The Watch – Part 178:

Then the knight flickered and disappeared. Is that over? Are all my chances up? Did I lose?

‘You know, I’ve been thinking,’ his voice, drenched in curiosity boomed over the microphone once more. I didn’t lose. He just changed his mind.

‘I wasn’t going to bring this up until the end, but I just couldn’t wait, if you know what I mean. Your hand is obviously quite messed up. Broken if I’m not mistaken, and yet you’re acting as if it is just a scratch, nothing more, and earlier, when you were sitting down, completely exhausted, you then got up and started running about as if you had just had a good long rest. I don’t know about you, but no amount of adrenaline will allow you to do that unless you have a special kind of device known only as the watch. No one has ever done that, and no matter what the odds are of someone actually doing that eventually, when you are wearing the watch you are practically throwing the odds out of the window, never to be seen again. And then you combatted the soundwaves that I so expertly set up to specifically distract your senses, and you just ignored them entirely. You gave an excellent excuse that I must admit was very convincing, but I knew it was a lie from the way your face was all so struggling to think of something clever to say beforehand. I must admit, I did think for a good minute or so whether you are actually that good, but then I quickly realised that you just weren’t. I’m sorry, but you’re using your watch and that calls for drastic action.’

‘If you knew that I was using my watch all along, then why didn’t you say anything. Why didn’t you stick to your word and hurt my friends? Do you have another plan up your sleeve?’

‘I’m not going to answer that question just yet,’ he continued. ‘I would like you to answer mine first. I was watching you closely and I never saw you once go for your watch and activate anything. How were you activating the watch?’

‘And what will you do with the information if I do tell you?’ I asked. I’m not about to give away anything concerning the watch to someone like him.

‘Nothing,’ he said. His tone of voice was plain and simple, making it hard to tell whether or not he was lying. Knowing him, he probably is. ‘Genuinely nothing. I don’t care for the watch. All I care about is finding out whether or not the person wearing it is able to look after themselves, and I’ve already got my answer to that, so are you going to answer my question now or would you like some more convincing. I can threaten you with hurting your friends since that always seems to work.

‘How about you show yourself first. All you’ve ever done from the very beginning is hide behind a microphone. How about you convince me by showing your face.’

‘A valid proposal. I’ll think about that. In the meantime, you are allowed to repair yourself. That hand is starting to make me gag. I’ve always hated the sight of blood. That’s why I work with holograms; there’s never any mess to clean up and I love technology.

‘So is this over then. You’re going to let me go. Let my friends go. We can go home.’

‘I don’t think you’re going to like the answer to that question,’ he said. That obviously means no. I didn’t waste any more time asking any more questions. Instead I tapped away at the watch, repairing my hand. My fingers clicked and snapped into place as my healing factor increased tenfold. It really wasn’t the best of sights to see your fingers twist and turn like they did.

After my hand and arm was back to normal, I returned everything back to how it was before. I’m now my normal-self again. I breathed a sigh of relief that all my stats were back to being ordinary. I moved my hand, my fingers, crunching it up into a fist, then opening it up and repeating until I felt a slight ache in the back of my hand. For some reason, I just had to do that.

‘I have decided that I will come and meet with you face to face in exchange for some answers,’ he said. ‘If you would kindly make your way to the end of the room where I will open the door for you. I will then make my way down where I will reveal my true identity. I don’t normally do this, but since you are a special guest of some sorts, then I will make an exception. Are you OK with that?’ he asked.

‘I am,’ I said, accepting his offer.

‘Excellent,’ he said with that tone that told me he was smiling. ‘See you in a couple of minutes, then,’ and the microphone went quiet. I spun on the spot until I was facing directly at the door. This was a sudden change of pace. Everything that has happened here has been very hard to understand. Very clever ideas that could have been used for something much better than testing people to their limits for reasons that I simply cannot remember anymore. It was only when I was walking and not having to worry about any challenges that I was able to fully contemplate the size of this room. It must be at least the size of a football pitch in length and width, if not, then two. I cannot believe that I was able to run from one end of the room and back again without any help from the watch. And the technology in this is obviously far more advanced than anything we have back at home. We aren’t able to create fully rendered and realistic holographic dragons or knights that can breathe fire or run at an insane speed.

I reached the end of the room. The door clicked open and I found myself standing in that small concrete room once more. The door swung shut behind me, plunging me into darkness once more. Then the room started to move upwards. Were all the concrete rooms able to move like lifts? Probably. Actually, the first one wouldn’t be able to as that had fake walls. The concrete room/lift came to a stop and the walls/doors started to open. I could see the outline of someone standing behind it, the creator of this place, the man in charge and the person who is going to get a piece of my mind.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)