The Seven

by Sean Patrick Little

  "We're going to help you to your feet now, Posey. You're going to feel a little disoriented. You've been out of it for a long time," said Sebbins. Posey had to shut her eyes as they lifted her out of the tank and set her on her feet. She felt motion-sick. Her legs felt swollen and weak. Her feet felt different, too. It was harder to balance.

  Sebbins spoke quietly in her ear, "Take a step, Posey."

  Moving her legs felt different. It took more focus. It was as if her brain was trying to retrain her limbs to move. Posey exhaled and tried to speak. She succeeded in issuing a low moan. "Keep trying to speak," said Sebbins. "I know you feel weird right now. The more you try to utilize your body as you used to, the faster you'll regain control."

  Posey coughed and exhaled again. "How..."

  "We escaped, Posey!" Holly blurted. "We're not at the Home anymore. We stole you and came here."

  "Andy and Sarah stayed back, though," said Indigo. "We're going to back for them as soon as you're well enough to travel."

  Posey shook her head. "How," she coughed again. She couldn't speak above a whisper. "How do I...look?"

  Holly's smiled widened to a forced, pained expression of positivity. "You look...good."

  Holly, you liar. Posey was desperate for a mirror. Since she was a little girl, Posey had always been self-conscious about her appearance; being tall and lanky with almost no breasts and a big, stupid, hideous nose had always eaten at her.

  "Girls, I want to get Posey outside. The sun will help restore her circulation and we'll be able to get her...uh...spread out."

  Indigo looked up at the hatch above the lab. "How are we going to get her up the ladder?"

  Sebbins sighed. "I don't suppose you can just...lift her out, can you, Indigo?"

  "No way. I'm not angry or upset or scared. I don't think I could move a speck of dust."

  "Holly, get up the ladder and get John. We'll use some rope to fasten a crude harness and we'll have John just pull her up and through." Dr. Sebbins turned to Indigo. "Get some rope from one of the survival kits over on the far wall, beneath the bottom row of shelves."

  "Check," said Indigo. Holly scampered up the ladder and John's face quickly appeared in the hatch. Indigo threw him a coil of rope. John quickly tied off an intricate harness and lowered it through the hatch.

  "John," Sebbins called up, "we're going to have to be extremely careful. I'm going to leave it to you to maneuver her through the hatch. Be very careful of her...uh, well...you know."

  "No problem, Doc."

  Sebbins turned to Posey. She put her hands on her shoulders reassuringly. "Posey, we're going to take you outside now. We need to get you stretched out and there just isn't room down here."

  "I can...stretch here," whispered Posey.

  "No, not really. I want to get you in the sun."

  Posey's memory was still fuzzy; she was desperately trying to piece together a jumble of memories. She could see the hallway at the Home; she had been talking to Holly. And then pain. Pain like she'd never known, pain that seemed to start deep in her chest and radiate out through her very bones. Stabbing sensations were still in her mind. But, it was hazy.

  John easily pulled her through the hatch, his strong hands handling her delicately. He untied the harness and cradled her. If she hadn't been so out of it, Posey might have died of happiness.

  Sebbins crawled through the hatch right after, with Holly and Indigo on her heels. "Carry her outside, John. We need to get her out of the shade and into the light; the sun will help her get feeling in her limbs faster. There's that patch of grass down the road. Lay her there. Holly, I'll need your help with her, uh..."

  "Got it," said Holly.

  "What's...wrong with me?" said Posey. "How much...did I change?" Posey saw Holly shoot Sebbins a look. The doctor tried to stifle a sigh.

  "Posey, I'm not going to lie to you. You are very different to what you remember yourself as, okay? I think seeing yourself right now, before you're ready to deal with it physically, would be extremely detrimental to your healing."

  "Oh no," Posey moaned. "How ugly am I?"

  "You're beautiful," Holly said immediately; it wasn't sincere, just fueled by reaction.

  "Get me a mirror!"

  "Not now!" Sebbins said firmly.

  John walked quickly into the sun. Posey shut her eyes and tried to lift a hand up to shield herself, but she was still barely more than a rag doll. John knelt and laid her on the ground, moving her slowly and gently. When he stood up, he shielded her from the sun with his body to keep her from being blinded. The rest of her body was being warmed by the heat of from the sun. It was a cooler day, but the direct rays made her sore limbs feel better.

  "Posey, this is probably going to hurt," said Sebbins, "but, we need to get you spread out so you don't atrophy." Posey felt the doctor's hands as they slowly began working the muscles in her shoulders. One of the doctor's hands slid down to her shoulder blade---and everything felt very, very wrong.

  It was as if her brain had bifurcated into two distinct halves. One half told her she had one set of shoulders, the way it was supposed to be. However, the second half was suddenly telling her that she had a second set of shoulders and that it was perfectly natural. That second half started projecting memories of four arms instead of two and then the fog in her mind cleared and missing chunks of memory slammed back into her conscious mind. Both halves of her brain were fighting for dominance. In an instant, her heart rate shot up and she began to panic. There were memories of things sticking out of her back. What had they done to her?

  A look of concern crossed Sebbins' face. "John, I'm going to need a med-kit out here. Go back and get me one now. Fast!" She put her hands on the sides of Posey's face. "Listen to me! You're going to be okay! Breathe deeply!"

  "What...what happened to me?"

  "You went through the transformation process, Posey. It looks like it was a success."

  "What...what does...that mean?" Tears were streaking down the sides of her face now.

  Holly stuck her face into Posey's line of sight, tears welling in her eyes, too. When she spoke, her voice wavered as if torn between a lie and the truth. "You're an angel, Posey. You grew wings. Big, beautiful wings."

  "Wings?" Posey felt like tossing her lunch, if only she had something in her stomach. Adrenaline, released with the panic attack, was washing pain away from her. She suddenly felt a surge of strength. Her arms shot up and shoved Sebbins backward. There were four limbs on her torso, she could feel each and every one. She stretched the second set---the new set---and the muscles on her back, knotted and tight, fought her, but she was able to sit up, feather-covered wings unfurling behind her like battle standards. She looked down at her feet; they had lengthened, become bonier, more gnarled. Each toe had lengthened and her toenails had become curved and dark like daggers. She was horrified. She wanted to scream and before she could, something else happened---an incredible burst of sound from her throat. Her shriek dropped everyone around her, forcing them to grab their ears in pain. Posey choked off the noise. She saw a broken-down minivan in the trees. Using the panic surge, she forced herself to run to the minivan. Her gait was gawky and uneven and awkward like a vulture hopping over ground. She knelt and looked at herself in the side-view mirror.

  She was ugly. Pure and simple. She had become even uglier and she hadn't thought that was possible. Smooth, downy white feathers speckled with delicate brown spots had sprouted along her temples, curving back over her ears. More were over her eyes like freaky eyebrows. Long, straight feathers grew out from behind her ears, curving down her neck and toward her back, going from white to a dark brown in color. Her irises had grown in her eyes; they were at least twice the size they had been. Eagle eyes. She had a poster of an eagle on her wall at the Home. She used to stare at the large, golden-hazel eyes and think about how proud and mysterious they looked. Now, those same eyes stared back at her in a mirror and she only saw hideousness. She looked down at her arms and saw feathers shooting o
ut of the skin on the backs of her arms, growing back toward her back. More feathers had grown from her ankles and the sides of her lower legs. She shook her wings. No wonder Holly put her in a tube top, a regular shirt wouldn't fit over those mutant wings. Posey began to cry---not a teenaged girl's drama-queen weeping or the petulant bawl of an upset child, but a deep, soul-tearing keening that tore through the air with a razor's edge, cutting all who hear it to the very bone.

  Holly ran to her side and threw her arm around her waist. "It will be okay, Posey. You will be fine. We'll all be fine. You've got us and we'll get you through this."

  Fury suddenly silenced the wail and Posey spun on her best friend, grabbing her by the front of her sweatshirt and almost lifting her off the ground. "You don't know that! You're not some freak from hell!" Posey tossed Holly backward. Off-balance, Holly fell backward hard and her head hit the ground with a heavy bounce. Holly looked terrified for a second, and then her eyes rolled back and her head lolled to the side.

  Instinct flooded Posey, an instinct that hadn't existed before. Her brain suddenly commanded her second set of arms to flee and the wings began to churn. With three strong pushes, her feet left the ground. Another push and she was truly flying, slipping through the air with ease. As she gained height, the extraneous feathers on her body picked up the thermal waves coming off the ground. She instinctively tilted her body and an updraft launched her several feet higher. She curled around in a lazy circle and caught the thermal again. In moments, she was several hundred feet in the air. She looked back at the people on the ground. Her eagle-eyes spotted them easily, focusing with perfect clarity. She could see individual strands of hair on their heads.

  Tears still combing her cheeks, she forced herself to look away. Freaks don't belong with humans. She was going away. She was going to find herself some rocky peak somewhere, far away from people, and she was going to sit there until she died. She tilted her body into the sun and found a stream of air. With her wings spread to the sides, she allowed herself to glide along the air current and slowly rose into the clouds. In no time, she disappeared into the emptiness of the sky, the only family she knew stood on the ground blow, helpless.

  Sarah woke, her teeth chattering and her skin prickling with goose-bumps. She was shivering. At some point, the blanket had slid off of her and rolled to the floor. She had been dreaming tormented dreams of horrific tests, vivisections, and being put on display in a zoo. She sat up on the cot and wrapped the blanket around herself, closing it in front and trying to get warm. Her hands were bandaged, but they didn't hurt nearly as much as they had the night before and the swelling was down considerably. She unwrapped the gauze from her hands and surveyed the damage. There was only a bit of discoloration. She was healing very quickly. She closed her eyes and shivered, concentrating on tightening her muscles. She tightened her thighs until they shook with strain, her toes curled and her legs began to tremble. Her legs were still bound tightly by the cables. If she wasn't a prisoner, why did it feel so much like she was?

  She hopped over to the door of the cell and peered out the little rectangular window that was in the middle of the door. The clock on the wall across from her cell told her it was in the late afternoon. Past the locked metal gate just outside the corridor where her cell was, she could see a couple of guards sitting at a table. One was doing a crossword puzzle and the other was eating some sort of pasta dish. The sight of food made Sarah's stomach rumble. She called out loudly, "Hey---can I get some food in here?"

  She stood up and saw the guard doing the puzzle lay down his paper and get on his feet. He walked to a refrigerator a few feet from the desk and pulled out a tray. On it were several sandwiches pilled high with meats and lettuce and tomatoes, a small bottle of mustard, a dish of mayo, and a gallon of milk. Sarah backed away as the guard opened it with a key. He gave her a half-smile and handed her the tray, quickly closing the door after she took it.

  Sarah collapsed to the floor in the middle of the room and did nothing but inhale food for several moments. The sandwiches and milk were very chilled, and she was already cold, but they tasted amazingly good. She poured mustard over them thickly and bit down hard. Mustard slopped out of the sandwich and onto her thigh. She wiped it off with her fingers. She rubbed the mustard between her thumb and forefinger for a moment. It was slippery. She looked down at her bound ankles. The cables were tight, but they weren't like handcuffs. It was just cable looped around her legs, binding them together. Sarah pushed herself to her feet and looked out the window at the guards. They were still just sitting there. Quickly, Sarah bent over and squeezed the contents of the mustard bottle between her ankles and the cords, trying to move her legs to allow the thick yellow smear to coat everything between her skin and the polymer cable.

  Pulling with her legs and pushing with her hands, she tried to pry her ankles out of the cords. They were slippery, but they were still tight and they were unyielding. She took a deep breath and began again. This time, she could feel her Achilles tendon bulging beneath her skin like a steel rod. Her feet flexed as she pointed her toes. They were like hardened metal. The skin on her feet began to pull and scrape, despite the mustard lubricant, but Sarah tried to block out the pain. She kept pulling and pushing. She gritted her teeth and hissed a breath out between her lips. In an instant, Sarah went from the intense pain of her skin ripping and pulling to the joy of accomplishment: Her right foot suddenly slipped free of the bonds. Sarah collapsed to the floor and used her right foot to push the cables off her left foot. Her legs were free. She glanced at her feet and saw red streams mixing with the smears of mustard. The thin skin on the top of her foot, and a few patches near her ankles had split open. She grabbed the blanket from the cot and held it on the wounds. It hurt, but not badly.

  She stretched her long legs, flexing her toes as she did. She could run now. She needed some blood flow back in her legs, but she knew she could run. She stood and steadied herself with a hand against the wall. She bent deeply at the knee and righted herself. As she did so, she thought of the rest of the group. She needed to find them.

  Sarah knelt and opened the flap in the door again. "I'm done!"

  She moved back a few feet and took a deep breath. The guard's face appeared in the window of her cell and Sarah heard the key in the lock. The second the door began to swing open, Sarah clicked to speed and hit the door for all she was worth. The impact blasted the door open and sent the guard into the wall of the corridor so hard that he put a hole in the drywall and slumped to the ground unconscious. The other guard began to leap from the desk, but Sarah hit him like a missile. She drove him into the cinderblock wall behind him, trying to slow up enough to keep from putting her hands through his chest. He gave a sick grunt and his eyes closed; he slid to the floor in a heap. Sarah hoped she hadn't killed him. She walked back and pulled the keys from the first guard. Keys might help her escape, but she had no idea where to go.

  The hallway outside of the jail area was empty. Sarah listened for noise and could hear a few low murmurs of people talking, but it all sounded like it was coming from behind doors. All the tricks from all the spy movies she'd seen in her life started to pop into her mind. She checked the corners of the hallways for cameras. She let her eyes drift down the length of the hall, and there in the middle of the hallway was the tell-tale dark plastic half-globe that protected a camera.

  She ducked back below the window in the door and pulled her thoughts together. The memory of one of those "mysterious world" shows came into her mind. She and Andy had stayed up late one night and watched this episode about UFOs. It had talked about a phenomena called "rods," weird rod-like images that couldn't be seen with the naked eye, but showed up on film as blurry wands of light. One of the skeptics interviewed showed how a bird, moving at top speed, could show up as a rod. It also showed how, if a bird moved fast enough, it could barely be seen by a video camera. The believers tried to give their side, and show how they clocked the rods at more than 300 miles per hour, mu
ch, much faster than even a Peregrine falcon could dive. Sarah could go faster than the speed of sound. She didn't know where the corridor led, but she reasoned that as long as she kept moving and moved fast enough, the cameras wouldn't even be able to pick her up, let alone some security guard half-asleep starting at a black-and-white CRT monitor. She just had to make sure she kept it under the sound barrier. To create a sonic boom in the hallway would probably not be the safest way to keep a low profile.

  "To hell with it," Sarah whispered. She shoved the door open and blasted out of the jail, in less than a heartbeat she was at the end of the hallway slowing up greatly to negotiate the ninety-degree corner, and then flying up the stairs. At the top of the stairs, she wrapped around and flew down another hallway, her feet barely feeling the cold floors as they moved. Every time she passed a bulletin board or a poster in the hallway, the vacuum behind her ripped it from the wall and left it flipping down in her wake. It felt like she was playing a video game, one that was moving too fast to comprehend. She reacted from gut instinct, not thought. Her legs propelled her down the halls, changing direction before her conscious mind had a chance to register the turns. She turned down a set of stairs and went to the bottom. Ducking under the final set she stopped and tried to get her bearings. She was breathing hard, still unable to get a breath when she moved that fast.

  There was a small map on the wall next to the doorway into the next corridor. Sarah glanced around for a camera and couldn't see any. She snuck over to the map and tried to read it. There were no words on the map, only odd codes with numbers and letters. The numbers meant nothing to her, but she supposed if she were in the military like everyone else in the complex, things like "GS-102" would mean something. The map showed the entire installation, six buildings in a loose U-shape surrounded by a wall. From the outlines of the rooms in the building, she guessed that she was in some sort of office building, lots of small, square boxes in a row. Maybe a hospital? The corridor beyond the doors she was next to led to a new building, a larger one with a large, wide room like a gymnasium or an airplane hanger or something. There was a definite exit in the next building, though. It had to be. It was labeled in red with a fire icon and an arrow on it.