Ex Officio (#3 EX TRILOGY)

Chapter 10

Akoma shook her head and searched the faces of each guy standing in the room staring at her. She was feeling very nervous about knowing the truth behind her abduction and being subjected to psychological torture in Scenario for some aptitude test she still could not figure out. She was getting confused, and it was making her more scared than she could imagine.

"Talk!" she shouted at Poku.

Poku sighed and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. "Right," he said, and after a quick glance at TT who merely prodded him in the back to get him going, he began, "We are an anti-Ex Vivo extremist group known as the 'Realers'."

"Wha'?" Akoma gasped.

"Don't interrupt," Poku drawled and continued. "The Realers have been in operation right from the time Ex Vivo showed up in this country. We saw right through the mask of a dating company and knew it for what it stood for: enslavement of the black man with advanced and deceptive technology meant to use our desires as bait to lure us back into colonialism. Unfortunately, we could not come out in the open to expose them because we faced a major setback. Ex Gratia was said to be misrepresenting the syndicate and causing deaths. They fooled us. We had no idea that it was all part of the plan to get the public and even the government to trust them."

Akoma blinked. "I don't see where I fit in. Is that all?"

Poku added, "So we've been in the shadows working hard to get this storage media from Ex Vivo that will help us learn about our enemy and locate a material called the feroxic foil. We don't really know how it looks like, but we do know that the answers to its whereabouts is right there in that storage media I gave to you – "

"The one the other Poku gave to me, not you," Akoma interrupted with her eyes closed. "Don't mess with my mind."

"I am not – look! Will you shut up and listen?"

"Right. Talk."

"Just listen."

"OK."

Poku took a deep breath and continued, "While we crack the codes and all, we have to keep fighting till we locate Ex Vivo's secret weapon and lock him or her in something like a cyberplane. That's how we came up with Scenario to do that for us. We don't need to go out there in the open to fire missiles. It will expose us. We rather subtly hack into Ex Vivo's secret weapon, bring their minds into Scenario and engage them long enough to expose a weakness and seize control over the system, and then we can destroy Ex Vivo remotely with no loose end for them to find us. Scenario is designed to cover our tracks. Nobody can hack it. Nobody can find a user and its source once they're logged in."

Akoma nodded slowly and bit her lip. "I am still waiting for the part where I come in," she muttered.

TT stirred on the spot and grunted. "My guy, tell her. You're beating about the bush," he growled.

Poku stared at Akoma with a slight look of concern in his eyes and said slowly, "We have some training on how to use Scenario to get what we want, but we cannot go as far as engaging this secret weapon of theirs."

"Why not?" Akoma asked.

"Because we don't have that mental capacity to go that far or that deep. But you have. You have some experience that none of us have. That's why we believe that you can help bring the Ex Vivo nonsense to ruins with your potential." He grinned and stepped closer to Akoma, but she stepped back and held up a hand to stop him in his tracks.

"What are you talking about? Who is this secret weapon?"

"I already showed you in Scenario when I helped create a fake continuity from the moment I abducted you from the guesthouse in the Northern Region. Do you remember the news?"