Mutation- Chapter 2

What's up.

 

The next chapter of Mutation is a bit different. It takes a new twist on the world that I'm creating. The exposition in this story is like wading through mud, I know, but it'll all come in handy later. Next chapter is going to be a major twist that will basically shape the plot of the story.

As usual, enjoy.

DMS

Chapter 2:

He was still snarling at us when we threw him down before the table. As we ripped off his blindfold, he looked up to see who was sitting before him on the ornate, golden table. He jumped backwards from surprise, landing on the cold, hard stone floor. As Pierre, Tyla and I stood behind him, one of the five people sitting at the table slowly rose. His robe billowed around him as he pushed back the heavy oak chair back with one hand. A bony finger extended from his sleeve as he pointed at the prisoner. A raspy voice echoed throughout the stone chamber when he spoke. “Traitor. You betrayed us for nothing apparently, and the Parliament hates you now too. No one likes you.” He shivered. “I’m sorry, so sorry, so so so sorry, please, please, please...”

Two of the guards stepped forward as a clear, baritone voice resounded from one of the ends of the table. “I think we have a standard punishment for traitors lined up here already, Master.” The brawny figure at the end of the table rose and threw off his hood, revealing a man’s angular face and a rock-solid jaw. The prisoner crawled backwards as the huge man’s pale blue eyes seemed to scorch him. “I think that we have to throw you in the jail, now don’t we?” The guards grabbed him and hoisted him by his shoulders.

“Just one minute,” rang out a high-pitched voice from a slender shadow at the opposite end of the table, from a shape almost too small to be real. I automatically assumed that the formal, concealing garments contained a woman. “What about the documents?” The person sitting in between her and the person in the center threw out his hands and started making circles and shapes with his fingers. One of the guards stepped forward and I handed him the papers. He handed them to the two figures on the end and they sat down, browsing through through them. They stopped after about a minute, simultaneously sharply glancing upwards. “GET HIM!” yelled the woman who had asked about the documents. But in a flash, the man ripped out of the guard’s hands had laid out both of them. They lay on the ground, blood dripping from their noses and mouths. Pierre tried to land a flying tackle, but in an instant the seemingly transformed man sidestepped and shoved him to the ground with a quick trip.

Tyla came toward him throwing a series of short, fast punches. While they didn’t look harmful at all, each had an impact not unlike a tiny bomb because of her power. She rapidly converted that energy into explosions. As they fought, the brawny, robed man threw off his cloak and sprinted toward the battle. As he did this, I dove out of the way of the huge person barreling toward me. The prisoner, with a sharp crack, sent Tyla spinning to the floor, but too late. As a heavily muscled arm wrapped around his neck, he fought in every way that he could, but nothing could free him. The man, with his other hand, broke from his chokehold for a split second to grab a weapon from his pocket. The prisoner seemed to go limp as a very sharp knife was held to his throat. The four left at the table stood and watched. Looking to them for permission to kill, the person who seemed to be the leader gave a slight nod.

As the body hit the ground, the man said, loudly so that everyone in the room could hear it, “They don’t call me The Executioner for nothing.”

I caught up with the last man at the table, the one who hadn’t spoken or moved much for the entire ordeal. He had been my best childhood friend, and being promoted to the extremely high rank that he was, I received a lot of my information from him, much of it classified. “What was going on in there?” I nearly shouted as I matched his brisk pace throughout the hallways of the underground stronghold. Without missing a beat, he dodged sideways into an empty room and snappily closed the door behind him. “John, you can’t tell anyone about this, all right?” He was a bit shorter than me, but lean and toned. I nodded and he went into an explanation. “The five people that you saw, including me, were the Executioner, which you probably figured out. He’s basically in charge of the justice system and punishment.” I nodded quickly, eager to get more. “I’m the Minister of Internal Affairs, so being part of The Gathering, which I’ve already told you is that group, is part of my responsibility.” He had already told me about his job. Basically he has to keep the whole Underground Nation running.

    I guess that I haven’t explained that much, but in the rest of this it’ll basically become apparent. The year, currently, is AS 478. After the government became defunct, a new group arose from the ashes, called the Legion. It was a group of citizens, led by those with abilities caused by mutations. The Legion is led by a group of people similar to our leaders, who are called the Gathering, who are completely ruthless. They’ll do anything to establish complete power over Domain 3. More on Domains later. Anyways, because the Legion was, and still is viewed by its citizens as corrupt, another group broke off, known as the Underground Legion. We aren’t so underground anymore, but no one has even suggested to change the name.

    Tanner kept talking, explaining more and more. “The woman who asked about the documents was the Minister of Information. I don’t want to talk much about her, because now the penalty to talking about this is crossing over from high fines to death.” I already knew that most of this was covert information. The Underground Nation doesn’t speak a lot about its leadership. All of the sessions of the Gathering are closed and the identities of the people involved, as well as their responsibilities, are private. Once you’re inducted, you’re listed under “Employed by Government” and that’s all there is to it.

    Tanner continued to speak. “The man who you saw make symbols with his hands is the one leader we have who is a Deformed. I’ve never seen him take his hood off. The King of the Deformed always has reasons behind his actions and has lived through things that we haven’t even imagined. One of the guards was deformed, which you probably couldn’t see, but he can read their sign language.”

    The Deformed have a complicated history. About a hundred years before the Seperation of Deformed, Mutated, and Normal, normal people, who didn’t possess a mutation, started being born looking different or having something about their physicality altered. A period of discrimination ensued, culminating in the Seperation, where the Deformed, Normal, and Mutated were divided into different parts of Domain 3. The Normal took the left half of the island, the Mutated took the right, and the Deformed were cast into the Pit, a deep abyss near the center of the island. They say that no one that isn’t Deformed or sentenced there to life for their crimes knows what’s down there. Over time, the Normal and Mutated diffused, and the Deformed sent emissaries up to us. The old government that decreed the Separation has nothing to say about this, because it long ago crumbled into dust.

Tanner finally got to the last person. “The person in the middle was the Grandmaster. Nobody who isn’t in the higher levels of the Nation or has been clued in, like you, even knows that he exists. He is the supreme dictator, and what he says, goes, unless it is strongly opposed by the rest of us.” None of this really came as a shock to me, surprisingly. I had assumed that a secret, ultra-high ranking group had existed and basically called the shots. Tanner finished, and asked if I had any more questions. I shook my head no, until suddenly, I wondered what had gone on with the man that we had captured. You see, there’s a story beside him.

In the armed forces, there are several divisions. Pierre, Tyla, and I are part of the Scout faction. We mainly accept special assignments that are decreed by higher-ups, but there’s a fair amount of patrolling the area as well. For a year, Pierre and I were stuck in patrol duty with a man by the name of Markus. Markus was lazy, and not really fit to be in the armed forces. He had fallen into the habit of slacking off, as most patrols are uneventful. One day, Pierre and I had traded out our patrol duty for a different assignment, and we heard about what had happened to our replacements and Markus. Apparently, a group of enemies had attacked, and killed one of the three patrolmen. The other fled to get reinforcements, and when they finally came back, they found a spiteful note laying on the body of the deceased patrolman, telling the Underground Nation to burn in hell. There was one thing I noticed, though. The Markus that I used to know was different. The overweight, slobby, and lazy Markus that I remembered had been replaced by a jacked, ruthless-looking killing machine.

Tanner answered my question with a promise. “I’ll find out, don’t worry. There was definitely something different.” The door swung open and a man with a buzz cut stood imposingly in the doorway. “Minister Tanner. The Gathering awaits.” He glanced at me menacingly. “I feel as if you should be saluting right now.” On the left breast of his uniform hung a rank signifying that of a rank I didn’t really know, but was obviously extremely high. I snapped into a solid salute and held it until he and Tanner walked out of the room. I pondered the information for a while, and then stepped out, ready to protect what I had just learned with my life.