

I

THE

SENTINEL

By

Aditya Chandrashekar

Editing : Mr. Mayank Singh & Team Foreword : Ms. Sushmita Gupta Cover Design: Aanvik Singh

Printing : Digital Graphics, Muscat

Sultanate of Oman.

Support : My sincere thanks to Mr. Kiran Asher,

Ms. Bridget Ganguly, Srivaths Mahadevan and above all my family & friends

# Foreword

Some days are bleak and so black that no amount of smelling or drinking coffee helps. On days like that a fiction and a hero from there makes all the difference. Young Aditya surprised me with one such extremely fast paced and modern plot. Within turning of a page I was totally sucked into the life of the protagonist wanting to know his fate while I hardly breathed. For one as young as he, Aditya's choice of words and phrases shows extreme maturity and at the same time provides an ease of imagery that is exciting.

I cannot stop smiling for this was expected. Even as a much younger boy his choice of movies and his selection of books were clearly ahead of his time. It was almost as though he could see or read more into them than the rest.

He has been very positively influenced and molded by both these early loves of his. "The Sentinel" has an
edge of the seat, nail-biting feel to it. It is almost like a book begging to be made into a movie. I can clearly see it soon becoming one of favourites of the young and not so young readers. A brilliant idea to say the least.

## -Sushmita Gupta
Prologue

I could hear the finality of the explosions from the surface. I could hear the inevitable destruction of the Earth.

After all, it was just a question of time. How long would it take for order to crumble? We all knew it was coming. But most of us did not know what to do when it came.

I knew.

The only to way to survive was to hide. Not even run, just hide amongst the shadows waiting for the smoke to clear. If you ran the Empire's Army would just you chase you down.

The Empire truly was ruthless. An enemy history had never come face to face before. They lurked in the shadows of time waiting for their chance and the day they got their chance? Well let's just say it wasn't pretty.
A couple of major terrorist attacks scattered across politically unstable areas and voila!

Remember what I said about waiting? Yeah they struck at the chime of the bell; the perfect assault. They dropped breadcrumbs for each agency to sniff and for them to declare whether the bread was Russian, Pakistani, Chinese or Korean among others. They just started the biggest political blame game.

The Europeans blamed the Chinese, the Chinese were onto the Koreans, the Koreans put it on the Americans, the Americans shifted it onto the Russians and the Russians loaded their nuclear weapons. The Empire just managed to create a World Cold War.

And oh boy did they capitalise on it. With world peace and public trust in shreds they progressed closer towards their goals: They crashed fragile stock exchanges, destroyed governments from the inside, took control of trade routes all the while building their
own army. The nations of the world had no hope. If they retaliated they would be welcoming tons of nuclear radiation at their doorstep.

It was a brainwashing. The Empire grew tenfold, each member recruited in hopes of creating 'a better world for all of humankind' and 'overthrowing the regimes of the world'. What used to be a terrorist group was turning into a new world order.

Safe to say that they've got what they had wanted for so long. The society that we now know as The Empire has apparently existed since the dawn of the modern man. They existed amidst the Romans, the Pharaohs, the Mayans, the Shogunates, the Mughals, the British reign and finally the United Nations. They've waited Millennia and The Empire has finally begun its tenure.

The Empire now rule a tiny blue planet in space called Earth or as they prefer to call it Pangaea. To them it
symbolised the unification of the Earth under their control.

To me it marked the start of their tyranny.

But is all this just the culmination of human greed? Or maybe a demented perception of peace? Or just our fate as destined by the heaves?

Whatever it may be, I don't think we're getting out of it any time soon. The Empire is much too strong to be overthrown from the outside or even the inside. Also who knows if this is really for the better or for the worse?

Maybe this is what we need, what we deserve.

Although the world might be left in tatters we'll build ourselves again. We always do. But will The Empire allow that? The king always has to take care of his throne. There's no doubt The Empire will do that too.
A day will come when we'll see the Earth restore itself to its former self. Mother Nature never did really like change. Unfortunately I'll be gone by then.

The Empire came, they saw and they conquered. But a sentinel will rise; rise to put down The Empire.

Hopefully that is.

# Chapter One

...............................................

Troubled Beginnings

The phone went off once again.

"Hello, Rinston Leroy speaking," I picked up knowing who was on the other side.

"Mate, where the hell you at? I've been trying to get to you all day!" Oh boy here we go again. This guy really won't take a hint.

"I know. Also where do you expect me to be at three in the morning Gary? Okay you blithering idiot what do you want?" I question.

"I'm in a mess Leroy and I need your help."

"Oh gee what a surprise to me at three in the morning. You need me to pay off your debt to a dealer don't you?" This was just a day in the life of Gary White. Get into a 'lucrative' deal with some dealer but meanwhile lose all the money that you need to pay the dealer
with by betting on street fights, then owing the dealer twice the amount for being such an idiot and finally stalling my life processes to get me to pay it off.

"Um no," Wow, this was new. "Then what is it then?"

"I decided to take a shot at one-a those street fights down the alley ya know. I bet hundred krones on me self. I missed it by a whisker mate. But I'll get Rory next time and return your money Rinston. Just get me clean this final time."

Now this was just getting on my nerves. He's attempted a variety of stupid things in the twelve years I've known him. Gambling, betting, conning, pawning, auctioning you name it. But never has he taken part in a street fight, bet on himself and then lost. Gary loves earning his krones, the problem is that he isn't very good at earning them.

"I don't have hundred krones Gary. I need it for college." This time I'm not going to be that generous. Enough is enough. Anyways I need that money to pay for my tuition.
"Mate,Iowethreehundredkronestothelad," Nowwhat in the name of the Empire was this? "I bet a hundred on me self but Rory, the bloke that I was fighting with bet two hundred on himself. So that means I owe him a grand total of three hundred krones. I've got two hundred on me self but need ya to pay off the other hundred. Whaddaya say?"

The nerve of this man. First he wakes me up at three in the morning and then- oh never mind.

I cut the line and pull the covers back on me. Let it rain, snow, hail I don't care. Nothing is going to take away my beauty sleep. Not even if the Taskforce barge down my door.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"Mr. Rinston Leroy?" Someone rang the doorbell. "Would you please open your door? We need to speak to you,"

I looked at my digital clock. "4:26 AM" Didn't I say I wouldn›t wake up even if the world ended?
"Its your headmaster."

What was the headmaster of the college doing at my dormitory door at four in the morning? I scramble out of my tiny bed, if you can even call it that, and proceed to open the door not caring that I was just in my standard Empire supplied boxers.

"Yes sir?" I asked wide-eyed as I opened the door. Behind him were four armed guards decked in the vicious Taskforce uniform.

"Good morning Rinston. We just need to talk to you about your friend Mr. White. I'm sorry to say that the Taskforce found his body in a dumpster outside the campus. You are also under arrest for the murder for Mr. White."

Wait what? Gary was dead? But I just spoke to him an hour ago. How could he be dead within an hour? And how did I kill Gary? I haven't even stepped out of my room. Other than that why would I kill Gary?

"Don't try to put up an act lad. We have eye witnesses
and physical evidence." A gruff officer spoke from behind.

Well he was right. Nothing I would say or do could convince the Taskforce but I tried nonetheless.

"But sir that isn't possible. I've been in my dormitory the whole night and haven't stepped out, other than that Gary White rung my phone just over an hour ago." I said.

The Taskforces officers looked at each other and then one of them said, "You can say that to your jail mates," What did I say? The Taskforce of The Empire were never really ones for actual interrogation and truth. Picture a bully taking a piece of candy from a little kid, just exponentially more violent and cruel. Yeah they were that kind of 'warriors of justice'. I wonder what kind of evidence they actually had on me given the fact that I never actually murdered my friend of twelve years.

I was then handcuffed and hauled into one of their Taskforce vehicles. Inside the vehicle were two other
men, one was stout with a full beard and the other was a lean blonde with sharp features and a bruised eye.

Wonder what they must have done to find themselves here.

In my nineteen years of life in Area 32 of The Empire I've probably witnessed at least a thousand people being chucked into an armoured van and then driven off to wherever the Empire was sending them.

Guess today was my turn. I've been internally preparing for this day since forever. I knew that I would be one of those people being hauled off into a van. It was just a matter of time I thought. Well looks like I was right.

Maybe it was just gut feeling or it was some kind of subconscious fear from my experience of watching all those unfortunate people. It was only natural.

The Taskforce officers sat on the other side of the van laughing among themselves. I could hear bits and pieces of their conversation.

"Did you know that General's wife was executed
yesterday? The General's face was priceless! And I was there for all of it!" Sadistic.

If there was one word I could describe The Empire with, it would have been sadistic.

I looked at the lean blonde man sitting on my right. He seemed unnaturally calm, suspiciously calm almost. While the stout man on my left was shivering to bits. Probably because of what he thought what fate awaited him. I didn't blame him.

The Taskforce officers broke into another fit of laughter but abruptly stopped when there was a resounding thud from the roof of the vehicle.

They immediately drew their rifles and pointed them at the roof. Another thud sounded and they opened fire at the roof.

The blonde gave me a look that conveyed, "Now's our chance." While the stout man had his hands on his eyes.

The gunfire ensued as the noise from above continued.
"By the way my name is Rory if you were wondering." The blonde said into my ear before pulling out a pistol from his back pocket and effectively subduing each of the preoccupied guards who were still firing blindly at the roof oblivious to us.

I was left shocked while the other guy still had his hands on his eyes.

The door of the armoured van opened and a woman decked in a black suit with black helmet stood outside. " That was savage Rory," The person said as she lifted her helmet off. "And hello Rinston, its so good to finally meet you."

I just stood there completely astounded.

Then realization hit me. This Rory person and this lady in the black suit planned this. But somehow they knew me but the thing was I didn't know them.

Wait where I did I hear the name Rory today? Wasn't Rory the name of the person that Gary lost against?

"Rinston I'm so sorry that I have to do this to you. Its just
a precaution." I heard the lady say in the background. What did she say again?

After that, all I saw was black.
Chapter Two

...............................................

Confused Conversations

Oh my head hurt. I touched my head to find a bandage wrapped around it. What had just happened?

I sat upright and found myself in a large room with a television, a couple of armchairs and a coffee table. I was sitting on a bright yellow couch. This definitely wasn't my dormitory room.

I looked across the room at a window. It was dark and rainy outside in contrast to yesterday's hot weather. Where was I? I pinched myself to check if I was having a really weird nightmare.

No, this was real.

I glanced at the rest of my body to check if anything else was bandaged and then saw a handcuff on my left wrist. Then everything struck me, Gary, the arrest, that guy named Rory and some lady who hit me with some kind of weapon on the head.
"Who names their child Rinston? That's like the worst name a parent could give to their child," I heard a male voice say and buzz of laughter from the other side of the room's door. I quickly jumped behind the couch. I noticed that this voice didn't have the same kind of accent that I did. This person sounded like he was from Area 2 or 3 perhaps and yet again he knew who I was.

"Where did good ol' Rinston go?" The male voice asked slightly amused as they entered the room. "He's behind the couch Patrick." The lady from yesterday, today, whatever day it was said.

"I know that Lana. I just want to play a little game of hide and seek with him," What was 'hide and seek'? Were these people even from any of the Areas?

"Lookie here." Patrick rounded the corner and said.

I immediately sprang up and made a break for the door only to be blocked by Patrick again. "There's no need to fear us Rinston. We're neither the Taskforce nor anything like them. In fact we're actually here to ask for your help. So please take a seat."
I hesitated but still went back and sat down on the couch before asking, "Who are you people and why did you abduct me from the Taskforce van?

"Abduct? More like saved! Also we'll answer all your questions. Just wait for a bit. Rory still has to arrive. I hope you acquainted yourself with him. He's like our de facto leader even though I think I'd be a way better leader than him."

"Pat! Don't disrespect Rory; he's a better leader than you'll ever be, the lady from yesterday said.

"What? I'm just joking. Also meet our lady friend Lana, Rinston. You may have encountered her yesterday. From your experience I hope you have realized that you do not want to mess with- Ow! What was that for? I'm just stating facts!" That got him a whack on the head.

The door suddenly opened and in came Rory with his clothes soaked with rainwater. I stood up.

"Glad to see everyone's here," Rory looked at me and
gave me a nod. I nodded back at him. "Well make yourself comfortable Rinston,"

The group of six, including myself, sat in what I presumed to be the living room of theirs. Patrick, Rory, Lana and another man and woman I didn't recognize.

"Let's all introduce ourselves formally shall we?" Rory said.

"Hi! My name is Lana Olsen." Lana gave me a soft smile. She had raven coloured hair.

"I'm Patrick Hertha, the true leader of this group. They just don't know it yet." He said with a smirk. That earned him another whack on the head. He was relatively well built and sported a tattoo on his neck. I thought tattoos were banned here in Area 32?

"My name is Avi Roy." This person too didn't seem to be from Area 32. Avi just looked monotonous with his short dark hair, clean-shaven face and rectangular spectacles, he didn't not share the same enthusiasm his companions had.
I shifted my gaze to the other person I did not recognize. "Hello, my name is Reina O'Brien. I'm Rory's younger sister." Well if you looked close enough Reina and Roy shared similar features. But Reina had brown hair while Rory was distinctly blonde.

"Now that this is done let's get to the real deal. I anticipate that your questions will be along the lines of 'what am I doing here? , 'who exactly are you?' and 'did you kill Gary White?'.

Firstly I'd like to assure you that Gary White is very much alive and that his 'death' was just an elaborate ruse to kidnap you. Secondly you are here because we need your help..... to save the world that is. Who are we? We are the Liberators of Earth. A specialized group whose sole purpose is to overthrow the Empire and restore planet Earth to its former glory.

We've been watching for quite some time Rinston and you are the most gifted person we have ever seen and do you know what's the best part? You don't even realize it. You have so much potential, physically and mentally. It's basically in your genes.
So it's our duty to train you and prepare you to be the pioneer of what we believe will be a massive revolt against The Empire.

Do you understand the position you're in?"

I just sat there listening to each word Rory was saying. I was special somehow according to them and they also want me to take down the Empire. They had also admitted to spying on me.

"What if I don't want to overthrow the Empire? Maybe I'm happy with the way it is."

"Well that's where you're wrong Rinston. In your heart you know that you despise the Empire. You despise them for taking away your parents, despise them for ruining your childhood, despise them for arresting when you didn't even commit a crime, despise them for all the pain they've caused you these past few years in college. Yeah you hate them. Also I know everything there is to know about you, so don't bother trying to hide any information from us.
I'm also going to prove to you that you have enhanced capabilities; the preferred word here would be a superpower. Yeah, you have superpowers and we're going to prove it to you. The Empire wouldn't even know what hit them."

This was....... Extremely confusing.

What have I gotten myself into? A band of psychopaths who claim I have superpowers and to want to use them to take down The Empire?

"Hello Rinston? You've zoned out on us man. What do you think about it?' Patrick asked.

I took a deep breath and said, "I think you lot are crazy. You want me, a twenty-one year old college student, to overthrow The Empire. Who mind you, have an army that has millions in number. Can I just go back to where you abducted me from? That is before I report you maniacs to the Taskforce."
Patrick chuckled and said, "That isn't quite possible. You unfortunately have been declared a dead man. According to Taskforce records you were shot down while trying to escape. Returning could be a little bit of hassle for you. Also I forgot to mention it to you, we were the ones that tipped the Taskforce off saying that you murdered Gary White. They were more than happy to arrest you I guess.

As for Gary's true fate, Rory tranquilized him and dumped in that garbage can after the fight. By the way, that fight was pure chance. Rory never meant to fight. It was just that Gary was being such a cocky baboon that Rory couldn't control himself. He got himself a bruised eye in the process unfortunately.

Coming back to the point, you have to agree. There is no other path for you. We'll show it to you that we are completely serious. Trust me, when I was first rounded up by these guys I had the same reaction. But this is really on a whole other level. It takes time to comprehend the situation and we understand that.
So make yourself at home because you are in for the long haul".

Again I sat there just listening to what they were on about. This really was serious and by the looks of it, these guys went through a lot of pain to get me here cleanly.

All I could do was sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Note the sarcasm.
Chapter Three

...............................................

The Birth of 'Rinzler'

"Man we've got to give you a new name. Rinston Leroy? It sounds like something out of an Empire infomercial. We have got to give you a new name. This is priority number one. Leave all the physical training and the unveiling of your superpowers business aside. I'd like to call this our very first squad goal." Patrick was talking about this as if his life depended on it.

This was day three in what these 'Liberators' called their 'den'. I was sitting with Patrick on one of the sofas, he was extremely eager to discuss pressing issues like changing my name.

I learned that this place of theirs was still apparently in Area 32 and that there was a low chance of them getting caught here, as this was one of the more lenient regions. This region also seems to rain a lot as indicated by the nonstop rain that's been harrowing us since the day I ended up here.
They also told me that this den of theirs is a big piece of history. The building was previously known as the Cheltenham Castle and that the Empire destroyed it in bombings. I did not know that structures had actual names other than 'Building 146' or something.

Rory found the ruins of Cheltenham Castle back when he was a teenager while he was on the run from the Taskforce for stealing some rations. He and the rest of the Liberators renovated it and made it their home base.

Rory too was from Area 32 but ever since that incident he's been careful to not come back to Area 32. Lana told me it took him quite a lot of convincing to get him to come on their expedition to 'recruit' me.

"Dude you really zone out a lot."

"Oh yeah, sorry. What were you saying would be a good name?" I asked.

Believe me, Patrick's eyes were sparkling when he said this, "We could go for a name that rhymes with Pat
you know? Like Matt or Nat or maybe even Zatt. You can also try names like Will, Paul, Christopher. All this generic Area 32 names could work too. If there's one thing that I commend the Empire for it's the freedom to choose our own name. They gave a generic name to everything in existence except our very own names. Imagine them giving us a name like Citizen 3034 or Resident 89322. Not that they haven't done it in other aspects of life. Jeez couldn't they have been subtler when naming everything with the prefix 'Empire'? We get the fact that you are the undisputed rulers of the Earth but really? Empire Natural Hair Oil? Ridiculous I've se-"

"What was Earth like before the Empire took over? I really don't know much since I've never had conversations with any person who has actually experienced that time." I said. Life before The Empire had always intrigued me since my childhood but I never made any attempts to actually quench this intrigue of mine. I was scared of The Empire.

What I had gathered nonetheless was that around
two decades ago a major war broke out between the regions of the world and that The Empire was the culmination of it. Ever since that war The Empire grew stronger and stronger in such a way that no revolution could bring it down. That's why I don't understand how these Liberators are going to liberate the Earth using me.

"You zone out way too often Rinston," Patrick said with a chuckle. "Also to answer your question, I don't really know since I was just about your age back then too. But you could ask Rory. He's the eldest of us and actually kinda remembers what went down. Rory's father was a big shot politician in the UK and when The Empire came knocking on his door he was the only one courageous enough to try to push them back a step. The very first British Liberator I'd say. Maybe that's what got him killed. You should really ask Rory."

"Where was this UK and British place that you just mentioned?" I asked. There was a lot I needed to know before I could truly comprehend what was going on.
Patrick gave me a smirk and said," Friend, Area 32, the place that you reside in, was formerly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or otherwise as Great Britain. The UK itself was split into various regions called England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I do not understand how you don't know this. I understand that you never had an adult figure from that time to explain it to you but come on! You must have heard it somewhere. Like maybe the language that Area 32 speaks, English, also gave its name to the land, England? Shocking really.

"Nope never heard of any of this. This probably means that The Empire is pretty good at erasing the past. They don't want us know of the past and then revolt against them I guess. Isn't the term for this 'brainwashing'? I read the word in some obscure old magazine from the early Empire days." I said.

Patrick patted my back, "Rinston, I think you're becoming more of a Liberator every day. These are the ideas that have to be spread to the rest of the area. They need to know that they can actually fight against the Empire. "
"Patrick, I've been here just three days. I still don't quite understand the whole concept of this. It's like being blind for your entire life and then one fine day you can see a rainbow." I said with a laugh.

"You know what a rainbow is but have never heard of the United Kingdom? The Empire really has a messed up education system," He said raising an eyebrow. "We really have to give you a crash course of the history of the world. From the Egyptians and the Greeks right up to the 21st century."

Egyptians? Greeks? This sounded like one of those weird Empire commercials. The Empire really had done an in-depth brainwashing. But was the 21st century? We'd learnt that a century was equivalent to one hundred back in arithmetic. "Hey Patrick, what's the 21st century?" I asked him.

"That my friend is the era we live in. Can you tell me what year we live in?" He questioned me.

"Um, Year 21 of The Empire?" I hesitantly said.
Patrick rolled his eyes. " The year we live in my friend is actually 2045 Anno Domini. Haven't you ever wondered what came before Year 1 of The Empire?"

"I thought the Empire referred to that as the irrelevant past? We were never taught about it in school." I said.

"You my friend, have a lot to be taught about," Patrick said. "Let's just get back to getting a new name for you yeah?"

Did I really need a new name? My parent's obviously named me Rinston for a pretty good reason. So I see no reason to change it. " Patrick let's keep this name thing for another day. Just talk about life before the Empire."

He rolled his eyes again, "You are so boring, just like your name. You gotta combine life with a little bit of –" Patrick stopped speaking abruptly. His face suddenly lit up and he howled, "Voila! Your new name can just be combination of Rinston and Leroy! Let's see. Rinroy? Stonler? Stonoy? Rinler? Rinsler! I've got it! It's gonna be Rinsler."
Rinsler? That sounded like someone who rinses stuff. " Wait. How are we going to spell your new name? 'Rinsler' isn't cool enough. Let's spell it with a 'z'.

Like 'Rinzler'! That sounds amazingly cool. Patrick sounds like an old granny's name in comparison to that."

Rinzler huh. Well I think I've just got to accept my fate at this point.

"Hey guys! I found a new name for our dear friend Rinston Leroy! From now on all of you have to call him Rinzler!" Patrick ran through the halls of the building screaming to anybody who would listen. Or wouldn't listen. I don't think he really cared.

But anyways, today marked the birth of Rinzler, Liberator of the United Kingdom.

Damn I liked the sound of that!

# Chapter Four

...............................................

Physical Training for Dummies

My alarm went off on my bedside table for the third consecutive time in five minutes. This was torture. Probably worse than that drowning thing that I heard the Taskforce does to some select unfortunate set of 'criminals'.

I grabbed the alarm and chucked it to the other side of the room. Thankfully it went dead. I hadn't had a good night's rest in two weeks and it was really starting to mess with my brain. I rolled over and pulled the covers back over me, preparing myself to continue my sleep which had oh so graciously interrupted my sleep. Back at the dormitories of my college we never had the liberty of an alarm clock. We had to train ourselves to get up for the morning assembly, which was at 5:30am. Was 5:30am even considered morning?

"Rinzler get up. It's time for training!" Oh the skies had to be kidding me!
Lana walked into the room and sprinkled water on my face using some kind of spray. "Wondering what this is? This is my special wake up spray that I use to wake up the boys. Every time you get up late you get to have a nice meeting with this spray here, got it?" I could barely hear what Lana was on about. She had sprayed water right into my ears.

"Okay okay, I'll get up. Just don't use that thing on me ever again." I mumbled, still in sleep.

That got me another spray of water on my face.

I was ready in my newly supplied training gear courtesy of the Liberators and was walking to the training room. Apparently there were Liberators all over the other Areas just like them. A few of these Liberators from Area 21 or something had access to an warehouse of just military gear, training gear and who knows else what. So they supplied to everybody else. To be honest it was kind of neat to be doing all this right under the Empire's nose. Even I, who was involved in lots of shady business courtesy of Gary had
no clue anything of this magnitude was even going on. What I also don't understand is why they picked me. There might have been others too who possessed the same 'enhanced capabilities' that I possessed. Yet they made no mention of watching them and trying to recruit them. Weird.

"Ready for your first training session Rinzler?" Rory asked once I entered the room. "We pay a lot of attention to melee combat as well as weapon combat. You do have to fight trained soldiers who are much more equipped and much stronger than you. We'll start off with the basic physical workouts and will slowly move onto more challenging exercises. You have all the time in the world, there's no rush. Also remember you'll have your fair share of mental exercises that Avi and Reina will handle. They're the sharpest of us.

Finally, believe in yourself. There's a reason why you're here amongst us. You will soon understand why you are different from the rest of us too. It's just a matter of time.
What then followed was the most grueling training session of my life.

Rory made me perform some 'basic' workouts like push ups, weight lifting, cycling, boxing etc. To think it was just me repeating the same thing over and over again. And to think that the rest of them performed these very same exercises without complaint every day.

My diet too was completely overhauled. The tasty food that I encountered in the first few days of my stay here that was in complete contrast to the bland canned food that I was given back in the dormitories, yeah that was gone. I was back to eating bland boiled food, only this time it was supposed to be healthy for me.

It was like slavery. Not that slavery was particularly uncommon in the surrounding Areas.

I guess I kind of misjudged of Avi as being monotonous when he was actually anything but. I think he just needed to open up to me. Avi and Reina were in charge of giving me my re-education and erasing
whatever the Empire had forced up my brain. Not that whatever they forced up my brain really had an effect on me.

I'd never been one to be too extreme. I was always neutral. I held my own and hoped for the best. This was even true when it came to my loyalty to the Empire.

I had always despised the Empire for what they had done to me but apart from that I never really cared what they did as long as it did not affect me. This may be selfish in some perspectives but the reality was you had to be selfish to survive. The guys here at Cheltenham tried to turn the tide, they taught me the concepts of democracy and the different forms of human rights. Although I'd been here a mere two weeks, I'd actually learnt a lot.

My days usually consisted of reading the vast amount of books they had here along with bringing myself up to scale with the Empire. Like understanding their own twisted form of government, the location of some of their more crucial buildings. Analysing the profiles
of some of their more higher-ranking officers and of course how they came to dominate the planet.

What used to be a intrigue that never really went forward had now blossomed into full blown curiosity. An unquenchable thirst even.

I also observed the Liberators routines. From every small part of the lifestyle to their adventures these past two weeks.

They still hadn't called me up to one of their escapades, as I was deemed 'insufficiently trained in the art of combat and strategy'. Not that they were wrong. I hadn't even hurt a punched an inanimate object until today.

I did tell you that I was neutral.

"Hey Rinzler! Join us for dinner." Reina called out as I sat in my room pondering. I had been assigned my very own room too. It was probably twice the size of the dormitory I had and the bed was like sleeping on one of the clouds in the sky. It still didn't help my
sleep though. I wondered how big Cheltenham Castle actually was. After all according to Avi a castle is a huge structure with dozens of rooms that a King and Queen of a kingdom resided in. Cheltenham Castle itself was ruined to bits and they must have only restored a small section of the structure for their use. I hadn't explored the entirety of the place yet with some rooms and closets still being a mystery to me.

How had I gotten myself here? From a lonely apathetic college kid to a Liberator in-training to help save the world. It astounded me completely.

"Hey Rinston you coming to eat?" Lana popped her head into the doorway.

"Yeah, I am. Sorry just got a little lost in thoughts here. By the way, I believe the name is Rinzler. According to Patrick Rinston Leroy is a dead man," I said with a smile. "Shall we eat? I'm starving so please don't tell me It's going to be boiled carrots and sprouts again."

Lana just laughed and walked back to the dining room.
Forget all the intricacies and complications of the situation I was in. I was in fact starting to enjoy it here. It did not seem like I was here to save the world. It seemed like I was here to live life and I hoped that these folks (a word that Rory taught me) would stay by my side for the rest of my life, however long it would be. That was the impact they had on me. That was the impact of liberation from the Empire.

The Empire could go jump off a cliff. Otherwise I was going to push it off.

# Chapter Five

...............................................

Crazy Cartographics

My eyelids were holding on for dear life. It was so tempting to just close my eyes and nap right there on that desk.

Avi was attempting to teach me 'basic' mathematics that included such exquisite and diverse topics such as 'Calculus', Trigonometry', 'Geometry', 'Statistics' and much-much more. Note the sarcasm.

During my entire school life all I learnt was how to add, subtract and multiply numbers. Now from where did the letter 'x' come into play? It was like trying to spell a name with numbers. Perhaps Rinzler could also be spelt 99658155. Who knew? I for one wouldn't have.

I felt a piece of wood hit my forehead. "Rinston Leroy, you do not have the right to sleep in my class!" Avi barked. He was normally reserved and quiet compared to the rest of us but when it came to his job he was more
merciless than the Taskforce themselves. He even had his own room for research. This room was also utilised as classroom with desks, writing boards, timetables, the whole shebang. I preferred to call this room as the 'dungeon of torture' following my experiences with mathematics here.

"Avi, how is knowing whether x=y going to help me decimate the Empire's army?" I asked giving a pained expression. This really was torture.

Avi gave me a glare and said, "This isn't about you beating up Empire forces. This is about you being harder, better, faster, stronger than them." I raised an eyebrow.

"Don't I have to be harder, better, faster, stronger to beat them? Isn't that the whole purpose of this thing?"

Avi groaned in frustration. "Just do the math Rinzler. Just do the math." Why has he being so irritable?

After a few grueling sessions of math I moved on to the next mental training on my timetable. Yes, I was
serious. I had been assigned a timetable.

Mornings were physical exercise, followed by lunch, then mathematics and sciences with Avi and then history and literature with Reina after a short break, which was where I had to go to, this being my break. Of course this timetable was overruled when there was a mission on hand but I still didn't accompany them in their activities. I had to monitor them from the control room as well as complete the homework that was given to me by them.

Forget everything that I said about enjoying it here. I'd rather be in an Empire jail cell or labour camp than being holed up and forced to study random subjects. But the only subject that I was truly interested in was the Empire.

Every now and then the guys would sit me down and give me a run through of the Empire's latest activities. Who was the last General to be executed? Which was the latest Area to have an economic boom? How many students topped the most recent Empire annual examinations? All of it mattered.
Those very same General's children could be potential Liberators seeking to avenge their father's death. The Area that had an 'economic boom'? That may have been due to a weapons development facility that has been set up there. Those students may have been the latest recruits to become high-ranking officers in the Empire hierarchy. As I said, all of it mattered.

The Empire was weird in an aspect though. It didn't have an emperor. An Empire without an emperor is like a tree without its roots. It cannot exist.

This led us to another theory that we discussed yesterday. It had to have one undisputed leader. The question was; who was he? Or perhaps where was he?

Throughout its entire lifetime the Empire has never had a clear-cut leader. The Empire also referred to itself as "we" even when an individual belonging to the hierarchy of was speaking about himself, weird indeed. Also the Empire has never had a legitimate headquarters per say, they've been everywhere all the time.
Even the powers of each of the Areas are split equally, no matter what the size. Areas have always had a governmental building and from what I have heard from Rory the structure of the building has always remained the same, in shape and size in all of the Areas of the world.

There were totally 36 governed Areas of the Empire.

Yesterday the Liberators recovered a world map of the time before the Empire and after returning to the castle I took a quick glance at it and compared it with current "Areas of The Empire" map. The Areas were not too different from the "Political Map of The World – 2012", the map that was recovered from an abandoned mineshaft in Area 29. Area 29 was known for its abundance of minerals and ores and The Empire had taken control of basically all the reserves so to find an abandoned one was quite the surprise to the Liberators of Area 29. They were on the run from the Empire and were desperate to find a new location to take shelter in. Deep in the forests they found that mineshaft and subsequently that map.
Since our Area 32, was closest to Area 29, they had called us in to recover the map in case they were caught and the map destroyed.

So why such importance to a world map of the days of old? Well, the catch here was that the map from the year 2012 Anno Domini had Empire markings and symbols.

In 2012, the world did not even know that an organization called the Empire existed. The first recorded use of "Empire" with its current meaning was only in the year 2019 according to documents salvaged by Liberators of Area 2.

What was the Empire doing in that abandoned mineshaft in 2012? 7 years before its recognition? Also why is that mineshaft now abandoned? It still seems to have quite a bit of ore left. So many questions just a few answers.

As I said, all of it mattered. Small details like that always had a deeper meaning when seen in hindsight.
But what really mattered was that we had a map with Empire markings that could have told us a whole lot more about the Empire than we already know.

We really didn't get a real opportunity to analyse the map the previous day with them being exhausted from traveling. It was very much a challenge to travel between Areas undetected by the Empire's Border Control. You'd need to create perfect fake identity cards and have perfect disguises to get through the borders especially after the Control had amped up the securities following the capture of a dozen Area absconders. Other than that they had to be careful while making their way to the location of the abandoned mineshaft albeit the mineshaft was some ways off from civilization. You could never tell if you were under surveillance by the Taskforce or any other military wing of the Empire.

So it was only after they got their due rest that we could pursue our interests of the map.

I looked at my watch. Well it was time for my final session of today, history and literature with Reina.
What I didn't understand was that they were exhausted and thus weren't up to analyse the map but they weren't exhausted enough to not run my training sessions, both physical and mental. There was no logic there. Wasn't teaching a rookie a much more straining job than sitting down and analyzing an extremely intriguing and interesting piece of paper?

Somehow that told me that they didn't really want to analyse the map and that sounded extremely suspicious to me. What were they hiding from me? What was in that map that stripped away their enthusiasm completely? Cuz' when that call from Area 29's Liberators came about an important document scavenged from an abandoned location they were as eager as a Taskforce officer waiting to arrest someone. It was their first lead in weeks in their mission to gain information about the Empire and my first lead overall. So what had transpired during that mission?

I looked at the watch again, I had to get to Reina's room. I got up from my relaxed position on the couch and made my way to her room.
Unlike Avi, Reina preferred to keep her sessions in her room rather than the actual training room. She was much more laid back and relaxed about it than him. She was much more open too, maybe I could get some information out of her? I couldn't really speak to her since they came back so this might be my chance.

All of them looked off since returning from the trip, Reina included.

I thought the Empire was secretive; guess it's the same case with my new found friends too. They hadn't really shared all that much about themselves in the month I'd been here. Just a few important details from here and there but nothing that actually told me who exactly they were. Nothing about their own intricate past, nothing about their families, nothing about their personal experience about how they came to be Liberators.

Other than that they hadn't made their own agendas clear to me. What did they exactly plan to do? All I heard was about their missions which I witnessed them going about every other day which usually ended
up with nothing substantial, except this last one of course, and I heard about what a few other Liberators are doing around the other Areas.

So really, what did they want to do after all those missions? What was their real plan to take out the Empire? Go all guns blazing? Was that their plan?

I needed to know that is if they knew what they were going to do first.

I looked down at my watch for a final time, I was five minutes late, and then opened the door to her room.

"Rinzler, you're five minutes late. If I were Avi you're punishment would be doing the dishes for an entire month. But since I'm not I'm going to keep you here for ten minutes extra." Reina attempted at joking.

That sold it to me. Reina was not great at hiding her feelings, as indicated by her attempt to lighten the mood with a joke. Lighten her own mood that is.

# Chapter Six

...............................................

Bare Knuckle Blaring

The alarm went off signaling the start of another grueling day, another grueling physical training. Except this wasn't my usual alarm.

My alarm was just a beeping noise over and over again as per the usual alarm clocks that were manufactured. This one seemed to be much more louder and had a deep sound.

But I'd heard this alarm somewhere before......

Ah yes, this kind of sound signaled a red alert. I'd learnt this in grade four in my "Safety Studies" class. This kind of alarm was to signal any kind of danger such as natural disasters such as Tsunamis and Earthquakes. Even after being such monumental jerks they did seem to care about their citizens, although it was just educating us to save ourselves when disaster struck.
The alarm continued to blare over the next five minutes. So much for my extra ten minutes of sleep. I walked of my room and strode into the living room with my ruffled hair and drool dried over my mouth to investigate the source of the noise.

Rory and Avi were up on a ladder toying around with a blinking red light hanging from the ceiling, the source of the noise. I was right; it was that red alert kind of alarm.

"Hey Rory, what's the new alarm for?" I shouted over the noise. He turned his back to look at me only for him to lose his footing and come crashing to the ground. Avi and I rushed to help him stand up.

"Ouch my head. Don't pick me up, I feel extremely dizzy."

"Dizzy?" I asked. My vocabulary had grown exponentially since coming here but there were still new words that I needed to get myself acquainted with.
Avi looked at me and said, "You know when you feel like your brain is all wobbly and you feel like you're gonna fall down? That's dizziness."

"Isn't that giddiness?"

Avi looked at me like I'd grown a second head, "Mate, it's the same thing. Didn't the Empire teach you synonyms of the English language?"

I have to admit that that offended me a little bit. "Aren't you a product of the Empire education system to Avi?"

He scoffed, "It's been a long time since I was last in a school of the Empire. I realized pretty early on that what they were teaching me was complete bogus." Remember what I said about not elaborating on their past. It was kinda like this, just make a casual passing statement and never elaborate on it ever again. It was a little annoying to be honest, to give out a minor detail but leave everything else out. It left you wanting for more. I wanted to know more about themselves, not about the Liberators they were. I'd become extremely curious and even more observant in the month I'd
almost been in here. That curiosity gave me an eye for detail that I never had before.

"Okay now can you pick me up? And switch off that bloody alarm will ya!" Rory exclaimed, clearly in pain.

Avi climbed up the ladder and turned off the alarm that was still blaring while I picked Rory up and made him sit on the couch.

Meanwhile Lana, Reina and Patrick walked out of their rooms to check out what the commotion was all about.

"What in the world is going on here?" Patrick asked with a yawn while the girls just stood there clearly wanting to be back in their beds.

Avi and I looked at each other before Avi spoke up, "The alerts came in this morning so me and Rory thought that we'll test it out. Rory just had a small accident."

"Couldn't you two have found a better time to test the alerts other than six in the morning?" Lana groaned.
"We thought that we could wake up the rest of you using the alerts. If it could wake Patrick then we would know its really effective." Rory said with a grin even though his eyes were still closed.

Reina walked up to Rory and squinted at his face, "Why does my brother have a huge red swelling on the side of his head?"

"He fell off the ladder when he got surprised by Rinzler entering the room." Avi shrugged.

After a few moments of small talk everyone was back to his or her daily grind. Rory still lay on the couch clearly dazed. The fall really must have got him on the wrong side of the head.

So that probably meant that I was training on my own this morning. There went my chance of discussing the map with him.

I underestimated Reina. She may have been bad at hiding her feelings but she was by no means bad at dodging questions. Every time I brought up a topic
that pertained to either the Liberators or the Empire she ignored it completely.

I was hopeful that they would at least talk about today.

Patrick and Avi wouldn't tell me nuts. They're close to Rory, so is Reina. Maybe Lana could tell me. She seemed to like me and was honest about certain things. Maybe she could explain their less than enthusiastic demeanor.

The morning passed by with me going through the workout regimen that Rory had set for me. Slowly and surely I was getting stronger with my body too becoming more muscular. It was definitely a step up from the skinny brown haired boy that I previously was.

I guess the boiled food actually had an effect.

I was moving on to more rigorous training too. The regular weight exercises like weightlifting, bunch presses and 'burpees' (jeez what a name) got heavier and tougher while the endurance exercises like marathon running the entire length of the Cheltenham
Castle and short sprints that I had to do over and over again got longer and more tiring than ever before.

But the one exercise that I enjoyed the most was physical combat. Normally it was Rory who would go through the paces of boxing and the 'martial arts' but today it seemed to be Patrick as he came through the door when Rory normally would have. Rory must still be sleeping after he passed out today morning.

"Guess what Rinzler, you are fighting me today. And guess what, you are going down." Patrick said with an almost evil smirk. Oh boy, this was going to be fun. Patrick was the oldest after Rory and its safe to say Patrick was as strong as Rory too if not stronger.

We went through are usual warm up routines before taping up our hands. Rory told me that training bare knuckle was the most satisfying. I think that applied to actual combat as well.

"You are so going down kid." Patrick declared.

"We'll see about that kid." I replied with a smirk of my own.
What followed was one of the best things that I had done after coming here. Sure, I had practice fights with Rory too but that felt like a routine training exercise. This was on a whole different level.

Patrick gave it his all and every punch of his showed intent to put me to the ground. The problem for him was that I replied with the same aggression.

We threw punch after punch at each other all the while grinning like we were having the best day of our life. Maybe some of the Empire's sadistic traits passed on to me too.

After more than what was forty five minutes of just uppercuts, jabs, hooks and right crosses we were left bloodied and bruised all over. We cleaned ourselves and took a seat on one of the benches in the room.

"Well that was fun." He chuckled.

The adrenaline was palpable. "Yeah it was, we should do this more often."
Patrick chuckled again. "I don't think the ladies will take too kindly to us pummeling each other everyday. Also I'm pretty sure Lana wouldn't want to see your pretty little face bruised."

Where did that come from? "What are you on about Hertha?"

Patrick chuckled yet again. "I've seen the way she looks at you. She's had her eye on you ever since you got here. I don't think you know this; she insisted on joining Rory on the mission to bring you here."

This was shocking to me. More shocking than the event that brought me here in the first place.

"So what do you think is for lunch today Pat?" I try to ignore his statement.

Patrick rolled his eyes,"Nice attempt on trying to ignore the topic at hand Leroy. You know I'm not letting this go. I've seen the way you look at her too."

Now I feared for dear life. Patrick was never going to let this go, ever. I got up from the bench and made
my way to the door, I was starving. Maybe there was something else in the refrigerator other than salads.

But seriously though? Lana? I never thought of anybody here as more than a friend or an ally.

This was not the time and place for those kind of interactions. I had one goal. Train my hardest, achieve my full potential, go on recon missions in the Empire and then used the information gained to liberate Area

32. That was my mission. Not wondering whether Lana liked me back.

Liked me back? Where did that come from?

I thought Rory was the one with the knocked up head, not me.

I was just going to close the door behind me but I popped my head back in and asked Patrick who was still unwrapping the tape from his bruised knuckles, "You okay man?"

He looked at me with confusion, "Yeah, why are you asking?"
I took a deep breath and said, " You guys just looked a little off when you returned from Area 29 day before yesterday. Anything happen on the mission?"

Patrick eyed me suspiciously before cautiously saying, "Nah we were just exhausted. You were monitoring us from the control room like usual weren't you?"

"I was."

"Alright then." He finished packing up his training equipment and made his way past me out the door towards his room.

Yup, something definitely went wrong on that trip and I wasn't there to see it from the control room.

Well the plot just thickened.

# Chapter Seven

...............................................

The Sentinel Among Other Things

"So basically the new alarm is for emergency missions or if the Taskforce track us here and try to assault us," Rory said. He was fairly okay but was now sporting a bandage where his swelling was. "We can't take any more risks with more and more Liberation teams being tracked and ambushed around the world. It's only a matter of time before they get to us too. Word is that they even got a new secret force called the Citizen Security Force just to track us down and kill us. "

All of us sat in deep thought before Lana asked, "How is the alarm triggered though?"

"Earlier this morning Avi, Pat and I set up tripwires and laser fields all over the entrances. Avi even programmed the radars to alert when a Taskforce or Security Force aircraft is detected low enough. Of course one of us can manually set it off too.
"I just wanted to be sure. We don't want to end up like Area 29's or Area 16's. We've had way too many close calls in the past too."

It was late in the evening and all of us were huddled together in the living room. This was the perfect opportunity to discuss the map.

"Hey guys, what about the map we recovered from Area 29. We should inspect it closely shouldn't we?"

Patrick gave me a similar look from yesterday and said, "Yeah we should. It's a good opportunity to see if the Empire planned any secret bases then that they may have built and operate in today."

Everyone nodded in agreement although it seemed very hesitant. Again the whole situation seemed off. What was it about the map?

Reina went to the control room to retrieve the map. But she returned with another file with the Empire's sigil along with the map.

She placed it on the table in the middle of the room. I
heard her mutter, "Here we go."

Rory spoke up, "Rinston, before we proceed you have to promise us that you will not come to any harsh judgments or rash decisions."

Wait...... How did the map relate to me all of a sudden? Was that why they were avoiding it?

"Yes or no, Rinston?"

I inhaled and said, "Yes. Of course."

"Good, now listen closely. First things first take a good look at the map. What do you see initially?

"I see divided areas from the year 2012. I can identify Area 32 from the year 2012; it says the United Kingdom and England in smaller letters. There are many dots with name of various, what I presume to be, cities in that area. There's a city called London that has a bold writing and has a square instead of a dot. I presume that to be the Area Centre of the United Kingdom. There are numerous other recognizable Areas from around the world with their own Area Centres."
"Okay Rinston, now observe the Empire markings." Rory said and looked at me straight in the eyes, obviously trying to judge my thoughts.

I squint at the Empire markings that are scattered all over the map. There are significant markings over "USA", "China", "India", "Saudi Arabia" and of course "United Kingdom".

"Rory, do these markings suggest Empire strongholds in these Areas? Even Area 32 perhaps?"

Rory gave me an unsure look and said, "This map is from the year 2012 and was found in a mineshaft. We can't be too sure about that. Other than that those markings could be anything. Maybe planned aerial assaults, smuggling routes or maybe even locations of ore resources since it was found in a mineshaft. But that isn't why the map is important even though it could tell us a lot about the Empire's planning back then if we analyse it in complete depth. What's important is on the back of the map. Flip it over."

The back of the map? I didn't even bother looking at
the back of it, rookie mistake. I flipped the map over to find a plethora of even more markings and scribbles. More so than the front of it even and this was legible too. Much of the scribbled writing on the front had faded off.

"And here is where it gets interesting." Patrick said with a low whistle.

I observed the scrawls on the back. Many of them had words like "new world order", "rebellion", "safety by hiding" and one particular phrase said "destruction of the earth". What in the world was going on in that mineshaft?

I looked up at the rest of the guys. They were staring at me intently. "You've missed something Rinzler." Patrick said, he pointed his finger to the top left corner of the page where there was a tiny scribble that I had missed.

"Rinston Leroy – The Sentinel (2024)"

"What is my name doing on a map from 2012?" I asked. Rory gave me a tight smile, "Here was where I made
a cardinal error Rinzler. The map may have been from the year 2012 but the scribbles on the back are not. Also notice the writings on the front have a distinctively different style Rinston than the ones on the back. There's a different medium of writing too," Rory looked down to the ground and smiled again.

"The writings on the back are from the year 2024. Rinston do you remember where you were born?"

What was Rory getting at? "I was born on the fifth of May in the first year of the Empire in the Empire Hospital of Area 32."

"Here's where you made an error Rinston. You were born in a mineshaft in France or as you would know now, Area 29. The person who scribbled on the back of an Empire mask he found in an abandoned mineshaft was your father. You weren't born on the fifth of May Rinston, you were admitted into the hospital on that day. The story fits completely. There was a makeshift baby's cradle in the mineshaft and I read your hospital file. It said that you were admitted into the hospital, not
delivered there. You my friend are someone that I had a hunch you might actually be. You are the Sentinel."

This was heavy. My head felt heavy. It felt like I was falling into an abyss. The word for it might be dizzy.

"Whoa buddy we aren't letting you pass on us now." I heard Patrick say from somewhere in the background. My body was losing control of itself. The light of the room kept fading and fading and fading and fading........ and....

I suddenly felt a cold fluid make contact with my face, "Aah!"

"Sorry dude, you passed out on us." Reina stood before me with an empty glass of what I presumed to have been water in her hands. "You alright?" Lana asked with concern in her eyes.

I blinked my eyes and nodded a yes.

"Here, take a towel." Lana passed me a towel. I wiped the water of my face. Patrick coughed. I turned to him and gave him a glare, he just grinned.
I shifted my attention back to Rory who was giving me a pensive look, "So you were avoiding discussion of the map with because you didn't want to tell me."

Rory said, "No, not exactly. Look at that writing again." I read it again. "Rinston Leroy – The Sentinel (2024)" The Sentinel? I looked up at Rory confused.

"And that is why we recruited you." Rory smiled. "You recruited me because I am 'The Sentinel'?"

He looked at the others and they just shrugged, "Again not exactly. But we had a hunch.

"Care to elaborate on why what this trivial hunch might be?"

"Remember we told you that we were monitoring you before we brought you here?" Rory asked.

"Yeah, I always thought that was a bit creepy on your part." I said and Rory chuckled.

Rory continued, "Well obviously there was a reason
behind it. Its story time now, so listen carefully. Back in the days of yore, when the Empire was still in its infancy and people were still unaccepting of the Empire a group of people realized that they were going to lose and that the Empire was inevitably going to prevail because of its growing might. These people called themselves the Liberators and were spread all across the world. They had promised themselves that they would destroy the Empire one day if not then. So they started to collect vital information about the Empire from the inside. It was basically a huge inside job, quite like what the Empire did to gain power. Unfortunately the Empire didn't like having a taste of its own medicine so they methodically hunted and killed every one of the moles in their system.

"But our Liberators were smart, they realized that the Empire was out for them so they compiled all their gathered intelligence and stored it away on a data file and at a place where they Empire could never access it. They gave the file the code word, "The Sentinel" and also encrypted it in such a way that only the
one person could open it. We call that person The Sentinel. Liberators around the world were searching for clues indicating who the Sentinel might be, we were scouting Areas where we knew Liberators were more prominent in but we could have never guessed that the Liberators of Area 29 would have found a clue by complete accident in a mineshaft while on the run from the Empire. A complete coincidence for us and your destiny at the same time."

I buried my head in my hands. How could it get more convoluted than it already was? I had so-so many questions. This was so confusing on so many levels to me.

"So you recruited me because I am the Sentinel who has access to this said data file and needed me to get this data file to reveal the Empire's innermost secrets." I theorized.

"We didn't know you were the Sentinel per se but as we said we were following you and had a hunch. There is something special about all the Liberators around
the world, something that all of us share in common." Lana said.

"And that is?" I asked raising an eyebrow.

"All of our parents were Liberators before us. Therefore each one of us had a chance to be the Sentinel. " Avi answered instead.

"We recruited you when we found out you were the son of Tristan Friedrich, a German Liberator who was rumored to have helped encrypt the data file. Therefore you had the most probability out of all us in Area 32 to be the one who had the access. You were given a different identity and secretly placed as a baby in Area 32 where the Empire could never suspect you." Lana continued.

There were no bounds to my confusion at this point. I just tried my hardest to understand the entire meaning of it.

"And how do you know that I am the son of this Tristan Friedrich person?"
"By running a facial recognition test of every adult in Area 32 and every Liberator that we had a photo of As Rory mentioned, we had friends in the hospital. He got us access to the medical files of everybody in Area 32. I guess you're lucky that 86% of your face matches your father's genetically. By the way, this facial recognition program that I created made our process of finding you way easier. These guys were completely done for when they tried to find me. It took them a month while it took just a week to actually trace you," Avi said.

"So my name isn't even Rinston Leroy and my father created the Sentinel thingy that I'm supposed to have access to."

Rory spoke up, "Rinston Leroy is your identity if you make it to be. Rinzler is your new name if you want to be. But you are the Sentinel because you have to be. All of us are extremely lucky that the Sentinel is actually alive. Not all of the children of the Liberators suffered the same fate as us. We are also extremely lucky that you ended up being the Sentinel. You were one of the last of the Liberator's children that were alive
being. So all of the Liberators were actually getting a bit worried that we won't actually find him or her. So when we found you it felt like we had struck a gold mine with you fulfilling all the potential conditions that could make you the Sentinel. "

Wow, talk about having a burden. "Its not a burden, its an opportunity."

Please don't tell me I said that out loud. "You said that out loud Rinzler." Dammit!

"That one too."

This night was much longer than I originally planned it out to be.

# Chapter Eight

...............................................

Discoveries of The Highest Order

We halted our conversations about the Sentinel to break for dinner.

Lettuce and beans was today's menu for dinner along with a nice juicy glass of tomato juice. It was hardly a feast but it definitely trumped the potato and onion concoction that I was being served at the college. Looking back, that definitely wasn't a college. It was like a Taskforce training facility. Maybe it was a Taskforce training facility. All I was ever taught at college and at school was discipline and order among other subjects. My college gave an uncanny priority to sciences like the human body rather than to arithmetic, language and literature. It also gave priority on how to break the human body. We had learnt how to combat with technique. Which body part to harm to inflict what kind of pain, which kind of pain indicated harm to which kind of body system. We were taught all of it.
I wasn't very good at it since the beginning. Always finishing second to last, or last for that matter. Some people are genetically better than others I guess, no matter how much training is given. That's why I was worried when these guys said that I had to fight the Taskforce of the Empire. I didn't fear violence as such; it just wasn't in me to choose violence as a means of reasoning or success.

I never got to choose my college. I from a young age I was drafted into Placement 13 which pre-assigned my school and college. It was as if I was being engineered to done just one thing.

I was just about a year into college when these guys came along and abducted me. The Empire also assigned what job we had to do after graduation. Looking at my college, I would presume I was being trained to become a medical officer for the Taskforce. We were never really told what we were to become after graduation until graduation itself. Maybe that was the case with just my placement. I never really got to converse with anybody outside my placement. I lived
on campus and studied on campus. I didn't need to go anywhere else.

Anyways, every Taskforce squad had a medical officer. Not every criminal that the Taskforce apprehended gave in that easily and a few times here and there an officer would succumb to his injuries inflicted upon him by somebody trying to evade capture. The medical officer was introduced to prevent that.

So there were fifty placements totally that one could get drafted into. This varied from area to area. I wondered what placement the others were assigned.

"Hey Pat, what placement were you assigned in your Area?" I asked Pat first. We were all sitting on the rectangular dinner table eating our dinner.

"Me? I was assigned Placement 42 which was apparently for builders. Rory and Reina abducted me before I could even start college though. So much for being a builder. If I had graduated I would have been part of the builders who would have built the Empire Financial Tower in the Area Centre of Area 2. That is
one hell of a building man. The Empire may be bad guys but they do have touch for architecture." Before today, none of us actually spoke at the dinner table. But today we were actually conversing and discussing our past, present and future.

Maybe it was like this even before I came here? I don't think that these guys knew much about each other either.

"What were you going to be forced to become Lana?" Patrick asked Lana but he was looking at me. The nerve of this guy. Nothing existed between Lana and I; he was just making it up to cure his own boredom. This was sadistic in a way too.

"Well I was assigned Placement 23, janitor or maid for Empire buildings. College was really short for me, just about three months of it. I worked in the Empire Financial Tower here in Area 32. I never really liked it, pay wasn't as much as a clerk but I managed for about six months. Then Rory and Reina came for me. I knew my father was a Liberator, I sometimes heard him use
the word when I was little. Didn't know what it meant back then. Years after he died I got to know what it meant. I kept it a secret. If anybody had heard me using the word in the Tower than I'd be dead by now."

"So how did you get recruited by Rory and Reina?" Avi asked curiously. Guess he was learning too.

Lana laughed, "They made me fake my death by making me jump into the river that runs across the Tower. I had one of those breathing things on me. I swam to a safe spot where they picked me up."

Avi's mouth and my mouth were left gaping. I think the both of us didn't actually have to fake our deaths; the Liberators did it for us by simply manipulating the records.

"Close your mouths boys and eat." Reina chuckled.

I ignored her command and questioned, "What was my cause of death labeled as?"

"We made a oil leak in the van and well then just set fire to the oil effectively blowing up it up. It looked
like an accident so your death was probably labeled as accidental." Lana explained. So that meant all those officers in the van just went bye-bye. But did they deserve a death like that? After all, even they were products of the system. Condemned to a life they didn't actually choose. But that was a thought for another day.

Hmm, I remember there was another person in that Taskforce van though, a stout man with a beard.

"Hey Rory, what happened to the short bearded man that was with us in the van?" I directed the question to Rory.

He furrowed his eyebrows and thought for a second. "That guy who was shivering and had his head in his hands? If I remember correctly Lana just let him run. He'd be an idiot if he wanted to go inform the authorities, that would have just got him caught again. He must have gone back to his family or something, there's no harm in letting people like those run away. We just have to hope that he isn't caught again one
day and confesses to the Taskforce. Then we'd in some deep business with the Taskforce, not that we already aren't."

We talked through finishing our dinner and were soon too tired to do anymore talking so we decided to go to bed. Tomorrow was a big day; every forthcoming day was a big day now that their 'big' secret was out.

The dynamics of my situation completely changed too with me now having a purpose to work with. Every training session counted. Every meal counted. Every conversation counted.

In our quest for that data file we were going to face many adversities that tested were going to test our strength, agility, stamina, mentality, motivation, intelligence among others.

I was told that we might meet other Liberators who we might need help from while Empire's new Citizen Security Force who were specially designed to task us out now that the Empire had got wind of the Liberator's activities.
We didn't now where the data file was and how to find it or even access it. It was a race against time and the Empire cuz' sooner or later the Empire would catch on to us.

There were like a million places where the Liberators of 2024 could have hid the data file, we just had to start looking in the right place.

But the most important thing of all was that during all that time, fighting the CSF and searching for the data file I couldn't die. That data file gave us access to Empire's innermost information that our parents went through so much trouble to obtain, so much trouble that it cost them their life. If I died all of their efforts would prove futile, their deaths would have been in vain.

So I had to stay alive no matter what the circumstances were. If I really was the Sentinel who had the key to access the Sentinel file then that was what I was going to do.
That data file was going to tell us who the Empire at the heart really were. And how we were going to take down those grade-a oppressors who destroyed the world according to my father.

We were going to liberate the world.

# Chapter Nine

...............................................

Engulfed in Flames

The alarm went off on my bedside table signaling a new day. I got up and walked into the bathroom connected to my room. I switched on the light that was above the mirror.

The reflection that I saw wasn't me, the old me that is. The old me had a short hair cut, a clean-shaven face and a fixed expression that well, expressed absolutely nothing

And here I stood in front of the mirror wanting to save the place that the Empire called Pangaea and I called home. I never used to call Area 32 as my home, maybe due to the fact that my origin isn't even from Area 32. I was born in a mineshaft in France, which Patrick told me was now a part of Area 29. But I wasn't from Area 29 either as my father Tristan Tobias Friedrich was from a place called Germany, which Patrick told me, was now a part of Area 28.
So where I did I really belong? A hospital in the Area Centre of 32? A mineshaft below the ground in 29? Or where my father was from?

Maybe I was over thinking it, I could choose where I belonged and I decided that I belonged to the planet Earth. A place controlled by a ruthless set of people who were themselves controlled by their greed.

And I was going give back that control back to the people who deserved it and needed it.

With that thought I set out for my day. Physical training suddenly became more enjoyable today, probably because I knew whom I was doing it for. Every punch of min had a motive behind it. Ever kick of mine had a purpose behind it.

It was fascinating how I could change so much in just a few moments. Maybe that's what I was waiting for all my life, that one moment to spur change in me. Even Rory was surprised by the aggression and intent I was showing today. He observed me for an hour or two before stopping me and saying, "You are really
starting to scare me right now. A few days ago you were struggling to cross even one set of this exercise and now you're doing like four. Yesterday really shook you up Rinzler. That's a good thing, but just don't overwork yourself yeah."

I completed the physical session refreshed rather than exhausted. Of course my body was sore from a heavier workout than usual but my mind was feeling motivated and determined.

I walked into the room to start Avi's session only to find him napping and drooling on his desk.

"Oye get up! Today was my test remember?" My sudden voice startled Avi and he almost fell off his desk. When he gathered himself and got back on his seat he looked at me as if I had grown a second head.

I found myself enjoying the test that Avi had given me. I always did averagely in his tests, nothing too spectacular nothing too miserably but I didn't really enjoy the test. I was just looking to finish it as quick as possible and get out of Avi's class.
This time though I found pleasure in cracking each one of the questions he had set me, especially the harder ones. I finished the test in record time and submitted it to Avi who had resumed his nap.

Avi now looked at me as if I had grown a third head.

I exited the room and proceeded to the kitchen to grab myself a snack. I picked up a tin of crackers and dumped my body on a beanbag in the living room.

I decided to switch on the TV for a change. Normally I wouldgrab myself a nice bookfrom the largecollection here at Cheltenham castle but every now and then you needed some variety to keep things interesting. This time I wanted to see what propaganda crap the Empire was spreading out using the television. That's why I never watched TV back at the college because the Empire controlled all the channels that aired and all of them had an Empire undertone to them. Again it felt like a brainwashing and I never took a likening to it.
We had a television here because we needed to keep track of what the Empire was announcing and airing. Certain codes and messages were passed on using the network too. But all of us had to admit that Empire Entertainment's Comedy Hour segment was a tad bit funny. The Empire always had its own pros among its numerous cons. Every form of government that I come across in history did.

What defined the success of the government was whether its people and the rest of the world accepted it. If it weren't accepted that government would crumble to its roots and make away for another government to begin its rule.

Here was where the Empire defied all odds. The most absolute power the world had ever seen and irrevocably one of the most difficult to bring down.

In retrospect the Empire was pretty young, just twenty years into its reign. But what it achieved in just twenty years has been something that history has never witnessedbeforeandthat's whatmakes itsodangerous
to human history. When the Empire crumbles either from the efforts of the Liberators or on its own accord (as if that was going to happen) I was afraid that it was going to take the whole world along with it. Like an act of revenge against us. The Empire waited hundreds of years for its opportunity but we didn't even want to give it twenty. That's what I was scared of.

All this while the television was on and was blaring about some new special edition mattress that had come into sale and how I should be the first one to buy it. I munched on my crackers as I slowly surfed through the channels using the remote and came to a stop at the news channel for Area 32 which was on about a college that was engulfed in flames.

"It is being reported that College of Placement 13 in the Area Centre caught on fire early this morning. It is suspected that one of the rooms on the bottom floor caught fire due to loose wiring due to a structural error that caused a short circuit. Efforts are currently on to extinguish the fire and save the valuable souls that are trapped inside." A male reported spoke while a video of the college burning was playing on screen.
I saw Patrick in the kitchen trying to get himself a glass of water. "Hey Pat, look at this." I motioned him over to look at the television. He came and plopped himself down on the bean bag next to mine.

"There are reported to be around a hundred casualties with many more trapped and injured inside the building. We will continue to bring you reports as we get you more information. Moving on to the next sto-" I switched off the TV not wanting to here more.

"I'm so sorry man I-" Patrick apologized.

I interrupted him, "The Empire now I'm here and alive and who I am."

"What?" Patrick said flabbergasted.

"When was the last time you heard an Empire building having a structural malfunction and burning or crumbling to bits? You know that the Empire is very specific with their building and architecture and do not make mistakes like this."
Patrick furrowed his eyebrows and said, "So you think that they set fire to their own building just to show us that they know what we're up to?"

"Exactly. They want to show us that they're after us."

Patrick reasoned hesitantly, "Don't you think that all this is just a mere coincidence and that you're really over analyzing this? It is always possible that something actually went wrong and caused the fire. Also why do they need to show us that they're after us? Wouldn't it be easier for them to trace us secretly and then ambush us when we're vulnerable? And I don't even think the Empire knows that we exist here. Rory has always been extra careful in covering up our tracks. Liberators of other Areas "

I bit my lip, Patrick did have a point. "You are right but that doesn't mean we just overlook this. There must be some meaning to it. My theory is that the Empire want to provoke us to make a move. Like they want us to rush and in the process expose ourselves. We have to tell Rory about this, he'll know best."
"I was listening," Patrick and I turn our heads back to find Rory and Lana standing and looking at us. "What Rinzler's saying is extremely plausible and in my opinion right. So that's why I suggest we tread carefully and analyse the situation completely. I've got some friends close to the college, the ones who organize the street fights Rinzler. They could probably tell me what went down there. But for now we'll continue what we're doing as per usual. No need to jump the gun, if they were really after us then they'd be here by now. We're prepared for them, we have the alert system and we're receiving our stock of weapons and ammunition from the Liberators of Area 22 tonight. So that means all of us restart weapons training tomorrow, you too Rinzler." With that Rory exited the room while Lana grabbed a book and came and sat on the couch.

"Weapons training huh Rinzler. Hope you can hit the target." Patrick winked and nudged me. He was clearly referring to Lana, it wasn't even that subtle.

"Yeah weapons training. Its going to be the first time I'm going to hold a gun so make sure you're not
anywhere near me. I might shoot you in the head Pat."

Lana chuckled in response while looking down at her book to my statement. This just increased Patrick's amusement and the smirk on his face grew so wide that I could fit a plate in there.

I was going to learn how to kill a person using a weapon tomorrow. This just got a whole lot more real.

# Chapter Ten

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Holes In The Wall

I walked into a large room that was on the other end of the castle with Avi. This room was meant specifically for gun training.

As I entered I observed eight booths long booths separated from each other by a foam wall and at the end of the booth was a black illustration of a body with target points on parts of the body. The centre of the body had a red target, which was where I was assuming I had to hit.

"Welcome guys, suit up. Let Pat and Lana join us and then we can start. Hope you're excited Rinzler." Rory stood before wearing what I thought was a bulletproof vest. He was also wearing thick transparent glasses and had headphones in his head.

I guess, safety was an extreme concern here especially with newbies like me on the block.
I put on the bulletproof vest and the glasses and also tried on the headphones.

The door opened and Lana and Patrick stepped inside the room. I saw Lana's lips move as she tried to say something while Patrick was trying to control his laughter behind her. These were the most noise- cancelling headphones I'd ever seen. She walked past me to suit up while I removed the headphones and went over to Patrick.

"Hey Patrick, what did she say?" I whispered.

"She said that you looked quite dashing in the full kit." Patrick said, still trying to control his laughter. I punched him in his shoulder.

"Ow! I was being serious."

"Yeah right." I replied and made my way to Rory as he motioned me to join him. Was he being serious though? Did she really say that? Even if she did she was probably joking. But she didn't look like she was joking. Man, I was really getting paranoid about something so trivial and I did not like the feeling.
"So Rinzler, before you actually start shooting you've got to know about what you are actually shooting with. So tell me what are the types of guns that you are aware about." Rory asked me.

"Um, I know what a pistol is and I've seen revolvers in movies. There's that sniper gun and then there's those guns that the Taskforce use, I think its called a carbine or something. That's about it."

"Good you know what a carbine is. We'll be using a lot of that too. Come over here," He walked over to some wooden cartons that were lined up against the wall and opened them. "These are the guns that we're supplied with from the guys at Area 22. These are usually standard issue Empire made guns that they've modified to suit our needs. Except a few of course."

"How did they supply it here?" I asked Rory.

"Well they discovered a few airspaces that the Empire doesn't monitor all that much. So Liberators around the world exploit these airspaces to supply each other. We got these from a supply drop yesterday around midnight."
I just came to realize that the Empire wasn't all that perfect. Even they had their own fair share of loopholes which has given the Liberators a small advantage. If those loopholes didn't exist then the Liberators wouldn't have been anywhere.

"So in the first box is your regular handgun or pistol with a decently sized magazine. I'll give a document with the specifications of each weapon, you can read it if you want. The pistol is usually your secondary weapon but make sure you always have one on hand. Your primary is usually this beauty of a gun here. The L1R1 Carbine is our first self-made gun. This is the gun you should get yourself acquainted with. The next few guns are some standard issue assault rifles, a shotgun that we never use and a sub-machine gun. The sub- machine gun is quite handy too because its rather small compared to the rifles but can still deal as much damage. But you aren't going to start shooting these guns right away. We'll get you started with something we call an airsoft gun. Its like a normal gun except that it has less dangerous bullets and uses air compression. Clear?"
I went through everything that he told me in my head and gave him a nod.

"You'll get a feel of each weapon as you fire it so don't worry about that. Just worry about hitting the target accurately." Patrick snorted in the background. That got him a whack from Lana.

Over the next two to three hours I got a chance to fire every gun in their arsenal. Slowly making my way up from the airsoft guns to that carbine that they held so highly in regard.

I must say that I wasn't too shabby. I missed to miss the target once every three shots I took, which Rory said was phenomenal for a guy who had never held a gun. But my self-confidence was completely shattered when the others started their practice rounds. Neither of them missed the target outright even once throughout their entire session. Lana was the best shooter out of all of them. Every shot of hers had the same amount of precision and concentration her previous one had. I guess everybody was here for a reason other than
being a child of a liberator and a potential Sentinel. I think these guys were born with this sort of skill set. It was in their blood!

Well Rory did say I had it in my blood too. But only time will tell if that was true.

After all of us exhausted the amount of bullets we were assigned for practice we unzipped the kit and decided to split for a nap or two. After that it would just be a free night for us where we would sit and chat. We needed our minds to be free, there was only so much we could jam in a day.

Tomorrow would be devoted to discussing the whereabouts of the data file and what could possibly be the method to access it. Rory said that he was trying to patch in as many Liberators from around the world as possible.

Rory had made sure that word was being passed around that the Sentinel was found and that the time had come for them to begin their search for the data file.
The data file did not ensure victory against the Empire. The data file just gave us information for viable means to take down the Empire. We still had to convince the world to join our fight in taking down the empire and that was on a whole other level.

And who knew where the data file was. In the depths of the Panthalassic Ocean? In some corner of the vast jungles of Area 8? Hundreds of meters beneath the Earth's surface? Or lying in some Empire office's desk? Who knew? And that was why we needed all the help that we could get.

The Panthalassic Ocean is what the Empire called what used to be the Pacific Ocean. I really didn't understand the need for them to change existing names of geographical entities. According to Avi, it signified the unification of everything on the planet according to them. Including the planet's name from Earth to Pangaea. The Empire obviously had very weird guys.

I really couldn't wait to find out who the crackpots were who started this Empire business in the first
place. Reina told me that they've been around for as long as the dawn of mine, waiting to catch the world at its most vulnerable. They really had a large level of patience, so props to them for that.

But who controlled the Empire at its core? There had to be an emperor, even though we couldn't see him or her for that matter.

My curiosity was through the roof. I wanted to find that data file, even if it was the last thing I did. Wait, scratch that. I didn't want to die. There were a million things to do before I die.

One of those million things was learning more about my parents. I've lived in the school and college dormitories for as long as I remember. Imagine what it must have been witnessing the Empire with my parents. Much less traumatic of course.

Tristan Friedrich huh? What must have my name been if they were alive and were taking care of me? Rinston Leroy is obviously an obscure name my father must have given me to conceal my identity. What name
would I have got? Would my mother had given it to me or my father? How did my mother look like? Rory promised me that he would show me a picture of my father later on but I wanted to know how my mother looked like. Was she a liberator? She must have been. Father and Mother of Rinston Leroy. That sounded odd in my head. I'd never associated those words with myself before. But Rinston Leroy is dead isn't he?

I guess this is Rinzler doing all the talking. Rinzler Friedrich perhaps?

And with that thought my body drifted into sleep. Sleep was going to become an expensive commodity soon, without how little I was getting it.

# Chapter Eleven

...............................................

Liberators of the World

The alarm on my bedside table went off signaling the start of a new day. A very important day that is. Today was the day Rory had planned for us to meet Liberators from around the world and discuss key issues.

Saying these last few days were eventful would be a huge understatement.

And this meeting with the other Liberators right under the nose of the Empire would also mark my official introduction into the Liberators. It's surprising that I had been here for almost two months and still hadn't gone on a mission with the Liberators. Not even the small reconnaissance missions.

My first mission was to find a data file stored on some twenty-year-old system hidden away in some part of the world that could take an eternity to find. Brilliant.
I proceeded with my daily routine. I brushed, made myself a cup of coffee, had a quick shower, got dressed and made my way towards the living room. As per usual I found Rory and Avi sitting in the living room and chatting. They were normally the first ones awake and the first ones to start their day. Patrick and Reina were the last. Lana's sleep depended on whether she had a good or bad day the previous day.

Lana was the most difficult to decipher among us all. Reina was the quirky one, Rory was the commanding one, Patrick was the goofy one and Avi was the sensible one. Lana just didn't fit into any of these categories. She was well just Lana.

"Good morning." Avi said as I entered the room. "Yeah good morning."

"Big day huh." Avi remarked.

"Yeah big day." I replied. I wasn't really in the mood for chitchat. I was concentrating on the events of today.

"You're worried about today." Rory said with a knowing
look. Yes, I was worried. Worried that all our efforts could possibly go in vain if I messed up. A major part of this rode on me, saying all of it did would be narcissistic of me and victimizing myself at the same time.

"Nah, why should I be worried?" I lied. Avi gave me a look that said, "Don't even try."

I gave him a look that indicated that I didn't really want to talk about it. We just sat in silence and waited for the rest of them to join us.

Rory told me that the meeting was scheduled for around 3pm Area 32 time and that approximately thirty to forty people were to join us via a video call. He could only get half of the Liberators on the call.

All of the rest were involved in activities pertaining to evading the Empire. It wasn't that assuring to know that the Citizen Security Force of the Empire was behind more than half of the Liberators in the world.

The Liberators though were always a step ahead, a
gruesome step ahead. They knew that if the Empire caught them then the Liberation was done for. The Empire would torture them until every single piece of intelligence they had about themselves and the Empire would come spilling out. Thus there was only one way out of that. Each of the Liberators carried a pill with them at all times. The pill when swallowed would render that person dead in a matter of minutes. I was given my pill yesterday.

Only a handful of Liberators have used the pill and that was years ago so that is a little bit reassuring. But sooner or later the Empire would catch up, its inevitable as I stated before and that is where the pill was going to come in handy.

Back in the early days of the 2025's the Liberators numbered in millions, hundreds of millions that is. By 2035 they had decreased to a few thousand. By 2045 there were only about a hundred. Rory told me all of it. He was there for all three of those decades witnessing how prominent Liberators were methodically assassinated and how the rest succumbed to fear of
the Empire for the sake of their own lives.

Rory was thirty years old now and Reina being twenty six. He has evaded the Empire for twenty years and protected his sister too. Rory told me how they traveled from Area to Area constantly changing identities and eventually they came across Cheltenham Castle hidden in the hills of Area 32. From that point on he set up base here and started recruiting other children of Liberators on the run or in hiding like him. Liberators around the world were doing that too. Rebuilding their very own army with a new wave of Liberators. If it weren't for old Liberators like Rory then the Liberators would be of a number you can count using your fingers.

Such were the people I was going to talk to today.

I spent the rest of the day until the meeting training in the 'gymnasium' for a bit and then reading a book about democracy. I had learnt more about government this one book than I had learnt in my entire life.

I don't think the Empire liked democracy that much.
Democracy was like the arch-nemesis of these guys. Freedom? Yeah they didn't offer it. Rights? They preferred lefts I guess. Equality? I think they thought that was some kind of bread. Peace? The vegetable?

I noticed a funny thing; many wars were fought for peace among other things (money, power, land, world domination blah blah blah). Like how do use violence to gain peace? That was mind-boggling. Yet I sat here waiting to do the very same thing. It may be an extremely immature thought but hey! Everybody has his or her own opinion. Do they Empire allow people to have opinions? Probably not.

"Hey Rinzler, whatcha doin' dreamin' 'bout Lana ova' there?" Patrick said in what I assumed to be an accent from Area 2 of sorts. He really wouldn't let this Lana thing go would he? This was a figment of Patrick's imagination. Nothing ever existed between Lana and I and nothing ever would. No one had time for such things over here. We had to remain focused.

"Whatcha doin' wid dat weird accent ova' dere?" I
 asked Patrick doing as he lifted some boxes from the living room and dumping them outside into the hallway.

"You can't do the accent so don't even bother trying. Also you didn't deny that you were dreaming about Lana and third we can't have random boxes in the living room during the video call. It would be unprofessional of us."

I rolled my eyes and continued reading the interesting book about democracy.

"Would you mind helping me out here? There are a lot of boxes."

"Naah." I replied and continued reading

He huffed and carried all the boxes while I read in peace. Well, he deserved it.

Soon it was nearing three o'clock and all of us gathered in the room where a large screen was projected on the wall and a camera was set up with a few speakers.

112
Avi was especially busy, as he had to make sure that the Empire couldn't hack into the call and potentially find out the faces of every one of the Liberators who were practically safe. There was a lot riding on this meeting.

I was wearing a plain white t-shirt with red stripes accompanied by some half shorts. Not exactly the best attire I had but it was decent enough for the meeting. My friends on the other hand were wearing the best clothes they owned. Every now and then Lana and Reina would sneak into the Area Centre to buy some adequately fashionable clothing. Area 32 wasn't really known for its fashion, but there were some good stores. If one liked fashion then Area 25 was the place to be. Of course all stores in the world had to be approved by the Empire and every item had to go through inspection. They had an entire ministry assigned to retail I think.

I for one knew nothing about clothing as to wearing the same grey uniform that I had been provided with by the Empire. A few weeks ago they sneaked in using
disguises and bought me some half decent clothing to wear around the Castle and for casual training. The Liberators themselves provided my training gear of course. The Liberators had a fund that was maintained by Liberators from certain areas. Every Area's Liberator got a certain amount of krones to spend on monthly expenditures like food, electricity and of course clothing. I didn't know the exact amount we received from the fund but I presumed that it was fairly decent and way above what an average family would get in Area 32. This lead me to believe that the fund was pretty big, and whoever was maintaining it was certainly secretly earning a lot of krones to maintain it.

"Get ready people. Take your seats. Avi's connecting us in a moment." Rory commanded as all of us took our seats in front of the camera and the screen.

This was it. The big moment, where I got to meet a whole load of new Liberators.

"Aaand connected." Avi said as he took his place on one of the chairs that had been set up.
The screen lit up with seven different cameras and our own camera's output on the corner of the screen.

"Hello Liberators I would like to welcome you to this meeting. Long time since our last meeting isn't it? We've got a very important new member amongst us today. After years of searching we have found the Sentinel amongst us. Meet Rinston Leroy also known as Rinzler from Area 32. He is the son of Tristan Friedrich as it makes sense, as we now know that he was one of the core people responsible for the Sentinel in the first place. It was only apt that it was his very own son that he gave access to. We found him around six months back and it's been around two months since we've recruited him. He's made leaps and bounds of progress since he's joined here and is up to speed with our activities. We're here to discuss two main questions. Where is the data file? And how do we access the data file? We may now discuss." Rory concluded.

An immediate chatter began amongst the near forty groups of people that we were. I observed the faces of the people on screen and they were truly from around
the world. People of all ethnicities and age were here. There were men and women who looked about the age of forty and fifty and there were teenagers who looked just about younger than me. The chatter continued as I looked at Patrick. He just shrugged back at me. I zoned out of the conservations and just looked blankly at their faces. Rory and Avi were involved in the conversations while Reina and Lana were discussing amongst themselves. Patrick was listening pensively to what one of the people on screen was saying. I had no clue.

Then all of a sudden the chaos stopped and a young man who seemed to be from around the same regions of Area 2 spoke, "Okay so obviously we have more than a few ideas about where the data file might be. But we seem to have agreed on a few things that we have learnt. It has to be in underground. As indicated by many of our findings of the documents of Liberators we have concluded that it will most probably be in an underground location. A lot of the Liberators too went underground into hiding so it supports the theory.
Along with that we have also concluded that it will be in a place that Liberators Friedrich, Kagawa, Williams and Iyer had in common with since these persons were the foremost men and women associated with the file from the intelligence we have collected over the years. So that narrows it down to places in Area 2, Area 28, Area 35 and Area 15. Unfortunately this is still a huge amount of land we have to cover. At this point in ti-"

"I know where it is!" I shouted. "What?" Rory asked.

"Its in the most obvious place ever. How did you ever miss it! Its in the Statue of-"

The red alert alarm went off and the projector screen went black and had text on it that said. "Connection Error – Unauthorized Access Detected"

Rory screamed over the alert," Everybody grab your suits and a weapon and get the hell out of here. They're onto us."
Oh no, this was really happening. I had a gut feeling that this was going to occur ever since I saw my college burning and all those people inside trapped and scorched alive. It was a message for us that they were coming for us. They were tracing us and they knew about the meeting too.

I raced towards the storage room where all of our weaponry and suits were kept. I ran inside the room along with the others and started picking up every single weapon that I could find.

I heard an explosion from somewhere outside the castle. They were forcing their way in.

"Hey Rinzler you're gonna need this!" Reina tossed me a black suit with a red lining. It was the suit that they were on their missions, the suit that I first say Lana wearing when the hijacked the Taskforce van.

I put on the light yet strong suit within seconds. It was a perfect fit. I holstered all the guns and ammunition I had picked up into the pockets of my suits. This was the second time I was wielding a gun. What a time to be doing that.
All of us ran our way to the underground escape tunnel at the end of the Cheltenham Castle. They had shown me this tunnel on one of the first few days that I had come. In any emergency this tunnel was the way to escape.

The explosions got louder and louder while the air got hotter and hotter.

Patrick yanked open the hatch of the entrance and all of us hurried our way through the extremely dim lit stone tunnel. This tunnel existed as an escape route for the royalty when the castle was attacked. Today the castle was being attacked.

We saw at light at the end of the tunnel as we waded our way through. Yes, the tunnel had water and extended into a river.

At the exit of the tunnel there was a small boat docked to the side of the river.

I jumped into the boat first along with Patrick and helped the others up while Patrick hoisted the anchor of the small boat.
As soon as everybody was in Rory turned on the engine and we zoomed out of sight of the Castle into the opposite direction.

"Good bye Cheltenham Castle." Avi said as we looked towards the retreating figure of the structure.

"So what are we going to do now?" Patrick asked.

That was the question. What were we going to do now?

# Chapter Twelve

...............................................

Roads and Rivers

We anchored ourselves towards the side of the river where there was a large clearing. All of us got off and dried ourselves. Luck was on our side, as the Empire hadn't caught up to us yet. It must have taken them some time to realize that we were long gone.

It was nearing nightfall and it was getting colder by the minute. We had to find a place to satisfy our basic needs. For the while though, we decided to plop ourselves on the soft grass and calm our franticly beating hearts.

"I thought you said that the Empire couldn't hack the feed Avi! How could they track us down!" Rory shouted at Avi in anger as soon as we sat down.

"I did everything in my powers! I encrypted it completely! Only a person from the inside could have done it."
Rory's eyes grew wide. "So you're suggesting that one of the Liberators leaked it to the Empire."

"I came to no other conclusion." Avi said definitively.

"Boys stop fighting. The conclusion we need to come to right now is what next? We're on the run from the Empire with no where to go and here we are fighting about something that was beyond our control."

"We do have somewhere to go." I spoke up. All heads turned to me waiting for my answer.

"I was reading an old newspaper from the 5th of May 2024, the day I was dropped off in the hospital and just about a week or so after the Empire legitimately took control of Areas 1, 2 and 3, that was lying in the back of the library at Cheltenham Castle a few days back. Patrick may know this, in the Area Centre of Area 2 there used to be a monument called the Statue of Liberty that was built on an island. An article in the newspaper stated that a man with the surname Kagawa and a woman with the surname Williams were caught
and executed for high treason against the Empire. They were wanted fugitives caught trying to escape on a boat from a place close to the monument. A few weeks later the Statue of Liberty was demolished by the Empire."

"So what are you implying? That it's on that monument off the shore of the Area Centre of Area 2? You did say that they destroyed the structure. So they must have destroyed the system that the data file was hidden on there too." Avi asked clearly not satisfied with my reasoning.

"The island still exists and I'm pretty sure the system was hidden underground the island not in the actual structure. Almost everything thing that the Liberators had tried to preserve was underground in some capacity. It all fits."

"How sure are you about this?" Rory asked.

"The moment that person mentioned Williams, Kagawa and Area 2 it clicked. They must have been caught trying to escape from the city after installing the
data file. It probably made sense for them to escape because they knew the Empire would have hunted them and paid less attention to what they had done. And the monument's name was the Statue of LIBERTY! It's all in the name! I really don't know how long it took for all of us to realize it from all the documents you guys collected about the Liberators and I'm pretty sure the Empire would have even taken longer to figure it out." I remarked.

"But now the Empire know what we're up to as they've been tracing for who knows how long. They even told us they were after us with the college thing they tried to pull. How did they find out though about Rinzler?" Reina mused.

"Probably that Gary White guy, Rory's street fighter friend or the guy we let go from the van that night. Or all three. Who knows?" Lana said.

"So I guess there's only one thing left for us to do now." Patrick declared solemnly.

"And that is?" Avi asked him.
"We somehow find a way across the ocean and into Area 2's Area Centre." Rory concluded.

"Really? We're going with his stupid theory? How are we even going to get back into the city? Let alone another continent altogether. I'm sure the Empire tracked the rest of the Liberators too and must have ambushed them too. They must have heard the whole thing too. They now know what we're after." Avi put his head in his hands. All of us fell silent after that for a while. We could here crickets making sounds in the darkness while the moonlight reflected onto our faces.

"Hey Rinzler, was your father mentioned anywhere in that newspaper?" Lana asked me.

I replied, "No he wasn't. That Iyer person wasn't mentioned. I guess they were a little preoccupied with hiding me that day." I replied.

All of us rested in the clearing for a few more minutes before boarding the boat again. We had no sense of direction and were following the length of the winding river hoping it would lead us back to some
sort of civilization that could get us back on track. We needed to get to a city and find ourselves a plane or a ship that could get us over the long stretch of water that separated Area 2 and the other part of the world.

It took us a couple of hours to find a place where we could dock our boat and then find a place where could get ourselves a car to enter the Area Centre. We presumed that we were about four to five hours away from the nearest city with an airfield or a dockyard good enough to take us to Area 2.

We were thankful it was nearing midnight as that made it relatively harder for the Citizen Security Force or the Taskforce to actually find us and chase us down.

This was legitimately the first time I had seen the rest of Area 32. The only parts I had ever known was the localities near the college and the abandoned land surrounding Cheltenham Castle.

It was ironic what had happened to the Cheltenham Castle. It was bombed and destroyed, left in ruins and one day the Liberators came across it and started
secretly restoring it as a home base. Life came back full circle for it when the Empire showed up today.

I'm almost certain that they must have reduced it to ashes with their explosives. We couldn't see the extent of its destruction; we were long gone in the boat.

I could see the passing lights of the dimly lit villages and towns. We hadn't seen any Taskforce or Citizen Security Force vehicles either behind or ahead of us. So far so good. Patrick was behind the wheel of the small beat up SUV that we managed to rent out from a small dealer in a town for about twenty-five krones. We also bought a pocket map to guide us and we found ourselves to be two hours away from the nearest city with an airport. We just hoped that there was a plane that could actually fly us there.

Luck was on our side as Reina managed to retrieve her wallet before escaping the crumbling building. Which left us about a hundred krones for our needs. We stopped at an inconspicuous diner and got ourselves a quick meal to replenish our hunger. The waitresses
gave us a suspicious look after observing our attire but her attention was abruptly diverted when a coffee mug was spilt somewhere.

Reina paid for the meal and we were off for City Six's airport.

"So what do we actually plan to do when we get to the airport?" Patrick asked as he let Rory control of the vehicle instead.

"Pretty simple actually. Get in through the back entrance of the air hangars discreetly; find ourselves a plane that gets us to the Area Centre of Area 2. Get into the plane's cargo or baggage hold discreetly; survive the long flight. Get out of the plane discreetly; find ourselves a way to get to the island discreetly. Get on the island discreetly; find the data file; access the data file and finally use the contents of the data file to take down the Empire. Simple. We're going to have to do a lot of things discreetly by the way." Lana explained.

And I thought me being the son of a Liberator was far- fetched.

# Chapter Thirteen

...............................................

Cargo-to-Cargo

"Welcome to City Six, Area 2" The sign read as we entered the city. The city was fairly large with its few tall office buildings and grey apartment buildings that dominated the black starry skyline.

We still hadn't come across any Taskforce or CSF vehicles on the road and we were getting a bit suspicious. Was the entire force waiting to ambush us at the airport? There was only one way to find out.

We followed signs and drove towards the airport, which was on the other end of the city.

"Howmuchlonger?" Aviaskedinfrustration.Everybody was getting a bit nervous and irritable. We had to keep our composure if we had any chance of evading the Taskforce and the Citizen Security Force.

"Ten more minutes, get ready and focus on the plan." Rory said.
I went through the plan in my brain. Lana and Reina were going to get to sneak into the departure terminal of the airport and find out when the next flight to Area 2 was due for take off while us boys were going to find a way into the airport through the one of the hangars.

The car was quite as everybody mentally prepared themselves.

I could see the lights of the airport and planes that were landing and taking off every few minutes from a distance.

Rory parked the car a little away from the airport in a side alley. All of us got out and started equipping ourselves with the gear we had dumped in the truck.

Lana and Reina unzipped their suits and were back to wearing the common clothes that they were wearing earlier underneath. They had to be careful to be not recognized inside the airport, all they had to do was take a quick glance at the departure timings of the flight and the flight number. The Empire controlled all aircraft throughout the world, except for a few that us
Liberators had stolen for transporting goods to each other.

"Stay safe ladies." Rory commanded as they made their way to the departure terminal of the airport.

The rest of us got back into the vehicle and waited for the ladies to return in silence. They came back about ten minutes later and entered the vehicle.

"There's a passenger flight leaving in half an hour from Gate 5. Let's go." Lana said as soon as she sat back inside the car with Reina.

We made our way to the other side of the airport where the cargo bays and hangars were and stopped the vehicle behind a large section of bushes. We scanned the area for any Taskforce officers or Citizen Security Force officers. There wasn't much of a difference between them except for the fact that they had slightly different uniforms and different weapons. Other than that they seemed to operate exactly the same way, mercilessly.
"Ok boys, weapons ready. Two Taskforce officers at our eleven o'clock. Patrick and Rinzler, take out the cameras above them on the entrance door. Avi and I will take out those idiots." Rory said as we slowly exited the car with our rifles and positioned ourselves in the bushes with our guns pointed at our targets.

I heard Avi call out to me, "Hey Leroy, use the silencer you bozo or you'll get us all killed."

I quickly pulled out the silencer from my back pocket and screwed it onto the rifle. If I hadn't used the silencer like the rest of us we would have been surrounded and probably killed in what would have been seconds by the rest of the Taskforce. As Lana said, "We have to be discreet."

I took aim at one of the two cameras that was above the gate while Patrick took aim at the other.

"Okay fire in 3, 2....1."

And I didn't miss. Neither did Patrick. Both CCTV cameras now sported a hole through their lenses. The
two officers looked up for the source of the sound. At that moment Avi and Rory shot both the soldiers square in the forehead.

This just got real. I had now aided somebody kill two men. If the Taskforce didn't show mercy neither did we. This was now in concept a war.

"Move move move."

We sprinted towards the entrance door and quickly dragged the limp bodies back into the bushes and out of sight.

Lana and Reina had finished getting back into their bulletproof suits and were carrying their own rifles.

All of us then went back through the entrance not knowing who or what might be awaiting us on the other side.

The door opened into a small office of some kind with a flickering tube light and a half drank coffee mug. There was a door on the other side of the office through which we could see opened into an empty
airplane hangar. Man, were we lucky tonight.

We slowly made way through the hangar cautious of any cameras or people.

"What gate did you say the plane was at?" Patrick asked Lana.

"Gate 5. We mustn't be too far from it. Lets just hope that we make it while the cargo hold of the plane is still open." Lana answered.

We walked onto a small taxiway for planes only illuminated by the small warning lights on the ground.

"There I see a sign saying Gate 5!" Reina pointed out to a sign on the side of the building.

"And they're still loading up the baggage into the plane. Come on lets ago." Patrick enthused.

We made our way very very discreetly towards the plane hoping that none of the stewards on the ground saw us.

But how were we going to actually get into the plane
itself?

"How are we going to distract them?" I asked. "We bribe them." Patrick suggested.

"And what if that doesn't work?" Avi deadpanned. "Then we're all buggered."

There was no way this was going to work. Even if we bribed them they would tell the authorities. There was nothing for them to lose and that's when an idea struck me.

"I've got an idea, just follow my lead." I quickly said. "What?"

There were four to five stewards working on loading the baggage into the plane but there was one steward who was standing alone and looking at his clipboard.

I pointed towards that steward and got close to him and aimed my gun at his chest.

"Hands in the air." I ordered at the steward who was still unaware of my presence.
He immediately looked up and dropped the clipboard putting his hands in the air. The rest of the Liberators pointed their guns at the stewards that were tending to the baggage who also put their hands in the air.

I looked at his hands subtly; he was wearing a ring on one of his fingers. "We've kidnapped your wife. If you don't let us in the baggage hold of the plane she dies. If you tell the authorities, she dies. If you even call or message her she dies and the only person you could blame would be yourself."

"I don't believe you." He said with his lips trembling.

"Do you want to test us? We don't have time for your games. Tell your friends to let us in." I ordered.

He stood still trembling in his sweat. "Move!"

The stewards slowly moved and gave way for us to enter the hold.

"And we know your near and dear ones too so don't
bother trying that." I said to the rest of the stewards as all of us slowly entered the dark and cold baggage hold.

The stewards finished up loading the rest of the baggage in before the first one said, "When will you leave her?"

"When we land," I asserted. "And if we don't you very well know what will happen to you lot."

They closed the hatch and left us to breath in the hold.

Rory looked at me in the darkness and said, "Well that was smooth."

"Yeah it was," I laughed. "Let's just hope he doesn't actually call up his wife then all of us will truly be buggered."

"But how did you know he had a wife?" Lana asked me.

"Ring on his left hand. Assumed he was married." "Nice." Patrick patted my back.
"Now we have an extremely long flight in an extremely uncomfortable position. So buckle up.....if you can." Rory said.

Lets just hope that a firing squad didn't await us at the airport in the Area Centre of 2.

# Chapter 14

...............................................

Hard Landings

"Rinzler, wake up! We're about to land." Lana pushed my body.

"And how do you know that?" I grumbled and turned the other way around.

"Because I can feel the plane descending dumbass." She pushed me one more time. She was stronger than one would give her credit for.

I finally gave in and sat up straight. I rubbed my eyes and observed my surroundings. Suitcases, suitcases and wow, even more suitcases.

We even used some of the suitcases as pillows. They were comfortable enough to get some rest I guess.

I looked over to the side to see Lana struggling to wake Patrick up who was snoring away to glory on the hard metal of the plane. Reina, Avi and Rory were already awake and were talking quietly.
This was it. The 'it' it. We were going to find that data file and reveal all its contents to the world. There must have been something truly confidential in that file for it to be so valuable and guarded. Something that would really expose the Empire and make it vulnerable.

The plane landed in ten minutes and I was gripping on to the side of the plane for dear life. It was like one of them rollercoaster's that one finds in those amusement parks that the Empire sometimes set up.

"Ok guys gear up. From here on out it's a complete race to the island. We have to find a vehicle to get out of the airport and a rather fast one at that too. There's no way we're getting out of the airport cleanly let alone this plane." Rory said as we felt the plane taxi to the gate.

Soon the plane came to a complete halt and we were waiting for the hold's hatch to be opened by a steward.

I heard Patrick mutter, "Home sweet home."
A few seconds later the hatch was being opened and we aimed our guns awaiting an ambush internally. As soon as it was completely opened and we were greeted with broad daylight we jumped out onto the platform of a the small baggage crane and made a break for the nearest vehicle that we could see, an airport truck.

I looked behind to the stewards who we didn't even spare a look at. They just stood there completely stunned at the scene. It was only a matter of time before the called the Taskforce.

Lana, Reina and Avi got into the cabin of the truck with Avi taking the driver's seat while Patrick, Rory and I quickly hopped onto the back of the truck.

Avi raced towards an exit for all the airport vehicles.

Our guns were cocked and ready for any violence that was about to ensue.

Avi slammed through all the exits and burst onto the main road that lead to the highway. I had never
pegged him as one for reckless driving. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

"Do we know where we're going?" I shouted against the wind hitting us at the open back of the truck.

"Yeah we do. Reina bought a map for this city too at the small store." Rory said.

At least we knew in which direction we were going.

Avi sped through the lanes of the highway making his way to the inner part of the city. There was going to be a lot of traffic in there and a lot of Taskforce too.

"Aaand the Citizen Security Force is after us!" Patrick exclaimed as an armoured CSF car came into view. It was much faster than us and was gaining on us quickly.

I opened the small window separating the cabin and the back of the truck and shouted again, "The CSF's gaining on us, step on it Avi!"

He immediately stepped on the gas and we were dodging our way through the busy morning traffic of
the Area Centre with the CSF tailing us.

"How much more time Reina?" Rory asked through the window.

"Ten minutes at least."

"At the rate they're gaining on us we'd be dead meat in ten minutes." Patrick remarked.

"Then I suggest you shut up and start shooting them." Rory said.

We started shooting at any CSF vehicle moved in our direction hoping it would deal some damage.

"Dammit! They're all armoured." It was pointless to waste ammo on vehicles with a bulletproof body and a tires that couldn't be punctured.

The truck suddenly swerved to the right sending all three of us crashing against the side of the truck.

"Spike strips!" Avi yelled as the vehicle swerved to the right trying to avoid running over the spike strips set up on the road.
This was getting chaotic. The noise of the CSF sirens, cars honking all around us and the buzz of a busy crowded metropolitan city and of course the gunfire.

"We're reaching a dockyard where we can hijack a speedboat to the island! We can see the island from here!" Lana called out through the window as we made continuous grunting noises as we kept colliding with the side of the truck due to Avi's extremely rash driving.

We kept our heads low as CSF soldiers fired at the airport truck from all directions.

"Get ready to jump!" Avi yelled. Jump? Jump where?

"Jump Rinzler!" Rory yelled as he jumped out of the vehicle, I took a leap of faith. I literally took a leap of faith and landed into cool salty water. I just realized that the one ability that I did not learn neither during school nor at Cheltenham Castle was the ability to swim.

"Rinzler swim to the boat!" Rory shouted as I struggled
to keep myself afloat. I splashed around frantically in the ocean, salt water quickly entering my body.

Patrick pulled me up into the speedboat that we now had control of. I lay flat on the floor of the speedboat breathing heavily. I was passing out. No, I couldn't, not now. We were so close to what we wanted. That data file could change everything. But the water in my lungs was.... It was just so tempting to close my eyes and just....

"He's gonna pass out! Pat do something!" Pat started pumping all the water out of my chest but I was still passing out. My head was oh so heavy and I was hungry too. My last meal was like almost twelve hours ago. Water and stomach juices were not a good combination, trust me.

"Rory they're gaining on us! We can't risk Rinzler getting shot." Avi shouted at Rory. To me it just sounded like garbled radio static. My ears were ringing with a sound like garbled radio static.
"You don't think I know that? Just concentrate on shooting those son of a guns!" Rory shouted back.

The gunfire coupled with the roar of the engines of the speedboats was really messing with my head. I was hanging on by a thread concentrating my entire being on just staying awake because I knew if I passed out it could be quite a while until I actually regain my senses.

"We're getting close to the shore of the island, we need to get this guy on his feet quick," Patrick said. "Hey I need you to get up or you're going to get all of killed. Get up!" He slapped my face twice.

"How close are we to the island?" I mumble while squinting my eyes. My vision was extremely blurry and all I saw was the blue of the sky.

"Close enough for you to get the hell up!" Patrick bellowed in anger as the Empire's Coast Guard, even though they were some way off, were still pelting our speedboat with bullets. "I'm going to kill those jug heads the moment I get my hands on them."
That definitely got my blood running again. I wanted to shoot those jug heads too for trying to mess with us. They were only two ways that I was going to get off the island. With the data file or dead and the latter was not an acceptable option to me.

"Pick me up and get me a gun." I asked.

"We're here at the island. Now where do we go Rinston?" Lana asked me in desperation as Rory docked the boat near the dense forest of the island.

"I don't know."

"Lets get on the island, they're gaining on us. The island will be surrounded pretty soon. We also need to work out a way to get off this island. File or no file." Rory ordered.

We picked up our weapons and got out of the boat and into the dense forest of the southern part of the small island.

"Where do we go Rinston?" Rory looked at me and asked the same question once again.
"I'm working on it, lets just get to the middle of the island." I answered.

The only direction we moved in was forward through the dry forest. Eventually we came upon a clearing that gave us a spectacular view of our surroundings.

We could observe the Empire's Coast Guard coming towards the island from a distance. There were also a few helicopters that were flying towards us from the tall skyscrapers of the city.

But the most prominent figure in our line of sight was a lighthouse, the only remaining intact structure on the island. The Statue of Liberty was demolished, but the lighthouse that must have been built years before the Empire wasn't. It seemed to be operational and in use despite its ruined look.

There was only one place where the system containing the data file could have been hidden and that was in that lighthouse. It was right under the Empire's nose. It would have made the perfect hiding place. A desolate abandoned island with a lighthouse that nobody seemed to care about.
"Our only chance of finding it will be in that small lighthouse," I said to the others. "There's no chance of it being anywhere in the forest or underground. It just doesn't make sense for them to hide it six feet under. Its hidden in that lighthouse."

Patrick looked at me for reassurance. "There's no other place I can think of." I replied honestly.

"Our lives are in your hands Rinzler. There's no going back now. We find that data file or we die trying. Lets go before they kill us." Rory said with a fire in his eyes. I had the same fire in mine.

We sprinted towards the lighthouse hoping we didn't get shot or blown up.

In seconds we were in front of the intimidating structure with its fading paintjob and rusted metal door. In reality the lighthouse wasn't all that tall, but in our minds the lighthouse was the factor that decided whether our fate.

"The door's locked." Avi said as he tried the handle.
"Move!" Patrick shouted and slammed into the door ripping it right off of its hinges.

We stepped into the dark and dingy lighthouse with its winding spiral staircase that led up to the top.

"Patrick and I will cover the doors. You four go on up." Rory said. There was no time for thought as we climbed the old metal staircase.

All of us frantically scanned every inch of the structure as we climbed. Maybe it was on the outside of the lighthouse? No, I didn't think they would put it anywhere outside. They had to put it somewhere where it held significance.

"Get up here Rinzler," Avi called me when reached the lantern room at the top, "Check this out." He pointed towards the beacon.

It looked......... normal. Just a huge lens with a two huge bulbs inside. There had to be some kind of system here for the data file to be stored in.
"There has to be a way to switch this thing on." I said.

"Yeah it must be right below in the service room." Avi answered. We both looked at each other for a second.

"Service room." We said together and raced down to search for the service room that Avi and I missed on our way up. It was a small hatch on the side of the staircase that led to the small room. The service room was directly below the lantern room. It served as a living quarters for the man who maintained the lighthouse. Thankfully nobody maintained this one.

Avi went forward and started toying around with the equipment while I started searching the desks and pulling out drawers.

"Hey Rinz, go back up there and see if this does anything." I went back up to the lantern room to see that the lens was now rotating in its place. Where was the bloody thing?

Lana and Reina had managed to join us up here after searching the staircase thoroughly. "We didn't find
anything. Anything here?" Lana asked.

"Um guys, just take a look outside the windows." Reina said with fear in her eyes.

Outside the window was an entire armada of the Empire waiting in the water to decimate us. I guess we could forget getting off the island alive. That data file although had to get off the island, with or without us but definitely not with the Empire. First we needed to find the damn thing.

I looked at the lens, which was still rotating in its place. I noticed that the lens was split into two parts. "Avi stop rotating it." I shouted hoping he could hear me.

The lens stopped its rotation and Avi joined us up here. "Oh, I was rotati- Is that the freaking army out there?" He stopped mid-sentence looking out the glass panes.

"Yup." Reina responded.

"Somebody help me with this." I diverted everybody's attention from the windows to get them to help me
open up the lens. Avi and I pulled open the lens into two as a wave of dust came flying in all directions.

I peered under the bulbs and found a small device. "Gotcha!" I said as I pulled the device that had a screen out. The moment I touched the screen it lighted up with a bluish hue and a small command popped up saying, "Press the centre of the screen, Sentinel."

I turned to look at the others. They were sporting a grin on their faces but that quickly turned grim when they looked over my shoulder and out the windows.

"Rinston, watch out!"

And after that all I saw was black.

# Epilogue

Oh my head hurt. I touched my head to find a bandage wrapped around it. What had just happened?

I sat upright and found myself in a small room with a black screen that had a line that kept rising and falling, a heart rate monitor I thought. I looked at my arm to find a tube connected to it that was also connected to small plastic bag with some kind of liquid, gross.

And what the hell was I wearing? Some kind of green gown that went past my knees.

I wasn't dead. I was in the hospital.

Maybe I was dead and was dreaming that I was in the hospital.

Something of the two, I was sure.

I found a small bowl of some leafy vegetable soup and a newspaper lying on a table on the side of the hospital bed that I was in. I picked it and read its headline, "Empire No More, A New Free World."
Yup, I was definitely dead. I looked at the date of the newspaper out of curiosity, not that it really mattered because I was dead. It read, "22nd January 2046"

Wasn't it sometime in November that I died? The lighthouse and all that drama? So this meant that I had been dead for more than two months. Jeez, was that a long time to take to find out you were dead and 22nd January didn't even have to be today.

I unclipped the tube off of my arm and got off the bed to observe the rest of my surroundings, I wondered if anything was different between being alive and being dead. So far it seemed just the same. The hospital was awfully quiet though. Wasn't anybody else around?

I walked out of the hospital room that I was in and stepped into the corridor. There were a few nurses talking at the end of the corridor with a clipboard in hand. Were they dead too?

"Mr.Friedrich, what are you doing out here? How did you get up?"
"Rinston? You're awake!" I heard a person shout from the other end of the corridor. Was that Lana? Rory and Patrick were standing next to her. Were they dead too?

She ran and hugged me. "We thought you would never wake up. The Empire's gone. We won." She muffled into my shoulder.

Wait.... What did she say again?

I looked at her in confusion and unable to utter anything.

She laughed, "Yeah, you almost died when they shot down the tower. Almost all of us died. But guess what? Liberators from 2 and 3 rescued us. They managed to rally a mini army and find themselves multiple helicopters and boats and got to the island when they heard of us here in Area 2 being chased by the CSF to the island, they somehow knew we were going for the data file. They were like twice the size of the Empire's armada and obliterated them. The data file survived the ordeal too. You activated it simply by touching the screen and guess what? It uploaded all of the Empire's
information and intelligence right onto every single network and cable on the planet. It was hooked up to the Empire's database so it was updated right until 2045, that's like an extra twenty years of information. It was more than we ever wanted."

"So what happened to the Empire after that?" I managed to ask despite the overwhelming information that I was now receiving.

"The Empire basically turned on itself along with the rest of the world turning on it too. I didn't expect it to disintegrate so quickly, its still prominent in a few places around the globe though. Anyways, it's a long story for another day. What matters is that you're alive, just like the rest of us.' Rory said with a smile.

But something else struck me. "Why did that nurse call me Mr.Friedrich?" I asked as the nurse still stood there like a guard dog waiting to drag me back into that hospital bed. She looked menacing.

"Because we also found out your real intended name that was given to you by your parents." Patrick said.
"And that is?" I asked with a mock monotony. I had so many names that I didn't even care at this point.

"Patrick." He said.

"My name is Patrick Friedrich?" "Yup."

"So we have the same first name." "I guess we do."

"Splendid." "Splendid indeed."
NOTEL

THE END
 Extremely creative. The book doesn't come as a surprise from a boy who has excellent command over the language, runs his imagination and capable of thinking beyond his age. He joined the school midway of the year, never gave the feeling he was new, adapted to every situation.

## – Vijayasri Sarath Department of English, Vidya Mandir SSS, Chennai

I met Aditya Chandrashekar for the first time over five years ago, at a school quiz. He was representing his alma mater – Indian School Al Ghubra and looked strapping in a green school blazer adorned with lapel pins, depicting his various achievements. Aditya and my son Aanvik's shared interest in quizzing, gave me an opportunity to see his precociousness at close quarters. While his cerebral qualities are second to none, Aditya remains a fun loving teenager, who can regale you with his pranks at school, quick repartee and jokes.

The Sentinel is his first effort at writing fiction, and he exhibits a maturity way beyond his years in terms of the plot, writing and discipline that has gone into the effort. Conversational in style, The Sentinel moves at a brisk pace, making it a page-turner.

## \- Mayank Singh Group Editor

UMS Group of publications

Impressively written. Couldn't have expected anything less from an extempore speaker. Way to go for this story–teller.

## -Vandana Pathak English Department The Indian School Al Ghubra, Muscat
