The Next Dark Age: book 1 beginning

chapter 16 suburbs

The suburbs were a lot like everything else in the country; barren, desolate, and a grim reminder of how far a country can fall. Luckily it was rather easy to navigate the suburbs, due to the prevalence of roads, and the lack of buildings that have fallen down also helped them a lot.

When they arrived they realized that they had no idea where to find Tim, so they started to ask everyone they could, until finally some gentleman who was wearing rags and had more dirt and grime than the party asked "Are you guys looking for Tim?"

"Yes, thank you," responded Michael, although he sounded a bit skeptic due to the mud and grime on the man, which starkly contrasted Tim, who was for some reason was always clean.

"Listen, first up," he leaned close into the group,  "shut up. I really doubt Tim wants to be known where he is. Second off, how do you know him, he hasn't talked to anyone in years."

Trisha thought that it was best for her to answer, "I've known him all my life, but these four only met him just recently."

"Really, Tim rarely comes out of hiding. Okay well, you guys should come with me."

"Hold up," interrupted Michael, "Who are you?"

"I have no idea."

"What do you mean by that."

"listen, there are too many people here for me to explain," Trisha looked around and saw that there were at the most three people around, and though "paranoid much" to her self, while the ragged man continued "come with me to my bunker and I will happily show you what i mean."

"I don't know.."

Stephanie grew impatient of Michael's caution and yelled, "There are five of us, one of whom has all three abilities, and one of him. If he attacks us who do you think is going to win?" the man shifted uncomfortably a little and starred at Stephanie

"Fine, but your explanation better be real good."

They followed the man a little ways into to town, until they found a house. From the outside the house looked fine, but everyone in the world knew that you should never enter a house built before the war, due to their infections and instability. That is why it was no surprise to anyone that they would not be meeting here.

Instead the man dusted off some dirt from the ground, that revealed a handle, which led them down into one of the few storm shelters in the area. The storm shelter made Trisha slightly cramped, but it could of still happily fit more than five people if it wanted to.

"I am sorry for the accommodations," replied the man, "but this area was the only place I could find where i could make sure no one would overhear us."

"Yeah okay whatever" Michael told the man hastily, "Who are you, and what is going on?"

The man let out a deep sign, and he mentioned everyone to sit down, "Okay, 5 years ago me and a group of others were released from a cell by someone named Nydia, we had been in the cages for long before that, but we had no idea how long. We knew basic science, math, history, and other elementary school lessons, but that was it. We had no idea where we came from, why we were there, we didn't even know our names.

Nydia told us that we were kidnapped by the Beast's cult, and that they erased our memory, and were holding us prisoner. She was the first human outside our cell mates we ever knew who interacted with us beyond giving us food and water, so everything she said we treated like gospel. She said that she was starting an organization to help us take down the beasts, so that this would never happen again, and we joined without a second thought.

Someone disagreed with this method though, the one you know as Tim. He secretly tried to convince some of us that Nydia was insane, and most people rejected him. I, on the other hand, believed him, so I went away with a few others. The most notable person in this group currently working for the TGK is now named James, and is second-in-command. The interesting thing about us is that we all have at least one modification, and only one of them acts normally."

Trisha thought back to the day before, when she was able to lift all those glass shards out of her head simultaneously, "What do you mean, 'only one of them acts normally'?"

"Well, the strength is all the same, it's the other two that act weirdly. The regeneration take longer to heal than most, but somehow they can withstand more damage to the head than most regens. The other notable one is the telekinesis, they can lift more small objects at once."

"Is it possible that i am one of these special people? Because i was able to lift many small objects at once recently."

"I don't know a whole lot about the situation, but you most likely aren't. Everyone I know was pretty older than you, maybe slightly younger than your parents, and everyone I know that does have these powers was in the cage. That being said, you might be a descendant of one of these people."

"Were these modifications given to you while you were kidnapped."

"It would have to be that way, after all no one else has these powers, and we all came from different parts of the country, so it's not like it was a local mutation that had spread."

"Well this all happened after I was born, so unless they were given these mutation before, and then rounded up after a few years, I don't think i could be one. Is it possible that's the case."

"The amount of resources that go into genetic modification, only a large group could do this, and the Beast's cult was too small that many years ago to pull this off."

Great, this was another mystery in Trisha's life, because her mom being missing, her dad dying in suspicious circumstances, and her ending up with a virus from some kinda-but-not-really divine being wasn't providing enough mystery in her life.

"Do you know when Tim will be back?"

"No, sorry, what is it that you need him for?"

"We're looking for my mom, she was kidnapped a year ago, we were hoping Tim would know where she was."

"Well I have no idea where Tim is, but there is a TGK base near here, if you can sneak in you might be able to in there."

Trisha wasn't sure if they were really ready to do this, but the others already seemed to be asking questions about this place, and she figured that now there was no use arguing. Trisha just hoped that it would be easy to sneak in.