Chapter 14 — Draft Notice

  William pointed at the sealed envelope from the government. “What’s that?”

  The officer cleared his throat. “You’ve been out for a while, kid. It’s a draft notice.” He held up a hand seeing William about to speak. “Don’t worry, it’s not just you. All able bodied citizens of service age are getting called up, with your cohort first. We’ll be sending you over to the testing center for your awakening right after we’re done here with you, if we find you eligible.”

  That reminded him. The awakening orb! That was exactly what he needed right now—touching it could potentially reawaken his power. But something that the officer said bothered him.

  “So if that letter is a draft notice, what would make me ineligible to be drafted?”

  The officer exchanged looks with the detective, as the dean kept silent with a stern look on his face.

  “We’ll let you know when we finish our questioning,” replied the detective. “Before we revisit the timeline of the events at Trinity Academy, Mr. Blackwood, it’s come to our attention that you reported a monster sighting the night before the lockdown. Can you elaborate as to why you made this report?”

  “Were you perhaps intoxicated, or under the influence of any sort of substance at that time?”

  William glanced at the tape recorder set on the table, recording their conversation. They were trying to get him to slip up.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Then why did you report that you had seen a monster, when an alert had not been issued that night?”

  Part of William wanted to scream at the officer, to tell him the truth, but he knew that that would play right into Professor Ghoulstein’s hands. Nobody had any reason to believe him, and ranting on about the madness principle no longer applying would only make him appear more unhinged, and he wasn’t about to let some legal trickery land him in prison.

  “I must have seen a dog or some other animal, sir. It was raining that night, with poor visibility. I was delivering food, so I took the alleyways.”

  The detective nodded. “Naturally, you may have misidentified an animal in the alleyway and acted out of fear. Understandable, given the world we live in now.”

  “Now back to the events at Trinity. Did you have contact with Ebenezer Finch before he went missing?”

  William quickly and truthfully explained the encounter in stability storage, until the detective waved him off.

  “That matches our discussion with the other two students.” He flipped over a page on his notepad. “Now, here is where the sequence of events gets fuzzy. Why were you and Finn found in a locked computer lab, with all of the monitors thrown around the room and destroyed?”

  “That’s destruction of school property,” Ghoulstein said. “All the more pointing towards his guilt—”

  “A student knocking over some computer equipment is not a city recognized crime, Mr. Ghoulstein,” the detective said. “Now William, would you please enlighten me on the sequence of events that led to that.”

  William hesitated, not knowing how to spin this the right way. "Abby was assigned by Professor Ghoulstein the task of scrubbing the toilets as punishment for stealing liquor. Later, I decided to check up on her."

  The detective raised an eyebrow. "Why did you decide to check on her?"

  "I felt guilty," William admitted. "She got into trouble defending me earlier, and I wanted to make sure she was okay."

  "And what did you find when you arrived at the bathroom?"

  William paused, choosing his words carefully. "When we got there, Abby was gone. Finn arrived shortly after me, since he actually needed to use the bathroom. Since Abby wasn’t there, we decided to go look for her.”

  The detective held up a finger. “Care to explain why there was a shattered trophy display in the hallway?”

  “Finn tripped and hit it by accident,” William lied, not sure if the detective would buy it. The detective scribbled onto his notepad. “He thought he was being chased by a monster.”

  The detective continued to jot down notes. “Very well, continue.”

  “He scared me by saying that there was a monster, so we ran into the computer lab and locked the door—”

  Professor Ghoulstein scoffed audibly, earning a glare from the detective. "Monster? Mr. Blackwood, are you trying to falsely report a monster again? Are you certain about what you saw?"

  “It was dark, and Finn’s panicking made me think he might’ve actually seen something,” William lied. “After we entered the computer lab, we both started to feel strange. I think that the substance that put us into a coma came through the vents. I don’t remember anything after that.”

  By saying it this way, he could force the police to investigate the vents. He hoped they’d investigate.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Anything else to add?”

  “No.”

  The detective leaned back slightly, studying William intently. "Mr. Blackwood, based on the evidence we've gathered, including toxicology reports and witness statements, it appears that you, Mr. Mutton, and Mr. Finch were exposed to a powerful neurotoxin. It is our suspicion that this neurotoxin is also related to Ms. Fate’s disappearance, although we have still not ruled out the possibility that she has simply disappeared for personal emotional reasons.”

  “Let it be clear that there was no record of monster activity within the university during lockdown as you claimed that Finn believed. Furthermore, Professor Ghoulstein has expressed concerns about your involvement in distributing illicit substances within the school."

  “Since there is insufficient evidence to conclusively paint the picture, and since after an examination of your personal belongings we did not find any evidence of possession of illicit substances, we will resume questioning when your friend Finn Mutton awakens. For now, I’ve deemed you eligible to undergo the awakening. Your classmates have already undergone their awakenings and have begun their basic training regiments. You will join them shortly.”

  “Follow me, Mr. Blackwood.”

  William walked behind the detective, passing Ghoulstein and the dean. Ghoulstein gave him a nasty look, but the dean remained wordless with his usual stern expression. He never struck William as a thoroughly bad person, rather just an old man with pride in Trinity Academy.

  After a quick visit to the changing room, where William put on a shirt and pants, they took the elevator down and exited the building. Only then did he finally realize the scope of damage caused by the outbreak. Burnt cars and fallen road signs riddled with bullet holes could still be seen on the street. although the government had done its job in cleaning up.

  A tank with deep claw marks on its hull armor was parked in front of the intersection, and several members of the big seven guild Jormungandr talked animatedly with rifle-bearing soldiers.

  Besides that, the city center had returned to a semblance of normalcy, as civilians walked down the street minding their business. Two repairmen hoisted over a new glass panel to replace a shattered storefront windowpane. A mother pushing a baby stroller walked by, chatting with another mother. Construction workers and their foreman coordinated to lower a crane onto a fallen road sign.

  “We had the highest casualties in years from this outbreak,” explained the officer as he opened the door to the police car. “Had a few high tier beasts that gave the military’s tanks a run for their money. The regular monster number was far higher than normal this time around, and to top it all off, our communication systems got fried at just the wrong time. It’s a miracle that we could still muster up an organized response. At our headquarters, our police chief was issuing paper orders. Can you imagine that? Paper orders in today’s day and age!”

  William got in the back of the vehicle as the police officer got into the driver’s seat and the detective into the passenger’s seat.

  “This looks like one of the worst outbreaks ever. Is that the reason why the government issued a draft?”

  “Yeah, that and the overall strategic picture. We’re running low on both soldiers and materiel. Central has been telling us for months now that a bunch of our munitions depots and synthetic fuel factories down in the Albane lowlands are getting completely overrun by monster attacks, and no one’s doing jack shit to stop it. Even the manufacturing depots running right outside the city in the outskirts are getting hit. The government is desperate, there’s not enough military personnel to cover the perimeter on the home front, and materials are becoming more scarce. Every bullet and every soldier counts now.”

  “Why can’t awakeners help out?”

  The officer scoffed. “Most awakeners aren't worth shit, kid. There’s old guys like us who can’t awaken even if we wanted to, and out of the pool of people who actually awaken, the majority don’t get to develop their powers enough to actually outperform conventional ballistic systems. In this day and age, you can’t just rely on awakened powers. There needs to be integration between powers and conventional arms. That’s what the guilds don’t understand.

  He shook his head, clearly frustrated. “And don’t even get me started on the ridiculous political games they play—it only makes our overall response worse. Can you believe Blue Mountain was bickering with Jormungandr for dungeon rights an hour into the outbreak, as if people weren’t dying on the streets? Big seven guilds my ass! Of course, none of that mattered much lately when things were running butter smoothly with the new electromag tracking system, but this latest outbreak knocked it offline for an entire week.”

  With an aggressive rev of the engine, they began to drive towards the testing center, as William absentmindedly fiddled with his phone, running his thumb over the new crack that had formed. “So, since a lot of awakeners aren’t developing quickly enough, and we’re losing control over our factories, the government wants to accelerate the development of awakeners and in the meantime take us out of the control of the guilds, right?”

  “That’s the gist of it. I don’t envy you one bit, kid. I bet they’re gonna be sending you through to the other side, or down to those nasty areas where we’ve fully lost control and unclosed gates are everywhere in some dumb attempt to try to restabilize things. If you’re lucky they’ll start you off small, doing those little enclosed ‘dungeon’ gates that the guilds have been hogging. I’ll just be living my life here in the city where it’s relatively safer, trying to wait this whole shitshow out.”

  The rest of the ride was quiet. William didn’t fully believe all of what the officer was spouting—draft or not, there was no way that Trinity students were getting sent onto suicide missions that they couldn’t handle—but some of his biased takes had to be based on reality.

  They pulled into the testing center, a sleek and contemporary building in the middle of downtown. A man in a suit opened the door for William. He got out of the car feeling somewhat like a VIP.

  “We’re here. See ya, kid, and don’t get into any more trouble,” said the police officer, giving him a salute before rolling up the window.

  “You’re Mr. Blackwood from Trinity Academy, is that correct?” asked the man in the suit, his eyes barely visible as he smiled. He appeared to be in his early thirties.

  “Yes, that’s me,” William confirmed.

  The smiling man in the suit gave a quick handshake, then got into introductions. “We’re already quite a bit behind schedule, but late is better than never. My name is Naver Frost, and I’ll be your navigator and liaison. Your classmates have already undergone the awakening process and evaluation,” Naver said. “But don’t worry, we’ll get you up to speed in no time.” He spoke quickly and professionally.

  “So, what does a navigator do?” ask William. He’d never heard of the role before. “Is that a new thing?

  “That is correct. The navigator department is a new department established concurrently with the awakened fighting forces in Crisis Protocol 109. Since the awakened fighting forces do not fall under the traditional branches of service under the military or the guilds, we act as a liaison between government and guilds. Most importantly, we’re here to limit unnecessary casualties in the coming months.”

  With the swipe of a card, Naver Frost opened the door to the intimidating Awakeners’ Bureau. It was a modern building that appeared to have been recently renovated.

  “After you, Mr. Blackwood,” Naver said politely.