The Chosen by Lee Borromeo

Chapter Four

Daniel woke up with a start. He was covered in a blanket, and he only had his underwear on. He looked around the room; it wasn't his. For one thing, it was too large, and for another, it was neat. And yet, strangely enough, he saw some of his things there. His clock, his CD player. He saw some of his clothes neatly piled on one chair. He saw his favorite books and some of his shoes on the floor. But the room... it looked like something out of a magazine. One whole wall was a large window with heavy blinds, blocking out the sun.

"You're awake."

Daniel spun around, by the door was the one called David, Blackshadow. He wasn't dressed in black now. He was just in a soccer shirt and a pair of tattered corduroy shorts, with sandals. He was still awfully tall, all six feet and more of him. His hair, which Daniel hadn't noticed, was a long shining mane of black hair, and he looked like he just woke up.

"Come on, we have a lot of explaining to do."

With that, David left, looking every inch like a normal person.

Daniel was able to find his favorite house shirt and shorts and walked out of the room barefoot. The living room made him whistle in surprise. He was in the middle of Makati, from the looks of it, with all the familiar tall buildings... and he seemed to be in a penthouse, since he had to look down at some of them.

To one side was the kitchen, and there he could see another guy in a shorts and a t-shirt, holding cups of coffee in both hands.

"Hi, I'm Zeke. Coffee?" He extended one of the cups to Daniel.

Daniel took it, smiled, and then sat down on the sofa.

"My code name is, err, Ezekiel...my name," he offered. "You must be Daniel. We nearly didn't get to you in time, sorry."

"What?"

Zeke sighed. "This is going to be a long one, so get comfy."

Zeke took another sip of the coffee and then stood up to stand in the center of the room. David sat on one of the chairs and proceeded to look like he'd heard it all before.

Zeke looked normal enough -- rather short, a Spanish mestizo with brown hair and hazel eyes. He wasn't exactly as well built as David, but he, too, was lean. He had wire-rimmed glasses that complimented the soft, almost girlish curve of his jaw and his fine-boned nose.

"Okay. You know about the Chosen, right? I'm sure the history lessons have been pretty clear on that right? Well, they're not all clear. There have been Chosen even before, but not in great numbers. In other words, there have been Chosen since the beginning of time."

Daniel thought this over, and then came up with a question. "So how come we never heard about it?"

David guffawed from his corner of the room. "Told you he's smart."

Zeke just smiled. "Well, genetics is a bitch. A lot of mutations pretty much are fatal, like birth defects and genetic diseases. But, once in a while, something comes up and works. In the past, these people have been called magicians, monsters, faeries, elves, what have you. And part of the reason why you haven't heard much about is due to another fact: that genetics is an even bigger bitch. We can't have children. Yep, us natural Chosen are not capable of having children."

Zeke cleared his throat, and took another draught of coffee.

"But there's an up-side to it; we're technically immortal. Not that Highlander cut-off-your-head stuff. We're talking real immortality. You see, all you really need to be immortal is for your auric field -- what could be termed as your body's electromagnetic field -- to be capable of surviving without a corporeal form. That's what it's all about. All these mutant powers that you've seen go back to electromagnetics. Our personalities somehow key in to how we use our powers. For example, David here is an unbelievably stubborn idiot, so he somehow has invulnerability and some sort of reflex and speed enhancement as his powers."

David just smiled, chuckled, and then kept quiet.

"Anyway, that's the whole gist of it. The natural Chosen are immortal because our auric fields do not fade away; we somehow feed off the ambient energy around us, making us, well, live forever. With the coming of the Chosen caused by the Bathala Test, things changed. The new Chosen are not immortal, but they are a damn sight more powerful than us on the average. Most of us natural Chosen aren't as gifted as David or Patrick. So there, any questions?"

Daniel sat there for a few long seconds, absorbing all the incredible information.

"Hmmm... So how old are you guys?"

Zeke smiled. "I'm about thirty years old, actually, though I look about sixteen. David over there is over a 200, and Patrick? Who knows? He's like a woman in that sense. Never tells."

Daniel asked his next question.

"Why me?"

Zeke suddenly turned serious. "We don't know. Patrick decided that we should bring you into our little group -- there are a bit more of us -- and we don't know why. It's possible that you are a latent Chosen, that your abilities haven't awakened for some reason or the other.

That answer hit Daniel like a rock on the head. "Me? Chosen?"

"It's been known to happen, but more often to natural Chosen," Zeke offered helpfully.

"Okay, last question. About last night. What was Patrick talking about when he said probabilities?" Daniel's stomach did a double turn as he remembered the images of the past night. He nearly retched out the coffee.

Zeke looked at him. His face softened, the playful grin disappearing. "I'm sorry you had to see last night. To answer your question: my abilities, aside from some telekinetic and telepathic skills, also include an ability to see into the probabilities of the future. Precognition. Patrick has it, too, but I can focus it more, while his are like wild hunches. He had a hunch about you...but I was the one who knew that if Ranjee were allowed to live, you would be dead by now."

Daniel turned pale. "Dead?" He whispered.

"You would have been the first he would have truly killed. Accidentally, mind you. He would have gotten carried away; the breaking down of his psychological barriers against killing would have magnified his telekinetic ability. He would have become a wild Chosen. So, we erased that possibility by killing him."

"But Patrick started it! He goaded Ranjee by sitting on the bench! I bet he knew I would try to stop him," Daniel shouted. "You assholes!"

Zeke sighed. "It would have happened sooner or later. I saw it. You were just destined to be... killed by him. We just pushed the events so that we could stop him right now."

Daniel, by this time was swirling with anger and confusion inside.

"Tangina ninyo! How dare you! I want to go home, dammit, and I'm going to tell them what you guys did!"

David suddenly spoke up. "Did you ever wonder how we got your things out of your house?"

"What?"

David stood up, and his demeanor was one of sympathy. "He's been spending the whole morning going around and telepathically rearranging people's memories. You're officially dead. All that everyone will remember is that you got mugged last night. You'll be buried tomorrow. Remember Lance's body? You'd be surprised what a little molecular rearrangement can do...another one of Patrick's abilities."

"What are you guys?" Daniel screamed. He was shivering now, frightened, and he didn't know what to do.

David sat back and looked at him with sympathetic eyes. "We make sure that the world won't kill itself, and we make sure that it won't be because of the Chosen. Patrick has seen a lot of things happen in his life, and he knows that all it takes is for certain events to happen, and we can say 'goodbye, world'. He knows, that's why he works so hard. And us with him."

Daniel couldn't think straight anymore, he ran out of the penthouse. Zeke and David ran after him.

"I told you this would happen, " Zeke shouted at David.

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