Chapter 16: The Apostle Crest

Here I was the next day having breakfast with my parents, it's one of the small changes due to last night's developments,but...

"Where are Andrew and Felice,mom?, as far as I know school vacated on Wednesday and Felice's vacation period should not be over yet"

"them?, I sent them on some missions, they should be back by tomorrow", My father answered,"And that reminds me, some people will be here shortly to see you"

"Some people?,who are they?"

"Their from the military, they say they have some important business with you"

"But I don't have anything to do with the military"

"Thought so, since I've been observing your movements all this time, I'm getting a bad feeling about this"

Shortly after we'd finished with breakfast, a group of men arrived, nine of them, and they were being led by a man in black suit. My father greeted their leader with a handshake and led the party into the conference room where the family usually gathers for important meetings. It was my first time in the room and I could not help but marvel at it's size.

At the center of the room was a large round table with chairs around it, but it was harder to miss the modern tech that furnished the room, it would cost two lifetimes worth a fortune to own. After we had sat down and gotten comfortable, the man in black suit cleared his throat and proceeded to speak...

"Excuse me Mr Strider but could you allow us some privacy?"

"No, I'll be taking part in this meeting, if my son's concerned then I'm concerned as well"

"But...".

"...my decision won't change Mr Vasquez"

From his straight answers this Vasquez man realized convincing my father was impossible. He stood silent for a while, either thinking or getting confirmation from whoever was at the other side of his surely hidden wireless communication device.

"(Sign), Looks like it can't be helped, please do as you wish Mr Strider".

He proceeded to take out a tablet and had his men pass it over to me

"I'm Ramsey Vasquez,the commanding officer of this small unit of soldiers, it's good to finally meet to Brian, to cut to the chase all we need from you is to verify whether you've seen that mark anywhere before".

I had already received the tablet, and on its screen displayed the crest that was on my chest, I had tried so hard to get information about it but I could not find any no matter how I searched, and it's obvious these people know about it, I have to find out what this is all about even if it means revealing it to them.

"Yes, this is the same crest master Julius gave me six months ago", I said raising my shirt to reveal the mark that was glowing bright purple, all nine of them reacted as soon as they saw it and their facial expressions became more serious.

"When was it you last saw Julius?"

"Last week, he was training me until he suddenly left saying he had something important to take care of"

"I see, Julius was unfortunately found dead in a secret hideout we believe to be his last Friday, he was a highly skilled military asset but he broke his code of servitude and ditched us when he was needed most, that was about a year ago. He got off our satellite tracking radar and only appeared last Thursday, but after tracking him down we found him dead".

"Julius was too strong, there are not many people on this planet that can kill him, what really happened?,do you know anything?", My father asked.

"You really knew him well, you're right, he wasn't killed but died from matox disease, is what our forensics say"

"That's absurd, everybody has immunity to matox", I replied.

"That is true, and it all comes down to that mark on your chest"

"Come to think of it I remember master also had this mark, what really is this mark?!"

"Calm down boy, it's called the 'Apostle crest', anybody with that marking is directly connected to zone six's Zeus piece, but when it's glowing like the way yours is now, it means you've already established a meteor link".

Apostle crest, Zeus piece, meteor link, there was a lot of information here to digest that I could not help but make a confused face.

"Looks like I need to explain further, well then listen, researchers figured that if the pulze waves that humans emit we're almost on the same wavelength as those emitted by the Zeus meteor, then there should be a way to connect people to the meteor through pulze in order for them to tap into the power of the meteor directly and boost their powers. I don't really know how it was done but they managed to succeed and link people to the meteor, and this is what is called a meteor link. From what I know there can only be one person linked to the meteor at a time and that individual becomes so powerful that a new group was created exclusively for them, 'Apostles'".

"I get the picture now, but how does that lead to Julius' death?".

"I'm getting there, each zone has one piece of the meteor, making a total of six apostles. It was necessary to have the apostles under military control in order to maintain a balance of power among the zones. The only problem is that the sizes of the meteor pieces are not the same for each zone, the zones are numbered based on the size of their meteor piece with zone one having the largest and zone six having having the smallest. Due to this, the other zones have more powerful apostles which kind of defeats the whole balance of power idea. Just recently a silent underground war has broken out between zone one and zone six, we feared the military might of zone one so we had to protect our zone, but what better defence is offense. We planned to launch a surprise attack using our greatest weapon, apostle six, Julius Macaiah, but he bailed out refusing to hurt innocent civilians of zone one and he ran away and went into hiding...