Titan (2 page)

“Please leave us alone,” Mark replied, trying hard to emulate his father’s commanding tone.

“You can do what you please squirt, nobody’s stopping you.  Go ahead home, I just want to talk to Elise.”

Mark stepped forward in front of his sister
.  A strong action says more than any words
, his father would often say.  The message was clearly received, as the tires screeched, each bicycle stopping for their riders to dismount.  The pack advanced, circling the pair.  The leader stepped forward to face Mark, and leaned in close until they were nose to nose.  “I said, go home,” he repeated challengingly.

Mark heard a yelp from behind him, and he turned to see that one of the boys had grabbed Elise’s arm, and was pulling her away.  As Mark moved to interfere, each of his arms were grabbed as well to hold him back.  Mark remembered that his father had told him never to start a fight, but he also remembered being told that it was his responsibility to protect his sister, and he intended to do that as best he could.  Mark jerked hard on both his arms, and to his relief, neither boy was able to hold him.  He dashed forward and aimed a punch at the face of the boy holding his sister.  At the last moment
the boy turned, and his fist instead met the side of the bike helmet covering the boy’s head.  To everyone’s surprise, the helmet shattered beneath his fist, and the boy collapsed into an unconscious heap on the ground.

“You killed him!” one of the boys screamed, tears beginning to well up in his eyes.  In his fury, the boy jumped at Mark with a flying tackle, but Mark just stood there in stupefied disbelief as the boy bounced off, grasping his fist in pain, as its connection with Mark’s jaw resulted in little more than a tickle to Mark.  Another boy pulled a baseball bat out of his bag, and swung at Mark’s face.  Finally Mark had recovered from his stupor enough to react, and he stuck out his hand, catching the top of the bat.  The boy yanked and pulled, but he could not move the bat an inch.  Mark felt the bat beneath his fingers, but it did not feel like wood.  It felt fake, like it was designed to look like a real wooden bat, but was instead a
soft cardboard.  The curious feeling of the wood led Mark to begin closing his fingers, and as he did the wood crumbled into splinters beneath his grasp.  Finally the boy was able to pull the remainder of the bat free, and swung hard into Mark’s abdomen, but the result was nothing more than the shattering of the remainder of the bat.

The boys’ fear at last got the better of them, and they ran off, leaving their bikes and their unconscious friend behind.  Noticing the boy still
lying on the ground, he turned to his sister.  “Elise, run ahead to the next house to get help.”

She nodded dumbly, unable to look her twin brother in the eye.  Mark watched as she ran off down the road before turning back to the boy on the ground.  Mark scooped him up, surprised once more by his newfound strength, as the boy felt more like a stuffed pillow than a human being.  He ran off after his sister.

Later that night Mark received word that the boy would be alright, the hit to the head knocked him out, but did no permanent damage, thanks in large part to the helmet.  Mark would never return to his old school again, as the next morning his father would begin training his son.  Mark’s entire future had changed in an instant.  He would be trained by his father until the Academy came to take him away, as they did with all the special children.  Mark was destined to train at the world famous Academy, and to one day go forth to defend the world as a hero.  Mark was not a child anymore.

Mark was a Titan.

Chapter 3
– Present Day

The sound of the door handle rattling as someone on the other side worked in a key echoed through the room and into Mark’s alert ears.  Whatever their plans for him, they were ready to enact them.  The door swung open silently, and three men walked in.  The front man he recognized immediately as the famous Captain Williams, the head of the Academy, and leader of the hero army.  The way Captain Williams carried himself reminded Mark of his father.  Walking erect, as if his body were only capable of bending at the joints, and reluctantly even there.  His strides were even, carrying him at a constant speed throughout, his head never rising or dipping from its chosen level.  The biggest difference Mark could see between the captain and his father was the smile on Captain Williams’ face.  His father never smiled, not even a fake one like he saw now.  The smile looked almost like it was being forced to be fake, to hover between an honest grin and a flat out mock.

The two who walked behind him were not dressed as formally as the captain, but were wearing white smocks and facemasks.  They looked like doctors ready to perform an op
eration, yet rougher and somewhat more unkempt.  They looked more like people dressed up as surgeons for a costume party.

“My boy, I must start by welcoming you to the Academy,” Captain Williams began cheerfully.  An edge of excitement twisted Captain Williams
’ voice, mixing with the serious formality and overwhelming contentment with which he spoke.  “One of the guards mentioned that you were thinking we had brought you here to kill you.  I wish to put you at ease immediately; we at the Academy do not make it a habit to kill our students.”  The Captain reached out to pat Mark’s arm, but being bound as he was, the captain patted one of the restraints instead, mixing a reassuring gesture with a reminder that they were in full control.

“Before the day is out we intend
to return you to your quarters, to allow you to continue on as another one of our privileged students.  We keep our promises, and we promised to train you, so train you we shall.”

Mark listened to
Captain Williams, waiting for the catch.  With what Mark had seen, the Academy would have to do something to prevent him from talking.  If they would not kill him, maybe they planned to torture him first.  The doctors had to be there for a reason.

“…I see you have noticed my friends here.  Yes, I suppose they do stand out with the way they are dressed.  You see, you are in the unfort
unate position to have witnessed something that we cannot allow you to know.  Even if we could trust you to keep it a secret, we train mind readers at this facility, and there is too great a risk that another student or professor could learn something that we would rather they not know.  So before you leave, my friends here need to perform a simple operation.  There is no need to worry; you will not feel a thing.  In fact, you will not even remember that an operation took place.  We are privileged enough to have found a method of picking memories out of a subjects mind, and erasing them from existence.  So you see, there is no need to worry about your unfortunate discovery, as pretty soon you will remember nothing about it.”

Mark stared up at Captain Williams, eyes wide in horror.  This was worse than death.  He would train and fight for these people having no idea what they had done to him.  He discovered the truth, yet he will be able to do nothing about it.  He will in all likelihood live and die as a tool to these men, these men who perform wicked deeds behind closed doors.

Captain Williams nodded to the doctors, and spinning on his heels, waltzed back through the door from whence they had come.  Mark heard the door knob rattle once more as the key was turned, locking the three of them in once more.

“Please do not do this, anything but this!  Lock me up if you need to, but leave me be, I beg you.”  Mark could see his pleas falling on deaf ears.  He dropped his head back in submission, knowing there was nothing he could do.  “How many people have you done this to?  How many times have you manipulated people, forcing them to know only what you w
ant them to know, and to forget what you want them to forget?”

The doctor, who was preparing to place a mask over Mark’s mouth, stopped.  He blinked rapidly, and it occurred to Mark that the doctor was just as nervous, and possibly more so, than him.  The doctor gathered himself again, placing the mask down over Mark’s mouth, starting the flow of some gas meant to force him into an unconscious state for the operation.  Mark’s vision began to blur, and just before he blacked out completely he heard the doctor answer his question.

“You will be the first.  But don’t worry; we are pretty sure that this will work.”

Chapter 4 – Two weeks earlier

When Mark walked into the gymnasium to be tested for admission to the Academy as a Titan, he knew he was ready.  His father had trained him well over the past few years, constantly pushing him to learn how much he could lift, or how long, or how high.  He studied the art of war, various martial arts, team techniques and formations.  Every news story involving a Titan was recorded and watched repeatedly, with every movement broken down into fine detail, tested, perfected, and exceeded.  Elise contributed as well, running with him, monitoring his nutrient intake, working as a check against their father to ensure that the methods of training were as safe as they were effective.

His body also did its part to push him to peak physical form.  Mark had learned that abilities often develop differently from one person to the next, even within the same ability class.  Some Titans grow taller than the rest, while some remain at their normal height.  Sometimes their
muscles grow thick and bulky, and sometimes they remain lean and deceiving.  Some Titans become top heavy, while others have a more even spread of muscular development.  Mark’s development combined in such a way that changed him into a formidable, hulking creature.  He often felt like Frankenstein’s monster, drawing stares of wonder and often fear from anyone he passed.  His height increased dramatically, leaving him at a height of six foot four inches, while most of the other boys his age were still a foot or more shorter than him.  His muscles came in thick and even, not bulky, but hard as iron and perfectly toned over every inch of his body.

Despite all of this, his nerves upon entering the testing site made it hard to walk straight.  He knew he would pass, that was not the issue.  The Academy has a policy of automatically accepting anyone who can prove to be a Titan, Hermes, or Prometheus, and there was no doubt of what Mark had become.  He could not put his finger precisely on what made him want to turn and run from the room; maybe it was the knowledge that his years of training with his father had ended, that this was the
culmination of all the long days and short nights they had spent preparing.  They had been preparing for this test. 
No,
Mark corrected himself,
we have been preparing for what comes after.

“There he is, there’s the boy I came here to see.”  The woman who spoke rose from her seat at the side of the room and walked beaming over to meet Mark just inside the gymnasium doors.  It was immediately clear that she was a Titan as well, as despite being smaller than Mark, she emanated confidence and strength as he had never before seen outside of the news reels he had studied so rigorously.  It seemed odd to Mark that a fully trained Titan should be administering the tests
in his small town.  All that he had learned studying war tactics had led him to the conclusion that such a resource would be better utilized in battle, instead of coming out here to sit in a chair watching hundreds of students try to lift far more than they are capable.  But he has not been trained by the Academy yet – he was sure they knew what they were doing.

“I am here to be tested as a Titan, ma’am.  My name is Mark…”

“I know who you are,” she interrupted with a wave of her hand.  “Relax, this test is more of a formality.  The Academy tends to know who will be accepted long before we come to these schools to see for ourselves.  If someone develops a power, word gets around.”

Her honest
y helped to calm Mark, but he knew the knot in his stomach would not unwind until the test was officially over.  He looked past his examiner at the room behind.  He could see dumbbells placed in a circle around the room, starting out small and increasing in size as they circled back to the doorway where they now stood.  The first dumbbell to Mark’s left was only fifty pounds, which confused Mark until he remembered that the vast majority of the time, the child who came in to be tested was not, in fact, a Titan.

“Shall I start here?”  Mark asked, moving over to the fifty pound weight.

“Oh no, there is no need to begin that low with you.  We can start over here, at 200 pounds.”

The 200 pound dumbbell was about halfway through the circle, and as they passed Mark could see that the beginning weights were more for show than for practical testing.  Arriving at the specified we
ight, Mark waited for further instruction.

“Go
ahead, you don’t need to wait for permission,” she said, stepping back and pointing her hand towards the weight on the ground.

“What am I to do with it?”  Mark asked.

“It is just a dumbbell, just lift it up and put it back down,” she responded with a chuckle.

Mark knew what a dumbbell was, but he was surprised that they just wanted him to lift it up.  He had not worked with such a low weight since shortly after his strength began, and even then his father had
him count how many reps he could handle.  Mark bent down and rapped his hand over the cool silver handle.  He lifted the weight up over his head, and then lowered it back to the ground with less effort than most people take to lift a television remote.