Greetings From the Experiment

Tedros made a pillar of light appear in front of the door, while the soldiers still haven't noticed them.

"Hey, Ulysses." Allan whispered. He whispered right in Ulysses face, and his face scrunched up in anticipation of any wayward spit to approach his face. "Can you make a vortex?"

"What?!" Ulysses whispered back, in a slightly more panicked tone. He knew his power was to make vortexes, but the issue was that he didn't know how to use them correctly. He'd set them up, let them go suck everything into it's mass, and then hope for the best it would just stop existing.

"Come on, only for a few seconds."

Ulysses looked at Allan, who kept gesturing to the soldiers. After a few seconds, he took a deep breath and waved his hand. He could feel something, as he always did. Some kind of dark energy underneath the surface of reality itself. A small needle ready to make a small tear. So when it was right below the two soldiers, he let the needle emerge, and the rift began growing.

It was purple, and slowly began growing, it's gravitational pull growing with it. It quickly grew between the soldiers and the ladies they were trying to woo. Allan put his hands out to the women to save them, and they watched with the barman as the soliders tried to escape the vortex. They tried making big steps and stumbling to keep themselves upwards, but ended up falling flat on the ground as anything not nailed down in the bar flew towards them. Allan, Tedros, and the two woman had to hold onto Tedros pillar to stay upright. Tables and expensive bottles were hitting them, and some of the hits looked like they hurt.

"Okay Ulysses, you can stop the vortex now." Allan commanded. The fear on Ulysses face told him that he wasn't aware of how to do that. Ulysses tried clapping at the vortex, which didn't work, and he quickly grabbed the pillar before he could get closer to his creation. He pointed into the centre of the vortex, and it seemed to stay in place. It was still spinning, but it didn't seem to be growing anymore. He could feel the energy of the vortex, putting his hand over it until he found the origin point, the original needle. He felt it's energy, and then pushed his hand down as hard and fast as he could, and the vortex was gone. The only evidence of it's existence being all of the damage caused to the bar.

Tedros made the pillar disappear, and the prostitutes ran out like their lives depended on it. Allan threw a couple of notes at the clearly angry barman as he approached the two bodies, rummaging through their pockets. He noticed a couple canisters of what was probably tear gas, and stuffed them in his backpack. And what he was looking for, a smartphone. He turned it on, and it asked for a fingerprint scan. Now we were in business. He scanned the unconscious soldiers finger, and Allan quickly began browsing the phone. There didn't seem to be any kind of work group chat app installed on it. Not even hidden in the 'useless' folder on the phone, but that was just system apps nobody used anyway. So he checked the normal ones he had, immeditalk, snapapic, those ones. Nothing but memes sent to friends, and a message to a colleague from yesterday about how the current mission sounded really stupid. Also a wife and several flirty messages with women who were not that wife. Lot of different countries as well, man must want someone ready for him wherever he gets assigned. But no sign we could contact the boss. Well, only one option left.

"Hey Tedros, you're an influencer, right?"

"Yeah?" He asked.

"Cool, tell your followers to check out the immeditalk stream starting on JohnJeffJones account."

Tedros took his phone out and did as asked, just sending out a story with the first thing that came to mind.

'Yo WTF is going on with @JohnJeffJones page? Unrelated to Space Piece but WTF?'

The bump from Tedros quickly sent a couple dozen people to Johns stream, and Allan began talking.

"Hey everyone, how's it going?" He asked the audience, quickly angling the phone to show off the men behind him. "Now, my friends and I were being chased down by the military in some weird little game the government cooked up, right? Me and eighteen other high schoolers have to get together every few days to play games which end in someone dying. With me so far? Lot to take in, I'm aware. But here's the thing. We somehow got superpowers from the whole ordeal. I can burrow underground effortlessly, and my two friends, who will be kept hidden for privacy's sake, can respectively create pillars of light and black holes. It's wild shit here."

Allan quickly checked the view count, and it was now in the thousands. Five thousand viewers, and it was only going up.

"And I'm here to get a message across to whoever's in charge, okay? I wanna talk. I'm not taking no for an answer. I've got two of your boys and their now very accessible weapons. So here's the deal. Either I hear back in half an hour from whoever's leading this operation or one of the five losers hosting this thing, or you'll be down two guys. Also, Melinda Jones? You're being cheated on with at least six different women. Anyway, this is Allan Reeves, unwilling government experiment, signing off."

Allan ended the stream, dropping the phone on the man's head like a mic.

"You think that's gonna work?" Tedros asked.

"Beats me." Allan shrugged. "But worst case scenario, people are gonna keep up with what's going on. We've won."

"What did we win?" Ulysses asked, his eyes darting between Allan and Tedros.

"The people are finally gonna be aware of who's controlling them! This is step one to exposing the deep state! Look, I began noticing irregularities with society and finding likeminded people to discuss ideas with, so we're gonna see more of that happen! The world they've built is crumbling around them!"

"Tedros, do you believe any of this?" Ulysses asked, praying to every god he was aware of he'd say no.

"No idea. But we do have the same enemy."

The phone rang again, and Ulysses couldn't take it anymore. He just ran out without another word. Allan casually picked up the phone, the "Hello?" following being the two most smug sounding syllables the city had ever heard. He quickly put the phone on speaker, just in case Tedros needed to hear anything.

"Is this Allan Reeves?"

"Unwilling government experiment, yes."

"Junichi wants you in Ritzrub car park. I'll also be there."

"And who would you be?"

The call cut off before Allan could get an answer, but Tedros looked visibly pissed.

"We're going." He said. He was clearly trying as hard as he could to keep his composure, and once Allan took whatever weaponry from the soldiers as he could before he ran out the door, Tedros quickly followed.