Chronicle of Nautilus

Chapter 12: Deceived By A Friend

 The Outsider was both, fascinated and disgusted by humans.

Strong minds, undamaged in any way, could easily block him. He was not used to resistance. No one had ever resisted him before he met humans. He could easily take over someone weakened, but to control a person with a strong will he needed to be let in.

******

 It was the third week after the memory loss Glen had experienced. Each night he went to sleep early and each morning he woke up late.  It was the fault of vivid dreams, he thought.

Glen put one leg out of the bed and yawned.  He felt as if he had had no rest at all. Tonight he dreamt about an ancient war he had never known about before - soldiers running forward with their primitive firearms, screaming, getting shot at and falling into rivers of blood. Even after waking up, images of massive explosions, pain and suffering remained in his head.

The racket outside was what woke him up. Glen stepped on the cold floor and slowly walked towards the window. The head was still feeling dizzy.  He leaned forward to see what was going on.

The view was staggering. People had gathered to look at a dead male body lying in a puddle of blood. Glen quickly picked up the comms device and turned it on.

He made a call to an emergency line operator at the security headquarters.

“Operator, this is Glen Usher, have you received any reports on the murder at 357-80?”

“No.”

“There is a dead body in front of my house, I’ll go check it. Send an official agent after ten minutes to start an investigation.  I want to make the first inspection using my journalist’s identity.”

“Affirmed. I want to inform you that the first citizen asked you to contact him as soon as possible.”

“I will do that when I am done with my inspection of the crime scene. Glen Usher out.”

Glen dressed up and rushed downstairs. After a minute he was already at the scene ordering people to step away.  

He moved around the body trying to avoid getting his feet into the blood. There was a huge hole on the right side of abdomen just below the heart. Lasers left small wounds; this one must have been made by a powerful weapon. Such weapons could not be bought on black markets. Even being agent of security, Glen had access only to the small firearms.

There was nothing inside the man’s pockets except for his worker’s digital card. Glen scanned it, copied the name and tried searching for a match in the security databases. The search was not available, his gadget showed an error ‘main database disconnected from the network.’ Must be a work of Landau, perhaps he finally had enough of the intrusions from hacking software, Glen thought.

After asking a few questions and searching for witnesses in the crowd he rushed towards security headquarters to check the dead person’s ID.

“Stop!” The voice inside his head spoke.

“Why?” Glen asked.

The voice Glen started hearing after he left the hospital became a great help during the last few weeks. Somehow it always knew when Glen needed assistance and showed up at the right moments. The voice was intelligent and insightful. He felt that he had found a new powerful friend.  Only thing that worried him was that whenever he asked the voice about its place of origin it would stay silent, it did not come from his own head for sure.

“Glen, didn’t you notice the size of the wound the body had?”

“I did.”

“Think. Who could possess such weapons?”