Claws of The Phoenix 1
Once again it’s time to walk along the lonely pavement filled with empty memories and dull moments, it is the only way one must take to go to school, the time most of the students never wanted to arrive and only a handful of the kids actually waited for -- the start of the new semester.
For a guy like Kurt, a guy who spends most of his time breathing and spacing out without a goal in life, a guy who leads a listless kind of life, it was just another day to waste and wait on but in another place.
Kurt is in his 3rd year of college; even though he doesn’t really a textbook student and he does not study much, he always passes the requirements to move on to the next year of his study. He is one of the lucky kids people with ignorance call "gifted", he could solve an entire equation without the guidance of an instructor, he is someone who can hack into any existing system, but only if he put his mind to it. Someone with his gifts doing nothing in his life is such a waste of talent really.
He lives pretty distantly from other people but he looks decent and dignified enough that bullies and other lowlives stay away from his path. He gives off a very intimidating aura that makes everyone else wary and cautious of him. It is as if he exists and nobody cares, nobody notices even. It may also be the case that no one really wants to be involved with the mystery and darkness in which he seemed to be engulfed.
Nobody really knows more than the basics about him. People know him as that guy who sat on the corner during math, that classmate from one subject, but as soon as the class ends, his very existence is already forgotten.
Whenever he has free time, which means most of the time, he sits under the shade of a tree or up the rooftop writing lines of code for several programs and designing several algorithms that he knows someday will become useful.
Hacking and cracking systems, these are his favorite pastime. He does them for no particular reason, and just out of boredom. He has no intentions of using his tools though.
A window that lays bare the world outside, the green grass of the meadow, and the falling leaves from trees as they dance with the warm breeze of the afternoon, sits beside Kurt all throughout the period. He neither hears nor sees a thing during those long spans of time for he is just lost somewhere within his mind.
The class was left to a self-study time so it was all gloomy and quiet until the bang of the door broke the silent threshold and echoed across the whole room. Kurt's attention was absorbed and his eyes with a stare of inquiry were fixed in the opening the door made.
A figure of a female drew his consciousness back from his fantasy. The female has long blonde hair which curls slightly at the bottom part and stretches just above her hips, a slim person with a fully developed feminine body, and a character that looks stiff and mean as it seems to break the class’s awe when she begins to speak.
“Kurt! Kurt Johnson! Anybody here knows Kurt Johnson?”
Still, people from the room including Kurt himself were silent and in amusement with the lady just outside the door. They were without a doubt lost in anticipation of what was going to happen next. They're just mindful and sort of relieved that they were taken away from the boring book they were forced to read.
The lady felt kind of agitated for the indifference she had just received and with a louder voice repeated, “Kurt Johnson! Stand and speak, you shall do. Kurt, to wait another minute, I shall not.”
With that, Kurt came to his senses, stood up, and approached the agitated lady. He was still in between discerning where this lady come from, all he could think about was her thick English accent and the weird speech pattern he only heard in Sci-fi films.
“My name is Kurt Johnson, do I know you?”
With a questioning look in the lady’s eyes she replied “Very well, the name is not important. I’m afraid, to lay the information upon you in such circumstance I cannot. Everything must wait until you come with me. So get your things and follow me at once.”
Shocked and confused, Kurt said “I am not coming with you; I don’t even know who you are. I have a class to attend… "and right before Kurt could finish his statement the lady interrupted her by pointing a gun at his face which she had taken from nowhere in sight. The class was frozen still and nobody was able to move.
“It’s either you come with me at will or don’t come at all, what it’s going to be Johnson?” and with that instant, Kurt knew he doesn’t have a choice but to come with the lady.
It was a black Mercedes, a long one which carries the lady and Kurt, and an old man driving the vehicle to god-knows-where. Strange as it seems Kurt feels fear no more, if there is something he feels it is the confusion about what is happening to him right at the very moment.
After a couple of minutes of riding it in total and utter silence, the lady breaks the air, turns to Kurt, and says
“Raven, call me Raven if you will. I work under the National defense.”
For Kurt, what she’s saying doesn’t make sense at all, it doesn’t add up that well. He thinks very deeply and asks,
“National Defense? Am I suspected for a terrorist or anything? What did I do to deserve such attention? And what's with the Yoda speech?”
“A terrorist?” says the lady while letting out a small amount of smirking. “You are making me laugh, please don’t. You are not a captive, nothing of the sort. You are here with me because we are in need of your talent and your assistance.”
“What are you talking about? And wow, you're ignoring the Yoda question.”
“We have been watching you trying those toys of yours, we know what you have done and whatnot."
"What toys? What? Are you really not gonna answer my question?"
"You can take down an entire system if you wish but you never did. It shows that you are just playing and don’t have any intentions of cracking so we always let you off the hook."
"Oh, so you're just gonna continue talking huh? Nice."
"Finding you wasn’t really so easy because you covered up your traces very well and you used different algorithms every time so it seems that you are experimenting with the art.”
“Okay okay, I give up. But wait, did you just say art? I thought it was a crime.”
“Yes indeed. Art is what I call it because I am fond of doing it too. But the level of your hacking is higher than mine. So here we are talking, and I am recruiting you for the team.”
“Wow, that, you answered? Anyway, everything you just said didn’t make a single sense. I am not joining anything or whatever, I am going home.”
“I think you now know you don’t have a choice Kurt, do you not? Home you say? Can you call a house a home without a family inside it? You are the only one who lives in that old apartment for years. No one will bother themselves to find you.”
“You are beautiful outside but full of prejudice.” Kurt fell into silence after saying those words for he knew that arguing will take him to nothing, same as for the lady, she kept quiet after hearing what Kurt thought of her. Without Kurt knowing where on earth they are.
"O----kay, alright. I just wanted to try that Yoda speech for once. It sounded really cool in my mind. All right? Jeez. Kids these days." Raven burst out with a flustered look on her face.
Kurt chuckled and shook his head.
This is the first part of a fiction I was trying to write before.
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