Chronicle of Nautilus

Chapter 41: The Beginning

A young dark haired man with a pointy nose sat on a wooden bench, there was a feel of calmness in the air around him. From a distance it was difficult to tell if he was sleeping or just comfortably resting.

He stretched his hands to the air and yawned.

 “I gave you the tools, hurry up,” he said silently, looking at the communications device in his hand and turned his attention to a small twisted river running just a few meters in front of him.  He lifted his head up to enjoy the light coming from a small spec high in the sky.  The warmth of the sun falling on his youthful soft face seemed to please him.

As the man enjoyed the moment, a young couple walked by behind him, their faces were muddy and hands dirty to the elbows.  They greeted the sitting man, who stared at the artificial sun, “Good day, Sir”.

 But the man did not reply.  

 The couple stopped and looked at each other, the young woman spoke to her friend, who after their short, one sided conversation approached the stranger from behind.

 The muddy worker spoke again, only this time his tone was not as kind, “Sir, do you have a permission to be here?"

 The man seemed not to notice them. He moved his head down, glanced at the comms device and the returned his attention back to the river.

 “Sir, if you’re not going to show me your clearance I will ask you to leave,” the man said for the third time and put the right hand behind his back.

 “This will not help. Don’t waste your energy,” the person replied.

Instantly, the worker drew a gun and pushed the trigger. A yellow continuous beam hit the person on the bench. Its luminosity slowly intensified, it shined the brightest at the point where the beam intersected the target.

The shooter covered his eyes with a palm and asked his colleague, “What the hell is this? Can’t see a damn thing.”

“Increase the power or—“the woman paused and then shouted, “Duck! Get down!”

But her friend was too slow to react. He was halfway down, when a powerful projectile hit him, throwing him to the direction of his girlfriend. He flew and rolled as a dirty rag and landed by the girl’s feet. His chest moved up and down slowly, but his eyes did not open.

The intruder hid a weapon behind his back. Looking at the girl he said, “Go ahead, warn them.”

The girl turned around and ran as fast as the wind towards the fields, it did not take much time for her to disappear in the horizon.

The intruder used his left hand to take out two small orbs from the inside pocket of his coat. He threw them lightly to the sky and murmured, “Fly, my little butterflies, follow the lady.” They sped towards the woman.

He turned and walked the river's shore, following it round a small hill. There, a couple of meters away, it stopped flowing and began falling. The man jumped on a rail that stood on the edge of the waterfall. After he heard his comms device beep loudly, he took a step forward.  

 Down below, a large circle trailed a wall of a massive sphere, it was covered in greenhouses. If he focused, the man could see people, the size of ants, doing their daily drills inside the glass boxes. In the immense hole of the circle, obstructed by a thin layer of fog lay a city the man hated. The city he was about to shake.

 Violent explosions sounded from down below. The man glanced at the comms device - it showed 09:30 - with each second the last digit decreased by one.

 He touched the metallic belt and used a switch on it. The free-fall turned into gliding. As a feather he moved through thin air towards a small platform that lay far in the middle of the wall ahead of him. It had neither steps nor ladder – a lone island in the middle of nowhere.