Prototype: Inhuman
Prologue: I am...
I never knew my father.
I grew up in what they called a "containment ward" or some sort of "isolation unit" for the majority of my early childhood. I didn't really mind it. I liked the quiet. The quiet soothed my soul.
I read books in the spare time I had after those men in white coats were done asking me questions and testing me with strange needles.
I never understood why those needles were necessary back then. Besides, when they poke holes in my arm, the holes just disappear.
It was always filled up with some strange red liquid. I never bothered to ask just what exactly that stuff was. It looked...beautiful, in a sense. It was a stark and powerful contrast to the constant whiteness that was the color my room was.
White bedsheets, white ceiling, white tiles.
Everything was white.
I never quite understood that back then, either.
...
I never met my mother.
They said to me that after I was born, they had separated me from my genetic mother right away. I was never to make contact with her again because the two of us might do something dangerous. She might teach me something dangerous.
That's what the men in white coats told me.
I always believed them. I didn't think that they'd have any reason to keep the truth from me back then.
As I read many more novels as time went on, I began to understand a bit more of human nature. And so, when the next scientist came in, I decided to talk to her.
When she pulled out yet another needle to take my blood, I spoke to her.
I asked her why they wanted my blood.
I knew what blood was now, thanks to the books that I had been given.
She just smiled at me and said that it was necessary.
…
It was when I was thirteen.
I had begun to grow tired of the blood tests and the questions that those people would constantly ask me every day. And then one day, something different happened.
A man walked into my room, and he was nothing like I'd ever seen before.
He was wearing dark green clothes that looked clearly like he had ventured outdoors for a long time. His hair was a dark brown, a color I scarcely saw in this place. His skin was far darker than mine, which was pale and whitened.
His eyes were a startlingly ice blue, and I felt strange when I saw that color. I had never seen any of the people here with lab coats that also had blue eyes.
I remember standing up and walking up to him, a smile on my face.
I was about to ask him a question.
I couldn't ask that question.
I felt a piercing sensation shoot through my chest, and I stumbled backwards. Shock was something I wasn't used to, and so I sat there trying to process what had just happened.
A sound had cut through the air when I had felt my chest in pain, and now my ears were ringing. I looked down at my body, and I saw my blood staining my white clothes.
I heard the sound again. And then again.
I felt my body spasm over and over, and the painful sensation pricked at my arms and my legs. More and more of my blood began to come out, and I felt a strange kind of feeling well up in my chest.
Was it fury? Anger? The simple loss of patience and temper?
I didn't know.
I looked at the strange object that the man was holding. It was a lot like the illustrations I had seen of weapons that soldiers used to kill people. There was a hole in the side facing me, and that hole was letting out smoke. I could smell a scent I'd never smelled before.
My curiosity began to burn bright, and I stood up. I walked over to the man, who had begun to step back for reasons I could not tell, and I smiled to him. I grasped the barrel of his gun and ripped it from his grasp. Before he could react any more, I took it with me to the far side of the room. Placing it on the floor, I began scanning my library of books. Seeing an encyclopedia, I smiled and pulled it out.
After reading a bit, I nodded and put the book back.
Yes, it was a gun. To be precise, it was an assault rifle. An M16. A standard-issue assault rifle given to law enforcers and military crew throughout America.
And he had just shot me with it. Three times.
The smell that I could detect was the smell of gunpowder, as well as the increasingly heavy scent of fresh blood.
My face suddenly bent into an expression I hadn't made yet, and I picked the gun back up. I stared at the metallic surface of the weapon, and the strange emotion from earlier began bubbling back up. I felt my eyebrows knit, and then my grip on the stock and the barrel grew tighter.
With a simple and weak movement, I felt the metal cave under my arms as the gun broke in half. Shards of steel flew into the air, and I discarded the now broken and useless firearm onto the floor.
I walked back to the man, whose expression had become one I was a little bit familiar with.
I remember reading something about that kind of expression.
I think it was called...what was it?
Fear?
I paid the thought no heed and turned the man around. I pushed him lightly out of the room, but the movement sent him sprawling onto the floor. He quickly scrambled back to his feet and exited the room hastily.
I shook my head and looked back to the wall. It was now stained and splattered with the color of my blood, and I thought it might be...a refreshing change.
Ignoring the mess, I walked back to my library and took out the novel I had been reading earlier. I sat back onto my bed and opened the page on the bookmark I had left there after one person in a lab coat had offered it to me. I had taken it with gratitude, even if his face was trembling slightly.
…
I never got to meet my father.
I never got to meet my mother.
In fact, they told me that I didn't really have a real mother or father. I was just a baby born and raised in a test tube. I was only a product of the combined genes of two different people.
But I remember the names of those two people as if they were my own father and mother.
They called him Pariah.
They called her Dana Mercer.
And sometimes...I hear the whispers or the hushed chatter outside my room as they get ready to test me again.
I heard a bunch of different names.
But one stood out among the rest.
I was...
I am Codename: Hercules.