested it for toxins?” The chief asked him. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Analysis showed it constitutes of inert burnt celluloid.” The guard replied back.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Wood? You mean tree bark from the forests of Earth? We are eight billion kilometers away from the homeworld. Here a block of platinum is less valuable than tree bark. So where did he find something like this thing called wood?” The superior confronted the captive as he poured some of the contents of the sack into his palm. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The prisoner said. “Its origins shouldn’t matter. Why not ask me why I was spreading it on the floor instead….”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The operative stared in the mocking eyes of man his men had detained. He noticed the ferocious intensity of his captive’s cobalt blue eyes, the rectangle bearded jaw tense in exhibiting a calm aggression, the most dangerous kind. The KGB agent gauged the prisoner slowly, trying to fit his profile into a comfortable behavioral pattern. Thus the chief evaluated the meaning behind the personality of a man who tied his golden brown hair in pleats, the strength in his limbs resembling tree trunks and the deep bassoon voice that reverberated every word spoken. [/FONT]
[FONT="]It was an exercise in futility, the operative soon found himself facing a puzzle outside his league. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You know what this is for? I want answers!” The security head barked at the prisoner, the detainee’s hands and legs were bound by carbon fiber strands. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“I came here to meet someone. I’m using the ashes to draw him out….” The captive said slowly, the voice resonating inside the heads of the men around him. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Eh? What are the name? Being co operative will make it easier for you later on if I put in a word. Go on…” The KGB agent declared magnanimously as he checked the recorder one more time to make sure it was functional and memorizing the events around them. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The captive smiled, making his contempt for the operative’s assurances very clear. If the KGB had its way, he would be subject for the rest of his life to the tender mercies of the state’s brutal penal system consisting of daily liberal doses of beatings, torture and interrogation sessions. Living in it would mean torturous years of confinement and thus so far as the matter of experiencing the state’s gulags were concerned, the prisoners would rather prefer death than be incarcerated to face routine torture inflicted by the interrogators and also get forced by his fellow inmates to pick up soap dropped on the floors of the bathstalls.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The giant spoke slowly. His voice resonated through the men’s skulls: he was trouble. “My name is Bonn. Ruben Stuart Bonn. Admiral Bonn to my men, the men of the resistance…” Bonn let the message hit home with the intensity of a hypervelocity rod rammed from orbit. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The information made the operative reach instinctively for the gun sheathed to his belt, every man in the room reflexively trained his weapon on the admiral’s skull. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Do you think killing me would stop me from biting on my capsule?” Admiral Bonn asked the crowd. He was referring to the glass ampoule of poison which most high ranking rebels carried in their mouths. Once the ampoule was crushed with the teeth, one gram of that chemical would rapidly disperse into the environment, usually killing most living beings in the limits of confined spaces. 10 grams of it would be enough to kill all the ten thousand families residing in this asteroid base.[/FONT]
[FONT="]So the ampoule had one other purpose besides being used to commit suicide. Properly deployed it can also kill the lives of their captors. In the end it was a tradeoff between experiencing a few short agonizing seconds of dying for the gift of evading capture. Many high ranking rebels often exercised this choice and the consequences were dead rebels, state soldiers and interrogators. The soviets even investigated rumors that certain rebels had built up within them the resistance to the toxin by means of unknown crafts practiced by the dwellers of the asteroids. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn contoured his face to part his lips and the skin pulled away to reveal the tiny blue capsule held firmly between his teeth. The men surrounding him quickly backed away as they perceived the threat to their very lives. All of them knew if the admiral spit the contents of that capsule into the air, death for all would come in moments. There was no antidote to the poison in their books.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Killing us all would be a grave mistake. The state shall retaliate even more mercilessly.” The chief warned trying to rein in the captive. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“An acceptable situation, when you suppress the population further they shall turn over to us in greater numbers…” Bonn said. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Your times have come and gone, admiral. The state has won the war, killing yourself now would be futile in the hope of gathering momentum.” The security head reminded Bonn.[/FONT]
[FONT="]But the giant had no need of being coached on this topic, as a rebel he himself knew the situation inside out. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The story began in 2107 AD when a man named Selvan Veld began the organization known initially as the Smelter Resistance. It was a revolt against the state by the miners who inhabitated the Sol’s system’s richest sources of mineral wealth, the asteroid ring between Jupiter and Mars.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Selvan Veld with the resources mined by his men from the rocks orbiting around the sun, managed for a relatively moderate time to gain a tactical advantage over the cruel soviet state before they got overwhelmed, all in all a span of fifty years.[/FONT]
[FONT="]For over half a century the resistance managed operations smuggling rebel personnel offworld from Earth or otherwise to other extra earth colonies, staging attacks of isolated soviet bases and battleships, capturing the ships into their ranks.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Soon the war of the asteroid smelters took on form of a general revolt throughout the world, ultimately becoming the resistance, the scourge of the solar state. Their attacks would continue until the rebels actually managed dared to attack the soviet citadel of power itself, the militarized earth moon. Selvan Veld lead from the front and fell in the debacle that followed. The rebel fleet was defeated grievously over the moon and from that point was forever in defensive. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Today the rebellion was the shadow of itself and again Bonn agreed that the KGB officer was correct. There was no point to killing now to make a point. Besides the toxin will kill many innocnets on this anyway. He never had any hesitation in following the act which caught the soldiers and the operative by surprise.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn spit the capsule out, the tiny globule landing on the operative’s table, laying a tiny pool of spit. Then the men around him behaved as exactly Bonn expected again. They scrambled to secure the admiral to ensure he had no more surprises. [/FONT]
[FONT="]One man had him by his throat. Two were holding either of hands, already bound in carbon strands. The operative came closer, he hissed.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Want do you want, admiral?” [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn smiled and replied. “I’m here to anoint a king…” [/FONT]
[FONT="]“A king? There are no kings and queens here my friend. This is the victorious Solar State, here there is no aristocracy. Just honest citizens of a glorious civilization your scum kind is not ready to accept.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Your commissars live like Kings, they suck the blood and suppress the people of the world and space. Do not preach…” Bonn retorted back.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Before this daycycle is over, you will tell me what you know about everything going on here. I want the name of the man you are about to meet…” The chief threatened him, wanting to squeeze every kind of information he could extract as possible from this man. He would get the additional credit for being an expert interrogator. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You can meet him in moments from now. He would be here any moment…” The admiral sneered, None of these men knew the game he was planning. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Eh? This man will be here now?” The chief asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Yes. He will come to rescue me.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Indeed? You can be rest assured you are secure here. We got thirty armed personnel on this station.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn smiled. “Thirty? An entire battalion won’t be enough to take him…” The admiral was sincere in every sense of the word, the confrontation ahead would be extraordinary. Thus this way, the great game of life was set in motion.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Are you playing games, admiral?” The operative said, wising upto Bonn’s tactics.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Call it whatever you want, before this hour is out all of you be dead…” Bonn declared ominously. The words sent alarm bells ringing inside the KGB man’s head. Again he pointed the gun back at the admiral’s head and distanced himself away from the giant instinctively. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You cannot escape him…” The admiral warned as a matter of fact.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Escape who? Tell me, or I swear by the Architect to discharge my weapon on your head.” The chief ordered menacingly.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn replied slowly. “He is not human. You cannot kill him…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Not human? Admiral? I’m not making sense from you. I want all the facts now, especially since you threatened us all with death!” The operative interrogated.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I can tell you what he is. But don’t think that will prevent your deaths…” Bonn paused before continuing.”I’m sorry for what will befall you… I know you are just well meaning Soviet citizens…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The blow to his back came very expectedly and Bonn settled on his knees to elevate the disequilibrium the impact had on his body. The KGB man did one further, he socked the admiral square in the giant’s rectangular jaw with his fist.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A stream of blood began to run its course down around the admiral’s chin. Bonn mumbled through his bloodied mouth. “He will kill you all…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]A boot from one of the soldiers landed square in the admiral’s stomach. Bonn crumpled and blurted. “Nothing can stop him… he is the king…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The response enraged the men around him even and one of them was just about to stamp his head squarely into the floor when the chief ordered that soldier to freeze.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“How can be we believe you?” The chief hissed.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“You need not believe me. It does not work that way, all of you here will be dead before this subcycle is out.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Not satisfied with the reply, the chief raised his hand to lash at him again, but a very curious situation made his arm freeze midair because of the seriousness of circumstances.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The lights inside the station began flicking. The other electronic devices began displaying irregular modes of operation giving static, pulses and surges. The security station’s station’s sterile insides began to get bathed in a glazed glow of devices pushed to their limits. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“What’s going on?” The chief fumed, he realized a loss of electric power would be a very grave situation indeed. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“He is here. He has come to get you.” Bonn breathed out. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The chief turned to stare back the admiral, this time the operative had a look of fear on his face. He spun around again to give orders. “Go bring the power back up. Search and shoot any intruder inside here. Four of you remain here to guard him.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn watched the men leave to their deaths and the KGB man turned back towards the admiral.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn said, quoting words from the Magna, a book the admiral regarded as his Bible . “He bridges space and time. He is the one who knows the true path through the multiverse. His mind can cross barriers impossible to us. He is only human in flesh, His soul a part of a greater whole.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The chief exclaimed. “You are blabbering nonsense, fool.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn smiled as he explained. “You can never catch him, he will never let you. He is the perfect hunter. He disappears into the dark. In the darkness, he becomes one with the universe, he becomes a god.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The words enraged the chief further. He said. “Perfect hunter, gods, you are insane, admiral. By the Architect, I swear that this man will be found and both of you will be shipped to farm anti hydrogen above Jupiter.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The threat never came to fruition, the moment these words were uttered, the illumination throughout the station went dark completely, the electronics turning cold being denied of energy.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A voice came from the dark. “The circuit breakers, they got overloaded. “ [/FONT]
[FONT="]Another voice responded. “Fix them…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The first voice began to reply, but never finished. “We need to replace them fast and…” This voice got cut off with a shrieking expression of sudden acute pain. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The scream from the man froze everyone still. His companion’s voice called out. “Dmitri…Dmitri… What happened to…?” But this other voice too ended the same way, a muffled shout out of pain escaping the mouth from being killed in the darkness out of nowhere.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The second scream emanating from the darkness forced the soviet men to action. Most of them realized at once that they were being stalked by a hunter in the darkness. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Back in the room Bonn was in, the admiral was saying in the chief. “You see this darkness, it cloaks him. When he is observed by none, he can become unbound from the universe. When he is unbound, he does miracles. He is everywhere and everyplace at once…” [/FONT]
[FONT="]The KGB man continued to stare at the admiral in shock, taken in by the events around him. As a reaction to Bonn’s words, he shouted orders through the darkness. “All of you get together. Stay together so he cannot take us one by one.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]His men responded to his command and began finding their way towards each other through the cover of darkness. Soon a group of dozen men managed to organize themselves into a self protecting shield, but even that effort was futile. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bang![/FONT]
[FONT="]The sound of the explosion rocked through the station and the chief found himself twelve men dead. All of them blown to pieces strewn across by an explosion right at the very center of their group. The hunter had got them too.[/FONT]
[FONT="]From this point onwards, the command structure of the security station collapsed into a cacophony of panicked reactions. Voices screamed from the dark. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“He got Yukhov! Yukhov’s dead at my feet…” A man shouted before his throat got slit seconds later.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Another soldier screamed. “Regroup, regroup. He is like a ghost…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]A second epicenter of men formed under the cover of the shadows, only to meet the same fate as the unfortunates before.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bang![/FONT]
[FONT="]The second group of soviet soldiers too disintegrated in the subsequent explosion, the dark walls being splattered with body parts and pools of crimson. Obviously the hunter was aware of every trick in their book.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The panicked men kept shouting through the darkness. One of them tried fleeing from the station itself, only to be met with sudden death before he managed to even open the door.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The voices cried desperately.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“He got me from back. I have a hole through my shoulder…” A man screamed in pain before dropping silent.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Not this way. Not this way.” A desperate soldier ringed out.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“He is coming and disappearing out of nowhere.” A soldier exclaimed before becoming a victim himself. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Several others died without a whisper escaping from their dying lips and very soon the commotion quieted down, the tally of living beings reduced to Bonn, the chief, his two last remaining guards and of course, the mysterious Hunter himself.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The chief was very aware of this fact when he trained his weapon on Bonn’s head.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Your friend gets close to me. I discharge this weapon on your face…” The KGB man warned.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“He won’t let you.” Bonn replied curtly.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“We should get out of here and alert Vostok.” One of the two remaining guards suggested desperately.[/FONT]
[FONT="]This man turned for a reply towards his other guard companion and got the biggest shock of his life. The other guard lay slumped in a pool of his own blood, killed under their very noses without them knowing anything about it. The hunter has again stuck mercilessly and without warning out of nowhere. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The sight sent the remaining guard futilely trying to flee for his life. The man never made it out of the room he was in. No sooner the unfortunate man abandoned his post and turned, he was shot in the back by the superior for cowardice, the last exercise of authority ever by the chief.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Again there was a suffocating silence, the intensity of which the KGB man tried hard to bring under his control.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The chief shouted. “Enough games. Show yourself or the admiral dies…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]He met only silence as the reply. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You are not getting away with this. The state shall find hunt you down for these actions of yours…” The operative stammered into the darkness veiling death for him.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The ordeal for the soviet man didn’t last much longer. The chief never saw the blade which descended out of thin air to slice off the limb training the weapon to Bonn’s face.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Instead he only got to experience pain as the blade having chopped off his arm also dug its way into his torso a split second later. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The chief in his final dying moment managed to glimpse his assailant just before his mind went dark forever to be rocked into the sleep of death. The hunter withdrew his bloodied platinum slowly from the operative’s chest as the dying KGB struggled in his painful death throes. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Before his consciousness faded out of existence in this dimension, the chief saw the King. It was a masked, hooded man with skin tight black attire holding the blade inside him, his tall and thin frame gently lowered the soviet officer’s struggling body to the ground to die. [/FONT]
[FONT="]This was the master hunter who bought him death and he is now dead. So thus as far as the security chief’s life was concerned, his story for most purposes in this universe ended here. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn stared at the hunter as the masked man turned his attention over to him. The admiral was unsure how to act this moment despite having spent weeks preparing for it: his first encounter with the master hunter designated as the king in the books of the ideology all rebels adopted as their code. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“I knew you shall come here, it is said the ashes will draw you out…” Bonn gestured towards his sack of ashes lying on the floor next to the dead superior. “…are you here to kill me as you did the others?” Bonn questioned, gauging the reaction of the hunter who studied the admiral slowly.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The words made a sudden impact on the mysterious man, the effect of which was he pounced on Bonn himself, holding the admiral hostage from behind his neck, the blade ready to slit the jugular. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“What are you, man or monster?” Bonn asked slowly, mindful of the cold touch of platinum on his vein. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The hunter hissed in a surprisingly restrained and calm tone. “I can be both…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“What are you more?” Bonn choked the words out, his neck being trapped in the elbow of the assassin.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I’m a man all the time, the beast within me this evil world provokes…” The assassin hissed sincerely before letting Bonn go. He asked further. “You came alone.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn answered. “I came searching for you.”
[/FONT] [FONT="]“Yes, we have plenty to talk, admiral Bonn.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“You know me? We have never met before and few knew me in the rebellion itself apart from my crew.” Bonn asked in surprise.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I always known you, admiral.” The hunter answered cryptically. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn nodded as he accepted the Hunter’s statement at an esoteric level. The hunter proceeded to remove the strands of carbon fiber binding the admiral’s hands together.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The hunter surprised Bonn again by asking. “Admiral, the laser emitter you have concealed in your mouth, may I have it? It would work better than my blade here.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]In Bonn, the words rang true from the codes of Magna. [/FONT]
[FONT="]He sees hidden truths![/FONT]
[FONT="]None except Bonn himself knew that he had concealed an emitter in his mouth. He would have used to cut these strands himself and kill those poor fools, the soviets eventually. [/FONT]
[FONT="]In the context of spitting out the glass capsule earlier, he had cared less about his poison than give away his emitter to the chief’s men by an oral inspection. It was the reason why he had brazenly spitted it out to fool them into letting down their guard.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn bought the small laser blowtorch to the tip of his mouth and the Hunter plucked it with his hand. Then the mysterious man proceeded to vaporize the carbon strands extending between the admiral’s hands. The task finished very soon.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I know who you are too…” Bonn said as the assassin walked back to make way for the giant’s limbs to move. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You always knew me too, admiral.” The mysterious Hunter replied cryptically again. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“So why the mask?” Bonn asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Thus the master Hunter removed his mask as the answer to the admiral’s question and it was revealed who HE was.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Cherin Veld! I knew it was you, I always did, Cherin.” The admiral said as he stared at the Hunter’s oval face. The eyebrows arched in perfect curves to match the round green eyes, the nose elongated at the right proportions to the thinness of the lips.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Admiral Bonn, you were a battle companion of my father. It’s an honor to meet you.” Cherin Veld replied in return.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s been a long time since the world has laid its eyes on you, Cherin. You hid well in the years past your father’s death.” Bonn said.[/FONT][FONT="]
“I had no choice, Bonn. At that time we were the most wanted family in the whole system. My father and mother died and I had to drop away from the eyes of the soviet. So the rebellion did the best it could. It secreted me away as an orphan to be cared by the state itself. I hid all these years under their very noses as a state ward.” Cherin Veld answered.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Cherin, its good to see you again and its better to even see your father within you. You are as your father was and in this way Selvan has returned back to his men today…” Bonn replied.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“My father was a different man.” Cherin replied. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Not anymore than you and you are his extension in this universe.” The admiral said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I don’t think so, Bonn.” Cherin said as he gestured with his arms. “we can discuss this all we want, but not here. Lets move to a safe place.” Cherin explained to Bonn further.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Make way, I shall follow you.” Bonn said as Cherin led the way for the admiral inside one of the vents.[/FONT]
[FONT="] ******************[/FONT]
[FONT="]The two men crawled their way through the airducts of the asteroid base. From the grates installed on the vents, they could see the rest of the world living out in the base. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn asked as he crawled his way through. “It is said you can breach spacetime. Is that true or is even possible?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It is true in a certain sense…” Cherin Veld as he lead the way. They passed through levels of machinery which worked to invigorate the base’s respiratory system. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“I saw how you killed those soviets in the darkness, how did you do it?” Bonn asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin paused in his crawl. He turned to confirm what Bonn already knew. The doctor said. “In the darkness when I’m unobserved, my being decouples from the spatial part of this reality. I enter a state of existence where I can be there at a point and not at the same time, my being turns into a wave. At this time, I’m beyond the confines of space of this reality in that sense. I can choose certain paths… timelines of my own liking. I can jump from certain places to other. I have some amount of control, but that’s it. This is how I mindshift from one spot to another.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Where do you get this power from?” Bonn questioned.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“You and neither will I understand it completely. There is a great knowledge worth pursuing in this universe and the fact is that in the quest for the complete truth of about our universe, we must seek truths however incomplete for a greater existence beyond it.” Cherin Veld said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“So what does this mean to us?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“This world we see is a shell of the reality around us. We as men are still ignorant of this universe as the primates would be of our own. The power which grants me to ability to mindshift is something beyond this spacetime we see, very much greater!”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn wondered about the implications of the doctor’s words as they approached a grating in the vent. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin opened it to let the admiral through first, then followed himself. Both men found them in the corner of a narrow passageway leading between rows of the compact, living capsules inhabited by the colonists of this asteroid base. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Both men walked in silence through the dark corridors for a few more minutes until they narrowed upon the hatch doors of the capsule the doctor himself lived in.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A quick moment later, the doors of the capsule opened and a thin woman awaited them standing on the other side. Cherin entered the capsule and beckoning the admiral in and the first thing Bonn noticed was the intense despair the woman has reserved for him for his appearance in their lives. The old warrior sensed that sorrow instinctively. He knew exactly what she meant; she will resent him very much for taking Cherin away from her for the rest of her short life left.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The two men took their seat on the chairs inside the room while Cherin’s wife stayed in the shadows. As always the dull humming of the station’s oxidizers served as a screen to their conversation, ever an oppressive reminder of the varied mechanisms it took to keep them alive so far from Earth.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Veld’s wife watched as the two men spoke with each other, her brown eyes filled with foreboding; the captain’s arrival meant bad tidings.[/FONT]
[FONT="]So far, so long, her family had managed to stay out of trouble by living in a remote asteroid colony, eight billion kilometers from Earth. With a baby on the way, their home was made of just a couple: a husband, a wife, an unborn child and all the love in the universe between them. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The visitor meant a danger to all that. She knew the captain has come to take her beloved Cherin away forever. Her unborn baby will never see its father.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“For a moment, Bonn, I thought this was a Soviet trick to get me….!” said Cherin.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Tricks? The soviet needs trick?” Bonn mused. The old warrior accepted a drink from Cherin’s wife as he continued saying. “…tricks are men like you and me. The soviet just uses his mammoth fleets to exterminate us outright…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It was the Resistance’s fault too. Your policy of not taking prisoners provoked the situation…” Cherin said, accusing the admiral of atrocities committed by the rebellion men.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn nodded and looked sidewards. “It’s a mess from both sides. I always opposed the take no prisoners policy myself, but with circumstances out in the void so drastic, it is impossible to control behavior despite the best of command….”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Selvan Veld would have been repulsed by this.” Cherin said to Bonn.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“That’s why I want you to come with me, Cherin. Something has happened which we need for…” Bonn said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Selvan wouldn’t have wanted me to join the rebellion as it is now, he would hate his own creation…” Cherin said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s my hope for you to become Selvan. I see your father within you, Cherin and it is my greatest hope that you can contribute to delivering the rebellion to what it once was…” Bonn said, as he noted Cherin’s wife again as she choose to stay silently in the background.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn studied her, the eyes filled with anxiety, the pose awaiting the bad news to fall and the restrained despair noted on her fair face. He will never forgive himself for breaking her heart.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn continued. “You and me shall force the rebellion to change…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin nodded, accepting the admiral’s solution. Bonn pointed out a seemingly apparent hypocrisy on part of the doctor. “You didn’t many prisoners yourself on that station…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin nodded again as he stood up to walk towards his wife.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin Veld explained. “This is a living colony, it hosts thousands of families in its confines. If I had allowed any of those men to know about me or the situation they could be facing, the soviets will descend upon this station ruthlessly. It’s important we do the right things at the right time.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn admitted. “Cherin. You are right there…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin said, gesturing towards his wife. “…my family shall live here to for the rest of their days. My wife, my son who I shall never see…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn stayed silent as he accepted the solemnity of the words. He tried to console the doctor. “You would return back to your family someday. All of us would…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin shook his head bitterly, clearly there was more to this than the doctor was saying. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn said with an anguish burning with him, but one he did not let show to the others. “Surely you prepared for this day. All of you knew it was coming…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I always knew you would come…” Cherin said. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Then?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I tried preparing for your arrival…” Cherin said as he lead the way to the admiral towards one of the inner rooms of the capsule. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn entered the room to find a glass tank housing a human body encased in blue suspension fluid. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn walked towards the canister to stare closer at the body suspended within. It was a perfect clone of Cherin, the resemblance unquestionable by the features shared as much the admiral could discern. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn turned towards the doctor in confusion. “This…” Bonn began.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s the evidence of my death as I will give to the authorities. They shall receive this body as the perfect explanation for my disappearance into the ranks of the resistance. I cannot risk the safety of this colony under any circumstances…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Is it alive?” Bonn asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin too stared into the tank. “Not really, it was constructed with nanobots by building blocks of chemicals. It’s not a human being, only a dead corpse with a structure resembling a formerly living thing. It took me seven years to make it…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“A philosophical zombie! You couldn’t grow one for your wife too?” Bonn asked. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“We didn’t have the resources to attempt two at once. I had estimated once this one was grown to specification, we would begin the process for my wife. But its too late now…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I came as a guest too soon, I’m so sorry. Cherin.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s not your fault, Bonn. None of any of us actually…” Cherin said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“That would be bring me little comfort.” Bonn said, sensing the presence of that poor woman near to him, every moment, he was now being tormented in the shadow of her sorrow. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Bonn, there is a greater game beyond us!” Cherin revealed, declaring the reality of the universe as perceived by him. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You father said so. He said that the universe we see is just a lower shadow of a greater one.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“All of this, Bonn is just a great game played in the higher sum of reality. We are actors on a stage…”[/FONT]
TO BE CONTINUED......
[FONT="]
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This is the story I have rewritten as the pages of my first chapter. You might recall them as parts of a story I pasted before.
Please Please Please review it and give me fair comments so far I pasted here.
Many people I need to show more than tell, please tell me if this is the case here....
Here is the extract. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CRITIZE IT TO YOUR HEART"S CONTENT!
THANK YOU! I WANT NOTHING BUT THE PERFECT BOOK!
[FONT="]Chapter One: The Reluctant Rebel. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“….of all things, experience sculpts men the most. We are what we have undergone and this wasn’t any more different for our savior Cherin, as he prepared on that terrible day to undertake the first of the steps towards the abyss as the price of our deliverance...[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]It should be a matter of record of how the experience shaped Cherin the man into Cherin the Savior. It is our right to know his thoughts through those desperate moments, his hopes even as he lost almost everything and everyone close to him through that trial of fire.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The first standard day of solar cycle: 2200 AD. So what happened from this terrible moment onwards? And how did it invoke the divinity in one man, Cherin Veld, our redeemer who shepherded us from eternal dusk to dawn.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]This question has many meanings as it has answers. Ask it to his faithful and they shall celebrate it as the beginning of his ascension. Ask this to the vanquished soviets and his mortal enemies shall rue it as the cataclysm that destroyed their realm. Demand the answer from that fiend Reinhard and the demon shall surely mourn about being dethroned on the verge of godhood. Ask this question to me, his closest follower and then I can only say it all began with the tendermost part of his soul dying forever….”[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="] ... Perth Dost[/FONT][FONT="]: The journey from darkness to daylight. [/FONT]
[FONT="]For Doctor Cherin Veld, the countdown to his martyrdom began ticking with the arrival of a visitor at the asteroid colony Veld called home. The doctor, now thirty three years old would live for only one more year and would be dead before his next birthday.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The year of the Cataclysm they would call it and thus the time left for the doctor to live began decreasing with the arrival of a rebel admiral at an asteroid base named Brezhnev, the suspected residence of the Veld family. The two men, the doctor and the admiral would meet each other in an utmost peculiar manner, the events rolling the dice for the future ahead of them.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“We found him in the shafts. I think he was trying to sabotage the vents…” A guard said, one amongst the group that had captured and marched in a prisoner inside the security station.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Interesting, I’m sure he has a lot to tell.” The chief smiled as the captive was pushed before him. The superior was the head of this colony’s division of the political security agency, the KGB. Obviously he was very pleased with the turn of events. If the prisoner proved valuable enough, he could even get a promotion out of this miserable lump of rock called Brezhnev, perhaps even a posting back in Russia on Earth.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The guard continued. “When we got to him, he was peppering the floor with this powder. This was on him.” The man handed over to his superior a small brown sack filled with grey ashes.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“You tested it for toxins?” The chief asked him. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Analysis showed it constitutes of inert burnt celluloid.” The guard replied back.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Wood? You mean tree bark from the forests of Earth? We are eight billion kilometers away from the homeworld. Here a block of platinum is less valuable than tree bark. So where did he find something like this thing called wood?” The superior confronted the captive as he poured some of the contents of the sack into his palm. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The prisoner said. “Its origins shouldn’t matter. Why not ask me why I was spreading it on the floor instead….”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The operative stared in the mocking eyes of man his men had detained. He noticed the ferocious intensity of his captive’s cobalt blue eyes, the rectangle bearded jaw tense in exhibiting a calm aggression, the most dangerous kind. The KGB agent gauged the prisoner slowly, trying to fit his profile into a comfortable behavioral pattern. Thus the chief evaluated the meaning behind the personality of a man who tied his golden brown hair in pleats, the strength in his limbs resembling tree trunks and the deep bassoon voice that reverberated every word spoken. [/FONT]
[FONT="]It was an exercise in futility, the operative soon found himself facing a puzzle outside his league. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You know what this is for? I want answers!” The security head barked at the prisoner, the detainee’s hands and legs were bound by carbon fiber strands. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“I came here to meet someone. I’m using the ashes to draw him out….” The captive said slowly, the voice resonating inside the heads of the men around him. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Eh? What are the name? Being co operative will make it easier for you later on if I put in a word. Go on…” The KGB agent declared magnanimously as he checked the recorder one more time to make sure it was functional and memorizing the events around them. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The captive smiled, making his contempt for the operative’s assurances very clear. If the KGB had its way, he would be subject for the rest of his life to the tender mercies of the state’s brutal penal system consisting of daily liberal doses of beatings, torture and interrogation sessions. Living in it would mean torturous years of confinement and thus so far as the matter of experiencing the state’s gulags were concerned, the prisoners would rather prefer death than be incarcerated to face routine torture inflicted by the interrogators and also get forced by his fellow inmates to pick up soap dropped on the floors of the bathstalls.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The giant spoke slowly. His voice resonated through the men’s skulls: he was trouble. “My name is Bonn. Ruben Stuart Bonn. Admiral Bonn to my men, the men of the resistance…” Bonn let the message hit home with the intensity of a hypervelocity rod rammed from orbit. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The information made the operative reach instinctively for the gun sheathed to his belt, every man in the room reflexively trained his weapon on the admiral’s skull. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Do you think killing me would stop me from biting on my capsule?” Admiral Bonn asked the crowd. He was referring to the glass ampoule of poison which most high ranking rebels carried in their mouths. Once the ampoule was crushed with the teeth, one gram of that chemical would rapidly disperse into the environment, usually killing most living beings in the limits of confined spaces. 10 grams of it would be enough to kill all the ten thousand families residing in this asteroid base.[/FONT]
[FONT="]So the ampoule had one other purpose besides being used to commit suicide. Properly deployed it can also kill the lives of their captors. In the end it was a tradeoff between experiencing a few short agonizing seconds of dying for the gift of evading capture. Many high ranking rebels often exercised this choice and the consequences were dead rebels, state soldiers and interrogators. The soviets even investigated rumors that certain rebels had built up within them the resistance to the toxin by means of unknown crafts practiced by the dwellers of the asteroids. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn contoured his face to part his lips and the skin pulled away to reveal the tiny blue capsule held firmly between his teeth. The men surrounding him quickly backed away as they perceived the threat to their very lives. All of them knew if the admiral spit the contents of that capsule into the air, death for all would come in moments. There was no antidote to the poison in their books.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Killing us all would be a grave mistake. The state shall retaliate even more mercilessly.” The chief warned trying to rein in the captive. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“An acceptable situation, when you suppress the population further they shall turn over to us in greater numbers…” Bonn said. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Your times have come and gone, admiral. The state has won the war, killing yourself now would be futile in the hope of gathering momentum.” The security head reminded Bonn.[/FONT]
[FONT="]But the giant had no need of being coached on this topic, as a rebel he himself knew the situation inside out. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The story began in 2107 AD when a man named Selvan Veld began the organization known initially as the Smelter Resistance. It was a revolt against the state by the miners who inhabitated the Sol’s system’s richest sources of mineral wealth, the asteroid ring between Jupiter and Mars.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Selvan Veld with the resources mined by his men from the rocks orbiting around the sun, managed for a relatively moderate time to gain a tactical advantage over the cruel soviet state before they got overwhelmed, all in all a span of fifty years.[/FONT]
[FONT="]For over half a century the resistance managed operations smuggling rebel personnel offworld from Earth or otherwise to other extra earth colonies, staging attacks of isolated soviet bases and battleships, capturing the ships into their ranks.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Soon the war of the asteroid smelters took on form of a general revolt throughout the world, ultimately becoming the resistance, the scourge of the solar state. Their attacks would continue until the rebels actually managed dared to attack the soviet citadel of power itself, the militarized earth moon. Selvan Veld lead from the front and fell in the debacle that followed. The rebel fleet was defeated grievously over the moon and from that point was forever in defensive. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Today the rebellion was the shadow of itself and again Bonn agreed that the KGB officer was correct. There was no point to killing now to make a point. Besides the toxin will kill many innocnets on this anyway. He never had any hesitation in following the act which caught the soldiers and the operative by surprise.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn spit the capsule out, the tiny globule landing on the operative’s table, laying a tiny pool of spit. Then the men around him behaved as exactly Bonn expected again. They scrambled to secure the admiral to ensure he had no more surprises. [/FONT]
[FONT="]One man had him by his throat. Two were holding either of hands, already bound in carbon strands. The operative came closer, he hissed.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Want do you want, admiral?” [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn smiled and replied. “I’m here to anoint a king…” [/FONT]
[FONT="]“A king? There are no kings and queens here my friend. This is the victorious Solar State, here there is no aristocracy. Just honest citizens of a glorious civilization your scum kind is not ready to accept.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Your commissars live like Kings, they suck the blood and suppress the people of the world and space. Do not preach…” Bonn retorted back.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Before this daycycle is over, you will tell me what you know about everything going on here. I want the name of the man you are about to meet…” The chief threatened him, wanting to squeeze every kind of information he could extract as possible from this man. He would get the additional credit for being an expert interrogator. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You can meet him in moments from now. He would be here any moment…” The admiral sneered, None of these men knew the game he was planning. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Eh? This man will be here now?” The chief asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Yes. He will come to rescue me.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Indeed? You can be rest assured you are secure here. We got thirty armed personnel on this station.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn smiled. “Thirty? An entire battalion won’t be enough to take him…” The admiral was sincere in every sense of the word, the confrontation ahead would be extraordinary. Thus this way, the great game of life was set in motion.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Are you playing games, admiral?” The operative said, wising upto Bonn’s tactics.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Call it whatever you want, before this hour is out all of you be dead…” Bonn declared ominously. The words sent alarm bells ringing inside the KGB man’s head. Again he pointed the gun back at the admiral’s head and distanced himself away from the giant instinctively. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You cannot escape him…” The admiral warned as a matter of fact.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Escape who? Tell me, or I swear by the Architect to discharge my weapon on your head.” The chief ordered menacingly.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn replied slowly. “He is not human. You cannot kill him…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Not human? Admiral? I’m not making sense from you. I want all the facts now, especially since you threatened us all with death!” The operative interrogated.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I can tell you what he is. But don’t think that will prevent your deaths…” Bonn paused before continuing.”I’m sorry for what will befall you… I know you are just well meaning Soviet citizens…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The blow to his back came very expectedly and Bonn settled on his knees to elevate the disequilibrium the impact had on his body. The KGB man did one further, he socked the admiral square in the giant’s rectangular jaw with his fist.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A stream of blood began to run its course down around the admiral’s chin. Bonn mumbled through his bloodied mouth. “He will kill you all…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]A boot from one of the soldiers landed square in the admiral’s stomach. Bonn crumpled and blurted. “Nothing can stop him… he is the king…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The response enraged the men around him even and one of them was just about to stamp his head squarely into the floor when the chief ordered that soldier to freeze.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“How can be we believe you?” The chief hissed.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“You need not believe me. It does not work that way, all of you here will be dead before this subcycle is out.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Not satisfied with the reply, the chief raised his hand to lash at him again, but a very curious situation made his arm freeze midair because of the seriousness of circumstances.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The lights inside the station began flicking. The other electronic devices began displaying irregular modes of operation giving static, pulses and surges. The security station’s station’s sterile insides began to get bathed in a glazed glow of devices pushed to their limits. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“What’s going on?” The chief fumed, he realized a loss of electric power would be a very grave situation indeed. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“He is here. He has come to get you.” Bonn breathed out. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The chief turned to stare back the admiral, this time the operative had a look of fear on his face. He spun around again to give orders. “Go bring the power back up. Search and shoot any intruder inside here. Four of you remain here to guard him.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn watched the men leave to their deaths and the KGB man turned back towards the admiral.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn said, quoting words from the Magna, a book the admiral regarded as his Bible . “He bridges space and time. He is the one who knows the true path through the multiverse. His mind can cross barriers impossible to us. He is only human in flesh, His soul a part of a greater whole.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The chief exclaimed. “You are blabbering nonsense, fool.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn smiled as he explained. “You can never catch him, he will never let you. He is the perfect hunter. He disappears into the dark. In the darkness, he becomes one with the universe, he becomes a god.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The words enraged the chief further. He said. “Perfect hunter, gods, you are insane, admiral. By the Architect, I swear that this man will be found and both of you will be shipped to farm anti hydrogen above Jupiter.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The threat never came to fruition, the moment these words were uttered, the illumination throughout the station went dark completely, the electronics turning cold being denied of energy.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A voice came from the dark. “The circuit breakers, they got overloaded. “ [/FONT]
[FONT="]Another voice responded. “Fix them…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]The first voice began to reply, but never finished. “We need to replace them fast and…” This voice got cut off with a shrieking expression of sudden acute pain. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The scream from the man froze everyone still. His companion’s voice called out. “Dmitri…Dmitri… What happened to…?” But this other voice too ended the same way, a muffled shout out of pain escaping the mouth from being killed in the darkness out of nowhere.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The second scream emanating from the darkness forced the soviet men to action. Most of them realized at once that they were being stalked by a hunter in the darkness. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Back in the room Bonn was in, the admiral was saying in the chief. “You see this darkness, it cloaks him. When he is observed by none, he can become unbound from the universe. When he is unbound, he does miracles. He is everywhere and everyplace at once…” [/FONT]
[FONT="]The KGB man continued to stare at the admiral in shock, taken in by the events around him. As a reaction to Bonn’s words, he shouted orders through the darkness. “All of you get together. Stay together so he cannot take us one by one.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]His men responded to his command and began finding their way towards each other through the cover of darkness. Soon a group of dozen men managed to organize themselves into a self protecting shield, but even that effort was futile. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bang![/FONT]
[FONT="]The sound of the explosion rocked through the station and the chief found himself twelve men dead. All of them blown to pieces strewn across by an explosion right at the very center of their group. The hunter had got them too.[/FONT]
[FONT="]From this point onwards, the command structure of the security station collapsed into a cacophony of panicked reactions. Voices screamed from the dark. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“He got Yukhov! Yukhov’s dead at my feet…” A man shouted before his throat got slit seconds later.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Another soldier screamed. “Regroup, regroup. He is like a ghost…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]A second epicenter of men formed under the cover of the shadows, only to meet the same fate as the unfortunates before.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bang![/FONT]
[FONT="]The second group of soviet soldiers too disintegrated in the subsequent explosion, the dark walls being splattered with body parts and pools of crimson. Obviously the hunter was aware of every trick in their book.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The panicked men kept shouting through the darkness. One of them tried fleeing from the station itself, only to be met with sudden death before he managed to even open the door.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The voices cried desperately.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“He got me from back. I have a hole through my shoulder…” A man screamed in pain before dropping silent.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Not this way. Not this way.” A desperate soldier ringed out.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“He is coming and disappearing out of nowhere.” A soldier exclaimed before becoming a victim himself. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Several others died without a whisper escaping from their dying lips and very soon the commotion quieted down, the tally of living beings reduced to Bonn, the chief, his two last remaining guards and of course, the mysterious Hunter himself.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The chief was very aware of this fact when he trained his weapon on Bonn’s head.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Your friend gets close to me. I discharge this weapon on your face…” The KGB man warned.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“He won’t let you.” Bonn replied curtly.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“We should get out of here and alert Vostok.” One of the two remaining guards suggested desperately.[/FONT]
[FONT="]This man turned for a reply towards his other guard companion and got the biggest shock of his life. The other guard lay slumped in a pool of his own blood, killed under their very noses without them knowing anything about it. The hunter has again stuck mercilessly and without warning out of nowhere. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The sight sent the remaining guard futilely trying to flee for his life. The man never made it out of the room he was in. No sooner the unfortunate man abandoned his post and turned, he was shot in the back by the superior for cowardice, the last exercise of authority ever by the chief.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Again there was a suffocating silence, the intensity of which the KGB man tried hard to bring under his control.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The chief shouted. “Enough games. Show yourself or the admiral dies…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]He met only silence as the reply. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You are not getting away with this. The state shall find hunt you down for these actions of yours…” The operative stammered into the darkness veiling death for him.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The ordeal for the soviet man didn’t last much longer. The chief never saw the blade which descended out of thin air to slice off the limb training the weapon to Bonn’s face.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Instead he only got to experience pain as the blade having chopped off his arm also dug its way into his torso a split second later. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The chief in his final dying moment managed to glimpse his assailant just before his mind went dark forever to be rocked into the sleep of death. The hunter withdrew his bloodied platinum slowly from the operative’s chest as the dying KGB struggled in his painful death throes. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Before his consciousness faded out of existence in this dimension, the chief saw the King. It was a masked, hooded man with skin tight black attire holding the blade inside him, his tall and thin frame gently lowered the soviet officer’s struggling body to the ground to die. [/FONT]
[FONT="]This was the master hunter who bought him death and he is now dead. So thus as far as the security chief’s life was concerned, his story for most purposes in this universe ended here. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn stared at the hunter as the masked man turned his attention over to him. The admiral was unsure how to act this moment despite having spent weeks preparing for it: his first encounter with the master hunter designated as the king in the books of the ideology all rebels adopted as their code. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“I knew you shall come here, it is said the ashes will draw you out…” Bonn gestured towards his sack of ashes lying on the floor next to the dead superior. “…are you here to kill me as you did the others?” Bonn questioned, gauging the reaction of the hunter who studied the admiral slowly.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The words made a sudden impact on the mysterious man, the effect of which was he pounced on Bonn himself, holding the admiral hostage from behind his neck, the blade ready to slit the jugular. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“What are you, man or monster?” Bonn asked slowly, mindful of the cold touch of platinum on his vein. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The hunter hissed in a surprisingly restrained and calm tone. “I can be both…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“What are you more?” Bonn choked the words out, his neck being trapped in the elbow of the assassin.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I’m a man all the time, the beast within me this evil world provokes…” The assassin hissed sincerely before letting Bonn go. He asked further. “You came alone.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn answered. “I came searching for you.”
[/FONT] [FONT="]“Yes, we have plenty to talk, admiral Bonn.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“You know me? We have never met before and few knew me in the rebellion itself apart from my crew.” Bonn asked in surprise.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I always known you, admiral.” The hunter answered cryptically. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn nodded as he accepted the Hunter’s statement at an esoteric level. The hunter proceeded to remove the strands of carbon fiber binding the admiral’s hands together.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The hunter surprised Bonn again by asking. “Admiral, the laser emitter you have concealed in your mouth, may I have it? It would work better than my blade here.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]In Bonn, the words rang true from the codes of Magna. [/FONT]
[FONT="]He sees hidden truths![/FONT]
[FONT="]None except Bonn himself knew that he had concealed an emitter in his mouth. He would have used to cut these strands himself and kill those poor fools, the soviets eventually. [/FONT]
[FONT="]In the context of spitting out the glass capsule earlier, he had cared less about his poison than give away his emitter to the chief’s men by an oral inspection. It was the reason why he had brazenly spitted it out to fool them into letting down their guard.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn bought the small laser blowtorch to the tip of his mouth and the Hunter plucked it with his hand. Then the mysterious man proceeded to vaporize the carbon strands extending between the admiral’s hands. The task finished very soon.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I know who you are too…” Bonn said as the assassin walked back to make way for the giant’s limbs to move. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You always knew me too, admiral.” The mysterious Hunter replied cryptically again. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“So why the mask?” Bonn asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Thus the master Hunter removed his mask as the answer to the admiral’s question and it was revealed who HE was.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Cherin Veld! I knew it was you, I always did, Cherin.” The admiral said as he stared at the Hunter’s oval face. The eyebrows arched in perfect curves to match the round green eyes, the nose elongated at the right proportions to the thinness of the lips.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Admiral Bonn, you were a battle companion of my father. It’s an honor to meet you.” Cherin Veld replied in return.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s been a long time since the world has laid its eyes on you, Cherin. You hid well in the years past your father’s death.” Bonn said.[/FONT][FONT="]
“I had no choice, Bonn. At that time we were the most wanted family in the whole system. My father and mother died and I had to drop away from the eyes of the soviet. So the rebellion did the best it could. It secreted me away as an orphan to be cared by the state itself. I hid all these years under their very noses as a state ward.” Cherin Veld answered.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Cherin, its good to see you again and its better to even see your father within you. You are as your father was and in this way Selvan has returned back to his men today…” Bonn replied.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“My father was a different man.” Cherin replied. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Not anymore than you and you are his extension in this universe.” The admiral said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I don’t think so, Bonn.” Cherin said as he gestured with his arms. “we can discuss this all we want, but not here. Lets move to a safe place.” Cherin explained to Bonn further.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Make way, I shall follow you.” Bonn said as Cherin led the way for the admiral inside one of the vents.[/FONT]
[FONT="] ******************[/FONT]
[FONT="]The two men crawled their way through the airducts of the asteroid base. From the grates installed on the vents, they could see the rest of the world living out in the base. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn asked as he crawled his way through. “It is said you can breach spacetime. Is that true or is even possible?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It is true in a certain sense…” Cherin Veld as he lead the way. They passed through levels of machinery which worked to invigorate the base’s respiratory system. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“I saw how you killed those soviets in the darkness, how did you do it?” Bonn asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin paused in his crawl. He turned to confirm what Bonn already knew. The doctor said. “In the darkness when I’m unobserved, my being decouples from the spatial part of this reality. I enter a state of existence where I can be there at a point and not at the same time, my being turns into a wave. At this time, I’m beyond the confines of space of this reality in that sense. I can choose certain paths… timelines of my own liking. I can jump from certain places to other. I have some amount of control, but that’s it. This is how I mindshift from one spot to another.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Where do you get this power from?” Bonn questioned.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“You and neither will I understand it completely. There is a great knowledge worth pursuing in this universe and the fact is that in the quest for the complete truth of about our universe, we must seek truths however incomplete for a greater existence beyond it.” Cherin Veld said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“So what does this mean to us?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“This world we see is a shell of the reality around us. We as men are still ignorant of this universe as the primates would be of our own. The power which grants me to ability to mindshift is something beyond this spacetime we see, very much greater!”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn wondered about the implications of the doctor’s words as they approached a grating in the vent. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin opened it to let the admiral through first, then followed himself. Both men found them in the corner of a narrow passageway leading between rows of the compact, living capsules inhabited by the colonists of this asteroid base. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Both men walked in silence through the dark corridors for a few more minutes until they narrowed upon the hatch doors of the capsule the doctor himself lived in.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A quick moment later, the doors of the capsule opened and a thin woman awaited them standing on the other side. Cherin entered the capsule and beckoning the admiral in and the first thing Bonn noticed was the intense despair the woman has reserved for him for his appearance in their lives. The old warrior sensed that sorrow instinctively. He knew exactly what she meant; she will resent him very much for taking Cherin away from her for the rest of her short life left.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The two men took their seat on the chairs inside the room while Cherin’s wife stayed in the shadows. As always the dull humming of the station’s oxidizers served as a screen to their conversation, ever an oppressive reminder of the varied mechanisms it took to keep them alive so far from Earth.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Veld’s wife watched as the two men spoke with each other, her brown eyes filled with foreboding; the captain’s arrival meant bad tidings.[/FONT]
[FONT="]So far, so long, her family had managed to stay out of trouble by living in a remote asteroid colony, eight billion kilometers from Earth. With a baby on the way, their home was made of just a couple: a husband, a wife, an unborn child and all the love in the universe between them. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The visitor meant a danger to all that. She knew the captain has come to take her beloved Cherin away forever. Her unborn baby will never see its father.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“For a moment, Bonn, I thought this was a Soviet trick to get me….!” said Cherin.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Tricks? The soviet needs trick?” Bonn mused. The old warrior accepted a drink from Cherin’s wife as he continued saying. “…tricks are men like you and me. The soviet just uses his mammoth fleets to exterminate us outright…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It was the Resistance’s fault too. Your policy of not taking prisoners provoked the situation…” Cherin said, accusing the admiral of atrocities committed by the rebellion men.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn nodded and looked sidewards. “It’s a mess from both sides. I always opposed the take no prisoners policy myself, but with circumstances out in the void so drastic, it is impossible to control behavior despite the best of command….”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Selvan Veld would have been repulsed by this.” Cherin said to Bonn.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“That’s why I want you to come with me, Cherin. Something has happened which we need for…” Bonn said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Selvan wouldn’t have wanted me to join the rebellion as it is now, he would hate his own creation…” Cherin said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s my hope for you to become Selvan. I see your father within you, Cherin and it is my greatest hope that you can contribute to delivering the rebellion to what it once was…” Bonn said, as he noted Cherin’s wife again as she choose to stay silently in the background.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn studied her, the eyes filled with anxiety, the pose awaiting the bad news to fall and the restrained despair noted on her fair face. He will never forgive himself for breaking her heart.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn continued. “You and me shall force the rebellion to change…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin nodded, accepting the admiral’s solution. Bonn pointed out a seemingly apparent hypocrisy on part of the doctor. “You didn’t many prisoners yourself on that station…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin nodded again as he stood up to walk towards his wife.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin Veld explained. “This is a living colony, it hosts thousands of families in its confines. If I had allowed any of those men to know about me or the situation they could be facing, the soviets will descend upon this station ruthlessly. It’s important we do the right things at the right time.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn admitted. “Cherin. You are right there…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin said, gesturing towards his wife. “…my family shall live here to for the rest of their days. My wife, my son who I shall never see…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn stayed silent as he accepted the solemnity of the words. He tried to console the doctor. “You would return back to your family someday. All of us would…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin shook his head bitterly, clearly there was more to this than the doctor was saying. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn said with an anguish burning with him, but one he did not let show to the others. “Surely you prepared for this day. All of you knew it was coming…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I always knew you would come…” Cherin said. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Then?”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I tried preparing for your arrival…” Cherin said as he lead the way to the admiral towards one of the inner rooms of the capsule. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn entered the room to find a glass tank housing a human body encased in blue suspension fluid. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn walked towards the canister to stare closer at the body suspended within. It was a perfect clone of Cherin, the resemblance unquestionable by the features shared as much the admiral could discern. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Bonn turned towards the doctor in confusion. “This…” Bonn began.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s the evidence of my death as I will give to the authorities. They shall receive this body as the perfect explanation for my disappearance into the ranks of the resistance. I cannot risk the safety of this colony under any circumstances…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Is it alive?” Bonn asked.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Cherin too stared into the tank. “Not really, it was constructed with nanobots by building blocks of chemicals. It’s not a human being, only a dead corpse with a structure resembling a formerly living thing. It took me seven years to make it…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“A philosophical zombie! You couldn’t grow one for your wife too?” Bonn asked. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“We didn’t have the resources to attempt two at once. I had estimated once this one was grown to specification, we would begin the process for my wife. But its too late now…”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I came as a guest too soon, I’m so sorry. Cherin.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s not your fault, Bonn. None of any of us actually…” Cherin said.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“That would be bring me little comfort.” Bonn said, sensing the presence of that poor woman near to him, every moment, he was now being tormented in the shadow of her sorrow. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“Bonn, there is a greater game beyond us!” Cherin revealed, declaring the reality of the universe as perceived by him. [/FONT]
[FONT="]“You father said so. He said that the universe we see is just a lower shadow of a greater one.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]“All of this, Bonn is just a great game played in the higher sum of reality. We are actors on a stage…”[/FONT]
TO BE CONTINUED......
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