Gotc: Hiya guys! Yep another story, not a part of the stuff I should be writing….please don't kill me! Anyway, do read this, I have a great explanation at the end of this whole thing! See ya at the end!
Ex Nihilo
"Are we there yet?"
The age old question was met with the same stifling silence that had permeated the interior of the cabin for the last ten hours. Or maybe it had been twelve? The windows of the plane were blacked out, and the sound of the engines continued their steady hum. The soldiers near the cockpit were certainly of no help either, as they sat rigidly in place staring at the young man riding with them.
An unkempt sprawl of sandy brown hair, stuck up on one side where it had been pressed against a window, adorned the top of his head. Hazel irises that refused to decide if they were a shade of green or the color of topaz, eyed the disciplined soldiers mischievously as his mind churned with ways to break through their façade. His tall, lean frame sprawled out over two other seats, as he flicked another stale peanut at the nearest soldier's helmet.
Yesterday, he'd been living on the streets, scratching out an existence in the illegal bare-knuckle boxing rings of New York City. It was an easy enough line of work, granted you knew how to throw…and take a punch. He'd been in the middle of a bout, two seconds away from putting some pompous brute down on the concrete with a splitting headache to wake up to the next morning, when the warehouse they'd set up erupted in chaos. Spectators scattered in all directions, refs seemed to evaporate into thin air, and the next thing he knew, a bag had been tied around his head and he was tossed onto a plane under armed supervision.
"I've had more stimulating conversations from people with brain damage," He grumbled, flicking another peanut, his mood souring even more despite the direct hit, "So is the stick up your ass a part of the uniform, or do you have to get that separate?"
"I'm afraid it's a prerequisite of all of our personnel, Mr. Kurin." A female voice finally spoke over the plane's intercom, "or do you prefer Raiziel?"
"I prefer to talk to an actual person," Raiziel said, swinging his legs to a sitting position in the seat, "Not a speaker or the Queen's royal footmen here."
"That will be remedied shortly, I can assure you, Mr. Kurin." The voice replied.
"Yeah? And what is 'shortly' to you? Cause I'm real damn tired of being a thousand feet above solid ground." He grumbled back.
"Actually," The voice spoke again, as the windows suddenly allowed a flood of light to enter the plane, "You landed over 5 hours ago."
Raiziel climbed over one of the seats to look out the window to see the plane was indeed sitting inside a brightly lit hanger while the engines finally began to spin down. A jet bridge was extending slowly out to the plane and docked with the outer hull without so much as even rocking the plane. A sharp tap on his shoulder brought him face to face with the same stoic pair of soldiers, now beckoning him to stand and make his way to the door.
"Yeah, no. I'll be staying right here." He said, settling back into his seat.
His answer was swiftly accompanied by the sound of cocking weapons.
"I'm afraid I must insist you follow these fine gentlemen." The voice spoke again, "After all, I'm sure you must have questions you'd like answered?"
"What gave you that idea? The fact you pulled me off the streets, slapped me blindfolded in a plane and sent me off to God-knows-where?"
There was actually a small chuckle from somewhere on the other side of the speaker.
"As I said, I must insist. We can't have you just sit in there all day."
Raiziel glared at the speaker, then at the guns now pointed directly at him. With a grimace plastered on his face, he reluctantly rose from his seat and started toward the door. If the worst that was waiting for him on the other side of that bridge was a meeting with the Grim Reaper, then it really didn't matter if it happened in there or on the plane.
The soldiers flanked him on either side, making sure he'd meet with the business end of a rifle no matter which way he turned if he tried to run. It seemed a little stupid to him. After all, where in the hell was he going to go? Every window on that plane had been carefully blacked out to the point where he wasn't even sure if it was night or day, much less where he was. For now, the only sensible option was just to play along.
It took a good five minutes of being led through twisting halls that all looked exactly alike, before the soldiers finally stopped at one door that looked just like all the others. A beep from some unseen speaker sounded in the hall and the door swung open, revealing a sterile looking room with a small table set up in the center of it. One soldier gave him a rough shove into the room, before the door slid shut behind him.
"HEY!" Raziel shouted, beating at the door and searching for some kind of way to open it again.
"Please make your way to the table, Mr. Kurin." The same voice spoke again, echoing eerily in the nearly empty room.
"Screw you," He spat back, "I'm not moving another foot until you tell me what the hell is going on here."
"You will be informed of our intentions if you pass the evaluations."
"And if I don't? What are you going to do then? Dump what's left of me in a trench out back?"
"Nothing quite so crude. We've found an incinerator leave behind far less evidence."
Raziel tensed at that, and felt himself crouch into a defensive position when the voice spoke again.
"Relax, it was only a joke, Mr. Kurin."
"Yeah, cute."
"Our studies have shown that testing proceeds smoother when candidates are more relaxed. Now if you will please proceed forward and place your hand on the table. If you pass the evaluation, you will be eligible to learn more about this facility and the purpose for which you were brought here. If you do not meet expectations, then you will be delivered back home as we found you."
"Just like that?" Raziel raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"Just like that." The voice assured.
He took a few reluctant steps toward the table, every muscle in his body wound tight in case this disembodied voice had no intention of keeping its word. The whole room was booby trapped for all he knew. But when hesitant step after hesitant step didn't trigger the floor falling out from beneath him, or the walls closing in to crush him, he finally allowed himself to actually take a close look at the table itself.
There wasn't anything particularly unique about the thing. It was just as white and sterile as the rest of the room. The only defining feature to speak of, were the two barely-there divots on the top surface of the table.
"Place both hands on the table if you would, Mr. Kurin." The voice spoke up again, as if it knew exactly what he was thinking. Then again, he would have been stupid for thinking that someone wasn't watching his every move somehow.
He glanced skeptically down at the table again with a scowl. Bells and whistles were going off in his head, almost screaming for him to run in the opposite direction…..if there were an opposite direction to run in. He spent a hesitant moment with both hands hovering over the table, before he finally brought his palms down to meet the cool polished metal.
And for a second…. nothing happened.
Steel bracers materialized out of the table in the next breath, and secured his forearms to the metallic surface. Another set clamped down across his feet. The cuffs bit into the skin, as he struggled against them, and he had the fleeting thought that perhaps the blood running down his arm might just be enough to slide his arm free…
He didn't feel the needle a white clad nurse pressed into his shoulder, only the suddenly overwhelming sense of drowsiness before the world fell dark.
"A fighter, that one."
Amanda Waller didn't so much as flinch at her visitor as she watched a team of doctors and nurses whisk their latest acquisition off to the lab before the sedative wore off. She did however turn an irritated eye toward the man as he poured himself a drink and settled comfortably in her chair.
"Would you have rather I brought you someone more submissive?" Waller said briskly, tapping a button on the monitor, "It would certainly help at the rate you've had us going through test subjects…."
"Ms. Waller…. I'm surprised," The man said feigning hurt, "The Initiative wouldn't have been anything more than a fleeting dream without your backing! The Board would have never even spared a second glance-"
"Your money was what did the talking and you know it, Jordan." Amanda snapped back, "I've tried to have this project pulled three times now, and you've got your fingers so deep in the Board's pockets, they won't even consider it."
"They know a good idea when they see one." Jordan leaned back further in the chair, yet his eyes still glittered dangerously as he took a sip of his drink.
"There's nothing good about seventeen wasted lives. Every scientist assigned to the Initiative had quit, two committed suicide, and the only one who hasn't either come to his senses or gone mad is that Dr. Gibson. And I'd bet the man was mad long before he was hired here anyway."
She could see the thin outline of the frown etched into Jordan's face even from her place across the room. The man almost exuded a suffocating aura into the very air that made her want to just turn and run for it. But she was used to intimidation, after all, one didn't become the head of an organization like C.A.D.M.U.S. by rolling over for every threatening personality that came her way.
She pulled the three files that had been handed to her by the Board late yesterday and all but slapped them down in front of Jordan.
"They're the last ones." Waller glared at him, hand still firmly down on top of the folders, "I don't know why you have so much invested in this failure, but I am still in charge here. You gave us the funding for twenty subjects, and these three are the last ones the Board approved. Let Gibson play all he wants, but if he doesn't produce results, I will personally see to it this operation is shut down."
For a moment, Amanda could have sworn she saw glimpses of her life flash before her. Jordan set his glass down on the table as he stood; the ice cubes clinking with a kind of finality that made her hair stand up on end. He grasped the edges of the folders with the tips of his fingers and still managed to give them such a hard tug that they slid out from under her hand. He opened them, one by one, and disinterestedly leafed through the contents as he circled around the desk and over to where Waller stood.
"You know….," Jordan said thoughtfully as he loomed over Waller, still looking through the files, "I have a good feeling about these three… But then again…. maybe you're right. Maybe this project is doomed to fail…"
Jordan gently set the folders back down on the desk, leaning over Waller to do so that his mouth was just next to her ear as his lips curled into a sinister grin.
"But Dr. Gibson has three tries left, and for his sake and yours, I want to see this project succeed."
Gotc: Eh-hem. BUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! So yeah, origin stories. For those of you who don't know, for the last…eh, 3 years….or almost 4 years, I've been running an RP on the Justice League forums with a bunch of amazing people. Recently, it was suggested that instead of being simply content with a brief bit of background info, we all should write origin stories! So here I am. You may or may not have seen the others putting theirs up, but if you haven't, I suggest going to read them. And then checking out the RP: Masters of the JLA. I've got all the other stories up in the C2 archive, Ties of Fate, so everything is all under one roof! Anyway, Not much else I can say here, but do keep an eye on us, cause there's a lot more to these stories than your average OC fic!