The Imperial Warrior

Chapter 10- Let Me Down Slowly

The sky had reached a steady blue when they reached the compound. Kyle hated when it did that. It seemed to mock him, "Look, here I stand still and calm, in the face of your turmoil."

"10 points for creativity to the Imperials." He told them as they reached the gates of the compound. The compound was exactly what the name ensued. A big wall loomed in front of them, as tall as it was wide. The gates had a barricade and Kyle wondered if there would be security guards to let them in. The entire thing looked like the remains of an abandoned factory and Kyle once again chided himself for not knowing where he was. He could have googled it and figured it out by then when it struck him. Google- GPS! He almost jumped with glee when he remembered the wonderful marvel that is modern technology. He could find out everything about the place in a minute. He was removing his phone when Derek jumped out of the car, showed what looked like an ID into a scanner and the barricade lifted to let them in. That answered his question about guards.

"You are a Ravenclaw, aren't you?" Khia almost grimaced as she said. "The entire lot of you is so annoying."

Kyle didn't know why he seemed so surprised that she knew Harry Potter, "I'm. Also, you know Harry Potter?"

Derek and Khia answered at the same time, "We Imperials aren't as boring as you think, Kyle."

"One of the only good things about this century," Khia muttered looking straight ahead, as if not paying attention to their conversation any longer.

As Derek drove further inside, Kyle forgot all about his phone. The compound might have looked like an abandoned waste of space from outside but it looked like a techie's paradise from the inside. A pathway was clearly lit by street lights and an assortment of electric scooters and cycles were parked on one side. A drone hovered above them and Kyle rubbed his eyes to make sure that he wasn't imagining things.

"Didn't you say Imperials are born into poverty?"

"I didn't say we stayed in it." Derek gave Kyle a smirk and started leading the way. Kyle didn't need him to though. The pathway led to a single glass building, looming high above them. Other than what seemed like the parking lot, the area didn't have anything else. It seemed odd that they had all this space outside but not a single bench, or anything to sit on.

It was a moderately long walk to the building and Kyle remembered to look up this place, even more curious about their whereabouts now. He flicked the screen on only to see that he didn't have any network. "Don't bother. Your phone won't get any network here." Khia told him, noting the phone in his hand.

Kyle sighed. Of course, a brilliant technological heaven, didn't have any network in its area. That made so much sense. Once, they reached the building, Kyle couldn't help but give a little yelp of excitement. The building had commercial bright white lights on and Kyle's eyes stung at their intensity. For some reason, they were even brighter than the Sunlight outside. They were at what looked like the reception of the building. A big metal desk was placed in the center and a woman stood behind it. A range of chairs was also placed in the entryway of the building and Khia motioned him to sit there.

Derek and Khia seemed to know the woman pretty well as they handed their badges to her and took two others in return. Kyle etched to hear their conversation and he suddenly wished he could do that trick Derek had tried to teach him in the locker room the other day. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate but he couldn't hear anything. He was willing himself to try harder when Khia tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to follow them.

The whole building seemed to hum on a mechanical sound and Kyle's brain again perked up to know more about all this. He had so many questions already but he didn't want to push Derek when he had just stopped with his Imperialism taunts. He decided he would start prioritizing his problems in his head. That way, his list would be ready and all he would have to do is tick them off.

He was trying to memorize the way but he never was the one for roads. Anya had been his navigator all his life and now, without her, he was just lost. The weight of the day had started to dawn on him and he felt exhaustion taking over him. The wound on his arm also throbbed and he struggled to keep his eyes open.

"It's the lights," Khia told him. Kyle turned his head sideways to glance at her but she wasn't there. Kyle blinked and suddenly she appeared into view again. He thought he was losing it as she continued, "They are set on the same frequency as the beam. They are meant to suppress our energy so even when our emotions are overloaded, we don't get 'urges'." She air-quoted Kyle's name for it and he wanted to ask her what she called it whenever that happened to her. On second thought, he wanted to see how Khia looked like when she lost control. She just had this look of assurance on her face, that it was difficult to imagine a time Khia was under duress.

"What I don't understand is, it didn't work on him at school, but it seems to be more than effective right now." Derek was telling Khia as they made their way through the building. Looking at the passageway remaining in front of him, he assumed they were on the left end of the building.

"All the more reason to get his tests done quickly and figure out the mystery of our Imperial Warrior." Khia smiled to herself as she finished her sentence. They bounded a staircase and Kyle ran his hand over the cool metal railing. He knew Alex would have loved this place even more than him. He had always been inclined towards anything science, just like Kyle. Except, where Kyle looked at the mechanics of things, Alex was the biological side. He did like microorganisms more than humans though.

He wished he didn't have to leave things the way he had with his friends. They had always been there for him, through all his misery, and this was how he was repaying them.

He pulled his hand away with a jerk at that thought and Derek looked at him quizzically.

"Why do you keep calling me that?" He asked Khia after a while.

"Oh, she has no business doing that. Pay no heed." Derek picked up the pace as they bounded yet another flight of stairs. Khia scoffed at Derek's choice of words.

Kyle silently wished for a cup of coffee, preferably one of Will's hands as he was sure he could sleep on the stairs right there. Okay, he was ready to admit it to himself; he already missed home. If he went at this rate, he was sure, he wouldn't last long.

They stopped in front of a glass door on what Kyle calculated was the third floor. The room had a simple blue plate on top of it reading: TR 1.

"What does TR stand for?"

"Testing Room." Derek answered in a flat voice. He stepped aside for Khia to show her card in the scanner on the door and Kyle was surprised to see that Derek had a lower clearance than her. The door opened with a click and Kyle visibly grimaced at the sight of the equipment laid out in front of him. It reminded him of the time he had visited the dentist for his father's appointment. Unfortunately for him, the needles were going to be in his body this time.

He waited for someone to come when he saw that Khia had washed her hands and was sorting through the things in front of her.

"Why aren't there any people here?" It had struck Kyle at the same time as he asked the question. For as big the compound was, it was starkly missing of its human populace. On their entire way there, he hadn't seen anyone save for the lone receptionist. Then another realization gave him horror, "Don't tell me, she is conducting the tests?"

"You know Kyle, your lack of trust in my abilities is hurtful." Khia said with glee evident in her eyes. At that moment, Kyle couldn't help but notice the distinction between the two people in front of him. While Derek was disciplined and guarded, Khia wasn't afraid to show what she felt. He wondered what had made them the way they were, but at the same time, he was glad they had found each other. He hadn't seen Derek be so open since he had known him and Khia's smile was evidently fuller when she saw Derek.

"Don't worry, she is just drawing the blood. The rest will be done by Nancy," Derek told him as he looked at the wall clock. "Who is late, by the way."

"Please tell me this Nancy is an actual professional and not one of..." He trailed off as he saw that neither of them was listening. They had gone to the far end of the room and were talking in hushed tones. It hit Kyle once again that he was amongst strangers and perhaps people who were hiding things from him. He knew he should be more careful, especially since he had met Khia not less than a day ago but he couldn't help it. There was something about her that made him want to trust her more than anything else.

After a while, Derek was walking out of the door when he turned back again and said, "Hey, check his arm for infection while you are at it."

Khia nodded already putting all the things she needed in a metallic tray. He wished she wasn't the one holding the needle though. He realized that his drowsiness had reduced considerably. When they had just entered the compound, he could have napped on the floor itself but now it was more like wanting to sleep after a long week.

It had been a rather long day. He looked around for the wall clock and saw that it was only 1 though. He hoped all Imperials got as hungry as him and looked forward towards lunch as Khia started to remove the bandage around his arm.

"Kyle!" Her voice was oddly loud in their current surroundings.

"What?" He tilted his head slightly backward to see the expression on her face and saw that she was staring at the wound on his arm. He remembered that he was supposed to look up the signs of infection and cursed the compound for its brilliant coverage again.

"It's septic, isn't it?"

Khia was more than annoyed at him. She was glaring at his wound, as if it would go away with the sheer force of her will. She had again gone towards what looked like a medicinal cabinet and took some more bottles out of it. The shelf had a number of glass bottles placed on it in what looked like translucent shades of blue and yellow. Kyle hated doubting Khia but he really hoped she knew what she was doing. None of the bottles were marked and they clearly weren't organized.

"Please tell me you know what you are doing."

"Boys who don't take care of their wounds don't get to ask such questions." Her words may have been light but her tone distinctly wasn't. "Do you know how much of a pain it is to clean a wound? Much less one as small as that?"

He wanted to point it out to her that the pain he would feel would definitely be more but somehow that didn't seem like the right decision. "How did it get infected anyway? I didn't think there was any water in it."

"The hell am I supposed to know where you put your stupid body parts?"

Kyle decided his earlier strategy of keeping quiet would work better so he didn't reply. Something had put her off and Kyle knew it would be overstepping his boundaries to ask what it was. It was funny how much he had begun to understand her body language in their little while together. He then appreciated what Anya meant by people being so easy to read. We bleed our emotions in almost everything we do; she had once told him. Even in something as small as drinking coffee; the problem was that we were all busy drinking our own coffees.

Khia shrugged her jacket off once she had found everything she needed again and came back to where he was sitting. He hadn't himself looked at his wound and judging from the wince on Khia's face, he knew he had made the right call. He figured he could look the other way again and the whole ordeal would be over before he could realize what was happening.

He was most definitely wrong.

His arm burned as Khia dabbed at it with some cool liquid. He tried to keep himself from making sounds that would divert her attention and make her do something wrong but there were some moments where he couldn't help himself. The burning was starting to get to his head and he realized he would zone out really soon and he didn't know if that meant getting an urge. The lights did have some sort of an effect on him but that hadn't worked at school so he couldn't rely on that to keep him in control. Khia seemed to realize that too, her questions clearly meant to keep him distracted,

"So, what do you think?"

"About?"

She was fetching another instrument as she was talking to him. Kyle felt a cool breeze coming from the fan on his open wound and itched to look at what was happening. It took an effort to pay attention to what Khia was saying but he caught the end of her question as he heard her say Imperialism. He could guess what she was talking about.

"Honestly, I don't think I even understand it?"

"What's confusing you so much?"

"Well," He tried to accumulate his thoughts and told her, "It doesn't really make sense, does it? Derek told me that we came before humans, that we were a great kingdom once, of artists and the like—"

"We were." There was something off about her tone as she said that. As if closing that topic to debate.

"So, what happened to the kingdom? Sure, we colluded with humans and the 'curse' took effect; which honestly is more like evolution gone wrong, not that it matters, Ow!" She had dabbed on his arm a little too hard at that.

"Sorry," Khia didn't sound sorry but he didn't pay attention to that.

"By definition of the word kingdom, I have to believe that there was a king, to say the least," As an afterthought, he added, "Or a queen."

He waited for her to reply but she seemed to be concentrating hard on cleaning his wound. To keep himself occupied, he continued, "So, what happened to them? Was it that shitty a monarchy that they abandoned their people when they found out about the curse?"

Khia stopped her hand mid-air and turned towards his face, "It was a beautiful kingdom, Kyle. And yes, we did have a king and a queen. There was the entire royal family in fact; the only true-blooded ones left."

"True-Blooded?"

"At one point in our history, most of the Imperials were cursed. There was only one family which had managed to keep its line pure. They were the only ones not cursed, so they were regarded as the highest of their people. The rest of the population had to succumb to the whims of their emotions, giving in to their urges whenever any feeling overpowered them. So, you can see why the only true-blooded family would be the right choice to rule."

Kyle didn't understand why she was going to such lengths to justify their rule. Every kingdom had a monarchy and a family which was to stay in command.

"What happened to them?" His voice had become grim, as if bracing for the impact of a bitter truth. He realized it was the mirror of the expression on Khia's face.

"There was a fire." That was all she said. Kyle decided to ask Derek more about this mysterious fire of the royal family as he didn't want Khia to have that dark expression on her face the entire time she was tending to his self-inflicted injuries. He waited for a respectable amount of time and decided to change the topic. Before he could think of anything else to talk about, Khia asked him,

"Did you tell your father where you were going?"

"What could I have told him? Sorry dad, I'm running off into the sunset because I might just hurt you the next time I'm mad at a math sum?" He knew there was more to it than that and perhaps he should have left a note. But something told him that his father knew that something was going on with him and yet hadn't told him a thing about Imperialism.

"Right."

"What about your family? They live here too?"

"Well, you have met my brother—"

"I have?"

"Derek Aukland? The guy who drove us here and mercifully not into a tree when you stabbed yourself with a pen of all things."

Derek was her brother. He had been sure that they were... That they weren't related. He really had to stop making assumptions about people.

"He is your brother?"

"Well, half-brother. Why? What did you think?"

He didn't know how to tell her that he thought they might have been dating so he just shrugged.

"You don't look like siblings, that's all."

Khia nodded as if he wasn't the first one to tell her that. He didn't understand why some part of him felt glad about that little piece of information.

"Okay, the wound is clean." Seeing the relief on Kyle's face, she added, "For now. Please don't make me do that again so keep it that way. I'm done tending to your injuries." She threw the cloth, with which she was wiping her hands, at him, for what he thought was dramatic effect.

Kyle nodded. He didn't want a repeat of that either. She handed him two small bottles with pills and told him to take one each every day starting from then. He found a water cooler near the door and quickly swallowed them. He felt a sensation that it was stuck in his throat and gulped down more water. Khia was waiting patiently at the same spot he had left her, with a suspiciously large needle in her hand.

Dread struck Kyle as he asked Khia, "What about school?"

"Excuse me?"

"You guys got me to this strange compound where I haven't seen a single person- in the middle of the freaking school year. I mean, I know I'm ahead on my schoolwork but just barely. I need a perfect GPA for Berkley." His mind was traveling at 100 miles per hour. He was looking at the rest of his life and suddenly he couldn't see anything in his future anymore. Not without him going to a decent college being impossible if he had to stay away from anything that made him feel at all. Oh, he was going to end unemployed, probably living in Derek's basement or something. He would never see Anya again. He couldn't stop his mind from thinking all this and he was pretty sure he had begun hyperventilating just then.

"Kyle! Kyle Jones! Snap out of it already." Her voice was distant, as if she had suddenly gone very far away. He knew he was losing control when he saw his face in the metallic tray before him. He knew he couldn't stab himself again but this time he didn't need to.

Khia did the job for him as she thrust a needle into his arm and he felt the floor go under him and blackness swallowed him whole into a dreamless sleep.