I didn’t end up getting much rest like I said I would. I worked most of the night just trying to get my mind off of things and ended up falling asleep in the wooden chair in the tiny kitchen. I wake up to major neck pain and complete exhaustion as I slept with my head slumped over the back of the chair and only got about two hours of sleep. I check my wristlet and a little blue hologram pops up shows me that it is 4:00 a.m., four hours till the president's speech. I get up and walk off the pain letting my body adjust to my weight. I walk into the other room leaning against the wall as I walk and find Becca up and getting ready. “Goodmorning,” she says in a cheerful voice, “you ready to go stop some rebels?”

  “I always am,” I says walking over and looking at my armor backpack, I feel around it trying to figure out how to turn it back into my armor for a couple of minutes before Becca starts laughing behind me.

  “Hey tech genius,” she says through a smile, “it is activated through your wristlet.” My cheeks get red as I feel a little stupid and try to push away the embarrassment. I shuffle through the holograms on my wristlet till I see one that looks like my armor. As soon as I press the wristlet my armor liquefies and starts creeping across my body and molding itself to my form. The glasses fly off of the counter and starts to form into the hard drive that inserts itself into my armor. The mask comes over my face and the information starts flowing through my armor. I look over at Becca as her armor has started to do the same, creeping across her skin and forming into its icy blue and white form. Even with her mask I can tell she is smiling underneath. Nothing needs to be said but we both know what happened yesterday so we let the memory sit in the room filling the void between us. The room lays silent for a while as we get ready for the mission, usually I am uncomfortable with silence but this wasn't an awkward silence like when you don't know what to say to someone you first meet at a party, no, it's more like the content silence you feel when you are just comfortable being in the same room as someone else. I have no idea why she kissed me or what it means but as far as I am concerned I am happy with it at the moment. Becca leaves the room to go into the kitchen and My thoughts are broken by the ringing of the phone on the desk. I remember seeing it there last night when I came in but I hadn't given it a second thought since. I move away from my spot in the corner of the room and move towards the phone. I pick up its shiny black face and press the button to turn it on and the blue light shines through my mask illuminating like a beacon in the dark. The time showed that it was 6:30, barely morning and barely night, a text comes on the screen of a number I don't recognize that says two simple words “call me.” I stare at the phone until it turns off contemplating what this means. Seeing as it was here when we got here it must be from the clan, but the clan is able to contact us through our wristlets, there is no need for this. Against my better judgement I decide to call the number, I take off my mask and call the number that texted me. The line rings for a while and it starts to drown into my mind, seeping to my thoughts until I hear the pick up of static and a low breath against the phone.

  “Hello?” I say trying to get the voice to answer me.

  “Chanel,” says a foreign voice I do not recognize, “this isn't a message for you, give the phone to Leqhoa.” He says in a rushed almost angry tone. Becca runs into the room and grabs the phone out of my hand quickly. I barely had time to react before she runs into the kitchen and I can faintly hear her talking in a language unlike any I have ever heard. I am only able to make out a few faint things like my name and the Wuxing Clan. This made me suspicious because no one is suppose to say our clan's name unless it is absolutely necessary. Over the years our clan has established itself as a secret empire, ruling the world from the underground making sure no one knows who we are or ever sees us coming. When the world starts to get out of order we step in and bring it back to the natural order of things. We are not corruptible, we are not bias, we are just interested in making sure the world stays afloat, only a few world leaders know we exist but as for the public no one does. We are completely secret, that is why Becca’s conversation scares me. She walks back into the room and doesn’t dare look me in the eye. After a few awkward minutes of me looking at her she speaks.

  “Are you ready to go?” This shook me, she has a conversation with a foreign man who I’m almost positive has no connect to our clan and she comes out of it just asking me if I am ready to go! The thing that surprises me the most is the fact that I am getting this angry, I never really get angry but as it felt last night the barrier seems to be cracking and breaking letting loose the Kraken known as my emotions and with them comes the hallucinations. I see my Father this time, he is standing next to Becca with a black mask and black armor on. He stands there for a while as Becca is trying to talk to me but I can’t hear her, my eyes are locked on the younger version of my father. He walks across the room to me and all of the sudden when I look down I am the little boy covered in blood that I saw yesterday, My father hands me the machete I saw the young boy, I guess myself, holding yesterday. He takes off the mask and telling me “No Mercy, Your father was weak, you are strong.” The words hit me like fire burning my insides and beads of sweat start to drip down my face. The blood is covering my clothes and decay starts to move down my body turning my skin grey and pale for a reason I don’t understand, but it hurts that is all I can tell, like I am aging at a rate impossible to comprehend. Through the hallucination I hear Becca screaming and calling my name and that is when it happened. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again I was back in my body in my armor but there was something strange going on with my body, It felt tingly and like it was buzzing with energy. Becca’s face was filled with horror at the sight of me and it wasn’t until I saw my reflection that I understood why. In the window I could faintly see blue energy coursing around my body, and striking the floor beneath me violently. Arcs of what seemed to be electricity were flying from my body and striking the walls and the bed setting it ablaze. Becca look terrified, stunned, and in some ways amazed at what she was seeing. I had no control over my body or my actions, it was as if someone had taken the reigns of my body and I was just a passenger for the ride. A cold feeling came over my body and all I saw was white. A series of images passed through my mind faster than I could comprehend them and then I came too and my eyes flew open. I sat up quickly covered in snow and looked at Becca. I couldn’t have been out for more than a few minutes but I felt like I had been asleep for days.

  “What the hell Chanel!” she yelled at me with hurt and anger deep in her voice, “You’re a remnant?!” The words hit me like daggers, cutting through my body making me bleed out feelings of deprivation,but that was the only feeling, as far as I could tell the barrier was secure again and I felt back to normal. I got up and looked at her, she had been crying and her armor was a little singed. The electricity hadn’t struck her skin so the only logical explanation was that something else had caused her crying.

  “I...I,” The words tried to come out but they felt frozen in my throat, the only thing that came out was surprise, “Did you use your powers on me?” She looks at me bewildered and a little angry.

  “You used yours on me!” She collects herself and looks down at her wristlet, “we have to go, we have to talk about this later just focus on the mission.” She is definitely hurt about something, could it have been my powers? That I didn’t tell her about them? It seems different than that, I mean if anyone should be mad it’s me. I never wanted to be a remnant, I have often despised remnants, why me? I should be angry but I don’t feel it, I mainly feel curious and want to explore the reasons how this could have happened because as far I can tell how could I be a remnant? Becca quickly puts on her mask and tells me to follow her she runs to the balcony and jumps on the roof a few feet below it. I put my mask on and the eyes seems to glitches a bit, the hard drive was damaged a bit in the electrical storm I was creating. I run towards the balcony and see Becca below waiting impatiently for me. The time is barely 7:25, almost an hour from the time Becca got the phone call and I discovered my powers to right now and we have to act like the past hour didn’t happen. I jump down and we begin free running over the tops of buildings. After years of training in the art of parkour I have been able to train my mind to comprehend my environment and how to get around while focusing on something else. I barely notice that I am jumping over walling and flipping across giant gaps, my mind is to preoccupied with the thoughts of how much of my life has been changed in just three days. I started feeling real emotions for what feels like the first time all because of some remnant girl I barely know. Kissing her caused me to start hallucinating and gaining abilities that I never wanted or felt I needed. Why me? Why did this cruel desolate world decide to punish me when I have done everything to protect it? I start to feel the tingling sensation running through my body and I force myself to calm down so I don’t alert the people below us that a man in armor unlike any they have ever seen is shooting lightning from his body looking like a monster. Before I even realize it we are on top of a building about 200 meters from a giant statue of some man who probably lead the country at one point. A giant white palace towered behind it with hundreds of cameras and guards prepared on the steps for their leader to make his entrance. Becca checked her wristlet, “It’s 7:50, we have ten minutes before the speech be ready,” she said while crouching down behind one of the ledges that leads down to the street below. My brain keeps telling me to talk to her about what happened and what I did to hurt her, but I know that the best decision is to just leave it alone until we complete the mission. We wait for awhile in silence, but the awkward silence that I hate, until the speech starts. A man in a nice suit, much more luxurious than the rest of the impoverished country, enters through a door in the middle of the palace and starts heading down the steps waving as most world leaders do before coming to the podium, he smiles and starts speaking to the crowd as pictures flash and people cheer or boo at his presence. On the display in my mask the words are being translated very quickly to english. He is basically talking about the livelihood of the country and the power of the people of Mozambique and the usual things a leader says about a country. Nothing seems out of the ordinary for the most part, and the longer the speech goes the more it feels like I am stuck on this roof with this girl that isn’t fond of me at the moment for absolutely no reason. Emotions of awkwardness and boredom start building up inside me like never before. I had heard of these feeling and thought I understood them but now as I am stuck in this situation it feels like I have never known what it meant to really feel something. In fact, have I have cried before a few days ago? Every lost control of my temper? Been scared of the dark? The more and more I try to comprehend it I find myself realizing that when it comes to emotions I have acted as a blank slate, believing I know what it means to feel these things, but not recognizing the sensation when my body is reacting to them at the moment. It doesn’t feel like before, I don’t feel the barrier breaking or the hallucinations coming I just feel...alive. Lost in my thoughts I only have a second before I hear the metal slide across the pavement and Becca yell, “Grenade!”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The explosion rocks the roof of the building and white plaster and concrete shower against my armor. The grenade couldn’t have been normal because a grenade only has a blast radius of about twenty feet. This blast shook the entire building and the foundation is starting to vibrate and feels as if it is about to crack. Becca and I look at each other, both of us are ok from the blast not being enough to penetrate through our armor but still causes us a major amount of concussive force and pain. The building starts to crumble beneath our feet and I know we have to find a way off of this roof before it collapses crushing us under the rubble of this building. Becca grabs me by the arm and jumps off the roof with me in her arms. The rush of the wind flies past our helmets and the sensation of death starts to become inevitable. About 60 feet off of the ground I feel my back slam against an ice surface and start sliding down before I hit the what now feels like a hot floor. My vision is face towards the blue cloudless sky when Becca steps into the scene. “GET UP CHANEL!” I hear her scream through the commotion around us. I get to my feet and look around seeing cars swerving, people yelling, and men in mask running towards the palace screaming in a language I don’t understand. They are carrying machine guns, swords, and assortments of weapons trying to run through the crowds towards the president. A man stands about 30 feet away with a belt filled with interesting looking grenades and another man with two pistols. They start running towards Becca and I unleashing bullets upon us. I summon two knives to my hands and thrust them out sending them flying into each of the man's chest. They fall quickly and the knives return to my hands. They may have weapons but they are not very well trained, this will work to our advantage. 50 men are running around killing and shooting everything in site and the guards are doing their best to keep them away but through the chaos they are failing to keep them back. I turn to Becca.

  “You go for the President and keep him secure, I will take out as many as I can from behind. Try and form a wall of ice separating the rebels from the president.” I yell to her. She nods and runs across the street, jumping and weaving through cars. I close my eyes and prepare myself. I think to myself and take off towards the men. The first man isn’t ready for my attack and I send a knife into his back. A man with a machine gun sees me kill his friend and a bullet hits my armor causing warning on my screen saying my armors integrity is at 99% after the blast and the bullet. The remaining rain of bullets is inserted into the man I just threw the knife into as I grab him and block my body from the bullets. I throw the man into the gun and knock him over before jumping up and stabbing him in the eye. I hear a scream and see a reporter being shove onto the ground by a man with a sword. I quickly react turning my golden knives into a rope dart and throwing it around his sword and forcing it out of his hand. As he loses his grip on the sword I grab the pistol in my holster and send a cap into his head, he drops immediately. I see a man running towards me out of the corner of my eye with a machete, I grab his arm and pull it over my shoulder and insert three bullets in his stomach before I see a man with a uzi behind him getting ready to aim. I move the limp body on me and put my pistol on its shoulder firing a shot into the man with the uzi causing him to shot in every direction before falling to the ground. I change my clip to one of my special ammo magazines before moving forward. A man with a minigun is standing next to a statue of a lion on the steps of the palace laying down fire upon the crowd. I fire a shot at the statue and watch as the bullet disintegrates the concrete toppling the statue onto the man killing him. I take out two more rebels, fight in hand to hand combat with 3rd rebel, after snapping his neck my vision is caught by Becca freezing countless men and creating a giant wall of ice around the podium and grabs the president and starts to carry him to safety. As I watch in amazement at the beauty of her powers I feel a strong hit against my head and go flying into the ground. My armor hits 90%, as I look up and see a bald, huge man, with a brilliant arthurian sword standing over me with a man on each side of him with each of their eyes glowing a different color. I react quickly firing a special shot into the man's head expecting the bullet to disintegrate his skull, but instead just a little bit of golden blood falls from his head onto my forehead. He wipes it away and smiles a bit. He picks me up and looks at me, he doesn’t say a word or move his gaze away, this golden eyes fixed on me and although my face is covered I had a feeling he could see me. He smiles a bit in the middle of the chaos and puts me on the ground gently. He starts walking away and I am to stunned to react to him leaving, an aura of golden power shows brightly from the man throwing me off guard as I try to gain my ground against the two men left behind. The other men with glowing eyes start to advance towards me as the bald man walks away. I summon two golden axes to my hands and get ready for a fight. One man's hands start to heat up and fire licks the bottom of his hands, the other seems to be vibrating in and out of my vision, moving too fast for my eye to catch his movement. The first man, a skinny man with a scar across his left eye, thrust his fist forward and a ball of fire comes rushing towards me at great speed, these men are both remnants. I duck out of the way rolling forward in on the man and dodging the fire, I come up for an uppercut with my axe ready to connect with his jaw but I am quickly hit in the side by the other man, a short, man with bright orange hair. I slide across the ground about four feet, and barely have time to react before another kick comes to my head at great speed. My armor flashes at 87%, but it turns out my armor was able to capture the speed the man was going at and track his movement, he is moving at roughly 250 mph. After taking a few more hits something strange starts to happen in my armor, the Orange blur who I usually can’t see is now highlighted red in my helmet. I see him coming towards me and react just quick enough to sweep under his feet and send him flying into the steps behind me. He gets up quickly and takes off again turning and zipping getting ready to come in for another attack. I try to prepare but I forget about scarface and and feeling a fireball hit the side of my body causing a wave of pain and heat across my shoulder. My armor flashes for 60% and the side of my armor is a little burned from the attack. Scarface starts jumping and kicking in a martial arts manner as waves of fire are expelled from his limbs coming towards me with great force. I duck and cover, contorting my body as if not the be struck by the streams of flames constantly forming on the man's hands and feet. He stops for a minute and I see his face start to glow and his cheeks start to puff up. Inferring about what is going to happen next, I spot a statue a couple of feet away from me and quickly roll towards it as the white hot flames scorch the ground around me as they exit his mouth. I move from the roll into a full sprint feeling the white hot flames on my heels just barely making it behind the statue. The flames hit the statue with such force it shakes and creaks under the force of the dragons breath. After a minute or so of the onslaught the flames stop and I hear a voice.

  “Give it up Garroter, you’re out of your depth in this fight,” says a raspy voice in English, “ we are the superior being here, you can’t win.” His words cut through the barrier holding my emotion like a knife. I start to feel angry, angrier than I have ever felt. Who does this guy think he is to believe that just because he is a remnant he is more powerful than me? I have trained my entire life to fight people like him and just because he accidently got some super powers he thinks he is better than me? No one is going to stop me! No one can beat me! If they want to face me then they won’t get to leave here alive! I expect hallucinations to start coming but instead I just feel the tingling stronger than ever. The axes go back into my arm bands and my hands start to tingle then flashes of electricity spark between my hands. My entire body starts to emanate and spark sending electricity all around me. I start to cry feeling extreme anger and sadness like never before then scream forcing my back off of the statue and turning to face the remnants. He looks shocked and frozen seeing my body shoot off lightning, striking and scorching the ground next me. Scarface tries to burn me with a fireball, but it bounces off of the aura around me. I thrust my hands forward and the energy moves from my body and expels from my hands. I close my eyes, feeling a free flowing energy move through me stinging my insides but at the same time almost making me feel free, like I have been holding this back for too long. I scream for a good minute or two before, half out of pain half out of pleasure, I feel the barrier reform and I fall to the ground exhausted. I open my eyes and see the carnage I have caused. All across the steps and across the street there are burn marks and holes in the ground. Dead bodies electrified and burnt to a crisp lie scattered across the front of the palace. The world almost seems to have come completely quiet as people stare at me and the giant ice wall around the palace with their phones out looking to take pictures. A warning comes up on armor telling me I have 20% armor left. I start to move towards the palace trying to get away from the open eye of the public, but my legs feel like lead after being drained from my powers. Four men with machine guns come around me and aim their guns at me. I stop and struggle to summon knives to my hands. I try and encourage myself to fight but I feel my vision get blurry and my body start to collapse under its own weight. I kneel onto the ground accepting my fate, and welcoming death like an old friend. I had never wanted to be a remnant, in fact I considered them an enemy to fuel my training trying to be better than them, but here I am now, a remnant about to be killed by men with no powers, the irony is overwhelming. It makes sense right? To die when becoming the thing you always fought to prevent from spreading through the world. My death will just help with my belief, that remnants shouldn’t be and now that I am one, I deserve this. I start to cry feeling more sadness than I had ever had in my entire life, letting the tears soften the pain I felt all over my body. I fall on the ground and start to fall unconscious just as I see a figure jump down from the roof of the palace.