Chapter 3

Occulte yawned as the Fulfiller continued his tirade.

"You not only killed two Possibles and grievously injured two others, but you contacted the police! What in the name of Prophecy were you two thinking?" The old man looked like he wanted two more Possibles to die as he stared at them.

"What I was thinking," Occulte said in a low, cool voice, "was that you should not be yelling at the two best and most powerful Possibles here less than a month from the completion of the Prophecy. After all... whoever is Chosen will be a god among men. Who the hell in their right mind wants a god as their enemy?"

The Fulfiller looked as if he had been slapped. "Yes... right... go back to your rooms. Stay out of trouble." He was speaking in a confused whisper, his mind obviously working at a far greater speed than it had ever been intended to.

Both of the boys slipped out of the office without a sound, not wanting to bring the old man back to his senses.

Jeremy laughed as they closed the door behind them. "Damn man, laid it on a little thick, didn't you?"

Occulte smirked. "Just a little."

Jeremy checked his watch. "I'm off to combat training. See you at dinner."

He hurried off down a nearby corridor, Occulte heading down the one opposite of it. He didn't have anything nearly as interesting as combat training during this hour; it was time for his mathematics class. He had always hated math, even though he understood it without a problem. It just didn't interest him; if he wanted math done, he would use a computer program to do it much more effectively than he could.

He yawned as he took his seat in the classroom. He figured he would be asleep within five minutes as normal. The instructor used to send him to Intensive Survival for an hour whenever he did this, but that had stopped a long time ago. They had figured out that Occulte did not mind spending a period fighting the best instructors without any rest- because unlike other Possibles, he took the hour as a challenge, beating every instructor that they pitted him against. It used to be great fun, but now his instructor just let him sleep... pity.

At the end of the hour, he immediately noticed the change of normal procedures. Most of the time, he was the last one out of the class, as he was never in a rush to get anywhere. Now, as he left the room, he noticed one of his four classmates, Todd, hanging back behind him. Considering that this particular Possible had always been a friend of Richard's (one of the boys Occulte and Jeremy had killed), he felt there was a good chance he was about to be jumped.

He was right. Before he had even strolled a few meters down the hall, he could hear Todd suddenly start to run at him. He turned around just in time to catch the arm that wielded a dagger, preventing it from implanting itself in Occulte. Moving quickly, he pinned him against the wall, holding his arm behind his back in a dangerous, painful position.

"We don't need to do this." Occulte said simply. "You don't have to wind up like your friend."

Todd obviously disagreed, as he launched himself off the wall with a powerful kick from his legs, attempting to flip backwards over Occulte. It was the wrong move; Occulte relinquished his grip, but the moment Todd touched the ground, he found a leg flying into his gut. Todd flew backwards, impacting the corridor wall painfully, blood running down from the back of his head.

Occulte walked away, not bothering to report the offense; you were expected to handle yourself without interference from adults in the Imperial Hierarchy complex. So, Occulte just went to his politics class as he normally would, the rest of the day passing uneventfully.

A hand came from nowhere, gripping onto Occulte's shoulder. Not one to react well to surprises, Occulte gripped the arm attached to that hand, performing a basic Ushiro Tekubitori Kokyunage Aikido throw. Diamond looked none too pleased with this action as she smacked ass-first with the gravel in front of the main gate. Occulte grimaced.

"Sorry!" He said quickly, "I've been a little jumpy lately..."

She brushed herself off and laughed. "I don't think 'jumpy' describes it... paranoid maybe? Come on, let's head into town, before you decide to actually break everyone else's ass."

Occulte nodded and pushed the electric car next to him towards the gate. The guards stopped him, leveling two shock sticks at his chest.

"Occulte Ferratus, Possible #27?" the guard asked shortly.

He nodded while rolling his eyes; everyone knew everyone by sight around here. "What's wrong?"

"You have been grounded to the complex," the guard responded, "due to several injuries and deaths you have caused recently. I am afraid you are going to have to return to your room for the free day."

He smirked towards the guard. "What do you think your odds are of stopping me?"

The guard, predictably, came in at Occulte's chest with the shock stick. He found his wrist bent at a horrible angle, his head impacted by an open palm, and suddenly he was on the ground faster than he could have blinked. The other guard rushed in, attempting to hit Occulte over the head with his shock stick. He was flipped over his opponent's head, however, as Occulte grabbed the middle of the stick and flung the man to the ground.

Diamond looked at him questioningly. "Was that a Shaolin counter technique you used on the first guard?"

He nodded in the affirmative.

"I didn't think that they taught that to the Possibles. I thought most of your martial arts lessons centered on weapons use?"

He smirked. "Yeah, the martial arts classes in the complex are pretty limited- but the ones in the town are not. I've been practicing every Sunday, six hours, for about the last four years."

Occulte flipped the first guard's captured shock stick into the air and caught it with one hand, while getting in the small electric car. Diamond quickly scooted into the passenger seat. Occulte floored it, getting them to the town in a little more than four minutes.

Diamond looked around as they slowed.

"So, where do you want to head to?" he asked.

She frowned. "I'd like to go to a Metallica concert over in St. Louis that I heard about, but with all those sensors around the town to prevent us from leaving..."

Occulte raised an eyebrow. "You have a microchip in you too?"

Diamond nodded. "Yeah, you didn't think my grandfather would let me go where I wanted to, did you?"

He grinned. "Well, I can get past those chip detectors. I've done it before. You see, they require a five-second burst of RF contact at the right frequency to determine if it really is a Possible attempting to leave, or just someone carrying a radio. Those little sensors only have an effective range of two hundred meters each, but they're deployed in a tight net. Now, if we are in a pretty fast vehicle, we can cross those two hundred meters in less than five seconds. That requires us to go a little over one hundred forty-four kilometers per hour to cross the boundary without being detected."

Occulte stepped out of the electric car, walking towards the Storm Drain. He hoped that the bartender, who he only knew as Mike, was out of the hospital. As he opened the door, he saw that Mike evidently had been given a clean bill of health, as he was pointing a shotgun at Occulte.

Mike breathed a sight of relief when he saw who it was. He immediately put the shotgun back underneath the bar.

"Sorry man," he said, "but after that little attack, I've become slightly paranoid. Thanks, by the way. I hear it was you that saved my sorry ass."

Occulte smirked at the unlikely bartender. "No problem, Mike."

Mike was not the type that you would think of as a bartender. He was barely over five and a half feet tall, and he maybe weighed a hundred and forty pounds at best. He also wore thin-framed glasses and dressed like you might expect a librarian to. Definitely not bartender material.

"Could you open it up?" Occulte asked him, while setting down his appropriated shock stick on the bar.

Mike suddenly looked very nervous as he glanced towards Diamond.

"What about her?" he asked.

"Don't worry, she's a friend."

Mike nodded, and pushed a few buttons on the underside of the bar. A part of the bar swung aside, as well as a door behind it that had previously been a part of the wall. Occulte quickly made his way down the stairs concealed behind the door, Diamond following. The door shut behind them, sealing them in the pitch black stairwell.

"Illumination to fifty percent." Occulte commanded to thin air.

Lights immediately snapped on in the stairwell, revealing a thick steel door that barred their exit. After he tapped in a code into the panel beside the door, it opened slowly with the sound of heavily straining hydraulics.

"Welcome to my laboratory." Occulte whispered sinisterly.

They both stepped inside of the facility, which was a single room with a massive, thick garage door at the end. There were various devices on the walls, things ranging from Frankenstein-look-alike computers to specialized electric tools. In the middle of the large room was something the size and shape of a motorcycle, with a white cloth draped over it.

"What is this place?" Diamond asked.

Occulte leaned against one of the benches on the wall. "It has been my real home for quite a while now. This is the place where I have snuck off to when life in the I.H. complex was just getting a little too stuffy for me. I never believed all this prophecy nonsense; I have always assumed that your grandfather is somewhat crazy, or is just planning on using us as an army to accomplish his own ends. So, I've long prepared for a rapid escape from this place, if ever necessary. That is what I modified this baby for. I only picked her up a month or two ago, so I haven't had time to do all that much with her."

As he finished speaking, he yanked the covering off the motorcycle. It was a beautiful, all-black 2005 VRSCB V-Rod.

"Damn. Nice Harley." Diamond commented. "But where in the hell did you get the cash for something like that?"

"To tell you would be to make you a co-conspirator in several federal offenses."

He straddled the bike, strapping on his helmet. He pointed to the wall where another helmet was hanging, and signaled for Diamond to get on the bike. She quickly slid on behind him, her helmet in place. With a quick input of a security code into the small console built into the area under the speedometer, and a kick start, they were gone, speeding out of the door that had opened when the bike's engine had started.

The door closed behind them, the town becoming nothing but a blur as Occulte accelerated the modified Harley up past a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour. A trail of dirt was kicked up behind them, the road being one of those country ones that somehow never managed to get paved. Within a minute, they had flown past the sensor network, no alarms sounding and no helicopters being deployed.

Occulte groaned as flashing red and blue lights danced across his vision. Less than ten minutes into their journey, and they already had a police motorcycle on their tail. He pressed a button on the side of his helmet, a microphone dropping to the level of his mouth.

"Hold on," he said to Diamond through the short range transmitter, "we're going to loose this guy."

He applied the throttle a little more firmly, the bike zipping forward at more than two hundred kilometers per hour. Normally, this would be pushing the operating tolerances of the 115 HP engine. However, as Occulte had replaced the engine with a 140 HP model of his own design, it was handling the additional demand for speed quite easily.

The police officer was barely managing to keep up with them, when Occulte decided to reveal the ace he had hidden up his sleeve. With the press of a button, a compartment full of nails opened on the back of the bike, spilling its dangerous contents onto the road. The second the officer drove over them, his tires blew, causing him to slow down and loose sight of the speeding duo.

"What possessed you to make that modification to the bike?" Diamond asked.

He grinned. "Too many hours watching cartoons in my little secret base."

Diamond frowned as she looked around. "Where are we heading?"

"I thought you said you wanted to go to the Metallica concert in St. Louis?"

Her eyes opened wide in surprise. "But that's a four hour ride from here, at least! I didn't think you took me seriously..."

He brought the bike down to acceptable speed limits, to prevent the attraction of any further law enforcement notice. Having one cop chase him today was plenty.

"You don't want to turn back now, do you?" he asked.

"Hell no!" she responded.

Four Hours Later

Occulte slowed as they neared the Edward Jones dome, where the concert was located. He actually pulled the bike up into the area near the entrance, parking it by the crowd that was gathering there. As he and Diamond stepped off the bike, he input a security code into its console, locking it down. He warned Diamond not to attempt to touch the bike, lest she liked her hair standing on end.