The Survivor (Daniel Atlas)

Chapter 5

"Please! Come in, come in." The man said and the guards walked us out of the elevator.

"Um, sorry who are you working with?" Danny asked.

"Just as much as a magician who pulls a rabbit out of a hat, is working with said rabbit." Crazy eyes said coming closer to us. "We'll be working together, yes. Allow me to introduce myself."

"Yeah, you're Walter Avery, you died a year ago."

"Yes! An idea I got from you, Mr Wilder. You fake your death and the world pits its guard down. I'm able to control quite a few companies, including my old partner, Owen's, which consists of anonymous share holders." Walter explained.

"And that violates how many SCC laws?"

"I believe it breaks all of them."

"Great another smart äss."  I mumbled bringing a grin to Walter's face.

"You see you all want an audience, need on desperately. It's quite sad really. Hence my ability to nab you. I, on the other hand, want the opposite of that. I just want to be, and I am, 100% off the grid. You know why?"

"Yeah, because the grid is for actual human beings."

"No, because in a world under total surveillance, the only true freedom lies in not being seen. You can't control the grid from within the grid. Follow me. Follow me!" Walter said and walked to the side of the room. We were pushed by the guards to follow.

"You pulled a hat out of a rabbit! That was very gullible."

"Almost eight and a half years ago! So no need to bring that up." Lula protested.

"Well, we can't all brag about our magic personas, can we magic-holio?"

"Magic-holio? No that was fifteen years ago."

"Magic-holio? You have a story to tell me later." I whispered to a blushing Daniel.

"Don't get me wrong, I love magic, but like you and many others I suppose, were not getting much sex in high school,"

"Danny did." Sky said with a laugh, but stopped when Danny looked at her.

"Well, I, uh dabbled with it. But unlike you, I was able to transition upward towards actual magic. Science. You may call it. So, I bet you're wonder just how I got you here?"

"Mm, we know how you did it." Merritt spoke up.

"No, you don't."

"Yeah, you stole our files, hijacked the show, obviously hypnotized us."

"No, stop. Seriously stop!" Going against his demands, Merritt continued speaking about how Walter got us here. It was quite funny to see Merritt get under Walter's skin.

"I said stop!" Walter shouted grabbing Merritt's head. "You might not be having fun, but I am!"

"You have an unusual way of showing it." Merritt eyes the man who held his head.

"So how'd I do it? Easy. You see, magicians like to control other people's perceptions, in your heightened state of agitation you saw the simplest cues. Black tube, roof and you know the rest. The tube you were meant to go down was twenty feet to your right. Come sit down! Sit down." The guards spoke some words in Chinese and we were again being ushered around the room. This time we were brought to the middle which had multiple couches. Lula, Sky, Jack and I sat on the couch, while Merritt and Daniel stood behind it.

"Anyway, once in the tube, yes you're right. Blah blah blah, strobes' contained UV letters with the word 'sleep' that combined with the sound of the word being said. From then on, it was really just fun. And I can assure you, you don't know what happened." Walter said and sat in the middle of the couch, between Sky and I. He took out a remote and pressed a button making a screen turn on. The words on the screen read 'Our trip to Macau' with music in the background. An image popped up and I was very disturbed. It showed all of us passed out on a couch.