Brett realized that he was going to die anyways, so wanted to go down at least pretending to be brave. He stepped into the hospital's lobby and let the stair door close behind him. The lights were on and the sirens weren't blaring, what a relief. The bearded doctor and pale, dark-haired girl continued to stare him down, which honestly made him more nervous than the line of soldiers behind them. With his false bravado, Brett made eye contact with the Doctor and sternly said "WHY. AM I. HERE."

He found it weird to hear himself speak, he hadn't said anything since he woke up. The Bearded Doctor was about to say something, but stopped himself. He then started again, "Oh, what the hell, I might as well tell you," sounding sarcastically carefree. "You're a mutant, but you've probably figured that out by now."

The thought of being a mutant never even crossed Brett's mind. He'd heard about them on the news before, but it's not like he ever met one. It was relieving to hear that those people didn't do anything to him, but almost just as troubling to hear that his condition was genetic. This fish-thing was lurking inside of his genes since his birth, just waiting to pop out eventually.

The scientist continued. "I just flipped through the files we have on you. Apparently you had an incident in school were you just stopped breathing and passed out. Your gills were the first of your mutant abilities to manifest, and the rest shortly followed. You were helped out by EMTs, who were very much untrained to handle the situation of emerging mutant powers. My men arrived on the scene shortly after and transferred you from your hospital to a training facility for my program here."

Brett had no memories of this at all, assuming that they cut off after he stopped breathing. He intently listened, keeping eye contact but occasionally glancing back over to the pale girl. Brett cut in, "So, I'm some kind of super soldier now? A mutant soldier?"

The Bearded Doctor sneered, "Heavens, no. We tried to make a weapon out of you, but we failed. Your abilities just aren't up to par with what we expect from this weapons program. We gave you a drug to simulate a coma and transferred you to this hospital, where we could keep you contained, reapply the coma drug every two weeks, and harvest genetic material for other experiments, should we need it. You and the dozens of other mutants unfit for our program, that is. This is a hospice, not a training facility. Your abilities are a complete waste of what your X gene could've given you."

Brett went from angry to defeated. He wasn't a freak with extraordinary abilities, he was just a freak.

"However," the Doctor continued, "an hour ago I was alerted that one of our coma mutants had woken up somehow. Did your willpower overpower the drug, or did it simply wear off slightly too early? Either way, it doesn't matter. My team here tracked you down and cornered you, but it seems your X gene has a couple more tricks up it's sleeve."

Brett was shocked, "How did y-"

"What? Just because we're experimenting on mutants doesn't mean we can't have them on the payroll. Some agree with our cause." The Bearded Doctor turned and pointed to a guard from the line. Brett recognized him immediately, it was the guard who stared him down while he was invisible in the drug storage room. "He's a low-powered telepath, he knew where you were the entire time."

"Then why keep me alive? Why are you telling me all of this in the first place?"

"In a coincidence, both of us were here in this facility already." He gestured to the girl beside him, still staring at Brett. "She hadn't left the training room until today, she hasn't killed anything that fought back yet. I was going to pick a mutant that she could fight, a lamb for the slaughter, and then you woke up and showed off some pretty impressive new abilities. You certainly didn't pull that vanishing act before, what other secrets are you hiding? And we can't put you back in the Weapon X program after having the coma drug in your system for that long. So, we simply lured you here for her. And why am I telling you all of this? I'm not inhumane, you at least deserve to know why you're dying. You're helping advance our program, be proud."

Brett felt terrified, he could feel his heart racing a mile every second. What kind of abilities was she concealing? What did this Weapon X program churn out?

"As for me, I have a helicopter on the roof to catch. I don't want to be around when she kills you, it'll get pretty messy. And she knows how to make her way back to the base, don't worry about her."

The armed guards walked in line past Brett and up the stairs. The Bearded Doctor followed and the girl stayed. Before walking through the door, he turned around a pulled a small metal object out of his lab coat pocket. It was spherical and had a button on the side. "Almost forgot this," he said before pressing the button and rolling it across the floor. He closed the door and followed the guards upstairs as the grenade started spitting out a light green gas.

Brett started to think and panic about what it could be, but the girl then did something completely new, she spoke.

"I'm sorry," she softly whispered, with a tinge of compassion in her voice. As the gas spread towards her, her apologetic and sad face twisted into a snarl. Brett had no time to react before she extended two long, metal claws from each hand and lunged at him like an animal.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Ok, so maybe I might've lied about this being a really exciting chapter. I didn't realize quite how much exposition I needed to write to get the point across. But hey, there's no way the next chapter CAN'T be exciting now. I'm sure that many of you recognize what character the mysterious girl is supposed to be, so you should definitely be excited. I'm planning to make her a fairly big part of the story to come.

As I said before, feel free to leave a review saying how much you love/hate this story. I love hearing what other people think of my work.