Slow(ish) updating, as usual.
Here's a random question of the day for you: How many of you guys were chanting 'Fight! Fight! Fight!' at the end of the book, Breaking Dawn? Am I really the the only one...?
Anyway, thanks to the awesome people who read and review this story!
Third person POV
[One week ago]
The young whitecoat trudged past the mounds of destruction that was all that remained of the once-proud Itex facility.
This wasn't what he had signed up for Itex to do, he grumbled to himself.
He hadn't signed up to play tourist for a destroyed building. He hadn't signed up to put his life on the line to satisfy the curiosity of his superiers-superiers who, at the moment, were all nice and snug in their respective offices. He hadn't signed up to check for radiation level in the ruins of some place which had been almost destroyed by a make-shift bomb from a group of rowdy kids.
But here he was.
Checking radiation levels.
The whitecoat shivered, and pulled the coat tighter to his small frame, as if the material could protect him from any possible harm. Which, considering Itex, was a distinct possibility. He held the device towards the ground, pressed a series of buttons, and waited nervously.
He sighed in relief. The numbers were perfectly normal for his surroundings. Whatever the kids had put into the bomb, the remains of it wasn't emmitting anything harmful, at least.
But it had leveled a whole building, which was an amazimg feat for a bunch of kids.
Wait...
Huh?
The man blinked and leaned closer, peering at the device. The numbers on it had started jumping around, even though they should have leveled off. What was with this thing?
But the numbers jumped around in a pattern. Up, down, up, down. Like a pulse, almost.
Although he may not seem so, the whitecoat hadn't been hired by Itex for nothing. He hid a quick mind behind the naive face.
And something was telling him that something was going on here.
It has been so long...
The whitecoat jumped. What was that he heard? No, nothing. He couldn't have heard anything.
I've been waiting for so long...
There it was again. The same ancient, deep tones that seemed to that seemed to speak of unthinkable age and knowledge. As if the earth itself was speaking to him.
A lonely Earth. A dark and vengeful Earth, the part that had resided in the hot centre, perhaps?
And now, my time will soon come...
The whitecoat stood there, as if paralyzed, sweat pouring off him. What was happening?
Was he just imagining things?
The voice was so tempting, tempting him to dig beneath the soil with his own two hands to greet this...whatever it was. But he was afraid of what he would find there. An angel of wonder, trapped beneath the ground, or a darkly vengeful demon?
Be afraid, little insect, for you have wronged me so much. Be very afraid...
An angel of destruction, perhaps?
He couldn't move, ot that he wanted to. The voice was calling out to him, luring him...He needed to find the source...
Clatter!
Somewhere, somehow, rocks tumbled from one of the piles of rubble, breaking the heavy silence.
The whitecoat snapped out of his trance.
Then he ran at a speed in which he hadn't moved since highschool. Fast. Faster. Anything to get away from that voice.
That sound...it stuck to his skin like a film, tugging at his thoughts, refusing to go away. He felt dirty.
He had no idea what had just happened.
But he knew two things.
One; he wasn't going anywhere near this place again. Ever.
And two; the information he collected with his device must be enough for a promotion. For a desk job, perhaps. The scientist smiled grimly as he tucked the radiation device inside his coat.
Because he had no intention of being a field researcher ever again.
Dealing with disembodied voices from beneath the ground was not what he had signed up for Itex to do.
Detached brown eyes stared at the retreating figure of a still-young whitecoat. No one would have guessed at the depth of rage and anger behind them.
But for now, the rage had taken a back-seat position in favour for a new emotion.
Cool and calculating.
The news the whitecoat brought were interesting. Very interesting.
White-hot anger was all the man had felt since childhood. Anger, a sense of abandonment, and beneath all of that, a profound feeling of loneliness. But mostly anger.
But as of now, the anger had been supressed.
Cool and calculating. That was Mr. Martinez's reputation. He was the one who never lost his head, the one who could order men to their deaths without so much as batting an eye, if it would help to further himself and the company. That was how he became the Directer.
But when the Flock had blown up his Itex facility, he was very, very close to losing his cold-demeaner. After all, it was his Itex branch, one that he had nurtured to bloom from the very beginning. The one he had put all his energies into for the past too many years. His branch of the company.
He had been very close.
Was he being punished for loving what he had helped to create?
Maybe he was, but the others will be punished tenfold for his pains.
An eye for an eye. Pain for pain.
Unfortunantely for him, the bird-kids had escaped from the ruins of his building, alive. That would prove to be a bit of a drawback in his plans.
But nothing lasts forever, especially when it concerns the lives of a certain six bird-kids. He will have his revenge on them, one way or another. Revenge on them, and the pathetic girl who he refused to call his sister.
Revenge had fueled his actions, had coloured his thoughts for so long, he almost welcomed the change in emotions. Almost.
And this development was a change, indeed.
Oh, yes. He knew what the whitecoat had seen (or more accurately, heard). Just as he had known what the young, ambitious whitecoat had really been after when he had presented Mr. Martinez the data.
Nothing escaped his notice.
(except for those...stupid...mutants...)
He knows what the thing was. He knows.
And he has a plan.
Mr. Martinez smiled for the first time in weeks. It was merely a slight twitch of thinly-pressed lips, but still.
It will be very interesting to see how this will play out...
Reviews = love :)