Lucky

In New York, an nineteen-year-old named Lucas Vowles was on his way to school. Lucas was one of the top students at his school and one of the top athletes. He was very popular at the school as well. All his friends called him "Lucky."

He was graduating this year. All the top colleges and universities in the country had accepted him. Two of the universities, Yale and Harvard, offered him a scholarship. Lucky was glad to have them. His parents didn't have much money because they lost most of their money during the Pulse.

Lucky lived a double life. He was a master thief. His father, Daniel Vowles, taught him the trade. Last night, Lucky broke into a museum and took a painting worth a lot. He took it to a secret warehouse that was used by black market dealers where he got a cut of what the painting was worth.

He looks at the newspaper stand. On the front-page headline of the New York post it read:

'SPRIRT OF '76 PAINTING STOLEN

Last night the Archibald M. Willard's painting 'Spirit of '76' was stolen. The painting was been shown at the Metropolitan Museum. 'Spirit of '76' depicted American patriots playing the flute and drums during the American Revolution.

The Police say it was the same thief that stole Paul Gauguin's Spirit of the Dead Watching, Georges Suerat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and several other paintings of American Culture. The thief left his calling card, a card with a four-leaf clover.

"This thief is a master." Police chief Graham Potter told the press. "There is no finger prints, skin or hair left on the scene. He got through the security system like it was child's play."

The police asks the public if they have any information on this crime or who knows who the identity of the thief is report it to the police soon as possible.'

Lucky smiled to himself. He knew that the police would never find out it was it was him who stole all those paintings.

* * *


The next day was the day of the school prom. His date was his best friend, Amanda Gaston. They had a great time at the prom. After the prom there was a party at beach not far from the city.

"Come aboard, Lucky, Amanda." Called Colin Spencer from his truck. "Plenty of room."

Lucky and Amanda climbed into the back of Colin's truck with two other seniors. Then the truck drove off.

On the highway, the driver and the passengers didn't notice a hummer was beginning to follow them.

"Hey, Lucky." Colin said as he was driving. "What university are you going to next year?"

"Yale." He answered. "I sent the letter to the place last night."

"You so lucky to get a scholarship, Lucky." Brandon, one the seniors, said. "I am going to a cheap college. My schooling money was lost in the Pulse. Dam those who released it."

"My dad works at the Cale Corporation." Angel, who was sitting beside Colin, said. "They give schooling money to the kids of their workers. What about you, Jondy?"

Jondy was sitting beside Brandon. "I am just going to do some traveling."

Ahead of them was a roadblock. Two hummers, two vans, and several officers blocked the highway. "Great." Colin grumbled as he came to a stop.

Lucky stands up to see what's happening. "What's going on?"

One of the officers walks toward the truck. His name was Donald Lydecker. Lucky noticed all the other officers were fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen year olds. All them had guns and tasers at their sides.

"What's wrong officer?" Colin asked him.

"We are looking for a fugitive." He told him.

Lucky sits back in the truck. He notices that someone was missing. "Where's Jondy?"

Lydecker turns to the group of officers by the hummers and nods. They run towards the truck and point their guns at the group of teens. All of them put their hands up.

"Get out of the truck." Lydecker yells.

All five teens get out of the truck with their hands still up.

"Get on the ground."

Lydecker turns to five X-5 officers. "Find X5-463 and bring her back alive."

The five X-5s nodded and go into the woods.

Lydecker turns back to the teens. "Get into the car."

A two X-5s opens the door to the one of the vans. At gunpoint, the teens filed into the van and the door slammed behind them.

"What up with that?" complained Colin.

"Probably something to do Jondy," Angel suggested as she turned to Lucky. "When you mentioned Jondy, he called those guys over to the truck. What do you think, Lucky?"

Lucky was just silent with shock. He didn't know what was going on. He just wondered where they were being taken.

Moments later there was a hissing sound and white smoke poured from holes in the van. One by one each of them passed out.

Lucky first met Jondy in early September when school started for his last year. She was in grade twelve. Lucky, Amanda, Brandon, Angel, and Colin sat with her when they noticed she was alone.

"Is anyone sitting here?" Lucky asked.

"No." she answered.

All of them sat down. Lucky noticed that Jondy was taking white pills with her food.

"What are they for?" Lucky questioned.

"My body doesn't produce a certain ammo acid." Jondy replied. "The pills and milk help my body produce it."

"What happens if you don't take the pills?" Amanda asked.

"I get seizures." she answered. "The pills are hard to come by. I have to drink a lot of milk if no pills are available."

"Those are Typthophan pills right?" Angel guessed.

Jondy nodded. "How did you know?"

"Angel's great in Science classes." Brandon filled her in. "What classes are you good at? By the way, the name's Brandon."

"Phys-Ed, Math, Science." she answered. "I'm Jondy."

"I'm Colin."

"My name is Amanda."

"I'm Lucas but everyone calls me Lucky."

Lucky woke up in a cell strapped to a cot. It was dark and the only light coming into the cell with the window in the door. The cell was like the ones used in a mental hospital. He sees a camera on the ceiling.

"What's the name of our new subject?" said a female voice from outside the cell.

"From the government files, his name is Lucas Vowles."

Lucky recognized that voice. That is the voice of the man that stopped him and his friends on the highway.

"His name now is XH-298." the woman added.

"What has the committee done with his colleagues?" Lydecker questioned.

"They all been taken to different Manticore facilities." she replied.

'What are going to do to me and my friends?' Lucky thought. He kept still and his eyes open a slit.

"Pity X5-463 or as you call her, Jondy, got away again, Deck." she continued. "The committee isn't to happy about this."

"He has seen her." Lydecker added. "He has helped her."

'Helped Jondy, how?' Lucky wondered.

"How did he help her?" the woman questioned.

"He was spotted by my men getting her Typthophan."

Lucky remembers when that happened. It happened two weeks ago. He and friends were having a party at his place and Jondy started to have a seizure.

"Oh god." Colin cried. "Jondy's seizing."

On the floor, Jondy was shaking violently. Brandon goes into Jondy's purse to look for her pills. "There are no pills."

"Get her some milk." Lucky called. "I will go buy her some more pills."

The black market warehouse was a block from his house. He ran to the built and through the secret entrance.

"Hey Lucas." Mac the inventory director called.

"Hey Mac." Lucky greeted. "Do you have any Tythophan?"

"Yeah." he answered. "We got a two large jars of it in the back."

"What's the cost for it?" Lucky asked.

"$500." he replied. "Why do you need it?"

"It's not for me. It's for my friend. I need now but I have no money on me on the moment. How about a pull off a job for you?"

Mac told another man to get the pills. "There is a painting coming in two weeks called 'Spirit of 76'."

"Got it."

The man came back with a jar beaten and bruised. "Here we are?"

"Where is the second one?" Mac yelled at him. "And what happened to you?"

"Some teenagers stole the second one and beat the shit out of me," he said. "The strange thing was both of them had bar codes on the back of their necks."

"Probably some new gang." Mac grumbled to himself as he gave Lucky the pills. "Here are the pills."

Lucky remembered that he had seen Jondy with a barcode on her neck as he rushed back to his place. He heard gunshots as he left the place.

"We spotted him leaving the warehouse with the Tythophan," Lydecker said. "Just as we were tracking down Zack and Ben."

Lucky sees a face of the woman come into view in the window on the door. She had blond hair and a cruel face. "Begin with him tomorrow morning."

* * * * * *

It was now nightfall. Lucky was still acting like he was still passed out when the scientists removed the retrains. They injected him with a liquid before they left.

He stayed awake all night. For some reason he could fall asleep. He sat on the cot thinking. Lucky was thinking about why he was here and what are they going to do with him.

Suddenly, a loud banging interrupted his train of thought. The sound was coming from the below him.

"Who's there?" Lucky called.

Lucky looked toward the vent. The sound was coming from there. He crawled toward it and opened it up. A pair of eyes shined through the grate. It nearly scared him.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"One of the first that was created here." answered a deep voice. "Escaped. Now live down here."

"Were you kidnapped like me?"

"No. Born here. Special." the voice replied.

"What do they do here?" Lucky questioned.

"Make killers, soldiers. I am not a killer. They are trying to find me. Kill me, Joshua. Especially the woman."

"What does she do?"

"In charge of everything. Anything that gets in her way she terminates. Anything not perfect she kills."

Soldiers burst into the room. The pair of eyes disappears into the darkness. Three point their guns at Lucky.

"Subject XH-298 has been communicating to the fugitive subject." one of the soldiers said over his communicator. "Subject disappeared on arrival."

The soldiers leave the room. Lucky was shaken but he shook it off in an hour. 'Those guys must be really after this guy.' he thought. 'Maybe he would visit again.'

* * * * * * * * *

A few hours later, two lab techs and two soldiers came into the cell and took Lucky out. As he walked down the hall and into other areas of the building, he looked into the rooms. There were children training in marital arts. In another, teenagers a few years younger than him were in a classroom flashing words like: RAT, SNAKE, and TRAITOR with pictures of other children that looked like them. At the time he passed, one of pictures looked familiar.

'If Joshua comes back, I will ask him about that.' he thought as the soldiers pushed him forward.

He saw other rooms where the children were going through numerous tests. They were only three-eight year olds. Lucky thought this was terrible. Lucky wondered what they had planned for him as that walked through the door at the end of the hall.

As soon as Lucky entered the lab, the soldiers grabbed him and strapped him down on an examine table. Above him were bright lights shining directly in his face. He tried to shut them because the light blare was starting to hurt his eyes but the doctors force them open with clamps.

All the doctors wore full body suits with a protective gloves and helmets. They were pausing very few moments to look at a government medical file about him as they examined him:

NAME: Lucas Steven Vowles
DOB: May 30 1998
POB: Palm Beach, Florida
GENDER: MALE
BIRTH PARENTS: Daniel Vowles/Caroline Armstrong
BLOOD TYPE: O
MEDICAL HISTORY: (YY/MM/DD)

DATA MISSING DUE TO PULSE

09/07/19: Bone Marrow extraction
Donated to Cancer Patient: Faith Vowles (Survived)

Faith was Lucky's little sister. Faith had cancer of the bone marrow. One month after the pulse, he gave her some of his bone marrow. A month later the doctor check for any sign of cancer and there wasn't a trace of it. Sadly, two months later, Faith was kidnaped. One of her friends told the police that a van pulled up to them and men in black uniforms took her away.

Lucky's thoughts were interrupted when the sharp prick of a needle pieced his neck. He began not feel anything below his neck. He heard the scraps that were on his wrists and ankles being removed. The doctor removed the clamps on his eyes and flipped him on to his back.

While being examined some more, Lucky looked toward the grate that was on the wall. The doctors were too busy to notice a pair of eyes was watching them. It was .

Suddenly the back of his neck was in pain. The doctor had fluid going into his arm at the same time.

"XH-298 blood has return from the lab." A doctor said as he came into the room. "This is unbelievable."

"What's so unbelievable?" asked one of the female doctors.

"This subject has a higher than normal count of platelets and white blood cells." the doctor replied.

(AUTHORS NOTE: For all those not good in the biology stuff, white blood cells protects the body from disease and platelets help heal injures.)

One of the other doctors takes a look of the test results. "That's even higher than a X-5," he gasped. "You better show this to Dr. Renfro."

Lucky was immediately taken back to his cell. Now he knew why he was here. It was a lab rat from government research. He looked at a refection of him in the shiny metal around the cell and sees a barcode tattoo.

"Some teenagers stole the second one and beat the shit out of me," the black market dealer had said. "The strange thing was both of them had bar codes on the back of their necks."

"You have seen them now?"

Lucky's eyes move towards the grate. "They call you Joshua."

"Father gave me that name. He is father to me and father to the others."

"You mean all those kids out there?"

"Yes."

Lucky gets up from his cot and goes toward the door. He looks out the window and sees a group of children march behind a soldier. "I am surprised none of them escaped."

"There was an escape." Joshua retorted. "A few years ago. Some were killed. Others hurt."

"Did some make it out?" Lucky asked as he still watched outside the cell.

"Some. Don't know how many?"

Lucky listened to the tone of Joshua's voice. He sounded sad. "Did you know one of the escapees?"

"Yes." Joshua answered. "She was the only one of the X5s that knew Joshua. She knew the rest of them would be afraid of me. Her older brother told them stories of us. He told them Nomlies make them disappear. She didn't want them to be scared."

Lucky made his way back to the cot. He knew if looked in the direction of the grate, the soldiers would come. "How did he come up with these stories?"

"Saw how it first started," Joshua explained. "He was in the area where they were locked up. One came to the bars and frightened a group of little ones. After that, the stories began."

The door to the cell whipped open. Two soldiers grabbed Lucky and dragged him out the door. He was taken to a different laboratory that was most full of scientists and doctors. He was strapped to a platform.

Lucky listened as they made their rounds.

"Dr. Renfro wants various samples from XH-298." began one of the doctors to the scientists.

Lucky was put under heavy sedation as the doctors and scientists began to extract many samples from his body like blood, skin, hair, and muscle tissue.

Renfro watched the whole operation from a window looking into the lab. She had further plans for her new lab rat.

'This is just the beginning XH-298," she thought. "Pretty soon you will like all the others."

Lucky woke up back in his cell in extreme pain. This went on for the next few weeks. Then every few days at random, the soldiers would come in, take him to the same lab, and do different experiments to him.

One of those days the scientists doing something to his eyes when Lucky found out who Dr. Renfro was. Lydecker was with her as well

"I want all operations and experiments on subject XH-298 to be increased," she told one of the scientists. "The committee wants XH-298 to ready for training and programming as soon as possible."

"But, madam." said the scientist. "He needs time to let his body to get used to the changes to it."

"We don't have time." Lydecker said angrily. "He knows one of the rogue X5s and we are using him to get to her."

Seconds later, an officer rushes into the lab. Lydecker turns to him. "What is it, soldier?" he asked.

"New York police raided place where XH-298 got the meds for X5-463," the officer began. "XH-298 was one that stole all those valuable paintings. The State a federal warrant for his arrest and a reward for $1000 000."

Renfro looked impressed. "Well, well. It looks like we got a master thief on our hands. He can prove to be more useful."

Lucky caught onto every word. He thought he would rather be in federal prison that this place.

* * * * * *

That night a brownout happened at the base but unluckily the security system and the locks on the cells were on the backup generator. Also that night, something happened to Lucky that he couldn't explain.

"This is amazing," he said as the brownout happened. Lucky just found out what they did to him today. The scientists gave him night vision.

"Won't be happy for long." said Joshua in a quiet whisper. "Pretty soon will have no free will like others."

"Is that what Renfro meant by programming?" Lucky asked.

Joshua sighed. "Once they are finished making changes to body, they will program you to do whatever they got planned for you including killing all the rogue little ones on sight."

"What do you mean, changes?" Lucky questioned. "I know they gave me night vision."

"Many more coming. Training and programming comes after. Do everything they say."

* * * * *

Joshua was right; the tests did begin the next day. The started with simple tests like clocking his speed, how long he can stay under water, and how much weight he can lift. Every week everything increased steadily.

Lucky has been at Manticore for a year now. Every day was the same it was all testing and training. Lucky taught himself to ignore the programming so it never affected him one bit.

In a couple of programming sections, he saw the pictures of the children he saw when came here. Lucky figured that those were the ones that escaped. He saw that one of those pictures was Jondy. He felt sorry for Jondy now knowing that she never had a normal child hood.

During one of the testing periods, Lucky overheard a couple of the scientists, doctors, and soldiers were planning something.

"The guards have already been paid off to see nothing," he said. "We will have no problem getting past the wire."

"Once we have our cut of the reward money," said one of the doctors. "We will leave the country and we don't have to bear the guilt of working on those children again."

"It's terrible what they are doing to them," another doctor cried. "This worse than happened in those African countries in the late 90s. Imagine what Amnesty would think when if they find out about this."

Lucky was relived that some of the people that worked here do care about the subjects but he knew they were talking about him when they mentioned the reward money. He made plans to play along with their plans. He knew that the reward was now doubled.

In his cell he wait on his cot relax and making it look like he doesn't know of the plans. Joshua somehow found out and he didn't come that night. He waited for a long time until the doctor rushed in and tranquilized him.

The next second he knew he was in one of the vans in normal street clothes and in hand cuffs. He acted like he still sedated until they reached their destination.

"I can tell that this kid would rather be in prison than that hell hole." said the doctor who was driving at the time. "He will cooperate. It's a win-win situation."

The doctor was right. Except for Joshua's company, that place was a hell-hole. Lucky was now glad to be out.

After 27.2 hours, the van entered Safford, Arizona. The soldier that was in the van brought Lucky into the local police station and the two doctors and the scientist followed him.

"What can I do for you?" the policeman asked as they entered the station.

"This is Lucas Vowles," said the soldier as he pointed to Lucky. "We want the reward for his capture."

Lucky cooperated as the police man did a finger prints check on Lucky. After it was proved he was Lucas Vowles, he was taken to the back to a holding cell. Through the window of the cell, he saw the group of Manticore personal leave the police station. The first thing in the morning, Lucky was taken to Safford Federal Prison.

That night, Lucky climbed into the vents and got outside. The training from Manticore came in handy. He avoided the searchlights and moved quickly on the grounds. Using his telescopic vision he looked to see if the guards were watching. When it was clear, he jumped the fence and disappeared into the night.

He walked through the woods until he found a small campsite. Everyone in the camp was alsleep. He stole clothes off their clothesline and untied the bag of food that was hanging in the trees.

Lucky changes in the new clothes not too far from the campsite and he kept the prison clothes with him. He had other plans to keep the police and Manticore off his trail. He knows Manticore would be tracking him down as well as the cops. He was their prized experiment.

He stopped at a train track and waited for the train to come by. Once it did, Lucky jumped aboard. He left the prison clothes on the train and his prints then he jump off.

Next Episode

Partners In Crime
Lucky meets up with Jondy in Orlando not knowing Manticore is not far behind.

Site For Series

http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/dafic/lucky.html