Chapter 3: The procedure
If ever there was a tense situation, this was it. Weapons were leveled at the big giant that could smash a building like it was nothing. On his part, Chege had decided that if this was his end, then it was going to be a glorious end indeed. His fists folded, he planned to punch a hole in this defense, and if he couldn't, he would take down as many as he could.
Now all that had been put on hold by a gorgeous woman who looked so completely out of place on the battlefield. Looking at her, though covered in dust, she still commanded that respect that came from elegance. The woman, standing tall, unfazed by death looming, looked majestic in Chege's eyes. He had to applaud her courage.
Seeing her approach him, he realized that if he were to cause any harm or even the threat of one, the trigger happy soldiers all around him would be more than willing to dispatch him to the afterlife, something he was not particularly keen for.
Playing along, he even sat down, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. The woman, on seeing Chege's action, was thrilled. It had been a dangerous gamble, but she could feel that the giant was not threatening at all.
Mostly, she could just sense fear in him, making her want to hold him like a child and assure him. Of course, that didn't seem plausible since even if he was docile, cradling him as a child would still be a tall order. All she could do now was draw as near as she possibly could to the giant.
Once she was within kissing distance, Chege held his breath. He too was just as curious or even more than the soldiers that were also looking from afar. Their eyes met, and she held his gaze. Hesitantly, and as non-threatening as possible, she raised her hand to his face, hoping to cup his cheeks.
Her actions made the giant blush, but before he could do anything else, 3 darts were already hurtling at him in different directions. Chege's magical shield was already down, so he felt the bitter sting of the darts as they injected their payload into his bloodstreams.
More than anything, Chege was pissed! He swung his massive arms all around as though he was expecting a full-on battle to ensue, but he was already growing weak from the anesthesia in the darts. Soon he was on the ground again. Frustrated, he let out a blood-curdling roar before finally collapsing.
He didn't know how long he had been out for, all he knew was that when he came to, he had a terrible headache. Chege felt as though the entire city was banging drums on his head, and when he tried to open his eyes, it only served to exacerbate the situation. It took quite some time for him to be able to fully open his eyes and survey his surrounding.
This time, he found himself in a transparent room whose walls were metal bars. Having never known what a cage was before, he didn't know he was in one. Back in his old city, there weren't cages since what determined if a crime had been committed was relative.
The duty of maintaining law and order, or maybe just order, fell on the King's guard. The king was in charge of the city, and it was the work of the guards to maintain order and allow the prosperity of the city. However, even if a commoner was murdered, as long as there was no disturbance to the peace, and no lasting effect on the city's development, the guards could care less.
Similarly, depending on the severity of the crimes, the culprit could be either placed in stockades or nailed to a tree for some time. The heads of the guard were the ones responsible for punishment, and given how corrupt they were, escaping punishment usually depended on how wealthy one was.
Though there was the concept of a dungeon, it was hardly ever used. A dungeon was a hole dug in the deepest corners of the castles and palace. In this pit, only the most repulsive and extreme criminals could be tossed in. Once in, there was no going out. It was a prison with only one escape, death.
Being locked up in the cage he was in, he didn't understand what he was placed in, but one thing was clear, his movement was severely restricted. While he could see everything happening outside his room and others could see him, he was completely sealed off.
What's more, his outfit had changed. Previously he'd had a gown over his body, now he had jumpsuits. What he didn't know was that his status had changed. He was no longer just a subject, but one that needed extreme care while handling. Having almost brought down an entire military base, the security officers were taking no chances.
The upside of all this was that he was no longer feeling lonely. While he couldn't communicate with other beings, just seeing them and monitoring their activities was enough. The advantage of transparency was that it came with an added advantage.
Previously, Chege had tried to figure out what his power was, but every time he did, he had felt as though someone was watching, causing him to dial it down. He needed some absolute privacy, one that he could control, to understand his new mysterious powers.
Chege was no stranger to Magic, however, one thing had been bugging him though. Even in his hometown, there had been various mages specializing in different fields, but one thing remained. One could only awaken their Magical powers before or at the age of 12. There had never been a documented case where anyone was able to awaken their powers much later or in their adulthood.
It wasn't just the fact that there was no documented case. It had been highly debated whether anyone can awaken their abilities after 12 years. Many mage scholars argued against it, stating that after this age, one would be too old to have a change occur in their brain composition.
Moreover, the truly talented mages could even awaken their abilities at the tender age of 3. Those that awakened their abilities as later as 12 had trashy abilities, hence if anyone awakened after this, it would be too weak to be noticed.
One thing Chege was sure of was that he was 19 years, a boy on the cusp of manhood. He had never once in his life done magic. He had it on good authority that no one in his bloodline, both from his mother's side and father's side, had Magical talents. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been that poor and miserable. As such, it worried him to no end that he had gained magical powers, powerful ones at that.
He had seen many mages do powerful things, but he had never had of anyone who could catch a spear mid-flight, yet he had been able to accomplish it.
His thoughts were interrupted when he noticed movement. Looking to the side, he saw the same woman who had betrayed him coming towards him. She had with her a group of other people also wearing the curious white garb. The group held glowing objects that they could read from.
This was not the first time to notice the magical abilities of the people who had captured him. They seemed to be quite specialized in their magic, even the light he was seeing was a product of their magic. To someone with a magical background, the technology looked like extremely advanced magic, so Chege saw the tablets held by the doctors as though they were magical books.
This time around though, Chege was having none of it. He wanted to lay his hands on her. he might not harm her, but he would show her the price of betraying him. Thinking about it, Chege rose like a bullet and ran towards the doctors' direction.
There loud bang caused by Chege's collision with the metal bars made the approaching group almost run in the opposite direction. This coupled with Chege's murderous glare made it quite clear that they were not welcome near him.
"Subject NT001 appears to remember you." A male doctor commented as he addressed his boss, Dr. Keshi.
"Clearly." Came the curt response.
"Given the amount of data collected so far from Subject, it is safe to assume that Subject does indeed meet the criteria for the procedure."
"Don't you think it is a little too early to that decision, Mark?" Dr. Keshi's remark had some saltiness in them. While she was the head of the Research Department, she had to show face to many other prominent officials present, and Dr. Mark was one of them.
Known worlds over as one of the most brilliant Physio-Bio-Cognitive Expert, it was a wonder so see the man in such a low profile mission. He was after all the inventor of 'the procedure', as he loved to call.
This was one of the reasons he had come for this mission was because of this procedure. As one of the renowned persons, he had such high status that he could opt to go in any exploration and mining operation without any hitches. It was no secret that to get this mission, he had forgone many that had much higher profiles.
The reason being, he needed to test out a new procedure he had invented in his quest to understand the human mind. Since many of the creatures in such small planets were advanced enough to not only be sentient but also have high functioning cognitive awareness, much like a human. They were also under no one's regulation, which meant that he could toy with them to no end without anyone's interference.
This was also one of the reasons why Dr. Keshi couldn't bully. However, she made it clear that he couldn't do whatever he wanted in her department. She was a stickler to such things. It was not strange at all to see her enforce procedures that would have been considered mute by other researchers.
What she didn't say was that in the period that she had been with Chege, she had grown to be fond of this violent giant. Their connection had been more than she had hoped, especially on realizing how intelligent he was. She knew for a fact that he was more intelligent and extremely cognitively aware. As such, he was the perfect candidate for the mad doctor's experiment.
However, the moment she had read through the kind of experiments that the subject would b going through, she couldn't even wish it on her worst enemy, let alone this poor guy who doesn't seem to want to hurt anyone.
"Look Keshi, we all know about that stick up your bum, but this is serious progressive work, we can't have you holding us back every time!" Dr. Mark's words caused a few nods from the scientists, among whom some were severely anti-Keshi. Others just remained silent, used to the friction between these 2 powerhouses.
"It will do you well to remember that this is the only one of his kind we have found so far, as such we cannot do any conclusive experiment especially one that is as delicate without first understanding his composition."
"And how many more tests do we have to run before we are ready?"
"Doctor Marcus, don't you think we should at least wait for the test results to come back, at least we know what we dealing with?" Keshi was unrelenting, she wouldn't give in to a bully who just wanted to use his credentials to have his way. She would do anything to protect her subject a little while longer, though she could feel she was fighting a losing battle.
"Fine, you win, for now." Mark's statement sounded like a kid grumbling when they were denied something. He did the math and he understood that this woman was no easy pushover. That being said, he had considerable powers.
He didn't think she was being intentionally difficult, just a stickler to policy, he'd met quite a few of those in his research work. This was also part of her reputation, and everyone had to follow the procedures when running anything in the department. Now all he had to do was wait for those pesky tests to come back, and then he'd have the giant all to himself.
Looking at the giant in a cage, he didn't see a living organism but just a subject to be sacrificed in the altar of Science!
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