Chapter 1
"Move," he hissed, directing his men toward the stairs once the last guard was laying prone on the ground, unconscious.
He followed them down. This place was eerie. It was a sub-basement level, where he knew from his hackers was a very important genetics investigation being conducted by...
Global Justice. The home of all things heinous and malicious. Under the guise of genuine do-gooders, law enforcers, and peace keepers, GJ orchestrated projects that could make the worst villain cringe. And they had ruined his life. And he was determined to sabotage this project if it killed him.
So down he went, through the dark hallway, silently directing his men to search one room or the other, one hallway or another, until they reached the last corridor.
This one was well lit. the cement and steel walls were stark white, as was the floor. The ceiling glowed with fluorescent white lights that made it look more like a creepy hospital corridor.
There were glass observation windows spaced evenly down the hallway, ten total. He glanced into the first four, but they were empty. The fifth one made him misstep as he did a double take. There was a man, completely naked, inside the room. It was also stark white. As was the small cot in the corner. Through the glass he could see the locked door on the other side of the room.
"You two. And you. Find those doors," he hissed at three of his men. "Let those people out! Bring them back to HQ, get them food and clothes. Now!"
The men immediately hustled back down the hall. Satisfied that his men were doing as they were told, he continued down the short corridor to the glass doors at the end. Pushing them open, he visibly flinched.
People. A woman, about thirty. Strapped to a table for some sort of experiment. A girl... about his age. Bright red hair and emerald eyes. She was tiny. And she was naked, and he could count her ribs. He knew immediately that this one was special. She was the culmination of all their experiments. And she was connected to wires and tubes everywhere. He carefully removed each one, and she sagged into his arms. If she weighed seventy pounds, it was a lot, he realized. They kept her weak.
He wondered why.
He quickly disarmed whatever they were doing to the other lady. Sticking a USB into one of the computers in the room, he typed a series of commands. Instantly there was a red siren and an alarm that made the weak girl cover her ears.
He'd planted a virus in the system, wiping its memory and setting off some sort of self-destruct. The virus also transferred all the files into his USB, for him to review later.
The tiny girl cowered in his arms as he fled the space. His men, thankfully, were right behind him, along with the other victims of whatever the fuck that sick thing was.
They were safely away from the building before it exploded, and they watched it burn until nightfall. Then they silently took the cold, naked people to a private aircraft and flew to an unknown location.
-23-
The red-haired girl was sleeping in his bed, currently. He had doctors on staff who had seen to all of the people. They were all malnourished, but the redhead, he wasn't surprised to find out, was near death. They put her on intravenous nutrient drip. She'd eyed them all warily, and watching her struggle against them pitifully as they setup her IV had stirred emotions in him that he hadn't felt in a long time.
They'd given her a sedative, and he figured that instead of leaving her in the infirmary, he'd have her set up in his room. He found her a pair of old shorts and an old tee to wear, and she was now fully dressed and resting.
The others were being slowly nursed back to health. Their conditions were awful. Some of them had the vocabulary of a three year old. Others were fully mentally competent, but weak. They'd found fifteen total. The horrifying part was that there'd been forty rooms. Were there more?
The first man he'd seen, looked to be in his mid twenties, was diligently working on some sort of puzzle while the doctors looked on. He sat next to him, quietly, watching him struggle to find a piece. Scanning the pieces, he found the one that fit and offered it to him. "What's your name?"
Dark, vacant eyes met his light brown ones. "Name?"
"Yes. Like me, my name is Ron. Their names are Dr. Doherty, Dr. Johnson, and Dr. Freeman."
"Oh." He turned back to his puzzle. "I guess I'm number fourteen."
"Number Fourteen?" He echoed faintly.
The man nodded.
"Do you know the names of the others?"
"Thirteen. Ten. Eighteen. Twenty One. Five. Twenty Three. Eleven. Seven, Eight, Twelve. Twenty Four died. Fifteen. Two. Six. Nine. Sixteen. Twenty Two."
"Can you show me them?" he showed the man a series of pictures of the people they rescued. Her picture haunted him.
He pointed them out in turn. The woman in the lab was number seven. The little boy hiding in the corner of his room when his men found him, he was twenty-two. Number ten was a girl with curly dark hair that couldn't be older than thirteen. He hadn't gone through the files yet, so he didn't know their exact ages.
"What about her?" he asked, pointing to Red, as he'd started referring to her in his head.
The man scowled. "Number Twenty Three. I hate her."
"Why?" he asked, bewildered.
"Because they had number Twenty Three. They didn't need us any more. They were going to put us in the room."
"The room?"
"The room where you go to die. Twenty Four went there and never came back. Same with Twenty Seven."
Dear God, how many of these people were there?
"Do you know what was in the room?"
"I don't know. I've never been in there. But a lot of us... went to the room. And none came back. Ever."
"Do you know why people got sent to the room?"
"Well... Twenty Seven... they said he was faulty. I thought he was normal. He yelled a lot, but he couldn't speak very well. But I liked him. He wasn't bad. Just loud, and kind of dumb."
So then... the genetic experiments that went wrong got terminated?! This was insane!
"How many have been sent to the room?" He asked numbly, afraid to know the answer.
"Thirty eight."
He felt the bile rise in his throat. He needed to...
"Just go, Stoppable," Dr. Freeman said quietly.
He sprinted past them to the area of his... building... where he, some of his staff, and the rest of the experiment people were going to live. He shifted his weight impatiently in the elevator, until it dinged that he'd successfully reached the sixth floor. It was his floor. And Red was on it. In his bed.
More incomprehensible emotions.
He stepped into his bathroom, wondering what to do. He finally grabbed a towel and turned on the shower. Nothing could calm his mind and body and help him think like the steamy recesses of the shower.
He was only twenty-one years old, and he'd seen more evil in his life than any elderly person. He escaped from prison after his family was accused of a supposed crime, at the tender age of fifteen. His family did not survive the escape attempt.
He'd gone underground immediately. His friend, Wade, who was only ten at the time, was also a target of Global Justice because of his uncanny ability to stick his computer nose in files where it didn't belong, and decided to run away with Ron.
Wade now ran the division of his... company... that had to do with hacking, software engineering, etc. anything that had to do with computers and equipment, he could do.
They cooly and expressionlessly schemed and planned until they came up with the perfect plan to destroy and expose Global Justice. They found that this organization, WWEE, had been trying to do the same for years. However, their leader had plans for world domination, not just the destruction of GJ, so Mr. Gemini, as he called himself, had to be eliminated. And he was.
Now, WWEE belonged to him, and he decided not to have the majority of them locked up in some lair. Only his specialists stayed there with him. The rest of his agents were scattered all over the world, hiding in plain sight. As bankers, construction workers, cooks, cashiers, teachers, scientists, psychologists... federal agents... and, Global Justice agents.
Having eyes everywhere was key. If he wanted to, he could take over the world himself. He had plenty of people inserted in almost every government. But he used them instead to uncover secrets and information particularly regarding GJ. His undercover GJ agents would tip him off to some plot, and he would come out of hiding, sabotage it, and go underground again, driving GJ insane. While they were lost and confused, making asses of themselves trying to find him, he and Wade would go in and tamper with their mainframes or ridiculously huge bank accounts, leaving them reeling and unable to recover. They'd done it multiple times already, slowly tightening their death-grip on GJ's throat, choking the life out of it.
And he was going to plan a personal blow to Dr. Betty Director this time. This experiment was inhumane and downright evil, and she would understand what it was like to suffer.
And Number Twenty Three was going to help him.
Yes, he grinned evilly. This plan would expose GJ AND eliminate it... forever.
-23-
It had been weeks before Number Twenty Three was well enough to be evaluated. She was thankfully putting on weight. The downside to that was that he quickly realized the reason those miserable lab people kept her so weak; she was exceptionally strong and quick. Even though she wasn't fully recovered, she had still wrestled her way out of a blood test in a way that he wasn't even going to explain, because it sounded nuts.
He found her in his room, glaring balefully at the door. "Hey," he whispered. He could swear he heard her growl in response. He raised his hands, slowly, in a gesture of surrender. "I'm not going to hurt you."
Her huff of laughter was derisive and sarcastic. "That's what they all say. 'This won't hurt... you won't feel a thing.' They all lie."
"We are nothing like them," Ron said, slightly offended. "Everything that's being done here is being done to help you get well."
"I don't believe you."
"Well fine. But I really like my room, and I can't really leave you alone as long as you're here. Will you at least let me show you to where you're going to stay until you're better?"
Her glare lessened. "Maybe. What's in my room?"
He smirked. "A bed. A couch. A bathroom. A television. A closet. Things that are normal for places where people live. A kitchen. A table to eat at."
"No tray?"
"What was on the tray?"
"Nasty stuff," she whimpered. "I couldn't eat it."
"No nasty stuff, I promise. I'll teach you how to cook stuff that tastes better, okay? Or if not, there's the cafeteria on the other side of the building."
She straightened out of the corner and he consciously checked to see that his mouth was closed. She was wearing his shorts again, except, instead of an oversized tee, she was wearing a white tank top that was obviously given to her by another female.
Her hair was a wild mess, and her eyes, green as ever, watched him warily. She stepped toward him, her every movement cautious. He turned, slowly, letting her walk behind him and keeping his hands in plain view as he guided her to the elevator and pushed the 5 button.
She flinched.
"Just an elevator," he said soothingly. "We'll go down a floor, and I'll show you where you'll live."
The elevator dinged, and she followed him gratefully out of the small space. He arrived at a door, and handed her a key card.
She looked at it in confusion.
"It's a key. It will open the door."
"Yours doesn't have a key."
"Mine is different. There's a biometric scanner on the door knob. It recognizes you, and it opens when you turn it."
She frowned. "I like that better than the key."
He chuckled. "I'll see what I can do. Go ahead. Open it, look around."
She fumbled with the card for a moment before slipping it in and pushing the door open. There was a tiny living space, with couches and a TV. A breakfast bar separated the space from the kitchen. There was a table next to where the kitchen ended. Two steps led to a hall, and she cautiously made her way down it. She found a bathroom, and a bedroom with a large, comfortable bed and floor to ceiling windows. The room was painted in a deep ruby red, with accents that were not exactly white. The carpet was really soft and fluffy and the exact same shade of... not-white. The windows could be covered with deep red curtains. The room by itself was three times the size of her... cell.
"Do you like it?"
She nodded, looking at the bed longingly.
He chuckled. "I'll let you rest. Can I bring you dinner in a couple hours?"
She nodded again, thanking him with a shy smile.
"Next time they want to test something on you, you tell them to come get me if you don't feel safe, okay? I'll make sure they don't hurt you. But don't run off like that okay?"
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her cheeks flaming.
"I understand," he said quietly. "I'll be back with something for you to eat."
"Okay..."
He stepped forward, warning her with his eyes that he was going to be in her personal space. She stiffened when he wrapped her in a brief hug. When he was gone, she stared at the door for a long time.
-23-
"What's your name?" She asked while they ate. The food was delicious. She'd only recently been allowed to eat solid foods, and she'd been trying to eat something different every day. Today he brought her simple pasta and meatballs. For dessert, though, he brought her cheesecake. She didn't know how cheesecake was going to taste good, because she tasted cheese for the first time in her life yesterday, and it was salty and tangy, and definitely not something you put in sweets.
He smiled at her. "I'm Ron. How about you, what's your name?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. They never called me a real name. Just my number. Number Twenty Three."
He shook his head. "Number Twenty Three... is not a real name."
She looked down at her plate sadly.
He eyed her speculatively. "We should give you a real name."
She brightened. "Really?"
He chuckled at her hopefulness. "Yeah, I mean, we can't call you 'Number Twenty Three' forever."
She stared at her plate again. "I... found one of their books, once. She was... having a baby. And her book was full of names."
"Did you see one you like?"
She nodded shyly again. "Yeah. But I got in trouble for taking it. They told me I had to sit in the dark for the rest of the month."
That was dumb, he thought angrily to himself. "What name did you like?"
"She... was calling her baby Kimmie. I looked it up in the name book."
He smirked again. "You're too old for 'Kimmie'... how about just Kim?"
"Kim?" She repeated.
"Yup."
"I like it," she said shyly, gingerly sticking her fork into her slice of cheesecake.
"It's settled then. And it suits you. And I think... you've survived circumstances that no normal person could. And you're the smartest, strongest, most amazing person I've ever met."
"You barely know me..."
He shrugged, smiling as her cheeks turned bright red again. "I don't care. You need a name as unique as you are."
"Well?" she asked, impatiently.
"Kim Possible."
She set her fork down and looked at him. Kim Possible. It sounded like someone who could kick anyone's butt. Maybe she liked that. "Kim. Possible." it rolled off her tongue. She did like it. Hmm.
He smiled at her. "I know you like it," he said, and his eyes sparkled with mischief.
"I do," she confessed.
"Good, then it's settled. Your name is Kim Possible."
"My name," she echoed, eyes locked on his, "is Kim Possible."