The Chosen by Lee Borromeo

Chapter One

Daniel asked himself that question when he stood there, waiting for his ride, sitting in the corner of the shed, feeling exactly like one of his mother's heirlooms: cold, and just one of many.

The Marian Private School for Boys was known for its foggy twilit afternoons; situated on top of a ridge overlooking the now-renamed Riverside district, it was as patrician and old-school as one could be in a tropical country. Famous for its priests and its cloistered atmosphere, it was a haven for young rich kids, be they aristocratic or bourgeois. Money, after all, was the final arbiter for entering this school.

"Danny! You going to the party later at Ryan's?" One of his classmates inquired, though not in so gracious a tone as the word "inquired" required.

"Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see," Daniel murmured as made up his mind that he would stay home. It wasn't that the party didn't interest him; it was just that he didn't feel like it was a good idea.

"Sige ka; you're wasting your time at home, pare. You'll never get anywhere with the babes! Friday pa naman!"

"Maybe."

Silence. It was always awkward for his friends when they knew he was in one of his solitary moods.

"Your ride's here, pare."

And true enough, it was. He saw the familiar black old-style Benz, like some sort of hearse, coming to pick him up. "See you guys on Monday," he shouted at his friends, who all waved goodbye or nodded as he got into his car. "Mang Roger, where's Dad," he asked the driver; it was his usual question. That way, he would be prepared if he would have to be nice and formal for dinner.

"He is gone for the weekend, 'nyorito."

"Good." Daniel looked to the sky. In the dimness, he could see some lucky mutant flying into the night.

The world had been largely untouched by the coming of the nuclear age; but its people were not. Long before Reagan joked about bombing Russia over the radio, one significant event happened, on a remote island in the Philippine Sea. Then-President Marcos had needed American weapons to combat the local insurgents, and so he agreed that one island, Bathala, would be used as a nuclear testing site. What he didn't know was that they were testing a new sort of bomb, one that affected living beings more than it did physical structures.

That was in 1974.

In 1980, they had their prototype. Observers were in their bunkers, recon ships in the distance, satellites in place, all ready to take a peek at what the new bomb would do. Rows upon rows of monkeys, each in their own little cages, were inside "nuke-proof" shelters on the island. The Nuke would be fired from a ship, and then detonated over the island.
When it finally happened, the bomb exploded in a glorious flash of atomic light, a mile above the island; it was a new style of bomb; it did not disintegrate everything in its path. Rather, it spent its energy in releasing electromagnetic waves that would target living tissue, making cells explode from the inside.

400 monkeys became 400 oozing piles of dead flesh in a matter of moments. Miles away on a nearby island, observers wretched, coughing up, literally, blood and guts. The bomb had been more effective than they thought.

But there were more effects. Nine months later, babies were born, and an unusually high rate of deformities was reported. Even more amazing than this nuclear scandal is that some of the normal babies started developing unusual abilities, the most unusual being that some of them could fly, or move objects by thought alone. Some could control fire. The press had a field day with it; calling it the comic books come true. "We have superheroes," they cried. And thus did they keep report on this. As with all things, however, the brouhaha died down, and as time went on, these children, now called The Chosen, were studied, and the secret of their abilities linked to the bomb test; the scientists learned what they could, and duplicated the events in their own laboratories. The world had entered an age of Homo Superior, as one comic book had labeled it.

And so it was that as Daniel looked into the sky, he saw a person fly, much like he had for so many years past. Later, in the comfort of his study-room, he reviewed his notes on Philippine History. One part of their lessons dealt with the coming of age of those who had been called "Chosen."

Every high school kid knew about the changes. Children with special abilities were segregated, taken to the Philippine Special School, the PSS as it was called, where they were taught how to control their powers. Most were there simply to learn how not to lift objects unintentionally, but there were whispers of those who could blow up a whole room in a fit of pyrokinetic fury. Aside from Algebra and The Classics, these children learned the skills of concentration and meditation, of Alpha-level thought control, all to make them harmless - or more harmful, depending on how one thought about it. It was well-known that all countries now viewed their Chosen with military value, and the Philippines, whose contaminated genetic lines had the most number of potential Chosen, had become a major player.

A special Military unit, simply called Bayani, was made up of all the truly powerful; people who, as some rumors reported, could lay waste to entire cities with the power of thought.

Daniel yawned. That was enough for one night. He went to bed.

The next day found him in Megamall; he was mallrat by his standards, but unlike others, who congregated in packs, he walked alone, looking at clothes and at people. His mother could not understand him when he did this, saying that he was too quiet for someone his age. He simply didn't care. His father and mother had gifted him with books upon books, not knowing that while they made their son a reading man -- a rarity in the day of the internet -- they had also turned him into a dreamer of sorts, content to walk his own way. He was looking through some albums in the CD shop when he heard the muffled thump of an explosion as its shockwave made its way through the mall.

Oh no, he thought.

People started running to the safety of the shops, or for the exits. He took a look outside the shatterproof display window.

Two teenagers were having a brawl. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but they were, well, Chosen. One was floating in mid air, his hands glowing brightly, while the other's head was surrounded with a nimbus of fire. And they were fighting, heat versus heat, will versus will. It was incongruous, seeing them in cargo pants and checkered polo shirts while they were displaying their godhood for all to see. Deadlocked in battle, the tiled floor around them had blackened in the intensity of their hatred. The floating one gestured with his hand, and small globes of light appeared around him, and then went straight for the other's halo of fire. The other's fire aura quickly expanded, matching the orbs power for power, leaving nothing but the smell of ozone in the wake of their collision. One orb spun off from the fire attack, heading towards the CD shop. Daniel could only stare at it, knowing that if it hit the window, that he would die, just another statistic of a fight between Chosen.

But the fireball stopped a few feet away from the window, its light shining mercilessly on his skin; sunburn in the middle of a mall. It was then that he noticed the third person.

He -- She? -- was dressed in the manner of the old Spanish ways, with a black cloak hiding most of the body, but from what he could see, the person was wearing what seemed to be a vest, and then had some sort of riding cloak over it. Leather gloves concealed the hands, and a wide-brimmed hat hid the face in shadows. But he could see a glint of metal; there seemed to be a silver eye-patch.

He suddenly heard a soft whisper in his head, while he watched the two erstwhile enemies turn to face the intruder in their private anger.

<Enough. >

Telepathy, he thought. He had experienced it from some of his friends who had minor abilities; they were not powerful enough to be called into the PSS.

The two Chosen directed their aggression towards the black-clad one in a fury of fire and light, the heat of their attack evident even from behind the window-glass. And yet, the stranger walked through it as if it were nothing more than illusion, untouched by the chaos of energies unleashed. It was then that he noticed the staff the stranger held, and the sword in its sheath, by the side of the stranger's belt.

<You've done enough damage, hijohs. >

The stranger just looked at them, and they both collapsed in pain, writhing on the floor, no longer god-like, just a couple of teens that seemed to be suffering from a gruesome form of pain-wracked epilepsy.

And then, just like that, the stranger was no longer there.

It took the better part of an hour for people to settle down to something like a normal routine; mall security had sent its men to attend to the two boys, and there were some Bayani agents there too, looking like deities. One was dressed in simple army fatigues with a blue beret, while one was also a teenager, and the other a girl in raver clothes. But what set them apart were the badges they wore in various parts of their clothes: a golden sun inside a silver triangle, three stars inside the angle points.

It was increasingly obvious that the cloaked stranger was not a Bayani agent. As he walked near them to get to the exit on the other side, he heard one name.

Salamangka.

He decided not to tell his mother about this little incident. She was the sort who was always afraid for him; he might never be able to go to Megamall if he told her he was here when this happened. When he got home, he searched randomly on the net, bored out of his skull. He could have called up his friends, but after his time in the mall, he didn't feel like being near anyone. He randomly typed in the word "Salamangka" into the search engine that he had accessed; it came up with a thousand references. Some were the usual word meanings, and some others were about native Filipino sites. There were some references however, to an individual who seemed to be on the list of Chosen who were not with Bayani. But that was all.

He yawned; he disconnected the modem and shut down the computer. He watched some shows on cable, getting lost in the mindless movie reruns and late night shows, before he finally fell asleep on the sofa. In the morning, he found that he had a blanket covering him. His mother had come home after all.

Sunday went by with him mostly in bed, just reading. He kept on thinking about how close he had come to getting killed; he could still remember the afterimages in his eyes as the light globe came close to the window. Was it a plasma ball? Was it a psionically-contained form of energy that was possible only in the realm of Chosen powers? He had no idea. It wasn't something that really interested him anyway, just the fact that he nearly bought it. And always, he was thinking about the Black Stranger.

Next

Please send feedback to Lee Borromeo

The Chosen main page