Return To Reality

the second chapter of the story

While I was leaving the facility, I saw the sign for the building. It turned out that I was in the Princeton Community Hospital. Where exactly? I have no idea. But your guess was as good as mine. There were twenty one states that had a city named Princeton in them and the weather seemed a little warm for where I was. It was very possible that one of two of them. Iowa seemed a little too up north and Florida and Alabama a little too down south. That meant I was somewhere in between. Anywhere in the north seemed out of the question, and I definitely wasn’t in the rolling hills of California. So my guess varied between New Jersey and West Virginia, and aiming more towards the warmer south would say the latter.

There I was, sitting in a Mustang in West Virginia, no clue where to go or what I was going to do. But I knew I had to find out who had done those tests on me and exactly what experiments they did. And the first step to the long journey required a new set of clothes.

Doing some aimless driving did the trick, and I ended up at a superstore parking lot. I quickly ran inside and made it look like I was looking for clothes, taking a package of socks off the rack, along with a pair of jeans and a plain red t-shirt and black sneakers. I walked into the dressing room and slipped on the clothes, ripping the tags off and disabled the security tags with my claws. I then transferred my possessions to my new jeans, throwing my old clothes into the trash, and then walked directly out of the store with no problem whatsoever.

That is, until someone approached me.

“Hey, Ranscion! Yo, Ranscion!”

I turned around to see a young man running over to me. He had tan skin and dark curly hair, wearing completely black clothes and sneakers with a wallet chain running into his pocket. His shirt depicted a band’s album that I didn’t recognize, being faded from many years of washing.

“Dude, where’ve you been?! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” the young man said. He appeared to be about six feet in height and a little overweight. I had to crane my neck a little to look at him.

“I'm sorry, who are you again?” Ranscion asked, confused by the confrontation.

“Come on, man, its Raziel! We’ve been friends ever since we were little!”

“I really have no idea who you are. I’m not trying to be an a*****e or anything.” I had to stop myself from revealing that I had just been made a freak of nature, in case he really did know me. You never know who you can trust in the world, and that was a quick lesson I learned a little less than an hour ago.

“Well, whatever, I need your help. I’ll jump start your memory later.”

“Depends on what it is.”

“I’ll explain on the way, where’s your car?”

I brought him over to the Ford and got in, taking off in it and following his directions. I was still skeptical of the guy, but I figured I might get something out of this little ordeal. According to his story, a little girl was kidnapped about three days ago from his best friend’s own house. The criminals had waltzed right in, a group of seven men and one woman for a total of eight people. Six of them were in body armor and looked prepared for a firefight, while a man and a woman were dressed in clothes that made them look like they worked for a big business. They demanded that Raziel’s friend, Derek, hand over his daughter. They abducted her and shot Derek in the head so he couldn’t report a kidnapping, then set fire to his house to rid it of evidence. Raziel had been in the bathroom, which was down the hall from the front door, and heard everything. He had been trapped in there while they covered the floors with gasoline and dropped a match on it.

“How did you get out?” I asked him

“As soon as I heard the door close, I ran out of the bathroom and looked out of a window first to see who they were, but all I could see was a black widow symbol on their backs. Then I ran to the back door and got out before I got cooked alive,” he explained.

“Ah, I think I know who did this. I killed seven, possibly eight of them today.”

Raziel looked at me incredulously. “Wait, what?! Did they go after you too?”

“In a sense. I guess they had already nabbed me, since I don’t remember s**t.”

“And it explains why I haven’t seen or heard from you in three months.”

Three months??? I thought. What the f**k happened to me?!

“So how do you know where their base is?” Ranscion asked after a few moments had passed.

“I grabbed my friend’s old bike and went after them, going through alleyways and traffic. I nearly got ran over a couple times, but I made it through.”

“Were you seen?”

“I really don’t know. Wouldn’t they come after me if they knew I saw their base of operations?”

“Who knows? Maybe they figured you weren’t worth the trouble.”

“That hurts, man. It really does.”

“Get used to reality first and then complain.”

The directions he provided ended up making me head to the outskirts of town, down near the state line that split West Virginia from Virginia, to an old supermarket that ran out of business long ago. I drove the car past the parking lot and stopped the car when we were out of view of the entrance.

“Ok, here’s the deal,” I started. “I’m going in there. Alone. You’re staying here.”

He nodded.

“What does she look like?”

He handed me a small wallet sized photo. She was a cute kid.

Her hair was just past her shoulders and was a rich brown. Hazel eyes looked deep into mine as I studied the flimsy photograph. Fair skin and some freckles on her nose, which was pointed but small. I couldn't tell her height from the picture, but she was small and skinny.

As a matter of fact, she looked like me. My hair was as white as flour, but cut to the same length as hers. While her eyes were brown, mine were red, and while I didn’t have freckles on my face, every other detail was close to mine.

I shoved the picture into my pocket and pulled out one of the Desert Eagles in my pockets, handing it to Raziel butt first.

“Use this for protection if anyone goes after you. If anything happened to this girl that was similar to what happened to me, she won’t even remember what she had for breakfast that day, so it might be best for me to take care of her. Is that ok with you?”

“Yeah, it’s perfectly fine, man,” Raziel replied.

“Ok. Stay in the car, I’ll be back soon enough. If I don’t return in 2 hours, leave. If you get into any trouble at all, I want you to drive away before you shoot. The recoil on that thing is murder.”

I stepped out of the car and jogged over to the abandoned supermarket drawing the other pistol and flicking the safety off. Looking into the empty store, I could only see a pair of steel doors at the back. All the shelves had been removed, making it look more spacious than even a football field.

I tried the doors, figuring the obvious was always the best to start with. They were locked. Placing my left palm on the glass, I traced around it with my right hand, applying enough pressure to make the glass screech while it cut through.

When I was done, I pushed the glass and made the piece fall through and break on the other side, cringing at the sound and wishing I had been able to be more silent, even though the damage was done.

I reached through and unlocked the door, stepping inside the vacant room. My steps echoed as if I were in an empty basketball arena while making my way to the doors in the back.

On my approach, I noticed something on the door. Well, more like a lack of something. The handles had been either removed or never existed in the first place. In its place instead happened to be a keypad, glowing blue on each number.

Well, s**t, I thought. I bet if I tried to break it, the alarm would sound. Might as well go movie style and look for a vent.

I started scouring the room, trying to find a vent I could pry off and climb into, but I found none that I could reach. The only vents were about fifty feet above me. Guess I had to go with the lock.

I walked over to the keypad and studied it closely, seeing if there were any traces of fingerprints on the numbers. I thought I could see a four-digit combination of one-three-seven-eight, but I had no idea of knowing if that was the right order. I tried the first combination. The keypad glowed an angry red to tell me it was incorrect. Then I tried swapping the last two numbers with the first two. Same result, except the keypad had a small screen appear before me telling me I had one last chance to enter the correct combination.

Right when I was about to enter another combination, the keypad lit up with a green glow and beeped, my guess being that it was opening from the opposite side. I quickly moved to the side of the doors as I heard a release of air accompanied by a series of metal rods moving inside the doors, like a pneumatic motor was pushing back the locks in the door and pushing the door open.

While I was hidden behind the doors as they were opening, two scientists walked out. One was a tall male, maybe six feet, blond hair, rigid features and a cocky stride with a white lab coat on, regular Nike sneakers on his feet. The other was female and smaller, possibly around five-feet-six and had multiple colors of red and purple in her hair, wearing the same thing as her colleague. I waited for the doors to close as they stood there and lit up cigarettes, probably taking a break from their duties.

“That new kid is really unresponsive with the tests, isn’t she?” the male said.

The woman nodded in agreement while taking a pull on her cigarette, then said “You have to remember that the virus takes time. We can’t expect results in an hour.”

“I know, I know,” he replied. “I’m just glad she’s got such high mental ability at her age. Godhand might power that up. I just hope she doesn’t wreak havoc like Reaper at the other facility.”

While they were still conversing, I crept up behind the male slowly, reaching for his head to break his neck.

The female looked behind her at me and smiled, her brown eyes flashing red for a moment, then looked forward again as she continued smoking her cigarette. I broke the man’s neck with a brutal but fast movement, then slit his throat with my nails to ensure his death.

“A little overkill, don’t you think?” the woman with the weird hair said.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Your back-up,” she said bluntly. She dropped her cigarette on the floor and crushed it to put it out.

“I never asked for help. I want a name. Now.” I bared my bloody claws and braced for a fight.

“Jana. I’m your sister.”

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[RachelReaper]

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