Sigma/Star

Chapter 69: Enter Beijing Part 2

Porter groggily awoke to a dim light that flickered overhead. His head was spinning, causing a blurred vision that didn't let him focus on his surroundings. Slowly, the mental fog lifted and the small metal room revealed itself. It was tiny, only slightly bigger than a broom closet. Chase was sitting across from Porter, their feet touching in the middle.

The hothead was well bound, with legs tied together and hands clasped behind his back. Chase himself was snoring gently, a snot bubble growing and shrinking as it precariously hung from his nose. His hair was tussled and his face smeared with grime from when they had been hauled to wherever this was. Chase coughed, seeming to choke for a moment before spitting and waking, blinking a couple of times at Porter.

"So, in revision."

"Please don't start Chase."

"In revision," the pilot continued, "you told me to come down to this country to find a missing brother who probably isn't alive..."

Porter began tuning out as Chase continued to ramble on. He sighed and looked around his surroundings as the teen talked. Nothing but a square room. It really was a closet. The situation felt eerily familiar though, as if Porter had seen this before, possibly dreamt about it. He stared at Chase and imagined him as an annoying, older man, but he didn't know why that popped into his head.

The door slid open with a pneumatic hiss and bright light seeped in through the opening. A shadow appeared in the middle of the frame, blotting out a portion of the blinding rays. Porter and Chase's eyes needed a moment to transition before they made out the same jade-toothed stranger from the library with his trademark smile stuck to his face. "Greetings my friends."

"Hi there," Porter answered halfheartedly. He was a bit upset with himself for getting into such a situation and being dumb enough to flash his insignia to everyone he had seen at the landing pad. Strangely though, the man's accent had disappeared, his pronunciation of their language flawless.

"I am so sorry to have to put you in such crude conditions but, as you might understand, I have to take some safety precautions in my line of work." As he spoke, the stranger knelt down next to the pair and began to untie them, using his green dagger.

"And what exactly is it that you do?" Chase spat.

The man paused for a bit then chuckled to himself and continued cutting. "You do not know who we are then? That is fine, I can understand why our group would not interest you as an outsider. Your emblem showed excellent handiwork but those who have a keen eye for the real thing know that it is a fake. So why must two young soldiers use a falsified pass to come to a library in my country?"

"We're not soldiers exactly sir," Porter began to explain, but was silenced by a raised hand.

"I am not sir. I am hardly much older than you are. My name is Ling Shi, call me by either my surname or given."

"But which one is which with you?" Chase cut in. "I can never remember."

"Chase!" Porter sneered at his compatriot for his ignorance, though he didn't admit that he too had no idea what the answer was either. "Ling I am sorry. We are just students here from an Enian academy."

"Students?" Ling said, raising an eyebrow. "Students who come in customized Goliaths?"

"They're our...parents?" Chase threw it out as an excuse with a large grin and a shrug. Porter used his now free hands to smack himself in the forehead. "What, it's believable!"

Ling Shi moved his eyes between the two, watching the banter and trying to follow along before a large smile spread across his face. "You two are too much! I must say you will go down as the most entertaining hostages we have ever had here. Come with me." He motioned for the pair to follow as he exited into a long hallway. "This entire facility was once used by our military here, a factory for manufacturing weapons." Ling pointed to different passages and doors as they walked, showing them windows into vacant spaces where gun-making machines had once stood. "We later found it and now use it for our purposes."