Subject Nine Ch. 2
Ch. 2
My name is Jed. I am a tiger with dark gray fur with white stripes. For two years I have known freedom. I plan to live free much longer than most people ever would. My power, as I've come to realize, is much more than absorption and projection of feelings and emotions. Through bullets and stabs I have found that when I absorb the bodies for emotions that I also heal myself.
To the least of matters I am chased by a white fox named Jenna and the military. The military is easily avoided, but Jenna on the other hand is a real pain. She saved me from captivity so you'd think that I'd be thankful, but she wanted to hide, only coming out to move to a new hiding spot. That is not who I am.
There was a nice soothing breeze along the rocky beach. I took a couple of steps into the cold water, enjoying my time here. I took a couple more steps until the water was waist high. I looked back to the crowd and saw a fur, a tigress, with an emotionless expression staring dead at me. A sharp pain suddenly popped into my head.
The wires were stuck in my back as an assembly line of bodies was brought to me. I screamed as I absorbed body after body, the fear, anger, pain, hate, and many other feelings absorbed also. The wires sent signals from my mind to a machine. I could hear it behind me, ticking away at paper. The mechanical clicks were driving me mad. The ticking seemed to have moved to my skin. My head was pounding, I felt like passing out, then a scream rang out in the room. I looked up and saw a young tigress hooked up to another ticking machine.
When I snapped back to reality I was coughing up water. Above me I could see that emotionless tigress. She had the typical orange fur with black stripes. I felt pressure on my chest, C.P.R. I quickly sat up pushing her away. There was a crowd of people around us. I got up quickly and pushed my way through them. I headed straight to a group of rocks that I was using as a shelter. The sound of another fur running made me turn around. The tigress had ran up to me.
"Aren't you going to say thank you?" Her voice had an annoyed tone to it. She looked dead at me with emotionless eyes. I shrugged and walked towards the rocks again.
"Naw. I know why you're here and my answer is no." "Then..." She had slipped in front of me somehow. "I'll just have to take you in by force." I quickly jumped towards her and grabbed her arm.
"You know my power, why get so close?" The sand between us shot up, my arms getting stabbed by the grains. I pulled away and jumped backwards. My back met a spiked wall of sand and. I fell face first onto a raised slab of sand. It circled around my limbs, turned me over, and held me in place.
"When you control the ground, you have a perfect defense." She stood next to me, the sand tightening around my arms and legs. My hand broke through the sand after a little bit of struggling. I grabbed her arm before she was able to move backwards.
"So much for perfect." I sent the pain and fear I had felt during my most recent flashback to her mind. She grimaced and the bed of sand blew away. I fell landing on my back, pulling her down with me. I let go of her arm and put my paws on either side of her head and stared at her eyes. "How about some of your memories too?" My mind dug deep into hers and forced out repressed memories. What I saw I should have never dug out. She had had her parents killed in front of her, the gunshots loud in our minds. Being taken to the prison.. And then the memory of the ticking machine. It pierced deep into her skin, scraping rock hard bones. I felt sick as I shut the memories back inside her mind and let go. I got up in a daze and ran off. She laid on the sand curled up and passed out. A group of furs began to run this way towards us, so I quickly made my leave. I thought back to her memories and the one good thing I had seen. Her parents holding her up saying how much they loved her. One word, a name, popped into my head. Maria.
The fight at the beach went with no news coverage. The people that witnessed it probably dead or missing now. I was sitting in a cafe about one hundred miles past the beach. Out of the window I could see Jenna. She was standing with her back to the window holding a piece of paper. She seemed to be waiting for something. Though I didn't know why, she would usually just confront me right away. The chair on the other side of the table slid back with a slight screech and I looked over to it to see Maria sitting there. My eyes widened as she smiled and held up a letter.
"This is a request. Your acquaintance on the other side of the window has one also. Read it and think deep about it. It could save you from captivity again." I looked at her in disbelief and took the letter. I opened it and began to read. It wasn't from the government or an organization that had imprisoned us. Instead it was hand written and proposed me to help Jenna in finding Subject Five. At the bottom of the letter was Jenna's signature. I smiled and tossed the letter back across the table.
"You expect me to believe that she wrote that letter? And who's Subject Five?"
"No. But she thinks that you wrote the letter that she has. And that letter is a death threat to her remaining family. Which she has none of course. But she thinks otherwise. And I'm hurt that you don't know my name."
"Then I'll just make my leave." I smiled as I stood up. "By the way, your name is not Subject Five, it's Maria." As I said this she gripped her head in confusion. She might not remember her name but it did trigger a reaction. Probably because of the memories that I brought out. I began to walk away until I heard her stand up behind me. I barely had enough time to turn around before a fist had hit me square in the stomach. The crowd in the cafe stared at Maria as she continued to punch me. Her punches had less of an impact than I thought they would but they still stung. I grabbed her hands and held her in place. "Let's not do this here Maria. We'll go to a graveyard. You'll have all the earth you need." She screamed and flipped backwards kicking me square in the jaw, forcing me to let her go. I stumbled backwards and through one of the cafe's windows. I landed on my back and looked up. Jenna had seen the small fight and was walking towards me.
"You think that you can threaten me? And then pick a fight with Subject Five? You've got a death wish."
"Subject Three, so nice to see you made it." Maria's voice was cold. "Now that both of you are here, we can begin." I twirled on the ground standing up. All I could do was wander why there weren't any military convoys around. Here was one subject, a kid at that, about to take on two other subjects with no backup.
"Jenna. You're a fool to think that I would just call you out. They lured you to this cafe, so that they could capture us at the same time." I was barely able to finish saying as a rock plowed into my stomach. I flew back a couple of feet and into a lamp post. It bent slightly and the sickening sound of a bone cracking could be heard. A sharp breath and a low growl and I was up again. "Come now Maria, you can do better than that." Maria, or Subject Five being her lab rat name, screamed and the crowded street began to shake. The furs on the street began to panic and fall as the ground began to crack. Jenna looked at me in amazement. I was able to lock eyes for a second and sent the pain of my broken arm to her. She quickly looked away and grimaced.
I smiled and ran at a person that had fallen down due to the ground shaking. My arm was numb and I needed to heal it quickly if I wanted to stay in the fight. I flipped the fur over and stared them in the eyes causing the fear they felt to amplify tenfold. They died of cardiac arrest nearly instantly. I began to absorb them as Maria screamed again. I finished and looked up to see a chunk of the road hurtling towards me. Pressing my body down as flat as I could, I felt the road pass over me by a couple of inches. I glanced to the side and saw Jenna laying on the ground in a dazed state. Her body was covered in cuts. I could only wander how Jenna was knocked down before I noticed Maria walking over to her holding a sharp piece of the road. "Maria!" I called out, throwing a small rock at her. She looked over at me with hatred in her eyes. The rock I threw stopped short of hitting her and flew right back at me. I cursed myself as I turned to avoid it. The rock clipped the back of my neck taking off a small bit of my spine, a metal chip flying off with it. My vision darkened and the noise began to die down. I hoped that I wasn't going to die, I hadn't been free long enough to die. I felt myself being rolled over and a body being pushed on me. The pain of having a bone crushed and fear began to crawl over me. It died down quickly and my vision came back.
"What are you doing?" Jenna had gotten up and past Maria and saved me. "You're making it worse every time you call her that. What do you expect to do, kill us?" There was a weird pain in my mind and I felt different. Something was telling me to convince Maria of something. But of what I didn't know.
"Just watch. And if this works out, you're going to let both of us walk away. I'm going to save all of us from her." I said standing up, not sure of what I might work out. My knees were weak and I couldn't see straight. The fact that I had just had my spine chipped off and healed made it unsurprising though. I looked around and couldn't see her. "Hey. Maria. Where'd you run off to?" I heard a scream from behind me and turned around in time to dodge a stab of what she was holding earlier. I looked at it and recognized it as a spear made of the road with a metal point. She stabbed at me again and I spun to the side grabbing it and pulling it away from her. She stumbled forwards and looked at me. I got eye contact and sent a wave of uncertainty to her mind. She lunged at me and I simply jabbed her in the stomach with the blunt end of the road. She fell down to the ground but began to stand up quickly. Before she could get her balance back I grabbed her and pinned her against a wall. Her eyes were wide with madness. "I'm going to kill you!" She screamed at me. "Let me go right now!" I frowned and looked up thinking of something. An idea came to me but I had tried it in the past on normal furs and it didn't work. I decided to give it a try anyways.
"Come on Maria. Is that anyway to talk to your brother?" She stopped struggling for a second then yelled a string of words that I couldn't understand.
She was weak in the mind, and I could tell that she was questioning if I was family or not already. Her struggling picked up again and I looked at her eyes. I began to send false memories of birthday parties and other happy events with me in them. I projected a memory of myself as her brother. A caring brother that wouldn't let any harm come to her. Her discovering her powers and finding out that I had my own. Then a memory of soldiers and scientists breaking into the house and killing our parents. A final memory of us escaping into a city and from there having to travel the country. All seventeen years of her life were being re-written with me in them. I let go of her and she slid down the wall. She had gone unconscious during the memory implant. I just hoped that it had worked. Jenna walked up beside me. She was holding a metal clamp that had L-1 on it.
"What did you do?" She sounded shocked. "One second she was screaming and the next she calmed down, and now she's unconscious." I smiled up at Jenna. She was frowning down at me. "By the way this clamp is a limiter." She was holding it up as if it were sacred. "They were placed on all of us to control our powers. I don't know what it was suppressing but you should have a new talent or something to work with now. I don't know how many were placed on you, Five, or me. But I know that one wouldn't be enough to contain any of our powers completely.
"That explains why I thought to implant a memory. And if it really did work, like I said you'll have to let us leave."
"What, you're not even sure if it worked? We should just run right now." I shook my head, noticing Maria coming to.
"No. I couldn't just leave my little sister." Jenna looked at me in shock then nodded realizing what I had done. Maria's eyes opened slowly. When she saw me she sprung up and stared at me strangely. "Brother? What happened?" She looked around the street in amazement. "Did I cause this?" Her eyes began to tear up.
"You did because of the army." I said in a comforting voice. "They found us and you kept them away. Jenna and I thank you." She looked over at Jenna in confusion. I cursed myself as I realized I had forgotten to add Jenna to the memories. "You probably don't remember her because you hit your head pretty hard. She was being chased by the army and accidentally led them to us." Jenna looked at me with a look of wonderment. I just smiled at her while Maria gave her an evil glare. "Come now Maria, don't blame her, she didn't know. But there is no time for talking, we have to go now. Say bye to Jenna." Maria just glared at Jenna again. Jenna turned away and began to walk.
"Sorry for the inconvenience Jed. I hope next time we meet, it won't be under the same circumstances." Jenna said as she threw the metal clamp at me. "May you remember this day as a turning point." She said as she turned into a wire and disappeared. Maria looked at the last place Jenna was with wide eyes. She then turned to me.
"Brother. I don't like her." I smiled at Maria.
"Neither do I. Now let's get out of here." She nodded and followed me as I began the walk to the outskirts of the city.