A Little Bit of Everything Part Seven

I woke up screaming, blinding light cutting off my dream and putting me into a state of fear and confusion. Thrashing my head back and forth I found that I was strapped to a metal table with metal restraints that cut me when I moved. My eyes slowly adjusted to the light and I stopped struggling when Merek came to my side, scalpel in hand. I glared at him as he ran the blade up the side of my face gently, not drawing any blood “Very heroic of you, leaving your friends like that. Well, you didn’t get very far did you?”
Hot anger built up inside me like molten lava churning in a volcano, about to explode. I lunged forward to try to bite him but he quickly pulled back and I seethed with hatred “Let us go. You’ll never get an ounce of strength from me and you don’t need to waste your time with my friends.”
Merek chuckled and slashed my wrist, the blood flowing into a small vile he held below it “Oh I will get strength from you and your friends will go up in flames to show what happens to the disobedient. You’ve drawn far too much attention to us already, the last thing we need is an immortal Armageddon with an immature leader.”
My wrist burned in pain but I stayed strong, watching Merek as he lifted the vile of blood up to his lips and smiled “Cheers.”
The anger inside me boiled and was reaching its breaking point, crashing against the surface of my actions. Merek downed the blood in one gulp and he dropped the glass on the floor, shattering it into tiny pieces. He convulsed and fell to the floor against a white wall which drew my attention to the room around me. A small white room with four white walls and a large window to my right, through it I could see a white hallway. Merek writhed in agony as my blood pulsed within him, burning into him. I glanced out the window to see Greyson and Daemon in chains, being led away by four suit-wearing guards. Their eyes were cast down but Greyson looked up in time to see me, he hesitated then threw himself against the glass screaming “Escape! Run! You can get out! Do it now!!!!”
The guards hit him on the head and pushed him forward again. I stared after him, my anger finally turning to fury I clenched my fists and pulled against them as hard as I could. First my right arm snapped the metal, my left followed, and then I sat up. The table bended and the restraints on my shoulders finally gave in with a crack. The rage had crested and I was getting out of here with my friends. The last few pieces of metal tying me to the table broke easily when I pulled against them. I leapt off the table without the slightest thought to my newfound strength whatsoever. Merek looked up at me and grabbed my ankle, my rage echoed in his face “Get back on the table you freak!” he hissed through his pain.
I paused to stare at him before replying “Never.”
He tore at my leg and I brought up my boot, his expression fading into terror, then stomped it down onto his head. His skull popped under my boot in a satisfying crack as his blood and brain splattered out over the once white room. My muscles were eager for more challenge and I approached the large window. I placed my hands on it and pressed evenly on it, leaning into it until it began to grow hair-like cracks, then splintered like thin ice. The shreds of glass rained down into the hallway and crunched underfoot when I started down the hallway where Greyson and Daemon had gone. Red lights went off down the hallway and sirens sounded close to me as a voice rang out over the intercom “BREAK OUT. THIRD LEVEL LABS SECTOR FOUR- ONGOING TESTS ON THE MORPHAN. USE CAUTION WHEN APPROACHING PATIENT, EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.”
I wasn’t sure where to go but I figured stairs would be good, we are underground after all. The halls were all bleached white and clean except for the red blinking lights. Heavy footsteps surrounded me and seemed to come from all sides of me as I hunched over and prepared for oncoming enemies. A guard appeared behind me and hit me over the head like they did to Greyson, I merely flinched and whipped around to kick him in the stomach. He flew backwards a ways and collided with several other guards who carried guns. Quickly I took off down the hallway, running at a pace I’d never run in my life. More guards appeared in front of me and fired their guns and tasers, ripping through me like hot knives through butter. My mind set on the distant stairs I ignored any such pain and shoved the guards out of the way. I felt indestructible when I got to the stairwell even with the bleeding wounds I kept going and living. The stairs were no problem and I went up them in a blur of speed, knocking over the guards as I went.
At the top I threw a door off its hinges and slid to a stop on the slick marble floor. It was the same large room that I had been in before, the big open offices of Contego. I took a step forward and was met with the sound of loading guns. It seemed all of Contego’s agents and guards had been collected in this one place with guns trained all on me. This was not what I planned on. I looked around for any escape in room but there wasn’t. The vaulted ceilings with carved marble cast shadows and in one there was the familiar face, the man in my dreams and vision, the man who seemed to want to destroy me. He held a finger to his lips and grinned then vanished into the dark. Violently I was pulled back to reality with a command “FIRE!”
The bullets unloaded and I jumped up onto a desk doing the one thing that I wanted to do: run. Over the desks I ran and jumped, each being obliterated after I left it, annihilated by the incessant shooting. Few bullets reached me but when they did it hurt like hell, the adrenaline starting to wear off. Eventually I ran out of places to run so I clung to the walls somehow, scrambling over the tall blank walls and onto the dome-shaped ceiling. My fingernails dug into the carvings with ease and my feet hung down, dangling in the air. A female voice rang out over the gunfire “SHOOT HER!”
A chorus of obscenities called out with her, urging that I die. The guns farther down now had less of a chance of hitting me and they began to crumble the area around me. I stuck my hand into an exposed area beyond the ceiling. There was dirt! The piece of ceiling I was holding onto was falling apart so I pulled out the dirt and dug a hole upward. I swung up into the hole and tensed against it to stay inside, then I continued to dig. The gunfire and yelling eventually dissipated and I was left in silence.
Whispers started up, calling to me from the ground around me, calling from the dark. I wrote them off as my mind playing tricks but they got louder and more comprehendible: Does she know where she is? Does she know what she is? What should we do? Will the master let us get her?
I worried about what they said but I didn’t stop digging until something like wood stopped me from digging. I found an edge and dug around it, then stopped to figure out what it was. It soon became clear that the object was a coffin but my morbid curiosity got the best of me and I felt around in the dark to open it. Once opened I felt around to find out what the occupant was but it was empty. It was an empty grave. The whispers went silent and a man’s voice vibrated in the dark “So you’ve found it. You finally know.”
My heart beat faster “Know what? I’m flesh and bone, I’m still alive, this isn’t my grave.”
It laughed “Are you sure?”
Suddenly the coffin’s bottom opened up and there was the fire down below that reached for me with its deadly heat. I held onto the sides of the opening and climbed up to dig upward again, frantically clawing away at the dirt. The laughing grew louder and louder and I was on the verge of tears when the soil became soft and muddy, infested with worms and soaked with water. My hand finally breached the surface of the ground and clamped on air. The laughing choked and coughed then died away with the sound of fresh rain as I crawled out of the ground. My jeans and black t-shirt became caked with mud and my hair was dripping with muddy water, only my boots kept my feet from getting wet. I peered up at the headstone and it said my name, it had my name carved into it and when I died: December 24th. But how? I was still alive and that would be nearly three weeks from when we got here. The tears brimmed in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks as I gripped the headstone and broke it to pieces in my hands. The was a gasp behind me and I turned to see Greyson and Daemon tied to a steel pole several feet away from my grave. They looked frightened and stared at me in disbelief. Sucking up my own fear I shrugged my shoulders “What? Never seen a girl crawl out of her own grave before?”
I smiled and choked back more tears that threatened to fall. I looked up at the sky and sighed in relief that the clouds showed no signs of leaving. The rain was good, at least it blocked out the sun if it was daytime. Greyson whispered “How are you still alive? We saw a group of guards bury you in a coffin before running back inside.”
I furrowed my eyebrows “Guards? They buried me? Well, I must have a damn good clone because I just killed some of those sons of bitches about an hour ago.”
Daemon was in wolf form again and nuzzled my shoulder when I broke the straps of metal holding him and Greyson together. At least I knew it was night now. Greyson shook his head “But he buried you right as the sun had set, that was a half hour ago. Are you sure you aren’t a ghost or something?”
I kicked Greyson in the shin and said “Could a ghost do that?!” he hopped around and held onto his shin “I’ve been told that I’m dead enough tonight! I had a dream about some dude trying to put me back in my grave for God’s sake! Then I wake up in a testing lab where Merek drinks my blood and goes into a seizure then you guys show up and leave and THEN I kill Merek after which I get shot at a bunch, climb onto a FUCKING ceiling and dig upwards into my own FUCKING grave where the guy from my FUCKING dream tries to kill me and then I’m here!”
I took deep breaths and leaned against the metal pole to try to catch my breath and calm myself. Daemon stared at the ground with his tail tucked and whimpered while Greyson kept shaking his head. Greyson finally looks up at me and says “It’s been three weeks since we got here. You’ve been unconscious for three weeks, Dae. Contego has run its tests and they were prepared to kill you until you apparently woke up.”
Daemon nudged my side and licked my hand, he looked at the sky and I could see the clouds were still there but the sun was trying to burn through them. I sighed and grabbed Greyson’s arm “Come on, it’s morning. We should get somewhere safe before the sun breaks through the clouds and burns you alive.”
Greyson nodded and led the way to a small cave that he said was just big enough for us. I looked around at the melting snow and ice and realized that I wasn’t cold even though I was wet. Daemon was obviously cold, he shivered when he returned to his human form, I guess it’s a good thing they shift with their clothes. He clenched his thin coat to himself and I put my arm around him to keep him warm. If he thinks I’m some supreme being then he shouldn’t take this the wrong way and think I’m being more than just ‘a good friend’.