Author's Note:
Hey, like is stated in the description, this is my first real tackle at an extended novel, although I have written some short stories in the past. My biggest problem usually is pacing, so if you are looking for something to give me feedback on, that would be really helpful. Any other feedback is helpful as well, and I'll try to read through the comments as they are posted, and edit as necessary. Happy reading.
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Using the magnificent power of hindsight, I’ve realized something. It might’ve been better for my mental health if I had kept my eyes closed that day, ignored the feeling of paper on my face, and just succumbed to the wonderful death that is freezing to death on the sidewalk in the middle of winter. I know, I know, some of you may be saying, ‘Why not just use this power to avoid the situation that had you freezing to death in the middle of winter in the first place?’ And you would be right, that would be a valid use of my powers. It’s just that I feel like it was this point in my now fairly long life, the feeling of the paper on my face as my eyes opened and beheld the advertised location on the paper, that forever changed my situation into what it is now.
So while I doubt many of you will find yourselves in a situation such as mine, I’m mostly writing this to get this off my chest. And hopefully, if you ever find yourselves on the sidewalk, a sketchy advertisement lying on your face as you lie on the ground doubting the likelihood of your survival, you think twice before getting up, dragging yourself to the aforementioned location, and getting involved in a world you are not ready for.
***
A small but powerful voice broke me out of my self-imposed stupor. “Mao Talbott? The professor will see you now.”
I coughed lightly, standing up and nodding to the woman. She nodded curtly back to me, however as I walked closer to enter the office, she brought her hand up to her nose, and a look of blatant disgust crossed her face. I thought I had gotten used to the looks at this point, but somewhere deep…oh okay maybe not that deep inside, the looks still hurt. A lot. I proceeded to the office, trying not to seem too offended, even though on the inside I had begun to tear up a little bit. The office I entered was small and orderly, a large desk in the center, surrounded by bookshelves that looked to be bursting with binders and folders, which in turn seemed prone to explode with the papers they contained. In the middle of this packed room was a small stout man, two monocles attached to his face as he paced across the room. He looked over and saw me enter, waving me down to sit in one of the available chairs. I sat, feeling quite awkward as I watched him strut up and down his scientific runway, not sure what about his pacing posture had made him seem ready to accept me to the receptionist.
Maybe she just wanted me out of the room, I reasoned to myself, sighing. I didn’t like being self-deprecating, but it was quite hard when I knew my current state was completely my fault. I was a mess, my pants and hoodie barely held together by threads, and the portions that were intact were covered in dried flakes of blood, dirt, and yellowish stains I would be remiss to admit was various forms of piss. I shifted around in the chair, trying to make sure I was touching as little of it as possible as I waited for the man to stop pacing across the room.
It was a few exceedingly boring minutes later when the man finally seemed to figure out whatever he was contemplating, hurriedly scribbling it onto a bunch of post-it notes, attaching said post-it notes to a paper, then placing that paper into one of the overfilling folders. He then turned to me, using the pinky and thumb of his right hand to adjust both his monocles at once. I looked expectantly at him, but he, on the other hand seemed to be confused. He pulled out a clipboard, looking between it and me.
“You are Mao Talbott correct?”, he inquired.
I nodded.
“You are much dirtier than your profile picture led me to believe.”
I grimaced.
“And much hairier as well.”
I self-destructed.
As I began to wallow in self-loathing, the Professor continued along as if nothing had occured. “But I assume that’s why you came to this establishment in the first place.” He began flipping through the papers on the clipboard in a leisurely manner. “Let me know if any of this information is inaccurate, although I doubt it would be. Name, Mao Talbott. Age, 35. Asian-American descent. Divorced by Maria Talbott, but fathered two children, Alice and Kevin Talbott. Former occupation, IT consultant. And now here’s the interesting part.” He grinned as he continued. “Won the lottery, on April, 20XX, and then proceeded to gamble away both his lottery winnings and also many of his other finances, putting him into quite a large amount of debt. This lead to his divorce, and also, loss of much of his financial assets. Even after all this, he continued gambling, seemingly desperate to make his money back-“
“Stop.” I interjected, a strained smile on my face. “I can see you’ve done your research. I didn’t come here to hear about my life. I came here to hear about this opportunity.”
The Professor looked at me, his eyes seeming to glitter behind his monocles. He put the clipboard down, and chuckled briefly before continuing. “I suppose you are right. The opportunity itself is quite simple. You will be provided with both living conditions and other necessities until the end of the experiment. When the experiment is concluded, you will be provided a sum of $1,000,000. If you still wish to continue to help us, we will employ your services full-time in helping perfect our experimentation, which you will be paid a yearly salary of $200,000 for.” He paused here, seeming to be trying to gauge my reaction. I returned his stare, but simply nodded. Even if I was skeptical about this office being able to offer such a sum of money, I was already homeless, and also being chased across the state by various debt collectors. If this offered me at least a means of living, I would hopefully be able to come up with a method to escape this cycle of debt I had entered. And maybe convince Maria to let me see the children. I ruminated.
The Professor, seeing my approval, walked behind his desk and pulled out a very large stack of papers, which I found out seemed to be both the waiver and the contract of “employment”. Being the responsible adult I am, I pretended to read the impossibly long document while I skimmed through it, placing my signature in highlighted boxes where my signature was asked for. I handed it back to the Professor, who accepted it, then took my hand into his own for an impromptu handshake.
“I’m glad you’ve agreed to this Mr. Talbott. With you on board, we have exactly the desired number of test subjects, and can finally begin our testing procedure.” Releasing my hand, he pointed to the door. “I’ll see you soon. I’m sure you will not regret your decision.” He said in a genial manner. I nodded, and turned to walk out the door.
Imagine my surprise, when I heard a small poof, and felt myself collapse to the ground, a small needle-like pain in my shoulder.
Son of a-, was all I could manage to process before I blanked out.
***
I awoke to a dull pain in my shoulder, and excruciating pain everywhere else across my body. It was as if fire ants were crawling all over my body, and my nerve endings were trying to drill holes out from my insides.
“ARGH!” I yelled, struggling to itch, scratch, and tear apart my body in an attempt to get rid of the pain. In some corner of my mind, I came to the realization that I was restrained, but that didn’t stop me from beating my body against the restraints in an attempt to free myself. The pain only seemed to get brighter, and more intense as I awoke and began to struggle in earnest.
“Oh, he’s awake.” I fought fiercely against the pain in an attempt to locate the voice, but I could barely control my eyelids, much less make sense of where the voice had come from.
“His heart rate is reaching dangerous levels now that he is awake. Put him back under.” I could barely feel the pricks of dozens of tranquilizer needles, but I soon felt their effects as I fell back into a deep, fitful sleep.
This process of waking, screaming, and eventually being sedated continued for a period of time I could not keep track of. I don’t know if it was only hours, days, or years, but all I knew was that every waking moment of my life at that time was pain. And then, one time, I awoke, and there wasn’t pain. Only a dull ache that had spread itself throughout my body. I carefully raised one of my eyelids, and found myself in a room with a small bed, a toilet, and a large door, but with apparently no handle on the inside. I carefully lifted myself off the bed, and approached the door. I tried pushing, pulling and slamming my fists against the door, but none of those worked.
This is… a cell. That realization both shocked me, but also grounded me back in reality. I had known coming into this what a sketchy deal this had been. Now I just had to wait and see whether it had been a good idea to entrust myself to this program.
It didn’t take me long to get my answer. The door to the cell opened, and when I walked out, I realized there were three identical doors and rooms in my vicinity. From the one in front of me, a tall woman with reddish-blond hair walked out. I attempted a small smile, but she just gave me a cursory glance before looking around the hallway to get an idea of why the doors had been opened. It was the contents of the other two rooms that had me thinking about flying into a rage.
From the other two rooms appeared a short African American kid with a mediocre afro, who looked like he could be no older than 12, with a frown on his face and his hands held in his pockets. From the other room appeared a fairly tall girl with dark hair, but over her head seemed to be some kind of locked in headset, covering her eyes with dark, tinted goggles. I highly doubted that she was much older than the kid.
They are using… children! What kind of… My thoughts paused as I saw the Professor with two monocles begin walking in our direction, a small smile on his face. That smile ticked me off, and I decided it was time to stop thinking about flying into a rage, and start doing. I ran at him, determined to give him a piece of my mind and a taste of my knuckles. I would like to think I almost made it too, until I was caught from behind by the largest and most solid arms I’ve had the pleasure of being restrained by. Looking over my shoulder at it, I could see why, as it seems I had been caught by a very large robot, that seemed to be built to resemble a bodybuilder. I struggled against it, trying to get myself free, while screaming incoherent words at him mixed with what I believe were things like, “They are children!” and, “How could you!”. What was heating my blood even more was the fact that his eyes never lost that calculating quality, it was like he wasn’t even acknowledging my anger. Things proceeded like this for a few minutes, before I ran out of expletives to use to process my anger. After the Professor was sure that I had ran out of things to throw at him, he simply stated, “Did you believe this was some sort of legal operation? Using children or what not, doesn’t matter. It is a means to an end.” He looked at the rest of the group, motioning for them to follow him. The three each took a brief look at me, draped in the robot’s arms, before proceeding. The woman in particular gazed at me for a long time, her pale green eyes gazing into mine, as if she was looking at a particularly interesting math problem. All I could do was wonder what was wrong with all these people as I was dragged along behind them by the robot.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
We were brought to a large dining room, where everyone proceeded to sit down. Well, except for me of course, since the robot carrying me found it simpler to just sit at the table itself, while I sat on the robot like some overgrown toddler. I knew I wasn’t the only one who thought it too, as the black kid began snickering away at my predicament. When everyone seemed to be seated, the Professor cleared his throat, before speaking.
“Well. Now that you’ve all signed the contracts, and have been subjected to the first stage of the experiment, we feel it would be prudent to give you a bit of a rundown on what will be occurring next.” He paused for dramatic effect, or that’s what I assumed, because there would be no other reason to pause at such a point. Unless he was doing it just to spite me. Which is working. Maybe I’m getting a bit unnecessarily mad. Anyways, he continued, “Each of you has just begun the first phase of your journey to become supernatural beings, or at least, as close as we’d like you to get to supernatural beings.” There was silence at the table as he let the information sink in. Yeah, I know for sure this time was for dramatic effect. An ecstatic grin, like the smile of a villain who got to explain the elaborate nature of his plan to the hero stuck to his face, and remained there for the rest of his explanation. “We’ve chosen 4 beings from various folklores that we feel represent what we want to create. Supernatural Warriors of the future.” He now began to point at each of us in turn his voice beginning to pick up in speed as he seemingly got more and more excited. He first pointed to the dark-haired teenager I had seen on our walk over. “You. Ms. Zaida Chalmers. We’ve equipped you with abilities similar to that of a Gorgon, minus all that hullabaloo about snake-hair and ‘everyone’ you catch in your eyesight being turned to stone. We’ve modified it to be much more suitable for modern battle purposes, meaning anything that falls in your sight will be prey to your stone transforming ability, not just creatures that look you in the eye.” Zaida proceeded to reach her hands to her goggle-covered eyes, and I swore if she could’ve gotten more quiet and withdrawn, she would’ve. This didn’t stop the professor from moving on to the next person at the table, which was the woman who had stared at me earlier. “Ilana. Although all of our projects were hard, you were one of the most difficult, but also one of the most rewarding to create. You are, a Lich! A supernatural controller of the undead and master of, well, for lack of a better term, magic.” The black kid's snickering turned into loud laughter this time, while both Ilana and I had looks of disbelief on our face.
“I… I just don’t believe you.” She finally said after the kid’s laughter died down.
At this, the Professor grinned. “Your belief can be arranged.” He clapped twice, and another bodybuilder robot entered the room, except this time, carrying what looked like a mix between a medieval broadsword and a laser show, glowing lines etched into the blades, and tubes of light jutting out of the hilt. It stomped over to her location, and when she realized it wasn’t coming for a friendly chat, she tried to scramble out of her chair, but failed and tripped over her chair onto to the floor. She tried to drag herself away from the thing, but she was just too slow, and the robot and her both eventually came to a stop, with the robot towering over her. I roared, renewing my struggle against my own robot, but to no avail. The robot simply picked her up, seeming to listen to her scream for a bit, and then impaled her through the chest, holding her up on the sword like skewered meat.
“WHY!” I screamed. I tried to rip myself out of the robot, but it was simply too powerful, and it gave me no leverage to attempt my escape. The Professor looked between me, and the now also shivering kids before returning his gaze to Ilana. I noticed his grin had not left his face, as he continued his talk. “An interesting fact about Liches, is their method of immortality. They basically remove their soul, putting it in something called their phylactery, allowing them to achieve a form of immortality as long as it’s not destroyed. You know, like Voldermort with his Horcruxes.” He chuckled at his joke. “We’ve done something similar, not with your soul of course, as that’s a bunch of hullabaloo, but some parts of you that are equivalently vital.” It was at this point that I had calmed down enough to notice something. There was no blood on the sword. I slowly looked up at the corpse on the sword, and was shocked when it began to move, and I saw the look in Ilana’s eyes made it certain she was shocked as well.
“This… is… I can’t even…” She began to mutter from her position on the sword, shifting slightly about, the sound of flesh scraping against the blade wet in our ears. This is also when me, and the two kids decided it was probably the most convenient moment to abandon our lunches. After we had finished painting the carpet a sickly shade of green, the professor moved on, pointing at the child. “You, Donte, while not the most complicated, were certainly one of the most inspired of our works. You, my friend, are not a single creature, but rather, a creative mix between two. You are a Weredragon.” I could see the kid’s eyes go wide and the hairs on his afro seeming to stand on end at the sentiment. “A man with the ability to transform into a dragon, and also a hybrid mix between dragon and man. But unlike the modern tales of werewolves, we are not relying on simple and stagnant triggers like the moon; that would be highly useless in sustained combat. We will discuss your triggers at a different date.” I don’t know how the kid could manage to go from throwing up his lunch at the display of a woman getting impaled, to getting genuinely excited about his ability to become a monster, but he did it well. Maybe I should learn from him, become a bit more curious about the state of my being. As Donte, Ilana, and Zaida processed their new abilities, the professor finally turned to me.
This should be good. These seem like quite outlandish creatures. I wonder what he chose for me. Maybe, the Loch Ness Monster? The Chupacabra? Or maybe, the Abominable Snowman? Or better yet-
“Vampire.” He stated.
“’Scuse me?” was all I could manage to croak out.
“Mr. Talbott, you are a vampire. Superior strength and speed, and also the ability to create an effective chain of command among his minions. We couldn’t be without a vampire.”
I sighed inwardly at my lack of luck, getting the most overused supernatural creature of the century. I turned back to the Professor, my curiosity again being clouded by my rage. “Why have you done this? Why are you involving children in your experiments? Do you really have no shame?” I asked, my voice and temper rising with each additional word that left my mouth.
The Professor smiled, clapping his hands as more robots began to proceed into the room, depositing what looked to be a five-star quality dinner. I almost found myself getting hungry, until I heard the squelching of the robot letting Ilana off its blade so she could sit back down at the table. I decided to abstain from the food.
The Professor on the other hand, began to dig in, sloppily answering my questions between bites. “For your first question, I cannot tell you exactly why we’ve done this, because you are merely experiments at this point, not loyal members of our team. Just know that you are being developed to help create a new tier of fighters.” He paused to chew a particularly large piece of meat before continuing. “For your second question, as I said before, we are not exactly a legal operation. Also, the method we used to create each of you has similar routes. We needed to see whether there were any adverse effects on a variety of age groups. Also,” and at this point he pointed straight at me, the grin gone from his face. “Do you think you are the only desperate one? The only one who has found themselves in a sticky situation? I’ll return your question back to you, do you have no shame, asking me all these questions, when these kids willingly accepted such a shady deal in the first place?” He stopped pointing at me to resume eating, only pausing to remark, “Sounds to me like you are just being unnecessarily judgmental.” The meal continued in silence, or the professor’s meal anyways, as we all sat and contemplated what this new information meant for us.
When the meal was finished, we all got up, and the robots proceeded to herd us back to our cells. I had ended up walking near Zaida, and noticed that she seemed to be shivering as she walked back. I wonder if she’s cold? Or maybe she’s worried about the situation? I wondered. I placed my hand on her shoulder, intent on giving her some comforting words, but when she looked back at me, my mouth ran dry of words, and I froze for a second as I stared into her eyes. The fear I could see felt tangible, and it hurt my heart. She quickly turned around and hurried off, but not before I noticed that her shivering got slightly more intense. My heart grew cold, and then became hard as my mouth set into a grimace, and I entered my cell.
Seeing those kids, I hated to admit it, reminded me of my own children. The children I very well almost ran into the very desperate situation I was in right now. That look of fear, while I wasn’t sure, was most likely because she had realized what a terrible situation we had entered. I climbed onto my bed, staring at the wall as I decided. To hell with the experiment. To hell with living as a military experiment and letting these children experience such a hell. I was breaking us out.