Ex Officio (#3 EX TRILOGY)

Chapter 5

The momentum of Akoma's fall miraculously dropped, and in a matter of seconds, she found herself floating few inches from the ground in the grips of the Ex Vivo men who were also under the same frozen effect. She looked up and realized Poku and TT were the only people moving normally. The car slowly came to a halt and reversed towards them. Akoma did not understand what was going on. These things were not possible in the real world. She was not sure it was witchcraft or some illusion that was at play there because she felt everything - from the fear to breeze of the night. Poku jumped off the jeep when TT stopped not far from Akoma and her captors and walked towards her. Akoma stared at him without a word and waited for an explanation. She gripped the tie of one of the men firmly for fear of an unannounced fall. Poku crouched before her and stared.

"I like that look on your face," he said and tut-tutted. "I expected more from you - at least the will to survive. Frankly, I am disappointed to find you still clinging to these killers. They tried to kill you moments ago."

"What's going on? What have you done? Do you have powers?" Akoma asked breathlessly.

Poku shrugged. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." He looked up into the sky and shook his head. "Dufie, end it. We're leaving." He sounded disappointed all of a sudden.

TT joined Poku and folded his arms across his chest. "Easy, man," he growled. "She doesn't know where she is. She'll definitely get used to it after a while."

Poku sighed and looked away. Akoma was surprised to see his sudden change of mood. What was he expecting her to do, and why was she still frozen in mid-air? She turned to look at the Ex Vivo men and realized all of them were still and looking lifeless. Before she could ask the next question, they flickered, and she shut her eyes and opened them again to check it they were deceiving her. They continued flickering for some seconds, and slowly, they disappeared. She turned to Poku and found TT and him dissolving into thin rays of lights that rose quickly into the sky and vanished. Everything around her began to fade into darkness, and she saw her hands dissolving slowly into tiny balls of light.

"What the - ?" she managed to say before she felt a strong jolt that knocked her into a thick blanket of darkness. She felt like her brain was sinking through a whirlpool for a moment, and then suddenly she felt a harsh jerk in her feet that launched her into a very bright light that forced her to shut her eyes.

"She's back. Help her out," she heard Poku saying. "I think we're done here." Akoma felt herself sliding forward, and then she slowly opened her eyes to find herself lying on her back in an almost dark room with a big lamp pointing down at her. She realized she was still in the same clothes she put on at Somanya when Poku and TT rescued her. She looked around her and found a lady seated behind a monitor busily punching keys on the keyboard in a corner. She rose to her feet and walked over to Akoma's side, where she pushed some buttons on a panel Akoma could not see because of her position. Akoma slowly sat up and turned to find the lady standing by what looked like a CT scanning machine except that there were weird tubes connecting it to a couple of servers and monitors. There were two others joined to it at right angles and they were previously occupied by Poku and TT who were also sitting up. Akoma got off the leather pad that looked like a patient table and landed on the cold floor, but a step or two got her stumbling and falling to the floor. She felt weak and numb in her feet.

"Great," the lady said and sighed. Akoma looked up at her and examined her. She was tall and thin, and her hairstyle reminded her of stereotypical tough girls with braids on the sides of her head, with wavy hair running all the way to the back of her neck and ending in a ponytail. Her makeup was dark and her eyes were dark and cold because of it. If not for the appropriateness of that kind of fashion in that century, Akoma would have mistaken her clothes for being tattered, but they were merely cut at several places for fashion. Her shin length boots were loud, and her fingers were covered with rings and hands with bangles. Seeing these made Akoma take a second look at her face to find some piercings under her lower lip, on her right brow and her left ear. In the absence of these, she could have passed for good looking. She shot a cold look at Akoma before stepping closer to look down at her. Akoma attempted to rise to her feet but felt drowsy and fell back onto all fours.