The corridors were quickly emptying of new people as the old man walked slowly to his room. He put on a display of wobbling and holding the wall, so the nurses and attendants wouldn’t view him as the threat that he was. A silent, slow tapping happened upon his shoe and Arnold looked down to see one of his chess pieces bouncing off the sole. Pretending to do a stretch, the old man leaned down and touched his toes, picking up the piece and putting it in his pocket. The wooden pawn joined its brothers in that place and grew still.

A younger nurse walked past Arnold and he gave her the best old man smile he could, looking slightly lost but purely joyful. She nodded at him, without returning the smile and continued on her way. He hated this place. Two years ago he had been sitting in a park minding his own business, playing chess, when three Sphere agents walked up to him and walked him away. He hadn’t put up a fight because he wasn’t sure what good it would have done, but a fire was lit in his belly now.

Arnold had seen what the Sphere was really about, after witnessing a girl being dragged into an operation room. Going in she had beautiful wings like those of a monarch butterfly. Coming out they were gone. The only noise that came from the girl from that moment on were sobs, until one day she was gone. Vanished without any clue she had been there and she wasn’t the only one. Arnold had seen many people come and disappear after testing and he had discovered early on that if he didn’t display his power that he’d be left alone. But he was tired of it. The game was about to change.

Slowly the old man had given out his chess pieces, either in secret or accompanied by a whisper. The entire building was almost mapped out inside his mind as each piece was carried somewhere. He called them back one at a time and felt the hallways and rooms as they each came home. Arnold had discovered at a young age that he could call things to him. It started out with one of his sister’s dolls. She had gotten him in trouble for throwing mud and he had been angry and he felt a kind of twitch in his mind. As if the twitch were an appendage, it reached out and grabbed the doll, making it walk to the boy Arnold. His sister had of course screamed and he got in trouble for stealing the toy but that didn’t stop him from experimenting with his new found ability.

Soon Arnold was able to control small constructs of mud. These mudmen were able to run and climb, listening to his every command. They became his army, bringing him snacks and attacking the kids who bullied him. It wasn’t long before word got around that mud was coming to life and causing havoc. Instead of revealing himself, Arnold gave up the mudmen and switched to smaller objects. He found he could control anything and make it come to life. At school he poked people with pencils and set thumbtacks on the seats of his classmates and teachers.

As he grew up, Arnold tried to expand his power but found that it was limited. Statues wouldn’t respond to his calling and living things were oblivious to his ability. The mudmen had been the best army he had had but were to conspicuous, that’s when he found chess. Each piece played a role in the game and they would each play a role in his personal army. He kept an entire game’s worth of wooden pieces he had received as a gift from his grandfather in his pockets. The pieces soon became a part of him in a way that he hadn’t expected. He could feel personalities inside of them and felt the life that he filled them with.

Now, being stuck in The Sphere, Arnold used them the best way he knew how. A pure white man walked by headed to his room, Arnold took a pawn out of his pocket and stealthily placed it in the man’s pocket and felt the piece as it grew further from him.

“Arnold.” A powerful voice said coming down the hall. “You’ve got a testing tomorrow at noon.”

“A testing? For what?” the old man asked the attendant who was walking towards him with a clipboard. He had tried to sound somber, but he’d been distracted by his moving pawn and his words came out irritated.

“Just the normal stuff. It shouldn’t take an hour.” the attendant said back not used to the old man speaking in the tone he’d just heard. “Are you feeling alright?”

Knowing his mistake Arnold put on a fake smile and tried his best to look like an old fool instead of the brilliant man he was. “I’m just a little tired is all. Could you lead me to my room, I seem to have lost myself.”

The attendant lightly grabbed Arnold’s arm and led him down the hall and into his room, leaving the door open. The chess player waited for the attendant to leave before he sat on his bed and rubbed his temples. He had five chess pieces out and about the facility, and he had just planted a sixth on the attendant. His mind was racing as each piece moved on different floors of the building at varying distances. They knew where to find him and he would soon fight his way out if he needed to.

The old man sat longer when a scream pierced the silence. A struggle could be heard down the hall and Arnold quickly poked his head out to see what the commotion was. A normal looking boy stood in the middle of a group of people all trying to grab him. His scream had alerted other ‘patients’ and the hall was filled with heads peeking out of doors. The people around the boy seemed to be in various stages of grabbing him, but none of them moved. The boy looked angrily forward and stepped out of the group, causing heads to disappear from view. When he walked away, the nurses and attendants who had been frozen were suddenly in a pile on the floor, having completed their lunges and grabs but finding nothing but air.

Arnold saw a stream of blood drip from the boy’s nose as he got closer. Without thinking the old man grabbed tissues from his bedside and tried to hand them off. When he came back to his doorway the air had thicken as if it were jell-o and the man found that he couldn’t move. The boy saw the tissues in Arnold’s hand and grabbed them, stuffing one up each nostril as if he did it all the time, and continued walking. The further he got, the lighter the air became around the old man until his muscles relaxed and he could stand freely again.

An alarm sounded throughout the floor and the thumping of heavy boots on the floor resounded down the corridor. Arnold closed his door knowing full well what was going to happen next. He couldn’t bare to watch another of his kind be taken down. As the door swung shut, a girl with multicolored hair poked her head out of her room and looked both ways. Arnold saw her for a second before his door latched and the floor shook with mayhem.