Chapter 6
The year was 1864 and Analeigh Hale was 17 years old and on top of the world. Felix Romano, the love of her life had asked for her hand in marriage and they were told the Civil War would be nearing its end. Her parents had already taken her younger siblings and fled the town due to the nearby attacks but Ana had refused to leave Felix, who was a soldier stationed in the small New York town. She was staying with her widowed aunt until the wedding day when they would be permitted to live together. In the meantime, she was training to be a nurse, ready to do her part for the war effort.
Ana and Felix had only been together for a few months but they both knew that they had found their other half; soulmates, if you believed in that. It had been love at first sight for them both, their first meeting having been in the hospital where Felix had come in with a wounded arm and Ana had been the only nurse in training available to help him.
"Do you come here often?" Felix asked jokingly, wincing as Ana sanitized the deep gash on his arm.
"Every day," Ana replied lightly, trying not to blush; she was used to getting hit on by the soldiers but she wasn't used to them being so good looking.
"So, if I came back in tomorrow I would get to see you again?" Felix tried hard to make his voice sound light and teasing, as Ana was forced to stitch him up without any pain medication due to an under supply.
Ana smiled without looking up, focusing on closing up his wound as quickly as possible.
"You want to spend your time in a hospital?" She asked, glancing around pointedly at all the beds surrounding them with injured and dying men.
"I would go wherever you were," Felix said honestly, looking deep into her eyes.
Ana's entire body felt tingly with butterflies as they gazed at each other. She cleared her throat instead of replying, her blush finally breaking through.
Ana had been warned by her superiors not to get too attached to patients, but she could not help herself with this one. Felix came back to the hospital with flowers every day for a week, before she agreed to let him take her out on a real, albeit chaperoned, date. Her parents approved of him, he got along well with her younger brothers and every nurse she worked with was wild with jealously. Felix proposed after only two months together but Ana had no reservations about it. She knew that this was the person she wanted to spend her life with. He was kind and caring, loved kids and best of all loved her. He was not a violent man in any way and had only joined the army to please his father. He did not relish the idea of killing anyone.
When the nearby towns were attacked during the night, everyone was in a panic. Ana's parents chose to leave their home and begged her to come with them. Ana refused. She would be wherever Felix was, regardless of the danger. Her only fear now was losing him.
A week before their wedding, Felix and his regiment were called to a town several hours away to assist in a possible incoming attack. Intelligence stated that the enemy was making their way up north to them and were taking no prisoners; they were even burning smaller towns on their way. This would be a good opportunity to stop them as the town they were headed for had plenty of hills and mountains to launch a surprise attack from if you were familiar with the area, as Felix and his comrades were.
Ana cried when Felix told her. He gave her a gold locket with pictures of them inside, the back engraved with a heart with their initials inside of it. A + F. He swore on his life that he would come back to her.
Twenty four hours after he had left, Ana was working at the hospital when they were notified by a commanding officer in the army that intelligence had been wrong and the enemy had been closer than anticipated. Felix's unit had been ambushed and there were few survivors.
Ana found this out at the same time the hospital was attacked.
Ana and the nurses ran for their lives through the darkness. An explosion sounded off to Ana's right and she cried out in terror as she ran. Wounded patients ran with them but no one was quite sure where it was safe to run to. Ana was simply heading for the back exit of the small hospital and had taken everyone who could walk with her. As far as she knew, the front door of the hospital was the main point of attack. Soldiers who were able were attempting to defend it, to give the others time to escape. There would be no backup.
Just as their exit was in sight, an explosion occurred directly in front of them. Ana was blinded as debris from the ceiling fell on her and she was buried underneath.
When Ana awoke in a dark place she truly thought that she had died. What she could not understand was why she felt so much pain. Surely, death would not be like this. Heaven was supposed to be a peaceful paradise.
Ana felt a needle being plunged into her right arm and she cried out in terror when she realized that her limbs were tied down. She tried to move her head and could not, feeling hard cold metal pressing into her temples. She gazed sightlessly around, tears running down her face.
It was three days before her sight returned. Three days of someone breathing close to her face as they poked and prodded her with sharp objects. Ana begged them to stop. She begged them to tell her why. No one ever answered and finally, Ana begged to die; the pain was too excruciating. Whatever they were injecting into her made her veins and limbs feel as though they were being lit on fire. Maybe she was being burned alive.
When she woke up next, her head movements were not restricted and she could see light. This was the first hope she had felt in days. Perhaps the torture was over.
She could see the blurry figure of a man in a white lab coat now and hear his sharp footsteps on the tiled floor as he walked around tables piled with sterile metal objects. Ana wasn't sure, based on the quiet, but it seemed as though she was still in the hospital.
"Who are you?" Ana rasped out, her throat sore from her constant screaming.
The man stopped what he was doing and came over to peer into her eyes.
"Ah good, your eyes are finally healed," he replied, making notes on a clipboard. "We can start Phase II now."
"Phase II? Who are you? What's happening?" Now that she could look him in the eyes, Ana once again wanted answers.
He smiled at her. "You may call me Dr. Jones. You were badly injured in an explosion. I saved your life."
"Why haven't you answered me until now? What are you doing?" Ana demanded, futilely attempting to kick her legs out of her restraints.
The doctor walked away and picked up a syringe. He made another note on his clipboard and then walked back over to her.
"This may sting," he said, as he injected it into her leg. Ana screamed in fear as a crawling sensation made its way up her legs. She felt as though thousands of ants were biting her at once and then she felt cold, very cold. The lower half of her body went numb and the doctor came around Ana and put restraints around her head again.
Ana passed out when she heard the doctor turn on a drill.
She was in and out of consciousness for the next few weeks as the doctor experimented on her. He knew that there were human like creatures out there with speed and strength beyond regular human capabilities. He had been all over the world and been able to take samples from dead creatures and people he had treated in South American hospitals. For a decade, he had worked on serums to make a super human. He had yet to be successful but knew that with the war going on, there would be thousands of subjects to finally test his work on. He had to take people that had been declared dead, as Ana had been after the hospital explosion. The doctor had taken her before any rescue teams arrived and with so many dead, a thorough search for her was never conducted. There were simply too many bodies. A mass grave was dug, the town records updated and that was it. The official end to the life of Analeigh Hale. A similar record had been written for Felix Romano, another body never officially recovered.
Ana was held in an underground bunker miles away from her home. The secret bunker had been outfitted to look like a lab and Ana wondered how many people had died in this room. The doctor never told her what he was doing but Ana knew from his constant frown that it was not going well. The doctor was not getting the results he was looking for and Ana could feel what strength she had left depleting. She was finally dying.
She watched the doctor look from her, to his notes, to another syringe. He was mumbling to himself and Ana strained to hear, feeling surprised when she was able to clearly pick up on his words. Had her hearing improved like her sight had? She wasn't given time to ponder as the doctor injected something new into her veins. She screamed at the top of her lungs from the blinding pain inside of her but could still clearly hear him say, "If this does not work, I'll have to find a fresh subject."
When Ana awoke in hell yet again she had never felt stronger. It was a strange feeling. Her entire body was tingling and she felt wide awake. She stared around the room, noticing that for the first time, she was alone. Did he think she was dead? Was he coming back? Unclear. Her mind raced through thoughts and possibilities in a single second. She felt an itch on her forehead and unthinkingly reached up to scratch it. Her wrist restraint broke easily and she scratched that itch violently, drawing blood. She wrenched her other body parts free, wondering if she was indeed that strong or if they had been purposefully loosened as a trick.
She gazed around the room and eyed a scalpel before swinging her legs off the bed. They collapsed underneath her immediately and she had to crawl to the table, her urgency growing. She grabbed the leg of her table and easily upended it, causing sharp objects to rain down on her. She grabbed the one she was looking for and kicked her legs experimentally. They felt strong and could move so she tried standing up again, using the table for support, ignoring the stabbing pain as she cut her feet. She did not notice the little cuts and scrapes healing as fast as they came.
The only door to the little room opened and the doctor came in, stopping in surprise when he saw her. Ana instinctively roared in anger, months of torture weighing on her mind and lunged at him with the scalpel, stabbing him over and over with startling speed. She was in a complete blind rage and was not able to stop until she was drenched in his blood. When it was over she screamed out loud with the remnants of her rage, thinking about Felix, her love. His brown hair and soulful brown eyes, large muscular body and the rough hands that she would never again get to hold. She had prayed everyday to die, to see him again. Now that it seemed she would live, a different pain was settling on her. She pictured her love dying along in some field, tears streaming down her face.
That was the first time Ana teleported.
She found herself in a field suddenly, possibly the very field where Felix had lost his life. She was instantly terrified and accidentally teleported again. She did not know how to control it or where to go. She did this again and again within a short time period and finally ended up unconscious in that first field at night, her strength gone.
When she woke up in that field, fully healed she knew that her life would never be the same. She would have to make a new one with the time she had been given. Whatever had been put inside of her had to have been bad and therefore, she did not expect to live long.
But 155 years later, she had not aged a day.
