After staying silent for a moment, Altair finally spoke. "Alright, I agree to come with you."
When he thought about it, he could not really find a way to escape from the current situation. He lacked too much information right now. Such as, who they were, whether they were just a small group or part of a bigger organization, or even how they came to know about him and where he lived.
They had shown that they could track him and he only knew about the drones(?) for now, but the ruined building he was hiding in, where James met him, could not be viewed from the outside using a drone.
'Did he perhaps go through several locations?' He wondered, but James found him too quickly for him to have visited all the places Altair went to in the past month, even if he searched with David, it was just a few seconds from the time he left the house, went to the Scaniae coast and then went to that building in Hzat.
There was the possibility that there were more of them searching but that would only mean more people to watch out for.
Either way, Altair had to find out answers to at least some of his questions, and if he was imprisoned, he could count on the Penalty Zone of the System to make him escape. He would just have to deal with whatever was there after getting there.
"How do we leave; do we wait for a vehicle?" Altair asked.
David replied, "I'll take you there."
"Meet you both there." James said, and he vanished.
David Slinged near Altair and vanished with him.
.
The two of them reappeared in an almost empty, moderately lit room.
"You can take a seat." David gestured to one of the sofas as he took a seat himself. He appeared quite relaxed. A contrast to Altair who was wary of everything around him.
Despite the room having no visible ventilation system and with all its walls and ceiling appearing all smooth without fault, the air inside was very refreshing.
While Altair was still looking around him, one of the completely smooth walls of the room opened into a door and James and Ronald walked in.
Ronald glanced at the apprehensive Altair and went to sit behind a table. James took a seat on another sofa and all three men looked at Altair, making him feel pressured.
He quietly walked to an empty sofa and sat on it.
Ronald seemed to be the leader of this trio considering that he was the only one at a table.
With his fingers crossed under his chin he briefly glanced at Altair's healed arm before starting to talk.
"Things have gone somewhat beyond our control and I must apologize for that. As you understand by now, we have been observing you for some time. Our first encounter however, was intended to be an evaluation, or a test as they said."
Altair decided to postpone the test issue since he was more interested in other things right now. "How did you guys discover me?"
"You don't think your activities were enough to draw our attention?" David asked tilting his head.
"Maybe, but how did you discover where I lived if that is the case?"
"We could have some tracking means that you don't know of." James said almost smiling.
Looking at him as he sat in an almost laying position, with his hands crossed over his stomach and his feet crossed on the sofa, he appeared too relaxed to be taking this situation seriously. This was good for Altair and it eased a bit of his nervousness.
"Which tracking means?" Altair asked.
"We wouldn't be telling that to a stranger now, would we?" James replied.
Altair decided to switch topics. "Why did you come after me?"
"As I said, our first encounter was intended to be a test."
"But, why are you testing me?"
Instead of replying to his question, Ronald asked another question. "Why do you do what you do; why did you decide to be some super-hero?"
Altair paused for a moment. "I… because I had the power to."
"Is that it?" Ronald asked.
"I have always been the kind of person who tried to help others, it doesn't matter whether I know them or not, I strongly believe that helping someone in need is always the right thing to do, and when I see the state of things around me, the way things are crumbling apart, I can't help but want to piece some of it back together."
James and David exchanged odd looks, with no one knowing what they were thinking at the moment.
Ronald on the other hand kept his eyes on Altair and asked. "Do you think of yourself as a saint?"
"I don't." Altair replied with a hint of displeasure. "I don't think you have to be someone or something special to do what is right. What is right is right and it should just be normal to do the right thing."
"So, that's why you never went public. You think helping is simply… normal. That's why you never wait for even appreciation?" Ronald asked.
Altair remained silent, but to Ronald, it sounded like an affirmation.
"Why now; if you could not see things go wrong and do nothing why wait till now?" Ronald asked.
As far as Ronald was concerned, someone with such a belief as Altair in front of him would not have waited so long to become active. The strong belief he had was not something someone would just develop snappily.
"I became active as soon as I obtained my ability." Altair replied.
The three men seemed confused. "You have only been active for a few weeks." David said.
"Yes. The first time I teleported was a month ago." Altair told him.
"Try to think carefully, there has never been a precedent before a month ago?" David asked again.
Sensing something odd, Altair asked. "Is something wrong?"
"You might not be a Slinger." David said.
"No. He is." Said James. "You saw it yourself, his ability operates just like ours, and there is the Sling gate, everything we saw so far confirms the information."
"Which information?" Altair cut in to ask, but they ignored him.
"Gentlemen…" Ronald slightly raised his voice and they shut up.
Ronald then said. "Slingers, all live their first Slinging at the age of five, if they don't explore the ability or if they ignore it for any reason, they are free of it until their teenage years when it manifests again and more strongly."
David continued. "If you were a Slinger, then when you reached your teenage years, you would not have been able to live normally without learning to control the Slinging, that's why it doesn't make sense."
"Are those some kind of rules?" Altair asked in confusion.
James interjected. "The theory is that most teenagers always want to be somewhere else, and well, Slingers can be anywhere they can see or remember, so at that age they just start Slinging more often and unpredictably. Other theories talk about mental fortitude and a faster developing brain but I'm not much of a scientist to look into that."
"For a moment there I thought you knew what you were talking about. David said.
Ronald pinched his nose bridge sensing another argument coming from the two, but he couldn't let them proceed any further. "Not now." He said in an annoyed tone.
'Why do they always have to argue?' He asked himself.
"You are more of a special case than I thought." Ronald said with his attention back on Altair. "But let's return to the main topic."
With the place quiet again, Ronald started talking once more.
"The reason we needed to evaluate you…"