Jumper

'I miss them so much,' a middle-aged man sighs while getting out of his rusty bed; his apartment was half ruined due to miscare of the infrastructure.

His bed being at the corner of the room, he walks out of the wooden-floored bedroom towards the hallway; it was narrow but sufficient. He makes a right turn into the bathroom; it was clean compared to the other parts of his house, the tiling was clean, and its condition was pretty impressive. It also had a sink with a cracked mirror above and a barrel of water.

'Today that thing is giving another speech.' He takes out his toothbrush and puts on the little toothpaste left that he managed to scavenge around the other apartments; he brushes his teeth, looking at the cracked mirror in front of him, his reflection bouncing back at him.

He had eye bags with yellow eyes; his hair flowed down to his shoulders; he hadn't cut it in a while; his clothes were rather torn; and his face was painted yellow and red.

'Every day I do this routine; I do everything without purpose.' He thinks about how his life has degraded ever since the last month, when it arrived in this stable community.

He spits out the toothpaste from his mouth and looks back up to the mirror while getting cups of water from a nearby barrel, splashing it into his mouth to wash out any toothpaste left.

Taking a look down at the sink, he finds a photo of a middle-aged woman and also a young child. 'I'm going to come back to Shilo one day; just hold out a bit more.' He puts his hand against the grainy photo; it was yellow from the time it was taken, and it definitely seemed to be important.

He leaves the bathroom, taking in the hallway once more. He starts to walk out the front door; it was a standard wooden door with a lock for his safety. He opens it and gets exposed to the concrete apartment building. He lived on the third floor and had a neighbour next to him also leaving at the same usual time.

His buddy talks the usual: "Yo, jumper, are you ready for work again? We have a speech later too; I love eventful days like these." His enthusiasm was evident; he was also a middle-aged man; that's all Jumper remembers about him; he doesn't care about more.

"Yeah, I'm ready," he replies with a half-assed tone.

They both go down the broken-railed staircase, the concrete hitting his shoes, which he never takes off; the luxuries of this community were taken the moment that thing came in.

'Why are people like him so excited to work anyway? He doesn't have anything he lost due to this? Never really asked him about it.' He thinks about how weird it seems; he's the only one who has an issue with this.

He gets greeted by the bright sun; it was the only good moment of his days. He turns into the alleyway of grey buildings, walking through it to the community area. They all gather together like a crowd; there are about a hundred of them. The robot on the front stage starts to give out the usual routine jobs.

Jumper was a part of apartment block J; ironically, he was usually tasked with checking the perimeter of the city to make sure there was no one there to invade. They all began their shifts, each group leaving the mass crowd for their job.

'No one comes here, and no one will come here.' His body starts moving automatically to his post; he climbs on top of one of the apartment tops and sits on the concrete floor.

His eyes scan the grassy area underneath the blue sky; it was a very lenient lifestyle that didn't require much of anything.

'Nothing to do but throw stones here.' He picks up stones and throws them at the building, hearing the impact of them quite well. His eyes catch a glance of a figure on the grassy plains approaching; it seems like a young man in his 20s. Without a second of delay, he whistles to his team on other buildings, pointing at the man below.

With the entire team knowing about his presence, they wait for him to get closer while hiding on top of the rooftops. Once the man enters the grey alleyways of the apartments with his limited field of view, he could hear the various sounds of people running down.

Jumpers and his group surround him within the alleyway in all four directions with no escape.

'It seems he has no escape. Quite the eventful day. I guess that guy was right. According to the rules, we can't talk to him but must capture him. These rules are insane!' He approaches the man from behind, who was terrified; he didn't put up a resistance, thinking it was a safe area to be in.

With the jumper having hold of the man, he, with the team, leads the man towards their robot leader in the middle of the open area of the city. The robot looks humanoid but has no face.

"Who is this?" the robot asks.

The jumper replies, "I have found him sneaking into the city; we have captured him, great leader."

The robot exclaims, "Perfect prey for a sacrifice!" His words were of rejoicing; the team also started throwing their hands up in celebration. The only person occupied was Jumper, who didn't see this as an opportunity.

'sacrifice? We've never done that before. Are they planning to kill him or burn him...? I'd rather stay out of this than worry too much.' He lets go of the suspect towards the robot; he apprehends him also and then calls for a gathering; the mass crowd returns to the open area.

Jumper walks back into the crowd as well, trying to avoid any attention; it worked well, and the gathering went smoothly until Jumper looked up and saw the man get brutally hit as a preparation. His screams of agony were heard throughout the city, and the rejoicing of the crowd filled the air.

He turns away from the scene, noticing two teenage-like figures in the grey alleyways running away the moment they heard the man's scream.

'Was that their father? Ah, this might backfire, but... reporting them this time would be like me being their killer, knowing this is the case. He didn't want his family to consider him a murderer, even for his own mental health, reporting two kids basically for slaughter?

As time passed, his job continued with nothing of interest until the request for everyone to gather for an urgent meeting came up. He rushed with his group to the meeting, standing in the crowd, listening to the robot ramble, before a white light appeared before him in an instant, and he got flung back, hitting the floor.

'What the-'

He looked around at the mass murder scene, with only a couple of choices left.

'I either use this to escape this damned cult, or I help them kill the murders from above.' His dilemma wasn't one that took much time to figure out.

'I have a family in Shilo; as a father, I can't abandon them like I have for the last month.' With a profound purpose, he starts looking at the remaining 15 cult members once known as allies. He finds a heavy sharp rock from the crater caused by the railgun, and he starts his redemption.

One of his friends walked up to him. "Jumper, let's find these ambushers that killed our saviour and feed them to the dogs!" His voice was determined.

With a sharp instant turn, Jumper stabs the rock into his neck; it didn't take much time for him to plummet to the ground, his body in the crater lying dead.

Back on top of the rooftop, K4 notices the weird man stabbing his people. "Hey Hino, we got ourselves a new friend." Her fingers point at the scene below.

"He's killing his own cult? He might be a bit more insane than the others even. Hino was convinced of this guy's sanity; it was weird to turn onto their own alley after all.

K4 glances over at Hino, "Don't be so negative! We're going to have great fun with someone on the team." Her mind couldn't be convinced; in the last rewinds it was only the two of them, and she wanted some extra fun.

Without saying another word, K4 starts running down the apartment building once again. Hino, without a reason to stay up, decides to follow her. They descend the concrete stairs out of the door, turning two corners to the station once again, and they take shelter beside the door, peeking out at the crowd.

"See, he's still going at them." K4 gives a slight smile at this new discovery.

Hino scanned the scene. "There only seem to be five left. Is he filled with rage or adrenaline? Maybe both even."

"They aren't fighters after all either; they are confused by my railgun." K4 spots a man about to hit a jumper on the back; she rushes out of her cover into a quick kick, sending the man flying onto the other side of the open area.

Their eyes meet, and Jumper and K4 both look at each other, confused about what to say; Jumper needed to clean up the confusion.

"Help me; I want to get out of here." His voice was pleading and begging; it was obvious he didn't want to be left with all these sick cultists.