Chapter 3: The Hidden World Revealed
The dazzling full moon slowly crawls across the dark sky of the night time that's riddled with white dots, illuminating the expanding beach with the glowing ocean crashing onto the tiny pebbles in a rhythmic melody. The small critters scurries around the sands for scraps while keeping a wary eye for enemies of their kind. Unlike the daytime, Mother Nature completely takes over the beaches and nearby mossy rocks with sleeping barnacles on it. Nothing can destroy the beauty Nature puts on, even though a smelly man wearing a worn out trench coat and jeans with greasy hair sits at the base of the beach where sand meets asphalt. That is, until new waves crash around the surface and a girl quickly claws her way out of the freezing, salty water, scaring the hobo. After Penny escapes the clingy ocean, she tries to get on her feet but falls to all four and vomits out some salt water that's gotten into her system. When she's done coughing out disgusting water, the girl unsteadily gets up, making her clothes cling tightly on her curved body, and she mutters, "Man, now I know how cats feel about water. I am never going back to that suffocating pool ever again."
She lies on her back and takes a couple large breaths to calm her hysteric heart and mind. After a few minutes, the rogue sits up and stares up to the different colored sky. The last time she saw it, the sky was a bright yellow with puffy white, floating cotton balls with the happy yellow sun that shines and warms her entire being. Now, it's black, maybe a really dark blue, full of dots that sparkle and twinkle beautifully. The moon above her, like the sun, shines its white-blue light everywhere, sending a mellow influence into Penny's warped mind. She closes her eyes and smiles, taking a deep breath of the salty, fresh air. She sighs blissfully and whispers, "I'm free."
The girl stays on the beach longer, taking deep breaths while listening at the nightly birds that chirp their heavenly songs, the crashing waves adding to the melody. She feels like staying right on the spot and sleeping for who-knows-how-long, but the thrill of exploring eliminates all sleep and she gets up and turns around, finding the hobo and a road that should lead to somewhere.
Meanwhile, the homeless person stares at the girl with interest, particularly her chest area, and he wolf-whistles at her. She turns to the man with a puzzled look, wondering why a stranger is whistling at her. She doesn't have anything that could be interesting.
The escapee decides to ignore the man and she walks up to the road, looking both ways for anything that could be exciting. After awhile, with her hawk-eye vision, she spots a faint light to her right and a few rectangles sticking out to the sky. She grins and starts sprinting toward the place.
After a couple of minutes, Penny slows down when she nears the entrance of the place with a big smile. In front of her, bright yellow light hangs up in the air and people everywhere walk around. She strolls across the edge of the buildings to a smaller passageway and slowly heads to the light, her exhilaration bursting everywhere. She stops behind a dumpster and tries to calm her thumping heart again, but instead of fear its thrill. She's going to see new buildings instead of the same experimenting rooms and people that don't want to poke and prod her with large needles like the horrible scientists.
But Penny needs to keep her composure. She doesn't want to make a bad impression. The people might get scared and bring her back. Once she calms her heart a little, the altered girl gets up and walks into the bright light, momentarily blinding her sharpened eyes. She instantly moves a hand in front of them and stops to clear the vision. Once the girl's used to the glow, Penny slowly moves her hand away and gapes at the wondrous sight in front of her.
Tall towers covered in glass rise up, reaching to the inky sky full of white dots and surrounding smaller buildings that smell really, really good and some others smell seriously sickening. Tall posts are seen everywhere, shining the same yellow lights on the ground. Small machines move across the rocky ground, shining a white light and showing actual people inside the machines. Above all, people of all shape and size walk around, talking and shouting fearlessly. They all look so happy compared to Penny. Happiness she wants to feel in her life.
Penny continues walking around, admiring all the buildings and people and machines surrounding her that she didn't notice she walks right into the street where the machines drive around. Penny hears a honk come from her side and she turns to see one of the moving objects barreling toward her. She quickly jumps out of the way and watches it rush past when another machine comes, the lights illuminating the girl's frightened face. She moves to the side, the body centimeters from her body, and runs away only to meet with a large metal beast. Thinking quickly, the altered girl ducks and watches the machine roll above her. She spots pipes and springs on the belly for a second and wonders what they do in a self-moving contraption. Once Penny sees the black sky, now tinted with a faint orange color, she quickly gets back on her feet and runs in a direction away from the machines but she stops when a few of them quickly stop and block her path while more stops behind her. Soon, Penny looks around at all the weird objects surrounding her and the large crowd starting to form on the outside, all wondering why the machines went crazy. They spot Penny in the middle of the whole commotion and starts chattering about their theories. A few of them take snapshots of the girl and shows them to their friends excitedly. Penny stares at the crowd, wondering what to do to get pass the awkward stage, so she smiles and waves shyly at them.
Suddenly, sirens echo in the air and more machines on wheels appear, these having white and blue on them. The altered girl starts shivering from the white and she takes a step back while the objects stop in front of her. The sides swing open and people in similar outfits rush out, using the machines as cover while they aim a hand-held gun. One of them shouts, "Don't move! Put your hands in the air!"
A confused Penny looks at the adults wearing suits, wondering what she did to provoke them.
"I said put your hands up!" he shouts again.
The girl slowly puts her hands up to her shoulders so to appease them. The people holding the guns are starting to scare her. Right now, she just wants to leave the area and return later, maybe when it's light outside.
One of the covered people walks around the machine and heads closer to the girl. Penny takes a few steps back from the gun pointed at her in fear and she starts to get a suspicious idea of what they are here for.
The person that walked up to her says, "Okay miss, don't be scared. We're just going to take you back home."
The altered girl immediately thinks of the horrible facility and she says, "No. I'm not going back!" and runs away from the man who shouts, "Stop!"
The girl runs across one of the machines and plows through the crowd, quickly escaping the people that want to return her to the Hell place. Penny continues to run under the neon lights of the signs and orange glow of the posts; looking for a place she can hide from the people that want to capture her. Suddenly, another one of the white machines appears in front of her so she jumps over it out of instinct and continues running. More drive up and chase the girl, their sirens wailing loudly and hurting Penny's sensitive ears, until she takes a small passageway to a different street and accidentally spooking some women. Penny turns to another road but stops when she sees a red and blue glow on top of more white contraptions. The girl looks around and ducks into a nearby alley just as the scary rides whisks past her. She starts breathing hard from the fear she had earlier, feeling safer now, while the sirens slowly diminish. Feeling the coast is clear, the girl was about to walk out of the alley when a voice from behind asks, "Well well, what do we have here?"
Frightened again, Penny turns around and sees another grimy person grinning and showing a few gaps in his mouth. "A cute little girl has walked into our home, gentlemen."
Slowly, more dirty people walk out, all having the same mischievous smirk on their faces. A few of them chuckle as they walk closer to the girl, who tries to make a break for the exit. She doesn't get far when two more appear in front of her and closing the only exit. Penny turns back to the leader, who takes out a switchblade from his coat pocket. He growls, "Why don't we have some fun, shall we?"
The men behind Penny grab her arms to hold her still while the leader walks closer with his blade pointed at her face. She nervously says, "I-I don't want to hurt you."
In answer, everyone laughs their heads off at the girl's frightened but courageous statement. "Oh, that's nice. We always like a good joke before the fun starts," the first man says. "But now that that's done, why don't we get to business, gorgeous."
Penny tries to escape without using the super strength but her captors have a strong grip on her lean arms. Soon, the stained blade that looks suspiciously like blood touches her cheek and, with no choice, she taps into her power and throws the men onto the leader. Everyone stares at the dog-pile in shock and the buried leader shouts, "Get her!"
After getting over from the stun, the nearest men charge at the girl with growls but the she just beats them back. Soon, all the goons try to get their hands on her only to be punched away by the little girl. Penny ducks one time and walks backwards into the alley instead of out before throwing a dirty man away. Tired of being humiliated, two of the hobos pull out guns front the coats, one being the leader with a black eye now, and point it at the abnormally strong girl. She turns and gasps when she sees the guns and tries to make a run only to find a wall. The goons start firing their pistols but Penny dodges them as best as she can before using her claws to climb up over. When she reaches the top, a bullet flies and grazes her upper arm only to bounce off. Another bullet gets her leg and the sudden force makes her leg collapse then she falls over and crash onto a few trash cans, denting them to unrecognizable shapes. She collapses on the ground and starts taking strained gasps from all the pain all over her body. The girl gets up and crawls toward the corner of the alleyway. While the throbbing pain slowly dulls to an ache, her gasps become deep breathing and her hysteric mind clears so she can think of what happened tonight. It isn't what she was expecting. Instead of all the nice attributes she thought the people outside of the facility had, they instead surrounded her with deadly machines, pointed their guns at her for no reason, and even fired at her despite wanting some happiness and wanting to live a life. She thinks, I don't believe it. Dr. Calico was right. The world here is awful. Now her breathing turns into quiet sobs as the reality she so wished for hits her unbalanced head. Right now, she wants some comfort from something or someone. She wants someone to help her get through the life changing night so much she was pondering on returning to the cat-lover but quickly gets rid of the idea. The world is as bad as the facility. They're both nasty. The world is full of nothing but white. That horrible white! "The color I will never escape," Penny sobs, laying her head against the metal can.
Penny doesn't know how much time has passed but the whisking machines out of the alley reduce and the amount of people comes close to no one when her sobs stop and her eyes start drooping. Wanting some relief, she lets them close and her body relaxes as she is brought to dreamland, the only haven for Penny.