Endless War (Complete)

Chapter 14 "The Knowing"

I look around the room and see nothing but the barrels of a multitude of guns. Personally I had no idea that there were so many of these out dated weapons still working much less the ammo needed for them. The shock gun is much more effective in killing and there is also the ability to wound someone without them dying from infection. I thought that all of these people were supposed to be peaceful and unwilling to kill.

"So what, are you going to pull the trigger? I could disarm all of you if you would like, however in such tight quarters one of you may shoot yourselves. I would hate for one of you to die." I say with a hint of false sorrow in my voice.

The woman I heard speak earlier steps forward, "Put the guns down. If she meant us harm she would have done something already. Sebastian, son, I though you said she was a danger to us all."

I cover my mouth to hide my smile, however I fail miserably and end up laughing. Sebastian the big scary Grim is really just a Sebastian. Sebastian's mother looks at us with her eyebrows furrowed.

"What is so funny?" She looks at the two of us obviously confused.

"Nothing at all. I am sorry." I contain my laughter. I watch as Grim's face goes back to white from red.

"Everyone please, walk away. I will take care of this." She says and everyone walks away as directed. "Sebastian, please tell me why you have brought these two people into our home." Her stern look makes me shiver.

"Because, she overpowered the link to the chip on her own. I watched her, she was fighting like the rest of the troupe then she stopped at the sight of a child seizing before he died. She lowered her weapon, I could see the shock on her face at what they were doing. I notified the leaders of the camp and they knocked her out. They had another chipped guy who's program malfunctioned. He was going to rape her, so I took her with me."

"I thought she too had malfunctioned and well I was letting her lead me to one of their bunkers so she could self repair. I was planning on taking some of the microchips and just bring them back to you so we can study them more. She figured out that I was planning to kill her and knocked me out first. I didn't know what else to do. Then I found out the kid is the presidents' son and I was clueless. I was actually going to get out of their site and leave them in the woods." He confesses. "She had him install more of the chips into her cerebral port plus she had an extra one in there to begin with. She has some special slot for it."

His mothers eyes light up and she looks at me. "Son, take the boy, he looks hungry. I need to speak to our guest." He obeys his mother and takes James with him.

"So, you don't seem to share your sons opinion of me. He seems to think I am a murderous cyborg." I move to sit on the ground.

She smiles, "No, I have been waiting for one of you to overpower that chip. Finally, please tell me you listened to your mother and had the other three chips installed as well as the video chip. Amelia had a total of ten children, with you being the youngest. I had almost given up hope."

"You knew my mother?" I look deep into her green eyes.

She nods her head. "Yes, I am the one who gave her the recording device and chip. She was the only person I trusted to do it. She like you had over come her chip, but we couldn't block them from locating her. I managed to program that chip just before they came for her. She was able to get messages to me though our collective of people. Now with you, we can discover the plans of the different facilities and free the children. I will have to send you with the presidents son and my own to take down the head."

"Ok, slow down just a little, I think we are getting ahead of ourselves. First, I need to figure out what I am capable of. I know that my awareness has been improved and I was able to process who the kid was just by looking at him but other than that I am not sure. You seem to be a lot more sure of me than I am of myself." She makes me feel like well, like I am in a movie. Yes the operative is here, we can now win this war, like one person can really make that big of a difference.

"Sorry, its just that I have been waiting for years for one of Amelia's children to come to me." She sighs and sits across from me on the cavern floor.

I look at her sad face and am forced to sigh as well. I look up at the cavern ceiling then at this woman, who's name I still don't know. "Why don't we start with introductions, rather than shipping me off to commit suicide. Hi, I am Phoenix. My mother said that I was her tenth and final child. As a matter of fact, she has probably already, been..." I stop speaking as I try to push back tears for a mother I never knew.

"Shit, I didn't even think. You haven't had a lot of time to process this. When did you watch the video?" Her voice softens, she gets up and walks over to me.

Her wrinkled hand settles on my shoulder, I never really saw how old she is. I mean I saw her but at the same time I didn't. Her short salt and pepper hair is mostly salt. She stands up strait but I can tell that she has lost hight with age. Her green eyes that I saw before are joined on her face with crows feet and a wrinkled forehead. Her lips are thin shadows of what they used to be.

I look up without moving my head as if that could stop the tears from falling and fake a smile. "That would have been this morning. I have been out of my hamster cage for two full days now. I can't believe that I lived behind a pane of glass being observed but never touched by my own mother, my whole life. If you can even call it that. How am I supposed to even process this? How could anyone?"

"I don't know, but you have to. After all you are the one person that can change the corse of this war. Oh, and I am Sharon, just so you know. I am with The Knowing that your mother told you about." She smiles at me with wrinkled cheeks. I wonder if my mom was still here, would she look like Sharon does now.