Chapter III
Now, to the denizens of the future.
To those of you reading this immense record in an effort to relive the past…. It’s best if you familiarize yourselves with the boys from Antigua all over again. After all, they were not content to follow reverently in the footsteps of the Speedwagon Foundation’s leading paranormal investigators, J.D. Hernández and Elizabeth ‘Lisa Lisa’ Joestar. No—instead, they surpassed them and charged straight forward into the unknown, into an era of constant upheaval. They were nothing short of legendary, a duo whose exploits ought to be marked down in history.
Look at this young man, this owner of both a massive body and voice. Your eye may first be caught by his bronze skin, obsidian-colored eyes, his chin and cheekbones seemingly sculpted with machine-like precision, or his standing height, most of which was made up by his legs, surpassing even 185 cm. He was proud of his K’iche’ heritage, but he was unusually tall for a Mayan, making him more closely resemble a Uruguayan player. His chest was so well-toned, it could make anyone who looked at it want to do 30 push-ups out of shame. He had only just turned 19, but his brows conveyed the disposition of a bold, brave, and peerless king. He was a nice man who would throw himself in front of a car to save a . He had a cool way of smoking, he was excellent at telling jokes, and he was popular with the . Had he had a more fortunate childhood, he could have gone straight to Hollywood and played a younger Clint Eastwood.
The man’s name was…
O… ?
Oct…?
Octavio!
And he wasn’t full of undeserved bravado. All throughout his time in the and on the streets, Octavio had never relinquished his status as .
Many of the of Antigua had felt shame when they garnered a glare from his -like eyes.
Despite his merits, Octavio Luna Kan was also very troublesome. He was addicted to the limelight—he’d lash out any time a friend got too clever or threatened to steal his thunder. He couldn’t go a day without calling somebody a at least once, and he would often be motivated by his pride and ambition to fly into a rage, getting into fights and wreaking havoc. He was a man who knew no fear and believed he could change if he tried hard enough. But the other man, a , couldn’t name a single thing he’d like to change. Absolutely .
Look at this man. Look at .
It’s rumored that in later years, this other young man’s hidden potential piqued Lisa Lisa’s interest.
He did not possess his partner’s loquaciousness or well-projected voice. The teenager simply wanted to be as free as the wind, living a life free of killings and strife.
He had a memory sharp enough to write out priests’ sermons down to the very word, the ability to carefully monitor every inch of his surroundings, and would do any task asked of him without grumbling or complaining. Joaquín was well-suited to be a Speedwagon Foundation investigator, but he would have never thrown himself into such a state of flux were it not for his friend’s pleading.
Joaquín’s vigilance allowed him to act as a sort of protector for Octavio. If Octavio could hear all the words flooding Joaquín’s mind, they’d sound a bit like this:
“If Octavio wants to go somewhere, I’ll go with him. If he wants to leave this place, I’ll leave with him. I’ll always stick to him like a burr—I even join him when he goes on dates with . I’m Octavio’s foil, his voice of reason—the to his . I’m the who writes songs of his exploits as a . I’m the one who follows him, picking up the caution that he threw to the wind. And I’m happy in this role. Octavio isn’t just some naive knight of chivalry and justice; sometimes, he can be uncooperative, or do things I don’t like. But ever since we met as kids, he’s the only one who’s been able to understand a mute like me. We’re inseparable.
So, can you understand my reasoning? If Octavio wants to join the Foundation, I’m joining too.
If he says this world is full of surprises and adventures made just for us, I can believe it too.
And if we get an opportunity to leave Antigua, I’ll try to seize it just as hard as he is. But I’ve never been able to put voice to all these thoughts.”
After they were pulled from the brink of misfortune, Octavio and Joaquín, the , were given their first assignment, a challenge that would intertwine their fates with the Speedwagon Foundation’s. They were to investigate whether there were more people hiding abilities like Fabio Ubuh’s.
“If that’s all it is, we can have the info come straight to us!” After all, there was already a massive network of informants out in the field. They had their informants ask people whether they had seen any suspicious activity, unexplained fevers or illnesses, strange occurrences. They questioned everyone they could find—men making repairs to the colonial buildings, the priests and nuns, the selling stolen goods, the pimps and prostitutes, the float makers and the jadeworkers.
They managed to get information from even the most stubborn and sly old foxes—even an eccentric old lady, who at first refused to answer anything asked of her. But her walls came down when Octavio fed her a sob story. “My father was put in the hospital, and he still hasn’t woken up. The police won’t do anything… I just want to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again.” It was enough to make her tear up. Crafting elaborate stories to appeal to people’s emotions was their specialty. They teased information out of people, shut down any lines of questioning, and formed a three-dimensional image of the town’s rumors by bringing together the scraps of information like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
The next assignment was to find out how Fabio had acquired the ability to control these . They went to the that the unfortunate Fabio had been working at and interviewed the landlord of the apartment he had been living in, but J.D and his team had already covered most of the same ground. Is she trying to pit us and the other team against each other in a race to the truth? She and the other investigators will leave this country eventually. We need to get some useful information to her before then, or it’ll be before we know it!
“I’ll bet Lisa Lisa and the others have already come to the conclusion that Fabio wasn’t born with the power to control those .”
Seems that way, Joaquín said with just a nod and a look.
“Maybe he got into the dark arts, or he made a deal with …”
Yeah, something must have happened to him at some point.
“Guess just searching the area can only get us so much.”
That sounds about right. Just investigating here won’t be enough.
“His parents were killed in his home village…” Octavio grit his teeth. “And when he drifted back to Antigua, he had become a . If we assume he met with the Devil in …”
Before he drifted back to this town?
“Let’s see if we can find those smugglers.”
Octavio had guessed that they needed to look for a who worked in smuggling people across the border. The guerrilla soldiers and citizens who were being chased, the and paupers out of work, and the eyeing new lands were all constantly trying to escape to Mexico to the north, but the heavily-guarded borders necessitated who ferried people across illegal routes. Most of them had bad intentions, and there had been incidents where customers who couldn’t pay tens of thousands of Guatemalan quetzals were robbed of everything they had and left deep in the forest. Octavio knew of a couple of men who had met that fate: Pedro Ochoa and Enrique. Large groups of people had tried their luck and vanished from town, never to be seen again. Fabio too had spoken of his attempt to cross the border with his coworkers at the factory. He had been caught and paid the price, but the fact that he lived to tell the tale made him better off than others in his position—most were shot to death by border patrol officers. Was it possible that Fabio had already obtained his powers at that point in time?
They expanded their search to the neighboring villages. They traveled between them all around the clock, something only possible with the help of Octavio’s back-alley network. News of this reached the whose businesses were not advertised on main street billboards. By piecing together the whispered rumors and secrets passed from one informant to another, they pinned down the who claimed Fabio’s home village as his turf.
“…So, I heard the boss of that changed a while ago, right when Fabio was trying to cross the border. I’ve heard the whole organization’s gotten shadier ever since, doing things like demanding exorbitant fees, forcing people to walk through dangerous areas, and letting people escape in the woods just to do target practice on them. Isn’t it terrible? It’s like they’re hunting humans!”
The deadline hadn’t yet elapsed, but it had taken four days since the beginning of the mission for the pair to give Lisa Lisa a report of their findings at the she was staying at. Octavio triumphantly offered up his report, confident they had passed their screening and acting like it had been no trouble at all as a thoroughly beaten J.D. and his team watched on. The man was doing his best to look like the rookie of the year and prove his usefulness, but in reality, he just seemed like a Labrador who had obediently brought back a bone.
“, it seems one of these gangs is stationed in a small community in the forests northeast of Guatemala City. We know its general location, so we could show you there. All we ask in exchange is that you allow us to accompany you there as official members of your investigation team.”
Lisa Lisa had been quiet, as if she was scrutinizing the report given to her, but she suddenly raised her head and studied the fluorescent lights on the ceiling of the hospital room.
“Did you know that fluorescent lights are actually flickering at an imperceptible rate?” She questioned Octavio and Joaquín in a soft voice.
“Oh, I didn’t know that. I don’t see it flickering at all…” Octavio rolled his eyes as he looked up. What’s this going on about? He shared a look of puzzlement with Joaquín.
“That’s because it flickers about a hundred times a second. It can’t be seen with the naked eye.”
“Really? Doesn’t seem that way to me.”
“It’s in a constant cycle of light, dark, light, dark.”
Her eyebrows twitched slightly, but she didn’t blink. Lisa Lisa was fixated on the light.
“When I was young, I would stare up at lights like these just like I am now, trying to spot the tiny interval of darkness. I wanted to see that darkness that peeks out from between the flashes a hundred times in a second, and yet no human eye could ever observe it.”
The light shamelessly cast its pale rays all throughout the room, as if there was no darkness taking refuge within.
“You and I live beneath these rebellious rays of light. But there are also some who live beneath those flickers of darkness.”
“Light and darkness…”
“There is another world hidden in the gaps of our own, one that our reasoning does not apply to. There, all living beings see their own shadows deepened by that of death itself. Our worlds exist so close together, but the border can never be crossed.”
Lisa Lisa lowered her gaze to meet Octavio and Joaquín’s eyes, her expression serene.
“Our duty is to capture that flicker of darkness. There are some things I’d like to ask you two. Working in the Speedwagon Foundation is not like working with Interpol or in espionage. It is not a secret society like the Freemasons or a social club that pursues its own interests. Although we wear black suits, there are no symbols, coat of arms, or decorations on our ties or cufflinks. The investigators themselves are essentially obscured like a cipher, hiding from all of society. Are you ready to become that?”
Oh! Is this like the interview before I get the job? Octavio perked up. Erasing all evidence of his existence and hiding from society would be a cinch. In fact, the two of them took pride in their ability to do so as .
Lisa Lisa went on. “Going back to the subject of your special abilities… That report was only made possible through them, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“That was quite the feat. I was surprised you finished so quickly.”
“Thank you, .”
“I have one more question for the two of you.”
“What would that be?”
“What is the biggest lie you’ve told in your life?”
“Well, I… hate to lie.” Octavio was first to respond. “I’ve even done some pretty crooked and violent things just to avoid lying.”
“Hmm… What about you, Joaquín?”
Joaquín looked deep in thought as he picked up a notepad and pen next to the telephone and began to write.
Saying that I haven’t ever lied is probably the biggest lie I’ve ever told.
Lisa Lisa smirked. Apparently, she liked Joaquín’s answer.
“Now, get packed and show me to the .”
Black vultures flew in arcs in the sky above them.
As they drove along this road, flanked by tropical rainforest and weaving between mountains, they felt an invigorating breeze.
There were three four-wheel-drive cars prepared for them. J.D., now driving one of the cars, seemed unaccustomed to the fact that his local informants were now wearing the same suit as he.
Octavio, Joaquín, and Lisa Lisa were all in the same car. The two men had received a thorough rundown of the 63-year-old Speedwagon Foundation’s philosophy and rules, and current operations of the Paranormal Phenomena Section from Lisa Lisa before leaving. As apprentice investigators, they were not allowed to carry guns. The division they were in was not combat-oriented in the first place—the weapons provided to investigators were for self-defense in zones of conflict. The sole exception to this rule was Lisa Lisa, who needed no weapon other than herself.
The dense rainforest around them began to thin; before long, they were able to see massive triangular pyramids made of stone from their windows. Four or five of them towered high in the sky. “These must be Mayan ruins,” mused Lisa Lisa. The Speedwagon Foundation prided itself on the scope and achievements of its research in its study of archaeology and ancient civilization. Lisa Lisa herself was closely involved in these efforts and well-learned enough in the subject to outshine an expert.
Octavio and Joaquín had learned about history from her. According to their , the ancient Mayans’ settlements had been made of stone, most of which was limestone. They increased maize yields with selective breeding, and from that cultivation and harvest, a religion of nature worship was born. As they considered accurate predictions of when the dry and rainy seasons would come and go more important than anything else, mathematicians and astrologists had a higher place in society. They built the pyramids with observation rooms standing higher than the treetops, then shut themselves inside to record the motions of the sun, moon, stars, and planets. Scientists have theorized that their calendar was more precise than even the modern Gregorian calendar, with the Mayan year coming out to exactly 365.2420 days. The ancient Mayans were so dependent on nature itself that this extreme precision was considered necessary in the calendar and in mathematics. Rituals to influence the movement of the heavens were never missed, and believers would be so fanatic as to sacrifice their own blood or entrails in order to control the weather.
“Zero, huh…” Octavio wiped away tears that had welled up as he yawned.
“Zero. . The very truth and principle of this world. Perhaps the very thing we’re pursuing here in the birthplace of the zero has a nature similar to that of zero itself.”
Octavio had dozed off, lulled by the vibration of the car, but Joaquín was listening carefully, humming in interest. It was like a scene from their childhood: Joaquín had always been the one in charge of listening to their teachers’ lectures.
“The two of you are like the binary system given human form,” their teacher said, changing the subject. “You rush towards any possibility like the number 1, Octavio, and you are a bottomless receptacle of knowledge like the number 0, Joaquín. I find it very interesting.”
Eventually, the stone pyramids that towered over the trees at a height of over 70 meters were behind them. After the ruins faded into the distance, they saw fields that had been burned after the harvest. The white flowers and red fruits of the coffee plant remained, as it was a crop harvested late into the season in Antigua. Birds and deer wandered the forests and women picked the coffee fruits by hand, creating a rich ecosystem. After turning onto and driving down an unpaved gravel road flanked by kapok and mahogany trees, they reached their destination.
It was said this village, with its from the woods and isolation from the center of Guatemala, now housed the guerrilla army. Weakened by the People’s Army, they had forced out the original inhabitants and set up base here. Even the seemed to have gone somewhere else. Those men did more than just smuggle humans—they also made their living by growing and distributing drugs and carrying out thefts and kidnappings. The village was utterly deserted, the atmosphere silent and mournful.
The Foundation vehicles slowed down out of an abundance of caution. The village consisted of a cross-shaped formation of several houses with a circular plaza at its center, all surrounded by trees. Although they were called houses, their inhabitants were only shielded from the elements by rippled roofs of sheet metal or simple layers of stone, living in crumbling walls on foundations that had collapsed in spots. In a corner of the plaza sat a large water tank, rusted and blackened from neglect. Dried weeds curled in the wind, and the undergrowth bent and twitched. An empty, handwoven hammock hung between two trees, creaking with each sway.
“It didn’t seem like he was giving false information…”
Octavio grumbled as he gazed upon the depressing scene.
Joaquín rolled down the window. The wind carried the scents of wax, tree sap, and earth.
“I hate the countryside, Joaquín.”
All Joaquín gave to Octavio’s complaint was a wordless grunt.
“Maybe this was all the army’s doing, or they moved because they knew they would be exposed,” offered J.D.
In other words, we were too late, and we came all this way for nothing? Although he was glad they would be going home, Octavio decided it would still be worth it to give the houses a top-to-bottom search. He opened the door and stepped out, only to jump as soon as he put his foot on the ground. “Ow!” he shouted, clutching his foot. He had stepped on the exposed prongs of a half-buried rake for hay.
“Dammit, that was definitely a . This is why I hate the sticks.” The tips of Octavio’s toes were injured, so severely that he couldn’t put his foot on the ground.
They found signs of life in the area. All sorts of things were scattered outside of the houses. On the ground, they found circles and squares recently drawn in chalk by children. “A game of hopscotch,” Lisa Lisa observed as she looked out from the car. Perhaps some had lived here with their families.
“Let’s look around. There may be some stragglers.”
Investigators came out from cars parked in the shade at J.D.’s command. J.D. did the same after asking Lisa Lisa to stay where she was. Joaquín joined them, taking care not to step on anything as he did. But something happened right as the younger investigators came out from the back row of cars. A loud rumbling emanated from the earth, shaking their very bodies.
In the blink of an eye, the investigator disappeared into thin air.
A pit had appeared beneath and swallowed them up.
Amid the whirling sand and thunderous roar, the ground began to collapse as if its support had disappeared, its sides pouring in like an avalanche.
Sand and rocks flew in the air. The quicksand didn’t stop at the investigator’s waist—they had been swallowed up entirely. Not even a glimpse of their head was visible.
“Hey, what’s g—”
J.D. called out the investigator’s name to see if they were all right, but no answer came. His voice was swallowed up by the hole.
What was that? What just happened? Was it a ? But it was on a different scale, nearly 2 meters in diameter. He dashed to the pit, with another investigator, but they couldn’t confirm the status of the person who had fallen in. It was too deep. All they could see in it was darkness. This wasn’t just some childish obscured with dirt and grass. The ground itself was caving in. It was no different from a mudslide or landslide. A bomb dropped from above wouldn’t have been enough to make a crater this deep. This was a bottomless abyss.
“Hey, what the hell?! What’s going on?!” Octavio shouted.
“I don’t know! What is this…?!” J.D. braced himself.
“Is it an ?! It’s an , isn’t it?!”
“…This?! This isn’t anything so simple!”
“Then is this even natural? What’s wrong with the earth’s crust here?”
Investigators who had scattered in all directions came rushing back to help their comrades. One of them vanished in another cave-in.
This one was better observed by the group. When the victim had stepped over one of the lines of chalk, the cliff underneath him collapsed, sending him down into the pit screaming. Soon, his cries gave way to silence. Just then, another yell sounded behind them, but by the time they turned around, yet another investigator had vanished.
All that stood in his spot was a hole… A hole… A hole!
“Nobody move an inch!” J.D. shouted. Octavio and Joaquín froze instantly. “This isn’t just a cave-in or a natural disaster… This is a , an…”
It was an attack.
But from whom?
A ? Were they laying all over the area?
Holes like this had a history of being used to capture large animals and had also been part of battle strategies in recent wars. It saw frequent use in guerrilla warfare by groups such as and the People’s Liberation Army in the counteroffensive, the warning line, and the parting gifts left behind after evacuation. But no human could ever craft a hole as deep and well-concealed as this one. If this was an attack, it was similar to the . J.D. instinctively knew that a hidden power, , would be put on display again. So, what were the fundamentals and laws of these abilities?
Suddenly, Joaquín let out an “Ooh, ooh-aah!”, sounding like a bird of the tropics. He was pointing insistently at the ground to where circles, triangles, and squares were drawn in chalk. Had all of them been there when they first arrived?
“I know what you’re trying to say, Joaquín! I saw it too,” called J.D. “This is a special kind of attack! Anybody who steps inside of a shape drawn in chalk will fall into a hole! I’ll say it again—whatever you do, nobody step inside of the lines of chalk!”
“But I already have…” Octavio’s voice wavered.
“What?! Okay, stay right where you are!”
Turning his gaze to Octavio, J.D. saw that the man’s left foot was in fact over a white line, and yet the ground didn’t collapse beneath him. He had reflexively stiffened up, like a man who had accidentally stepped on a landmine. Joaquín pointed to his partner, copied his posture, and then lifted up his right foot.
Octavio clutched his right foot as it dripped with blood and stood on his left leg. That’s right—this is hopscotch…
Following Joaquín, J.D. too had finally grasped one of the fundamentals of how this ability worked.
Octavio finally yelled back. “I get it now… This is just ! in Antigua are always playing this on the stone tiles. You’re safe as long as you hop through the shapes without putting both feet in one shape, right? Now that I know that, this’ll be a piece of cake!”
Joaquín, J.D., and all the surviving investigators stood on one foot. J.D. ordered them to focus on getting back to the cars before they began to work out a rescue plan. Each investigator began to hop back on one foot.
“How the hell’d it get to this?” muttered Octavio. The and had been one thing, but this just seemed like some kind of magical spell or sigil! “Huh, you really can’t see the bottom of the holes. What happened to all the guys who fell, Señor Hernández? You think they’re on the other side of the Earth now?”
“Who knows? For now, we just need to focus on getting out of here…”
“Hey, look!”
Octavio and Joaquín yelled at the same time. J.D. couldn’t believe his eyes as he wobbled on one leg. There was no crouching person, nor a stick of chalk. And yet, a dash of white limestone powder was forming along the ground. A large circle was drawn, followed by a square right next to it. Shapes, large and small, were being drawn all over, multiplying like a rash. They just kept coming, one after the other.
The lines appeared as if they were being drawn by some invisible evil spirit. These -summoning sigils were proliferating with no end in sight. A dizzying amount of circles accumulated. The shapes multiplied, squares intersecting with pentagons, forming a complete geometrical pattern. The patterns blanketed the ground like a Tibetan mandala, rendering it practically impossible to navigate without being on one foot.
“Whoa! Nobody put your other foot down! Hop back on one foot!”
“I can barely even step on this foot! You think I can hop on it?!”
“Stop getting distracted and just hop back there!” J.D. managed to keep giving orders even as he seemed like he could fall over any moment.
Staying balanced on one foot was hard enough for J.D. without factoring in the chaos and tremors all around him. The sand clouds swirling around him blocked his field of vision. The car was only about ten meters away, and yet it seemed so far… Suddenly, his left leg throbbed with a dull pain. He began to stumble forward, enough to make him fear that he was about to put both feet on the ground.
“Señor Hernández, y-your leg—!” an investigator screamed.
What the hell? J.D.’s left thigh was being stabbed by the tip of a rusty sickle. Where’d that come from?
“Holy shit! I was right—somebody’s here with us!” Irritation edged Octavio’s voice. “They’re attacking us to try and stop us from staying on one foot!
A terrifying number of sickles, hatchets, knives, and rakes came flying towards them. Practically every kind of lethal weapon was being thrown. It was impossible to tell where they were coming from amid the chaos and whirling sand. If nothing else, it was obvious that there was more than one assailant. Crouching figures hid in the shadows of dilapidated houses and trees—even when the investigators sensed silhouettes dancing across their fields of vision, they immediately vanished and could be seen no more. It all made the village itself seem like one big , attacking in waves to toss uninvited visitors into the depths of Hell.
“Aaaagh!” The investigator’s other leg had been struck by a hatchet, causing his knees to buckle. He stopped his fall at the last second with a hand, but the activated regardless. The ground slid with a massive rumbling noise as he became the next to be swallowed up.
“Using your hands won’t work, either! You need to have only one point of contact with the ground at all times!”
“Whoa, that was close!”
Just after dodging a hatchet, Octavio’s uninjured leg was struck by a knife that had come from the other direction. It sent him careening sideways, but he managed to stop his fall by slamming his hand on the tiny buffer offered outside of the lines of chalk with a loud yell.
He brought himself back into a standing position and immediately threw J.D., who had been rendered immobile by a hatchet in his left thigh, over his shoulders to carry him. Octavio managed to hobble along with the weight of two people resting on his single injured foot.
“Octavio, y-you’re injured too—”
“Dammit, I’ve had it! How the hell are we supposed to fight this?!”
“We’re evacuating. Get back to the car!”
“Joaquín! Are you all right?!”
Joaquín replied to Octavio’s call with a grunt. He had evaded injury in both of his legs, and was nimbly hopping to the cars faster than anyone else.
“What’s wrong, Joaquín?”
“Unh, unnnh, unh, unnnh!”
“What, the cars? What’s wrong with them?”
“Unh, unh, unh!” Joaquín yelled. He was trying to point something out.
“Señor H-Hernández, look…”
“I see it. There’s chalk…”
“…around the cars.”
White lines of chalk were being drawn around the parked 4x4s. An invisible evil spirit was enclosing them in a massive square.
Octavio and J.D. realized what was happening. This wasn’t a that only worked on two-legged humans. Cars had four points of contact with the ground…
The ground collapsed the moment the chalk shape was completed. Pieces of shattered earth spewed up from beneath the cars; a sharp crack pierced the air, mingling with the sound of the engines. Pressure and gravity pushed the four-wheel-drive cars into the hole right beneath them. The earth collapsed like a waterfall of dirt and billowing sand, plunging into the abyss like an ice shelf plunging into an ocean. Lisa Lisa’s in one of those cars…
The shockwave from the collapse winded Joaquín. The deafening cracks the ground gave were like the agonized cries of the Earth itself. The cars were falling. How long would they fall? “This is war,” somebody said. If it wasn’t that, it was a of war. Joaquín and Octavio finally realized just how difficult the task of facing las Maravillas with no ability truly was. They had no way of knowing where a might lay. They couldn’t even trust the very ground they stood on. This was like walking into the fog of war unarmed, into a whirlpool of flying projectiles and booby traps.
J.D. was the one to charge straight into this fog of swirling sand. Octavio and Joaquín followed him. Knowing it was as foolish a decision as throwing themselves off a cliff, they tried to leap into the bottomless pit their superior was in. Had the hole’s reaction come a moment later, they may have succeeded. Smoke, sand, and car parts that should have been far away now flew back up like the spray of a geyser, transforming into sparkles like tiny shards of glass high in the air. People at the rim were bathed in a wave of energy that gushed from the pit like wind. When they grabbed the end of her muffler, they didn’t even need to pull. Lisa Lisa sprang out with a bounce like she was performing a pole vault. She had come back without even a scratch.
“I’ve never seen anything so unrealistic,” Octavio muttered, dumbfounded.
Lisa Lisa had pushed her muffler—her weapon of incredible grace and strength—to its limit, making it act as a powerful spring so she could leap out of the abyss. Now, she was even using it for acrobatics, standing upright with only its tip in contact with the ground. It was within the chalk lines, but there was only one point of contact. Lisa Lisa was safe.
“You didn’t die after going through that?”
“Seems not.”
“What the hell kind of training do you do to be able to pull off a stunt like that as an ?”
“Looks like we can’t take the cars anymore. Are we going to have to walk home, Hernández?”
“Ma’am, this was an attack by the user of one of those abilities. In this short span of time, we’ve already lost five members of our team. We need to retreat immediately and form a plan.”
“Retreat? There’s no need for that. I was just about to speak with you,” Lisa Lisa explained from her strange position. “This has just given us more data. We must fully understand how those abilities are used in local battles like this. We’re on the receiving end of a sneak attack from an enemy who refuses to show themselves. What we need to do here is find them. It looks like this ability can’t spread its power and influence over a wide area.”
Now, Lisa Lisa asked her audience to consider their other example from Antigua. This user had always been somewhere within his ability’s effective range. It was known that the landslides here had varied in severity based on position. The differences in size and depth were clearly visible. And one building looked out at the area where the power was most concentrated and the holes were the largest…
That’s it! I get it now! Octavio stopped listening to Lisa Lisa and hurriedly hopped towards it. Joaquín followed him a moment later. They knew which way to head without a single word to one another. Ignoring the injuries on both of his legs, Octavio hopped powerfully with his foot scraping the ground, all the way to a water tank in a corner of the plaza. Upon closer inspection of the rusted surface, he found a peephole. Octavio climbed the ladder leading up to the lid on top of the tank in a flash and looked into the tank. Whoa! There’s somebody in here!
The user of this ability, which was later dubbed “Hopscotch” in the investigation files, would be in the Speedwagon Foundation’s custody by the day’s end. She was a , and only 15 years old.
Her pupils were as dark as pits, and it was as if you could hear them dilate. Her expression was that of a girl who had given up all hope and fallen into nihilism. She had chewed her lips so much that they oozed blood.
Her canary-colored hair fell in natural ringlets, now tangled and dirty like a tumbleweed. Traces of tears streaked her blackened, grimy cheeks, but any tears she would have shed in front of the Foundation had dried long before.
“He said to make everyone who came to investigate this village fall down, whether they were government soldiers, guerrilla fighters or anybody else. He told me to lay a and ambush them like antlion larvae do with their prey. I didn’t want to go with them, so I didn’t mind them leaving me behind.”
This girl who said she had gone around 3 months without a bath or clean clothing, Izahela Mena-Mena, was not considered dangerous enough to straitjacket like the of Antigua was. Octavio recalled that she had collapsed from exhaustion, laughing weakly, as soon as he discovered her. Several other children who had been left behind like her also came into Speedwagon custody without resistance. They had been the ones throwing hatchets and knives, but the moment Izahela lost her will to fight, the s in the ground vanished. It looked as if there had never been any pits in the first place. The investigators who had fallen in lay unconscious in a nearby thicket, but the physical injuries they had sustained from the fall had not vanished. They were all as severely injured as if they had fallen off a cliff, having broken bones in countless places. Two of them were unable to recover and never woke up. Had its creator been more cunning and persistent, this trap may have caused much more damage than it did. “I can summon chalk,” Izahela said after being brought to the Foundation base.
“I don’t really get it myself, but whenever anybody moves on more than one foot in a place I’ve drawn chalk around, it makes them fall into a pit.”
“How long have you known you could do this?”
“I’m the only one that can do it. All the other kids are just following my orders.”
A large ruin in the city of Guatemala had been converted into a Speedwagon Foundation base. It was fully equipped for medical treatment and inspection of seized evidence. Notes were pinned to a map on the wall, and stacks of documents, some new and some old, formed mountain ridges. Octavio and Joaquín hadn’t seen the room used for questioning yet. It contained what looked like a lie detector, an electric chair, and other strange equipment. Izahela was in a stupor, seeming neither fearful nor relieved as she blankly looked around.
“When did you first find out that you could summon that chalk?” Lisa Lisa was handling Izahela’s questioning herself. She had Izahela lay down on a sofa as if she was at therapy and sat at a chair, her own legs crossed.
“It began when you met the , didn’t it?”
“My family tried to go to Mexico. But they tricked us. They shot us with an ancient-looking bow. They told us that useful people would survive, and all the rest were done for. I saw my father and little brother die like they had been poisoned. For some reason, I was the only survivor. They made me come with them to that place.”
One moment, she had the family with whom she shared the good times and the bad, the dreams of living in a new land, the optimism-stirring birdsong.
And then came her family’s screams, their blood, the sound of an arrow coming from behind. It pierced her shoulder, but instead of killing her, it left her with something beyond human understanding.
The next moment, she felt herself moving in a world shrouded in darkness. She was trapped in a space no light could penetrate, shoulder-to-shoulder with other men and women who had been forced here like her. They were only given scraps to eat, and they spent their time sprawled on the ground or slumped over. Those who hadn’t perished were woken the next morning, but with nothing to do, they simply cowered in the corner of their room. All of them were terrified.
Only ten people were there. She had no idea if the others had survived being shot by the Arrow like her. When they were led out by the traffickers, some came back, and some didn’t. It appeared Izahela passed some kind of test, because she was eventually taken out of confinement and put to work like a servant or livestock.
Listening to Izahela’s from the next room, Octavio whispered to Joaquín with a rare expression of humility. “Am I cruel for hearing all that and being glad it didn’t happen to me?”
“No matter where you go in this country, you can’t escape war. Either one of us could have ended up in that chair. Right, Joaquín?”
When the exhausted Izahela finally gave in to sleep, she was handed over to the medical team. That night, Lisa Lisa entered the briefing room accompanied by J.D., causing the investigators and two apprentices who had been standing by to look over. Her cool and collected expression brought to mind a priest coming up to the pulpit with plenty of topics for his sermon.
“Unlike Fabio Ubuh, Izahela has provided many clues pertaining to the people we are searching for.”
She used her cane to point to a spot on the map that was pasted on the wall. It was a mountain range south of Guatemala, situated on the border between Brazil and Peru.
“Let’s rewind to seven years ago, in 1966. When a magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck Peru, it caused large deformations in the earth’s crust below this mountain range. A geographical investigation was carried out by a certain research organization, 40 kilometers east of the capital of Lima and a town connected to it by highway, Pucallpa. Researchers who entered an area that had a new, large-scale depression suddenly fell with unexplained illnesses. It’s said that most of these illnesses resulted in unnatural deaths, but three or so exhibited strange changes in their bodies, such as spontaneous combustion or electrical discharge. It’s believed that in the process of the geographical investigation, they had come into contact with a strange mineral that had been exposed by the earthquake, causing them to be infected with an unknown virus. At the very least, we know that a pathogen that had been lying dormant in the ground was unearthed by the changes in the earth’s crust. In most cases, the virus will make hosts resemble a jambalaya fit for a monster, but in a small percentage of hosts, it is used in a specific way. My understanding is that, along with its extreme acuity, this pathogen encroaches on our own souls and consciousnesses and overwrites our very composition.”
Like many of the most contagious diseases in history, humanity only happened to come across this pathogen because of the times it lived in, a kind of fate. She explained that pathogens carried from the polar regions, undeveloped areas, old-growth forests, and the deepest caves were very rarely beneficial to the host, but most were unable to manage the sudden changes to their own bodies. In this way, some viruses have built symbiotic relationships with humans since ancient times. Whether it’s the bacteria lurking in our brains or moving in our stomachs, we are already host to billions and trillions of microorganisms.
“There is also the fact that this virus may lie hidden in the earth in places other than Peru. As deep layers of the earth are brought to light once more in a new era, this could irreversibly change the course of human history, the same way it changed after humanity encountered tuberculosis, malaria, and influenza.”
“…Hey, what’s she getting at?” Octavio whispered into Joaquín’s ear, having utterly lost the plot.
It appeared the other investigators had already heard some part of this, but even they had no idea where this speech about the aims of the Foundation was headed. Lisa Lisa’s tone, as grave as a passage from the and as cold and hard as steel, made both Octavio and Joaquín gulp.
“After becoming an advisor to the Foundation, I devoted myself to researching this incident. I discovered that in the distant past, there were cases of people finding and harvesting this very mineral in regions other than Peru for their own purposes. It’s said they carved the ore into an arrow that was used as a vector for the virus—the very same Arrow that struck Izahela. In other words, that arrowhead is made up of a material with the same characteristics as the unknown mineral.”
Lisa Lisa and her team had already been conducting investigations past the border for a while now, but never came to any proper conclusions. They had no way of getting in touch with the families of the victims who could provide valuable testimony and evidence. Like the Bermuda Triangle and Hanging Gardens of Babylon, it was a story that existed only in legends and rumors… until they had heard Izahela Mena-Mena’s testimony today.
“So who made the Arrow, and why?”
Lisa Lisa tossed this vague question about this mystery of their world at Octavio and Joaquín.
The heartbeats and breathing of every person in that briefing room seemed to stop at that moment. Octavio and Joaquín looked at one another, seeing absolute cluelessness in the other’s eyes. Their minds were tearing at the seams.
“There was once a man who wanted to be as powerful as a god. He was a member of a family who had lived eternally since time immemorial, or perhaps a descendant of that family, and he instinctively sensed the true value of this unknown virus and came up with a scheme to turn the mineral into Arrows. We decided on that theory after consulting with many thinkers and researchers. One person who had superior foresight predicted the world that was to come and unearthed this ancient secret, bridging the past and the future.”
Lisa Lisa went on to explain that there appeared to be not one, not two, but several of these so-called Arrows in existence. By the very nature of their form, they had spread far and wide across the world, pierced many, and appeared in war zones and regions of conflict.
“Izahela, that girl, told us all of this in her testimony. It appears that several of these Arrows have fallen into the hands of the who brought her and the other children into that position—into the hands of their leader, Alhorn.”
Upon hearing that name for the first time, Octavio repeated it, mulling it over in his head.
So the cause of this outbreak of strange powers in Guatemala was the Arrow, a tool from ancient times that awakened abilities that surpassed human knowledge…
Izahela wasn’t the only victim. Had Fabio Ubuh and countless others been shot by the Arrow?
What did this man named Alhorn plan to do by awakening so many people’s abilities? Was he planning on making them the private army to his very own kingdom? Did he want to go against established values and overthrow society and state? Or was he making an investment in the human and drug trafficking businesses? Whatever the case, this man was more than a simple trafficker. He was a criminal who had ought to be topping most wanted lists all throughout the world. Lisa Lisa held her hands aloft like the plates of a balancing scale as she spoke. This man named Alhorn was using the Arrows to screen potential underlings. Either they were weeded out, or they were revived with a new vitality.
“Our duty is to bring these dispersed Arrows under Foundation management. For the time being, we must focus on capturing Alhorn and his underlings here in Latin America and retrieving the Arrows in his possession.”
At night, Guatemala was ringed by a horizon as dark as the void and domed by a sky crowded with stars.
Octavio, who had been completely taken in by his leader’s speech, came out onto the facility’s terrace after the briefing, his cheeks convulsively twitching even when exposed to the fresh air. His eyelids drooped, his head hung, and he trailed off when he spoke. If he let his chin fall to his chest and stretched out his arms now, he would look like a statue of Jesus on the cross. He seemed to be restless due to his surging emotions. Even Joaquín had never seen his friend in this state.
However, Octavio didn’t need to speak for Joaquín to understand him. In the silence, Octavio’s thoughts were as clear as glass.
Octavio wanted to say: “This is a rarity for me. A miracle is unfolding here, just for me. Right now, I’m being called upon to act and decide…“
flew. Wings buzzed. The sound of an caving in echoed all around them.Echoes of the strange events Octavio and Joaquín had experienced unceasingly reverberated in the back of their minds. Chaos, screams, tears, viscera, the fog of war. When they closed their eyes, eye-searing scenes of battle replaying themselves on the backs of their eyelids. When they looked up, they felt as if the ground and sky had been reversed, a bottomless pit looming beneath them, ready to suck them into the abyss the moment they let down their guards. Joaquín kept his feet planted firmly on the ground so that he wouldn’t fall into the sky, but Octavio just had a hint of a wry smile.
“So this means that all sorts of unique abilities are being awakened. If someone’s chosen by that Arrow that the was talking about…”
Octavio opened his mouth to speak. Joaquín saw something foreboding in his profile. This was more than mere impulsiveness—it was his troublesome nature rearing his head once more. His insatiable ambition, his dreams of power… In this land so dry it seemed to evaporate hope itself, where people slept day and night like they were dying of thirst, it was Octavio who shouted that he would do whatever it took to escape this reality.
“If I was, what do you think would happen to me, Joaquín? Would I bite the dust, or would I get some incredible power? Hearing a story like that would make anyone wonder, don’t you think?”
Stop thinking about things like that, Octavio. Joaquín grasped his neck as if he was trying to feel the words that rose up to the top of his throat, but the words for the rebuke never came.
“Isn’t that a natural thing to think after hearing that?”
The throbbing pulses and pounding heartbeats deep in their bodies only grew stronger. Neither could deny that a new door had opened. There was no going back to how things were before after listening to such a story. They felt trapped in a swirling vortex of vertigo, or like a cancer had begun to spread in their bodies.
On the distant horizon, they saw a faintly white, faintly red flame that flickered. It was in the northeastern forests, where the ancient stone towers and ruins lay. It seemed it could have been a farmer burning off the land, but this fire had no hopeful glare. The light was like a long sigh after the passing of many things, as vague as a faint memory from a past life. In spite of himself, Joaquín became weak at the knees. It seemed as if his body could take off right there and silently tear through the night sky like a runaway kite. But Octavio grazed his shoulder with his fingertips, as if to ground him. Octavio’s face turned toward Joaquin. Joaquín’s shifting expression, with eyes full of an indescribable emotion, lips drawn taut, and shoulders stiff, spoke for him more elaborately than it ever had before. I don’t know how far I can go, my friend, but will you follow me for as long as you can?
