Agents swarmed the whole place. Helicopters zoomed in and out of the woods and scanned the area from the air, some were perched at the plateau they were said to have been, but they were not found anywhere. The agents were working very hard, but Jerry doubted if they would find anything.
He heard twigs and leaves crack and crunch as someone approached him from behind. Michel come and stood beside him, with his arms at his back.
‘Look, Jerry. Maybe they’re not missing at all. Maybe they just fancied a ride through town, exploring the land.’
Jerry glanced at Michel through his glasses. ‘Michel, they’re missing, and you know it.’
‘But-‘
‘I cannot find a single trace or wave of the energy signatures on the Transformat, which I’m sue they have taken. It’s just missing, popped out of existence.’
Michel listened to jerry, well, actually, his accent. It was rather charming and lovely. A mixture of British and Spanish, maybe. Then something clicked into his head.
‘You cannot find what?!’ he bellowed.
Jerry smiled apologetically. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Seems I have not filled you in that particular detail.’
‘Jerry!’ Michel explained. He looked rather livid and angry. His tone changed completely. ‘I have warned you, Lucy has warned you- that you shouldn’t give the thing to the boy. It will open him into a very dangerous world. One that he is not yet ready to face.’
‘Now I promised his father-‘
Jerry interrupted. ‘That you would protect him. I know. I did, too. And I will. But trust me, he is fit for the Transformat and we would find him.’
Michel calmed down a little. ‘And you can’t find its signatures?’
‘Unfortunately and curiously. Unless he has not taken the Transformat.’
Michel breathed something unintelligible and walked away in long, angry strides.
A helicopter landed in front of Jerry and an agent stepped out and showed him the empty Transformat case.
Then the boy had taken the Transformat after all. He was probably working on his first adventure with it.
But he knew, he knew it as soon as that ball of light had come to his office that night.
James walked with Leo through the corridors of the Cerebrum quietly. He was scared in earnest, not only because he was a new comer, but because he hadn’t studied anything at all and their first lesson was an intellectual class.
Seli had given him some books to read, saying James and Leo didn’t want to go into their classes and just stare like dumb cows when a teacher asked them questions. Unfortunately, that was exactly how James was going to disgrace himself. Not that he hadn’t bothered to read the books, but as soon as he went to his room and lay on his bed, he’d slept.
Leo pushed the door of the classroom open and they stepped inside, James slowly. The classroom was already packed with about twenty students; each looked up with curious faces when Leo and James entered.
James slowly walked through the aisle to the last but one desk, where Leo also sat by him. Cornie smiled brightly at him a few seats away.
‘Ok,’ the female teacher declared in front of the classroom, picking up a blue marker, tossing it in the air, catching it and quickly sketching a few names on the small white board.
‘Today, we’re going to learn the names of a few Leukocyte positions and their functions. Now, who can give me one type of a Leukocyte?’ she looked around the room with her marker poised to ask somebody.
Cornie lifted an eager hand into the air. The teacher looked around for some seconds and seeing nobody, called her. ‘Yes, you?’
‘Well, there’s the Neutrophilis, who are our first line of defence before the other Guardians come,’ Cornie said.
‘Yes, well done,’ the teacher said and wrote Basophilis on the board.
‘Next?’ she turned around.
Cornie, raised her hand again, this time followed by a white haired boy who had a long nose. The boy was called.
‘The Lymphocytes,’ he said tentatively, ‘Who create weapons for the destruction of Germs.’
‘Good.’ The teacher said, and she mentioned a lot of names like the Monocytes and Eosophils.
For a moment, or an hour, James didn’t really see where the discussion was going until he felt Leo nudge him quickly and painfully. ‘Ow, what?’ he frowned, rubbing his ribs. Leo just nodded to the direction of the teacher.
‘Hello?’ the teacher chided. ‘I’m talking to you, boy.’
James got to his feet shakingly, his chair making unnecessary scraping noise behind him. For a minute, he stood there dumbly as he did not hear the question. The student stared. The teacher tutted, then she rolled her eyes.
‘I said,’ she began. ‘What was the name of the crisis that has greatly led to the shortage of Guardians in the Inside?’
The what?!
‘Umm, I-I don’t really know,’ James stammered.
The teacher shook her head. ‘Are you sure you’re supposed to be in this class?’ she asked.
James nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Then you should know, that Guardians do their very best to protect the Inside. They are always on top of their game, ready to save the world. As is our motto, “The Daring To Protect” so you are getting double homework boy, for not answering a question so easy as this.’
James nodded and sat down. The thought; dumb Cow, unrolled itself in his head.
‘It was called the 1956 Axar Crisis,’ another boy said.
‘Aww,’ James groaned quietly. ‘Did you know?’ he asked Leo.
‘Well, yeah,’ Leo whispered. ‘It’s on like the front, back and foreword page of every textbook here, including the ones Seli gave us. Didn’t you read it at all?’
James didn’t answer and didn’t speak again throughout the class. After about forty five minutes later, an alarm that sounded like a gigantic whales cry reverberated thrice in the classroom to mark snack time.
James was the first to get out of the class, closely followed by Leo. First day in Guardian school and he was having one blooper of a time.
‘Hey, James, don’t feel bad.’ Leo said. ‘I heard teachers are paid to humiliate their students like that. But did you not read the book Seli gave you?’
‘I dozed off,’ James said with finality as a group of girls in his class passed by and laughed quietly at him.
They didn’t have time to grab some snacks before another Guardian came to call them into the other classroom. Actually, it wasn’t a classroom; it was the back of the Brain, outside, a huge field with the greenest of grass that smelt so lovely, stretched into about four acres, and James couldn’t even see the end of it.
All around James, the cells breathed in the fresh smell of the grass, making deep inhalations and hollow exhalations.
‘Alright. Enough sniffing. Gather around, let’s do what we do best,’ the voice came from a yard away, belonging to Commander Josh. The students all ran to his side. In rows behind him were shooting target boards extending to about four feet tall, with colors painted in circles on their faces. The outer color was painted blue, the color in its circle, green, and yellow, and as a small dot, red in the middle.
‘Good morning, young Guardians,’ Commander Josh greeted. He looked very strict from when he and James had had a little chit chat. I heard teachers are paid to do that. James dismissed the thought, smiling a little.
‘Today, we’ll be practicing our shooting accuracy. As you should know, guns are a Guardian’s finest weapons… not that we don’t use our fists when things get tough. Ok. Now I want everyone to grab a gun,’ he pointed to a small crate beside him which was piling with black, long guns. Everyone quickly scrambled to the crate and hustled for a gun. After a few minutes of waggling fingers in the crate, they all had their fingers around black small weapons.
‘Now stand in front a target board, ten yards away. There’s a red line there to tell you.’
Soon, all of them, including James, were standing behind an oily red paint
. Since they were twenty seven and there were only fifteen practice boards, eleven of them had to sit down on benches under a wooden shade.
Commander Josh stood in the center of those who were ready to shoot. He held his hand gun in front of him and directed it to one target board.
‘Now. When you see Guardians holding guns and shooting the nonsense out of some Germs, you might think, wow, so cool, and so easy. Well, it’s not. Before they learn how to hold a hand gun, they train and practice shooting every time. I know some Guardians who were sacked because they couldn’t carry a decent gun.
‘Hold the gun around the handle with only three of your fingers that is your middle finger, your little finger and your ring finger, keeping your thumb and index finger on both sides of the gun, away from the trigger. You rest your finger on the trigger only when you’re about to shoot. Now cup your other hand over your dominant hand around the handle and grip the gun tightly, until you really feel the gun’s handle in your palm. Then relax your hand only very slightly.’
He paused for a moment and looked around at the class. Students were sweating uncontrollably, their guns shaking dangerously in their palms.
‘Keep your thumb well away from the hammer, boy.’ Commander Josh suddenly burst out on a pale boy. ‘Trust me, if that thing clicks on your finger, you won’t hold a spoon for weeks. And stop jerking like a sissy.’
He dropped his gun stance and strode across the field to the boy and placed two firm hands around the boy’s waist. ‘Keep calm. Relax your grip on the gun. Just so you can channel your power through it. And keep your stance. Your left foot should be slightly placed in front of your right, with your knees just a tad bent.’
The boy closed his eyes and relaxed the grip on his gun and corrected his stance.
Commander Josh nodded. ‘That’s it. Feel your energy flowing from your legs to the gun, not from your gun to your legs. Good. Now breathe calmly and keep your gun aligned horizontally. Thaat’s it.’
He turned to the rest of the class, by that time which the boy had ceased to jerk hysterically, holding his gun like it was a two second timed bomb.
‘And who told all of you to drop your stances? Quick! Before I mistake someone!’
Everyone shuffled into the correct stance, copying what Commander Josh had shown the boy. Commander Josh walked around each of them, breathing down their necks. He stopped by James for a second or so and pushed his hand slightly upwards and made him flex his shoulders a little. Without a word, he moved on.
‘To aim accurately, you must perfectly align the front sight to the rear sight, or as some Guardians call it, the target hoop. Aim the hoops at the red point of the target board. You might find it quite helpful with one eye closed.’ Commander Josh brusquely stopped talking and stood being the line of a thin girl, pointing his gun at the target board. When he shot and the sound of the bullet echoing around the field, his gun had hit the red dot, slightly to the left.
‘I’ll start from the last end over there. When I come to you, give it your best shot. Until then, just keep on practicing focusing.’
James stared at the bulls eye point through the target hoops. Every two to three minutes, he would hear Commander Josh distinctly bellow Fire! And someone would shoot a resounding bullet, most of them missing the point so incredibly. Some of them managed to scrape a yellow, green or even a red but were knocked back by sheer force and crashed into the ground.
It seemed like it was no time at all before Commander Josh suddenly materialized in front of James. ‘Give me your best, Recruit Winter,’ he said firmly. James swallowed and rested his index finger on the trigger, but he wasn’t alone.
The Transformat suddenly burned his wrist brutally like hot oil, and he was doing his best not to cry out and drop the gun. He had disgraced himself in intellectual class. He was not going to do same here. Then suddenly, as if by command, the heat flowed through his veins and steeled his arms and fingers tightly. Then it travelled to his eyes, and he it was as if his eyes were made to focus on the red dot.
He could all of a sudden see every conspicuous move in the air, every hidden object no human was to spot so vividly and sharply. From the slightly overgrown grass to the small thumping pulses on each and every of his fellow mates. He could even see a housefly slowly perch on a boy’s gun two yards away. It would suffer a shock of it’s life if the boy clicked the trigger.
It was a scary feeling, but he somehow knew he was supposed to have that feeling.
When he clicked the trigger, the bullet made an unmistakable beeline for the bulls eye point and pierced it right in the middle.
For a few seconds, Commander Josh just stared at the red dot, now a gaping hole. Then he regained his posture, put his hands behind his back and said with indifference, ‘Good work,’
But in the slightest moment of a second, James saw the cell give him a small wink.
The shooting lesson went on like that till Ben Diva mistakenly put his thumb in the way of the slide when he shot and received an intense, agonizing pain. Commander Josh dismissed the class and took him to the nurse.
‘I told you painstakingly not to put your thumb in the way of the slide didn’t I?’
After that they went for lunch in the Cafeteria, which took James and Leo about forty five minutes to find. Apparently, the Brain was not only huge, but consisted of many corridors and twists and curves, almost like a maze, which made it hard to find your way from anything to anything if you were a newcomer.
But, after a bit of getting lost and ending up in the Neuron Distress Message department, they were now safely gulping down what tasted like orange juice that was actually part oxygen whilst eating something that looked like a cross of a doughnut and a sandwich.
Cornie was sitting with them, next to James, chattering away plenty whilst James only half- listened, but he couldn’t say the nay or oui for Leo. Then, her friend called her to sit with them for a discussion. She only went half heartedly.
‘What a cell,’ Leo said, watching Cornie go.
James nodded.
‘Hm. I wonder what Seli must be doing right now. Training, you think?’ Leo said again as he took a large bite from the snack.
‘Don’t know. Look, Leo. I reckon, or rather, I know something isn’t right with Rognard. You gotta believe me.’
Leo breathed heavily and set the juice on the table. He looked like suddenly tired and bored. A look he and his sister always gave James when he mentioned this topic.
‘James. I- I understand it’s because of the greave and anger of losing your cousin that’s why you don’t really fancy Rognard. But you must understand that he’s a good guy. Why would he want to-‘
‘He tried to take my Transformat last time. But, somehow, it burnt him and woke me up.’
Leo groaned quietly. ‘James, I-‘
Cornie interrupted them. ‘Leonardo, we’ve got a phagocyte meeting now. Commander Josh said James shouldn’t come, though, dunno why.’
Leo jumped up from his seat. ‘Be right back, James.’
‘We won’t be long,’ Cornie smiled at James.
It took two minutes before James realized why he was still seated and not following his friends.
‘Wait a minute. Why shouldn’t I come?’ but Leo and Cornie were long gone.
So he took to walking along the halls and corridors of the Brain, hoping he would get lost, then he would have an adventure trying to get out of the maze.
He had just passed the City monitoring Department when he bumped into someone big and solid.
‘Oh, sorry.’ He aid absent mindedly, before he looked up and saw the serious face of Commander Josh staring into him.
‘Oh, James! Great. You just saved me two trips. Now I have only one. Can you take this to my office?’
He handed James a big brown envelope sealed with the Brain’s symbol.
‘Sure,’ James said as he took it.
‘Thanks. Just climb the stairs behind me and head left. You’ll see my name on one of t
he doors. I’ll Be back in a mo’.’
He hurried down the corridor James had just come from and disappeared. James sighed and climbed the brown stairs.
He turned left and headed through a marble corridor, stopping at a door labeled, Commander Josh Office; Commander of the Brain’s Guardian Army, Head of Trainers,mr.
He turned the knob and stepped into Commander Josh’s office. The room looked like a domain of a very busy man, or cell.
On a broad desk, papers and documents and paper clips were thrown about clumsily and pens settled on them, as if waiting to be finished. James settled the brown envelope carefully on the table.
It looked very official, very important. Some news worth hearing. Temptation was overcoming him to slip his hand under the seal and just spy the topic of the sheet inside.
After a few minutes, he ignored the thought. It must be some adolescent ‘Kick-ins’.
He turned to the maps posted all over the wall, so that little of it was left. There were maps of the Heart, of the Brain, of the Liver, and of the whole of Nemo city. Stuff he was thought in class.
His eyes scanned the maps with interest until they rested on a black hole at the right bottom of the Heart. He frowned. The place wasn’t named, nor was it sensibly drawn. It was directly at the bottom of the last elevator in the Heart’s Main Hall, The Atrium.
The door opened behind him and he turned to see Commander Josh walk into the room.
‘Mind my mess,’ he said, closing the door with a snap. ‘It’s been a very busy week. Deaths and robbery and sights of Singar everywhere. That guy needs to be caught.’
‘Um, who exactly is Singar, Sir?’
‘I told you, it’s Josh when we’re alone,’ Commander Josh warned. ‘Anyway, Singar is a new risen Germ in Nemo city. Ever since his arrival, the city has been turned upside down. He’s like a shadow, vanishing as soon as any Guardian gets closer. He doesn’t bother to clean up after himself, though, and we’ve never gotten any footage of him.”
Commander Gosh held up the brown envelope. ‘See this envelope here? I’ve been asked to read it carefully and look for clues and evidences. Miss Dome, remember her? She has been killed days ago, and now we find her body in a subway station in the Spine. She has a bullet through her head. And it’s probably Singar’s doing. He controls like, all the Bacteria in Nemo city, and rumor has it that he’s operating in other cities, too.’
He threw the paper down on the table with frustration. Now, James had an idea of how Commander Josh’s papers lay scattered on his desk.
‘And, Josh, why wasn’t I allowed to go to training with the others?’
‘Well,’ the cell started, sitting on the edge of his desk, just a free spot from scattered papers. ‘You see, in times of crisis like these, we need as much skilled Guardians as possible, and you, boy, are very talented. When you shot yesterday, you hit a perfect bulls- eye, which I wasn’t able to do for weeks. So, I’ve promoted you to the More Advanced Levels, MALS.’
‘That’s where we do the real stuff. That’s where we go into fights and rescue people,’
He paused, as if expecting some reaction from James.
James smiled. ‘Awesome and Commander Josh laughed. ‘Just the sort of attitude I want in you boy!’
‘Would Leo be in, too?’
‘We’re testing him further, but I think he will. And, I must tell you, there will be a test coming up next two weeks. A general test that will go through everything about being a true Guardian. Pass that, James, and you’ll be rewarded.’
There was some silence for a moment, which James created deliberately so that he could ask his next question without sounding pushy or like a talkative.
‘What is that black spot doing there?’ he asked, pointing to the map of the Heart’s Atrium. ‘It doesn’t seem like it’s a real thing. Just like some spilled ink or something.
Commander Josh surveyed James for sometime. Then he seemed to come upon a decision. ‘It’s not only the Leukocytes that protect Nemo City, you know.’
‘What do you mean-‘
The telephone rang, and Commander Josh picked it up.
James pointed to the door and whispered, ‘I’ll be leaving.’
Commander Josh gave him a thumbs-up to show that he had understood.
James walked back to the stairs.
The offer did sound awesome. Saving people and beating bad Germs, just like some hero.
He would pass that test.
The rest of the days until the test were fun, if not tedious. But James strived to pass each session and learn everything about being a true Guardian. Each morning, Rognard had dropped them after dropping Seli at the Heart at five o’clock and picked them up at six thirty, also after picking Seli up at the Heart.
In training, first, the trainees were set up for shooting and combat practice. They were like the first tests they had performed, but a little more advanced. For the shooting practice, they set up a dozen fake flying birds for each student with red dots hidden at different places, like on the beaks, under the wings on the foot, and so on.
Then, those bulls eye boards appeared again, only, this time, the red dots kept vanishing and reappearing at different places`. Then the ground suddenly became dark and they were told to cross the grounds in stealth, avoiding the robots and switch on the lights at the other side, without the robots spotting them.
And James topped the whole class, each time.
At the end of the semester, the whole class was in awe of James. He couldn’t blame them, though, they had been training for their whole lives and this new kid just flicks his arm and BAM! He’s topped the whole class.
And at the end of each class, Commander Josh was smiling down upon James like a great sun.
Leo was also admitted into the MALS, so was Cornie and a bunch of other Recruits. Leo was doing pretty well in his Lymphocytes class, where they were basically like war engineers of the Inside. They made weapons and machines like ammo tanks, grenades and bombs, war planes or Distribution planes for the Erythrocytes to supply the whole City with oxygen. So far, Leo was the top Lymphocytes in his class, too and he had already designed a digital 3-D model of the next Generation battle suits for the Inside. He was a celeb in the Anti-body Department.
Cornie however, worked in the Guardian class with James.
Then the day of the test fell upon them like the sky.
The mood in the waiting room that morning was deadly. There was silence everywhere; everyone had shut up, locking their selves in the suspense of the test.
They hadn’t been briefed yet about what the test was going to be like. But every one hour or so, Commander Josh or one of his other colleagues will come into the waiting room and mention out a name from a list.
Cornie was called after a few minutes.
A few others followed, and then Leo was gone.
After a whole 8 hours or so, James was the only one in the room, so when a Guardian came into the room, he didn’t wait for his name to be called. He got up quickly and headed the Training Field.
The ‘sun’ was shining dully outside. Leo and the rest of the class were sitting on benches at the far side of the Field. Leo and Cornie waved, and James half waved back before Commander Josh pushed him in front of a closed door.
A Guardian handed him a gun and a dagger and explained the rules to him.
‘Here’s how it goes. As soon as you enter through the door, you will be challenge and faced with a lot of tough challenges. If you are able to beat the challenges without getting shot at, which will render you asleep, and score a lot of points regardless of how low your time was compared to the others, you’ve won. Good luck.’
Commander Josh nodded at him. James nodded back and turned to the door. He opened it and stepped inside.