The SWAT team walks the withered man to their transport vehicle and binds his hands behind his back, though he sits still as stone, eyes flickering with a quiet thrill. Even on the winding mountain road, the team felt his intense gaze from the rearview mirror watching them with that eerily unwavering smile as if he was savoring every second of this journey.
Down below, at the base, the officers escort him through shadowy hallways; his frail body makes a distorting shadow on the walls. He looks around wide-eyed, as if every nook and corridor held some sort of secret just for him. Dim fluorescent lights above softly flickered, casting an unnatural pale glow on his skeletal face, emphasizing cracked lips and sunken cheeks.
He sits at a cold, metal table in the interrogation room, his bony fingers touching its surface lightly as if he's delighted to feel it. He is sitting upright, almost regally, and looks around the room with a slow, leisurely smile. The tension is thick as the officers glance at one another, ready to begin the questioning.
One officer sits across from him; another observes through the one-way mirror. The man's gaze catches onto the officer's face, his eyes filling with an unsettling sense of delight as if he has been waiting to share some dark, delicious secret.
The officer begins asking him questions. With each question posed, he edges a bit forward, never failing to listen intently, his head cocked in a playful, almost childlike curiosity. Each question is followed by silence, the man's smile stretching wider with each pause, eyes gleaming with something unreadable. After a few moments of wait, he answers each, voice a low, breathy whisper, his words calm and measured, as though they carry hidden meanings only he can understand.
Behind the glass, the observers watch the exchange continue. The man's responses seem to carry him into some private, inner reverie; his fingers drum softly on the table, his smile widening, growing more feral. Every now and then, he glances toward the mirror, that knowing glint in his eyes, as though he knows the watchers on the other side hang onto his every word.
There are more questions, but he begins to respond more animatedly. His bony hands gesture with constrained, almost gleeful enthusiasm. He begins to mumble disjointed, incoherent phrases, interspersed with short bursts of laughter, low and fractured, the sound echoing off metallic walls.
Then, with the last question, there is silence in the room. He leans back, clasps his hands, and his eyes rest again on the officer opposite him; his smile thins into a line, unreadable, yet full of some dark, unvoiced gratification.
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The officer assigned to question the man leaves the room. From the looks of it, he is visibly distressed as what he had learned from the man was dire news. Inside the captain's office, a briefing is held with the top officials. With bated breath, they wait for the questioner to tell them what had been discussed with the man.
The questioner walks to the room's center with a file in his arm, he breathes in deeply before starting to brief his comrades.
"The man's name is Ben just Ben no last name was provided. He seems to be in a crazed state talking of the messiah whom he described as a little boy with white hair and deep red eyes." He paused letting his words sink in and register with the members present in the room. Those who were in the mission remembered the peculiar boy matching him with the messiah spoken of
"He says that this 'messiah' has telekinetic powers and is able to lift boulders with little to no effort at all." surprised gasps echo throughout the room.
"Oh and one last thing the boy is said to be able to regenerate though we are unsure of the extent as the man only saw him regenerate a small cut in the cheek from the boulder's debris."
"Any questions?" he asks the crowd. Shortly after arms were raised throughout the room each and every one of them.
"Why was he not also blown up into the sky like the other villagers?" one asked. All the arms raised moved down as she asked what was on their minds.
"The man states that it was the 'messiah's' will to let him leave though we found out he was b*llsh*tt*ng as the camera shows him drinking in a bar on the day the rest of the people were blasted to space making him well out of the five-mile radius of the incident."
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Later that same day the same scene occurred in the state house as they discussed the boy. The officials were getting migraines as now they had two large issues on their plate; the other governments and media were pressuring them to release intel on the silent fleet's cause while at the same time, they had to deal with the superpowered boy too.
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A cold wind whipped past as the boy launched himself into the night sky, leaving the SWAT team far below them-their shouting and melting into the shadows clinging to the ghost town. His white hair streamed back, catching the moonlight, and his red eyes scanned the ground below, instinctively searching for any signs of pursuit. But he already knew one could reach him up here.
The night air was free, the chill nipping his face and anchoring him in this place and time his mind wandered. Thoughts and emotions came, a thrill of exuberance and something darker, a quiet, gnawing ache that pulled at his consciousness. The woman's body on the mattress flashed into his mind the silent, faded shape that had been his only companion for such a very long time. His heart tugged, but he made himself keep his face impassive and focused. He told himself not to turn around.
Up high, under the open expanse, he was more at home compared to any shelter. It was here that he fitted, far from walls and their hidden dangers, where all could be seen and where wings could take him higher than any man's reach. In the dent of his mind, however, something was amiss-missing was the warmth, hands not cold and lifeless, voices not talking in cryptic whispers from behind mirrors.
The SWAT team had come into his quiet world and shattered it with their loud commands and harsh lights, and for a moment he'd almost let them pull him in. Curiosity- a flicker of something- but he dismissed it. They didn't understand; no one would. They were bound to the ground, to the ordinary, where he was something else entirely.
He flew on and on, wrapped in that night, dim stars scattered like the few forgotten memories across the sky. He did not know where he was going; he knew only it was somewhere beyond all this-where the night and its silence could hold him like nothing else could.