A Hoax

Matthew

If there was one thing that I was proud about was the fact that I adapted fast. New team member joining on a mission? Fifteen minutes later, I was using them to the best of their abilities. Comms failing and no sign of movement in a hot area? Get the hell back and get the team to do the same. Ending up in the ICU while trying to make sure the team got away? Start rehabilitation the second the casts were off. Learning magic exists, and there is a prison keeping people who can use it in some top-secret place? Learn everything there is to know about it.

That was what was supposed to happen, but it wasn’t that easy to ignore that magic existed, not when I was surrounded by the people who could use it all the time. Something in me unlocked, and I was on my toes every hour on the clock, anticipating, almost imagining, an attack from them.

“What happened to her?” I asked Cooper during a meal. A couple of days had passed since I had seen Julie; her cell was empty, and not even her personal effects were there.

“She should be out already,” he said with a tiny smile on his lips,  but I refrained from asking him about it. “When one of them has an episode, they are taken to the medical bay underground and stay there until they are calm enough to be released.” Despite keeping my expression plain, my muscles contracted when I remembered what happened that day. “How did you end up here?”

“You asked me that before,” I said, frustrated that everyone seemed to share a secret that only I didn’t know about.

“I guess I did,” He nodded. “But you didn’t explain why you don’t know about what's going on here.”

“Why don’t you enlighten me then?”

He chuckled before replying. “I’m sure you already have an idea of what is going on.” I had made some assumptions, but needed to hear it from someone else. “Every prisoner has some sort of ability, power, magic, whatever you want to call it. The cuffs block their abilities, so the stronger they are, the more cuffs they get,” he said and looked to his side where a petite woman with straight black hair sat eating and chatting happily with her peers wearing two cuffs. 

“As I said before, for some of them, we don’t know what got them here in the first place, but they don’t all end up in prison. There’s a small village on the other side of the island, some of them came from there.” I shuddered thinking about that small village, and part of me was glad I was stuck in guard duty in prison.

“They even have a small hospital,” said Cooper, scoffing as we put our trays away. The radio on Cooper’s waist buzzed, requesting his presence on the third floor, and he excused himself without finishing his sentence. I turned towards the doors to get some fresh air but I stopped in my tracks against my wishes.

Julie stood a few steps away from me, her eyes bulging when she saw my reaction. The extra bracelet on her ankle did nothing to help me move, and the heaviness in my core increased tenfold as my heart raced. Somehow, this situation was worse than disarming a live bomb.

Against my instincts, I forced myself to take two steps diagonally away from her, hoping she would just follow along and go the other way, but she stepped towards me instead, and when I saw her red, sunken eyes, I felt like a jerk.

Every instinct was telling me to attack or run away as far as I could from all these freaks, but for the first time in my life, I was frozen. I remained deadly still as she closed the distance between us.

“I wanted to apologise,” she said in a small voice. I nodded, or at least I think I did. I told my muscles to do the small movement, but I wasn’t sure if they followed through. “I’m really sorry for what happened. For hurting you.” Her eyes landed on my shoulder and then on my face, on the thin scab on my cheek. I wanted to tell her that it didn’t hurt and it would disappear in a couple of days, but I couldn’t manage to make a sound. She pressed her lips together and lifted a small bag she had in her hand, waiting for me to take it. “I baked these today. It’s for you.”

I eyed the bag, urging my arm, my hand, or even just a finger, anything, to move and take it, but my body wasn’t listening. Without warning, she closed the distance between us, grabbed my hand and handed over the bag, taking a step back when she felt me flinch when she touched me. Her hands were warm, extremely so. She showed a small, polite smile before she left, and I remained there, my hand where she had left it with the bag on top.

‘He is pliable. A sheep in wolf’s clothing.’

It was those cursed words that brought me out of my stupor and got my feet moving again.

By the end of the day, I was exhausted in a way that not even the best sleep ever would help recover. Berry sat in his bed, reading, when I arrived, and what he had said on the aircraft popped into my head, so I sat on my bed in front of him.

“Why did you come here?” I asked. He knew, or at least had a pretty good idea of, what had gotten him here.

He stared at me for a moment, then shook his head. “They set me up,” he said, hands clenching the book. “Another guy and I were called in to speak with the Lieutenant, but he was running late, and they told us to wait in the meeting room. Next thing we know a screen lit up, showing pictures and recordings of people, of labs, the army–”

He pressed his lips together and looked away, recalling the events. “I thought they were special effects, CGI,” he continued, meeting my eyes again. “Then the screen went black, we were detained, and I was brought here to fulfil my sentence.”

“For how long?”

I saw his eyes shine red in anger, hate even. “Two years.” I nodded more to myself, trying to organise my thoughts. “But something tells me they are lying.”

His gaze was intense, and the redness in his eyes became darker. “Do you have proof?” I asked, and when he shook his head, I continued, “Don’t be rash. Maybe you are just homesick.” He nodded, but I noticed how clenched his jaw was. “Do you remember anything else?”

He shook his head. “What about you?”

I racked my brain trying to pinpoint what exactly landed me here. I had access to a lot of classified information, but all of it pertained to specific missions, and none of it was related in any way to magic or the like. “I don’t know.” Yet. But I would find out because I had the same feeling that the timeline I was given for this job was a hoax.