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EnarrFranklin St. Jopling
Open waters. Switching back and forth between none and a people’s land. Little islands to claim, to make your own, to house your men and your efforts as they chase their lifeblood.
One old multi-layered platform, painted in grays and ambers, sitting near a small cluster of islands. Inside, on one of the lower layers, men in similarly colored fatigues and gear sit and wait. They chat, they punch each other’s shoulders, they laugh a bit. All while they wait.
“Boys!”
A voice rings off the pipes and grating. The soldiers, both sitting and leaning over the bars of the raised walkways, watch as their leader walks down through the aisle of folding chairs, pushing a narrow cart with a young man tied to it. Robbed of his hair, and most of his clothes, though otherwise unharmed. The man pushing him turns him around as he reaches the front of the aisle, pulling up onto a raised platform to look over his men. “Alright.” He calls out, “Show of hands, who’s confused?”
A few men raise their hands. Many don’t.
“A lot of you think I’ve been making very little sense lately.” The man announces, “That ol’ Franky’s lost his marbles or something. Talkin’ about folks on the mainland with uh… extraordinary abilities, remember that?” Some men chuckle and nod. The leader, Frank as he is known, pats the restrained man’s bare shoulder. “Adam Singer. American. Eighteen years old, just finished his senior year of high school. Taken from his home along the east coast. All in all, an ordinary young man.”
Frank draws his sidearm and walks towards one of his seated men. He ejects the magazine and shows it to the soldier. “See that?” He says, showing each man in the row. “Real bullets. No rubbers. Lethal.”
He returns to the poor man strapped to the dolly, who doesn’t appear to be completely conscious. Frank aims the pistol at his head and calls out, “Observe!”
He fires. Adam winces. But there is no wound, no blood, no mark. The bullet has bounced off Adam’s head and fallen to the floor below. “Impenetrable!” Frank calls out, firing a few more times at Adam’s chest. The shots ring off the metal of the platform, and all the men hear it loud and clear. Frank smiles as he holsters his sidearm and continues with his speech. “Extraordinary abilities. I wasn’t a believer at first either, like most of you. But I’ve been watching the last few days as the market has rung up orders for cunts like Adam here. Like fucking hotcakes, I’m not exaggerating. This kid is our first claim, and as we speak…” Frank pulls out what looks like a PDA, watching rows of numbers pass by. “We’ve got bids from a few let’s-not-talks going upwards of six-hundred-thousand. For one man, who can’t be killed through conventional means. Maybe they want to experiment on him. Maybe they want to use him for the most intense labor imaginable. But whatever it is, it doesn’t matter!”
Frank scans the crowd and calls out, “Reports, all over the states, are popping up through freelance scouting parties and public volunteer groups. Mostly kids, mostly on the run. It’s not just us who’re gonna be chasing them, oh no. Police, FBI, competitors in the trafficking market. It’s the gold rush of 1849, all over again boys! And we’re gonna strike the veins while they’re flowin’!”
The men cheer. Frank smiles, a fist raised in the air.
These men were always eager to jump into the fires of hell if it meant they could strike a fortune in the process. The risks be damned.
The operation has begun.
