Title: Manticore
Author: Alexandra Bruderlin aka Lexie
Characters: The X5 group
Fanfic100 Prompt: Beginning; Middle; End.
Rating: G
Summary: In the name of science and patriotism, this is sheer brilliance.
Author's Notes: Three more prompts for my fanfic100 challenge on livejournal. These three drabbles couldn't be split up, so I posted them all as one fic. I hope you enjoy it - it's fairly different to what I normally post, please review and let me know what you think!
I. Beginnings
There are children who will never really be children. Their necks bear testament to the fact that it doesn't matter if they get beyond the gates and fences that line the facility, they will never be free or safe.
The guards who have children at home do not flinch as the four year old handles the gun with more confidence than they do. The guards flick their eyes over the children – girls and boys alike, with cropped hair and military issue garments and pretend that the hand gestures don't unnerve them at all. They pretend that these children do not send them home wishing they'd become lawyers and doctors instead of soldiers.
They look all the same to the guards – maybe the doctors can tell them apart, but the guards cannot and there's something almost morbid about fifty bald children carrying guns and not having names.
But in the name of science and patriotism, this is sheer brilliance.
II. Middle
The barracks are a reprieve from reality.
They are educated through a never ending flash of words, numbers and knowledge on a projector, hands flat on the desk in front of them. Forty nine eyes watching every move the great Colonel Lydecker makes as he lectures them on everything and everything – during long winter days, he reads aloud from great heavy dictionaries that are better placed in a fancy university somewhere. There is no heating; they keep the air conditioning running all winter so that the prototypes won't fall asleep during these lessons.
Outside, training is a haze of mud, slush and blood. A six year old tumbles down the hill and breaks her arm. She waits until the training session has finished, before she reveals the bone that has ripped through her flesh; her face is pale but there are no tears, and maybe that is the scariest thing of all.
Blood bounces on ice.
The barracks are warmer than anywhere else, and they huddle together in groups, their thin military issue blankets wrapped tightly around themselves, and they smile secretly to each other, and give each other names to ward off the cold.
III. Ends
The snow crunches under their feet, and they run. Blood smears almost stale brown on the snow as they put their rigorous training – American tax dollars at work – to the test. And as the great Colonel Lydecker commands their recapture or their death, a flicker of pride can be seen in his eyes. They have gone above and beyond anyone's expectations.
The guards have been here for these prototypes long enough now that shooting them, stunning them, hurting them to gain the upper hand does not affect them anymore. These aren't children, just glorified science projects.
Small bodies litter the training area, the electric blue of the tazers jumps out in the night air.
Twelve are gone. Out of thirty five, it seems insignificant, but dangerous none the less.
They run through the brutal Wyoming winter – free at last, free at last! Blue lipped grins cover their faces, but they are alone now.
It's going to be a long decade.