1.6

- You are still Clark, my good man. But you are not in Kansas anymore.
- I have never been to Kansas.
- You miss my point, which is not at all uncommon it seems. You can not go back to where you came from because it does not excist anymore. What you took for granted back in the old days does not excist here, not since the Banes emerged. They changed everything.
The old woman became very silent as if she was recollecting old memories.
- Banes? What is that?, asked Clark
- It is more who are they, but they are now the invisible rulers of this world. They have encased the earth and forced knowledge from the grasp of common man. For hundreds of years they manipulated mankind against itself until there was barely any man left. It had already started long before you were born in a small scale. They started wars in already unstable regions and tried to make these wars grow. The first few times they failed and the conflicts cooled down enough for humans to stop the fights. But for each battle they learnt some more about the human mind. But the human mind is a confusing and complicated place which they couldn't understand so they decided to select a group of people and use them to their own needs. These were collected by the Banes and brought to their lairs. There the humans were configured to do their biddings and sent back to earth. Most of the people handled in this manner never got triggered for their duties, some were activated and caused massive destruction. But a few of these humans broke free from their mental bonds and tried to cleanse their minds fully of the Bane and vowed revenge on them. You were one of the sleepers, one that was about to be activated. The freed ones tried to deactivate you but the Bane started their sequence. The freed ones had only one choice and they took it. They shot you dead.

Clark had to get another warmerupper.
- You say I have been dead? It really was hell?
- No, it was a Bane lair you were in. And the Bane managed to wake you and keep you for years in an induced coma trying to read yout mind of who the freed ones were. Eventually they got through you and sent you down to assassinate the assassinators. It was a job in which you had no control of yourself. You managed to almost wipe out the whole freed ones cell but you were once more shot dead.
- I have died twice?
- So far, yes.
- How do you know all this?
- I have my ways. Anyway, Through miscommunication you were brought back to the lair and kept in storage for a long time before being revived. That was when you had your little hell moment.
- So hell is a alien headquarter?
- Something like that, but it is more to it.
Clark felt as if he was stuck in a bad dream and he pinched himself to wake up.