Chapter 9 – A Flawed Plan

  Still sitting on the sofa, I began stuffing my pockets with sweets as if someone might appear and rip everything away from me. One, seven, nine — I shoved in a few more just to be safe. It had been five years.

  Five years eating baby food with almost no taste. It was wrong in a wonderful way. Too much sugar, too much coloring, too much flavor.

  Now I understood perfectly why children lose their dignity over this. My mouth was probably completely stained… and I didn’t care in the slightest.

  When I turned around, the elephant was still unconscious in the middle of the room. Too big to ignore. And the plan… the plan didn’t even truly exist yet.

  I let out a low snort, irritated with myself.

  — Out there is a minefield, with one of these on every corner. — I jumped off the sofa and stopped in front of the fallen guard.

  — And if I go through the ventilation, this guy here dies. Or rather… if someone finds out what happened here, he dies even if he wakes up. — I ran a hand over my face, impatient. — One more useless detail to slow me down… but I don’t want to be like him.

  I crouched down and began searching the soldier’s pockets. Nothing impressive. Documents, a communicator, things too small to be worth the effort.

  Even so, I threw everything onto the carpet, mentally organizing every possibility as if that could somehow fix the rest.

  I looked at the remaining items scattered on the floor — nothing truly useful, just weight. I chose only the communicator, the weapon, and a single document.

  Only the lightest. The most necessary.

  Without this useless excess… it was time.

  — I hope this works.

  My hands moved carefully.

  The dust responded like a thin, obedient thread, sliding toward the television outlet like a snake opening its mouth to tear it from the wall. It was simple; the wires were exposed, vibrating slightly.

  — Ok… I won’t have much time. This is the part that will consume me the most.

  I concentrated everything I still had left.

  The man rose in jerks, like a corpse poorly convinced that it was still alive. For now, my puppet.

  As alive as he was — he would be under my control.

  The dust infiltrated beneath his clothes like needles, settling delicately against his skin, lightly activating dormant muscles, pulling tendons like invisible threads hooked to a latch.

  His neck tilted at the wrong angle before I corrected it. Even supporting only strategic joints — spine, shoulders, knees — with thin threads of dust spread throughout the soldier’s body, the effort was brutal.

  Each movement required precise commands for every area so he wouldn’t collapse.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I made him pick me up quickly — after all, that power hit me

  like a punch to the stomach, nausea rising so sharply that I had to bend forward for a moment, leaning against his shoulder, breathing heavily as exhaustion already tried to take over.

  — I didn’t think he’d be this heavy.

  Positioned in front of the door, about to open it, forcing myself to keep using the dust.

  At the same instant, the dust joined the two wires in the outlet.

  The lights flickered.

  The walls of the entire building seemed to protest in a sharp hiss as the energy fluctuated. The brightness of the room died behind the door at the exact second it closed, swallowing the evidence of what had happened inside.

  The corridor flickered frantically, emergency lights trying to decide whether to stay on or surrender to the blackout, bathing the hall in blood-red light.

  And at every door, just as I expected, soldiers entered formation. I could hear the orders through the radio.

  — Repeat, formation 3, prepare yourselves. We need to remove the president and the heir from the building as fast as possible! Suspected terrorist attack.

  My puppet took the first slightly awkward step at the command and continued, gradually increasing the pace.

  The other soldiers immediately looked at him, tense from the orders, grouping around us. I lowered the puppet’s head slightly so they wouldn’t notice his closed eyes.

  I kept the soldier upright, rigid posture, steps a little too firm.

  Every movement required microscopic adjustments of dust at the joints so he wouldn’t look like a broken doll. I squeezed Red tightly to stay focused.

  One of the guards to the left took two steps forward, suspicious.

  The corridor still flickered.

  I lifted my face slightly, forcing myself — even in pain — to look ahead. I already knew I looked suspicious. Inside, I was sweating cold while calculating distances.

  If one of them decided to touch the wrong shoulder, they would feel the softness of a corpse.

  My bigger problem was that more of them kept joining the formation. I would collapse before halfway if more continued appearing.

  The puppet kept walking.

  One step.

  Another.

  My mind boiled, overloaded, thinking too much about how to get out of that complicated situation.

  My heart pounded. I knew I wouldn’t last much longer — and right at that moment, a micro movement from the guard made me even more alarmed.

  The bastard was waking up.

  I had to make an even riskier move. From Red’s stitching, I pulled my contraband and quickly threw it to the floor.

  My small and cute ant construct began walking between the soldiers’ boots.

  Confused under the flickering red light, already at maximum alert due to the suspected attack, when they heard the metallic sound running between their boots they reacted as trained — they broke formation, aimed their weapons at the ground, and began trying to eliminate my small intruder, prioritizing immediate containment to protect the heir at the center of the corridor.

  While they were distracted, I made my puppet run to get away. One of the guards beside us, startled, ran after us.

  — Hey?! What are you doing?!

  With a desperate movement, I made the other soldier trip and fall so we could keep running. That was when I felt the taste of blood in my mouth.

  — Shit… — it slipped out with the pain.

  We crossed a side door next — the sign indicated staff area. It was a run as far away as possible from the crowded corridors.

  We only stopped in a dressing room — and everything collapsed.

  Just a few more clumsy steps were enough for the dust threads to finally fail and vanish into the air. We fell to the ground. My consciousness flickered slightly, the taste of blood still warm in my mouth.

  To make it worse, the puppet-soldier woke up from the fall. I didn’t want to get up — my body was heavy from all that effort, every muscle trembling, vision darkening at the edges.

  For a second, I considered simply staying on the floor and letting everything end there.

  But unfortunately, I had already gotten myself into too much trouble in one day. I rolled to the side with difficulty and leaned against a pile of clothes to stay sitting, dragging my arm until I reached the weapon I had stolen from him.

  My hands trembled when I aimed it, so I used Red as support to hold the gun steady.

  The metallic taste of blood rose in my throat. To mask the bad taste — I shoved a sweet into my mouth with dirty fingers, chewing sugar. It wasn’t relief.

  It was just something to keep me awake for a few more seconds.

  — One peep and you die.

  The soldier looked at me as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing was real.