Enforcers A Manipulated Lens (eBook)

DB Cloud (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
440 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-0361-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Enforcers is a heart-driven adventure about friendship, inner power, and finding your place when the world is seemingly getting larger and more dangerous by the moment. Join Travis and his friends as they tackle all of the newly developing issues that are coming their way in the island of Stone.

Just a guy who wants very badly to tell a great story.

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Travis and his friends thought they were just going to enjoy their Winter break-until everything they believed about their world, themselves, and each other began to fall apart. Thrust into a tangled mystery of strange powers, shifting realities, and unseen forces, the group must navigate an ever widening world where nothing is as it seems. As trust fractures and secrets surface, their friendship becomes both a compass and a lifeline. With heart, humor, and a steadily rising sense of danger, Enforcers is a thrilling, emotional ride about the strength of chosen family, the search for truth, and the fight to revert back to the things that are taken for granted.

Textauszug

I tapped the eraser end of my pencil on the desk while I patiently waited for the rest of my fellow test takers to drop their pencils and look up at the general. It was a quick ten-question warm-up assignment, testing us on our logic while on the battlefield. I tapped on the table a bit faster as I caught on to someone approaching me from behind. I tried to mimic the steps with my taps on the table. Suddenly, I felt a hand land on my shoulder.

“You’re such a goof,” Eric whispered while the general continued on and on about precautions and such.

I stopped tapping. Why was I a goof? I thought. What could I have done now? Not like I was doing anything explicitly foolish. I didn’t look at him. For the short time I’d known Eric, he’d told me that direct eye contact was a sign of confrontation. That wasn’t really something I was good at, so I avoided it.

“What are you talking about?” I said while keeping a lock on him with my peripheral vision.

“Look around. You’re in a classroom full of dingbats. I’m trying to save you, and you won’t even look at me.”

Is he seriously saying this right now? I thought. Now he wants me to look at him? I looked around to see what it was that he was talking about. Did this mean that he didn’t consider me a dingbat? The room was filled with empty seats. The people that had left had either been all the way in the back of the conference room or they were so spread out that you couldn’t tell that the room was gradually declining in population. Which was why the general hadn’t noticed.

I was in the back and I’d just now noticed (Thanks to Eric) that I was the only one in group seven that was still there (beside Eric, obviously, who had come to rescue me).

“Man, what are you thinking about? Let’s get out of here. The rest of the group is out having fun at the Carnival.”

I looked at him in surprise. He must have made a mistake, because Quill most certainly was not there.

“Even Quill. Now come on.” He grabbed me by my forearm. I resisted slightly, but enough for him to notice. “Come on, man. Dispatch is tomorrow, and the way all of the airheads are talking about it, it feels like this will be the last day we get to have any fun.” A goofy smile appeared on my face when he called the generals airheads, he paused and smiled back. “Plus, I shouldn’t say, but Kristen really wanted you to come.”

My body shot up, partially because the Carnival sounded like a much better time than this lousy room filled with insipid conversations. That, however, was a small portion of what swayed me.

I walked out of the auditorium as swiftly and silently as possible. We walked casually, like our destination was one that we had authority to arrive at. Our confident strut balanced with our friendly but somehow serious salute made walking out of the base an absolute duck soup.

Eric and I laughed and told stories for most of the walk over, which was only a few blocks down. As we walked down a boardwalk, we could see the sunset; it was almost romantic.

I thought about what he’d said. Eric made it seem like tomorrow was the last day for fun, but I think what he really meant was that it could be the last day, period. The truth was that we were the first line of defense. The allies weren’t going to be dispatched until the day after tomorrow, that would give us more than enough time to “have fun.”

As we strolled through the west coast, I looked at the never-ending horizon. Pink clouds seemed to be emitting from the setting sun, spreading, powdering the darkening sky like one last cry of relevance. The sun was misleadingly bright, giving up its final gleam of the day, and leaving us with a cliff-hanger for the thrilling continuation the next morning.

I always wondered what drove people from all around the world to take time out of their day to watch such a sad sight. After all, this was darkness overtaking the light—the sun’s last shine against the moon’s shade. In that moment, standing there with Eric, I realized that they might go see it for the simplicity of its beauty because there was no promise they would see it tomorrow. I guess that’s why it called to me today.

My mind stopped ticking, which jolted all of my other senses back into play. I noticed how quiet it was. I looked over at Eric. He was leaning against the boardwalk’s railing staring intensely at the setting sun.

“Have you ever seen a sunset this close up before today?” This got us talking. Eric told me of his childhood, how he’d grown ‘til he was about nineteen, and then it happened. When it happened to me, I was a year younger than Eric, I mean, I still was. I was always a little envious of him. He had a whole year that I didn’t get to experience, an entire year of normality. Here I was, a twenty-four-year-old who’d never experienced many of the wonders of life.

Eric went on about his early life in Italy, talking about all the adventures he’d had with his friends back home, and the countless number of times he and his friends had ditched school to go out and venture around, aimlessly seeking enjoyment. They’d filled their days finding new things to do, living off the land, and taking advantage of the grand open spaces by finding the next cave, river, or cliff they would spend the day at. His childhood sounded bright and productive.

“What about you, Aaron? Did you ever do anything that wasn’t absolutely dreadful?”

“You just love making fun of me, don’t you?” I replied. “As a matter a fact, I did; my parents are farmers, and I lived in a neighborhood with many kids. The neighbor kids were my best friends. We grew up together. We had our fun.”

Eric looked at me, almost as though he was trying to piece together my childhood. He looked surprised as he stretched his arms towards the fading sky. “Yeah,” he said softly. “It was fun back then, now it’s all ‘Objective!’ this and ‘Timeframe!’ that. All work, no play.”

I nodded. “It’ll be over soon, though. At least we have that to look forward to.”

He gave me an intense look before he turned away, looking towards the empty sea. “Have you ever heard them?”

He caught me off guard at first, but it wasn’t too long before I realized what it was he was talking about. “You mean those people from before?”

Eric continued looking out to the endless horizon, watching as the pink in the sky kissed the moon goodnight. “Yeah, them. What do they speak to you about?” He turned towards me. “They say they were the group before us. Do you think that’s true? Do you listen to them? I mean, my interaction with them is so few and far between that they’re just strangers to me, even though something tells me that few people understand us like they can.”

I avoided eye contact with Eric, instead looking into the distance. I could now see the light that the enormous Ferris wheel was emitting. The light spread across my eyes like a million candles lit at the same time. “Honestly, I haven’t talked to them all that much either. They’ve shown themselves when I really needed them, to offer wisdom and such. Besides that, I haven’t really.”

“Do you think we’ll ever be that for some reckless group of kids? I’m twenty-five years old right now, but I don’t feel like I am. I feel like I have a lot of life left in me.”

“Well, the scientists seem to think that our bodies age at a slower rate than normal humans.”

We slowly detoured from that conversation, going back to our lives and what we hoped to achieve. Time flew while talking about that stuff. Before I realized, we were being offered cotton candy and popcorn from all sides. Men were riding bicycles while on a wire and others were spitting fire out of their mouths.

“I thought we were the abnormal ones around here?” said Eric, hoping to spark some humor.

I continued taking it all in; my surroundings intrigued my focus. There was movement in every direction. I felt like a father struggling to pick which son to give the most attention to. Then, without question, I found a winner. She shined in this place. To be entirely honest, she stood out anywhere—to me at least. I’d never regretted gaining my unnatural abilities, because they were the reason that I had met her.

“Hey, Kristen!” Eric yelled. She looked over, smiled and made her way towards us. “Where is everyone else?” Kristen was still approaching as she started talking, which resulted in her speaking louder and then progressively softer as she met us.

“What do you think? Quill found another thing that he was unnaturally good at, like more unnatural than he already is. So they’re over there waiting to see if he can beat, like, the world record. He is giving the poor guy running the stand—”

Slowly I began drifting away into Kristen’s effortless charm. I was such a goof, I couldn’t help myself; every time she blinked, I wanted to tell her how I felt. I was almost certain that my face wasn’t doing the best job of hiding what I was thinking. I had all these thoughts circling in my mind when I noticed that she was talking to me.

“Aaron, hello? Where are you, doofus?” She giggled. “Where is it that you go?”

I looked around. I guess I had subconsciously been attempting to find something that I could say. Then I noticed that we were alone. “I, uh, was just thinking about some things. Where’d Eric go?”

She looked straight at me, her gentle green eyes bypassing the encryption that my face was putting up, which kept me from turning into a nervous wreck. I...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.5.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3178-0361-2 / 9798317803612