Ex Officio (#3 EX TRILOGY)

Chapter 9

Blackness.

Nothing more.

Was she dead?

She could not tell – but somehow she could feel her body lying down still.

No burns. No blood.

Except for excruciating pain in her head that was making her uneasy. Was she still lying in the lava?

Then she heard a female voice calling her. She recognized the voice. It belonged to someone she knew, but that person was dead like her mother. She felt sad and burst into tears. She died more than five months ago. She watched her die, and her death seemed to be entirely her fault because she got her involved in something she was supposed to keep her out of. The mind control hustle and the subsequent griefs seemed to have drowned the memory of this person out of sight, and now she was suffering the burden of guilt because she could hear her audibly.

"Akoma? Is that you?" she said.

"Louisa?"

"Akoma!"

"Louisa! I can't – I can't open my eyes. I want to see you!"

"Log her out. Now!"

The last voice was not Louisa's. It belonged to Poku – and it sounded very harsh but from a distance.

"I think we should – ", TT tried to say, but Akoma heard something smash to the floor and Poku cried out angrily.

"Log her out!"

Akoma felt a harsh jolt, and she woke up with a start, but unfortunately she hit her forehead against the hard inner plate of the chamber when she tried to sit up, and she fell back onto the motorized platform dazed and trembling. She felt all sweaty and terrified by the experience, and after massaging her face for about a minute, she became much aware of her surroundings and confirmed that she had been in Scenario. The question was – how did she get logged in without her knowledge?

She was pulled out with Poku's help and helped to her feet by TT who started to take her to the room she had been kept in, but Akoma stopped and pushed him away. She looked around and found Dufie seated by the monitor. Instead of the usual hostile stare, she looked rather befuddled by something she had observed on the visual display. Akoma angrily walked past Poku and headed for the exit, but just as she reached for the door, it opened to reveal two men – identical twins who were dark oily skinned and lanky. Akoma noticed they had guns in their holsters and stopped in her tracks. Akoma sighed and dropped to her knees in despair.

"You don't have to – ", Poku said and reached for her shoulder, but Akoma hit his hand away and shot a threatening look at him.

"I want my life back!" she cried out. "This is both insane and abusive of you!" She turned to scowl at Dufie, who seemed not to have recovered from whatever had shocked her. "You delight in getting my mind locked in that maze all the time, eh? What do you get from it?"

Dufie looked up and shook her head. "I didn't log you in," she said in a hushed voice.

"Then who did?"

Dufie rose to her feet and angrily left through a door next to the room that hosted Akoma. Poku attempted to go after her, but TT stood in his way.

"You should talk to her, man," he muttered to Poku. "It's not fair to log her in without her consent. She needs to know why we are keeping her here. Let's do the briefing now."

"But we need more time to figure out her potential," Poku whined. "We need to know if she's the keystone. If we tell her everything and she's not, you know what that means, right?"

TT clenched his jaw and cursed. "Bro, how do you think she came by the storage media? Do you think she stole it? If she's not the one – ", he bumped his chest intimidatingly against Poku's and squinted before adding, "then you need to worry about what could become of you. You sure about this?"

Poku smacked his forehead in exasperation. "Look, I know what I saw. But we have to test her capacity still."

"She doesn't know how to use the machine. How will she pass the test?"

"If she's the keystone, she won't need a rehearsal. We will definitely see right through her in Scenario, but she's just been failing at scenarios we create for her or ones she even creates herself. That's so not cool."

"But she could tell she was not in the real world when she was in the underwater scene. She did not fall for the apparition of her dead mother. Doesn't that count?"

"Ah! TT – don't defend her. That's not enough. She still believed the Louisa part and wept. Look at her eyes." Poku pointed at Akoma who sniffed and dried her eyes on the collar of her T-shirt.

"I am still here if you've forgotten about me," she said quickly. "What are you people talking about?"