Part Adam: Chapter 11 (Start)

HI! My name is Adam as you may have guessed from the chapter title. Currently I am living in an orphanage since my parents died when I was first born. There is one person who talks to me here. His name is George. We’re roommates so he kind of has to talk to me.

They put a tracker in my brain when I first came here. Our headmaster, or dad as some of the older kids like to call him, asked to keep it a secret. He said I needed the experiences that are lacking here to be useful for the UPBS.

George use to tell everyone I was a weirdo for the way I screamed awake every night. We weren’t somewhat friends until I mentioned the tracker and the beatings it showed me. “No one else has seen these kinds of things. Maybe the people showing these events know you hate violence,” George said.

“But they’re in my dreams! How can these people know about my dreams,” I asked. George pointed to his head. “Right…” I was scared to fall asleep at times because of my tracker.

Even though we all lived in one town, the headmaster made sure we went to different schools. Certain groups at the age of five went to one school while the other groups went somewhere else.

“This is to make sure some of you actually leave here,” the headmaster answered. “You need to stop asking and do as you’re told.”

Someone that was on the UPBS took care of us and taught us about the station. She first arrived when I was eight. Her name was Zana. She paid special attention to me, especially when I saw those people. “You remind me of a person I knew. He told me about a tragedy similar to the one you see,” she said one day. We would talk about things like this after school.

I would ask her about all the people she me on the station. Each day was a new person. One boy was skipped over every time she got to him. I would beg over and over for her to speak of him “What do you want to know about him,” she asked me.

“How did you know him? Was he in your squad,” I feverishly asked. She giggled every time like the older girls did. I never understood why she did it.

“He wasn’t on the same squad as me, but I did teach him self-defense,” Zana answered. What she was telling me sounded like he was the coolest kid in the world. He was the youngest commander they had and won every battle. She also said he could manipulate people’s minds into thinking they already lost. I was starting to look up to him.

“He must have been really smart if he could manipulate people,” I said.

“He was strong too,” she added. “We trained every morning from the day he became commander to the day I graduated.” Zana let me leave the room. No one was in the hallways that I could see.

Behind me came three pairs of footsteps. Louder and louder they came after each step. They were a group of older, rejected, boys. All three of them would be turning 11 sometime in the next three months. “You seem to be spending a lot of time with Ms. UPBS after classes lately,” one said.

“Are you in love with her or something,” another said in a mocking tone. The three of them use to push me around because I would have to eat meals somewhere else from the sudden outbursts. No one wanted to talk to me during those days.

I tried to just walk away, but the boys would catch up. “Why are you trying to get away from us? It could lead to you getting hurt,” the leader boy said. I was shoved into the wall to my right. The three of them enclosed me to the spot I was in.

George was walking by the end of the hallway with some of his friends. He looked over towards us quickly. They just continued walking like nothing was happening.

“I thought you were supposed to be smart,” the boy who shoved me said. I could feel the abandonment George left me with inside.

“I never said anything about being smart. No why don’t you let me go,” I wanted to yell. It wouldn’t be much help since no one would come to save me.

The boy punched my stomach hard. There was a smile on his face as his friends laughed. “You have to be smart! How else did you escape the psychotic killer of those people? They were probably your parents,” he said. How could this boy know anything about them? “Face it! You’re just a helpless boy who can’t even stop us. There is no way you could fight THEM!” He pointed about us.

“But I am a kid,” I argued.

“Not to the soldiers! To them, you’re a pathetic excuse to call a human.” I felt a kick to my gut. More came from three people. Once it stopped, they left. George didn’t come back to help me up. The friend thing is just a lie for me to keep myself from committing the unthinkable.

Zana came out a couple minutes later. “What happened to you,” she asked. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was covered with her hands. She helped me sit up and lean against the wall. “Tell me now,” she demanded. “Who did this to you?”

I held my stomach where the boys kicked me. It hurt to sit here like this. The pain would stay here no matter where I was, living was the problem. “No one did this to me. I’m just a little sick today,” I answered.

“Even if you are a little sick, where were these symptoms when you with me?” We looked at each other. “Now are you going to tell me or am I going to have to bring you over to the headmaster,” Zana asked.

I ignored Zana now. The pain surged up and down my eight year old body. It was too much for me to handle. “Maybe you should try fighting back when they attack you. Defend yourself,” Zana suggested. From that day, she taught me how to fight someone close up. We would practice twice a week after school.

I encounter them again a year later. They were still stronger than I was, but this time it would be a two-sided battle. He would hit me and I would hit him. At one point I slammed his head into the ground.

I took his arms and positioned them to be behind his head to cover his mouth. The amount of times a bone broke could scare even Zana. Then I took his legs and bent them to the point they reached his head. More bones snapped and cracked to get there. No one bothered me again, or went near me, after that. George was scared the first week to sleep in the same room as me. I also got in really big trouble with the headmaster afterwards.

One week before I turned ten, the images I saw of the couple looked more realistic and started talking to me. They kept telling me it was their entire fault I was here. It was their entire fault for what was going to happen. None of it made sense now, but soon maybe it would.

I was called down to the headmaster’s office the day I turned ten. Instead of just the headmaster there was another man. He wore a UPBS uniform that high ranking officers wear. “Adam, it seems you were chosen to go up with these people for battle training,” the headmaster said. “I don’t see how being able to physically harm someone the way you did with your hands is acceptable up there, but I can’t disagree that you have the brains to know your enemies.”

“So I’m leaving? Just by the snap of this man’s fingers I must leave,” I asked. The old man rested his chin on his hands and closed his eyes. The uniformed man sat down in a chair.

“You make the final decision to go or not. If you say no though, there isn’t a second chance to say yes,” he said. There was a glint in this man’s eye that said something was up. Did I really have a choice?

“I don’t know. That tracker has shown me reasons not to go. I want to-”

“You can’t ask Zana about it,” the old man interrupted. “We kept her outside and away from this room to make sure she didn’t manipulate you.” The headmaster sighed, as if he was getting something off his chest.

“There isn’t a choice to make here, Adam! You don’t know about it yet, but your parents signed off on you leaving,” the uniformed man said. He held up a piece of paper with two peoples’ names on it. The headmaster opened his eyes and stared at me.

“This document was given to us when you were found inside the house. You belonged to them for a short while and now belong to the UPBS,” he said.

“So he lied in saying I had a choice,” I said towards the headmaster.

“I did,” the uniformed man said. “But I thought it would be better to ask you like any other boy or girl they send me to fetch.”

The nameless Caucasian officer stood in front of me. He was somewhere around a foot taller than me for now. I didn’t know him, yet he knew me.

I stood tall and straight in front of him. My voice was louder than it intended to be. “What am I to call you, sir,” I asked. He looked down with a smile on his face. It was very strange to see that.

“Jerry. With your status you can just call me Jerry.” The man led me out the door and into a car. Zana sat on the bench on the porch and watched silently as I followed this man. Jerry acted as if he didn’t notice her presence.

I was taken onto a ship, alone with Jerry and the pilots. Zana told me that other trainees normally flew with another into space. “Where is everyone else,” I asked. “Others are usually on here when new people come up, right?”

“He needs you to be there now. We couldn’t wait for other trainees to arrive here.” Jerry stared off into the wall in front of us. “I don’t expect you to live more than a year. The general has special plans for our subject.”

I sat still as the launch sequence began. “So I won’t be a trainee,” I asked, surprisingly disappointed.

“No, you are to act as a ‘friend’ to a boy named Charles Borgenson. Be careful around him I say. There was an incident a couple years ago that should have landed him in a correctional facility on Earth,” Jerry warned.