Demigods

by Robert C Ray

  * * *

  Casually she walked down the street with her narrow, yet rather dark sunglasses, which wrapped around the side. She acquired them in much the same way that she had the cup of coffee the night before, and they served a particular purpose, for her eyes could not be seen with them on.

  She could not walk around in the normal daylight with a blindfold on, but with these, no one could see that her eyes were closed, so they offered her a bit of freedom, and all of her senses were far greater than normal. Her hearing and sense of smell told her where everything was around her.

  "Hello," said the man that passed her by, and his heartbeat, and the way that he changed his breathing told her that he had not seen her from a distance.

  "Hi," she said with a smile.

  The surprised tone that hid within his voice, and the fact that he did not slow his pace, told her that he was married, though his heartbeat still raced. What he had seen tore at him for a moment, and she felt flattered.

  Then came the overpowering smell of sizzling beef. She had never had such a pleasure, and she had been moving toward the scent for over a mile. Now she had reached the source, and she had to experience it.

  Stepping into the fast-food joint set in the side of a tall building, she opened her eyes, and stopped short of the register. She blinked her eyes briefly open at the menu, and this was enough to memorize it. Anything on it she was sure would be a delightful experience, but she had to wait for just the right moment, and order just the right thing.

  She allowed a few people past her as she pretended to stare at the board, until the perfect moment presented itself. It came in the form of a handsome man wearing a very expensive, Italian suit, who was also without a wedding ring on his finger.

  Stepping in line, he stepped up behind her. Although she would not have been able to see him at this moment with her eyes opened, she could still hear the change in his heartbeat. He was happy to have her in front of him, which was the entire idea.

  "Will this be for here, or to go?" the young woman asked as Viper approached the register.

  "Ta go, please," she replied in a deep, yet eloquent, southern accent. "Such a nass day, Ah decided ta walk ta the park."

  "And what would you like?" she asked with a smile, but Viper paused for a moment, and pretended to look back at the menu.

  "Ah'll take a double cheeseburger with evrathin," she said before another brief pause, "and a strawberry shake."

  Reaching to her side, she seemed confused for an instant, as the woman asked her if that would be all, and then she looked back up again.

  "On uh day Ah walk ta the park, Ah leave ma pocket book in the foyer," she said with a tone of disgust, though it be at herself. "Just cancel all that."

  "I'll get that, ma'am," the handsome gentleman interrupted as he handed a hundred dollar bill to the woman.

  "Why thank you, kind su," she said as she looked up at him after removing her sunglasses to reveal her light green eyes, and a shiver went straight down his spine. Surely, she was careful enough to look in a direction that would not reveal her location to the triplets.

  "You deserve such kindness," he replied as she entrapped him, but then the lady behind the counter interrupted them both.

  "Your change, sir," she said as she held out a wad of bills.

  "That belongs to her," he said without ever removing his eyes from her own, yet she gave him a slight nudge.

  "Ah can't accept that," she told him as she began to turn away, only to look back up at him with the eyes of a pitiful kitten.

  Grabbing her hand, he turned her so that she faced him directly.

  "It will get you through the day," he said with a charming smile, "and if you wish to repay me, you might allow me to take you out to dinner, sometime."

  For a brief moment, she pulled her hands back, and turned away before looking back at him with a playful smile.

  "What evah makes you think that Ah am available?" she questioned as she placed the glasses back on her face, and closed her eyes once more. She found his answer to be slightly impressive.

  "You wear no ring, and no jewelry," he charmingly replied. "It makes me think that you may have been hurt by someone recently."

  She simply stared at him for a moment, allowing him to wonder what she might be thinking, before allowing him a response.

  "You are handsome, and smart," she replied, "but how will Ah meet you agin?"

  Quickly he pulled his wallet back out, and produced a business card. Writing a number on the back of it, he handed it to her.

  "It's my personal cell."

  The front told her that his name was Robert Winston, and that he was the CEO of a company called Dynamic Technologies, and she was quite pleased with her catch.

  "Mah name is Kitty Hall," she told him as she tucked the card into her dress in front of her left breast, and offered her hand as a lady would.

  Before he could say another word, she stood on her tippy-toes, and softly kissed him on the cheek.

  "Ah'll be callin'," she said with a smile as she turned, and left the restaurant with a bag in one hand, and her shake in the other.

  As for him, he determined that he was not hungry any longer, as he watched her sway perfectly in her pretty, red dress, out the front door.

  "Will this be for here, or to go?" the young lady asked with a smile, having watched it all, but he never looked back at her.

  "To go," he replied sarcastically, as he followed Viper out the door so that he could admire her once more as she walked away, and he completely forgot about the hunger of his stomach. This hunger had more to do with a man's most basic instinct, and he had no idea that her effect on him was more than simply a natural one.

  She, however, understood it well, and she waited until she has far enough away where he could no longer see her.

  Opening the bag, she pulled out the sandwich, and unwrapped it. The heat of it tingled on her fingers, and she could feel the condiments smeared off to one side. This was the side she determined that she would first bit into.

  With eyes still closed, she sank her teeth into it, and the vibrant array of flavors exploded upon her taste buds. Naturally, the mustard stood out first, followed by the sharp taste of the onion, and soon it was a symphony within her mouth.

  Each and every taste had something different to offer, though her favorite was the sweet, succulent taste of the tomato, as its juices ran down the side of her tongue. The orgasmic expression it gave her only seemed natural.

  "Is it that good?" a man asked her as he strolled on by, and saw her face, though she did not feel the need to open her eyes. As far as he knew, they were opened behind her unrevealing shades.

  "Ah'm lovin' it," she replied, holding on to the southern accent for just one more moment. She had laid the groundwork for something quite important at a later date, and she had no idea whether the two gents would meet, or already knew each other, since he was walking in that direction.

  Then she took a drink of the strawberry shake, and although the sensation was quite different, the effect was much the same. It may not have been a detonation of various flavors, but was a beautiful combination of a simple few, and its icy smoothness made her feel like a child.

  It didn’t make her feel like the child that she remembered, but like the one that she had always dreamed that she could have been, yet this caused her to wonder. Did they force those memories upon her as well?

  Tossing the remains of her treat into the nearest sidewalk trash can, which she found by sense of smell, and the fact that she could hear the people around her not stepping in that very spot, she brought her mind back to the task at hand. They were thoughts of the most influential person in the life that she knew, and it was time to pay him a visit. She had to know the answer to the one question that bothered her the most.

  As she approached the building, she could “see” its height and width by the sound of the light breeze passing around it, and it was not impressive compared to the other skyscrapers b
eside it. It was rather small next to the rest, but it was still the building where she would find him, and she took a deep breath before entering.

  She knew exactly where to go, because it was all in the file that she had read on the computer before ever leaving the lab, though she still felt nervous. It was not every day that you would meet your primary creator.

  Walking a short distance, she stepped up to the elevator, and pressed the button. Her heart began to race as she still held her eyes closed, and her adrenaline was beginning to concern her. Certainly, she did not want to rush into this event.

  It seemed like forever before the beep sounded, and she heard the doors opening. Then she breathed a sigh of relief as she entered the small space. This is when she began to understand that she was afraid of confined places, but she did not allow it to bother her. She understood why, and knowing was half the battle.

  She felt the sensation of an elevator moving upward for the first time, and it caused her to tremble slightly. It was nothing like being on solid ground, and it was nearly blinding, so to speak. Her sense of hearing was useless, and her sense of smell was irrelevant, while her sense of touch would only reveal what she already knew.

  She was tempted to open her eyes to see what was causing such fear in her, yet she clenched them even tighter. She did not want to see it, and she understood that opened eyes meant the triplets.

  Finally, the bell sounded again, and the doors opened, and she hastily stepped from the lift.

  "You had better be there, Jonathan Mire," she whispered as she tried to push the elevator memory from her mind, and there was a long enough hallway to help with such a task.

  Soon her mind cleared, and she began to focus once more, on what she now needed to do. It was the biggest event of her brief existence, and she had wished that she could have postponed it, but the circumstances dictated her responses.

  Stepping into the office, she smelled the scent of his secretary, and heard her tiniest movements before she ever spoke up.

  "May I help you?" she inquired of her, but Viper never needed to respond. She knew where she was going, and she could hear his soft speaking, off in the other room.

  "Doctor Mire is in session," she tried to tell her to no avail. "You can't go in there."

  Turning the handle, she noticed that it was locked, so she turned it harder, and broke the mechanism that kept her from him. She had no need to kick in the door for they had made her muscles better than those of ordinary humans. She was not quite like an ant, which can lift ten times its body weight, but rather half of that, which was more than enough to gain entry.

  "Why did you do it to me?" she asked him with sorrow on her face, and tears sneaking out from beneath the dark shades. His look was dumbfounded as he sat there at his desk with his phone next to his ear. "Why did you have to hurt me like that?"

  "Should I call security?" his secretary asked as she followed Viper into the room, but doctor Mire figured out who she was rather quickly, and motioned his secretary away.

  "I'll call you right back," he said to the person on the other end of the phone, and hung up before he could have even heard their response.

  "Did they send you to kill me?" he asked, seemingly not so disturbed as he should have been, had they done so. "I've often wondered since the beginning, if they would."

  "They didn’t send me," she said sternly as she closed half of the distance between them. "I awoke prematurely, and I escaped."

  Placing his hands on his lap, he sat up, and smiled at her. He understood how much of her he had created, and was intrigued, though quite frightened as well.

  "Why did you make them torture me?" she asked as her voice trembled, and her body slightly convulsed at the thought of it, "and why did you make them rape me?"

  Without thinking that she knew it, he gripped the revolver that hid beneath his desk. It was the one that he had put there after helping the government create the perfect killing machine, because he always feared that they would try to tie up his loose end. He had never figured that she would come to him in such a scenario, but he was even more frightened now. In this scenario, he was facing, eye to eye, the evil that he had done.

  "Aren't we all simply just a product of our environment," he asked her as he gripped the gun tightly beneath the desk, "and should I have not given them the environment that they asked for?"

  "Did you ever consider what you were really doing?" she returned as she stepped slightly forward, which caused him to draw the weapon, and fix it upon her. "Did you not know the pain that they were going to put me through?"

  His hands trembled as he pointed the revolver at her, but she did not seem afraid at all. Instead, she simply stepped one step closer.

  "It wasn't my fault," he pleaded. "They made me do it."

  She saw that it was a convenient lie, yet she could hear every beat of his heart, and she could smell every drop of sweat that his body produced. As though that was not enough, she could also detect the quivering in his voice, along with the inconsistencies in the natural tone, which she could feel the moment that she entered the room.

  "That gun is too heavy," she told him, and his hands quickly dropped down to the desk as though the gun weighed a ton, yet he began to realize what she had done.

  "They needed me for the hypnotic suggestion part," he said as he began to smile, and lift the gun from the table, only to point it directly at her once more, though her response took him by surprise.

  "How can you live with yourself?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Understanding

  As Charlie began to examine the computer, he was relieved that he was the one to do so. If it had been someone else, they might discover what he had done, but now he could easily cover his tracks.

  At first, everything seemed normal, other than the fact that the security footage showed that Viper was still there, and he knew better than anyone that she most certainly was not. However, as he began to dig a bit deeper, he discovered just how talented she had become.

  He soon realized that he would not have to cover up anything, for she had done a far better job of it than he ever could have, and ten minutes later, he had all the information that he needed.

  "You are an amazing woman," Charlie said with a smile before printing up a page, and grabbing it on his way out the door. He knew that the colonel would be wanting to read it for himself, and he was not going to like it one bit.

  As Charlie walked the hallway, he was too excited about how Viper’s computer skills had developed to even try thinking about how they might run off together. Although he was the one to provide her with such knowledge, she had developed it into something that was far beyond his own abilities.

  Just as he stepped into the colonel's office, the phone rang, and the weathered soldier motioned to Charlie that it would be a moment as he answered it.

  "Colonel McClure," he stated as he placed the receiver to his ear. "Make it quick."

  The voice on the other end was that of a terrified woman, and he could sense her trembling uncontrollably as she spoke.

  "Madame Jasmine is dead," she told him, obviously in a state of disarray, "and I don't know what to do."

  "Calm down," he tried to sooth, needing more information to assess the situation. "Just tell me what happened."

  "I think that it was the young, blonde woman who came to see her last night," she told him as she sobbed. "She went up there, but never came down, and the Madame’s 'do not disturb' light was on all night."

  This was disturbing, as the colonel suddenly realized that the situation had gone from bad to far worse.

  "Does anyone else know about it?" he asked her, and was glad to hear that she had just discovered the body, and had called him immediately.

  "Leave the room, and close the door," he instructed, "and tell everyone that she has been put on an assignment out of town."

  "Put lady Saffron in charge," the colonel continued, knowing well that he had to make everything seem as normal as possible,
"and I’ll send some people over to clean things up."

  At this, the woman seemed slightly relieved, knowing that he would take care of things, but it still did nothing to bring her boss, and her friend, back to life.

  Hanging up the phone, he looked up at Charlie.

  "It would seem that no one took Viper after all," the colonel stated with a tone that indicated his worry. "She's awake, and god only knows where, or what she is up to."

  "I know," Charlie replied, which caused a more curious expression upon the colonel's face, "and you are not going to believe what she is capable of."

  "Did you get the security footage," the colonel asked, "so we can at least see how she got out?"

  "No," Charlie replied before pausing as he tried to find a way to say it that the colonel would understand. "It would seem that Viper has hidden it."

  This puzzled him, for Charlie was the very best at what he did, which was why he was here in the first place.

  "And why can't you find it?"

  Again, Charlie tried to find the right words, but found that there was no easy way to say it.

  "She programmed a secondary operating system into the computer core, in a language that doesn't even exist," he tried to explain clearly, "and she hid the files within it."

  Colonel McClure sat there silently for a brief moment before asking his next question.

  "Can't you just erase it?" he asked, knowing only the basics about computers, for he had grown up in an age long before they had much use to the general public.

  "Even if I could, which I doubt," Charlie answered as he laid the printed piece of paper upon the large desk, "I wouldn’t recommend it."

  Putting on his reading glasses, the colonel picked up the page, and began to learn of things that he could barely understand, but the ending was quite clear.

  Hello, Colonel McClure. If you are reading this, then you now understand that I am no longer your captive.

  I am writing you because I needed a little security policy, so that you do not hunt me down. What you have done to me was very wrong, and you should forget that I exist, or everyone in the world will know that I do.