Chapter 1 – Awakening
I was surrounded by them. The timer continued to count down until my evacuation arrived and I was still nowhere near the designated nav point. The enemies advanced upon my position, with their weapons drawn, as their tendrils danced and writhed in anticipation. I readied a grenade in my hand, when the enemy captain gave out a loud snarl, as acid dripped from its ugly maw slowly eating away at the metal floor beneath us with each droplet. One of the lesser soldiers tackled me from my flank, knocking me down with its bulky horns. I felt an explosion of pain erupt in my body, as my body crashed to the floor.
“No…not here, not now. It’s not over!”
I tried to get back on my feet but the feral beast had me pinned. All I could do was lay there and stare into the ugly creature’s glare, with its pupils dilating, when I heard a metallic sound come from the right side of my head. My eyes darted in the sound’s direction. The grenade, which I had accidently pulled the pin from, came into view slowly rolling towards me. The captain raised its fist in a triumphant cry and its fellow soldiers followed suit. The one on top of me bared its teeth and laughed, as the grenade rolled closer still. Time seemed to slow down, as the soul crushing peril sank in. Then… there was a flash of light.
BEEP! – BEEP! – BEEP! – BEEP! – BEEP!
“ZACK! WAKE UP ALREADY!” I could hear my sister shouting as she banged on my bedroom door. “How long are you going to sleep!? If you don’t get moving, you’re going to be late! Get dressed for school already!” The sunlight flooding from my window blinded me the moment I opened my eyes. I pulled the covers over my head and curled back into the warmth embrace of my bed, begging for the world to disappear and for myself to get swallowed back into that intense dream where I left off. The alarm continued to flood my room with noise, and my sister continued to bang on my door with rising frustration. There was a brief pause before my door nearly flew off its hinge as my sister kicked the door open. If it were possible, the look in her eyes would have killed me.
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As the bus came to its next stop with a snow man prominently standing next to the bench, I took note of the students outside who were waiting to board. I always see the same faces get on and off the bus at specific stops. I didn’t know any of those kids, but I saw them all so many times I had nicknames for each one of them. There were “Specs”, with his nose in a book; “Skater Kid One”, “Two” and “Three”, trying out tricks while waiting for their turn to board the bus; and the “O.M.G. Girl” who was texting her friends while simultaneously checking her makeup on her cell phone’s camera screen… Not to mention a few others the likes of which easily blended in with the crowd.
Behind the slew of usual faces, I saw a hooded figure.
“Who-“
My interest peaked. I couldn’t make out a single detail about their face, or anything else about them because they stood behind the pack of students, but something about their presence just struck me as odd. I took this same bus route every day at the same time with my sister up until now. This particular person I’d never seen before and yet whoever they were stood there perfectly still and no one else seemed to acknowledge them. A new transfer student in the winter?
Who Moves to a new school just before the holidays?
“Hello~ Earth to Zack. This is my stop. Are you going let me out of my seat or what?”
“Oh, uh sorry. Guess I’m still half asleep.”
“I swear. Well, see you after school. It’s still just going to be us for dinner. We’ll figure something out to eat later, ok? You better help me in the kitchen this time!”
“You got it. Heh, heheh.” She’s still mad about last time?
As my sister weaved her way through the passengers with the other middle school students easing their way off the bus, more students from my own school boarded. As I watched them, I noticed the group of kids had a missing member. The kid with the hood covering their face was gone. I looked around but didn’t see them anywhere. I laid back in my seat and closed my eyes.
Had I only imagined it?
They weren’t outside either. I still had five stops to go until I reached school, so I put the thought out of my mind and tried to relax for the remaining few stops.
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The slightest movement of her head allowed me to see she had a small grin spread across her face.
“Despite your doubt, you have come to the correct conclusion. I’ll award 9 points this time, minus 1 point for your hesitation.”
She grabbed her cape with a quick fluid movement and pulled it off from her body revealing her entirety. She had a head of long flowing white hair cascading down over her shoulders. Her eyes had a unique color I’d never seen before. They had a blue hue to them, but they weren’t the regular blue I was accustomed to seeing, but more of a pinkish purple color. They reminded me of pearls. Her facial features were all quite small and dainty, her nose, her mouth, chin, everything about her face equally small and cute and her white porcelain skin had a soft pinkish tint. Past her cascading white hair and cute features, I saw she wore a rather flashy dress. It was of the gothic lolita fashion you might see women dress in at certain events, except instead of the usual black with white frills, it was almost entirely white with traces of purple for accent in the form of ribbons and bows. The skirt portion of the dress reached her knees and flared outward with all the ruffles underneath. Adorning her hips were lavender flowers which only served to intensify the scent she gave off, which continued to flood my room. Her legs were encased in thigh high stockings: one purple the other black, and her small feet were in what looked like ballet shoes but they didn’t match either, with each shoe matching the color of the opposite stocking. I would have sworn I was talking to a doll had It not been made painfully aware that this was an actual living, breathing person. A deadly, and potentially crazy one at that.
Her eyes trained on me with the utmost focus, she declared “Zack Reverie, I am Aerilyn Roya and YOU ARE AN ESPER!”
Stunned, I continued to sit upright in bed staring blankly into the girl’s pearlescent eyes.
“No way, that’s absurd. I can’t be one of them. I’ve got no crazy imagination. There is nothing special about me in the slightest. All I got is a boring normal life. I’m mediocre at best.”
She finally saw fit to lower her huge blade of a weapon and stand it up alongside her, only further dwarfing her size in comparison. I took a sigh of relief.
“Boring or not, it doesn’t change the fact that it is true. You are in fact one of them. We’ve never seen number readings like the ones you have been giving off.” she said, as she pointed to the ceiling with her small feminine finger. “You’re responsible for that after all.” She looked up briefly and a small smile appeared on her lips before her eyes returned to me.
My eyes followed her finger’s pointed direction. When I saw what she was talking about, I felt my mouth slowly hang open and my eyes widen.
Looming overhead on my ceiling, an obscure black sea now existed upside down with its dancing waves. Even in the darkness of my room, the “water’s” surface reflected odd colors in an array of reds and blues, yellows and greens. All known colors to the human mind appeared on my ceiling in a watery torrent of flashing luminescence yet the water itself seemed the blackest of black, like ink. It was truly a site to behold. Shockingly beautiful and yet eerily unsettling. It felt as if it would swallow me if I stared too long into it.
“Reverie, you’re a rather lucky boy. Through my observations of you, my reports sent in to H.Q. and the unique case you present us with, I’ve been ordered to try a different approach. With so many questions still lingering about you, we have decided it’s time for a change. A new method is needed for this kind of puzzle. You exhibit a display of readings that normally would call for your death on the spot, and yet…nothing has happened. We’ve monitored you for some time now and with the exception of your creation above our heads, no danger or harm has ever been caused directly by you. Nothing we can measure anyway. You provide us quite an irregular situation. Your numbers suggest you should have destroyed the world a hundred times over, and yet nothing out of the ordinary has ever once happened anywhere near you. This is a peculiar case, one that needs to be handled carefully and played close to the chest.”
She leaned across the foot of my bed, eyes open with eagerness and anticipation. Her small frame stretched so far that the toes of her shoes barely made contact with the floor.
“Reverie…WELCOME TO R.E.M.!” A grin full of mischievousness bore a hole right through me, and somewhere deep inside, I knew my life was about to get very interesting.
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