They kept his body on a slab; cold, lifeless, boney. The stiff sheet they threw on him sank into the depression in his chest. This is how they kept him. Like some low level lab rat. They poked and prodded every day for new discoveries.
The government shipped off the body the second things calmed down; packed it away in a walk in freezer on slabs of ice for months. They took it out and gave him his own room. Machines that whirred and buzzed, clean bleach and steel smell.
They cut him open like a pumpkin on Halloween. Cutting open new pieces and pulling out new parts to play with every day. The government pulled him apart and studied him in every way they could. Beneath the sheet, his body was covered in scars; stitched up to no end.
The doctors had just finished giving him his third lobotomy in one year. Andrew was now the proud owner of a raised angry scar running across his forehead. The thing that interested the researchers so much was how his body continued to develop post mortem. His scars healed. His chest cavity took months, but eventually it filled. The blood coagulated, and his chest seemed to grow inward, scabbing over and over until the scabs connected.
They took blood samples and injected them into rats. They fed rabbits parts of his brain tissue they scrapped off from the lobotomy. The rats ate each other, and the rabbits smashed their own skulls in on the glass of their cages. But they kept going.
The government needed to find out how he had his powers. How they worked. They wanted to create, control, destroy. The events that unfolded in 2012 would be a revolution for bio-engineering and weaponry. The government was set on created an army of psychic soldiers and super humans; and they ripped Andrew apart limb from limb to get what they wanted.
Most people were afraid to work on him. Some of the research assistants swear that his body moves when you aren't looking. Others say that at night you can see a blue light glowing from his door, but when you open it, nothing is on.
Then came the day that things changed; the day of a lightning storm.
The first thing Andrew regained was his sense of smell. The stainless steel and bleach came on faint, and then grew strong. He tasted copper in his mouth. There was a crusty dryness. Then, he felt cold.
His fingers twitched against the slab as he regained motion. Finally, the darkness started to peel away from his vision as everything came into sight. First blurry, and eventually clear. A splitting pain stabbed through his head as his memories returned.
He looked around in question. His rusty body filled with anger. He levitated himself up. It took him a few tries and he could feel blood pour from his nose. He reached his hand up to wipe it away. The blood was black and sticky. Dead blood.
He could feel the aches in all his muscles; physical and mental. His body would have to readjust. He looked around and his eyes found a camera in the corner, watching his every movement. Someone would see him. Someone would be coming.
He walked over to the door to the room. He banged on it, and then grabbed the handle. He pulled it with his mind and yanked it off of its hinges and threw it away. Andrew could hear an alarm sounding, and saw red lights flashing. He walked through the hallway and made his way out.
He didn't know the way to the exit, so he made one. The wall of the facility bust open and gunshots rained down upon him in a thick sheet.
Guards standing on postings yelled to each other. They could not see the target. They waited for the debris to settle to locate the body.
When the dust cleared, Andrew was standing in the rubble, surrounded by hundreds of bullets stuck midair. He looked around at all of the guard stations and counted them out one by one. He looked at them sideways and sent the bullets back at them in a barrage.
Bodies dropped like rain. Andrew took a deep breath and looked up into the sky. He pushed himself upward and took off.
Three Years Later
Andrew had decided it was best to stay out of the cities for a while. He found a wooded area outside of a smaller city and stayed there. There was an abandoned car halfway into the wood that had driven off road a few years ago and was never recovered. It made a perfect bed for him. It smelled like rust, and the paint was peeling, but it had become a home.
He preyed on the people who wandered into the woods, and would go to the outside of town to steal food and people. He was on his way back when he heard the roaring of a bike coming up the road behind him. He glanced behind him as the biker road up.
The biker swerved around him at the last minute and spit on him; he then swore at him for walking in the middle of the road. Andrew glared as he went past. He lifted up his hand and swept it like he was swatting a fly.
The bike crumpled up beneath the biker, who was thrown to the road. The lack of helmet made his head splatter across the ground, a mess of grey matter splayed on the pavement.
Andrew walked up to the biker and stared at his remains. He was a bit bigger than Andrew, his shoulders were wide across and his belly was large. Andrew reached down and grabbed his crusted brown leather jacket and wiped the blood and brain onto the man's shirt. He went through the pockets and threw the man's wallet on the ground. He didn't need money or material things anymore. He was better than that.
He threw the jacket on over his shoulders and pulled his long hair up from under the collar. The fall wind would be coming in soon, and the extra warmth was a plus. He stepped off the road and wandered into the woods, leaving the blood mess behind.
