The First: EVO Uprising

by Kipjo Ewers

  She slowly descended into the big cat section of her preserve. It was not long before a young male South China Tiger walked up to her growling. He playfully jumped up placing his massive paws on her shoulders while trying to sink his teeth into her impervious skin. Sophia shook her head scratching him around the back of his ear.

  “How are you doing Butch?” she spoke baby talk to him. “You being good?”

  She pulled him off, setting him back down on his feet. He, in turn, rolled on his back where she rubbed his belly.

  “Head on back to Gloria, big boy.” She gave him a pat. “I’ll see you later.”

  She walked off leaving him laying there watching her walk off. She tried her best to stay detached to prevent domestication. Her big heart gravitated toward beautiful things.

  Just as Earl confirmed, she found her daughter sitting underneath a tree. Two young cheetah cubs lay next to her as their mother sat watching from a protective distance. She rubbed the male’s belly as it playfully clawed at her hand, while the female found its head resting on her lap. Sophia slowly strolled over catching the attention of the cubs. Though her back was turned, Sophia felt her daughter rolling her eyes in disgust at her presence. The male pup sat up as she neared the tree and sat down next to her daughter.

  Neither one said a word nor looked in the other’s direction. The young male cheetah finally stood up and walked over placing its paws in Sophia’s lap curiously sniffing her. She scratched his chin which got him purring as she fought to form the words in her head that she wanted to say.

  “There’s this nasty habit in Caribbean and Latin American cultures that I’ve always hated,” she began with her icebreaker. “It’s actually prevalent in a lot of other cultures but, in my opinion, it is the worst in those two. When something horrible or traumatic happens to someone, especially children, you’re expected to get over it somehow and sweep it under the rug. To talk about it is to bring shame to the family or opening old and unnecessary wounds. I always thought it was a horrible and detestable way to live, and I was never going to partake in that aspect of my heritage.”

  The young male cub rested half of its body on Sophia’s lap as she gently scratched his ear and neck causing his hind leg to rapidly kick.

  “I don’t expect you to get over this or forgive me for what happened to you.” She slightly closed her eyes. “You have every damn right to be angry and furious because I’m furious too.”

  She paused a minute, expecting her daughter to say something. She slightly braced herself for, “I really don’t want to hear what you have to say”; instead, she felt her shifting where she sat attempting to be more attentive.

  “I always wanted a baby,” Sophia continued. “I had two Barbie dolls growing up and twenty different baby dolls. Cabbage Patch, you name it. I used to run up to pregnant mothers and ask to touch their bellies. I wanted to hold little infants but was too young to hold them, and when I was old enough and could hold them, a part of me didn’t want to give them back. I was so baby crazy I think I scared my mom. I overheard her one day telling a friend she was scared I’d get pregnant once I hit puberty. Probably the reason I was never allowed to have a boyfriend until I was seventeen.”

  She smiled a bit finding the memory amusing now that she was older; the male cub copied his sister and had now fallen asleep in her lap.

  “Thankfully that never happened,” she continued. “As much as I loved babies, I also wanted to be a doctor. I graduated top of my class in high school, again in college, then again in medical school. While doing that, I met and married a wonderful man who loved me and wanted a simple happy life with children just like me. It was as perfect a life as anyone could have. Then it all went to hell in one night.

  “Actually, it was more than one night.” She sighed, correcting herself. “There were signs that things were not right, and something bad was coming, but I just didn’t see it, or I just refused to see it. Then during my trial, I found out I was pregnant with you. I couldn’t decide if it was a blessing or the cruelest joke ever. Here I was carrying new life that I always wanted, and my life was about to be over.”

  Her eyes glowed brighter as tears welled up within them.

  “I decided then and there that I didn’t give a damn about the trial,” her voice crackled. “That for the next nine months I was going to find a way to enjoy being pregnant and preparing for your future even if I was not there. I was going to cherish every day rubbing my belly, as it got bigger, singing to you, and feeling your little kicks. And when you finally came out and I got to hold you in my arms, and kiss your little nose, it felt like it just you and me and no one else in the world… until they took you away from me.”

  Her glowing tears fell from her face, as her voice got raspy; the male cub slightly opened an eye and cocked an ear as he felt his human pillow tremble.

  “I am forever furious because you were mine,” she said. “It was supposed to be my breasts that nursed you, my hands that burped and cleaned you. I was supposed to hear your first words, see your first steps; take you to your first day of kindergarten. And it was all taken away from me. I will never have those experiences or memories. And I am so friggin’ angry!”

  “Then why didn’t you come for me!” Kimberly’s own voice cracked as her tears fell. “When you came back, why didn’t you come get me?”

  “I did, I really did,” Sophia bowed her head. “You were the first thing on my mind when I awoke, and nothing on Earth was faster than me on that day getting to DC. But as I hovered a mile up from the house, I realized I couldn’t take you. I couldn’t destroy your world for a third time. I couldn’t give you a normal life.”

  “But I was never normal!” she shot back. “I remembered seeing you as a baby! I knew you were my mother from then! When I was old enough to talk, I’d tell people in front of the Stones that they weren’t my parents! I’d describe you to them in detail! I’d hear Ms. Stone crying in her bedroom at times afterwards. I wasn’t trying to be meaning… I didn’t know what I was doing!”

  Sophia fell silent as she allowed her daughter to unload ten years of pain.

  “I would go to school and get bullied and teased for being a know it all and acting so perfect,” Kimberly rambled on. “No one wanted to play with me or be my friend. I was all alone until I saw you at that mountain. I knew who you were the second I saw you… and I thought my mommy came back for me. I’m not alone anymore… but then you flew away with that woman… and never came back.”

  Kimberly began to rock as she cried uncontrollably. It awoke the female Cheetah resting in her lap, who looked up at her purring.

  “I knew you were alive,” she said. “Mark and Michelle never said anything, but I knew it. My mommy is the strongest person in the world; nothing could hurt her. She’s going to come and get me. All I wanted was for you to come and get me. But you never came. So I started to think you didn’t want me, that you were ashamed of me because I wasn’t strong like you..”

  “No, baby, no,” Sophia cried.

  She got to her knees crawling over to her daughter, wrapping her arms around her. Frantically, she kissed her forehead as she sobbed. Kimberly wailed uncontrollable as she clutched onto her mother’s arm. The cheetah cubs, now fully awake, lazily watched with curiosity the heartbreaking scene.

  “I didn’t know,” she wept. “I didn’t know. I don’t care about powers and abilities. I just wanted you to have what was taken from me… something normal. I didn’t think I could give you that! If I knew all you wanted was me, nothing in this universe would have kept you from me.”

  Gently she wiped her child’s eyes and raised her chin to gaze into them as she held her.

  “Sometimes adults don’t make the best decisions,” she explained. “Especially for their children. I chose for you, and I shouldn’t have. I should have had the courage to come to you and ask you what you wanted. And in that I failed you, and I am so sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I’m just asking for a chance to make things
right. Let’s start with any questions that you have that’s been bottled up within you for so long. I’ll answer it truthfully and honestly.”

  Kimberly nodded in a agreement. Sophia let her go, allowing her to sit in a cross-legged posture in front of her. She mirrored her as they held each other’s hand. Kimberly wiped her eyes and took a deep breath as she contemplated her first real question to her mother.

  “What am I?” Kimberly finally asked.

  “You are the first superhuman ever born.” It flowed from her mouth.

  There was a bit of pride in her tone that was never there before, the realization that she gave birth to someone so magnificent and beautiful.

  Kimberly’s face had the expression of confusion and fear.

  “I thought you were,” she responded nervously.

  “No I’m not, you know what DNA is, right?” Sophia hesitantly asked.

  “Deoxyribonucleic acid,” Kimberly recited. “They are the building blocks of all life.”

  “Very good,” she nodded. “Your father became an enhanced human due to experiments done on him by the military when he was a soldier. Enhanced meaning much stronger than normal humans, but nowhere in the ballpark of you and I. When I became pregnant with you, the DNA in his gene, that is the molecular unit of heredity of a living organism, became a part of you and turned you into what you are.”

  “You weren’t a super or enhanced human?” Kimberly tilted her head.

  “No,” Sophia shook her head. “I was normal human being.”

  “Then how?” Kimberly leaned in with a look of confusion.

  “You… you turned me into a superhuman.” Her eyes became glassy again. “When you were in my belly, you somehow passed your genes onto me, and changed me from the inside out.”

  “So how come I wasn’t strong like you?” she sheepishly asked.

  “You are very strong. First thing is you are immune to all forms of sicknesses and diseases, so you can’t get sick from anything. That kind of sucks for you because that means you can’t fake an illness to get out of school with me.”

  Her poor joke brought a small smile to her daughter’s face.

  “You have super eidetic memory, recognition memory, adoptive muscle memory, and vocal mimicry,” Sophia began to explain. “The first two mean you can remember and recall everything you’ve experienced in your life in detail. A book you have read, movie you watched, a song you have heard, a flower you’ve smelled, or a food you have tasted. Adoptive muscle memory means that you can perform any physical action after seeing it performed once as long as it is within you physical capability. Those cool moves you were able to duplicate just from watching TV is because of that. The reason why you fell after your jump was because the terrain was different, and you did not learn to adapt to it. Real life is not as controlled as what you see on a screen; sometimes you will have to use common sense and judgment to adjust and adapt to situations like that.”

  “Why am I bigger?”

  “Our bodies heal differently than normal people,” Sophia emphasized on the “our,” not wanting her to feel alone. “When we get hurt we don’t only heal really fast, our bodies create self-defenses so that we don’t get hurt the same way again.”

  “So if I get hurt again, I’m going to grow more?” a panicked Kimberly asked.

  “No.” She patted her hand. “That’s not how it works. Something foreign to your body has to break your skin open entering your body, most importantly, your blood stream. When you fell, some rock and stone got into your wounds. Your cells absorbed and studied the small fragments. They then made your skin denser so that rocks won’t pierce it and hurt you again. The rest of your body had to mature and go into puberty early to help support the weight of your heavier skin. Your muscle and bones became stronger and longer as well as your internal organs. God forbid, if it happens again, you’ll probably only get as big as me. The tradeoff is you’re now stronger, faster, and more durable.”

  “Is that how you got stronger?” Kimberly asked. “Did you get hurt?”

  They were simple words that took her back to bad times for an instant, enough for her to wipe tears again from her eyes.

  “Yes,” Sophia nodded. “I got hurt, a couple of times.”

  Kimberly saw that her question was taking her mother into a bad place and decided not to press further.

  “What was my father like?” she asked.

  “A wonderful man with a big heart, that could make you laugh for days.” Her mother smiled. “You have his eyes and ears. Everything else, including the hair, is me. He would have so loved you. It wouldn’t have mattered what you were, but I think he always wanted a little girl.”

  She moved closer running her hand through her daughter’s thick, dark curls. Her heart quickened realizing this was the third time she was touching her offspring since being with her. Kimberly closed her eyes for a second as if she was one of the cubs.

  “How did he really die?” Kimberly let the question slip out before looking up at her mother.

  Sophia did not flinch or break at the question. Instead, she drew her daughter closer holding both her hands. She leaned in to rest her forehead against hers.

  “Let’s make a deal,” she smiled. “Whether you decided to stay here or not, on your sixteenth birthday… if you really want to know… I will promise to tell you how he died. Right now, I just want to tell you… how he lived.”

  “I like that.” Kimberly smiled with a nod.

  In the middle of their moment, the mother cheetah barked signaling for her cubs to come to her. Obediently, they ran back licking and nuzzling against her.

  “I’m surprise they took to you so well,” Sophia observed.

  “Actually.” Kimberly bit her lip while raising her right arm.

  The right forearm of her wetsuit had teeth and claw marks that went down to her unblemished skin. Sophia let out a laugh, shaking her head.

  “Which one?” she asked.

  “The girl,” she pointed. “She held on just hanging from my arm for, like, five minutes before she gave up. The other one ran up, stopped, and just sat there watching.”

  Sophia doubled over cackling, which became infectious. They sat there talking and laughing into the night.

  CHAPTER 19

  The next day Sophia took an official day off to spend with her daughter. Earl and everyone else gladly stepped up to take over daily responsibilities as she and Kimberly spent time to actually get to know each other.

  They made, and ate, breakfast together. Sophia took her for a proper tour of the village and island. Everyone they met greeted them with a hug and smile; the events from yesterday forgotten as if it never happened. Some broke into stories about how they met her mother and what she had done for them.

  They went on a tour of the important parts of the island from the other parts of the animal preserve, the harbor built for their fishing boats, and the large electrical generator that ran the town.

  In the afternoon, they made lunch and ate. Sophia told stories and showed her pictures of all sides of her family which comprised of Jamaican, Belizean, and Texan heritage. She purposely left out the evil actions of her father’s father, leaving it for a time when she was older to understand.

  Kimberly asked about her eyes and her ability to fly. Sophia first made her swear never to attempt to duplicate the process. Her daughter reluctantly agreed, before she explained her current state of evolution. After lunch, she took her to the far side of the island to display some of her abilities in safety.

  The more her daughter watched her, the more she saw in her eyes the timid little girl melting away, embracing the being that she was. Mixed emotions of pride and concern swelled within Sophia. Although she wanted her daughter to accept and embrace who she was, she also wanted to keep her grounded and on the road to a normal life. The problem was, even Sophia did not know what a normal life was these days.

  Later in the evening, they had a girl’s night in. They gorged on s’mores, popcorn,
and other sweets while watching Kimberly’s favorite new movie, “Frozen.”

  Sophia found the movie entertaining until Anna turned to ice while protecting her sister. Kimberly, who always became emotional over the scene, was shocked to see her mother’s eyes glow and whelm up as well.