Much ado about nothing! Those four words could perfectly sum up the catastrophe that had been the joint mission to destroy the spaceships hovering over the various cities. The desired results for that endeavour had not been achieved at all, the whole point of the mission having been circumvented by the scientists.
If anything, the consequences had bit us in the ass instead of helping us as we had thought. For the first time, the mortal world got a true look at the power the Untethered held in the palm of their hands. Naturally, this led to governments worldwide being intimidated while governments salivated at the prospects of such super-powered soldiers. It had only been three days but the Council of twenty-one was already making preparations for the Untethered across the world to move into safe quarters until the whole fiasco died down.
“You are going to be safe, right?”
I looked at the sombre face of my father as he spoke those words, both of us standing at the door of our home.
“Yeah, dad. I am not alone in this whole thing, you know.”
My dad just nodded at me as he walked down to the car waiting for my parents. My parents were moving to some relative’s home for the foreseeable future. They wanted me to accompany them but I had already been assigned a living space in the Council headquarters, where I would be safer while not being a threat to my parents.
I walked to the car, only to find my mother still refusing to talk to me. Ever since the revelation of me being an Untethered three days ago, she had refused to say more than a few words to me. Her hostility towards me had only intensified after being informed of the fact that I wouldn’t be moving with them.
“Take care, mom.”
My mother glanced at me for a second before turning around again, her face back to its frosty expression. I could only sigh helplessly as my father got in the car. I turned around to walk back into the house to begin my own preparations when my mother called out, “Take care of yourself.”
I looked around and smiled at my mother, who returned it with a watery smile of her own, as she struggled to hold back her tears. I could only watch sullenly as the car drove away into the distance, my mother looking back at me till I couldn’t see her anymore.
With another despondent sigh, I went back to my room to pack up my belongings to move to the Council headquarters. I was just about done with my preparations when Samuel turned up at my window.
“Are you done,” he asked.
“Yeah.” I didn’t feel like talking at the moment, the tearful face of my mother constantly reappearing in my mind. Samuel picked up on my mood as no more conversations were had as I packed my stuff for my relocation.
As soon as I was done, we moved out quickly through the window. Whatever scant population remained in the city weren’t making the known Untethereds feel welcome. I, being the reluctant face of the Untethered due to ill-timed photo in the news, was the recipient of the harshest of glares and scrutinous gazes, all at once.
The journey to the Council headquarters was mostly a silent one. Each of us was much too preoccupied with our own thoughts to be good conversationalists at the moment. Before too long, we found ourselves in the familiar surroundings of the Council headquarters, where we were greeted at the entrance by a man who neither of us had seen before.
“Okay, Samuel and David. Yes, right here, I have got you on the second floor.”
He looked up at us, gracing us with cursory glances, although his gaze seemed to linger on me for just a little longer. After that, he went back to looking at his list before saying, “Right. Follow me.” He proceeded to move towards what I presumed to be our rooms without waiting for us to respond. Samuel and I exchanged a look before hastening to follow him to our rooms.
We had walked through the hallways for a few minutes before our guide stopped in his tracks before a door and said, “Well, here we are. I hope you don’t mind bunking together. Unfortunately, we are a little cramped with respect to lodgings. So, no individual lodgings.”
Samuel was least concerned about the prospect of us sharing a room, just shrugging in response. Instead, he asked, “Well, you said our rooms were on the second floor. We didn’t take any stairs. How is that possible?”
The guide gained an amused look on his face as if Samuel's concerns were childish. He then looked at me, clearly expecting me to have the same reaction as him. Problem was, I was as puzzled as Samuel when he brought up the problem. Seeing the same befuddled look on my face as Samuel’s, our guide just sighed before saying, “Don’t worry about it. If you stay long enough, you will get to understand things you wouldn’t have thought possible before.”
The man seemed singularly unimpressed with us and our knowledge, or lack thereof, as he waited for us to enter our room.
“I hope everything is to your liking. We did the best with what we could manage.”
With that said, he turned around to leave us to our own devices before stopping in his tracks and informing us that “the Council expects you two to be in the auditorium within the next hour.”
Before we could get some clarification from him for that titbit of information, he had already marched, once again engrossed in his list.
Samuel turned towards me and said, “Auditorium?”
I could only shrug at that question, having never been in this auditorium before. Samuel could only sigh whimsically, “We will find it, I hope. If only we had someone who was given the responsibility of informing us of these things. Oh, wait….”
That drew a sharp grin from me as I remarked, “Wonder what crawled up his ass and died? I mean, yeah, we don’t know much about these headquarters but I am sure most of the Untethered don’t. Not every day do we see a place which plays around with the concepts of space.”
After that, we silently unpacked our belongings. The silence also gave me a chance to look at our room properly for the first time. The room was spartan, with bare furnishings and only the barest of necessities provided. I couldn’t see a source of light anywhere and wondered what we would do once the sunset. The room did have an attached bathroom though. So that was cool.
We were out of the room after around thirty minutes, on the quest to find the auditorium. No sooner did we leave the room did we hear a familiar voice say, “Look who we have here.”
We turned around to see Broderick looking back at us, the trademark annoying smirk plastered on his face. Any hope that a joint mission, which could have led to our deaths, might have eased his feelings towards me were dashed as soon as I saw him looking at me with his usual sneer.
Samuel greeted him for the both of us. “Hey, Broderick.”
“Hey yourself, Samuel.”
I didn’t exchange any pleasantries with him and he didn’t show any inclination to do so either. I walked in silence as Samuel and Broderick had a conversation of their own. It was after a while of walking around like this when we realised that we utterly and truly lost, with no idea of where we were. It was in the midst of us looking around like lost ducklings looking for their mother when another annoying voice assaulted my senses.
“Lost, are we?” Walking towards us, in all his pompous glory was the guide, looking at us like he felt pity for us. I could hear Broderick grit his teeth. Seemed like someone didn’t like a taste of their own medicine.
Samuel, in his usual stoic manner, told him, “Sorry, we didn’t get a chance to catch your name when we arrived.” Anyone could say that this was an invitation for the guide to tell his name. Not the guide, however.
“Of course. Narcissistic tendencies do tend to run wild in some Untethered. No worries, though. My name is Alexander. Not Alex. Alexander.”
That pompous declaration of his name broke through Samuel’s stoic façade, as his usual expressionless face displayed vague signs of irritation. ‘Not Alex’ seemed to catch on it too as he quickly changed tune and asked us to follow him so that he could lead us to the auditorium.
The auditorium was more akin to the Colosseum than any auditorium I had seen in my lifetime. It would be more fitting to say that it was like a half-Colosseum. I had no idea why such a structure had been constructed because even now, with the entire population of the Untethered in the auditorium, it was only a quarter full.
I was looking around, admiring the massive structure in all its glory when suddenly my attention was captured by the amplified voice of Nova. Nova was standing at the centre of the stage at the head of the auditorium as he began addressing the crowd.
“As you undoubtedly aware of by now, we have a meeting set up with the leaders of the mortal world. It will be the first time in our history that the Council will meet with the representatives of the mortal world on equal grounds, in a place of their choosing.”
“We don’t expect this meeting to be entirely peaceful or even conciliatory in nature. That’s one of the reasons we have summoned all Untethered to this safe haven so that we can stay safe from any sort of retaliation or backlash from the mortal populace should things not go as planned.”
“But the most important reason we have summoned you here doesn’t have anything to do with the mortals. It has everything to do with us. And our future. War is on the horizon and we must emerge victorious if we are to secure our future."
"Even now, as we speak, Sol Syntrivon’s forces creep their way towards us. And they have gotten too close for comfort.”
Just as he said that the air behind Nova lit up as it displayed pictures of a white surface filled with craters. It took me a second to realise that I was looking at the moon. A surface image of the moon, in fact. An image that the likes of even NASA would kill to have.
But before anyone of us could marvel at the images, the images were invaded by spaceships of the kind that had been hovering over our cities just three days ago. Gasps of shock filled the auditorium as Nova spoke.
“Yes, that’s right. Sol Syntrivon’s forces are at our doorstep. These images are the last images we received from the moon, about eighteen hours. If our intelligence is to be believed, these forces that we see on the screen are being led by two of the four most trusted generals at Sol Syntrivon’s command.”
“I regret to say this, ladies and gentlemen, but war is upon us.”
Pin drop silence. I understood the true meaning of that phrase for the first time at that moment. Because the largest auditorium I had ever been to was the host of the grimmest silence I had ever experienced. And that terrified me more than the images of the spaceship ever could.
