Barely Human

Chapter 33

Happy belated Easter! sorry i meant to post this sunday but didn't get the chance and then i went hiking monday and just got back from my grandparents house today. so i hope you enjoy!

Chapter 33

I take a few tentative steps forward and immediately a red light appears above the door. I freeze in my tracks and stand as still as possible. I briefly wonder if it can see me but that thought is cut short by a howling alarm. I clutch my ears and wince.

The alarm continues for a good three minutes before stopping suddenly, replaced by a low humming and a creepy woman’s voice. It says, “Casey Hanson. Generation one, experiment. Escaped containment four times. Highly dangerous.”

How the heck does this machine know about me? Highly dangerous? What’s that supposed to mean? And who is the lady? What does this have to do with anything?

These thoughts are still running through my head when the door ahead hisses and begins to slowly open. This snaps me back into reality. I leap to the side and attempt to hide behind a stack of boxes. I can only hope that Sam had the same idea.

When the door is fully open, I see a few shadows, all armed with guns except the one in front. From what I can tell, the leader is female and relatively young. She has brown hair, blue eyes and a thin figure. I have to refrain from running toward her and taking her down here and now, however that idea is quickly discarded when she speaks.

“Casey,” she says. “I know you are here. I’m not stupid.”

“Emma,” I whisper to myself.

She turns in my direction and I try to make myself even smaller. A sinister smile crosses her face and I can’t help but wincing at the expression. Gone is the girl who cried in my arms because she just wanted to fit in with the kids in the cliff. Gone is the child who used to love it when I flew over the lake by our old house with her in my arms. Gone is my little sister.

In her place is a soldier devoid of emotion of any kind.

“Casey. Did you really think you could hide? Did you really think you could just walk in here and- what? - blow up the compound?” she laughs but it’s not pretty. “You’re even more of an idiot than I thought.”

Then she stretches out her arm and the stack of boxes I was hiding behind is gone as if they had never existed. Emma is suddenly in my face, an evil smirk on her face. “There you are, big sister,” she says. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Emma lifts her hand again and it’s like a thousand hands are gripping my body. I am lifted off of the ground and floated in the air, though I have no control over my body. She spins me in circles until I am completely disoriented.

“See,” she says, “you used to be the strongest one out there- the strongest freak. I was jealous of you. You had everything that you could ever want. And I was just the pathetic sister who followed your every move.” Emma snickers and turns to face me. I float closer to her and we are face-to-face again. “Now I’m the strongest, the fastest, the best soldier they’ve got. And you are nothing.”

To emphasize her point Emma tosses me across the room with a twitch of her hand. I crash into a stack of boxes and can barely lift my head before the hands are back on me. In that one second of freedom, though, my eyes meet Sam’s as he is in the corner closest to me. I mouth the word “run” before I am hurled back across the room. I land with a thud and hear a definite snap and a jab of pain in my right shoulder. I don’t want to know what happened but I can feel my wing bent at an unnatural angle. Emma lifts me back up and my left wing just hangs there behind me, useless.