Towards the sunlight

Chapter II: Waking Up

Have you ever felt like you've had a dream that was too real to be a dream?

Well, that was how I felt, as I was thrown into the back of the van, to land in a damp heap with the others. Quickly the small stream of moonlight narrowed and disappeared with the loud click of the van's double doors. In darkness, we could barely make out each other's features, but from the silence I knew that they'd all had something else on their minds. But was it the same something that was drilled in the back of my mind? Who knows. It was all so frustrating.

What was that? What happened? Why did he look like Riley? These thoughts kept circling my head. My first thoughts were that it had all been a dream, although a pretty coincidental one. Then I thought it might be related to him somehow, but nothing like this had happened before. Psychic powers? Since when did they exist. Still, no matter what, I couldn't piece up a plausible explanation. The guy wasn't much like Riley either, personality wise that is. He was never the silent type, always speaking his thoughts and using his macho strength to defend what he thought was right. That other boy, there was no way they could be the same person. It's too different. But if not then what? A twin? A distant memory? No, that couldn't be right. He never had memory gaps. No head injuries. No concussions. If anything Riley had one of the best memory spans of our sector, scoring 170/180 in our evaluations. But it still doesn't explain what I had seen. Maybe it was all coincidental. Just a dream. I really hoped someone would break the suffocating silence soon. I needed to talk to someone, anyone. To show that I haven't driven myself to the brinks of insanity. Heaving in irritation, I slumped against the side of the van wall, letting the thoughts rebuild what had happened just minutes before.

We had glimpsed a flicker of a torch light and broke into a run, not bothering to be careful anymore. Weaving in and out and taking abrupt turns as we went, we tried to shake them off, but didn't prevail. The distance between us and them neither shortened nor lengthened, remaining the same. We were engulfed in the pursuit, watching Kye intently as he led us further into the trees, hoping for cover or safety of some form. It was better than running in the open and we had a better chance this way. My gaze was fixated onto his back, watching as the shifting of his muscles hinted; revealing his next move before he’d even made it. Then the air grew cold, and the cocking of the rifle rung in my ears. We’d known they had guns, they always had guns, but I guess it wasn’t something we’d thought about amongst the mess of the pursuit. The trance we’d all been in was broken and one by one we froze.

Bang.

That sound echoed in the night. At that moment nothing else existed. Just me and the gun. I didn’t dare look down, afraid that I’d been hit and afraid of the mess that might have mingled my body. Fear gripped my body, like ice had been poured down my back. Then the whole scene went black and faded away. No coherent thoughts present. Nothing.

Before I knew it, the sounds of shifting tables and voices became evident, starting off quiet and distant and growing louder until it was as if I was there too. It all looked so real, I thought it had been the classrooms we’d attended but it wasn’t it was brighter and filled with colored posters. The students wore different colored clothes and weren’t in uniform like we’d been. Then my vision zoomed into a girl with chestnut colored hair. It followed her, from when she walked up to the ragged boy’s until the moment she left her to stare into his fate beneath the bridge. Slowly he walked up and watched the river sternly. A droplet of water rippled the surface of the still waters and the vision closed as a screen playing the daily news announced the discovery of a male body-dead.

At that instant as the vision faded I found myself back in the forest with feet planted firmly on the ground. The ringing of the shot still squealed mercilessly, followed by a stifled choke.

That single shot had sent our minds into chaos. Well when I say that, I meant all of us except Riley. When I’d gathered enough of my brain back together Kye had already turned around, his face frozen. Bracing myself, I turned around knowing I’d regret it.

He was a mess, a figure. Lifeless. Silhouetted against the blindingly bright light, his body collapsed into himself like a ragdoll. Blood splattered against the floor and aimlessly into the air as he hit the dirt with a dull thud. The five of us stood stunned. Especially Kye. The life had been drained out of him, heart glazed over. His eyes emitted no form of emotion. He’d failed. The words were written across his face as he shook ready to collapse.

Then he winced, paled and started to shake uncontrollably. That was when the ringing grew louder. Loud enough to drown out the rain and the whirring sound of engines. Nothing remained but the it vibrating through every pulse of my body, splitting my thoughts into two. In a second I saw my view of the floor shake, then two sets of leather shoes covered it tainting the perfect brown dirt with black. Shakily, my eyes scanned up his form. The glimpsed ghost of a huge man in a leather jacket cackling soundlessly was the last thing that filled my vision.

The next thing I knew, I was being shoved from behind, cuffs secured tightly around my wrists, following the others who were being pushed similarly out of the bushes and towards the white van.

The bumping of the vans wheels against the terrain kept me awake. As my recollection ended I sat staring blankly ahead of myself. What was I to do? I was tired and that was probably the closest thing to sleep I was going to get. I could feel my eyelids drooping as the weird colored patterns splotched into my sight. Unawaring I'd probably dozed off, like those nights where you're really tired, but still have work to do. In the end you end up finding yourself asleep ontop of your piles of paper.

Less then an instant had passed while I was in my state of semi awakeness when the engines seized and the light began pooling in again. In an instand I was on high alert, as if someone had slapped me. The strong and bold sliding rails of the van doors projected like a train and all the artificial yellow light started pooling back in. Faces in the darkness reformed becoming clear and reckoned with defeat.

"Move it!" A gruff low voice boomed into the trailer. Slowly we shuffled. Were we going to fight back? No, of course not. Were we going to sit there and follow their commands like dogs? Yes. That was exactly what we were going to do. Any other time, it would have been the other way around. But not this time. This time, our minds were blank. An amalgamate of our different emotions.

Maybe we thought we'd had it rough, acted as if nothing in the world could harm us. Maybe we'd thought we'd known everything, that we were better then the dozens of highly trained security guards or the mysterious background figure that had ran this whole place. We had too much hope, too much faith and had jumped in recklessly, not seeing how fragile our lives really were. Worst of all, none of us really knew death up close and personal, not until today.