Chapter Five: Gifted or Cursed?

“System, what's a portal pass?” Mason asked as he cornered into a bustling street.

It looked like the catastrophe that struck the city had subsided or like monsters were not on the run — businesses were open, stores and malls were stocked with customers and cars zoomed on both lanes of most of the streets of Griffin City.

“A special card that grants free passage to any person going through the portals without restrictions or consequences. Every portal traveller must have a copy of the pass, either virtual or a hard copy, when they intend to officially go through a portal,” the system replied with its automated voice which he was getting accustomed to.

“You never said anything about this.”

“You never asked,” the system's reply came in a neutral tone.

“How do I get one?”

“Portal passes are gotten from the Protectors' Guild, an authorized association that was established to protect the city from the effect of the Anomaly Storm since its first occurrence a decade ago. They only give the pass to qualified people after registration under the guild and full assessment.”

“I see, I’ve never heard of that. Where's this protector's guild?”

“The protectors’ guild headquarters is located at the former military training base in Trenton Town.”

Trenton Town was not accessible to all civilians, even after the establishment of the guild, only authorized personnel or high class citizens could access it or live in the area. After the first Anomaly Storm, it became a ghost town littered with a population of individuals who were tagged as ‘awakened’.

Awakened people were the ones you would call the gifted, or the cursed, in some cases. The Anomaly didn't just wash up the portals and the vicious monsters to the shores of the city, it also endowed many with incredible powers and the varieties of powers was limitless, from control and manipulation of elements to godly abilities.

Mason, aware of the restriction on the area, took the subway. As he boarded the train, the three protectors followed him in. He glanced from one corner to the other, the passengers were either adorned with badges or weilded gadgets and weapons, or they had a divine and otherworldly aura hovering around them.

A few sat at the corner flaunting their powers to each other. He had never taken the subway, especially this subway. It was only meant for the gifted and the cursed. The train’s engine cranked up and chugged down the dark subway.

“Which one am I?” a thought struck him as the train's engines silenced and the driver announced that they had reached the last stop.

The door swung open and he alighted the train amidst the crowd of awakened people. The crowd all strolled up a flight of stairs amidst chats and laughter. When he got up to the end of the stairs, he spotted a plain road that led to a large metal gate.

As he got to the gate, he noticed what was going on. Every person placed a special card on the panel beside the gate and it somehow became penetrable, allowing them to walk through it like it wasn't even there.

Some of them drew these cards from their pockets and bags, some displayed a virtual card from their gadgets that the panel could scan, and a number of them who had auras floating over them just forged it out of thin air.

“Hey, are you even registered?” A girl with a brunette hair asked him as he watched the others walk through the barrier.

“N-no,” he stammered and turned to see her standing beside him.

She stared him up. The right side of her face was tainted with a scar that he couldn't take his eyes off.

“You have to register first at the Registry before you are granted access here.”

She pointed to another door at his right.

“Thank you,” he replied with a smile.

“Yeah, if only you're qualified anyway,” she scoffed and swiped out a scarlet card from beneath her arm bracelet before she proceeded to the panel.

Walking past the door and into the interior of the Registry, Mason's mouth hung open as he spotted the queues at different counters.

“The awakened people are this much?” he wondered as he scanned around the hall that was illuminated by a golden radiation at the centre and the bright light from screens at the counters.

He rushed to one counter where a lady had just mounted. It was void of a queue but as he got there, he was already behind the tenth person.

“Next,” the lady called out for the eleventh time and Mason stepped forward.

“What do you want here schoolboy?”

Mason had totally forgotten that he still had his school uniform on.

“I want to register under the protector's guild,” he said with a smile, but the lady raised a brow at him and sized him up before focusing on her screen again.

“Name?” she asked without looking up.

“Mason Xander.”

She clicked on her keyboard.

“Age?”

“Eighteen.”

“Joining the adventurers or protectors?”

“Um… what's the difference?”

The woman sighed, “Powers?”

“Respawning.”

“What's that?”

“I can be brought to life again after I'm killed.”

“Hmm, I wonder where you got such curse. Skills?”

“None for now.”

“Weapons? Gadgets? Empowerments?”

“Um, I don't have any.”

“So you are only useful to just die and resurrect?” Mason was silent.

“How could someone be so useless?” One man said to another on his queue and they both laughed.

“My advice, don't even think of joining any squad because_ ugh, what an annoying bug you'll be,” the woman replied shaking her head.

“Imagine he's on a team with us and then all he does is just die and then comes back to die again, over and over, while I have shot down ten monsters with my beam,” another guy with a green goggle said.

“Sorry man, but you really suck to the core,” a girl behind Mason said.

“Say hi to the Grim Reaper for us each time you die, kitty,” another boy about his height said and waved a hello at him from the queue next to his.

The whole crowd were soon murmuring and laughing at him.

“I'm a curse,” he whispered as they all mocked him.

“Here, I've processed an adventurer pass for you. You can pass freely through portals, maybe kill some tiny monsters and see if you're lucky to get something good to swap for some money at the counter. Don't bring it to my counter though, I wouldn't be expecting to see you anyway,” the lady said as she handed a blue card to him.

He left the queue and took a walk of shame through the crowd that snickered and jeered at him as he made his way back to the metal door.

He placed the card on the panel. His face glistened with a mild smile as the panel echoed a beep. He stepped a foot first, then the other and walked through the penetrable door.

The other side was a beauty, its aesthetics and architecture was solid and eye catching. Everything was covered in silver, and in the middle of the hall, a huge statue of a man with the heads of two monsters in his palms stood and around it was an engravement.

Different people, dressed in fancy costumes, filled the different sections of the wide hall. Up above him, there were about three floors.

“Finally,” he sucked in air through his nostrils and exhaled.

A young man leaned on a silver sculpture of a man with a shotgun with a toothpick stuck between his lips. His hood shielded his face, only his nose and mouth was exposed.

“Did you see him?” he asked another man that stood beside him. The latter scanned the crowd and shot a glare at the former.

“Who?”

The other man tossed away his toothpick.

He inhaled, “The boy from the C portal,” he said and turned to face his colleague.

“Where is he?”

“He just cornered to the refreshment section.”

“What's the big deal about him anyway? He is just a newbie.”

“And he survived an attack from a herd of aggressive slizzards. If he's able to do that, it could only mean one thing… Alert your friends. Tell them to keep an eye on him.”

The other man observed the hooded man.

“Alright,” he finally replied.