Chapter 9: EXIT 0
While Nameless and Kutti were trying to move out of the forest to reach the nearest town before Henna woke up from her drug induced slumber, we will shift our vision to Jason and Dorian who were perplexed when they looked at the situation in front of them.
As soon as the lady clad in burqa had uttered the word : " Rahmat", Jason went into a kind of shock and would have fallen down had it not been for Dorian who supported Jason. Dorian became more anxious looking at the state of his friend and kept repeatedly asking him : " Are you alright ? What's happening ? Talk to me, Jason." However, Jason's mind was somewhere else. He started having visions one after the other. He saw a young boy Rahmat, a paddy field farmer in his vision. He experienced all the hardships that the boy had gone through and his deep regret of not being able to protect his parents and the innocent farmers of the village on the day he died. The vision then shifted to him looking at a beautiful young lady observing him lovingly with a fierce expression on her face ; he felt like he knew this person, yet for the life of him he could not remember where he knew her from. Suddenly, his vision shifted to a huge field where two armies were fighting with each other furiously. The field was dried red with the blood of the warriors and in the center of the field, there were two men who were fighting tooth and nail for supremacy. Again he felt like, he knew one of the men, but before his vision of this scene deepened, he was suddenly jolted out of his painful reverie by Dorian.
Dorian : Are you back with me, Jason? Does it hurt anywhere?
Jason : No. I think the worst of it is over.
Dorian : What was it? What happened?
Jason : I am not sure. I will try to explain it to you later. First, tell me where we are.
Dorian : This is the adjacent road to Antonio Street. I carried you here after you fainted.
Jason : What happened to the lady who was requesting for mercy?
Dorian : How do you know what she was saying? I was not even able to understand anything that she was saying. Moreover, those men surrounding her are intent on taking her life. Since she is of a different religion and her way of dressing is different, they have adjudged her guilty of being a spy. The language barrier also does not help them.
Jason : What are you saying? She is guilty because she practices a different religion and her dresses are different then ours? How does that make her guilty? Is she not a human being? Does she not have the same red blood as us? They should first listen to what she has to say by getting translators instead of trying to be executioners.
Dorian : I am not saying it's right. Infact, I was sickened by what I saw. But those people are not interested in knowing what the lady and her son are saying. What I understood from the discussion between the onlookers is that a notification had been sent a few days ago through out the kingdom. The notification requested the general populace to be wary of foreign spies. Any one who helps in capture of such folks will be rewarded handsomely. The people who are trying to harm that lady are the black cross group. They are mostly made up of thieves and cutthroats. I believe they want to harm the lady and her son and then pass them on to the kingdom as spies to claim their reward.
Jason : But the kingdom will find out what they were upto, once the lady speaks.
Dorian : What if they are missing their tongues ? They are not the sort of people we can go against.
Jason felt a slight shiver in his spine when he understood the implications of what Dorian was saying. He asked : "Should we then inform the city authorities?" Dorian replied : " They will be long gone from here by then."
Jason : This is not right. I don't think I can sit this out Dorian. I will request you not to come with me as I don't want to bring you into this quagmire.
Saying that Jason started running towards Antony Street. Dorian shouted :" Wait Jason". But Jason was already running at full speed and Dorian started following him.
They reached the street and saw that the men from the black cross group had the lady and her son in custody and were trying to get them into a carriage and drive away. Jason came running in front of the carriage and shouted : "STOP. On what account, are you abducting these people?" A big man came out of the back of the carriage and replied : "This does not concern you kid. Scram." The man seemed to be the leader of this group.
Jason : Either you let the poor woman and her child go or I am not letting you move an inch from here.
Dorian, who had just caught up with Jason also bluffed : Yes. And we have friends who are already contacting the authorities while we speak. If you do not let them go, then you will face the consequences of abduction under the law.
Black Cross Leader : I have had enough of you two. Do you know that these people are spies? Are you both collaborating with them? If so, then we will take you out.
This was clearly a threat meant to disperse the crowd and the boys. The crowd started dispersing as soon as they heard this threat, but the boys stood their ground.
The leader motioned to one of his men who went forward and tried to push Jason to the ground. Dorian grabbed hold of the hands of that man and punched him. Jason yanked away his hands from the grasp of the man and kicked him. This caused the man to fall face first into the hard ground. But as soon as that happened, Jason heard a loud yelp. When he turned his head he saw a knife sticking out of the back of Dorian, who was bleeding profusely. The leader had stuck the knife without warning into Dorian's back. Looking at that, Jason lost all his reasoning and shouted : "You lowlife. I will kill you" . He tried to grab hold of the man who had hurt his friend, but the man was way stronger than him. He brought out another knife from his belt and pushed it deep into Jason where his heart was.
Jason was so shocked that he could not understand at first what had happened, but suddenly he was gripped by tremendous pain from his chest region. He fell down in the ground , bloodied and almost near to death. He started hearing sounds of people panicking and a carriage moving away. Before he died, he felt he was being looked at by a man with a wizened face and that man seemed to be extremely sad. Thus Jason, a well liked, talented, young orphan boy who had yet to reach adulthood had lost his life while trying to save an innocent mother son duo.
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Meanwhile, in the room containing the mechanical contraptions, the machine started emitting harmonic sounds. Suddenly, texts started appearing up on the screen, which read :" Exit 0. Installation failed. Sequence expansion not possible. Retrying... Retry failure. Subject is offline. Move to next subject ?"
The man, sitting in front of the machine had a doleful look on his face when he read those words. But he soon composed himself and typed in : " YES ".
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