Chapter 1
I never thought I would be part of a group travelling to one of the most dangerous places on a classified mission until yesterday. But I am part of this group now. The ocean winds, the serene climate and the stars which brighten up this place like a million fireflies would normally bring a peace of mind to me. But now it doesn’t help in soothing myself instead it creates a sense of restlessness and anxiety in me. I don’t know what I am afraid of whether the dangers of this mission or whatever I have found may not be true. In a sense, I may be the reason why this mission started but it did not strike my mind then that I would be asked to accompany this group. Technically speaking, I was kind of ordered to do that.
I can hear the soldiers speaking amongst themselves in the lower deck. Wish I am as ignorant as they are of the dangers that await us. I felt a hand on my shoulder, as I turned around, I saw a man in his late 40s , tall, well built and in a stiff posture. He must be a high ranking officer, I reckoned. He smiled at me and I smiled back and he started to speak, “ Good evening Dr. Rahul, why are you standing here all alone? Did you have dinner?” I nodded yes. “ So how far are we from the shore, Sir?” I asked him. He replied “Around 500 nautical miles from our destination. I am excited that we are the first people going to that island in two decades”. He is excited obviously, but in the happiness sort of way unlike my excitement which borders between fear and anxiety. “ I see you are not much of a talker”, he said. Well he realised that only now. I have never been much of a talker. I always kept thing to myself. But now since he cant leave me alone, I must find some topics to converse until he gets bored and decides to leave. “Yeah Sir I don’t talk much. Sorry I didn’t catch your name” I thought about starting the conversation with introduction. Maybe this conversation can help me to keep my mind of the upcoming dangers. “I am General Ajay, so I heard you were the person responsible for decoding the secret”.
Yeah I decoded that code which put me in this situation. I have always been good with decrypting and decoding. Maybe its because I love to read between the lines. Its like adjusting your eyes for seeing in the dark. You just have to focus a little and before you know, you can find something. Sometimes its better to leave something as secret. “Its not much of a secret, Sir. Its much of a code, actually and to be honest, I think decoding that secret was the biggest mistake in my life. Had I not decoded that, it would never have fallen into the wrong hands and we wont be here to reach that before them. If we cant reach that before them, then I cant forgive myself for putting all these lives at risk”. He put a hand over my shoulder “ Don’t lose your hope already and you are not exposing us to danger. We wont be here if we don’t want to. Also we do have high tech weapons wih us so I think you are over thinking about our safety.”
I do know we have high tech weapons in our ship but I don’t know what weapons or the powers those people have and even if we manage to reach the island before them, I don’t know what awaits us in the shore. But I don’t want to discourage him. He can atleast have some peaceful mind until our ship reaches shore. “ Sir, Do you think we have enough food reserves for a month in this ship” I asked him in order to divert the topic. “ You don’t have to worry about any of these trivial things, Dr. Rahul. We just want you to be focussed about interpreting the message from the code and provide us those information so we have very little surprises in the shore” he replied. I do know that I don’t know have to worry about these things but I don’t think I can get any more message from that code than I already have.
“ Yeah Sir, from the information that I got from these codes, I estimate that we have to go through three levels of protection before reaching the weapon and I am not sure what the second and third levels of protection contain. It can be anything, natural protections or man made or in worst case, a magical protection. Above all, we have to reach there before the terrorists”. He replied in a calm manner, “Don’t worry if you don’t know what is waiting for us , then I am sure that they also don’t know. Anyway now we cant turn back. Lets just pray that we can wade through that without much casualty”.
As we were speaking, I could see the lightning which illuminated the night sky for a brief moment of time, followed by a rumbling thunder that seemed like a warning sound to us. “I think we have got some rough weather ahead of us”, said the General.
After few minutes, drizzle started. “The drizzle has started and its getting cold, so its better if we go down, Dr. Rahul”. This weather has so much in common with my life. It turned from a sense of tranquillity to thunderstorms in a matter of minutes. “Sure Sir, we can go to the decks below and I think we should have some quality sleep before reaching the shore.”
We moved to the decks and I entered my room, switched off the lights and laid down on my bed hoping that the rocking motion of the ship will put me into sleep. But to my disappointment it didn’t happen. Tired of lying down on the bed and not being able to sleep, I opened my laptop and decided to give a try on understanding about the second and third levels of protection. From what I decoded, it read something like this, ’Red ball is of no use here, run if you want to survive and create your own path’. I cant figure out what they are trying to say from this piece of puzzle. I switched off my laptop and decided to go to the captain’s cabin to see how much time we have left .
As I walked towards the cabin, the swaying of the ship became more and more, making it difficult for me to walk steadily. I managed to reach the cabin and greeted him, “Hello captain, how serious is this storm? Can we manage to reach the shore in time?”I can see that he was not terrified of this weather which slightly gave me a sigh of relief. I feel like I am the only one in this ship who is afraid. Maybe the ones who truly know about the dangers are the ones who are afraid. The captain responded in a quiet manner, “If you call this a storm, then I don’t know what you would call a real storm. Don’t worry its not that serious. This happens all the time and I estimate we would be late by an hour or two.” I hope that the two hours wouldn’t decide the fate of the humankind. I don’t understand why some people go through all these troubles to destroy other people’s lives. Maybe that’s why they are called as terrorists.
