Pending (5 page)

I never considered myself
violent, but as I made my way up, I was too angry to stop myself. I was losing control,
letting it get away from me. Like jumping off a cliff, only I could control the
speed at which I fell.

It felt like when I was deep
underwater in the pool and holding my breath. Everything is silent and muddled.
The pain in my lungs burns as if they’re about to burst, but they don’t, and I allow
myself to rise to the surface. As I break through, I take a deep breath, allowing
my lungs to fill with clean, crisp air. I imagine what the sun would feel like;
I’ve wanted to my whole life, and it alleviates that pain, and then I have trouble
remembering how bad it had actually been.

I felt my veins widen and
my blood pressure increase substantially. My entire body throbbed but not in a painful
way. It was pleasure. Every part of me had a pulse that seemed to have power emanating,
only it couldn’t be seen, just felt by me.

It somehow allowed me to sense
the others. I could feel all their parts and weaknesses and bend them to my will.
There was a link between all of them and me. It was because we were all human.

The screaming started before
it got messy. They were my enemy. They took the job for money. Whatever they needed
that money for was irrelevant to me. They were against me, so when I concentrated
on them and their bloodstream and every molecule in their body heated up like boiling
water in an instant and they started bursting open and spraying their blood on the
walls, I felt nothing for them.

SUBSEQUENT ENTRY WRITTEN BY
SUBJECT HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY OMITTED AND IS UNDER FURTHER INVESTIGATION.

THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS ARE
FIRSTHAND ACCOUNTS FROM SURVIVORS.

NAMES AND CLASSIFIED DETAILS
OMITTED.

TESTIMONY FROM A DECKHAND
SERVING ABOARD THE USS (OMITTED):

I was at my post when the
first jet crashed. It wasn’t like our own aircrafts were being forced to attack
us; they were being forced to crash into us. They were being aimed, like how I heard
those Kamikaze pilots did it in WWII.

TESTIMONY FROM HIGH-RANKING
OFFICER SERVING ABOARD USS (OMITTED):

By this time, the aggressor
had made it to the surface, having decimated all floors of the facilities on his
way up. I hate to think of what happened to the personnel he killed. They were people.
Our people.

I was leading the attack,
and he had fortified himself on one of our boats and was deflecting munitions with
that field he had created. We couldn’t see it, but we could see the impacts. We’d
sent a team to assassinate him. My thoughts were that, yes, he could create the
field by only using his mind, but that probably wasn’t likely if he was injured
or dead. We hadn’t heard from the team. I informed them that if a shot wasn’t possible,
then to gas him. Anything to get his defense down so we could get in there.

It was a direct battle and
had gone on for about three days, since the moment he emerged. In hindsight, I would
have spaced out our boats better. We’d heard of what he was capable of, but we really
had no idea. Our show of force didn’t slow him down a bit. In fact, it gave him
more to destroy. We were nervous. The knowledge of how many of us were left was
constantly on our minds.

Our militaries had converged
on his location, but he was able to stay hidden by mimicking his own unique heat
signature and distributing it to various locations, including what was left of the
United States! It seemed his power increased on the surface. We weren’t prepared
for that. We’d tried to send a team to each of the locations he could be at, but
there were just too many. We were forced to be patient and wasted a lot of time
attacking dummy targets.

The most serious problem we
encountered was that most of our weapons were powered by his energy and he could
manipulate it and turn it against us. That included our own aircraft. His power
was the backbone of the military, and I was told we hadn’t yet been able to duplicate
what he could do, only harness it.

I shudder to think of how
many sailors were lost. I lost count of how many aircraft carriers exploded and
illuminated the darkness we initially thought hid us so well. He manipulated his
own power—the power that that drove our engines. The only ones he had trouble with
were the jets, because there were so many of them. Similar to you or me swatting
at an entire hive of attacking bees, they were delaying the inevitable as long as
possible.

The world around us was on
fire, even though we were surrounded by the ocean. I wondered about him then. We
didn’t even know he was still alive before the attack. There were reports—reliable
ones—that he was dead, and we all learned long ago that the power that he created
ran our engines, weapons, electricity.

Everything.

I got word that the team had
located and wounded him. Not surprising since he probably hadn’t slept since the
attack started. It was then that the burning fires around us started to intensify.
I didn’t even know that kind of heat was possible—as if Trent Fodero had and understanding
of physics like no one else on the planet.

The world around us shook,
and bubbles rose up from the water, as if the ocean were being heated, as if Trent
Fodero were manipulating the Earth and all its physics and bending it to his will.

I’m only guessing you understand.
That is what it felt like. It gave me a feeling like no other, like the moment before
you knew someone was about to die. Except it was the Earth, like consciousness was
about to be wiped away from all of us. I’d never felt anything like it, and I hope
I die without experiencing anything like it again. Every last person on the planet
was going to die from Trent Fodero’s thoughts alone.

Then it all stopped. Everything
calmed, and the chatter from the radios was deafening. It was then that I knew he’d
been taken out by a sniper.

What had created such a monster?
We knew few details about him. Mainly his name and age, where he’d come from, who
his father was, and his ability. I’d made a career from it. Living off what he created.
I wondered what kind of man he was, how similar he was to his father.

If he could have been saved.

DECLASSIFICATION OF SAID CASE
FILE AND ALL OMITTED ENTRIES ALONG WITH RELATED CONFIDENTIAL RECORDS AND INVESTIGATIVE
FINDINGS (FROM SECRET TO PUBLIC) PENDING.

Did You Like This Novella?

Share your opinion by posting
a review on Amazon. Simply click here and you’ll be directed to the reviews page:
www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B00JSC9OYE

Thank you for reading.