Soldier of Time

XVII: Hanibal's Power And The Divided Target

Karen watched Slevin with disbelief. She tried to think, with precision she was looking for fragments of her memory that would show her something that resembled a special ability used by the Deer, but she could not find it. Little by little, her mouth closed, and her gaze settled on the floor as her thoughts soared through the air.

“Karen?” Slevin asked carefully while looking at her intently, “Are you okay?”

The girl raised her face. Her expression was complicated when she asked, “Do you also have these powers...?”

Saying powers seemed childish in her mouth, but there was no other word to describe it.

She looked at Slevin, and he nodded slowly. That gesture gave meaning to ideas that bounced in the girl’s mind.

“What kind of powers do you have?” She asked once more.

This time the discomfort of the word passed unnoticed under the weight of curiosity. The Deer looked at her directly and was silent. Her expression was rigid and deliberative, he tried to decide whether to open that part of himself with that young woman, but his mistrust prevailed.

The young woman interpreting the silence, said, “I understand that you do not want to say it. It is a tactical error. I will have to find out.”

She spoke confidently but found it hard to believe that there was another person with special abilities in front of her. She knew perfectly well that in the world, there should be more people with that kind of powers, many more until now she only knew the other royal guards, and even they ensured the existence of more people like that.

Elsewhere in the complex, Simon was questioning the young woman with the huge glasses with his gaze. The girl’s confidence was absurd when it came to computers, and this remarkably drew Angel’s attention.

“So no one could ever hack you?”

“No, It is impossible….”

The boy smiled and walked around her as he said, “Impossible, huh!”

A bright smile appeared on her face and then continued to ask, “Why are you so sure?”

“You just have to know that it is a certainty.”

The young woman said, but this time her confidence seemed threatened by Simon’s evaluating gaze. The young man smiled and said, “You know when you have so much time in battle, you develop a sixth sense. I have one of those...”

The nervous young woman looked in all directions as she replied, “What kind of sixth sense?”

“The ability to know when someone is lying.”

The young woman took a step back as Simon’s gaze seemed to change shape. The young woman drew back a little more and questioned, “Do you think I’m lying?”

“No,” said the mercenary smiling, “That’s what intrigues me. How can you be so confident that no one will ever be able to hack you? I only know one way for that to happen...”

The girl looked at him directly and, breathing heavily, and she said asked, “What way is that?”

“Total Control...” To which the boy replied.

Karen tried to guess what the Deer’s power was, but her deductions were always interrupted by inconsistencies in her memories. Slevin watched her think and gave her space to assimilate the news.

Suddenly the young woman questioned, full of doubt, “How do you know that Hanibal also has power? And which one is it?”

“I don’t know,” Slevin replied after he shook his head, “I couldn’t define his power clearly, but I’m sure he has it. It is not an active power like yours, and it is different.”

“Active?”

“That’s what the boss calls them...”

“Who?”

“A friend, he defines them as active and passive powers. Yours would obviously be active.”

The girl waited for a second, looked at Slevin, and asked, “Why active? Because it has an effect on me?

“Not only on you but in the world, something like throwing fireballs or disappearing.”

“So yours would be a passive power?”

Slevin was silent and looked directly at the young woman. He didn’t want to give information about his ability, but for her to trust what he had to say, something had to be given.

“That’s right, and my power is passive. Like Hanibal’s, if I’m right.”

“And how is a passive power?”

Slevinfelt was very out of his control area, and he did not like this kind of interrogation. He hated giving data about himself because if experience had taught him something, it was that this data could only be used to harm him.

“Passive powers are which influences only you, and its effects cannot be seen.”

The girl smiled and added, “Like yours?”

“Like Hanibal’s.”

“And what does he do?”

“I’m not sure, I think he can see the future or something very similar,” Slevin replied that with total naturalness, but the girl looked at the ground with frenzy if Hanibal could see the future, he would be impossible to stop, nothing they did could manage to defeat that monster.

The girl looked up and looked at the calm eyes of the Deer and did not know what to do, how he could be so calm having that information. More importantly, how she could defeat him if that monster saw the future.

“To see the future?” Karen said with a thread of voice, “it can’t be...”

Saying this, the girl buried her face in her hands, losing all hope. But Slevin said, “I don’t think so, I don’t think he can see the future with all the expression of the sentence. Maybe it has like probabilities.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t have a better way to say it, but Hanibal always does the best for the moment.”

The girl listened, but she did not understand. The small interaction of her with Hanibal repeated continuously in her mind. A man like that was difficult to forget, as she thought.

“I think that somehow he always makes the best decision, that’s why I say that he can see the future. I don’t know exactly what his power is, but it must be related to the way he fights,” Slevin continued.

“If this guy sees the future,” Karen said, slowly raising her devastated gaze, “How did you beat him?”

Slevin looked at the young woman and remembered the last meeting with Hanibal before the unfortunate incident the day before and remembered the fight, everything was under control that day, and he knew what Hanibal’s objective was, so he knew how to perfectly isolate the factors.

“I don’t know if I’m right, but I beat him by dividing the risk factors.”

The girl looked at him incredulously and asked, “What the hell does that mean?”

“Actually, nothing too complicated. It’s the way I beat that guy. It is isolating the target.

“You want to lock up the chancellor?”

“I do not mean to isolate it that way,” said the Deer scratching his head and snorting “imagine the following. You are going to fight Hanibal. What is your main objective?”

“Kill him,” Karen said without meditating as if that question had already been asked by someone else.

“Then all your strategies will be based on killing him, right?”

“That’s right.”

“But if you wanted to survive, the strategy would be different, right?”

“I guess. But what is the point?”

“The point is that Hanibal can accomplish any goal without blinking. but we can’t do that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Our basic objective is to protect the Chancellor, but if we isolate that objective, then we will have to protect her, transport her safely, and assassinate Hanibal on sight.”

“Yes. That’s obvious.”

“So instead of playing defense. We play both. We defend the Chancellor and hunt down Hanibal King. It’s like they hired us to kill him instead of saving her.”

“Okay, although I thought that was implicit.”

“It is. But the situation is that Hanibal can only fully accomplish one goal.”

“Then?”

“If the objective is to assassinate the Chancellor. He won’t have his strength focused on saving himself, but if he concentrates on that, then he won’t catch up with the Chancellor.”

“You basically say that we should divert his attention.”

“Not him, his power. The time I beat him, I forced him to focus on me as his target drifted away. I’m not sure, but I think his power can only resolve one conflict at a time.”

What Slevin was saying didn’t make much sense to Karen, but something in his words made her pause and say.

“If you see the future, will you not know that this is what we plan?”

“Yes, but even so, if he concentrates on us, he will lose the chancellor...”

“And if he concentrates on the chancellor,” Karen said, leaving the phrase in the air for a second. The young woman was thinking of a sea of possibilities.

Slevin’s idea was not entirely unreasonable. Perhaps she should give him more credit. After all, he had defeated that beast once.

The girl walked to the door of the morgue, and when she arrived, she turned on her heel and faced the Deer with saying, “I hope you are right….”

After that, she left. Slevin stayed a while longer in the morgue, thinking about what was to come. He retired to his room and considered all the possibilities that might occur.

He looked at the briefcase with his horns, and his teacher’s voice bounced off the walls, “don’t deny who you are,” like he could do something like that. He didn’t even know who he was.

He looked to the side and looked at the self-portrait of Amber, who looked at him from the paper with understanding eyes. He took the phone and wrote.

“I’d like to be there.”

He put the phone on the bed and grabbed the razor that he always carried with him. The crisp deer symbol on the handle stared at him as he thought about how to face what was to come.

Doubts flooded his mind, and the ceiling grew farther and farther, opening a void that reflected the feeling of his heart.

He was no longer in bed, and there was no ceiling or walls, only nothingness caressing the vertices of his body and the confusion that fed on every idea of his mind. He closed his eyes and heard a voice echoing through the room as sounds of explosions matched the environment.

“Not even you can save them.”

That voice repeated, and he perfectly knew who he was from.

One bit destroyed the illusion that the Deer was in. He had meditated for hours and was lost in his mind. He used to do that by activating his power, and now perceiving the passing of time was an ability that he no longer possessed. He picked up the phone and read.

“You must be there. But you’ll come...”

He sighed at that message and muttered, “The old me will not return.”