Prologue: The unnamed.
When you are in one of those nets, let me tell you, you are not thinking about your own death. Oh sure, you know it's going to happen, but in the same way you know that all things eventually die and rot. You have had fourteen years (or in my case, more) to go over this, and that is more than enough time. You are thinking about the death you will bring, after your body has been nicely sliced and diced, twisted to form a new creature, like the Winger that is carrying you. First, you look up, see those arms, twisted and stretched like thin plastic and the leathery skin that billows in the air as the morning draft catches it. And you do not care that you are about to die. Really, you don't.
All you can concentrate on is the fact that you will be a controlled murderer.
Author's notes: This is, what I like to call, a "mosh". It is not the standard two story, three-story crossover. It is bits and pieces, some important and some minor, taking from many stories/mangas/animes/etc. If you can tell already, the setting is almost identical to Garth Nix's 'Shade's Children'. Though it does not take place in New York, but another city. You'll figure it out. Just for some basic ideas, the following are from which I using in this fanfiction…. (Keep in mind, it may not be from the same time, perhaps occurring before or after).
-The Giver
-Animorphs
-Shade's Children
-Inu Yasha
-Rurouni Kenshin (samurai X, to some)
-and many other novels I have forgotten to name.
-and a lot of original ideas and characters.
So sit back, and enjoy the show.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own characters and ideas.
What you should know:
Much of the beginning is based on Shade's Children. More correctly, it is based on the last few chapters and the ending. We know this: In the city where the overlords ruled, the machines that powered the creatures were destroyed, thus freeing the children there. What we do not know, and thus subject to fan fiction: Were there overlords and their creatures in other cities-meaning no adults, just children and monsters? If so, did the destruction of the machines located in the city where Shade's Children took place affect them too? If so, how long did it take? How were the effects different there (we know from the novel that in the city that all the creatures died, but they were closest to that power source that was destroyed).
And, what happens after?
Another novel used for another main character is The Giver. What we know: Jonas and Gabriel escaped, searching for the unknown where memory still exists. We know they encounter or "enters" a memory of the family and the music, but is it real? Let us assume they lived. What happens next?
Oh, and please don't expect to see characters from the animes/mangas listed to start bounding in. One main char happens to be a descendant, while the other really happens to be more dead than alive from what it once was.
But you'll see that later. For now, sit and enjoy.
Chapter 1: Rebirth
The unnamed
"You were once human."
I said it softly at first, climbing up the mesh netting so that I was barely a hand's width away from the creature. "You were once human." The creature is not deferred. Again, louder, I repeat my simple revelation.
No response.
I am quiet for a few moments, until I see the meat factory in the distance. A huge, slightly off white building, lined with symbols I could not understand. It is like a block of ice, almost. This time I scream, seeing the red mist form in my eyes, soon watching everything as if it was washed in blood. The creature yells its protest in response, and I laugh hoarsely. If I am going to be changed, then I will put up a fight. I yell at the beast, screaming and ranting. Taunting it for allowing it to be controlled. However, I dare not touch it. To do so would help the situation become more realistic, as I am in a state of shock still.
The overlords want me specifically, not like the others who are just culled at fourteen for simply no reason other than to make creatures that will live short lives and die in the their overlord's planned battles. They will fight for my sinews and brains, for my muscles and nerves, for my eyes. For my speed. I imagine I will be a prize. Perhaps they will keep me as breeding material, in which case I will probably commit suicide. I would not give birth to another that would be like me, so valuable. If my mother, whoever she was, had known what my birth would bring, she probably would have gotten rid of me. But then again, how was she to know? All of the adults are gone, we all know this. Over the years, the fourteen-year-olds at the dorm write a message on their bunks just before the morning of their Sad Birthday. Sometimes it is a plea, sometimes a poem, a rare escape route written in code, or a diary. These memos are our informal history lessons, far more precious then the math, writing, and reading we are force-fed in the dorms to keep our brains sharp.
Back to the point, I am special. I hate it. The overlords first spotted me at age 10, maybe earlier, but that was the first time I noticed them watching. I knew I was different, and tried to make myself look normal. Redheads and blondes are rare, most dorm children have dirty brown hair that might have been meant to be a colorful shade, but had long ago dulled from lack of nutrition and mud. Every morning I would purposely cover the thick red stuff, some of it already mucky, with fresh mud. I'd also keep my eyes shielded from anyone that was curious about them, and walk about with a bowed head and a shuffling walk. Which, considering the mental state of many dorm children, is not out of the ordinary. Still they noticed me one morning when my age group was outside to exercise. When I see the sky, however dark and gray it may be, or whenever I am out in the open, I can't help but want to run. Or jump. Or scream. Just move, it doesn't matter how. I always thought that I had a disorder, like many of the children, but as I became older, I figured that it was restlessness.
I was running around, jumping and playing tag like all the others (for if you don't, the overlord's watching creatures punish you-they need fit children), when it happened. If I had known they were watching, I would've have lost the game like everyone else; but no, I won. I dodged and spun, ducked and jumped through legs faster than any child's eye could track. Did I know I was doing it? Of course, I did, but did I think I was better? Maybe, but I doubt it.
It wasn't until I saw them watching me, the overlords that were there that day, I knew I was.
It earned me another year of life. Sitting with my age group, the night before our fourteenth birthday, I was crying like the rest of them, trying to form escape plans in my cloudy mind with them. But the day came, and I was not taken away. For what seemed like forever, I sat in the position we had been ordered to take as the overlords choose us, not moving at all. Part of me wondered if I was invisible and the rest of me was filled with unimaginable dread as an overlord came to me, and kneeled down in front of me. He was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen, physically human to my brain, but my heart knew better. He was the oldest person I have ever known; my guess was that he looked to be in his mid or late twenties, pale white hair and curiously dark eyes with milky toned skin. Out of the five overlords that had came on our Sad Birthday, this one looked to be the most junior of them. He wore a simple black shirt and pants with the sign of his army on the shoulder, but it looked finer than any other clothes I have ever seen. I flinched with my head down, hoping he would not see my eyes, as his long fingered hand swept along my cheek.
"Oh," he said in a soft whisper, tilting my head up so he could see my eyes and stare into the blue gray depths. "You are valuable, you know it, and I have known it for a long time. I think I shall see you again later, little one." With that, the overlord got up and moved away, and looking over his shoulder, he threw a feral grin my way. Then he was gone.
Even with my Change Talent (thank the sky they don't know about it), I can't perfectly recall what happened next. I remember walking out of the room, stepping into the crowd of younger children. I had been apart of these crowds for years, there only purpose is to catch a glimpse of the near future. Closest to me were those who would go away next year, and they stared at me. Some of them gasped, others stood shock still, and I believe I heard a scream. With a dazed expression, I walked past them and the crowd split for me, allowing me to walk freely.
I could try to tell you what that year was like, but Falling Back for me is hard for anything over a couple of months in the past, especially when I have tried to block it out. A Change Talent is an uncertain thing, and there have been many times when I have randomly gone into the trance that allows me to view the past. It is particularly odd, because I don't see it from the viewpoint I saw things then, rather as if the current version of me was free to walk around watching my surroundings and I. Quite odd. Only in the past two years have I been able to control the Falling to a precise time in the past and control when I want to do it. However, there is one memory I can Fall onto very well during that long year. It would earn me another 12 months, letting me live to my sixteenth birthday. Did I mention that? Happy belated Sad Birthday to me. I am 16 years old now.
It was the week before my fifteenth birthday when it occurred. Over the past months, I had grown accustomed to being left alone (after all, my only friends were gone forever). But today was different. A boy came up to me, one that would stand at the Sad Birthday a week in the future (which I believed I was going to be apart of). He was a full head taller then I, maybe more. This was one of the kids they use to make Myrmidons, giant hulking beings clad in armor that make up the brute force of an overlord's army. They pack these kids full of steroids from the age of six, enlarging muscles and stamina. Steroids have a weird effect on them, some of them suicide, while others become violent. Unfortunately for me, this was one of the latter kind. Like the fool I was, I lifted my eyes to his. The boy, Grimy was his name, looked at me with a sneer on his face. His long nose and bulbous eyes (thank-you chemicals) made him look like a tracker, a small sniveling beast about half my own size (which is relatively short and scrawny) that crawl about sniffing out enemies (or escaped children). A tracker's head, on the boy with the dimensions used to create the myrmidons that stand at least 9 feet tall. Maybe it was the insanity born of my isolation that made me do it, but I laughed out-loud. Right into his damn long-nosed face. You could imagine Grimy's expression, all sneer and extra face hair contorting into one mass that made the situation even worse for me. I just continued laughing.
"You think somethin' funny?" He more or less gargled down at me. I knew trouble was happening, but did I care? No. Besides, I was faster then any kid there; I could always run away from him.
"Yes." He probably was waiting for me to say more.
"Yes what?" No answer from me, so he kept going. "You know what. You should be dead. You should've been dead a longo time ago. With Mick. You knew him?"
Yeah, sure I knew Mick. He was another steroid kid, tried to commit suicide but couldn't. The overlords gave him more steroids, and he started killing rats. First he would catch them, then he would poke their eyes out, and he would then rip their tails out. Finally, he would kill them by sticking a long, sharpened rock through the roof of their tiny mouths and into their brains. I think he ate the carcasses, but possibly through them into younger kid's beds. "Yeah," I reply.
He looks at me as if I was simple, or mentally slow. Easy prey for a bully, a. "He was my brother, ya' know that? And you should've died with him!" Suddenly, he shoves me. I see it coming, but don't move. I slam into the wall of the dorm, feel my knees give away and I crumple. "And now, I'm gonna make sure you hurt so bad that even the big guys won't be able to know what to make of you."
If I didn't move, I knew my fate would be worse then those rats. A crowd was gathering, cutting of any route of escape, and I had the wall to my back. It was not a good scenario. Then he lunged, like a tumbling pile of rock hard mass that was half my height again and three times my weight. This time, I saw his attack. A fist the size of my head was making a fast course for my head, a blow that would kill me. Suddenly, I didn't want to die. Yeah, so I would live only a week more, but I couldn't help but move. My vision clouded red, bloodlust you could call it, and I made my own move. I caught his arm, taking the momentum carrying it, and through it into the wall. He roared at me, screaming in pain as he retracted, revealing a 2-inch hole in a concrete wall. The crowd hissed with surprise, and I laughed at them. Laughed at everything. There was energy stirring through me, and blood in front of my eyes. I wanted to harm this boy, no longer run away. I moved around Grimy, faster and faster, almost as if I was jumping from place to place. This wasn't a new Change Talent, I was doing this on my, without breaking a sweat. Finally, just when he was dizzy from trying to track me, I struck. My foot contacted with the only soft part of him. It's rumored that all males on steroids lose this organ, but he still screamed and crumpled. I bent down and Grimy stared at me with fear as I said, "Yeah, I knew your fuck of a brother. He pulled rats apart, you know that? Bet you did, Grimy, I bet my own life you did it yourself. So why don't you go back to your little rats, and stay the fuck away from me. It won't be hard; we both only have a week left. Good luck as a myrmidon Grimy, you're almost there."
I gave the crowd a stare, and they departed silently, whispering amongst themselves. Eventually Grimy crawled away throwing me a look of anger and fear. I sat down in the cold, watching the sun set and looked up. He was there, fair hair and dark eyes glinting in the dying sun rays. The overlord stood there, watching me from the roof of the building about forty feet above me. And I could see he was flashing that feral grin. In a fit of madness, I returned it.
When my fifteenth birthday came, I sat with the fourteen-year-olds, and they did not collect me. Though, Feral Grin and I had another little chat.
"They are fighting for you, little one. Asking for another year. And you know why? We've dug up your genetic records, found a genealogy that is unlike any we ever seen. You are far too precious to become like any creature who will die in a month." His face was dangerously close to mine, and I saw that he had fangs. I was not surprised. "My seniors are fools, for I shall be the one to win you!" He whispered this, eyes narrow and cold. And like a year before, he left me.
Today, on my sixteenth birthday, I did not sit with the others. I was taken from my bed by a myrmidon. "Hi, Grimy." I let him drag me to the Winger and shove me in the net. "Still pulling apart rats like Mick, or have you moved on to kids yet, Grimy?" Those were my passing words to the Myrmidon as I was carried away.
So, here I was. I think I could see Feral Grin in the distance, and I laughed again. "You were once human, but he never was." It was more like a hoarse cry than a laugh, but I think the Winger understood it. My carrier's wings miss a beat, very suddenly, and we faltered in the sky. Suddenly, it cried out. We dropped from 60 feet above the ground, to about 15 in four seconds. Do winger's have heart attacks? I'd never heard of one just dropping like this. Then again, I had never been carried by one before. Feral Grin gave me a look of anguish, as if he was feeling what the Winger was going through. And suddenly I realize two things. First, we were about to make a crash landing. Second, my Winger was dying. The poor thing (not) gave one final attempt at a hover before screaming in an all too human voice, "I know!" And then we slid into the ground; the Winger's body flipping over and hitting ground first. I am not surprised I survived, but it was only about to get worse now that I was on the ground. Thankfully, the Winger claws let go of the net and I tumble out, staring about at my surroundings.
The meat factory is nothing more than a squat gray building, somewhat ugly to the eye. I walked towards it, skirting the bodies of Trackers and watching out for anything still moving. My overlord is sitting amongst them, looking somewhat dazed. I moved to him and sat cross-legged in front of him, and asked him what had happened.
He looked at me, eyes glazed over, I don't think he realized he was talking to a child, but rather to another overlord. "Rebels. Got the energy sources in the other settlement. Chain reaction, everything is destroyed here. All our work." He threw back his head and gave a hoarse laugh. "I told you it would happen, they aren't just animals, and it is impossible to start over or get back home."
I stared at him for a while, feeling something that might have been an odd form of pity for this killer, merged with my own desire to rip his throat out. His eyes were slowly starting to clear and I decided it would be foolish to hang around any longer. But where would I go? Out of the city? Who knows what is in the country, there could be more overlords, more creatures.
But then again, what did I have to lose? I was already supposed to be dead.
Jonas
Where was I? How long had I been out of the community?
It was no longer winter there, and if the family had been a memory, it had already floated away into nothingness. But Gabriel and I were alive, and that was all that counted.
"No more family?" Gabe asks.
Since when could Gabe speak sentences? I looked over to him, and found that he is older. This should have been impossible, how did time pass so quickly? All I have are fleeting glimpses in my mind of the family and their music, welcoming us. How did years pass? How old was I?
I looked over into a puddle of water, and saw my face. It was not as round as what it once was, but my eyes are still the same. I was perhaps sixteen, most likely seventeen. Quite suddenly, I sit down, absorbing this information. "No," I replied to a five year old Gabe, "We are somewhere else."
He watched me pick at the frayed ends at my tunic (several inches too short now) and staring at our new surroundings. All around us are the abandoned ruins of homes, somewhat like the ones the Giver showed me. Obviously, we were in the suburbs of a large city, for ahead of me I could see the rise of large buildings and the sickly gray sky above. Everything around us was broken, desolate, overgrown with moss and ferns as the forest that had once been here tried to reclaim it's lost territory. I wondered if we were the last two free humans, free from the communities that is, in the world.
Abruptly, Gabriel pointed down the cracked road, and mutters with a lisp. "Person." And he was right, there was a person walking along the road, a child it seemed. Wait, no, a young woman, a short young woman, with the same skinny build as a child, but perhaps as old as me.
With laboring steps, she made her way up our hill and stopped about five feet from me. Her eyes were a dark blue gray with an odd gleam in them, and her matted, dirty red hair lies in choppy lengths to the middle of her back. She wore an odd assortment of clothes, a shirt with mismatching pants and what could have once been a long overcoat. Everything was as dirty and frayed as she was, but she carried no weapon. "Everything is dead, all the Wingers, Myrmidons, Trackers, and the rest of the shit back there. But I don't think the overlord's are dead. But I doubt they can do anything. So, if you want to go to the city, go ahead. I know I'm heading out of it," She said in a harsh whisper. The girl looked down at Gabe, frowning a bit, and walked the same way Gabe and I had come from.
"Wait!" I cried. What was this girl talking about? She didn't seem like any well-fed or clean community child, what was this city of her? "All that's back there is forest! You'll starve. What are you looking for any ways?"
She stared at me, blinking. I knew she was trying to figure me out, and her stare was somewhat suspicious. "I don't know. A home, maybe. What about you?"
What was I going to say? "Freedom." It sounded best.
"Well," she said harshly. "You won't find it back there. Not a chance in hell. Me, I'm getting as far away from that city as possible, and you should too!" The girl looked me full in the eye, and said, "What's your name anyway?"
"Jonas, and the child is Gabriel."
The red-haired girl tries out the sound of our names in a whisper, as if affixing them in her memory. "Who are you?" I ask.
"Don't know. Maybe that's what I'm looking for, my name."
I stared at her, how many people don't know their names? "Want me to give you one?" It was the only polite thing to do. She shook her head, saying. "Unless you're going to follow me, what's the point of giving me a name? Besides, it wouldn't be my real name, just a sort of code name. "
"Well, you said it's bad in the city, and I said you won't survive in the forest, so what if all three of us went elsewhere?" She looked at me over her shoulder. "Well," I continued. "There is safety in numbers."
She nodded, took a sharp turn left where the paved road spiraled down a street of more or less identical houses. And, like the fool I was, I followed her under that gray sky.
Author: God, this is trite and choppy. Halfway into it I forgot my sense of time, was I telling it in past or present tense? I decided for past tense, but I may have missed some parts trying to correct it. First person is hard, no italic thinking lines. Eeep. This is going to be fun. ::cough::