He stood right there, a short distance away, in a moonlit wooden corridor littered with blood and bodies hung from the walls and all around him in macabre configurations of suffering and torment. He looked around as naturally as if he was born in a room full of death, as if it was natural as walking through a field of grain. The red Victorian trenchcoat hung on his form like the dried underside of a skinned man, hiding his long arms beneath it and the hand lifting with poetic slowness. The muzzle was birthed out of the shadows under that nightmare coat, glittering in the swirling emergency light that alternated red-yellow-red-yellow from outside, making every glittery surface of it appear as though it were imbued with flame.
But so far, he did not see me. If he did, he barely turned his head to fixate those glowing orange glasses on my location.
Every instinct in me screamed to flee. For the first time, I was afraid.
---
It started on the usual morning. I was strapped with tungsten chains to the wall. My legs and arms unbelievably heavy. Naked and alone for most of the day except when they brought in that tray, stopped exactly five meters and a half meters away and brought me a wooden bowl and spoon and fed me the usual protein-rich gruel that made my insides feel like they were processing bits of glass rather than nutritious goupy brown meal. I slept with my head hung down, unable to discern the pink of my hair from the blood staining it a much darker color.
Experiment after experiment. How much can the Diclonius bitch take? How else can we break her, tear her apart, make her tell us her secrets?
They knew nothing. But I knew even less. All I knew was that someday I would have to be free. I would get away.
When I was little, days after I had come forward from my cocoon and accepted my vectors as a part of my being, I had kept a picture of my home. Another island, far from here. It was wet and cold, and even in summer, there was never a day of sunshine without a few days of rain. The picture was of an enormous clocktower, and I remember the sound it made when it struck the time. It carried across the river there, the rooftops I traveled at night, and all the world was mine and the clocktower was my friend because it always told me where I was if I just listened for its call. The sun rarely shown for more than five minutes at a time, it seemed.
I liked the darkness there in that place I used to live. I liked the cold, because it gave me an excuse to hide the delicate ear-shaped osseous tissue protruding from the sides of my temporal lobe under a hat. The rain gave me an excuse to play in the puddles and laugh gleefully before I scurried like a cat through alleyways and heard the snatched conversations of human beings not worthy enough to breathe the sacred air of the earth.
I didn't understand why everyone I came into contact with treated me so strangely. I didn't understand why I hated everyone, even those who genuinely wanted to help me.
But after my capture, I understood why. I understood when they tore my clothes and shot me, strapped me down and filled my body with unspeakable pain, shot at me without any avenue of escape, tested my vectors with stronger and stronger ammunition, and cut into my body without any reservations about whether the scars would last or be too terrible.
I understood very clearly. All mankind is a disease and the symptom is suffering.
----
I strained to listen for their conversations when they thought I wasn't looking up at the vast, double-layered window that protected them inside their observation bay. The glass was too thick to transmit any sound, and the head scientist of this wing's back was turned. I could read lips like any expert now, but I only could read one side of the conversation that fateful day. I was waiting to see if at last all my suffering would be paid off and I would again know the taste of rain and the bitterness of the wind against my face to counterpoint the fire burning inside me.
I had practiced and practiced it for ages. It was deadly and many times I thought I might just accidently kill myself, but with time, I became confident - directing my vectors into my own body. I explored avenues of my body I never knew existed before. I spent hours dissecting my understanding of pain and trying to cauterize it. Then it was a simple matter of switching it off and on. After that, I knew how to make my body limp without feeling any pain at all. When they fired at me to measure the limits of my vectors, I no longer felt the pain but only the pressure with a distant horrible detachment, gazing at the gore spattering the walls around me without any realization of the damage.
After several more weeks, I understood how I would beat them - how every single one of them would suffer. All I had to do was die.
I forced myself to wake up early in the morning. After a painful encounter with several lead balls fired at me at the highest velocity settings, the morning after I slowed my heart. Slower, slower... in gentle increments, I kept my breathing shallow but also slow. My breasts rose and fell with barely any detection at all. Their life detection systems might register me as 'flatline' if I slowed my heart just enough - or at least cause alarm.
If I was disposable, I would be lucky if they got near enough for me to use my vectors against them as they unchained me from the wall. However, that was not my plan. I was a precious test subject, and I understood that I was only one of a few in this entire laboratory.
So, as I hung limply, blood dripping from my slowly healing injuries, my heart was beating a sixteenth of its normal rate and my chest barely fluttered with breath. It was difficult to think, but I heard the hydraulic hiss of the four-foot thick automatic doors sliding open and several footsteps approach.
"Quickly! Get her down. Is she conscious at all?"
"Minimal brain action, as if she's been knocked out."
"Can she be saved?"
"Chances are, she's in a coma. If that's the case, the new option now is to put her in confinement on a life support system."
Closer, I willed them. Closer, you monsters.
They unchained me. Their filthy hands were touching me, but I was as limp as a rag doll as they rolled my nude, bruised, scarred, bleeding body onto a hospital bed and rolled me toward the middle of the room and then to the quadruple-locked automatic doors. They hissed open. My vectors whispered to me, urging me to lash out, to tear their brains from the backs of their heads and smear them into paste on the walls.
Then, in the corridor, I saw my chance. They did not restrain me at all. As they rolled me into the elevator, I released my vectors.
A nurse beside me lost her head, her face frozen in concern that changed to alarm as she suddenly saw the rest of her body from a worm's eye view. The rest of them were shredded apart like confetti before the elevator doors closed and I was alone.
With a single vector, I took a card key from the corpse of the doctor. I swiped it immediately and tried to remember quick facts - how many floors, how many corridors, what went where, from the casual conversation of those who had tended to my wounds and forced me to eat that foul gruel.
I quickly ascertained that the second floor might be my best bet. Even if I had to jump out a window, I was certain my vectors would soften the fall. Beyond that, I was lost - but the air called to me and that was all that mattered.
Soaked in blood, I ran out of the elevator and then came to a stop as ten feet in front of me, soldiers rallied up before me. I stared at them dispassionately, watching them all take aim, each man trembling as he gazed at my undressed body, unclean thoughts dancing in their glittering eyes while their automatic rifles were poised to kill.
"Pigs."
Half a dozen bodies fell apart like stacks of cards. Steaming intestines spilled out of a gaping torso, unseeing eyes stared from a skull rolling and bumping along against the corner of the wall and floor. An arm twitched on the floor, fingers pulling at empty air on an imaginary trigger. I hurried past, seeking my freedom with the key card clutched in my grasp.
This corridor was just a few steps away from the main corridor where doctors and nurses and guests would come to visit and check on the experiments performed. There were even friendly paintings of the ocean and sunsets and inspirational posters tacked onto walls in an office through the windows. One of them was midnight blue and black picture, with a single lonely lightouse standing on a hilltop overlooking a stormy sea. The word "Freedom" in all capitals embolden the bottom. Simple. Infuriating.
I encountered a second obstacle - a doorway with a number combination that I did not have. I spun around, fear, anguish, and hate filling me to the core. I wanted to make them all die, make each and every one of them endure suffering as long as possible. But if I did that, I would be at it all day and I would never find a way out of this nightmare.
Powerful I was, but psychic I was not. I stared around myself, trembling, watching as the lights dimmed and emergency back-up lights illuminated the hallway from lights in the floor. I pressed my back against the cool doorway, heart pounding. I was so close... was there not a single window I could break?
I looked up, desperate - then I detected an air duct. With deft, surgeon-like precision, I cut the duct open wide and jumped for the ceiling, vectors pushing me up while my scrawny, unexercised arms quivered to pull me in.
I crawled, using my nose - listening to voices screaming and an automated voice speaking:
"Genetic Anomaly Detected in Circulation Vent in Hallway 2A."
A red thread appeared inches in front of my nose. My eyes widened and I could only proceed slowly, reaching my hand out - if I touched it, would it burn?
It didn't - but it definitely alerted everyone that I was definitely crawling in here. I scuttled more quickly, scraped bare knees streaking blood wherever I crawled.
Then I encountered a puff of fresh air through the vent so strong I could taste the salt in the air. I laughed giddily, trying to muffle it against my hand. I shoved against a grate, nearly forgetting to use my vectors to assist. I fell through, landing on the floor in the middle of a dark, empty, quiet hallway.
"THERE SHE IS!"
The men rushed me from all sides - too quickly my vectors flailed and made a mockery of their armored bodies, casting them aside like the detritus of a dozen dying scarabs in a desert massacre.
Then it was over, and I was exhausted, and for some reason, my vectors hung around me like exhausted eels in an ocean. My short, cropped hair was heavy with blood. Tears streaked down my face because, I realized, that even more were outside waiting for me and I underestimated my body's ability to undergo such turmoil.
Weakling.
I started, a cold trickle dripping down my back.
Weakling child. Don't you realize your own potential? You were MADE for this. Don't be afraid. Let go. Let the carnage bathe you of your pain and suffering. Remember that humans are not meant to live. You are the instrument of their demise, a divine creation so perfect and pure. A machine of destruction, an absolute angel of death.
The door before me was open. I approached it, staring at the sky that had been denied me for so long. The horizon was an unfamiliar infinity of blackness meeting a glow that grew stronger and stronger and very, very far away.
Destroy anything between you and that light. Destroy it all.
Destroy.
-----
I was exhausted as I crashed against the shore. I was starving and cold, and the clothes I stole were of no use to me soaking wet. It was unbelievable how much I could miss something as disgusting as that healthy gruel.
The shoreline stretched left and right. I walked along it as far as I could. This was it - freedom. More suffering.
Then I noticed a familiar skyline. I had but to climb up the shore and through the rocks.
It was a church. It looked perfectly safe to me. I could take what I wanted without their false pretenses of righteous aid, or I could attempt a disguise once again. The military helmet had to go, though. I pulled my long hair back out of my face and tucked it into the helmet. Then with each agonizing step, I gripped the stones and climbed up to the church's grassy hill.
When I reached the top, I collapsed on the grass and rolled away from the ledge, wheezing. Then I rose shakily to my feet after several long minutes of laying very still and simply trying to recover. Food, I thought. I'm so hungry...
The view from that point was magnificent. I could see for miles and miles. I must have drifted for ages, fending off sharks with my vectors, propelling myself through rolling waves with my vectors. I knew it was possible I would die before I ever reached land, but I didn't care. I was out of there. No filthy human would ever touch me again unless I allowed it - and I never would.
I couldn't even see the facility where they kept me. It must have been so far away. Amazed at my own stamina, I turned and walked toward the stone church.
It was silent and absolutely empty. But the electric lights were lit and heat poured through the vents from some ancient system in the basement. I tore off my clothes and tossed them to dry on the pews before I wandered through into the little hallways, empty Sunday school classrooms with their walls pinning pictures of Jesus and God and all those imaginary friends that gave them comfort.
I trekked into a closet where I found choir boy robes collecting dust. I slipped them on, sneezed, and finally had no choice but to try and figure out where I was going to find something to eat.
In a small kitchenet, I discovered the fridge was still plugged in and connected to an electrical outlet that still functioned. I must not have noticed the power lines hooked up to the church outside. I fumbled around for something in the freezer that had not gone bad and microwaved a hot pocket.
The food was not entirely tasty to anyone else, but it was the most amazing thing to me. I always strained to keep my senses alert, for the slightest sound... but still, I was not prepared for the sudden hand clutching the back of my choir robe and yanking me from the floor where I had decided to eat like a dog, knowing no other table manners.
And the figure threw me clear through a wall. My vectors barely stood up to the sudden throw, hardly reacting with their usual speed. I landed on my back, cringing up like a spider in agony. The perpetrator appeared in the hole in the wall, dextrously avoiding falling rubble and smiling with teeth that seemed to glow with their own light. The teeth were too sharp, too inhuman.
I quivered, eyes slowly adjusting to the form occupying the crack in the wall.
My Diclonius horns stood out prominently from the curtain of pink hair that fell around me. The stranger gazed at them without speaking. He was the priest... except from his demeanor and the way he looked at me, he was not going to cast me out of his church for my unnatural appearance and powers.
"My, my. What a strange mouse that had crept into my trap. Good little girl. You'll provide me with enough fun to keep me occupied until others come."
He was out of my reach. But he stepped closer, his garb spattered with old blood, his gray hair slicked back from a wrinkleless brow. It disgusted me how young he looked except for those ugly eyes and his hair.
I heard a faint sound coming from outside of the church - then in the darkening evening, lights swirled past all the stained glass windows, shining on the church from above. Helicopters circled all around.
"What... are you?" I whispered, scooting back, raising my vectors around me, quivering under that gaze. All I knew was, he had to be human - he had the form, but inside he was something darker. A monster.
With jarring speed he rushed in at me, snarling as the whirring of helicopter blades became obvious. "YOU! You brought them here! You disgusting little bitch!!" While he threw me again, my vectors lashed out - and the arm that was extended in the act of throwing was severed right at the elbow. The monster looked bewildered at the sudden lack of a forearm. Then he screamed in agony as blood spurted from the fresh stump. I rolled across the floor, smacked into a pew, which exploded as my vectors splintered it into a dozen pieces and sent every one within reach whistling toward the monster as he rushed me. Heedless of the missing limb and the long pieces of wood thrust through his body.
He halted his advance, but stopped six meters away, only one of his eyes glittering when the other had a spear of wood puncturing through his skull.
He's not dead yet. Why isn't he dead yet?
What kind of monster is this?!
She skittered backward, her robe torn and hanging from one bare shoulder, vectors quivering around her. "I'll ask you one more time. What ARE you!?"
Behind me, the huge doors exploded. The doors whirled past her, narrowly avoiding me due to my vectors bouncing them away. I spun around, watching another monster enter - impossibly tall, the silhouette crimson and with nothing for a face except the glowing twin orbs of circular shades.
He lifted his arms, armed with long pistols, raising his head and the shadow his fedora created across his handsome angular face. I had but only a few moments to commit such a face to my memory before I dashed out of the way while behind me, the entire church filled with the booming reports of those immense firearms.
I crept through the wreckage. People I never noticed before emerged from rooms I hadn't bothered to look at before... only these were not people at all, they were empty, their faces had the same delightful rictus of death I saw in my own handiwork - but never had I been able to bring them to life again and make them walk and move.
They ambled toward me with a hungry glaze in their eyes.
I was too afraid to even move away. Here I was, a newcomer in a new world, and suddenly I was among monsters greater than I - and my fear was based mostly on my isolation of te past few years of my life. From being used as the humans' guinea pig to walking into a nightmare even greater than the one I left behind was tearing apart my very mind, and even the voice that had guided me away from my prison had nothing to offer.
I merely huddled in the corridor, lashing out at random with my vectors, only to watch the limbs twist and wriggle toward me as if mindlessly hungering though they no longer were attached to their bodies by any means.
I screeched, covering my eyes, covering my head, curled into my little corner, lost in this mad world where bodies no longer stayed dead and people came back to life and beautiful people shot at each other and never stopped moving no matter how many times you dismembered them.
I don't remember how long I was there. Time passed. Then did I dare chance to look up.
He stood right there, a short distance away, in a moonlit wooden corridor littered with blood and bodies hung from the walls and all around him in macabre configurations of suffering and torment. He looked around as naturally as if he was born in a room full of death, as if it was natural as walking through a field of grain. The red Victorian trenchcoat hung on his form like the dried underside of a skinned man, hiding his long arms beneath it and the hand lifting with poetic slowness. The muzzle was birthed out of the shadows under that nightmare coat, glittering in the swirling emergency light that alternated red-yellow-red-yellow from outside, making every glittery surface of it appear as though it were imbued with flame.
But so far, he did not see me. If he did, he barely turned his head to fixate those glowing orange glasses on my location.
Every instinct in me screamed to flee. For the first time, I was afraid. This entire place was Hell. He and I were its population.
"Are you just another dog?"
He was addressing me. I didn't know what to say. My vectors rippled around me, ribbons of death, rendered absolutely ineffective by his sheer presence. I stood up slowly, infuriated by the way my fear disabled me.
"Who are you?" I whispered. "What are you? And what is this place!?"
"My dear, this is England. You smell like blood and the sea, so you must have come very far to meet your death."
I felt my spine grow rigid. I sent my vectors at him, all four at once, crisscrossing toward his extended weapon - I would cut it to pieces before he could fire at me, knowing full well I could probably deflect the bullets anyway. But I wanted to defang this upstart, I wanted to show him that I was the greater monster.
How dare he make me afraid. I feared nothing - not even the chains that had once held me!
My vectors touched nothing.
He crept back into view from the left - from behind the altar, his eyes showing now. Red torchlights beamed from where his eyes ought to have been. He smiled as if I was completely inept.
"Fascinating. I never saw them coming but I felt them. Interesting appendages you have." He tipped his head back and opened his empty hands at me. "But you are human. Of that, there's no doubt. Just an advanced form of dog shit."
"I'm NOT human!" I screamed, insulted by his casual air. I calmed my nerves, every inch of me bristling with emotions I could not control, but my voice at least stayed soft again. "I am a Diclonius. I must destroy all of mankind. I was created for this... Humanity is a disease. A stain on this world. They're impure, vile, disgusting creatures, and all of them must suffer... for what they did to me!"
The man in the red coat walked toward me. He said nothing more, showing no sign of whether he heard me or not. His eyes stayed fixed on me, no more smiling but a dead, almost soulless look in those burning orbs. Finally he stood in front of me, and I had not raised my vectors in the least.
I quivered in front of him. He reached up and with white gloved fingers he touched my horns. I flinched, staring at him through my pink hair.
"Another monster... ha ha ha... with the face of an angel. But what are these scars?" He smirked, tracing the bare skin of my shoulder, over the various jigsaw puzzle of scars of experimentation.
A single vector stretched around him. She could slice him in half... and then in half again, and it would be a little flick left to destroy his head and make sure he was completely obliterated.
He smiled again. "Do you want to be free forever?"
I nodded, barely daring to breathe.
"Do you hate mankind so?"
I nodded again. I could only think - what monsters were they.
"My Master would not allow you to exist. In fact, she has informed me just now that you must be destroyed. Are you afraid?"
I shook my head quickly. Tears were streaming from my eyes.
"Where are you are from?"
"From the facility... an island. They capture monsters like me and experiment on us to find our weakness... and find a way to stop us from breeding." The words were falling from my lips easily, as much as I was loathe to tell him the truth, but still, it seemed to be best to go with it also.
"Who are you?"
"Eve." My lips quivered.
He nodded, sliding his hands into his jacket.
I crushed him with my vectors, tearing him apart with my embrace - I had no intention of dying at all. Not today. Not when I had just landed back on my homeland and sought freedom. His body went in several directions at once. His fedora flew into the air with part of his gray matter still in it and his limbs spread across the entire room.
Sprayed in gore, I closed my eyes and rejoiced in the violence, because I wanted to be victorious - to be stronger and faster and with less fear. I was born to be a killer, and so I killed.
No matter who it was.
I walked through the church hall and to the open doors. There were helicopters flying overhead everywhere... and none of them noticed me approaching the doors nor walk outside until a search light focused on me.
I turned my vectors inward - I turned off the pain. It was as easy as finding the lightswitch in a dark room that I knew too well to fumble around. But I felt something push me from behind. I kept walking. I never knew what it was until I felt a weakness in my legs and dizziness. Confused, I looked behind me and saw a trail of fresh blood. Then I followed the trail to the church doorway and saw the red coated man standing there with the smoking gun in his white-gloved hand.
I couldn't believe my eyes. My vision veered to the left, and my last reward was a sideways view of the sea glowing in the setting sun. As my consciousness slipped out, I saw Venus emerge from the night sky as a bright speck, glowing in a black velvet curtain.
