by Prometheus
"...you just don't understand, do you? You wake up in strange places. You find yourself wearing clothing that you have no memory of putting on, much less purchasing. Abrasions that you can't account for. Elapsed time. What does it all mean, Professor? What would your... analytical mind surrender in the realm of a theory concerning this phenomenon, eh?"
-- Friday
"That these words may one day find but a single inquisitive ear among my brethren of days to come, I must, at great displeasure, apologize for the previous entry into this, my sanctum of scribblings. It would seem that this eternal prankster... this... 'Friday', whomever he claims to be, CONTINUES to disrespect my wishes for a PRIVATE journal. That he would be so cavalier as to interject his words between mine, KNOWING that I will not rip them out, or blot them away, as, my faithful future ancestor, you can see, I write on the back of the page as well as the front. And yet, even after I plead for him to away, he bothers me still. More tomorrow."
-- August Tallmoore
Her Majesty's Royal Librarian
Court of Windsor
"Moron. Simpleton. You torture me with your ignorance. Why can't you just accept the truth? WHY must you continue to prattle on and on to someone who MAY read this, one day?! Why is it we ONLY communicate through this pedantic journal of yours? YOU KNOW WHY!"
-- Friday
"Damn you, sir! There, I've gone and said it. But it had to be uttered. How dare you trespass into my privacy! However, even if you are able to infiltrate my home without my knowledge, it matters little. I have already spoken to the local constabulary and have alerted them to you. So, dare I say, I implore you, before the long arm of justice strikes you down, desist and scurry back into the folds of night that bled your existence!"
-- August Tallmoore
Her Majesty's Royal Librarian
Court of Windsor
"You didn't speak to the cops! You aren't at home! It was a NURSE! Remember? And all she did was nod her fuckin' head and shoot me full of drugs! Don't you see, August? Don't you get it? If you don't find a way to get me out of this padded cell, I'm going to fuck with you FOREVER!"
-- Friday
"I'm disgusted by your continual presence, sir. So, I will play along with your delusional escapades, if it will bring you any closer to leaving me alone. In that, I will ask you this, with an exhausted sigh: How exactly will your freedom from what can only be described as a perfect habitat for such a mind bring relief, or have anything to do with me in the slightest? I await your answer, my mystery writer, with an air of sarcasm and baited breath."
-- August Tallmoore
Her Majesty's Royal Librarian
Court of Windsor
"You fucking idiot. I show you the light, and you simply will not look at it. Fine. Then I'll spell it out for you. Feel that... prick... right there? In the back left of your head? Feel it? As you read these words? Yeah. You feel it. You know what it is. Don't you? Of course you do. Now you do. It's very, very simple, August. When you're in danger, I'm in danger. When you die, I'll die. And, even as you live, so do I.
"Admit it, August. Look in the mirror. Watch your eyes. Watch their color. Nice hazel brown, eh? Your eye color, right? The one you've always had, right? Now... watch it... change... Don't you see? You can't be rid of me. We are the same person."
"...oh dear..."
Excerpt from patient 09745
Psyche research and development
SUBJECT FILE: "The One"
In the beginning...
If there is such a thing. I mean, how can you start fresh from a true beginning? Everything comes from something else. That's life. That's the bleedin' universe. So, what, I'm supposed to start by outlining the universe for you? Again, where do I start? Either way, having established that you're probably jumping into the deep end of things, no matter what, I'll start with a simple concept.
A name.
Mine's Turkish Stringfellow.
And this is the universe as I perceive it.
Belgium, Germany, 2002:
A somber night breeze licked at the smooth head, quasi-purple eyes squinting a bit against the brilliance of the full moon. The tips of his toes continued to dig into the minute cracks lining the corner bricks of the wall, his chest bent low near his pumping knees. Hands hidden by the enveloping gray folds of his robe stretched back behind him freely as he continued his casual sprint, running up the edge of the fifty-story complex with apparent ease. The yawning traffic below him continued oblivious to his presence, as did the contingent of security that covered the fenced estate.
"You're fifteen and three-quarters feet from the roof," the soft-but-precise female voice bounced into his hearing.
"I know," he spoke back with a whisper.
"Just trying to help."
"No, you're not..." he breathed, never breaking the determined sprint, "...you're just bored."
"Well I wouldn't BE bored if y--"
"Z..." he quickly interrupted.
"Wot?!"
"Mind telling me just exactly how we're talking to each other... what with me running up the side of a building and all?" he asked in a pleasant tone.
"Easy."
"'Easy,' as in the I-know-a-lot-of-big-words easy, or...?"
"No!" she replied indignantly.
"Okay... how easy?"
"The moon's giving me a perfect luminary arc into your ear, so I'm using the telemetry of your spacial co-ordinates, as related by the moon's reflection of light, to 'cold-boom' sound waves against your eardrum, whi--"
The man sighed with an annoyed snarl, and quickly stepped over into the shadowed side of the building, never breaking his stride upward. The woman's voice faded like radio.
Just outside the fenced estate, a tall, pleasant woman in her twenties twisted her face into the same annoyed snarl as she felt the speed-of-light connection broken.
"Bastard..." she huffed. Perched on the hood of someone else's car, she leaned forward with a light grunt, stretching her back. Then, ruffling her extremely short locks of blonde, she rested back on the windshield with a sigh of boredom.
"Don't know why it always has to be his way," she mumbled to herself, staring at the large sign illuminated near the main gate. "S'not like I couldna' just boomed us straight to the roof."
The sign read: The Hathaway International Center for Mental Health. It was the premiere psychological facility for the study of thought and all higher brain functions, and, with recent events in the world, the charting of the metagene and its effects on the human neural pathways.
In reality, only a few patients here truly possessed the metahuman genome, their abilities having caused turmoil with their psyche. The majority of Hathaway's residents, however, were merely simple, human, dysfunctional members of society claiming to be old gods, or test subjects for government experiments, or orphans from another world, and so forth.
Strangely enough, however, one of them fit both categories.
The stark, empty room shone with a dull luminescence, pouring easily through the enormous skylight. Silver moonlight coated the soft, off-white padding that covered the twelve-foot walls, illuminating a lone occupant.
A man, somewhere in his mid-thirties, sat perfectly still, kneeling and at rest. Staring blankly straight ahead, his short, slicked-back hair drank the moonlight into its ebony gleam. His white shirt matched his white pants, which, in turn, matched the floor and walls of his cell. He did not move or blink, and his breath came at subtle intervals. He seemed completely content in the nigh-comatose state. His eyes, though, told a different story, as they flittered back and forth, fading from a brilliant green to a pale blue and back again, a vein bulging along his forehead, obviously straining with some unseen battle.
So caught up in this struggle, he failed to notice a slender bald man, cloaked in something of a gray robe-mix-tunic, fluidly catapult off the edge of the roof and land serenely balanced on two fingers, dead center on the glass above him.
His robe snapped in the harsh breeze that constantly tore across the rooftop, yet his body remained rigid in its impossible stance. Balanced completely upside down, the index and middle finger of one hand bore the entire weight of his frame, positioned just between a pair of slender security lasers. Legs curled down, he studied the rigged skylight for a moment, the position as seemingly comfortable as his improbable ascent up the building.
"Z..." he whispered, "...you still with me?"
"Oh, NOW you want to talk..."
"Am I on target here?" he asked, his eyes narrowing as he noticed motion detectors along the metal frame of the skylight.
"Residual co-ordinates haven't changed, but I'll double-check... hold on."
The blonde sat up from her lying position and consciously dimmed her immediate awareness for only a second. Within that second, spatial feelers fired from her mind, tracing the moonlight around her, back to the moon's surface. From there, her subconscious mind calculated the distance of moonlight to the target location, exact spatial co-ordinates spreading into her awareness.
"Yep... you're right over the bugger..."
"I was afraid of that."
"Why?"
The man cocked his eyebrow, staring down through the glass. "This skylight is crawling with security."
"So? Like that's ever stopped you."
"It's not the stopping me part that I'm worried about. It's the fact that they've placed this kind of security around one person, a mental patient, at that."
Reaching his free hand down, the man purposefully gripped his index finger across one of the lasers. Surprisingly enough, no alarm sounded. Even more surprising was the fact that his finger didn't actually break the beam of light.
He merely bent it. As if a physical object to mold, he slowly pulled three of the beams up like caressing a shoelace.
"So, they're trying to keep someone out?"
"...or something in," he sighed. "Either way, someone knows what this guy can do."
"And what exactly IS that? Scion wasn't very forthcoming about why we have to get this nut job..."
"Tell me about it." Using only his fingernail, he began slowly dragging his index finger along the smooth glass in a large, circular motion. "But, whatever it is, whoever had him locked in and doped up here, knows what he can do..."
Completing the circle, he gently placed his open palm against the center of the glass.
"...and when someone else knows what Scion knows..."
Lifting his palm, the glass utterly disobeyed the laws of physics and separated from itself.
"...I get nervous."
The circle of glass held fast to his palm, its edges as smooth as its surface. It wasn't cut. It wasn't melted. The area of glass that he had ran his finger along had simply separated from the rest of the skylight. The glass silently released itself from his palm, floating motionless in the air where he left it.
A small draft of night air began tossing along the room, wafting from the opening. Tendrils of black hair tossed a bit from the breeze as the occupant slowly became aware of his surroundings. Green eyes finally faded to blue as he blinked a few times. He suddenly noticed a shadow fall over him.
Twisting his head around, a tall, slender, bald man of no more than twenty-nine, hands clasped together beneath a billowing gray robe, stood staring back with a calm smile.
"Hello," he began politely. "Is your name Friday Tallmoore?"
The man slowly shook his head, eyeing the stranger.
"Y-yes..." he stammered out, eyes darting up to notice a large circular hole in the skylight above. "How...? Who are you?"
The bald man cocked his eybrow, lined with a smirk. "Who is anyone?" he asked back with a smile. "But, that's a WHOLE 'nother philosophical discussion that we just don't have time for right now."
He held his hand out, pulling the other man up to his feet. "You, however, can call me Turkish."
"Turkish? What kind of name is that?"
The bald man paused, as if truly considering the question. "Uh... Turkish, I believe..." A broad smile crept along his face.
"What... is it... you want from me?" Tallmoore asked, still staring at the skylight above.
"This is a jailbreak, mate, and you're Charles Bronson..."
Tallmoore looked at him. "Charles who?"
"You know... Bronson... The Great Escape...?" he drifted off, Tallmoore not getting the joke.
"How did... how did you get in here?"
"I jumped. Lis--"
Suddenly, Turkish's eyes lit up as he huffed to himself with a burst of angst.
"What? What is it? What's wrong?" Tallmoore asked.
Turkish just laughed to himself, shaking his head. "Man, laser beams, motion detectors... I walked around them all," he said quietly, "and, as usual, I forget the most obvious details."
"Like what?" Tallmoore asked, still quite baffled at all of this.
Turkish reached his finger back, pointing to the corner of the ceiling. There, sitting nested in all its spying glory, a simple video survelliance camera focused in on them.
Tallmoore had barely registered the camera when screaming alarms suddenly blared through the building. Yelling voices and the fall of booted heels began rising in pitch.
The security siren blanketed the entire estate, jerking Z up from her lazy position. She jumped from the car and began walking briskly toward the twenty-foot fence.
"Time we were off, I would say," Turkish sighed, walking over toward the far wall. "Just give me a second."
"Turkish? What's up?"
"Going to need a fast exit, Z... can you boom us out?" he whispered.
"Negative... something's disrupting me... think security just threw up a hop-block around you. I can't trace directly into that room."
"Then get under the east wall, quick." Turkish leaned his ear against the wall and began quietly mumbling to himself.
Z picked up her pace, then quickly broke into a dead run toward the fence. Only inches from the metal framework, there was a dual flash of bluish light as she disappeared and reappeared on the other side simultaneously, never breaking her run toward the compound.
"What are you doing?!" Tallmoore yelled frantically. The sound of guards grew nearer as the alarms continued to blare.
Instantly, Turkish threw his hand up toward the door, convincing the frame that motion did not exist. Boot heels began slamming with little effect against the door. "I'm convincing the wall to take a breather," he replied nonchalantly.
Tallmoore just stared at this bald, robed man talking quite intently to the wall. "Think maybe you'd better stay here with me, fellow?" Tallmoore asked with a frown.
Turkish smiled. "Are you kidding?" he asked calmly. "Everyone knows... an asylum holds the only truly sane people on the planet." The wall suddenly began to vibrate. "It's the rest of the world that's crazy..."
And with that, the entire section of the padded cell lurched out from its moorings, every brick, every scrap of wiring, every inch of every bolt of the structural framework.
The entire wall separated, not falling, not crumbling, nothing even remotely broken. Turkish convinced the wall to completely separate into its composite forms and hover a few feet out into the night air.
"Jaysis... bloody... Christmas..." Tallmoore gasped with wide eyes, his black hair flailing wildly at the mad rush of air. "I think... I think I'm going to vomit."
"Nonsense..." Turkish said smiling, "...this is where it gets fun."
"Can't... can't we just go out the way... you came in?"
"You're too heavy for that," Turkish replied. "Welcome to Plan B."
Below, sirens were blaring constantly. The entire complex was in chaos as guards and their dogs scoured the area, along with spotlights.
The sound of gunfire caught Turkish's attention as he spotted a nubile blonde sprinting across the grounds fifty stories below. "Good. Our ride's here," he said, grabbing Tallmoore around the waist.
Tallmoore instantly began struggling. "You can't possibly think we're going to jump!" the frantic man yelled above the roar of chaos.
Z sprinted hard across the grounds, bullets flying literally all around her.
"Sorry, Friday..." Turkish yelled, watching his partner below, "...I'm too busy keeping the door closed, the wall open, and those bullets confused, to be able to fly us out of here properly."
Bullets sprayed at the speed of sound in their determined path. That is, until reaching within three inches of the woman known as Z, when Turkish convinced them that her skin was anti-inertia. They scattered along the ground in the hundreds, soldiers firing with constant confusion.
Coming to a dead halt directly in front of the east wall, Z threw her arms up and open, wide. It was then the laws of physics finally gave up completely.
There was a strange, minute static discharge as the event horizon of a miniature gravity-well suddenly spiraled open from her chest with a muted boom. Her body instantly dissolved into a swirling spatial wormhole, the entire area buffeted with turbulence.
Turkish, Tallmoore in tow, quickly jumped into the night air. A girlish scream erupted from Tallmoore as the two plunged the fifty stories with deafening speed.
"Have faith, my child!" Turkish yelled with a smile. "I'm merely the Alpha... she's the Omega."
"WHAT?!" Tallmoore was amazingly able to choke out.
"A to Z, baby... A to Z..." he replied with a laugh as the two dropped directly into the waiting spatial rift.
The wormhole immediately collapsed, with no trace of the three.
Strangely enough, the hovering wall reset itself back into place, the door of the cell finally broke open, and a small, circular pane of glass shattered against the skylight.
The End