Judgement 8 (Subject Alpha #1)

by D H Sidebottom

  Well, excuse—fucking—me.

  I sneered at him when he spun back round. Wiping my mouth on a napkin Jonah had set on the table, I secretly wished it was him who would walk me through this. I lifted my chin defiantly, braced myself and went after him when he disappeared through the door.

  “OH, NO! NO FUCKING way!” Holding up my hands in defence and shaking my head, I glared and started to retreat, my back hitting one of the rubber padded walls that encased the room.

  They both huffed, Reid staring at me with his habitual bored expression. Heather, the tattooed and heavily pierced bitch in leather who looked like she’d stepped off the set of Sons of Anarchy curled her lip and raked her eyes over me with disgust.

  “Seriously! Reid, no way will this weak little bitch hack this shit.”

  If I had been registering sound properly I would have launched her through the non-existent windows. Instead I stood, my legs wobbling and my heart banging furiously on my ribcage. My gaze refused to move from the hundreds of overhead electricity conductors that dropped from the centre of the domed ceiling and gathered into a nice shiny METAL helmet which apparently was supposed to slot over my head and give me an awesome smoking perm that would last for the rest of my life. Impressed? Me too. Oh, yeah! Fuck—that—shit!

  “Let me out, Reid!”

  “Elina . . .”

  “Oh no, you can stop with the Elina,” I mimicked in his gruff tone, pointing a finger at him, “shit right now and open this God damned door! Are you trying to kill me?”

  “Hopefully!” Heather cut in. I shot her my finest glare and turned back to Reid.

  “What the hell is this? I thought you said you were gonna help me. Sautéing someone is NOT helping them!”

  My eyes widened when his lips twitched and he burst into laughter. As stunned as me, Heather turned to Reid, her own eyes wide as she watched the bulk of muscle double over in amusement.

  “I’m so glad you find me funny! If you don’t hurry and let me out, we’re gonna have an even bigger problem. I need to pee and let me tell you, urine and electricity do NOT mix!”

  He laughed harder, his hands holding his stomach as tears rolled down his red face.

  My heart rate accelerated, my blood beginning the characteristic tickle as it thickened. My teeth vibrated as I watched him bark and guffaw.

  “Uhh, Reid,” Heather whispered, her ever-widening eyes fixed on me.

  My fingers snapped wide, tiny blue sparks discharging from my palms when the power inside me met the sweat adorning my flushed skin.

  “Reid!”

  My veins solidified, telling me my organs were preparing to shield themselves. My vision started to blur, the edges fogging with the white mist that seeped across my eyes.

  The overhead wires jolted and jumped, the energy flowing through them hunting for its Master. Me.

  “REID!” Heather screamed as she dived for him, pushing him back behind a small shielded wall when I let go and fractured the atmosphere in the room.

  I blinked away the fog, my brain snapping back into place. My nostrils and throat filled with the heavy scent of smoke and burning plastic. My backside hurt and I shifted, aware I was now sat on the hard concrete floor with my back pressed to the wall.

  My palms were sore, my skin blistered and red. I looked up at the blackened and still sparking wires swaying loosely in the still of the room.

  Clambering up, I froze when I was met with stares from Reid and Heather. Reid no longer held that irritating bored expression, instead his eyes were narrow and his wide chest heaved violently beneath the black brushed cotton of his shirt.

  “I think I broke it,” I whispered.

  “Ya’ think?” Heather scoffed.

  I backed up when Reid stormed across the room to me, his long legs providing large strides, closing the gap between us in seconds. The rubber at my back was soft when he slammed me against the wall, a huge contradiction to how his hand gripped my jaw, and he pulled my face close to his. “What the fuck was that?”

  His hot, angry breath caused me to choke on a whimper. He pulled me even closer, the tip of his nose squashing mine as his fierce eyes turned to slits.

  “Get out of my head, Reid.”

  His jaw clenched when he came across the firewall I formed in my mind, blocking the connection of our corresponding CPU’s. That was at least something they had thought important enough to teach me.

  “Fuck! Elina, what the hell are you?”

  I reared back, hurt by his hostility. “You know what I am.” I hated the choked, wounded way it came out. “I’m one of you.”

  He shook his head which hurt me more. I so desperately wanted to belong. And as much as Reid pissed me off, he was like me. He was one of the eight. My family.

  I had finally found one of them, one to which I belonged. But his denial squeezed my chest and I gulped back the pain suffocating me.

  “No.” His voice had quietened and I wondered if it was because he saw my ache. “We’re not like you, Elina. We can only control the electricity in the atmosphere, manipulate the atoms around us to feed our energy. You . . .” He shook his head again as if disbelieving his own words. “You not only take from the air, you take from everything, every resource available, including manmade power. You consumed every fucking energy source around, including the generated current through those cables. They were your puppets. They did your bidding. I’ve never . . .”

  He blinked, his eyes tracking the tear that had freed itself and run quickly down my cheek. More followed, until I couldn’t hold them back. “I’m sorry,” I choked out, swiping at my face. “I don’t know. It’s just always been like that. I don’t know.” I turned and pulled at the door. “Let me go. Please.”

  “Elina . . .”

  “No!” I sobbed. “I want to go. I’m sorry.”

  I pulled at the door, frantic to escape their hatred, their abhorrence of the monster in the room. I didn’t want to be different, I wanted to fit in, be with people who understood me. I had believed I’d found something to connect me to this earth, someone who could teach me, help me live normally. But I was wrong. I was on my own, abnormal, a deviant.

  “Let her go, Reid,” Heather urged.

  He exhaled at length and pursed his lips. “I won’t allow you to leave the building.” My heart sank. “But follow me.”

  He passed me, retrieving a key from his pocket and unlocking the door, then stalked back up the stairs. I followed him, disappointed when he came back into his office. I just wanted to leave. I wasn’t sure I could take their repulsed expressions.

  He didn’t stop. Punching a code into another keypad and then pressing his thumb to an electronic identity screen, one of the other locked doors opened. He turned to me. “Come.”

  I didn’t have the energy to retort to the simple command, so I followed him up a set of stairs.

  He opened another door and gestured for me to go through. My jaw snapped open as a huge room opened up. It was as cold as it was large. Long white walls extended so far that I knew this room was the entire area of the building. Shocks of black furniture broke the harshness; a long black leather sofa tucked to one side of the room, a giant TV, and numerous gaming consoles haphazardly tossed with various games onto a long black glass coffee table in front of it. A long black dining table sat to the other side, a mysterious white sculpture sat lonely in the centre. A large kitchen, with of course more black fixtures held one large corner and to the other side, a massive bed, with black scattered sheets.

  Different to the office though, was that the walls held a vast amount of pictures, photographs of people I knew instantly were Reid’s family from their resemblance to him. Each seemed to be organised along the walls in chronological order, two people I presumed to be his parents holding a young boy, then holding two boys around ten years apart in age. A large one was of the two boys flying a kite on the beach, then what looked like a graduation. The farther along I looked, I noticed the older boy disappeared, leaving j
ust Reid and his parents, then just Reid and his father.

  And then I came to rest my eyes on one that had my feet moving slowly across the room towards it. It hung above a gigantic fireplace, fitted into a separating wall between two sections of the room.

  “She’s so beautiful.” I hadn’t meant to say it, it just tumbled from me, my lack of discipline making me cringe. I spun round quickly, mortified by my loose mouth. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to infer . . .”

  “Petra,” he stated quietly, his eyes leaving me slowly to gaze at the large photo. “My wife.”

  I nibbled on the inside of my cheek, refusing to understand what his revelation did to my gut. His eyes held the picture for a moment longer, soft and full of pain, before they came back to me and he shook himself off.

  “Make yourself at home. I’ll be back later.” And with that, he left me in the huge room, more alone than I had ever been.

  “HEY.” THE SOFTNESS OF his voice echoed in my head. I slowly prised my eyes open. He sat on the floor beside the sofa where I’d curled up and fallen asleep. “Feeling better?”

  I didn’t answer. Was I feeling better? If I was honest, the answer would be no, and not wanting to sound like a whinger, I remained silent. He nodded in understanding.

  “I brought you supper.” He waved a plate at me with what looked like a cheese sandwich on top.

  “Thank you.” Sitting up, I took the plate from him and placed it on my lap, not really hungry.

  “You didn’t have to clean,” he said, moving to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer, making me wince when he used his teeth to uncap them, then walked back and handed me one before settling at the other end of the sofa.

  I shrugged and took a reluctant bite from the sandwich, my stomach growling with appreciation, even if it did flip when the cheese hit the bile.

  “It helps me relax,” I replied without looking his way. Placing the plate on the now tidy table in front of me, I greedily gulped down the entire bottle, deciding I needed to get drunk; very drunk.

  He watched me silently as I placed the empty bottle on the kitchen counter and pulled another bottle from the fridge. Opening numerous drawers, I turned to him and scowled when I couldn’t find a bottle opener. Without even having to ask, he held out his hand. I gave him the bottle, wincing again when he popped the cap and handed it back. “I’m surprised you have any teeth left doing that shit.”

  He shrugged. It was my turn to watch him when he walked back into the kitchen, grabbed two glasses from a cupboard and a bottle of vodka from the freezer.

  “You wanna get drunk, then drink like you mean it.” He took the bottle of beer from me and exchanged it for a glass, then filled half of it with vodka and settled back into the sofa, leaning into the plumpness of the luxurious cushions.

  “You have a lovely place.” I copied his pose, leaning back and taking a few mouthfuls of the alcohol before continuing. “Although, I find the décor a little . . . cold.”

  “Don’t need no girly shit. It’s my place and it’s me.” I wasn’t sure if he was annoyed with me but he completely changed the subject. “How old are you?”

  I took a sip of vodka and regarded him over the rim of my glass. “Twenty three.”

  He nodded slowly as if figuring something out. “And how long you been with Judgement?”

  I didn’t like where this was going. I remained silent but he leaned further into me, his eyes now angry with my wariness. “You want me to help you, Elina, then swallow your stubbornness and let me help you.” His voice didn’t match the temper in his eyes; it was soft, almost pleading.

  I sighed. “Two years.”

  He tipped his head to the side for a moment, then budged his body closer. I stared, my eyes widening when he gripped the hem of my t-shirt and lifted it. My heart raced, and although my belly heated, I scuttled back when he yanked at the waistline of my trousers and pulled them down to my hip.

  He tapped the symbol embedded into my skin and shook his head. “Don’t lie to me, little girl. You’ve been with them longer than two years. Your tag reckons at least ten years or more.”

  I looked away, screwing my eyes closed. Panic set in and I stood up, moving away from him and his touch that seemed to burn my skin.

  “Be honest with me for once, Elina, or I can’t help you. And if I’m honest, right now, you need my fucking help!”

  “You already hate me so what the hell? My name is Elina Rowe.” His eyes widened, his jaw dropped and he gawped at me. “And I’m Janice’s daughter.”

  I didn’t like the way he froze, the steel of his eyes burrowing deep, so I carried on.

  “I was born specifically for her to ‘experiment’ with,” I told him, using finger quotations. “You wanted honesty, Reid. Then that’s exactly what you’re gonna get.”

  I grabbed the vodka, refilled my glass and sat back down, refusing to look at him as I stared down at my glass and told him my story.

  “Janice was always unusual. Science, according to her, had always intrigued her. She was obsessed with the senses and the energy both in the air and from generated sources. She met another scientist when she was working as an apprentice in the late eighties. They had a wild fling; he was married but their minds and their beliefs were one and the same. They played around with power. I don’t know, I’m shit with stuff like that. She only ever explained it to me in tech talk, but from what I managed to translate, during one experiment, they found that while a cell was being created, if it was met with a bolt of electricity at an exact moment, it manipulated the foundation of said cell. They fucked, wired the fuck up to the national grid. Fucking like rabbits is this time changed to fucking like Energizer bunnies. Freaky bastards. I still don’t know how they even survived that. Anyway, here I am. The prototype that created you.”

  He just stared up at me, his eyes soft and his teeth gnawing at his bottom lip.

  I shrugged, it was my life, my story. It wasn’t unusual to me. It was normal. It still hurt though, that I was created specifically for the benefit of science and not love.

  “I was four when she first started to inject me with stuff and hook me up to different apparatus. She’d surge my little body with voltages whilst experimenting with each of my senses. Luckily I don’t remember too much from then.”

  He pulled in a deep breath, snatched the vodka and filled us both up. The room was starting to spin, but I smiled, enjoying the feeling and allowing it to loosen me up.

  “I didn’t live like normal kids until I was around ten or eleven. One of our neighbours reported me to the authorities. It was no great surprise that she hadn’t even registered my birth. From then on, I had to live as ‘normally’ as possible, although I was far from normal. I’d noticed some specific things; how my hair was way too static, much more than the other girls.’ My skin tingled constantly and I’d always notice the lights dip faintly when I walked into a room. I managed to hide this from Janice, or she’d have strapped me to the nearest table and killed me with more invasive tests. I started my periods at six, the shock to my system triggering puberty, and ending in the menopause at eighteen.”

  I flinched. Children had always been something I craved, but she’d even taken that from me. Reid swallowed heavily, his expression softening. His pity annoyed me so I ventured on.

  “And then, when I was about fourteen, it all changed. Nothing had worked, she was still categorising me as ‘normal’ and growing extremely annoyed with me. She upped the game, changed the drugs and altered the voltage, wiring something different into my brain this one particular time. She gave me a blast and my long hair suddenly leapt for the sky. I honestly looked like I’d been tipped upside down. It just stayed there, straight up, me looking like a cardboard cut-out in a hairdresser’s window that had been stuck on upside down.” My heart sank, remembering my life from then on. It all changed and not for the better. “If it had been up to her, she would have dragged me into her basement and refused me the light of da
y ever again. But I stood my ground, refused her any more unless she allowed me to finish school. It was the only thing that was normal for me. I’d made friends, found out I was quite clever, and I enjoyed that other side of my life, a life away from wires and tests and constant fucking agony.”

  My body sighed at the influence of the alcohol and I lifted my feet, curling them under me on the sofa, and finally found the courage to look at him. “She didn’t give me complete control though. To be able to carry on studying, I was to be all hers at the weekends and during school holidays, and when I hit twenty one, I was hers, lock, stock and barrel. All of me. It was enough though. Well, it was then.”

  “Elina.” His voice was quiet, his eyes full of sadness and pity. I shook my head, not allowing his sympathy in.

  “What you need to understand, Reid, is that she is my mother. She was all I had. She gave me life. Yes, I know it was a fucked up life, but she granted it to me. The air I breathed, each laugh, each smile, they were all because she created me.”

  I blinked and lowered my eyes when he slid his hand over mine and linked his fingers through my own. The warmth of him clogged my throat and I snatched my hand back. The pain from that simple act hurt more than anything. Sympathy was nothing; understanding was more important, and I was confused as to which he was offering so I didn’t allow any.

  “What I didn’t know at the time was that she’d sent every single report to my father, who had presented them to the defence secretary. Aren’t we lucky we have such a caring government?” I spat with intense hatred. “They couldn’t fund Janice enough, pushing grant after grant at her and finally giving her the resources to develop a controlled testing centre. A lab for all her little robots to be created.”

  “Judgement,” he acknowledged quietly.

  “The one and only.” I looked at him, narrowing my eyes and wondering how much he was actually aware of. “You do know the government was funding her to build them an army?”