Cross My Mind

WHEN THE TABLES TURN

As Mila begins to move, she could feel the difference in weight that Garba’s body has from her own body, her steps are heavier and more firm, her arms swing with more weight and force; and she can literally feel the overall increase in bodily strength.

Now face to face with her opponent, she took a stance and started attacking by throwing the first punch, immediately Carson’s knight piece dodged, she took the initiative of jabbing a fierce stab towards his neck.

The player used his dagger to blocked the attack but his hand was off by a few inches and he had his hand deeply cut on his wrist by Mila’s dagger. The player quickly reacted with a punch from his uninjured hand and Mila used her left hand to block the attack, repositioning her foot just before the punch landed to take the force of the punch but to her surprise, the punch felt only half as heavy as she had expected, making her stance readjustment totally unnecessary.

Mila is not new to fights as she has been in many fights as a teenager in high school who is constantly seeking her father's attention.

Even as an adult, she was short tempered and unapologetically intolerant so she has had many fights in her life. Some of those fights she won, some she lost but she has never felt anything like what she is experiencing at the moment.

‘So this is what it feels like to be a man, the increased weight that lets you pack a heavier punch as well as withstand heavy punches, the well groomed muscles that give you an impenetrable upper body strength, I could get used to this'

she thought and raises one foot to step even closer to her opponent but as soon as the other player realizes the opportunity, he bent a little low and swung one of his legs with all his might towards her legs and immediately, she realised what is about to happen.

If Carson’s knight hits her other foot before she puts the first one down, she would be swept out of balance and will be at a costly disadvantage.

Having realized this, Mila shifted her weight and stomped the foot that was already up in the air down hard, focusing all of Garba’s body weight on it as reinforcement just before the opponent’s leg hit it. The two legs collided with enough force that the other player’s ankle got dislocated, sending the other player recoiling and falling down, crying out in pain and holding the dislocated leg.

Carson becomes unsettled by this, he has expected his knight to easily defeat Garba who he believes must have no experience with combat much and he is right about that, Garba; who grew up in Nigeria with his Heterochromia giving him blue and brown eyes was branded as an anomaly and with the high level of superstition and misinformation, he was cast out as a witch or a person who brings bad luck even by his own father.

As a child Garba was avoided by all his own peers in school. Inside the classroom his seat and that of his sister was segregated from that of the rest of the students because even the parents of the other students in school expressed their concerns over putting their children near the cursed two witches as they refer to Garba and his sister Salma.

With this, Garba and his sister Salma have been avoided throughout their early school, in high school avoidance turned into bullying and even so, Garba has never really taken his time to fight back much. In his first year of high school, he got in a fight with a boy that was bullying his sister Salma and although in the fight Garba was the one who was beaten, a day after, the father of the boy who beat up Garba showed up in Garba’s home to warn his father that Garba should stay away from his son.

On that day, without any explanation Garba was beaten by his father to the point where he could not sleep the night because of how sore he was all over.

Garba avoided fights throughout the rest of his life even though the menial labor he has done for money growing up has built his body quite well, Carson was still right in his belief that Garba is not much of a fighter and he has not much experience for brawling it out. However, what Carson did not know is that his knight piece is currently not fighting Garba right now but Mila in Garba’s body, a much more experienced fighter who is currently taking advantage of Garba’s well built body.

Mila used her right feet and kicked her opponent right in the face, making him lose consciousness. She proceeded to the next square, the floor opened up and The player laying down fell in a slump.

Carson has realised that the game has put him in a place of overwhelming disadvantage so he started moving towards Garba who he anticipates must be fatigued from the last fight. In Response to this, Garba, who is in Mila’s body and is the king piece started moving towards Carson as well, as the two kings approach Mila, Garba has already calculated how to defeat him.

Because Carson is ex military, with more accurate combat experience than possibly any of the players combined, Garba intends to make it a two against one fight. He used the thought to speech function and passed a secret massage to Mila.

‘check all the back pockets of my Camouflage pant, there are five daggers in it. Move when I ask you to and when the chance provides itself throw those daggers at Carson' the massage says

Mila looked at Garba and nodded her head in a sign that she has seen his massage.

As Carson and Garba approach where Mila is standing around the middle of the court, He calculated his chances of reaching where Mila is before Garba arrives and realize that he doesn’t have a chance so he started to move backwards, with the intention of Playing the sixteen moves rule to end the game in a stalemate.

Garba immediately realized what Carson is up to and started to move Mila to Carson’s right as a means of restricting him from moving sixteen times without being checkmated. Slowly, Garba and Mila corner Carson until he has no moves left, Garba’s expectation is that the game would be stopped before the two of them can kill Carson, so he gave his signal for Mila to start throwing her daggers when she gets the chance.

Garba, in Mila’s body steps forward to have the last fight with Carson. He brought out two daggers and activated the analysis function MEDULLA has initially installed in hos Neuraface as an ester egg. This function makes Garba’s visual analysis hyper and accurate.

“Don’t use this function for more than a minute when you have crossed minds over, it puts a strain on your neurons by forcefully firing them and bombarding your brain with all of the visual information, if you overuse it, you may develop memory loss” MEDULLA said.

Carson is confident of his size and strength, he is sure that he can beat Mila in a one on one fight but the problem is that he is not sure anymore after seeing what Garba has done to his knight and how his plans have been overthrown.

He pulls out his dagger and aimed at Mila’s eye, stabbing with all his strength but Garba saw it a long time coming and dodged it by shifting his head to the left by a few inches, he raised his two arms and cut Carson’s hand mercilessly.

Carson dropped his dagger and swept his feet in an effort to catch Mila by surprise but Garba once again saw it coming and jumped right on time to avoid being swept down. While in the air, Garba turned the back of his daggers and punched Carson so hard with it on the face that almost made him lose consciousness.

Garba landed on his feet and immediately gave Mila the signal to throw her dagger now.

***********In the control room above the underground facility**************

Akihiro, and Nora have been watching the entire event unfold and at this point, just when Garba and Mila are about to land their final hits on Carson, Both Akihiro’s tablet and computer screen started beeping at the same time, he directed Nora to open the alarm window and see what is going on with the computer and proceeded to pick up his tablet, on the screen he noticed all the four channels from their VIP in the Mansion are open and dialing him in.

He pick up the call and Jefferson Lockwood’s voice hit him loud in the ear.

“Our two admirals are saying that if you don’t want to lose Carson, you have to save him now because the other team have expressed through their demeanor that they are about to land the finishing attack” Lockwood said.

“When you have been in combat for as long as we have been, you would know from the demeanor of your opponent when they are about to finish you off” of the Admirals said.

Akihiro was interrupted by Nora with an exciting look on his face.

“Our firewalls have detected and determined the exact root folder that MEDULLA's root program uses to interfere with the experiment, if we start trapping it in quickly, we may be able to lock it in and flush out its codes.” Nora said.

Akihiro was indecisive at first, then he removed a second pair of A tablet computer from his pocket, this one smaller than Neuratechnologies' custom tablets, he swiped a few different pages, launched an application and said.

“ Track all external and forced connection to the servers”

He handed the tablet to Nora , “ inform me once a location pops up on the screen” he added.

Akihiro turned to the large screen on his wall and watch as Mila pulls back her arm about to stab Carson in the gut while Garba aims a dagger at Carson’s head about to throw and in that instant he realizes that if he doesn’t drop do anything, one of his three precious Guinea pigs was about to be killed by the others. He pulls up the second tablet and pressed a button and hopes with all his heart that the delay works just on time to save Carson.

However, all of the spectators from the Mansion and those working in the control room, together with Dr. Reece and Ababio watched as Mila buried her dagger in Carson’s gut while the dagger that Garba threw landed and stabbed Carson in one of his eyes but immediately this happened, the square that Carson and Garba were standing on begins sliding and Garba jumped out of the way just on time before Carson fell into the pit that opened below him.