Chapter 3: The World right now
Marcellus woke up in a bed surrounded by machines. Those were not your regular equipment generally found at normal hospitals. He was being supplied oxygen and a lot of wires were taped to several parts of his body. There were about ten monitors around the bed with a lot of equipment making the typical beep sound. A man who was obviously a doctor entered the room and noticed that Marcellus was awake. Looking at Marcellus who was still looking around trying to process the situation the doctor pressed a button on a small device that was attached to his coat. Then he moved closer to Marcellus and spoke from his mask.
"How are we doing Mr. Marcellus?"
"can you speak?"
Marcellus took a deep breath. As a fighter, he did this to assess the internal injuries he had acquired during his fights. everything seemed fine. his body was in perfect condition. Marcellus was confused. The last thing He remembered was almost dying and having several body parts destroyed beyond repair. even if they had healed it would require several months.
"How long have I been unconscious?" Marcellus asked the doctor.
"That would be 3 days." The doctor said with a smile.
"That's insane, how is my body as good as new in just three days?" he looked at the doctor full of curiosity.
"Mr. Marcellus, what do you remember doing before you lost consciousness?" the doctor took a seat on the chair and crossed his arms and legs.
"I punched someone."
Marcellus looked at both of his arms. His left arm was also as good as new.
"I punched someone real good." He looked at the doctor again hoping he would get some more information because he was confused.
"Mr. Marcellus, You tore a building in half with your punch." The doctor informed but he looked rather excited conveying the message.
Marcellus remembered sending Vincent flying, That definitely wasn't normal.
"You have awakened Mr. Marcellus. You are one of the late bloomers." The doctor said looking at the monitors.
"And I must say, your graph is quite amazing. I can't even tell if you are a follower or a new God. that's how good your stats are." The doctor's eyes gleamed with excitement. he was definitely a nerd for these things.
"So I awakened huh."
Marcellus had been following the news about the awakened people. he had always wondered what would it feel like to have such elevated senses and physical prowess.
"So which one am I? a god or a follower?", Marcellus asked, If he awakened he wanted himself to be at the center. the idea of being a follower seemed uncool to him. he just couldn't imagine himself following another person. Dorian was a special case.
"Wait, Dorian!!", He realized.
He looked at the doctor and asked.
"What happened to the man who was with me? do you have any idea?"
"Oh, he was taken in for investigation. It seems the police had been after him for quite some time. He denied any affiliations with you though, which probably means he saved you from the trouble. The team leader told me that he left a message for you on your phone. you might want to check that out later."
"Oh" he could only let that much out as he began thinking what he should do about Dorian but he was interrupted immediately.
"But let's get back to the main topic, you just awakened, aren't you curious?"
The doctor had somehow seemed to have gotten much closer to Marcellus than he was before.
"Apparently not as curious as you doctor," Marcellus replied realizing that the doctor was quite irritating and overzealous opposite to his appearance.
"But hold on a sec, where am I actually?"
"Paris" The doctor smiled expecting Marcellus to reciprocate, but to no avail.
" This is an actual hospital, right?" Marcellus actually freaked out for a second.
Silence.
"Dude," Marcellus said that a bit louder and the tone was strangely funny.
The doctor laughed in amusement.
" This isn't quite an actual hospital."
Marcellus dropped his jaw very slightly.
" But I'm a real doctor don't worry, "he was still laughing.
" This is the Paris branch for UNRM. You know about UNRM at least right?" the doctor asked, not expecting a no.
" Well, yeah. heard about them on the internet a lot, they research about these awakened people."
The doctor nodded.
"I'm Doctor Phil, and I'm the one monitoring over you."
Meanwhile, a man was talking on the phone in a dark room.
"Yes, the new guy is being kept in Paris."
He listened to a man talking on the phone. After listening to everything the man said he answered, "They say this guy was quite powerful, he could easily be a lower level God ".
He listened some more and then answered again. " Ok I will try my best but please keep two awakened people outside just to be safe. After all, this guy is quite strong." He hung up the phone and fired up his laptop to look up a few things.
"You still haven't told me if I'm a god or a follower."
Marcellus reminded Phil.
Two nurses had entered the room, they were taking off the leads and all equipment connected to his body. The doctor was still in the chair, vigorously staring at his tablet.
"The truth is there's no way of knowing that yet."
He finally looked at Marcellus after he put aside his tablet.
"We need at least three more people from your energy group to verify that."
Marcellus did not speak but his eyes were asking questions.
"Ok first, How much do you know about this stuff?" the doctor leaned forward from his chair, he meant business now.
"As much as any common man knows."
"then you barely know anything."
The doctor proudly stated.
"Let me tell you everything we know about them, the details."
Marcellus gave a nudge to his brain cells because he wasn't very good with the long explanations.
"The essence of every awakened person is a unique type of energy they possess. The energy is mysterious because on special occasions it does not satisfy the current equations we have in physics "
Marcellus interrupted," I'd very much like it if you filter out the science part of this explanation ".
The doctor felt annoyed at that but continued,
"When a human awakens, He can be categorized as one of the three, The god, the pacifier, or a follower. The energy possessed by the God and the pacifier is called alpha energy. What differentiates the two is, the Gods are the source and the pacifiers are the end of it."
He looked at Marcellus to check if he was still with him. Marcellus was eating a slice of an apple from the plate that the nurses brought for him. The female staff of the facility had become quite fond of Marcellus, even though none of them had spoken to him yet.
He was still listening so Phil kept going on.
" The followers have energy that is different in wavelength to the God, We call it the beta energy but they have the same frequency. that means a god or their follower will never have energy that will match with the energy of a different god or their followers in terms of frequency. The energy from the Gods is comparatively much more potent than the followers."
As he said that much he dramatically slapped his thighs and slowly spoke,
"So you will need the three at the same place or their energy signature could be recorded for comparison. However, there is no previous record of the energy that matches your frequency in the UNRM database. that means you are the first awakened from your energy group to be discovered by UNRM and unless people intentionally chose not to report their awakening, There is a high possibility that you could be a God because God's always awaken before their followers."
Marcellus was playing with his curls again. But he got the gist of most of the things Phil was explaining.
"Also, You are quite potent. your energy has a very short wavelength, which means your energy is very powerful. it almost comes on par with some of the Gods from our database, but if you were a follower with this kind of energy, that would mean your god is insanely powerful. In fact, one of the most powerful to exist so far."
Marcellus suddenly felt the urge to ask so he did.
"So if all this stuff can be explained in terms of science, why are we still calling them Gods?"
He looked at Phil, who was enthusiastically taking the questions he was receiving.
"Shouldn't You have more scientific labels for them?"
He realized he was already awakened too.
"I mean us."
Phil smiled first and then got lost in his own thoughts for a few seconds.
He stood up and walked towards the window on the right side of the bed Marcellus was sitting on.
He began speaking as he looked out the window.
"We only know about the energy they possess. We do not fully understand the applications of this energy".
Marcellus quickly intercepted,
"well you become superhumanly strong, that's the application right?" He said remembering a bit of fragment of memory of his own moments of awakening.
Phil turned to him and chuckled.
"That's just a basic change in your body after awakening. The governments have limited the exposure of the awakened people to media. so, these things are not always reported. there even have been several incidents that weren't revealed to the general public. These Gods can do unimaginable things when they figure out how to use their powers."
He took out his tablet from his coat and started looking at something.
"UNRM has already listed about 50 Gods who could cause destruction at the same level as nuclear bombs. About 15 of them are so powerful that they could conquer the entire nation by fighting against all of their military might."
Marcellus was starting to enjoy all this information while being dumbfounded at the same time.
"Besides, they have awakened abilities that are so similar to the myths. You must have heard of the Sun Wukong in china right?", he asked not expecting a no for an answer.
Marcellus Nodded. Everyone had heard that name on the news once or twice.
"He is one of those fifteen insanely powerful Gods. He can actually transform into a Hybrid human and Monkey form just like the monkey kings from the movies. When he transforms, He becomes insanely powerful. He once Kicked the ground to check how powerful he was and half of China was hit by a 7 Richter scale earthquake. Of course, they did not reveal the cause and people still think it was a natural disaster."
Marcellus was playing with his curls again. This was definitely a lot extreme than what was made public. The Governments around the world did amazing work hiding the truth. And it was logical too, the world would be going nuts if they knew there were people who could do things like that. The world was already turning upside down with how much information was revealed. Since the full abilities of the gods weren't made public, people would make use of their imaginations to make assumptions. Skeptical people would not believe that these humans would be strong as an actual God so they made themself believe that the range of the abilities of these awakened was limited. but it wasn't as limited as they let themself feel comfortable believing in.
Phil showed him a monitor that had a page with Marcellus's picture. There were several fields which he could not understand. There was a diagram showing waveforms.
Marcellus looked at Phil with curiosity.
"This is your data, now if any awakened that belongs to your energy group gets discovered by UNRM anywhere in the world, we will know. Your data will be used to categorize them."
He said with a smile, He had become quite friendly with Marcellus. Even though Marcellus was a lot younger than him, Phil's overzealous nature made him look younger between the two.
"What happens to the awakened after they are discovered? where do they go and what do they do?"
Marcellus suddenly found himself filled with questions because he was confused about his next move.
"It totally depends on what the Gods want to do, They are normally considered the leader or someone that represents the whole group. We have a term for these groups; clans. Some gods want to continue their normal life. so their followers accept that and do the same. sometimes the followers come together, even if the gods do not want to engage in anything the followers come together and do stuff as a clan. some gods ask their followers to follow them in doing whatever they are doing in life. They are like sort of employers. these are the clans which have no specific goals or the ones who do not specifically focus on their awakened powers."
His face brightened up for what he was going to say next.
"And then there are other Gods, Normally the most Powerful gods are those who are already well-known personalities or the people who are not publicly known but possess exceptional qualities. even if they were not awakened they would still stand out among other people in one way or the other. These Gods have specific goals or have found special purposes to invest their powers in. Their followers also seem to be ambitious or passionate."
He showed Marcellus His tablet. It was a picture of a young Asian man.
"This is Liu Haoran. He is the grandson of the Chinese prime minister. This is the Sun Wukong I was talking about earlier. He was already an Idol among the youngsters. He has one of the largest numbers of followers among all the gods."
"How many?" Marcellus quickly inserted his question before Phil went on with the explanation.
"Approximately a hundred thousand."
Marcellus was shocked. He was under the impression that a god would at most have ten followers. it was insane that a hundred thousand awakened people were followers of a single God.
"But of course, Not all of these followers are all strong and have special abilities. However, all of them do possess beta energy and superhuman strength. There is a very rare and countable number of followers in a group that stands out. Their beta energy reserve is more than a hundredfold as that of normal followers. They even possess rare superhuman abilities."
For what he was going to say next he looked at Marcellus's face shrewdly to see what kind of reaction he would get.
"It may sound funny but We call them angels." He smiled after saying that.
Marcellus just sighed.
"So how many angels does this Wukong guy have?"
"13."
"Are they strong?" Marcellus was getting excited. He was a fighting maniac and he could still feel the impact of his last punch. This opened so many doors for a guy like him. A world, full of crazy strong people and strength beyond common reasoning. And He had now stepped into that domain himself.
Phill gave him a light smile.
"You can't even imagine. I was getting to this point anyway. Haoran was already famous because he was the world's Martial arts champion who loved his training. And his followers share that passion. All his angels strive to hone their talents. Now with awakened powers, all of them are so strong that the 13 of them could act as the army of entire china. which they are actually doing right now."
He moved to the next corner of the room as he kept going on with his explanation and Marcellus followed him with his eyes.
"The 8 Gods out of those special 15 have actually offered themselves to act as UN's law enforcers against the awakened who misuse their power in any way to cause harm to normal people. Haoran is one of them too. Other than these gods 78 gods are working as UN task force personnel. counting all the followers that make about 1.2 million awakened people in the UN task force. They are the ones keeping the peace so far and help salvage situations in case any gods go berserk."
Phil said everything he wanted to and felt a strong sense of accomplishment. He was even overjoyed that he got to talk to someone about all that.
"So who is the strongest?" Marcellus asked inadvertently.
"Is he in the task force too?"
Phil looked at him, he had a look of concern on his face.
"Well, yes there is one exceptional God. He has never shown any destructive abilities so far. To be honest, we do not know much about his powers. But he has extraordinary alpha energy. All the Gods are wary of his energy signature and without any proper comparison, these gods already consider him to be a league above the rest just based on that."
Marcellus kept staring because the second question had not been answered yet.
"He is not in the task force, he does whatever he likes. Not anything illegal though. And you know him, He is a very well-known person."
Marcellus raised an eyebrow." who?".
Before Phil could answer his phone rang.
"Sir we have a visitor." the lady on the phone said firmly.
"tell them to wait."
"Sir, I'm afraid He is not the type of visitor to be kept waiting."
Phil sighed heavily.
"we will talk more about this later. why don't you play around with your new energy a bit."
He smiled at Marcellus.
"But don't destroy anything here."
He left in hurry to attend to his supposedly important visitor.
"Sir what brings you here?" Phil nervously extended his two hands to shake the hands of the middle-aged man who was wearing a uniform with lots of medals on it.
It was the chief of defense of France, Gaston Martin. He had visited the facility two times before. That was when the Gods were discovered in France and brought to this base.
"I heard you have brought quite an interesting one this time." He asked looking at Phil very carefully.
"Well, yes sir he was brought here 3 days ago." Phil did not want to reveal more information. This guy was a bit sketchy.
"He is a murderer. So I am taking him to the detention center for the awakened. prepare to transport him."
He commanded.
This sounded very suspicious. First, this was a matter for the police and not the army. And the man with the greatest position in France's army came personally to make the arrest. Something was definitely going on.
"Sir I thought he was supposed to go to the court first and not directly to the detention center."
Phil stared at the chief. The chief avoided his eyes.
"And you even came personally for this?" Phil pressed on. The lady receptionist on the side was getting nervous watching all this.
It was a big hall and very few staffs were around.
The chief looked around him and noticed that even the security was weaker than usual.
"Is it ok for you to be so understaffed when you have such a dangerous guy inside the facility?" Gaston inquired completely ignoring the questions he had been asked.
Phil politely answered, "sir very pressing matters have arisen elsewhere so most of the task force have gone there. And may I also be rude enough to correct you but Marcellus is no dangerous person. He is just a kid. And I'm afraid even if the chief of the army himself has come here I can't let him be taken away under my jurisdiction"
Phil had heard about his shenanigans. The French army had been collecting the awakened to forcefully recruit them as their secret forces. Nobody knew what they were being used for. They would take any awakened with criminal charges or even make them guilty using schemes to acquire them. Gaston seemed to be the ringleader of all this.
Gaston felt irritated that he had been talked back to but he got the information he came here for. He wasn't expecting to get his hands on Marcellus this easily. That is why he had stationed two extremely powerful Awakened people outside. The plan was; They would attack the facility and take Marcellus. Gaston just wanted to make sure that none of the powerful individuals from the UN forces were present inside the facility.
Gaston put both of his hands behind his and back secretly pressed a button on his smartwatch hiding it from everyone's eyes in the hall. It was a signal for the two guys outside to commence the attack.
However One person saw it all, There was one person quietly sitting on the sofa a few meters away from Gaston and Phil.
Marcellus suddenly felt a strong sensation. His black aura suddenly started appearing, he was able to sense a presence. His Energy was moving in one direction as if it was looking for something. Suddenly he felt like his energy came in contact with another. He felt his own energy rise at the contact. As if it resonated.
"Doctor, You might want to alert your guards," The man who was sitting quietly till now stood up. He was an old man. The receptionist had asked him to wait and sit there. He was also asking for Marcellus. As he stood up, His old but very fit body along with his shining white suit emanated an extraordinary presence.
"This old man could replace Morgan freeman in bruce almighty." Phil thought to himself.
"Who are you sir, and what did you mean by that?" Phil asked the dashing old man in front of him.
Gaston was dumbfounded trying to figure out if he knew this man.
The Man smiled and put both of his hands in his pockets, staring outside he calmly said," Some bad kids are about to come here to make some trouble."
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