My arm throbbed from the punctures. Each one very precise and neat. “Brendon! Please let me out! I swear I won’t back talk ever again!” I was in it; the new machine with needles. Every time I moved, even the slightest bit, a new needle would shoot down into me. I hated having needles in me! If there was ever a thing to have a phobia of, they would be it.

“Let her go. Now Brendon!” Sam stood next to him with a death grip on Brendon’s shirt collar.

“Alright, alright! I just wanted to test out this baby before we start using it tomorrow.” Every needle slowly pulled out of my body, and the top carefully opened with a hiss. I tried to sit up, but quickly remembered I was strapped down.

Sam’s nostrils were flaring and fists clenching as I stood up with blood dripping down every inch of my body. They were big needles, so they left big holes. It stung as they started to close up, like bees coming at me from every direction.

“Brendon, you should run.” Sam cracked his knuckles and Brendon was gone. It was like a new power had swept over me; no one would mess with me, not even the scientists, as long as he was around.

“Sam, I actually do like having you around.” I half lied, half truthed (That’s my word! Try to say it’s wrong!!). I did like having him around because he would protect me, but only until the ‘Good’ doctor had enough and pushed the little red button that made him try to kill me. Sam was my best friend until he got enraged, then it was a good idea for everyone to run.

“Come on, let’s get you fixed up.” Sam stuck a small needle with a tube into my forearm. Blood started pumping back into my body, making me feel instantly better. I knew Sam wouldn’t hurt me with a needle, but anyone else would’ve been thrown across the room.

He was such a mush head. Why couldn’t he not have named me?! Why couldn’t he just be the jerk he’s supposed to be? Abcde, who ever heard of that as a name?! According to Sam, you pronounce it like Absidy, just spelled cooler. To me it just seemed like he took the first five letters of the alphabet and called it pudding. But we’ll come to the alphabet later.

We sat on my hammock for awhile, just talking. When 6 o’clock rolled around, the research room shut down. That’s the time Sam had been taking me to teach me new things. That night, he was starting to teach me to read. (This is when I learn the alphabet to know how dumb my name is.) I just couldn’t understand why the first letter was a circle and a line put together, or why the fourth was the exact same just with a longer line. None of it made sense, but it did make sense. I didn’t understand these things, but Sam made me understand how to use them. He could make me understand why the cow jumped over the moon, just because he was that good of a teacher.

We sat in that room for a few hours before I had learned enough of the alphabet to start putting letters together to make words. I had already spelt out at, bat, cat, fat, mat, and ball before Sam got so tired he started to fall asleep. His white hair had grown a little bit over the two weeks since he first tried to kill me. Now if his hair was wet and he ran his hand over it, water would actually flick at me.

I carried him back to our bunk and laid him carefully in his hammock. I used to worry about not having enough time to sleep by now, but with Sam around he would make sure I got enough sleep. I made sure to lie down slowly and quietly enough the white braded ropes wouldn’t creek under my weight. It swayed gently for a moment, and the rocking lulled my bruised and battered body into a deep continuous sleep.

“Abcde. Abcde, are you awake yet?” I subconsciously felt something cool brush down the side of my hairline, stroking back strands along the way. I tried to mumble an answer, but all that came out was a small moan. “Abcde, please wake up. I need your help.” I fluttered my eyes for a moment to adjust them to the light. Sam stood over me with a smirk of delight spread across his face.

“Sam? What’s going on?” it took me a minute to register that he had actually woken me up. My hands flew to the back of my head and I bolted for the door. Sam’s hand shot out and grabbed my ankle. My flailing hands were inches from the doorway as I was drug backward and flipped onto my back.

Sam only woke me up on one occasion, that when we were going to fight. Sam always let me sleep as long as I wanted, unless he wasn’t Sam. Only 29846 woke me up of a morning, not Sam. This had happened maybe three times in the last two weeks, and it was not something I was willing to get used to.

His foot pressed down hard on my throat. My hands clung to his ankle, pushing and pulling it in any direction possible. He was so much stronger than me, smarter than me, bigger than me. I never could seem to compare to him, but I had to try. If not for the lab, if not for Sam, if not for my kind. For myself. My vision started to haze over, and my lungs ached with desire. I needed air, I needed life, I needed to breathe!

I could feel Sam fighting 29846 inside, giving me just enough advantage to slip out from under his foot. Sam fell to his knees in rugged breathing. 29846 was dormant again for now, but who knew how long that would last.

He ran his fingers through his hair and cleared his throat. I wanted to hug him, tell him I was fine and he would be too. But that didn’t happen. Sam immediately stood and left the hut. I could hear his receding footsteps before the dormitory door shut tight.

Sam always seemed to have a foreboding attitude about him. Like he knew something would happen one day, something would snap. A walk outside in the fresh air always seemed to cool him down after 29846 takes over. He never seemed to understand that he could help being taken over by the one person in the world who probably could kill me if they wanted. He seemed to think he wasn’t trying hard enough to stop him, but in truth he was just in denial.

My throat still ached from his crushing weight on top of it. I didn’t even notice when I started to rub it. I needed to get stronger to defend myself. I needed…oh who was I kidding?! I wanted these things! I wanted to be stronger, I wanted to be smarter, I wanted to be bigger. I didn’t need any of it because Sam wouldn’t let him kill me; he never let anything happen to me.

I just wanted to show Sam I was stronger enough to stand my own. I wanted him to see I wasn’t pathetic or wimpy like he thought; I wasn’t dependent on him. 96873 was the strongest GE human in the facility. Sam had told me he had ‘fallen’ for her the day he met her because she beat up some guards when they tried to mistreat a youngster. He said he liked the stronger women, the more ‘advanced’ girls per say. AKA he liked the ones who were ‘developed’, but still able to kick ass. 96873 was only 16, but she was twice the human any average human could think about being.

Before I knew it, I was flat on the ground. 96873 had me pinned with my arms underneath her. “Sam’s mine. Leave him alone, or I’ll slit your throat myself, if he doesn’t first.” In a flash she was across the room. I barely had time to lift my head before she was out the door and down the hall. Sam had told me only we would call each other by our names, and now he’d allowed that thing to call him Sam?! What had he done?!

My throat was now an annoying throb, along with the new pain of my shoulder blades from my arms being wrenched back so far. I let my feet dangle off the tiny balcony deck of our top bunk. Waiting on Sam to come around could take a while, and in the mean time I had to watch my back.

Brendon strolled up to me holding a syringe. “35874, time’s a ticking. Come down here.”

“Over my dead body!”

“That can be arranged.” A devilish smile shot across his face, just before I felt something small, round, and cold jab into my back.

“Get or be got, Princess!” a security guard shoved me forward, my arms flailed to catch me, but it didn’t work. I smacked face first into a plastic container with my number written across the top. It was my storage tub. Brendon took the liberty of shooting me up with adrenaline while I was recovering from the fall. My whole body went rigged and limp. The feeling of numbness crept into my veins, making it impossible for me to move. My words were slurred and exaggerated, and my hair filled with the blood from the wound on my forehead.

On the contrary to humans, adrenaline is bad for Sam and me. It actually temporarily paralyzes us, the lasting effect depending upon how much you put in us. Brendon had put about 20 CC’s of it into my blood; I knew I’d be out for around three hours.

I was stuffed into the container like normal, and the guard hauled me onto his shoulder. Since my tub was clear plastic, I had the perfect view of Sam and 96873 holding hands in the shadows. I couldn’t pull my eyes away. He didn’t even look at us as we passed. He was too mesmerized in her eyes, her charm, her everything.

Sam had been my only friend the last couple weeks, and now I didn’t even have him. A single tear ran down my face. I had never cried before, didn’t even know what it was until Brendon told me later on. Water coming from my eyes wasn’t natural, not to me. Fear shot through me instantaneously, Am I dying?! I thought, Why is this happening to me?! I can’t even fight it, let alone survive it.

Since Sam had arrived, I hadn’t gone on any nightly patrols. Meaning, I didn’t know about the new mechanism they had lying around. It was a metallic blue with a burgundy stripe. B.O.M.B. was written across the side of it in bold black letters. Just the word those letters spelt out sent a chill down my spine. There was no way Sam would find us in here. It was impossible. Two men in white masks and white lab coats strapped me onto the cold metal table of the mechanism and then another walked in with a large needle full of some kind of drug. “This is a little something to make sure you feel everything we do to you, but you won’t be able to fight us or break lose 35874.” He said as he rammed the needle into my arm and pumped the drug into my system. Then wires were attached to my chest, head, and sporadically over my body to monitor me.

Suddenly I could feel everything. Every bruise was high-per sensitive, every touch felt like knives cutting into my skin. Then the mechanism started making all kinds of sounds. Fear shot through me faster than the drugs had spread as needles descended from the thing, each one filled with some kind of liquid. As the needles pierced flesh my vision swam with red. The pain erupted on my skin like nothing ever had before. A full days’ worth of testing hadn’t hurt like this ever and it just kept coming. Shot after shot from the needles as they went in and out of my skin filled with different liquids, each one dropping its liquid and my blood from the tip when it finally pulled out of my skin, leaving holes at each injection sight. Then something else extended from the machine that I hadn’t seen before and lined up with my side. A long pole attached to a large funny looking knife, that’s what it looked like. Then it made a quick move and rammed into my side. My vision went black for a few minutes as the thing turned inside me then slowly withdrew pulling at my flesh and poring blood from the tip and my side. I felt another needle puncture my arm and my vision cleared. “Can’t have you passing out on us when we are only an hour into the process now can we.” Said the man in white, which had given me the shot from before, as he pulled the needle out as slowly as possible.

Two and a half hours later I was thrown back into my hut still unable to move and covered in holes and blood. The drugs were still coursing through my veins and I thought I would pass out if anything else touched me. I could barely breathe and I was close to passing out as the men laughed and walked away from the hut. Time passed but I couldn’t tell how much time. Every second felt like an eternity and every minute a life-time. I heard more laughter and footsteps and feared that it was them returning to start a second round. Each step had my heart racing faster and faster. Then a shadow filled the entrance to the hut and froze. Sam had returned.

Thinking back on earlier, how he let the guards just pass by with me. How he didn’t even flinch when the door slammed; just wrapped around her finger. A tear fell down my cheek again. With every step he took, I could feel the vibration on the floor. The pain shot through me momentarily, but continuously. Somehow I still wasn’t crying because the pain hurt so much, more because I had lost my best friend. Sam was always there for me when the cards were down, but the one time when I really really needed him? He was off making googily eyes at some girl. A girl, in fact, that wanted me dead, wanted me out of the way so she could have Sam all to herself.

“Abcde?! What happened to you?!” Sam dropped to the floor and another pain shot through me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, all I could do was look around. As he stroked me cheek with sorrow, another tear ran down my cheek. Sam quickly brushed it away with his thumb, leaving only a warm feeling. He rocked me back and forth in my hammock for about an hour before the last of the adrenaline finally wore off. I was so happy just to know he wanted to be there with me, I didn’t care about the death stare from 96873. He eyes bore deep into mine, filled with a dark chill. There was something different about her. I couldn’t seem to grasp what it was, but something had changed in her since the guards took me.

I decide a smirk in her direction would suffice when he kiss my head gently. Her eyes grew wide and turned ice cold blue. I had never seen a human’s eye change color! They went from a chocolate brown, to a dark blue in the blink of her eye, literally. What was she? She couldn’t be the ordinary GE human I saw every day. She was some kind of monster.

“Sam, maybe we should leave her alone.” 96873 had placed her hand on his shoulder, acting innocent.

“Maybe you’re right.” My eyes blurred with tears and I shoved away from him. I landed on my hands and knees, crawling for the doorway. “Abcde, don’t you’re just going to get hurt. Let me take care of you, I’ll protect you.” He never did think I could stand on my own. He seemed to think I was as helpless as a normal human. Well, he was dead wrong.

I struggled to my feet, and pushed him away if he tried to help. “I don’t need your help. I can do it on my own.” It was still hard to talk, or move for that matter, but I was determined to show him I wasn’t going to roll over because he didn’t think I was strong enough to make it in the real world. It took me a minute to finally reach the doorway, but when I did, I jumped for it. The moment my feet came in contact with the concrete floor, my legs buckled and I face planted. A wound that had been trying to heal, now flowed even more so than to start with. Every inch of my body rung in fluctuating pain, but I pushed myself to keep moving. On a normal day, I could jump a maximum of 1000 feet in the air, straight up. But since I was injured and could barely move today, it took all my strength to jump hard enough to take me to the door. My fingers felt along the surface. Sam was still yelling for me, but I didn’t care. There were jagged edges and disfigurements in the cold metal. People had tried busting out before, but they weren’t a pissed off teenage girl on steroids.

It literally took me two seconds to kick in the five inch thick steel door, opening my pathway to the outside. I was starting to gain enough strength back that I could run and jump a little. The second the door flew off the hinges sirens blared and Sam’s pounding feet sounded out behind me. I took three long strides toward the chain-linked fence. It was fifteen feet tall, but I could clear it easy. I just had to make sure I got past the barbed wire that was closing over the top quickly. It’s like this, if someone breaks out, they have a machine that stretches barbed wire over the whole courtyard outside to make sure they don’t escape. Too bad they didn’t count on me.

With a single movement of my ankle, I was sailing over the top of the fence and landing on the green grass of freedom. The barbed wire finished covering the top just as Sam and the guards got to me. I smirked and walked away slowly as they tried to break the fence, shot the fence, anything they could to get it opened to me. But I was long gone before any of them could blink.

Copyright © 2011 Amanda Woodson. All rights reserved.