The Highturitan

I was sitting in my classroom with the rest of my fellow students. The teacher was concentrating on her lecture and it was a normal day—or so I thought. We were studying polymers and polymerization. The teacher began with styrene, but before I knew it, everything was fast-forwarding. The teacher now began moving so quickly, talking so speedily that it seemed only a minute had gone by, but the one hour lecture was about to end—But I could understand and remember every word she had said.

Suddenly, somebody knocked at the door, and in an instant, I was returned to the start—the teacher had not even written the word styrene yet, though I was close to completing the whole lecture.

This time anomaly would have freaked me out if it had been the first time. But as far as I can remember, I have always been able to manipulate time this way. It happened to me often; though I did not know why, or how to control it. My parents had always asked me not to mention this to anyone; ignore whatever happened.

The door opened and a tall, muscular serious-looking man in a white suit appeared. He did not enter, instead began talking to the teacher without looking at us. Then he turned, pointed at me, and began to talk to her again. He said something that made the teacher very angry and she asked him to leave the class. But the man did not like what she said; pushing her aside, he entered anyway. 

He stepped in, followed by five other men. They were wearing red. Each of them pulled out a gun and allowed the man in white to step forward. 

" Hello, children! My name is Agent Asphalt! I am here to retrieve one of you students for participation in a most noble project!" he said.

He was perhaps expecting some sort of reaction or question. He waited and then continued: " The lucky student who gets to be part of this is…Mr. Adrien Thomas. Please Mr. Thomas accompany me to the designated vehicle!"

Nothing. Nobody stood up. I knew this was me, but something about the way my teacher worryingly looked at us made me feel I should not provoke anything. The other students did not reveal me either.

" Adrien! Stand up now!—Or else!" 

And on that note, the men in red standing beside him loaded their guns and pointed them at the row of students in front of them. This aroused the teacher and she immediately walked up to Agent Asphalt and said hatefully, " You can't murder all these children!"

He turned abruptly and stared into her eyes. He pulled out a gun and pointed it at her forehead. She was frightened but stood resolute staring equally into his eyes. Then he said, " Oh!... But I can."

He loaded his gun, pressed it over her forehead, and was about to pull the trigger. I had to do something. I could not let him do this to her when I could stop it by revealing myself. So I stood up immediately, and suddenly all guns were diverted to me. The teacher tried to yell something, but in an instant was knocked out by one of the men in red.

Everyone looked terrified. Agent Asphalt motioned me forward and asked me to follow him. As he was about to close the door he pulled something out of his pocket and threw it into the class. I heard screams but could not turn. After some time I heard an explosion and realized what it was. I turned and tried to run to them, but was scooped up by one of them. They carried me away and the minute we were outside the school I heard explosions and the school burst open with flames from all sides.

They killed them. All of them. Why? What had they done?

They carried me to a large vehicle with a chamber at the back. It was opened and I was thrown into it. 

The chamber was like a large metal box. The walls were porous; small holes were made all over them. There were other people in the chamber too, some were kids, some were teens, like me, and the others were adults. They all appeared to be in some deep sleep. But something was really strange about it. They neither moved nor did their bodies seem in proper positions to be able to sleep. They were breathing, but lying as if they were dead.

I stood up and sat on the benches attached to the wall. After some time, I heard the engine start and suddenly the dull white light in the room went red and the pores emitted some sort of thick purple gas. Before I knew it I was fast asleep. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before; I had no dream, I couldn't feel my body. It didn't even feel like I was alive anymore.

When I woke up I found myself in a small glass tube. The tube was cylindrical and its floor surface only allowed me to sit down. I noticed that they had changed my clothes as well. Instead of the cotton shirt and denim pants I had been wearing previously, I was now almost naked. The only thing on me was an odd white underwear. It felt like wearing a stretchy metal. I looked around and saw that the whole room was filled with dozens of other men. 

Men, why only men? It seemed odd that no female was kidnapped. But then I saw a sign at the end of the room that red ' Male Highturitans Holding Warehouse'. What? What in the world is a Highturitan?

One by one all of the other captives woke up and each of them looked just as confused as me. Though my senses were back, I was still unable to speak. Then I saw some men in black long coats walk by. I heard them say to each other:

" So do all the Highturitans checkout?"

" Yup. All of 'em are pure specimens."

" Hedipa should be impressed."

" She should be! It took twelve years to create that test. But It's all worth it now that we've got the weapon's main ingredient."

" Think of it--a world for only the best of humanity--only a few steps away."

" The weapon maybe a few steps away, but I don't believe the new world will be born by tomorrow."

" Yes, I know that! But it is reassuring that plans are finally underway."

" You said it." 

And they passed him, went through the door, and left the room. I wish I could do that.

The days went by and I was barely alive. They treated us like filth. Feeding us only once and giving us water only twice each day. As for excretion we were given tablets once each day that somehow made our need to excrete disappear. It was horrible. They gave us injections, drugs, and took blood samples from us.

After a month passed, I was examined by one of the black coats and declared 'perfect'. I did not know what that meant but shortly afterward I was sent into a deep sleep again. When I woke up I was attached to some machine. My arms and legs were stretched far apart and fixed by metal cuffs. Wires were inserted into my body and connected to my veins. My arms, legs, chest, neck, and forehead had wires infused to them. Then all of a sudden a large amount of electricity was run through me. I felt myself dying. The electricity flew threw my veins. It felt like getting my bones crushed by a speeding train. Everything began to fast forward, but unlike my usual visions it kept on going and going. I needed to make it stop. I needed it to stop. I felt myself lose control. Everything became faster and faster. BOOM!  

When I woke up I was surrounded by broken… no destroyed machinery. My arms and legs were free now. I was in the center of a room covered with ashes and broken metal on all sides. Suddenly, I heard a mechanical sound, and the whole room was cleaned by water sprinklers from all sides of the room, revealing a large window in front of me. The same two black coats were on the opposite sides of it, talking enthusiastically. They didn't even seem to notice the wreckage.

 What had done it? But that was soon answered by the screen on the other side of the room. It showed me—trembling, crying, wailing, and then all of a sudden I began glowing. Every part of me gave out a blinding light and suddenly a large wave of energy exploded out of me that destroyed everything in the room. 

It was me. I had done this. But How? How could I explode like that? I was only human. Wasn't I?

The days past by and I began to learn more and more about my captors, their intentions, and my condition. I was what they called a Highturitan. A type of human having a supercharged brain and when such humans got exposed to extreme conditions, their brain would go into a sort of survival mode and try to fight back against the pain. 

They treated us like lab rats performing more and more experiments on us to provoke the many destructive actions we could do. It was extreme suffering…pure torture. But they seemed to keep their experiments to a limit, so we would stay alive.

Later on, I learned that my captors called themselves The Colours. They were a society trying to create, what they thought of as, a better world. They wanted to destroy all of the unworthy idle population and claim the world for the elite and intelligent. 

We, me and the other Highturitans, were their way of achieving their goals. They used us as weapons. They shot us with electricity till we began glowing and threw us of planes like bombs. We wiped cities and villages off the crater in seconds. 

For years they used us this way and slowly the world declined to a wasteland of sand and smoke. Day by day I grew weaker from this abuse. I was good at heart, and being used to murder so many innocent lives—It was torture. The guilt had begun affecting my powers and as the days went by, the black coats began to suspect I was reaching my expiry date:

" I think he can't take any more of this. He's holding himself back."

" Nah. He's just weak. Let's give him something more to eat and he'll probably last another year."

" I think we should just get it done with him now. No use keeping a blunt knife."

" Well. Let's see."

I knew I was getting weaker, I could feel it. Maybe my brain was tired of defending me so much that it gave up. Or It's so used to shocks it doesn't think they're dangerous anymore.

I survived the coming days and felt worse every minute of my existence. The guilt, pain, anger, depression, it began taking over me. I felt less and less inclined to try to survive anymore and if it weren't for the forced eating, I would now have gladly starved myself to death. At least I wouldn't be the cause of any more murders.

One day, two red coats came to my tube and began talking loudly about getting rid of some small village once and for all. It angered me. I wanted to die right now or kill everyone around me. But I kept my mouth shut. It wasn't my choice to decide. Then I heard one of them say " Good riddance" and that was enough. It was just too much. I couldn't take any more of it. I had been storing this rage inside of me for too long and it was time I said something about. But my anger overpowered me. It took control of me and BOOM!

But this time was different. I could sense myself being present. I was conscious and aware of what I was doing; more importantly, I wanted to do it. I wanted to blast the tube around me and go as far as to kill the red coats in front of me. Nothing more. I didn't want to hurt any of the other Highturitans. And to my immense surprise, my powers listened. I heard the wall around me ( which had been built to withstand any of my explosions) shatter and the red coats in front of me scream with pain.

When my vision cleared, I saw the two men lying on the floor. They were burned. Blood was spurting out of the parts the shattered fragments of the wall had penetrated. They were trembling with pain. And then DEAD. I exited my tube and saw my brothers still suffering. I wanted to free them all. But before I could try, I heard the sound of an alarm and many footsteps growing closer and closer.

I immediately ran. I ran out of the door and into a large hallway. I felt my heart beat faster and faster. There were two paths left and right, but which two choose. How would I know which would lead me to freedom and which to destruction? I glimpsed left and saw a fast-forwarded vision of me running through it and confronting a platoon of red coats armed with tasers and tranquilizers. I glimpsed right and saw myself run into two black coats and then through a door to freedom. Right, it is then. I ran as fast as I could, turned the ways my vision had guided me to do, and before I knew it I was face to face with the very two black coats who had experimented on me like some lab rat. They were the only thing standing between me and freedom. I guess I needed to kill them. I would have enjoyed it too.

But nobody knew the extent of my powers better than them—even me. They knew getting in my way was like volunteering to mount the gallows, so they stepped aside and begged me to spare them. I was in too much of a hurry to make time for revenge, so I took their offer and ran to the door and opened it to freedom.

But what I got to see was the most heartrending sight one could imagine. Nothing anywhere but sand, dust, sand, and more sand. It was like stepping into a desert that was haunted by dark spirits. It was night time and the moon's light only made the sight more and more lachrymose. 

I was confused. This was not freedom. This was not even the world I had once been taken away from. What happened? And then it struck me like lightning. And believe me, I knew how that felt.

I had happened. I had done all this. No—No time to dwell in the past. I need to run. Run far far away so they can never use me like this again.

And that was exactly what I did. I ran and ran, not stopping to look at the skeletons in my path. Not stopping to look at the graveyard of houses and buildings I had contributed to creating. I ran till I could no more. Once I had reached my limit my legs gave up and I stumbled to the ground. It was the first time in years I had felt the touch of dirt and soil. 

Now I finally stopped. I stopped and as the morning sun rose giving birth to a new dawn, I saw the little saplings sprouting underneath me. I felt the moisture in the air cleanse my inner and outer body of dirt, hate, anger, and instill hope. I observed and the more and more I saw them more and more my heart began to rise and enlighten.

These sprouts had risen through the soil by themselves. No gardener, botanist, or caretaker had given them resources or nourishment, they were doing it themselves. They were struggling and fighting for their place in the world and were succeeding. No kind of destruction was permanent. Nature wasn't going to sit down and let these maniacs try to do her job.

Nor was I going to sit around and wait for them to come and catch me again. I stood up and began to run again, but this time with even greater strength and animal spirit. I ran and ran, but unfortunately, It wasn't enough. After some time I heard the sound of trucks coming towards me. I knew it was 'The Colours' and they weren't going to let me go that easily. But I wasn't going to give up either. I took a deep breath and began dashing even faster and faster. 

But then something struck me. It landed on my calves, and the moment it hit me, I felt my legs go numb. I fell hard. 

I guess this was it. I tried, but now they were going to take me back to the warehouse and I was going to serve as their weapon for the rest of my life.

No! No! I'm not going back! Nor am I killing any more innocent people! If I can't live a life of hope, peace, and freedom, I won't live at all!

As I landed I saw a dagger just near me. I tried to move towards it quickly before I was completely numb. I could feel the toxin rushing through my legs to my upper body. I pulled out my last bit of strength and got close to the dagger. My spine gave up and I landed on the ground. But I still had my hands. I it stretched out and caught the dagger. I brought it to my neck and SLASH! That was the end.