Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ To Those About To Die ❯ Chapter 1 - Becoming ( Chapter 1 )

Chapter One -- Becoming

I lived with my adoptive father for six years. During that time, I attended classes that didn't seem terribly sinister or even significant. I learned German and Russian, mathematics, physics, self defense and world politics. I also learned psychology, but not from any textbook. The people around me were fascinating, and all so terribly bent on the inside. It was so easy for me to see their sins, their pains, their fears. Fully half of the teachers were perverts of one kind or another, and at least a third of those were predators as well. As for the students...

By the time I was eight I understood the real power of Rosenkreuz. And made myself immune to it.

The same things that had kept me unwanted in an orphanage now played to my advantage. My spooky stare held the other children at bay, while my coarse appearance hid me from the eyes of the sodomites. They sought the pretty boys, the ones with fair skin and angular cheekbones, large innocent eyes and soft thick hair. I had none of these things, and so I survived. My "father" was, fortunately, not among the predatory types, though he spared no fatherly affection for me, either. I was property, and so long as I remained respectful and diligent, I would be appreciated.

Once I turned twelve, he sent me to live with the other students, in a large, sparse dormitory. I learned insomnia quickly. There were only a few of us who had been raised by teachers; the vast majority had been found and brought when they neared puberty and their powers began to manifest in earnest. Some had been kidnapped, some had been bought. All were in the process of becoming what Rosenkreuz demanded of them.

My talents grew, and became identified as something a little bit rare even among the gifted. Not only could I read minds and emotions, and influence both to some degree, I could cause sensory hallucinations as well. The teachers called me an "illusionist". It's as good a word as any, I suppose, though "interesting weapon" would be closer to the truth. They trained me to use this mix of talents to confound people in combat. I trained myself to use it to become invisible unless I wanted to be seen.

Though I was only twelve, my talents propelled me into advanced classes with older telepaths and empaths. Illusionists were so rare we didn't have our own classes; we had to learn by extrapolation from other disciplines. My "father", whom I still visited for dinner on Sundays as they allowed it, told me it was a high honor to be in these advanced classes. What he meant was, "If you survive this, you will be more powerful and I will be honored." He threw me to the wolves. I began seeking excuses on Sundays.

The students in these classes ranged from 16 to 19 years of age. Most were being groomed for field work, and most were thoroughly inhuman. Rosenkreuz had reshaped them into tools of its own design. I began to truly understand fear. Their minds were twisted where they were not broken, and nightmare demons hovered close by. The psyche of the wakeful is different from that of the dreamer, but in many of these students that difference had been erased. Desire and intention became one. This would be danger at its finest for such a young boy, but I would face it without flinching. Throw me to the wolves, "papa"? Then I shall become a wolf as well.

I was lucky, I suppose, in that I was a tall and ungainly youth. I had the body of a fifteen year old, so I didn't immediately look like easy prey. My martial arts skills were formidable; they were my armor. My mind was my weapon, though a fragile one. Against other mental-based talents, it would be a contest of will, and against a straight-up telepath, it would be touch-and-go at best.

The empaths were at once better company and worse tension than the telepaths. They lived on pins and needles, always passively picking up feelings and sensations from those around them. They couldn't turn it off. This did, however, have the fortunate effect of ensuring that I would not be harmed by them, for they couldn't bear the repurcussions of violence.

One of the empaths actually befriended me for a short while. He was preparing to join a field team, but he spared me a little of his time. Karl talked to me about the world outside the gates, a world he longed to see again. Somehow, this gentle empath had not been broken or twisted too badly, and his reward for surviving Rosenkreuz would be travel with a team. He never told me what sort of team, though his eyes looked dim and distant when he spoke of them, as though the idea were, at its most basic level, distasteful to him. Karl was no assassin; no empath can be one and remain sane. And Karl was determined to remain sane.

Let me emphasize something here: we were friends, not lovers. At age twelve, I was still a virgin. Well, in the most crucial sense of the word, anyway. My combat skills and my mind talents helped ensure my continuing to remain so until I wanted it to change. That, and Karl was no rapist. There were, essentially, four kinds of students in Rosenkreuz, and I'm not referring to their talents. There were predators, prey, invisibles, and poisons. The predators were bullies, rapists, extortionists; the prey were...prey. Invisibles were ignored by both, and poisons were shunned out of a sense of self-preservation. I was invisible.

And I was observant. When I saw my friend Karl sneaking into a room to meet with another student, I paid attention. It was not out of misguided chivalry on my part; Karl could take care of himself. Since I knew Karl, this other young man might intrude into my life as well, and I wanted to know who he was. I caught a brief glimpse before the door shut, and I recognized him from one of my other high-level classes. Though I didn't know his name, that flaming red mane was unmistakable, and that one was trouble.

If he knew he had been seen, he made no indication. Classes with the telepaths continued as they had been, and the red-head continued to be utterly indifferent when he wasn't being utterly disdainful. He had the look of prey, but I knew he was poison. And so I stayed away.

I did ask Karl once who he was meeting with. He smiled softly and told me it was just a friend, someone else about to leave the facility and join a team. The red-head, it seems, had already been placed and was only waiting for official transfer. He would leave several months before Karl. Word had it that his team leader would be one of the rare male clairvoyants, and one of the more rare "blank zones": someone who canceled someone else's talent. The red-head was such a powerful telepath that he was at high risk of losing himself. This clairvoyant, a man named Crawford, created a blank zone where the telepath could more easily shield himself from the world. Whether he could read the clairvoyant, no one said. Whenever such a coincidence occured, where two students meshed so neatly, they were almost always placed together.

I didn't know if I would ever need such information, but I tucked it away in my memory, just in case.

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Author's Note:

Kasra, thank you for your review, by all means archive my stuff on your site! Let me know if you want to wait till it's all uploaded or nab it chapter by chapter; either way is fine with me. ^__^