"Watch out...?" Noor awoke to Julius's thunderous shout, while I remained in a state of confusion. A huge, strange object was hovering above the water, moving at incredible speed toward the boat.
It nearly struck my head, and I imagined my skull being crushed. But suddenly, I found myself about to fall into the water, while the object moved five meters away from me as if it had teleported. I quickly realized that it was the boat that had been propelled backward at breakneck speed, thanks to Julius's strength. Without his power, I wouldn't be alive now. How could he move the boat with oars alone at such speed?
After things calmed down, we exchanged bewildered glances. Julius asked me, "Are you alright, Ali?" I replied gratefully, "Yes, and it's thanks to your incredible strength."
Noor interrupted us in astonishment, saying, "Look, it's a tree!" It turned out that the object that had emerged from the water was a huge tree. "My God, it's a tree from the Northern Region of the Empire! How did it get here? The flood damage is catastrophic." These trees were known for their buoyancy in ancient civilizations; they were used in the construction of large ships. They seemed to have sprung up from the depths, but strangely, they weren't of the "S" class. Why did 016 say the danger was of that class?
[For those who didn't understand, this type of tree in the world of Angram can carry a hundred times its own weight above the water's surface. It's like oil on water. So when the great wave carried it, there were internal currents that pulled it back to the depths. When it emerged from the internal currents, it shot straight to the surface with enough speed to transform into a cannonball emerging from the water.]
I put my fingers to my chin as Julius looked around, adding, "This is strange; this calm. My senses tell me danger is coming..." I interrupted him with a laugh, "What? Your senses? Haha, are you a cat or what?"
Suddenly, Julius sped off in the boat, and 016 started warning us again: "Mr. Ali, the area around us will be attacked by high-speed objects within 100 meters..." I couldn't hear the rest of his words, as a cluster of trees began to emerge from the water with incredible speed. With lightning-fast movements, Julius skillfully dodged the trees, but then he suddenly screamed frantically, "Aaaaaah!"
I turned to him and realized why he was screaming. He was struggling intensely, and looking at his arm, I could see how much he was hurting. Every muscle fiber and blood vessel was bulging, as if his body was made for a fighter. I tried to encourage him while I dodged the flying trees: "Hang on, bear the pain; we're not far from here."
He yelled back at me, "I'm not screaming from pain, you idiot! Look to the left!" As soon as I glanced to the left, I cried out, "Ah!" The oar was about to break. It was a painful sight. Why now, of all times? But it was brand new from the shop; when did it start cracking?
"Crack!" Another crack. I moved to the right and saw that the second oar was also beginning to crack. "Why?!" I cried, but I realized that the problem wasn't the oar, but Julius's strength. His earlier cry was from trying to slow down to avoid breaking the oar and adjust his speed to escape. I understood then why he was so nervous.
He found himself caught between a rock and a hard place, trying to escape the onslaught of trees as quickly as possible, but the oarsmen couldn't hold up.
"Crack... crack... crack... crack!" No, the left oar had broken, but suddenly a small tree appeared beside us. Though it was small compared to the others, it was in Julius's hands in the blink of an eye! He had carried a whole tree with one hand! And that wasn't the strangest part; He used it as a substitute for the broken oar.
He dug his fingers into it as if it were a cake, and began carving it until it almost resembled an oar! Good heavens! When did his hand turn into a knife? Was he still human?
I remained silent until we were out of danger, nearly fainting from what had happened. I began to analyze what had transpired: "So, Julius propelled a boat carrying three people, each weighing an average of 170 kilograms, at breakneck speed within a 100-meter radius in a minute and a few seconds? And he didn't use his full strength to avoid breaking the oar? And he lifted a tree weighing at least 400 kilograms with one hand and rowed it as if it were nothing?"
I said firmly: "Julius! We need to talk now. What the hell are you trying to hide? How much power do you have?" Julius turned to his sister with a puzzled look, and she nodded at him. He turned to me with the cold air stream, and his face was sad, as if he were trying to uproot painful memories from his past.
I have no idea how powerful this guy is, because I often skipped school. And if I stayed with him, he never showed me anything about these powers. He was by my side during my psychological therapy, defending me when I was bullied, and he was one of my dearest people. Or at least, that's what I thought.
I said, feeling indescribable bitterness: "But why? Aren't you my dearest friend? Why didn't you tell me about this power of yours? Why did you hide it from me? Was it because you don't trust me?"
He replied coldly: "You're the last one who should talk!" I was shocked by his words, "What do you mean? How can you say this to me, the one who considered you my only brother?"
Noor intervened, saying: "Calm down, Ali, it's me, Noor!" I turned to her and found her eyes sparkling with a strong blue light. "What? Even you? What the hell is this?" I wanted to believe this was a dream, but suddenly, Julius spoke up with a question: "May I ask why you hid the secret laboratory from me while you were working on it with another girl? Then you come and say you consider me like a brother, huh?"
Under the weight of the tension and shock of what he said, I swallowed hard while thinking about how to explain my situation. His accusation was very logical, especially after I had yelled at him and placed all the blame on him, But how did he find out about the secret laboratory?
so he said I was "the last to speak." I gathered my thoughts and said firmly: "Damn, now that things have reached this point, I'll explain my story and then explain your and your sister's story. Is that agreed?"
Julius replied firmly: "Agreed." I began explaining my suffering from bullying, how I was weak and hid the matter. I would ignore the questions about the reason for my bruises until things worsened, and I missed school one day. I spent my time at Uncle's hardware store, and when I came out, I didn't notice the bully was following me.
He stopped at the door and ambushed me, hitting me hard and demanding money. Maybe he was following me for fun or because he needed money for drugs or any other reason. When I told him I didn't have any money, he got angrier and hit me harder, saying: "Do you think I wouldn't notice you came out of the hardware store with this rusty metal? Surely you have some change. Come on, show me what you have, or else..." Before he finished his words, he fell to the ground, with a large shadow behind him. It was Julius.
Then I asked, "I assume you know what happened next, right?"
Julius said, "Yes, I beat him until all his front teeth fell out and his face changed completely, then I turned to you. I came down to your level and ..... started hitting you too, while I shouted: 'Why did you hide all this from me?' I kept asking you, and then your answer made me change my view of you , where you told me: 'I didn't want your hands to get dirty, or for you to get into trouble because of my weakness.' You were thinking of me before yourself, and after join your school and stop the bullying, our friendship became closer to brotherhood."
[Here, Julius was angry that Ali had been bullied all this time and hadn't told him and had kept quiet, but he knew that Ali had also been thinking about him and didn't want to be a burden on him and wanted to deal with his problems on his own.]
I replied to Julius, "Yes, that's from your perspective, but from my point of view, I was like someone who found someone to lean on and share some of his pains." Julius interrupted me, saying, "But why are you going back to all this past? What is your goal in telling this story? Aren't we the ones who know this story better than anyone else?" I replied in surprise, "Didn't I say that you both would reveal your secret to me, you and Noor? Then I'll tell Noor so she can understand the events from the beginning..." Julius interrupted me: "Oh, if that's your goal, then it's fine because Noor can read minds!!"
"It's my ability—mind reading and telepathy." The voice spoke directly to me without uttering a word. It was clear. She had read my thoughts and then relayed them to Julius, who was privy to my hidden secrets. Now everything was clear.
"What?!" I exclaimed. "Telepathy and mind reading—what else do you have, Noor?" Then I remembered how embarrassed I'd been when I saw her in her underwear before we left the water. "If your embarrassment stems from knowing what I'm thinking, well, that's interesting." I continued, "After seeing you defend me, I felt something strange. Why would you go to such lengths for someone as hated as me? Why? I didn't want to stand idly by. The same goes for the lab; I set it up to be completely independent, even to help you if you ever got into trouble. I was avoiding any possibility of information leaks, so I kept it a secret from you because the other Black organizations would try to blackmail us if they found out you knew about me or my informant, Victoria. They would threaten me through you. I thought about shielding you from all this suffering so you could live a normal life, but 'things don't always go as planned.' As for Victoria, she's my assistant, and I only have a working relationship with her."
"Hahaha! Ha!" Julius burst out laughing. "So now you know why I hid my power and my sister from you?" I said, "I think I get the gist of it." "You, too, are trying to hide secrets from me to protect me." Julius replied, "I think you're going through the same thing I did, so now it's my turn and Noor's to tell our story..."
Julius Asterion
We were the children of mad scientists who experimented with everything they could. We were like lab rats, dressed in hospital gowns and thrown into a white room with other children like us, about 150 of them. There were some toys, but the rest was the walls of that white room. We had three sessions a day: physical training, which made you see the world of the dead on the horizon, where one or two of us died every week, and others went insane. The rest were seriously injured and taken to intensive care to recover as quickly as possible, then sent back to training. I was in intensive care 12 times, and strangely enough, I had a remarkable ability to heal; one day was enough for me to recover completely and return to hell on my own two feet.
I became so desperate that I tried to break some of my bones so I wouldn't have to go back for so long, but my bones I recovered in just three days. Do you know how much pain I suffered as a child during nine rounds of relentless torture, watching children die without knowing when it would be my turn?
My sister, on the other hand, did regular exercise because she was still very young. And that was just the first part of the day. Then there was the genetic testing session, where they would take us naked into a corridor that cleansed all the bacteria on our skin, then pass X-rays over us to make sure we were eligible to receive the ability serum.
After confirming, they would inject us. My sister was subjected to mental experiments, and they would give her the serum every time the experiments were completed. Strangely, those who participated in her group, the mental group, went insane.
- ... We slept in fifty-degree heat, bundled in thick clothing, and sometimes they forced us to wear simulators to induce the most terrifying dreams. These main sessions were punctuated by breaks for using the toilet or playing games, which never lasted more than twenty minutes. This wretched torture continued for three years; and our numbers kept dwindling.
"Julius, but why..." Ali interrupted me, shocked. Before he could finish, I replied, "Do you want to know why we obeyed them willingly despite possessing superhuman abilities?" Ali nodded in agreement, and I continued, "One of us did, but our abilities weren't as advanced as mine are now. But the part that stopped us was the torture phase.
They halted our program for a week. All we did during the day, or were forced to do, was watch them torture him. They broke his bones from his fingertips to his shoulders, and his legs too; they broke each bone slowly. Every time he lost consciousness, they would stop the torture and wait for him to regain it.
" This first stage continued until the third day, when his hands and legs were practically boneless. Then came the fourth and fifth days, when the torture was like breaking bones, but this time they gradually cut away the broken pieces.
My sister kept vomiting, and from that day on, she developed a phobia of blood and amputated limbs, like what we saw in the water. On the sixth day, when only his head, chest, and genitals remained, the torture entered its final stage: electric shocks. During the last two days of torture, the boy couldn't endure it any longer and died.
All of this was meant to terrorize us and instill in us the idea of not opposing their decisions. But one day, the electricity went out due to storms, and I was on the verge of collapse and madness, but my sister encouraged me and kept me awake with her mental strength.
I managed to escape them in a moment of inattention, as my sister guided me because she felt the walls and knew the best way to escape. But the shock was that she sacrificed herself and deceived me, saying, "She's waiting for me outside; she knows the way to escape because she's taken it," but it was all for my escape.
Then..." I took a deep breath, and then my sister, holding my hand, said, "Brother, let me continue from here."
Nore Asterion
"I knew Julius was the kind of person who would never abandon me. In the last days before his escape, I dreamt that he was defending me because the scientists wanted to conduct new and dangerous experiments on me as I got older, but it ended.....Tragic, with our deaths."
Ali continued, "So I preferred that one of you escape, and Julius was the better choice because of his physical strength and because he would escape faster." I went on, "Exactly, but unexpectedly, two years before I turned nine, Julius attacked the laboratory and completely destroyed it." Ali interrupted me again, "Wait, wait, wait, you were Seven years old, And now you are in your first year of Orthodox education, which means you are now 10 years old., I mean..."
...that is, the year 2219 in the Ingram calendar.News spread about a conspiracy that ended with the bombing of one of the most important laboratories of the Second Empire . Could it be... could it be that Julius was behind the Mount Murasaki incident? But he was in school then, how?' I smiled slightly. 'Yes, you're right; it was the Mount Murasaki incident. Julius was working with...'
Julius interrupted me, looking deeply saddened: 'I was working with X-Man...'
Silence fell, and I looked puzzled by what he was trying to say. Then he continued: 'He's someone from the previous generation in the Mount Murasaki incident; he managed to escape, just like me, but after losing everyone he loved in the lab: his brother, his twin sisters, and all his friends, he harbored an unbearable grudge against them and dedicated his life to finding out who was behind these experiments and what their goal was. But he couldn't find out anything.'
He somehow expected that I would go out or escape at the right time and place, as he was waiting for me, equipped with all the necessary means to escape from the laboratory, and then many, many things happened between us that made him like my spiritual father, and he had an essential role in saving Nour and helping us control our powers, as he trained me well so that I could confront the laboratory and bring back my sister, and now I do not know what his fate will be after this disaster, but, I am certain that he He survived somehow."
I'am Nour continued, "And this is the bottom line of our story."
Ali Vander
"Mmm….. your story is very touching, and you suffered from a really difficult childhood, and I assume there is more since you, Nour, have said the bottom line, and this is enough for now, but I would like to hear more when it becomes available, so that I can understand your feelings and get along with you well."
Nour interrupted me, "What about your childhood? Was it normal? I mean, before you met my brother Julius." Julius immediately turned around and said, "Yes, I never thought of asking you this question. It piqued my interest. What was your life like before we met??? "
[I thought a little before answering, and the memories brought me back to a blurry picture of a beautiful woman who was wearing a nun's dress, telling me that it is okay now, your sister Helena is here]
I inhaled the air and then exhaled again, "Hhhhhh.... Honestly, I was found without a mother or father and I have no memory, so I have no idea about my past. All I remember is waking up in the arms of Saint Helena, and that everyone was avoiding me and afraid of me. They said that I was the cursed boy, that I was possessed by the devil, and I don't remember anything else, but it was a very peaceful childhood compared to you." "I think"
The two brothers' looks were cold and devoid of any expression, as there was no response to my words. We all lived through a difficult childhood for a short time, and each of them was lost in his thoughts, and the silence continued until...
****** Side Story ******
She looked stunning against the backdrop of the sunset, lost in thought.
I decided to test her ability to see if it was automatic or if she was using it intentionally.
The word "test" was enough to make her blush. I turned to her and said to myself, "You're more beautiful than this sunset," then waited for her reaction... But she didn't react. So, she must be controlling her ability by will.
Meanwhile, Noor was lost in thought when she noticed Ali watching her.
Trying to read his mind without turning around, she heard him say, "You're more beautiful than this sunset." Those words were so surprising that she froze. "Hmm, does Ali have a crush on younger girls? Oh my God!"
End of side story.