Mhaz's chest billowed and shrunk arrhythmically. His eyes were sealed shut with the eyelids pulsing. It almost seems like he pursued awakening while his body forbids it. His hands jerked slightly, a couple of times beside him, seemingly involuntary reflexes.
He was awake deep inside.
On a synthetic gel-like padding of a gurney, he had been put to lie with his arms and legs held. His hands strapped in black bands. A ring-shaped thing in polymer fairing lined with rugged lamps encircled above his cranium. The segment of green light the lamps emitted had revolved constantly for an hour. There was a strip of white on both sides of his temple that seemed to glint every time the light went past his forehead. And it started soaking up sweat.
"He can't give the most out of it, you can't be serious," said the woman.
"Just stand by," he responded tensely, "We'll get them this time."
"What else will you give to him?" Her eyes met his, fatigue hinted on her face, "What else can I give to him? I am running out of dilemmas."
"Well, put him back to sleep,"
Nathan inserted a tube of clear liquid into his pistol-shaped injector. He peeked once at the man, then flipped the safety switch off. Calmly, he strode to the bed.
Mhaz's eyes pry open suddenly. A bloodshot pair of ones burning away Nathan's confidence. "STOP!" A penetrating yell came out of him, automatically, "Nate, I know your entire business was full of crap. Get this thing off me!"
"For the sake of humanity, sir. Calm down."
"That's not how you do it!" Mhaz shot his sight toward the woman, "I am tired of these things! Let me tell you, it is not how you do it." He realized the speech drained the energy from him, the last words almost turned into blank gasps when they came out.
Nate turned to the woman. The same rosy-faced woman Mhaz had seen on top of the holed building. She had the look of a deadlock. She was draped in a loosely-fitting medical coat this time, rendering Mhaz into imagining if she and her partner had cut his skull open and operated on the brain. No. At least, there was not any red on her white yet. She uttered to Nate, "It is enough. We are not hurting him. We have gotten what is needed."
And his face went back to Mhaz, "Okay. We're good and ending this little neuro-wizardry, Mhaz. Let me shed some light for this might help a lot."
"Go on."
"This is your entire sequence of DNA." Nate pinched up a rectangular piece of black the size of an old-fashioned SD card. "It shaped the benchmark of your memory. But it was only the vessel, which is still empty. What we did was fill it with your exact past experiences. And for this, we must figure out how you react to certain problems."
Mhaz blew a thick breath out and shook his head.
The woman walked up to the gurney where Mhaz remain supine. Her hands gripped the side handlebar and began slowly dragging him away from the untidy pile of electronic scanning units. She explained briefly as she unwound the straps on Mhaz's arms, "What you saw after the blackout was my past. Such a bad one, ain't it?" She chuckled and took the tiny card Nate passed on, "and based on your reaction to that, we mapped your sympathy, empathy, flight-or-flight responses, senses, et cetera. The good news is, we now have your memories filled up inside this card."
Mhaz lifted his left arm. Then he took the black, little thing she handed. "I'm sorry for your childhood. But why do this?" He inquired as he scanned it.
"For the same reason that drive was invented." The woman pointed at Farad's drive with a look in her eye. It was rested on a steel cabinet beside Mhaz, among the trays of spent glass tubes and ampules, in front of an old Waker clock that showed half-three.
"What reason?"
"The drive was a sign of contract between us. We are grateful we can still work together, as a team. You are a messenger we've been longing for."
Mhaz sat along the bed with his legs stretched out. He poured his face down, and occasionally blinked a long blink, trying to stabilize his breath. In his mind, he was still pondering the short experiment and about to unleash the next question. A big, bad one to reciprocate all their explanations. But an invisible barrier held it inside his mouth. It was the possibility of bitterness in case it answered. What is that drive, actually? That thought circulated in his mind, only held by a thin string of hesitancy - when would it snap and send the question flying was a mystery.
"Well, we are here to help you. So, calm down." Nate said. He was eyeing through a glass window on the bone-white wall. "When everything is done, you can save humanity."
"You can save us." The woman spliced, "And ... I apologize for exploring your brain. But believe me, we did not look for your personal things because it would be pointless. We looked for important details about the madness that burned the world. How you defied all the Extremes while being born amid ones interests us."
Mhaz rolled his eyes, but he nearly said it was fine. "So, we're pretty much different, isn't it? Oftentimes, differences created enemies. But that's what I used to see back in the days, probably changing now."
"We're cooperating, Mhaz. Even without yourself realizing."
"Alright. That means now I'm trapped in an undone deal of two big companies, ain't it? How can I call you, Mrs. Looking Good?"
"You will address me as Watcher."
"Watcher?"
"Right, Mhaz. And about that drive, I ca-"
Nate's sudden cry cut her off. He threw his face away from the window, about to launch into a dash. It was not the sun nor the star that appeared as the strange brightness on the window, but a pair of blazes. It was zooming toward this compound and turned Nate into a shadow outlined by the orange highlight. As if it was a flash of sunset, all the things and people inside the room were coated in a warm hue that rose in intensity.
And, BOOM! The explosion that went underneath the level quaked the room. All the lights flickered. Mhaz fell off the bed and Nate plummeted to the floor, altogether. Small pieces of metallic equipment rain down the shelves in numerous clatters. And then comes another wave of airborne blaze, fire lashes the glass window that had shattered by the shockwave. Hot air immediately surged into the room.
"We have a missile strike," Nate gasped as he cranked himself up by the bunkbed, "The terrorists are here."
Mhaz heard a fleeting roar from the sky. Through the pluming black smoke engulfing the broken glass pieces on the window frame, he saw small shadows of two sharp-beaked aerial things approaching. It was the fighter jets of the Dogs. Accompanying the engine noise was the piercing sonic boom as it accelerated past the speed of sound.
"Damn, they've brought jets." Mhaz scoffed, "We got to move, Watcher!"
The women picked the ashen modular sash with a hear-talker implanted on it. "All Observers, are you reading this?" She began to speak.
"Observer Two, Watcher One, Actual, we got a pair of stealth fighter jets entering our airspace. Requesting AARC activation, over," a husky voice of a male responded.
"Granted."
Mhaz took himself off the floor, and immediately grabbed Farad's drive from the cabinet. He was grateful it did not drop to the hardstone - and he assured it would never, he slipped it back into the pocket on his thigh. And for the tiny black card, he had it wrapped inside a piece of paper. He made the last glint before uniting it with the drive.
"This place seems like about to collapse, doesn't it?" Mhaz said.
"That's right, we have to move!"
Three continuous thunder-like crackles erupted from above, apparently at the top of the building. It was articulate and short, like a gunshot. It was the array of Anti-air Rail Cannons singing the chord of termination. And, undefeated accuracy. After another crackle was a delayed loud blast muffled by the distance, resembling the sound of an exploding barrel in the air. It was the sound of destruction; one of the jets caught in the perfectly straight trajectory of the AARC projectile.
"Observer One, Actual, one tango down." the voice coming from the audio paused, and rasps came out of the audio. A lot of it, then the speech continued, "Observer One to all stations, be advised, we have an unidentified mass inbound from the north. Standing by to engage."
"Observer One, repeat yo-" Nate quickly replied on the microphone before the women did.
"Copy. We spotted a large number of individuals coming from the north direction. They are possibly hostiles. Over."
The room suddenly turned quiet. The three gazed over each other without a single utterance. Mhaz could see Nathan had that gloom over his features. His sharp-shot eyes began to wilt. And the woman was no less stricken than him. Mhaz could feel the endurance draining out of her.
Nate strode out to the broken wide window, and right before it, he was petrified.
