Behind the military base with Liam and Mr. N, there was a small camp located 900 metres south.
Enter Class 1-B, one of the most proficient units in the entire United States program.
James looked at his map. Not having a cellphone, he used a traditional paper map. "I'm close," he whispered, walking quickly.
The 16-year-old boy from Connecticut came here on a scholarship; his results in combat and tactics were both elite for his age.
James walked quickly, his boots sticking in the wet mud of the wetlands, each step heavier than the last. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. As he squinted through the fog, he finally found the back gate.
He approached the reinforced entrance, presenting his ID to the two armed guards.
The guards exchanged a glance, then nodded, unlocking the massive steel door.
As James stepped inside the military base, something felt off. "Follow the arrows for Infantry B, Class B." As he followed, slowly but surely, his anxiety deepened into something else entirely.
James thought to himself, "This is the real deal. I can't turn back now. I'm one step away from the National Guard, one of the biggest honors a man can be granted."
The National Guard was the special forces for each country, a place where you could truly make a name for yourself as a modern warrior.
However, James knew that if his talent didn't hold up, he would be shipped off to the common army or police force.
Anything but that.
"There is no honor in being in the common army. It was talentless and depressing, the equivalent of slave work with hardly enough money to support yourself, much less your family.
The Elite Guards are the ones who forced human evolution. They are the ones who popularize new fighting styles, they create new martial arts from scratch, they are the ones who popularize new military tactics—
THEY ARE THE ONES WHO CONQUER AND UNIFY NATIONS!
I want to be like them…"
In a dim alleyway, Osprey and Aspera pressed against each other. They touched and kissed, laughing as their bodies brushed together. They were oblivious to the disaster their recklessness had set in motion, unaware that their actions would spark a butterfly effect so powerful it could become the very catalyst for the world's destruction.
As we snapped back to James, he stood determined.
"I want to make a difference… a real difference like Mr. N did when he was Elite Guard Rank #2 for Mr. President. Now he's above the rank, running for president himself."
James turned the final corner and saw the brown door.
As he froze, he saw himself in a field.
Sheep. 1,000 of them.
Before he knew it, his bones cracked, his body convulsed as he screamed, his legs bending as he fell.
His arms dislocated as his human body contorted into a four-legged animal.
It was a nightmare.
He bled out in the field while all the sheep followed their shepherd.
His scream came out fractured, half human, half something else. An abomination. He was a stinky, bloody ball of flesh, incapable of standing. He wasn't human.
A man-sheep monster.
The shepherd stopped walking.
"Are you a sheep, James?" a voice whispered.
"If you can't be a sheep, I will break you down and remake you into one.
In my perfect world."
James's life flashed before his eyes.
Back in the present, he touched his face, scared.
Like something wiped his memory, he had just woken up from a nightmare that he did not remember.
But what he did remember was why he came here.
James quickly gathered his determination to see things through.
Then a voice echoed, childish, distorted, and arrogant. "Come forward."
James walked cautiously through a metal detector.
In a flicker, the hologram dropped, revealing the courtyard and roughly 100 sharks.
Sharks?
At least that's what James saw. They were people, students like him, but it felt as if he had just entered shark-infested waters.
James looked around quickly. Some of the students tried to intimidate him, but his focus shifted.
"That technology?" James was scared, but he was more impressed. The young boy had never seen technology like that in his life.
"A full 200-meter hologram? Is that even possible? I thought that level of technology had long been destroyed. What's it called? AI? Projections? Holograms? I'm lost. I only remember those terms in history books. Mr. N sure is the real deal, man."
"Eyes up here."
The whisper was childish but ominous. James looked toward the stage in the courtyard.
There, a boy with jeans and no shirt crouched, playing with his gloves as he looked onward with a blank stare. Wearing very unprofessional clothes, he looked young, short, and almost playful.
James's eyes lit up like wildfire, his heart igniting in his chest.
His excitement could burn the entire world to ashes.
It was him.
The legend.
One of Mr. N's Ten Elite Guards. Guard Rank #8.