Secrets Unlocked

Day 1

As I lay there, all I see is darkness. What happened? Where am I? I try to move but something holds me back. What's happening? I scream for someone to come but there's no answer. All of a sudden I see a bright light. Am I dead? I hear a loud noise but I can't make out what it is. I feel breathing on my skin but all I can focus on is what's shining on my face.
I notice a voice, however, "Hold on. Stay still." I feel the force that was holding me down loosen and fade away. I sit up and try to stand. My legs are too weak and I fall. "Don't. You'll hurt yourself", says the voice.
"What is happening?" I ask.
"Just relax."
I feel myself lifting off the ground and the bright light goes away in an instant along with the noise. My feet feel the ground and I regain my vision. I realize the voice I was hearing came from a girl. I noticed she looked about 15. My age.
"Who are you? What's going on?" I ask.
"Come with me, to a safer place. I will tell you there."
"No. I have no clue who you are."
"Please. Just trust me, it's not safe out here."
She walks into the nearby woods and I reluctantly follow. As we near the edge of the woods, I see a porch light. We get to the house that was giving off the light, a shack like house, with broken windows. "Is this where you live?" I ask.
"Yes. I live here alone. I have for most of my life."
Why has she not had any parents looking out for her? Where are mine? Thoughts are racing through my mind as we walk into the house and down some stairs into what looks like a basement. We sit on two dusty lawn chairs she pulls out of the corner of the room. Time for my questions to pour out.
"So, who are you? Why don't you have any parents? Why are you here? What happened? Why couldn't I move?"
"I can tell you are a bit shaken by what just happened. My name is Alex. I was wandering in the woods when I heard a scream. I followed the sound and found you, tied to a railroad track."
"I was about to be hit by a train?!"
"Yes", she says.
"Holy shit! But I'm safe now right?"
"No. They will probably be looking for you as soon as they find that you're alive", she says quietly with her head down.
Who are they? What would they want with a normal kid like me?
"Who are these people that are trying to kill me? Why?", I say after a few seconds.
"I can't tell you that."
"That's it. You're crazy. I'm going home."
"No!", she says as she grabs my arm. "You can't go out there! Not now. Please."
"Why do you care? We just met. I barely know you."
"Trust me, you know me better than you think", she says with a slight smile.
After a few minutes of thinking, I speak, "Fine. What are we going to do about these people."
"Ok. Here's the plan. Their group meets once a month at a hotel in town. We need to show them that you are alive and ready to fight. I know that we can defeat them."
"Ok so when is that?"
"The first Friday of every month. But we can't go yet, it will take some training before we're able to."
"What kind of training?"
"These guys are skilled. They have experience and weapons."
"Well I don't have any weapons."
"Neither do I. However, I do know someone who can get us some."
"Well let's go talk to the guy", I say.
She takes me out of the house and through the woods to a big opening.
"Well where is he?" I nearly yell.
"Here", she says calmly. She opens a hatch hiding in the grass. Inside is a dark, murky, dirty looking rock staircase. She hops down the stairs almost cheerfully and yells a name at the bottom, "Marcus!"
"For goodness sake what have a told you child, call me Mark", calls a scruffy voice as he emerges into the underground opening.
He's as dirty as the staircase, I thought. He looks like he belongs down here.
"Come in, come in", he says. We walk further into the mud bunker and down a hallway that leads into another room. As I look around the room, all I see is weapons. All kinds of weapons. I don't recognize any of them however.
"Um, Mark is it?", I ask. He looks my way and nods. "What are these things? I have never seen any of them."
"You better not have", he says. "No one has ever seen these kinds of weapons. They are too advanced for this society. They couldn't handle it. Here." He hands Alex one of the bigger guns from off the wall. I wait, expecting mine. He looks at me and shakes his head.
"Where's mine?", I ask.
"Are you kidding?", he says, chuckling a little. "I just met you. And plus, based on those scrawny arms, you could barely hold one of these", he says as he holds up one of the weapons. "You couldn't handle the power of any of these. However, I do have one in the back room that just might suit you." He walks down a long, dark hall and disappears. He comes back about a minute later with a little box. He opens it up slowly and reveals the weapon.
"Now you have to be kidding. This thing?", I shout, now getting very upset. I stand there, staring at a tiny gun in a case lined with blue velvet. "It looks like a squirt gun!", I yell.
Mark takes the gun out of its case and holds it up to my face.
"This is a very powerful weapon", he says with dead seriousness.
Maybe for a five year old, I think.
"This is ridiculous. I'm leaving."
I start to turn and leave when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I look back at Mark, staring me in the eyes.
"Do you want to live to my age?", he says in a low voice.
"Not if I'm going to look like you too", I say without hesitation.
"Listen kid, you are in danger. From what I've heard, there are people out there who want to kill you. You won't get very far without my help. Now, do you want the gun or not?, he says as he holds out the little gun. I take it and stash it in my coat.
"So, what now?", I say.
Mark looks at me, at Alex, then back at me.
"Training", he says.
"Yea, he needs it", says Alex.
I look at her and she clearly sees the look of disapproval on my face.
"I do not!", I shout.
"Really", she says. Just then I feel an arm swing to come around my neck.
Crap, I think to myself.
Alex gets real close to my face and stares at me for a couple seconds. It felt like hours. She finally opens her mouth and whispers, "Training."
The arm that once held me in a headlock now releases and is back by Alex's side. She then spins me around by the shoulders to face the opposite way. Mark sticks out his arm in front of him and says, "Right this way", with a noticeable sarcastic tone. He led me past the display of guns and into a spacious room at the end of the hall, leaving Alex behind to work on her own.
The room was full of punching bags and dummies. The walls and floor were lined with mats. On the far end of the room where we're headed, there's a lineup of targets. All kinds of variety. Paper, human dummies, fake deer and turkeys. They all look pretty beat up. I guess Mark must be practiced.
"Yea know the place sure doesn't look this big from the outside", I say when we get to the targets.
He replies flatly, "I know that's the point."
"Where the heck did you get all these targets?"
"Oh yea know...well...look that doesn't matter. Let's get you set up here", he says as he moves toward the human dummy. "Still got that gun on you?"
I pull the little gun from my coat and Mark loads it up. To my surprise, it doesn't take some kind of alien looking ammo. Boring.
He moves me until I'm standing about ten feet from the center of the dummy. Now he speaks, "Alright so generally you want to try to hit the vitals. So like the head or the heart. Just places that will most likely cause immediate death. Of course if you're in combat with someone you won't really be paying much attention to where you shoot."
"Alright can we get on with it?", I was getting a bit impatient. I just wanted to shoot this thing. Find out how it compares to the big boy guns. See how much damage I could do.
"Ok go for it if you're so eager. That right there is your trigger." He points out a small rod hanging from the handle. "Whenever you're ready."
Finally. Let's see how this thing does.
I pulled the trigger and and instantly everything went slow. I don't know for how long but it felt like an eternity before the bullet reached the dummy. Headshot.
"Not too bad rookie."
"Ok. What the hell was that!"
"What?", Mark said with an annoying smirk on his face.
"You know what I mean!" I needed answers and I needed them now. "The whole slo mo thing!"
"Oh yea I was going to tell you about that before I was so rudely interrupted."
I rolled my eyes.
"The gun that I gave you was one of my newest models. It slows time right as you pull the trigger. It's more forgiving than any other gun."
"So does anyone else feel the time slow?" I still had more questions for him.
"It's just passing time for everyone else, but it gives you enough to save someone if you shot the bullet. This gum gives you the power to decide between life or death even after you've made a decision to shoot. It essentially gives you a second chance. Quite powerful for a 'squirt gun'."
My head was spinning. I didn't know how anyone could even have the information needed to make this, nonetheless actually do it.
"How did you make this?", I asked him.
"If I told you that, it would be my biggest mistake. Consider it a secret."
"But how do you even get the technology for this?"
"Boy, do you know what a secret is?"
Damn. This guy was annoying.
"Well can you at least tell me how I did?"
"Not bad for someone who had no clue what this weapon could do. Let's keep practicing."
We spent about another four hours shooting until Alex came in and told us it was time to go. Not to say I was enjoying shooting, but I didn't want to leave just yet. I stashed my gun back into my coat along with some packs of ammo that Mark gave me.
Alex comes to my side, "Ready?"
"Where to?", I ask. At this point in our conversation, Mark has already left the room, impatient on waiting for us to leave.
"Back to my place. By the railroad tracks", she says.
"Is it safe?"
"Should be. They think you're dead."
"Well ok then, let's go."We walk back to her little shack she calls a home. As we approach it once again, I really couldn't help but wonder why she lived in such a terrible place. What hardships put her here?
We walk into what I'm assuming is used as the living room. She gives me the grand tour of the place which is basically a square of four tiny rooms with the basement downstairs. There's a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a closet-like bedroom with a clearly much too small bed.
We go back to the living room and sit on the old couch awkwardly for a moment before either of us speaks.
"So. It's cozy in here", I say after being too uncomfortable. It was pretty late now according to the clock on the wall and all I really wanted to do was go to sleep, but I knew we had a lot to discuss. I started.
"You never answered my question from earlier."
She looked at me with a puzzled look. "Um", was all she managed to get out. She was clearly confused.
"Yea know, the one about your parents. And why you happen to live in the middle of the woods by yourself?"
"Oh right. That one. Well I guess you should know. When I was born, my parents didn't really want me. They had already had a child and wasn't prepared. They dropped me off here, with my aunt. She was the best parent I ever could have asked for. We got along perfectly. Well...kind of. I eventually got to be too much, even for her, when I reached about seven or eight. She told me I was never planned and I was a mistake." Alex's eyes started filling with tears, but she wiped them away. "She told me that she wanted me to get out, but I wasn't 18 yet, and she was still my legal guardian. She left. She told me she needed time away from me, to cool off and restart things. She just drove off. I never saw her again. About a month later they had news of a huge crash on the radio. My aunt. She was gone. I'll never get over the fact that I caused that. I pushed her over the edge."
Steady streams were flowing down her cheeks now. She didn't try to stop them. I had no clue what to do. I just sat there next to her and let her get it out.
"I shouldn't have been her responsibility. She couldn't handle me and I knew it from the day I finally learned why I was here. It was all my fault. All my fault and I'll never get her back!" Alex was yelling now, the tears still flowing. Her body slowly slumped and shook as she cried.
Shit, I thought. I had to do something. I put my arm around her and rubbed her back. It was awkward. It helped though and I'm sure glad it did. I don't think I can handle much more information all at once.
She finally straightened up and wiped her face.
"Sorry about that", she said quietly.
"Uh it's ok. I'm sorry. For all that happened to you. You shouldn't have gone through that. And at such a young age."
"Yea thanks. Well let's get your sleeping arrangements ready. I hope you're ok with the couch, that's basically all I've got." She stood up and walked into her room. She returned with a stack of sheets and blankets on one arm, and a pillow on the other.
"Here", she said, handing me the supplies. "You'll need these. It gets kind of cold at night."
"Thanks", I said, taking the blankets and pillow.
As she walked back into her room to go to sleep, I made up the couch and laid down.
Damn did it feel good to sleep.