Settings: Heated lab in the freezing colds of AntarcticaDr. Gunther stared at the various monitors secured to the lackluster gray wall in his office. What better place to have a secret lab than in the isolated white plains of Antarctica?
Each screen was filled with one interesting image or another. A few of them even ineffectually displayed the outside of the Antarctican Ward in all its insipid glory.
But the most interesting monitors were the ones right in front of Dr. Gunther. The ones that showed
them.
Generation 5
The most advanced form of Pouli Anthropos.
There they were in all their glory. Tall, graceful creatures, that looked almost as endearing as softly painted pastel angels. Their wings were smooth and shiny, as healthy as any well fed fowl, and they expressed the slim musculature that was to be expected of their generation. They were beautiful.
Okay, who was Gunther kidding? The children were ragged, poorly dressed, escapees, with little to their names but the few various items they’d conned and stolen out of innocent, unaware, humans. Still, it was better than nothing.
Their cunning showed their willingness to survive and thrive in relatively poor conditions. Weather they accomplished their survival by brute force or trickery varied from child to child, but, 88% of the time, resulted in victory.
They showed poor social skills in regards to humans, but seemed to trust one another (out of the few that had actually encountered each other), and showed a willingness to work together, or become accomplices.
Carefully, he looked from monitor to monitor, meticulously observing the actions that took place within the walls of the black boxes.
The first one he glanced over showed two of the older children speaking, strangely enough, near a dumpster. For a millisecond, he wondered how they were tolerating the repulsive scent of garbage, before shifting through his files.
“Taylor Rice” and “Samuel Echtin” were their unnumbered names. The poor boy, in an attempt to divulge answers about the Ward, questioned the girl. She answered in a typically sarcastic manner. Then, she asked a literal question. Something Gunther thought was a plausible question.
“Hey...have you seen any…more of us?” came her quiet frizzled voice through the monitor.
Gunther chuckled, low and devilish, something that would send chills down the bones of the innocent.
His eyes traveled to the next monitor. One of the younger subjects, “Conner Krauklis”, was out and about in the forest, lost and screaming. No doubt his terrified shouts would eventually attract the attention of those mongrels Gunther had created so many years ago.
The next screen was a bit more interesting. A boy had a death lock on
her. For a moment, Gunther was petrified that he would kill her. But then, she was dropped out of his grip. Fear ran rampant in her eyes, and Gunther made no attempt to hide his disgust.
“Dear Eins,” He whispered to himself, shuffling through her papers, “He is your friend. Do not be afraid,” Speaking to himself in this manner, Gunther sounded almost crazed. Of course, with Eins being more than complicated, the doctor had no plausible way of knowing what she was thinking without being close to her. He cared little. Eins had just been a stepping stone for his latest project. The boy, however, was more than a stepping stone. Generation 5, his name was “Jude Oakheart”. Surprisingly he had manifested the power that allowed him to escape.
Then, to the right of his present screen, there was “Marcus”, or so it seemed he was named. The child had cleverly stolen a credit card, proceeded to clear the scene of any plausible evidence, and went on to use the withdrawal money to his advantage. Gunther found the amount of items he had ordered impractical, but kept it to himself.
“Clever, very clever…” Gunther grumbled, as the child disappeared within the confinements of a bathroom, to which Gunther refused to have his camera follow.
Then, his cameras went to the scene of drama. His most least desired experiment, vs his most desired experiment.
Michael, that mongrel of a Vampire, had approached three of them. “Brendan McAdams”, “Matthew Bernard” and “Marceline Bernard”. Gunther’s lips edged into a smile as he wondered how each individual child was handling the confrontation between Avian and Vampire. He doted on it little.
A “special” thing caught his eye.
A Generation 4. They had all been eradicated. Or so his scientists had reported to him. And yet, here was a twenty year old Generation 4 male, with big thick muscles, and a clear mutation that had caused it. Even his wings were broader than the norm.
Screen capping his face, Gunther plugged the image into his databases.
No name. Just an image of the same man, though younger, with a smaller body (the beginnings of his advanced muscle development had begun to show in the teenage picture).
He was coupled with a young, quite miniature, female, with a darker skin tone.
Both of them had supposedly died in a plane crash.
Gunther was going to have a word with the employees of the South American Ward.
Suppressing his anger, his eyes moved on to the next screen.
A boy very similar to “Brendan” popped up on the screen, along with a innocent, and very confused looking girl, who happened to coincidentally also be another experiment. “Carter McAdams” and “Haley Price”. He was urging her to get a move on, do a perimeter of the area. Gunther theorized “Carter” knew trouble was on the rise by the fact that the twins, “Bredan” and “Carter” had been observed expressing a special connection with one another. It disappointed him that “Marceline” and “Matthew” had not developed a similar power, both children also being twins.
However, “Brendan” and “Carter” were identical. “Marceline” and “Matthew” were fraternal. Maybe it made all the difference.
“Alice!” he called. A small girl, no more than six years, with curly blonde hair, bounded over to him, placing her hand in his.
“Yes, Daddy?”
“Do you see the children, Alice?”
“Yes, Daddy.” She responded, ice blue eyes grazing over each Avian filled monitor with intelligence far surpassing the age of six.
“Alice, one day you will rule them all.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
I resisted the urge to immediately run for my life.
One thing that remained, however, was that everyone stayed calm.
Brendan, Matthew, me…not a single one of us showed any apparent fear.
“Michael,” I responded calmly, and a bit too confidently. I was thrilled. Never before, in my time at the Ward, had I been allowed to directly call a Vampire by his name. Out here, the rules were different.
“Making friends is a good idea. Don’t you think so? Besides, I’m sure one of you make friends with
your brethren,” I said, mockingly referring to his team of vampires.
“Why don’t you go ahead and come for us?” Matthew said, a steel edge in his voice.
My eyes, for a second, glanced back towards the building where the “adult bird kid” was stationed. Something looked odd about his feet. They had changed color. It almost seemed like, from his knees down, there was short course fur, and a furry tail sticking out from his behind.
Must be a power or something.
For a moment, his eyes zeroed in on Mike. He crouched down, preparing for flight, or so I thought.
And then, he
jumped.
For a moment, the Vamp had turned to look at me. He knew I was there, and he was letting me know it. I returned his cold hard stare with a much calmer one, making a face as he turned away to greet the children.
The young blonde girl eyes seemed to wander for a moment, falling on me. I ignored her stare to calculate the distance between me and Mike. It was about twenty feet.
No sweat. I had the enhanced muscle strength, not to mention the fact that I was able to half morph my legs into something more lemur like, powerful, and equipped for jumping and climbing.
Perhaps Mike was expecting me to fly to him, attack him from the air. That’s what most Vampires expected, at least.
Nope.
I crouched, down and then, bam, rocketed off from the roof opposite the store. I probably looked just like a monkey, taking a leap like that, but I landed exactly where I wanted to.
Right next to the Vampire.
“You wanna back off, Vamp?” I asked, calm like Solo had taught me.