While eating and drinking, James and I finally had the chance to question the boy, known as “The Ghost”. He was an interesting case to say the least.
“So”, James said, with his mouth full, “What the hell are you?”
The boy looked him in the eyes for a long moment. Then he dropped his gaze and said: “I’m the result of a successful experiment.” He paused for a moment, letting the words sink in.
“I went trough terrible suffering, in which they’ve mutated my DNA, resulting in a skill that everyone else can only dream of.”
He didn’t look happy about it.
“I can turn invisible at any time”, the boy continued, a faint smile touching his lips. “It costs a lot of energy, but it works very well, I’d say.” The room fell silent.
“That’s pretty cool,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“I guess”, the boy replied.
James was sunken in thought. “That thing that drove us here”, he said. “Is that also a mutant?”.
“Yes”, the boy replied. It’s their biggest trophy. They tried to create a dragon-like creature.
“A dragon?”, James and I cried in unison, not believing what we just heard.
“Yeah, I know, it sounds incredible. It didn’t quite work out though. It’s too heavy to actually fly. But nonetheless its a very effective creation. I released it when I escaped to create a distraction.”
“And that worked out just fine I see”, I said.
“You have no idea”, he replied, genuinely smiling now. He thought for a moment, whereafter he said: “I’m sorry for not telling you my name, I didn’t know if I could trust you. You could’ve belonged to one of them. I’m Kaipo.”
“Nice to meet you, Kaipo”, I said. “I’m Luna, and this is James.”
Before Kaipo could react, James interrupted: “Hold up”, he said. “Who’s them?”. Who did this to you, who created the dragon? What the hell is going on in this damn forest?”
Kaipo seemed to consider his answer. Eventually, he said”: “There’s a military base, not too far from here.”
That must be the reason I am still able to find a connection, I thought.
“There are more like me.”, Kaipo continued.
“More kids who can become invisible?”, James asked.
“No”, Kaipo answered. “More experiments, more innocent people being tortured, more monsters, more mutants”.
“How many?”, I asked.
“I don’t know”, Kaipo admitted. “Too many, at least a few hundred”
“Oh my god”, I said, genuinely shocked. James’s face was full of dismay.
“They usually select a group of people to go through the same modification, since most of them won’t survive the process”, Kaipo continued. It’s very tricky work. They killed almost 50 people trying to achieve what they finally managed to do with me. That’s why I killed that man near the river. They are looking for me. I’m not only the proof of their experimentation, I’m also worth hundreds of thousands of dollars of research”.
I almost couldn’t believe what I heard, but it was clear he was telling the truth.
“Why do they need the mutants?”, I asked, fearing I already knew the answer.
“Military purposes, warfare probably”, Kaipo said.
After a moment of silence, I said: “You need us for something, don’t you, Kaipo? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have brought us in here.”.
“Maybe I would’ve”, he answered. “But you’re right, I do need you for something.” He paused. “Ray is still in there, he’s my best friend. He survived his modification too, though I have no idea what he can do”.
“So, if I understand correctly, you are asking us to break into a military base? How the hell do you want to do that?”, James said.
“I’ve already set up a plan”, Kaipo replied.
“I’ll listen”, James said, “but we can’t promise anything. I don’t see how we’re going to pull this off without any proper resources.” At that, Kaipo smiled.
“What?”, I said.
“When the soldiers left this place, they didn’t take everything with them”, he said, pointing to the green metal door in the corner of the dim-lit bunker. I’ll show you guys later on, first, we need to discuss the plan”.
We spend the next hours talking about how we were supposed to free Ray. I really want to release all of those poor souls, but how? There is no way anybody will believe us. Anyways, for now, we are going to try to catch some sleep in this cold and forgotten place. Tomorrow there is a lot of work to do.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The next day I woke to the sound of the bunker being opened and five shouting soldiers entering, rifles in hand. I freaked out and automatically put my hands in the air. James startled awake and reacted about the same as me, surrendering in shock.
“Nobody move!”, one man shouted. All seven of us stood frozen. Wait, seven? Where the fuck was Kaipo? Two men approached me and James to handcuff us, while 2 approached the green metal door.
“Don’t”, one of the men said, keeping his rifle at us. “They couldn’t have entered, it’s still locked.” He looked like he was the colonel.
James and I didn’t fight, we both knew it was pointless. Our only chance now was Kaipo. Has he already been taken? Or had he just disappeared when the men had entered?
The answer came soon enough. Suddenly the colonel screamed in pain as a knife cut at his hand. Something invisible jerked the rifle out of his hands. There he is.
The rifle disappeared while the other men now pointed their rifle in the direction of the colonel, confused. They looked around the room, not knowing where to shoot at.
Suddenly the bunker filled with noise. The loud sound of an automatic rifle being fired reverberated off the walls, making the sound even louder. The two men standing at the green door dropped to the ground, dead. The other returned shots in the direction they thought the shots had come from, but because of the echoing, they couldn’t really be sure. Then the shots came from somewhere else, and the remaining men, including the colonel, dropped to the ground.
Then Kaipu appeared and walked to the colonel to take his keys and free our hands. “Could you warn us next time you’re going to make that much noise?” I said, irritated but laughing at the same time, trying to ignore the insane stress I was experiencing. James also seemed shocked, we’d never seen somebody being shot before.
“You’re welcome”, he said. “We should act quickly now. Gather our stuff and leave. There will be more coming”.
“Hold up”, James said, confused, and clearly in stress. How did you even do that, letting the weapon disappear while you touched it? And why are you so calm, cause I’m freaking out right now”
“If I concentrate very well, I can let an item in my hands become invisible as well”, he replied. And about your second question, I’ve seen worse, also, I knew they were coming. Now let’s get moving!”. He walked towards the green metal door and used the keychain of the commander to unlock it.
“You didn’t have excess?”, James said while we followed Kaipo. “How did you know they would come?”.
“Do you ever shut up?”, Kaipo shot out. “Of course they were coming. They’re looking for me. The colonel knew about this place, though it probably wasn’t his first quess. It was just a matter of time before they found us.”
“And you couldn’t have warned us?” I asked, perplex. “What if we would have fought them?”.
“You didn’t seem thát stupid.
“Okay”, I sighed. “Well, thanks, I guess. We’re still alive, so I guess it’s fine.”
When we walked through the door, I saw a lot of interesting stuff (I love weapons, James too. We often talk about it ). On the right wall were a few pistols, rifles, and knives. The left wall was full of all sorts of grenades. We all took a small pisttol and a combat knife. “Do you know how these work?”, he asked. “Yes we do”, James and I said in unison, smiling at each other. I didn’t take too long before we had gathered all the necessary equipment. “Okay, now let’s leave”, Kaipo said, walking to the stairs.
It was finally time to leave the bunker. Kaipo went first, scanning the surroundings in invisible form. As soon as we heard him say all was safe, we followed him, into the mysterious forest.
Kaipo let us to the military facility, while we tried to stay as quiet as possible. After a while we approached an open area with a river, once again. It wasn’t the same place as before though.
When we reached the treeline, we all froze. There was something drinking out of the river. It was an animal. A very large animal. But not just an ordinary large animal.
It was a dragon.
It was a fucking dragon.
Not exactly how you would expect one, though. On its big head were black circling horns, like those of a ram. There was a red part on the front of its head that continued as a line with spikes over its back and tail. Its tail ended in a big red spiked mace. The rest of its body was gray and the creature had short black nails at its feet. It stood on 4 legs and on its back were 2 big blue wings, that still looked way to small to lift is gigantic body. It was absolutely incredible.
“He looks like a vegetarian”, I managed to whisper.
“Maybe”, Kaipo said. “But I bet they made it aggressive enough to get us killed anyway. I wouldn’t take my chances if I were you.”
I stood there, thinking. It didn’t really look like it would hurt anyone. It was just peacefully drinking from the clear water.
“We need to get to the other side, don’t we?” I eventually asked.
“Actually, we should”, Kaipo answered, slightly irritated. “Okay, I’ll distract him”, he continued. “You two, don’t move until he’s gone”.
“A fifteen-year-old is giving us commands now”, James said, slightly regretful. Even before Kaipo could turn invisible, the dragon suddenly noticed us. It looked straight in our direction. Neither of us dared to move.
Then it released a deafening roar and started running towards us. We ran. We ran as fast as we could, into the forest, back the way we came. Behind us we heard the creature slam through trees, closing in on the distance between us. Kaipo was gone. Obviously, I thought.
Then, all of the sudden, we heard gunshots. It had to be Kaipo. The small bullets didn’t even pierce the dragon’s armor, but they did distract him. The creature growled and continued running in the direction the shots came from. Kaipo suddenly appeared behind us. “Come on, to the river”, he said, already running in that direction. The beast was still moving away, but now started slowing down, confused.
We ran alongside the river, waiting for a place we could cross. Then we heard shouting from people coming out of the forest on the opposite side. “Get behind there”, Kaipo said hastily, pointing to a section of big rocks nearby. We sprinted towards them and hurled ourselves behind. The dragon came bursting out of the trees. At the same time, a group of soldiers appeared at the edge of the forest on the other side.
They started shooting, but not with normal guns. It were shots that looked like they weren’t too kill. Of course, they wouldn’t kill such an expensive experiment, I thought. It had to be specially designed for the dragon, because the capsules pierced its skin with ease, and stuck out of him as needles in a cushion.
The creature didn’t faint though, at least not right away. It only enraged him and roaring it started running towards the men, who scattered in response, shouting. The dragon smashed its horns against one of them that flew against a tree. He didn’t get up again. I was frightened too the bone, but also, impressed by the immense power of the creature as it slam through soldiers and trees.
“Come on”, Kaipo said, “this is our chance”. Then I noticed the river was very undeep at this point. Kaipo led the way as we started crossing the river. That’s when one of the men noticed us and started screaming to his comrades. Kaipo didn’t hesitate. He shot at him multiple times and soon, the man dropped dead. Then, we reached the other side of the river.
“Go!”, he shouted to me and James. “Follow the tree line. Stop at the statue. I’ll see you there”. Meanwhile the other men started shooting at us. James and I ran away from the scene, as fast as our legs could carry. I didn’t look back but heard the bullets impact trees a few foot away from us. As we ran out of range, the man shouted in confusion as Kaipo was doing his part.
Not much later I heard a deafening bang and as I looked back I saw a bright light radiating from the ground and every tree. A second later gunshots, now faint and far away, filled the air again.
We kept a steady pace until, finally, we saw a statue appear in an open area. We stopped, completely out of breath.
It was a massive statue of a wolf, which stood on a great cube of stone, howling to the moon, with a gray muscular body and black eyes. It was beautiful.
“We should stay hidden”, James said.
“Yeah, we should”, I answered, still out of breath. We walked away from the open space and sat on the ground, against a tree.
“So, that was interesting”, James said.
“Yeah, it was”, I answered. “That creature is…. is….”
“Remarkable?”
“Sure, remarkable. I hope Kaipo’s alright.”
“I’m fine”, Kaipo said, startling the fuck out of us. He appeared right in front of us.
“What happened?” me and James asked in unison.
The short version is that I used a stun grenade, went invisible, and killed all of them.”
“Of course he did”, James said.
Than I saw there was a small amount of blood coming from his arm. “Are you alright?”, I asked, poining.
“Yeah, its just a fleshwound, I’ll be fine.
“And what about the dragon?”, I asked.
“It was so dazed because of the insane amount of stun bullets it couldn’t manage to follow me. It could barely keep its footing.”
“Okay, well thanks for saving us once again”, James said.
“Yeah, thanks”, I said with an approving blink.
“You’re welcome, now, it’s time to prepare yourselfs mentally”, Kaipo continued. We’ll rest her for a little and discuss the plan for the last time. The base is very close now.
We are resting near the statue now. In a hour or so we are starting the operation to free Ray. I’m scared as hell, but we must do this. I hope we will survive this. If so, I’ll upload an update on what happened. If I won’t, than this is the last you will hear from me. Take care.