A/N: Sorry for slow update, but hey, I promised a chapter today and I'm following through! I've had so many different ideas for this, and there were two ways for me to take it – I liked it better this way. For those of you who are wondering about updates on Sweet Caroline, that will happen in the next couple of days, and for Better Black and White, I have writer's block. Sigh. But enjoy this!

chapter four: you found me

lost and insecure,
you found me, you found me
lying on the floor.

I'd done it to protect them. I had to do it, I had to lie, I had to make sure that they'd never do as much as think about me again. It was so hard, every step I took carried me away from their wondering gazes. Every step took me away from my brothers. Every step was more painful than the last. And as I walked, I cried. I hated this, I hated it all.

"Great job, Nicholas." I spun around to face three men in dark suits. Expensive suits. I looked down at my own clothes – the same ones I'd been wearing for the past week, torn and dirty – and wondered, to myself, just how many kids had been tortured to pay for those uniforms. One helluva lot too many. "I'm glad to see you're trying to follow the rules." The man in the middle took off his dark glasses to reveal a pair of sapphire eyes, ones I recognized to be genetically enhanced. "Unfortunately, you also broke them."

"They talked to me," I tried to insist, but I was silenced with a flick of the wrist. Any survivor of his tests knew better than to try to protest. Anyone who didn't survive – well, something had gone wrong.

"Then I suppose they might be the ones to punish." He glared at me with those eyes, and I tried very hard to resist their hypnotic qualities. If he managed to get me under his control, then we'd all be dead.

"No," I whispered. "Please, no."

"Then you will take their punishment for them." He put his hand on my shoulder like he was trying to be civil with me. I glared at the hand but knew better than to even try to remove it. "Nicholas, as you know, I am a very busy man. I run a successful company and manage the lives of thousands of people looking for improvement. I cannot take time out of my schedule to deal with little experiments like you." He neglected to mention that I could have very well been the most successful of his "little experiments". I suppose that wasn't important to him, though. I was just another life to him, and he treated those like they were pennies in his pocket – virtually worthless.

"Then why did you?" I snarled.

"Because I have a little… let's say, 'surprise' for you and your friends. But since you're the only one here, I guess you'll be the only one to… 'enjoy' it." He motioned to someone – something – and from the shadows emerged my "surprise".

It looked like a mistake – it walked upright, like a human might, but it was covered in hair, maybe like a gorilla, and had long, protruding fangs coming from its mouth. Its colorless eyes locked on me and it growled once, waiting for its order. "This is my friend…" The awkward pause that followed told me that he hadn't given any thought to giving a name to the creature. If the poor thing had once been human, like me, it showed no sign of civility or any sort of normalness.

"I suppose its main mission in life is to destroy me?" I suggested, feeling like my life was becoming a lame sci-fi movie.

"You're a very bright boy, Nicholas," the president said. "The IQs of your prototype were off the charts. Not to mention your talent in music. But we have yet to test your ability to fight, to protect yourself. If you and your friends can even survive a fight with this creature, you'll truly be a success."

"My 'talent in music' was not the result of your genetic engineering," I muttered. "And I'm sorry, I have no interest in fighting this… thing to see if I'm a success or not."

He only smiled a sickly sweet smile and shook his head. "Oh, but Nicholas, you have no choice." He turned to the creature and gave it a signal as he stepped back into the bushes with his bodyguards to watch me fight his creation in the dwindling twilight.

It snarled, fangs dripping saliva. I tensed and stared right into its eyes, and for a split second, saw a flash of humanity, of recognition in them. Underneath all of the modifications, it was human, it was normal. But now its main purpose in life was to destroy me, to make sure that I didn't live. Mine was just the opposite. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the president smile, as if he knew I would fail. But there had been so many things that we were capable of that he didn't know about, so many abilities that he'd given us that he didn't know about. We never told him anything.

I put the secrecy on the line to save my own life.

The creature lunged, and I nimbly leaped out of the way. It tried again, but I once again dodged its grasp. I wasn't as fast as others, but still faster than an average human male. The third time, I wasn't so lucky. The animal grabbed me and pulled me in closer to its jaws, and now, looking into them, I saw its teeth lengthen and come closer to me. I tried to struggle free, but it was stronger than I was at that moment. There was so much more that I could do.

"Try harder!" I heard the president hiss to the creature, and it followed his order, getting back to his feet. Anticipating its next move, I managed to jump over its head, six feet off the ground and land behind it, kicking it over again. After the nose job I'd given it, it had been much less stable on its feet.

I was feeling so confident that I didn't see its claws. Before I could react, it had raked them right down the left side of my face and my eye. I lost vision in my left eye almost immediately, and the pain stung, but I managed to ignore it. I wasn't going to give up.

But it had the advantage now, and before I knew it, I was on the ground, and it was standing on top of me, one leg crushing mine. Broken. I felt confused, the pain was like a drug, and the loss of blood was beginning to get to my head. As everything began to go black, like in any lame sci-fi movie that was my life, I heard the president say:

"Leave him here to die."

(jpov)

He lay on the ground, covered in blood.

So, naturally, I did what any person would do when they saw a kid lying on the ground, dying. I called for help. Never mind that thirty minutes ago, I'd asked him a simple question about who he was, and he'd snapped right in my face. But even now, his face covered in claw marks and welts, he still reminded me of my little brother Nick.

"911 dispatch, what is the nature of your emergency?" the operator said when she picked up the phone.

"There's a boy here, he's bleeding – he looks like he's been mauled by some sort of animal," I breathed. "He's unconscious right now."

"Does he have a pulse?"

I hesitated for a second – his neck was covered in blood – but pressed two fingers to his neck for a pulse. It was there, faint but there. "Yes," I said softly.

"Where is your location? I'll send emergency vehicles over immediately," she said.

"In Central Park, west side, I think," I said, looking around for signage. There was none.

"Stay on the line until the vehicles get there," she instructed. "Do you happen to know his name, or is he wearing any identification tags or carrying an ID with him?"

I searched in his pockets, but he didn't have anything in them. His wrists were bare, unless you wanted to count the gashes, but I caught a glimpse of something silver around his neck. A dogtag. There were three words on it, and they were not a name. "Type one diabetes," I read into the phone, and sighed. "That's all."

"Thank you," the operator said, and fell silent as I examined the necklace. Nick had one just like it, I recalled, and I wore my own awareness tag around my neck in his memory. Wiping the blood off of it, I fingered it in my hands, turning it over to the other side, only to find more writing. I caught my breath – it was a name.

Engraved in tiny, miniscule letters were the words "Nicholas Jerry Lucas". My brother.

Tears sprung to my eyes almost immediately. "Nick," I whispered. "Nicky, please. Hold on. They're coming, you're going to be okay." I ignored the little imaginary devil on my shoulder, taunting me, telling me that he'd flat-out lied to us about everything. He was my freaking brother, and I didn't want him to die, especially because he was my brother.

"You still there?" the operator asked.

"Yeah," I whispered. "Still here."

"Is he okay?"

"Yes." I rethought my answer. "Well, he's still alive. I wouldn't use the word 'okay' to describe him."

"They're almost there," she said gently. "I'm sure, whoever he is, he'll be okay."

I looked at my brother, dying, lying in the grass, bleeding to death, and sighed. "I surely hope so."

And after the paramedics came, it was all a blur – they lifted him up, they carried him away, and left me there. But I wasn't going to let my brother slip through my fingers again.

Sure, he told me to stay away. But I'm following him.

where were you when everything was falling apart?
all my days spent by the telephone
it never came, and all i needed was a call,
it never came to the corner of first and amistad.