Don't Fear the Reaper
Chapter Three: Aftermath
Moving corpses inside and trying to find survivors, I offered to lead the process. I've done it enough in my life. Trained to ignore my emotions, I feel nothing as I pick up bleeding and bullet riddled young men and place them in body bags. I did most of the work, allowing the agents remaining to grieve for their fallen friends. I did not know them, they were just my escorts. Nothing more. So of course I feel absolutely nothing. I'm far too old, seen far too much. While I was thoroughly surprised by and taken back by the onslaught, that's all it was. I didn't flinch as I felt the blood of others across my face.
I feel nothing. I am heartless. I am cold. I am a soldier. There's nothing to me except for violence, blood, mutation, pain. My heart still beats, but it's empty. I was nothing from the moment of my birth. And this is what I've become. Honed, refined, morphed, the ice of Siberia blooms in the heart of everyone there. Sometimes the ice melts, but more often than not it hardens. And I'm what gets left behind.
Picking up the blade made from my bone, I decide to return it to it's home. I pierce the top of my shoulder with it, and it slides back into place. My mutation is a double skeletal structure. I have a layer of calcium and cartilage, separate from my bone, that provides support for the time that the bone is actually missing. So my body is never left just a mess of tendons and ligaments. Never left useless. And yet it's still almost impossible to break, being hollow. Mutation really is a marvel.
Rotating my shoulder, I try to get used to the added weight having been without it for an hour or so. Eventually my bone will morph back to it's original form if left alone. If I didn't return it, it'd even regrow. I try not to misplace my humerus and my femur all that often. My ribs and fingers are usually thrown away because they regrow so quickly. I look up to see a couple of agents glaring at me. Accusatory. Hatred. Blame. I lied to them. They had no idea of my gifts. And the fact that people of my own fold had caused all of this destruction made everything so much worse. They probably wished that we'd all died instead of their friends. We aren't even human to them. Just a mistake.
"We should've just rounded them up. That Shaw guy had it right there. Experiments. That's all they are. Mutants are an abomination."
Whoever said this, they have no idea I can hear every word. I still press on, I've heard it all before. Wiping the blood of their comrades on my skirt, I press on.
