Chapter 8: Iris

Iris was spiraling. Yoru was gone and said he wouldn’t be back for the summer, but that wasn’t the end of the world, right? What if the world really did end while he was gone! What would happen to him? Well… the world would have ended, so we’d all be dead, but that’s not the point!

“This Yoru character is a real focus of yours,” said a voice from behind her.

“Ah!” yelped Iris in surprise as she noticed that Amari was standing behind her. Calming down, Iris asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Like I said, I’m watching over you,” nonchalantly replied Amari.

Iris calmed down and sat back down on her bed, “Could you not?”

Amari thought for a moment before responding, “No,” Amari walked toward Iris, “If I went away, who would protect you from the M.I.S.?” Amari pointed towards Iris’s window.

What? Iris turned around and looked out her window, and sure enough there was a man in a trench coat looking into her room. After the man seemed to notice her, Iris ducked down under her bed.

“Why is he here?” she asked Amari.

“You are awakened. That’s what they’re investigating after all,” replied Amari, “it only makes sense they’d keep tabs on their subjects.”

Iris clicked her tongue, “What do you think he wants?”

“Don’t know. Maybe you should go ask him,” snickered Amari, gesturing outside again. When Iris looked outside this time he wasn’t there.

A loud thump resonated through the halls, as if someone had fallen.

Iris opened her door slowly, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Amari, appearing in front of her.

“I’m checking it out,” firmly replied Iris, opening the door just enough to sneak out of her room.

Her mom had a terrified look on her face, but wouldn’t move. Her fingers twitched slightly, as if she were paralyzed.

“Mom?” said Iris, tapping her mother’s head. No response. Now that she really looked at her, Iris realized that there was a small yellow and blue needle in her neck. Iris pulled it out, but nothing happened.

“Must be time sensitive,” said Amari. Amari crouched beside Iris’s mother’s frozen body like she was inspecting a broken toy. Iris noticed that her dad was further down the hallway, frozen mid fall, her siblings not far behind him. Obviously they were running from something. “I can’t believe these weaklings are my grandchildren, disgusting.”

Iris tried to hit the back of Amari’s head, but her hand just passed through it, “That’s my family you’re talking about.”

“Always trying to defend each other. So weak… so weak,” murmured Amari.

“Shut up,” muttered Iris in response, slinking down the hall. The trenchcoat man was standing in the kitchen, reloading a small gun. Iris ducked behind her kitchen counter, making little noise. After he finished reloading he kept walking, checking under tables and chairs.

“Come on Iris, we’re not gonna hurt you,” said the trenchcoat man, flipping over her moms favourite coffee table. Like I’d believe that.

Iris pressed her body against the table and continued to sneak around, ducking under the man’s occasional glances in her direction.

“Crya,” she whispered, firing a bolt of ice at the man’s feet.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, that was your last mistake,” said the man, his eyes flickering green. The man started walking toward Iris, as if he could see through walls. “You know, mana leaves traces. Cast a spell, even as weak as Crya and you’re covered in a mana-rich aura for minutes, sometimes even hours.” The man readied his gun. “You’re done, girly.”

Iris shot up and started screaming the incantation of every spell she knew. Blasts of fire and ice shot from her palms, a blue glow started covering everything, and last but not least she was suddenly invisible.

She started panting and sweating. Iris had never cast so many spells at once, it had greatly tired her out.

After the dust of the blasts cleared Iris realized the man was unharmed, just a few holes in his coat. “Damn, you’re the strongest awakened we’ve captured. This’ll be fun.” The man fired a needle at Iris. She tried to dodge, but it hit her in her neck.

Her eyelids became heavier than a million pound weight, and she couldn’t feel her fingers. Before she knew it, the world tilted and she was asleep on the floor, darkness all around her.

***

Someone shook Iris awake. She didn’t know how long she’d been out, but it seemed like maybe an hour or two.

“Hey, hey. Hey!” screamed the person who woke her up. It sounded like another girl a little older than her with a southern accent. “Wake up!”

“Where am I?” sleepily asked Iris.

The other sat down on a stone slab, “At an M.I.S. base camp in some place called ‘Varelion’,” she answered.

“Varelion…” muttered Iris, Yoru’s from there.

“What’s your name newby?” asked the girl who was talking to her.

“Iris,” replied Iris, “Iris Rellien.”

“Cool name. Mine’s Lindsy Dagrinski,” the girl named ‘Lindsy’ replied. “A while ago they separated my family. Sent me here, and my brother to some camp down in Canada. Don’t know where my parents are, though. Been here for a few months now.”

“My family’s still at my house. Well, for all I know. They hit them with this toxin that froze them up,” said Iris.

“Same,” replied Lindsy. “They stormed us in July of last year, so I guess it really has been more than ‘a few months’.”

“What is this place?” asked Iris. “Well, I guess I mean, what do they do to us?”

Lindsy put her hand on Iris’s shoulder, “Are you sure you want to hear this? It’s pretty gruesome.”

“What level of gruesome?”

“They push us until our mana breaks us,” Lindsy said. “If we collapse, they don’t help. They just… replace us.”

“Do people die?” asked Iris, the words stuck in her throat.

“All the time,” replied Lindsy, her expression darkening. “If you don’t perform at a certain level they'll kill you, and even if you can you might die of exhaustion.” Lindsy wiped a tear from her eye. “My friend, Sophia, wasn’t doing so good. They killed her, right in front of all of us.”

“I- I’m sorry. I didn’t know, I’m sorry for bringing it up,” apologized Iris.

“It’s okay. Not all of us die though, a few of us stick around for a while, probably because the proctors like us.”

Before Iris could respond a loud clang rang out from the bars of the cells, “Everyone up! We’re starting exercises in five minutes, get ready!” yelled a man in a black jacket with a tall hat. On the jacket was an emblem with a blue water droplet and ‘M.I.S.’ surrounding it. It was only then did Iris realize that it was a droplet of mana, not water.

A light-blue tracksuit, embroidered with a navy trim, dropped from the ceiling.

“Put that on,” said Lindsy, picking the bigger one up.

Iris obeyed. After she zipped up the front she looked like some neon prisoner. The bars slowly lifted up and Lindsy stepped out into the hallway.

“Come on, if you don’t go you won’t survive your first day,” said Lindsy, already in line.

Iris stepped into line, right next to Lindsy. “Why does no one try to escape?” asked Iris. “I mean we’re here because we’re strong mages, why can’t we bust out?”

A few harsh glares came her way, one kid even flinched, putting a hand against their eye. Obviously something like that had happened before.

Lindsy leaned toward Iris, “Not all of us are too strong. Most of us can barely manage a few minor spells,” she said.

“Oh,” replied Iris. She thought all of the awakened were at her level, at least. In fact she was the weakest mage she knew. Yoru was pretty strong, and his dad, Thalorian, was widely renowned as the strongest.

The collection of about twenty-ish teenagers walked into a large school gym style room. Except instead of basketball nets it had monitoring rooms and turrets. Lines engraved into the floor pulsed faintly, like they did more than just decorate the court.

A man’s face appeared on a large monitor on the far wall. He had a red bushy beard and his orange hair was multi-coloured.

“Hello,” he boomed, “my name is Director John Dobson of the M.I.S. Welcome to my training room. I see we have some new faces in our midst, so I’ll explain the basics again.”

The screen flickered again, this time shifting into an educational video.

“Hello!” happily said a young boy in the same jumpsuit as Iris. “Welcome to the M.I.S. training facility in,” the boy’s voice changed to a robotic tone, “Western Varelion,” his voice went back to normal. “In here you’ll be able to enhance your magical abilities ten fold! All you have to do is survive some simple challenges.” The boy said it like it was no big deal, “for example: survive for sixty minutes as constructs that can only be killed with mana attempt to kill you! Or run on a treadmill for two hours while channeling mana, or else you’ll be dropped into a pit of spikes!”

Iris noticed that Lindsy winced at the last example. Is that how Sophia died?

The screen snapped back to Director Dobson, “I think that about sums it up. You have sixty minutes, good luck.” The monitor turned to a sixty minute countdown, with a leader board at the side, “Oh, I forgot to mention. We’re tracking points this round.”

What does he mean ‘tracking points’? Several large mechanical figures dropped from the ceiling as walls and other structures rose from the floors. The constructs made a loud smashing sound as metal hit metal. The constructs had a faint blue glow around their limbs and runes around their chest.

Iris barely had time to react before a blast of mana flew past her ear and cascaded into a wall. Iris tumbled behind a wall panting, “What is that?!”

Lindsy was, thankfully, right next to her, “An M.I.S. Terminator. They’ll track down anything with mana flow and kill it.”

Iris looked at Lindsy like she was insane, “And you have to fight them every day!”

Lindsy just shrugged, “Yep. But today it’s important,” Lindsy dodged a blast and retaliated with a fire spell, “their counting points.” Another blast whizzed over their heads.

“What are points?” asked Iris, firing a couple spells of her own.

“Jeez you have a lot of questions,” muttered Lindsy, barely dodging a wide swing from a construct. “Basically the person who gets the most points is exempt from the next exercise, but they only rarely count points.”

Got it, silently replied Iris. Iris rolled under a terminator’s legs and pressed her hand to its back, “Aress.” Its frame crunched and crumpled up. Iris thought she had killed it, but the terminator turned around and tried to pummel her into the ground. Iris sidestepped and cast Zephra Elia, knocking the terminator’s head off. Iris’s name moved up a spot on the leaderboard, a little ‘one’ next to it. So we get points from killing them huh.

Iris noticed that as soon as she killed one another just dropped down in its place. “Can’t catch a break,” she muttered, running out of the way of another terminator.

As she was running Iris saw the mangled body of a young boy, about twelve, lying on the ground. She realized it was the same boy who held his eye when Iris mentioned an escape.

Iris must really have been transfixed on the body because a large metal body smashed into the side, potentially crushing one of her ribs. Iris tumbled to the ground, coming to a painful stop as she smashed into a metal wall.