Remi didn't really know what time it was. She didn't have a watch on her or anything. All she knew was that the sun was setting, and it was getting late. Manhattan at a late hour, alone by herself wasn't the best match-up. But she couldn't really help it. She had no place to go, no place to stay. She'd been hiding out in churches for the past week since she arrived in New York. Luckily, no one had noticed. This time, she wasn't near any churches, at least in walking distance, and she didn't feel comfortable taking the subway. Creeps took the subway. She knew how to defend herself, training to do so practically up until five years ago, but the subway was no place for a twelve-year-old. Neither were the streets of Manhattan, yet here she was.
An hour before, she'd gotten into a fight, one she didn't plan on initiating. Of course, she won the fight. How could she not with her enhanced cat-like abilities? She didn't really have a choice in the matter whether or not she should step in. Some men were hurting a young girl, held a gun to her head in an alley. Weird for the early evening.
Welcome to New York, she told herself.
The men didn't put up a good fight. They were too slow for her, and her training skills kicked in. She dodged smoothly and quickly. They didn't stand a chance. In the midst of the fight, they did manage to land a few punches. That mixed with being dehydrated and starved, plus still recovering from having a seizure a few days before tired her out. By the time she was just about done, the girl had already fled. Out of anger, the men took her small backpack, which held not only left-over cash she somehow acquired, but the pills that kept her seizures at bay.
With a cut-up face, bloody knuckles, and presence that wasn't one-hundred percent there, she sat outside an apartment building on the steps. She hoped that maybe someone who lived in the apartments would allow her to stay with them for the night. The people that'd passed by her so far didn't really care for a twelve-year-old girl, who also happened to be a former badass soldier in training until 2009. She figured nothing less from New York. She should've picked somewhere else to go that was a lot better, significantly lower crime rates. But New York was crowded. There was no way Lydecker and the rest of Manticore could find her all the way across the country from a new base outside of Seattle. She was free from him. No more training. No more brainwashing. No more field work.
She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. She couldn't stop thinking about what would have been if they never escaped, her and some of her brothers and sisters. Before then, she'd never seen the outside world, and her first encounter with it wasn't all that fun. There was a lot of confusion and screaming. She was by herself as her siblings all went separate ways. A seven-year-old being out in the real world by herself was overwhelming on its own.
As the sun was just about to set, she thought it would be best to find herself a church to sleep in for the night, even thought she knew there were none near by. Yet, she somehow convinced herself that she could find one anyway. She was about to stand from the steps when she heard footsteps from around the corner. The first person that may cross paths with her in almost two hours. She thought that New York would be crawling with people, but some spots must be empty. This was one of those spots. Either that or it just wasn't late enough yet for people to come out of their apartments and take trips to bars.
She leaned forward to see who was walking down this way. She waited until they turned the corner and... She sighed. Just a blonde woman and her dog. They were probably gonna pass right by the building as the woman was walking her dog. She learned back on the west coast that people do that so their dog could do their business and get some much needed exercise. They didn't do that for the German Shepherds back at Manticore, at least not that she knew of. Those dogs made her hate dogs, or maybe it was what the dogs were commanded to do. On the night of their escape, Manticore employees had those dogs on leashes, the dogs tracking down the escaped X5's. All she heard was barking and barking, and she knew that no matter how far away she was, the barking would always remind her of how close she was to the facility.
The blonde slowed down her walk as she approached the building, and her dog started to bark probably because it smelled animal. It smelled Remi, a young girl who was made half cat through science. She was the product of science. She'd tell her siblings that they should be proud that they're something that the average human could never create.
The barking of her dog only reminded her of those German Shepherds chasing her down, along with her other siblings. She could only stare at it, watching it as it excitedly pushed towards the steps. Instead of a nice house dog, she saw herself in those woods, surrounded by echoing barks. It made her feel like she could never escape, yet somehow she did. The weakest one in the unit somehow escaped, playing hide and seek up in the trees until they were left to think she already hopped the fence that surrounded the facility.
"Frannie, stay back. Come on. We're home now." A voice snapped her awake, so did something wet. Remi focused her eyes in front of her. The dog was sniffing her hand, which she pulled back in a hurry. She was going to bite it off. Lydecker said that dogs hate cats. That was why he always sent out dogs to the field if they were doing something wrong or to herd them back to the facility after the field work was over. But this dog, this tan lump of short fur, found her hand again. She sniffed her hand, then started licking it. And wow, was it the best feeling she'd ever felt. It was wet, but it gave her a tickling sensation, made the hairs on the back of her neck stand, right near her barcode. She didn't come to notice that the poor dog was licking the blood off her hands. Instead of attacking her, she was healing her.
"Frannie, stop." Frannie didn't listen. She just kept on licking. Remi was glad that she was. It was less for her to clean off herself later. To encourage her to keep licking, healing, Remi used her other hand to pet Frannie. That one wasn't stained with blood. She lifted her head up to meet with ocean blue eyes of the blonde. The woman parted her lips, a reaction to the cuts on Remi's face.
Remi gave the woman a soft smile, weak, but she didn't show it. "It's okay. Your Frannie girl is healing me."
The woman tilted her head to the side as her eyes moved between Remi and Frannie. Frannie sat down on the step next to Remi, her tail swishing back and forth. The German Shepherds' tails never did that. Was that what dogs did when they were happy?
"Look, I really need to get to my apartment. I had a pretty rough day, a long one at that." She tugged on Frannie's leash, and Frannie stood. She stopped licking Remi's hand too, much to her dismay. "I'm glad you got your dog fix or whatever, but..." The blonde sighed. "It's getting late. You should head home, kid."
If only this woman knew, Remi didn't want to go home. The only home she'd ever known was at Manticore, and she felt sick because in that moment, she couldn't believe that she actually considered it to be a home. No, Manticore was hell. Besides Manticore, there was nothing else. No where else she could truly call home.
The woman went up the stairs, Frannie tagging along behind her. Maybe this woman would let her stay in her apartment. If the dog trusted her, so should she, unless that wasn't how it worked. Remi stood and turned rather quickly, a dizzy spell haunting her, casting over her eyes and body. She was in a tunnel now. She almost forgot that the last time she ate was a few days ago. Her blood sugar was probably low. She didn't have much water in her system, and that'd make her drop.
Remi grabbed on to the worn metal railing of the steps. "Wait." Her hand gripped tightly on to the metal, her knuckle practically turning white.
She looked over her shoulder, and Remi could see the sudden shift from annoyed to concerned. "You okay?"
"I just need somewhere to crash." Hopefully it would be more comfortable than the barracks she was kept in with her siblings, the one she slept in for seven years, if this woman agreed to pity her and invite her into her home. She didn't know who this woman was, how she reacted to weak kids living on the streets. If she'd be willing to help them find their place. From what Remi had seen of her so far, she still wasn't sure. She didn't even know if she could fully trust this woman, just because she was the owner of a kind dog. Who else was she supposed to turn to? She was standing on one leg, ready to fall over with a single push. "I promise I'll be out of your hair in the morning."
The woman sighed. There was something pulling at her, Remi could tell. She was conflicted, biting the inside of her cheek, probably questioning if it was a good idea to bring a random girl into her apartment. Or if she should just call someone, fingers crossed that it wouldn't be the police if she decided to do so. "I don't feel comfortable inviting a kid I just met into my apartment. Hell, I don't even know your name."
"Remi." Her siblings gave her that name. She remembered that. She didn't feel human without it.
"Remi," the woman repeated, then shook her head. Frannie started getting antsy, sitting still for too long. She whimpered and padded her front paws against the concrete of the steps. "If you want, I can call the local hospital, and have an ambulance pick you up. They'll be able to help you better than I can, considering your condition."
Remi's breath hitched in her throat at the mention of a hospital. She knew well that she couldn't go there. They'd find out that she was different through her DNA and contact the government, maybe poke her with needles. She was a scientific creation that no one had ever seen before. People were cruel. It was unfortunate that she had to learn that the hard way, through countless hours of aggressive training being led by a man with no heart or consideration that her, her unit, and many others were people too. "I... I can't."
"What do you mean 'you can't'?" The woman was growing impatient, gripping Frannie's leash tighter, fiddling with the keys to her apartment in the other. It made Remi feel like she was being rushed. She couldn't just explain that she wasn't human in the matter of seconds. She'd be pressed with questions. The hows and whys.
"Please, just understand that sending me to a hospital is probably the worst thing you can do right now. If you let me inside, I'll explain. I just—" Remi's knees buckled under her, but she was able to keep herself up-right because of the railing.
"You really don't have anywhere else to go?" she asked. "No parents? No guardians that you can go to?"
This blonde actually believed that there was a possibility that Remi had parents she could run home to? It almost made her laugh. Having real parents was a dream of Remi's. Same for some of her siblings that wanted nothing to do with becoming the next superior soldier. Some didn't really care. While the rest truly thought that it was their duty. Disgusting.
"You know, you're really funny," Remi said, a sarcastic tone in her voice, which received an eye-roll from the woman. "No. I wouldn't be asking you if I did. I wish I did, but some people are just unlucky."
She smiled a little and held her hand out towards Remi—the one holding Frannie's leash. "Take her, and I'll help you inside."
Remi grabbed the leash and followed the woman's gesture to climb up the rest of the stairs towards her. She took slow steps, clinging to the railing with one hand, fading in and out of the tunnel with each step. To her surprise, she got to the single platform at the door without tripping over herself, safely tucked under the woman's wing as she buzzed herself in.
"I'm Amanda, by the way. Just so you know who I am before I bring you into my apartment building." She opened the door and guided Remi and Frannie inside.
Remi looked over at the woman, Amanda, trying her best to ignore all the little noises coming from each apartment they passed by. They were noises that she knew Amanda couldn't possibly hear. To her, Remi knew it was quiet. "Nice to meet you." Despite the circumstances.