The Fortress

Chapter 2 - The fortress

SARAH WAS PETITE, tall with blonde hair and dark blue eyes. She was in her mid thirties but still looked twenty-five as a result of her round babyish face.

As far as she could remember, she had been writing and she grew up with the dream of covering the most insane, mysterious, mythical and unbelievable stories and reports in her writings. Before the last two years, she had been doing researches on different gods and their mythical stories, coming up with captivating writings in forms of articles and short stories. In the last two years, she realized that there seemed to be gods among humans and wanted to cover a writing about them but she had not really heard anything about them or gathered solid facts regarding their existence. But she knew, she could feel it that they existed. Now, finally, there is a stepping stone for her.

She grabbed her Jacket and made her way to the scene.

* * *

As Ian climbed the iron railings with a huge back pack strapped to his back, he grumbled.

"I should be given the award for the toughest man alive."  He dashed his foot against a broken brick he didn't see, shattering it, but he kept moving without feeling an ounce of pain. Of course, any other ordinary human would have felt the pain, probably sustained an injury but Ian was no ordinary human.

Even though, he had misplaced the left foot of his shoe, he kept marching on like a soldier through the rough roads, stepping on all kinds of objects housed by the sandy ground without feeling the tiniest bit of pain until he finally found his camper van.

"Finally," he sighed. He reached for the refrigerator and grabbed his favorite beer to celebrate the success of his robbery.

"It's been a long day!" He sighed one more time as he gulped down his beer straight from the bottle. His celebration was cut short by footsteps in his camp van.

"Who is there?" He yelled at the silhouette figure.

"Someone who needs your help and have an offer for you!" The figure yelled back.

Ian stood from the chair he had been sitting and moved closer to the figure to get a better view. He was obviously a man from his voice and when he was close enough to see the man's face, he wasn't pleased with the view. He looked like a detective or a secret agent sent to spy on him or set him up. The man was roughly bearded with his hair hanging down his back. He was wearing a white shirt which was neatly tucked into his black trousers with gators and shiny black shoes. The man was of average height and Iann was two times his size but still, the man didn't seem terrified or shaken by Ian's posture and stature or probably he hasn't seen the news, Ian thought.

"Well, I don't need an offer from nobody!" Ian yelled grumpily, held a fist and threw at the man. The man's eyes widened without flinching. Ian felt his arm go stiff before his punch could reach the man but he still tried to resist the force that seems to be holding him back, it was to no avail. His whole body went stiff except for his mouth. The man kept staring at him with his eyes widened without moving a muscle or shifting from his position.

"Who are you?" Ian asked frightened that the man had paralyzed him.

"Good question but bad timing. Well, I'm Henry," the man replied moving towards the left side of the campervan to inspect a map and pictures that had caught his attention pinned to a board on the inner-walls of the campervan.

Ian fell to his knees with a heavy thud that shook the van.

"What do you want?" Ian found his voice once more but still on his knees and not sounding so grumpy.

"I'm trying to build a team of extraordinaries to achieve a long time goal of mine that will be of benefit to the extraordinary race."

"What is the goal? I don't really care, but it sounds interesting," Ian replied, getting back up on his feet.

"I will give you a good cover for now and you get to know the goal if only you accept to be part of the extraordinary team I'm creating," Henry said and stretched out his hand to Ian.

"Deal!" Ian said taking his hand and shaking it hard.

* * *

Sarah had reached the crime scene. Even though it was a crime scene, she had managed to make her way through using false identities. Her eyes sparked with excitement as she spotted the police car that the robber had tossed with just a kick from his left foot. Moving closer to examine the vehicle, she discovered a leathered caramel brown shoe with black laces resting on the driver's seat. She reached for the shoe and immediately she got hold of it, she felt herself transit from where she was currently to a road not totally strange, rather, difficult to identify at that moment. Probably, because it was dark. As she turned around to figure out where she was, her eyes met a tumbled car, wrecked beyond recognition. The road was void, not a single human could be spotted. She rushed over to the severally damaged car but before she got any close to the already misshaped vehicle, she found herself back at the crime scene, kneeling in front of the shattered vehicle holding the brown shoe with her two hands.

She looked around petrified, her instincts telling her she had created a scene kneeling there for a long time and not moving an inch. She realized no one had really noticed her as they were all engrossed in their different conversations and observations of how a single man could cause so much wreckage. She scooted over to her car.

Sarah let out a deep sigh the moment she was able to sit on her couch. Her couch was her favorite place in her living room, it was more comfortable than the little dining table and chairs behind it. Since it was adjacent to the wide screnned television, she felt it was more reasonable to always seat or lie on the couch after a stressful outing. She was becoming very bothered even though she tried not to think about all the strange transitioning that had been happening when she felt things that had come in contact with other people before her.

So many questions were beginning to surface in her mind and for a moment, she felt she needed help. The idea of help was quickly buried as it suddenly occured to her that no one had ever come out to admitting they were extraordinary even though she was of the opinion that the robber and her were not the only ones who had discovered they had unusual abilities. Maybe, other people were in situations like hers, not fully understanding the concept of their abilities or what to call it. And to think of it in a more realistic sense, if she crawls out of her shell to admitting to being an extraordinary, she could be locked up as a result of the fear of being dangerous or worst be subject to various government funded laboratory experiments, tests and projects. She wouldn't want to be an object or property of the government.

Despite all these fears , there was an euphoria of curiosity and inquisitiveness. She wanted to discover what she was really capable of. She let out a deep sigh then held the shoe in her two hands hoping something would happen. Nothing happened. After three minutes of trying, she decided to close her eyes and try connect with the robber consciously this time since just holding the shoe and expecting herself to transit isn't working.

She closed her eyes, tried to picture the robber wearing the shoes but she couldn't get a perfect picture of anyone, only the vision of the shoe was clear. She transitted.

Sarah found herself in front of a stewish red campervan. She couldn't figure out where exactly the campervan was. The ground was sandy, she could feel it and there was so much cold, she thought it could be the outskirts of the city. She was deliberating on either going into the campervan or not as it was dark and going in there alone could be dangerous. She closed her eyes and opened it, she was back to her couch.

"Yes!" She yelled in excitement. The key is concentration and with this new ability of hers, she could find out whatever she wants to and cover seemingly mythical stories.

She rushed into her room to find her notebook. She wrote down somethings and made a rough sketch of the campervan she saw with the sandy ground all around it. She moved over to the table where her laptop was lying at the corner of the room, she punched the keyboard few times and realized she wasn't totally wrong about the campervan being in the outskirts of the city.

Jared couldn't sleep the first night in the fortress. He kept reminiscing and reflecting his day. He had met so many people with different abilities like him except they had control over their abilities which made them seem very cool. For instance, Jamie who could appear and disappear to anywhere he wanted to, anywhere he thought, very cool! He also met Dawn who could create several doppelganger of herself and control them to do different activities all at once. Alessia who could create portals to take her anywhere she wanted, Wong who had huge feathered white wings that made him hover like a bird, resisting the law of gravity and Santiago who had immense strength and ability to jump very high, covering several miles with just one jump.

There were several other people with various abilities that he didn't take note of. The few he could notice, he really adored them and envied their control over their various abilities. He had not thought keeping his abilities would seem fun but after what he saw at the fortress, he was beginning to think about keeping his abilities. At the same time, he wondered why his own ability was something not really as powerful as others. Hearing several sounds all at once didn't seem much like a fun or cool ability to him.

After several hours of reminiscing about the day and realizing he wasn't going to sleep any time soon, Jared got up from the bed to take note of his room. There was a table adjacent to his bed with books neatly arranged on it and an old bookshelf which housed several books by the right side of the large bed, close to the window. A wardrobe was placed at the left corner of the room. Jared walked over to the bookshelf to discover any book that could be of interest to him. After scanning the books on the shelf for several minutes, he gave up realizing none of the books seemed to interest him. As he was about to go back to bed, the book on the table caught his attention. He moved closer to the table and saw that the book was unusual and old. The book cover read "Merlinoite." He opened the first page and he saw a printed picture laying on the first page of the book. The picture contained a boy and a woman, holding hands. Probably, the woman was the boy's mother.

He couldn't tell exactly, he flipped the picture and saw "Henry" scribbled at the back. He could tell it was written a long time ago. He flipped it over again then realized the woman in the picture was someone familiar, someone he saw recently. He tried to recall. He gasped when he recalled. The woman Alex had introduced to he and his parents as the brain behind fortress and the owner of the institution that had dedicated everything to taking care of people with unusual abilities. She didn't look much different in the picture, she was just more older. He paused, looked around the room. It occured to him that he wasn't the first person to occupy the room, it must have been occupied by someone before him which explained the several books in the room. Whoever occupied this space could have been an extraordinary also, Jared thought. He scooted to the corner where the wardrobe was situated, opened it and realized it was stuffed with clothes of various kinds for a male of his size.