The Ninth (10 page)

However, there was no following pain.  Opening his eyes, he found a female trooper in FF colors standing between them, Reggie’s fists still resting on her shoulders.  A brief look of fear washed over Reggie’s face before he disappeared to the floor.  Dante had swept Reggie’s feet out from under him with a single move.  Taking deep breaths while he tried to stand, Brent took in the entire battle.  Hundreds of troopers and recruits were exchanging blows, the recruits’ inexperience painfully obvious compared to the trained troopers.

A group of five RG troopers noticed Reggie’s fall and charged Brent.  The female FF counter charged and managed to take three down.  As the four wrestled on the ground, the two remaining RG troopers grew closer to Brent with amazing speed.  The first one grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back, immobilizing him before he could act.  The second laid into Brent, landing blow after blow all over his torso.  Owen jumped the RG trooper holding Brent and knocked them all to the floor.  Releasing Brent, the RG trooper behind him focused on Owen.  Having the wind knocked out of him, the RG trooper Brent had landed on was momentary stunned.  Rolling out from between the troopers, Brent found himself in the center of the main group.  It was impossible to tell which side was winning.

Tremendous pain interrupted his thoughts as a mighty blow landed on his back.  Spinning to face his attacker, Brent was face to face with Reggie.  Reggie snarled like a crazed beast.  Brent took a step back, right into the hands of three RG troopers who held him firmly.  Reggie’s face contorted into a hideous grin.  This was going to finish the troublesome recruit once and for all.  Reggie pulled back his fist and swung it with all his might at Brent’s head.  Once more, Brent’s eyes closed in anticipation.  However, after a moment or two of anxious waiting, he realized the expected pain had never come.  Opening his eyes, he was astonished to find Reggie’s fist mere inches in front of him, holding perfectly still in the air.  Moving his head to the side, Brent could see that Reggie’s entire body was perfectly still as if frozen in place.  Looking around, he realized it wasn’t just Reggie, every single person was frozen.

“Filthy organics,” a disgusted voice rang in his ears.  “You should just kill them all.”

“Who said that?  What’s going on?” Brent called out.

“I’m offering you a choice.” The voice was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.  “A once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“Choice?  What choice?”

“Right now your very life is on the line; make no mistake about that.  I’m giving you the option to save yourself, or
perish
.”

Brent watched as a shadow of himself broke free of the troopers and struck violently at Reggie.  Reggie’s body crumpled listlessly to the floor.  One by one, the other Brent killed the troopers as they futilely resisted.  The other Brent spared no one, killing members of the RG, FF, and recruits with reckless abandon.  With horror, he watched as his alter ego snapped Hiroko’s neck without showing any effort.  He could hear the crunch of breaking bones as his shadow’s fist ripped into Owen’s chest and flattened Dante’s head under his foot.  Before long, the other Brent was the only person left standing.  As suddenly as the vision had appeared, it faded.  Brent was once again face to face with a suspended fist.

“Forget it!” he shouted.  “I’d rather die than be responsible for
that
!”

“You can’t possibly be willing to sacrifice yourself for these bags of meat!”  The voice was furious.

“You said it was my choice.  I’ve decided.”

The voice let out a roar of pure fury that slowly degraded into a grating tone that tore at Brent’s ears.  As the sound faded, Reggie’s fist started to move ever so slightly.  Likewise, the rest of the fighting mass started to resume its action.  The movements picked up greater and greater speed.  As Reggie’s fist was about to make contact, Brent thrust with all his might against the trooper to his left.  Just as the fist returned to normal speed, Brent’s head swung to the left.  The fist continued on its original path, running into the face of the trooper directly behind him.  Dumbfounded, Reggie pulled back his fist as the trooper he struck fell to the floor unconscious.  Brent tried to strike back while Reggie was confused but found himself completely drained.  He couldn’t wink an eyelid, let alone muster a punch.  As Brent looked up at Reggie, a fist connected with Reggie’s jaw.  A male trooper from the FF nailed Reggie.  Reggie staggered back a few steps, blood draining from his lip.  The troopers dropped Brent and charged the man in green and orange.  However, before they got to him, they froze in place and slowly fell to their knees.  Several of the other combatants mirrored their actions and sat down.  Others rolled up into a fetal position, while a few simply stood, confused.

“That is
more
than enough of that!”  Administer Bloom’s voice bellowed over the troopers.

They had been too late.  Jack had instantly felt the massive surge of hostile emotions, but it had taken far too long to get to the mess hall.  It was academy policy that staff and troopers ate separately.  Nathan had invited Jack to his office for the meal.  Of course, he couldn’t have known what was about to unfold, but hindsight is twenty/twenty.  Jack envisioned scenario after scenario.  Maybe if he had refused Nathan.  Maybe if he had been watching over the boy more carefully.  Maybe if he had paid closer attention to the emotions in the mess hall.  Countless maybes that all added up to one fact.  Something important had happened, and Jack had arrived too late.

As the troopers and recruits were looked over by medical teams, Jack quickly headed to central maintenance.  He was certain of what had to be done, and done before anyone else had the same thought.  Jack made his way in record time.  A lone man in the dull gray uniform of a maintenance worker manned the reception area.  The attention of the worker was fixed on his pad.  Jack could hear soft grunts and moans coming from the pad.

“What do you want?” the scrawny man asked without lifting his eyes off his pad.

“The mess hall is monitored at all times, right?” Jack asked.

“Of course,” the man replied as he leaned back, still watching intently over his pad.

“I’ll need a viewer and unrestricted access,” Jack said firmly.

“And I need a raise and a bonus.  Guess we are both out of luck.”  The maintenance worker smirked.

Jack leaned over and snatched the pad out of his hands.

“Hey! I was watching tha . . . sorry sir!  I didn’t realize.  I’ll clear you access immediately.”  The scrawny man quickly ducked through a corridor.

The worker’s eyes had practically fallen out of his head when he realized he had been mouthing off to a Weaver.  Even Jack had to admit the public phobia of Weavers had its uses every now and again.  He stole a glance at the pad’s display while he waited on the scrawny man in dull gray.  Several female recruits in skintight leotards were warming up, some bending with incredible flexibility.  It was a poor duplication of station surveillance.  Obviously the mess hall wasn’t the only area observed.

“I’ve set you up with viewer twelve.”  The scrawny man’s voice came through weakly on the intercom.  “It’s the seventh room on the right.  Just leave the pad on the desk.  I’ll retrieve it later.”

The room was small but not uncomfortably so, just large enough for the purpose designed.  Within minutes, Jack had the recording of the fight replaying in front of him.  He could jump to any moment in the last eight hours.  Like most surveillance, it was hour after hour of pointless tedium and routine recorded in its entire mind-numbing glory.  Thankfully, the speed of the playback could be altered.  Jack had watched the seven-and-a-half hours before the fight in less than thirty seconds.  So much happened in such a short time.  From first punch to last, the fight had taken only a few minutes.  Jack had watched the entire fight a dozen times and yet still felt he was missing something.

“So here you are,” Nathan announced as he entered the room.  “In all the commotion I lost track of you.”

“Sorry, Nathan, there was something I had to do,” Jack replied as he reset the viewer to the start of the fight.

“I can see that.  That poor boy out there is as white as a sheet.  Nearly fell out of his chair when I asked if he had seen a Weaver.”

“Might want to check on security, Nathan.  That ‘poor boy’ was watching the female recruits warm up on their ship.  I wouldn’t bother mentioning it, but he was watching it in plain sight.  Imagine if I had been one of those girls coming to complain about a malfunction.”

“There is an image.  I’ll have it taken care of.  Oh, and you’ll be happy to know, besides some cuts and a few bruised egos, there weren’t any major injuries.  According to Medical, the brawl won’t interfere with the examinations.”

“Mm-hmm.”  Jack’s attention was again on the viewer.

Nathan quietly watched along side Jack, occasionally flinching and groaning in reaction to some of the more serious blows.  Suddenly, Nathan leaned forward.

“What was that, Jack?” Nathan said pointing at Brent.

“A couple of troopers held him down while their leader got ready to finish him,” Jack said absentmindedly.

“Not the troopers, Brent.  What was that he did just there?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Take it back, right before the punch connects.”

Jack tapped a few controls and the playback resumed from a few moments earlier in the fight.

“See!  Right there!  There’s a distortion in the recording,” Nathan said with rapt attention.

“I didn’t see anything.”  Jack studied the image closer.

“Let me at those controls.”

Moving aside, Jack let Nathan take over.  Nathan reset back a few moments, then resumed at quarter speed.  For a single instant, shortly after the troopers grabbed Brent and just after Reginald threw his punch, his image distorted.  Nathan tried again at an even slower speed.  Just as Reginald’s fist traveled half the distance, Brent blurred.

“What
is
that?”  Nathan asked as he paused the replay on the moment of distortion.

In the single still image, Brent’s body continued to struggle in a blur.

“Is this even possible Jack?”  Nathan asked, horrified.

“Right before we broke up the fight, I thought I sensed something,” Jack said agitatedly.

“Felt what?  None of the other Weavers said anything.  They assisted you in breaking up the fight without a word.”

“They might not have been sensitive enough.  It was only for the slightest of moments.  I thought I had been mistaken.”

“Mistaken about what?  What did you sense?”

“Rage.  Pure rage.”

“It was a fight involving hundreds of troopers; certainly that would explain any rage you felt.”

“It’s more complicated than that, Nathan.  Pure rage is impossible for humans.”

“Impossible?  I’ve seen enough trials to know blind rage is far from impossible.”

“Not blind rage,
pure
rage.  When a person is sad or happy or angry, most people think of it as a person being a single solid, shade of emotion.  In truth, emotions are far more complex.  A person may be sad with a tinge of happiness, or angry with a stroke of envy.  Any creature with a sufficiently complex mind is incapable of a pure emotion.  What I sensed was pure, unadulterated rage.  Hatred on an inhuman level.”

“So what does that mean we are seeing?”  Nathan asked, gesturing toward the monitor.

“I don’t know.  When Brent’s life was in jeopardy in the past, he would sometimes move with incredible speed.  Perhaps what we are seeing is Brent moving so fast it is impossible to slow time down sufficiently to pause his motion.”

“Let me get this straight, Jack.  In that single instant, Brent was fueled by
pure
rage.  So much energy that he was able to move faster than perceivable by the naked eye.  And yet not a
single
person was hurt?  Did you and the other Weavers stop him?”

“We arrived too late.  By the time we got there, the rage I sensed had already faded.  Whatever happened in that moment of time was completely of Brent’s doing.”

“I suppose we should count ourselves lucky.  It’s over now, and, aside from a few scratches, we emerged unscathed.”

“I wonder.”

Jack entered a few commands on the panel, and the screen changed.  Nathan recognized the new information as access logs.  Jack scanned through them quickly and pointed at one in particular.

“We aren’t the only ones who’ve watched this,” Jack said, quickly accessing more information.

“Well, of course not.  These recordings are available to security and maintenance.  Half the staff on the station could take a look anytime after they heard about the fight,” Nathan said soundly.

“Perhaps normally, but I initiated a security lock on the file as soon as I gained unrestricted access.  I was the first and only person to open the file and have been watching it ever since.”

“That means . . .”

“That someone hacked into the file.  Through a top priority military lock no less.  All while we stood here, oblivious to that fact.”

“Do you know who?”