Short Stories Volume 1

How I died pt. 2

It happened in a matter of seconds. It might have looked cowardly to them, but the moment I saw a chance I ran back into the house and set off the traps I had in the front. They are set to activate in a certain order. The next ones will be the ones that I have inside the house. The last ones will be twenty yards into the woods and twenty yards into the water. They may be in order but when you look at it from the a bird's point of view, you can see the traps are designed to go out in all directions and to separate everyone.

It's hard enough for some mods to work together. So, once you separate them, there's no way in hell you can get them on the same page again. That's why it's easier to have fewer mods to complete a task. Using this to my advantage, I set off to the east side of my home. There the ocean waves constantly crash against the woods making the terrain unstable and unsafe. Only if you don't you know your way across. With an uneasy path and the water to wash away our scent, my only concern will be keeping the boy warm enough.

Come morning, I'm miles away from my home. Well, my former home. Logically I know I can never go back there. And it's not that I regret helping the child, it's just well it's a little dumb. I know he's not old enough to comprehend the grave of his mother, but if that was indeed the woman who gave birth to him then I would've liked to have taken him there one day. Not so I can necessarily tell him about her since I don't even know her name but so that he might still have a piece of her with him. Unlike me who never found out whose DNA was used for the chamber leaving me to only call the chamber my mother.

I kept moving every two weeks. Never staying in one place long enough to let anyone recognize me. And I made sure I hid the boy's scent. They would expect me to hide him since he has no mod. Instead I hid him in plain sight. No one would guess that he was given a natural birth and no one would think twice about his mod. By the time the scent would run out, I'd be in a different place with a different scent. If by any reason they manage to pick up any of my trails, his varying scent would throw them all off.

Now a toddler, I noticed his intellect starting to grow. I don't mean just because he can say his ABC's or count to ten. I meant higher intellect. At three years old, he was able to finish puzzles containing over a thousand pieces in just under two hours. It was supposed to be just a simple toy for a child. One of those little plastic things that had different colored buttons and would light up in a pattern and you'd have to push the buttons in the correct order as they had lit up. It was three in the morning when I was still hearing the little beeping until it suddenly stopped.

He brought it to me and gestured to the backside of it. He would've still been playing with it had the batteries not died out. By the time he was seven, I would set up multiple board games. Chess, checkers, mancala and even go. Taking a picture of them so as to make sure I capture where every piece is. Afterwards, I'd bring him in and once he got a good look at every one, I'd knock it to the floor. Little by little, he'd pick up each game and piece off the floor and put them in the place that they belonged. Taking another photo, I'd compare to the one I first took. In the beginning he'd be one or two, three max pieces out of place. But after the first week doing this practice, nothing is out of place.

Deciding to take it up a notch, I set multiples of the games. First two of each, then three and then four. Every single time he'd set them up again as if I hadn't knock them down. Ironically, I eventually had to stop with it because I was starting to get confused with all the pieces.

The only thing I can say that was odd about him was that he rarely spoke and he would freak out when he would come into contact. It's not that he didn't know any words or couldn't technically speak, but that he would slightly stutter. After trying and failing to be able to say the word he wanted he would either spell it out or gesture to it. So, I didn't push him to talk if he didn't want to. The no contact one caught me by surprise. Obviously, I've carried him when he was an infant. I gave him baths and helped him get dressed. But when he turned six, he started crying and screaming whenever I tried to give him a bath or carried him to bed.

I put him down quickly without dropping him and asked him what was wrong. He didn't answer with words, writing or gestures. He just shook his little head. I didn't push on that either. He obviously was uncomfortable with it, even though I didn't get any scent of pain coming from him. From then on he took his own baths, I still supervised just to make sure nothing happened to him, and he tucked himself into bed.

It's been eleven years now since he was dropped off on my porch alongside my mail. Eleven years of evading the people that had allowed me to live and now wanted me dead. A decade and one year with the boy. He's matured faster than I had anticipated. I told him what little I could about his mother, the specific reasons why we moved around do much. Not just the general explanation for a child that bad men are chasing us, but the fact that they want him for the way he was born. All he asked me was why. Why didn't he let the men take me when they had come to my house?

To be honest, it's not just the question that was unexpected but the fact that I really couldn't give him a definitive answer. Many mods have tried challenging me and have even trespassed onto my territory. I brushed them off each time and only got physical when they did, and even then I never killed them. Just pinned them until they submitted. So that's not my answer.

In my previous missions, I have helped others who were wounded and needed aid before. But I have never gone against the chain of command. Even if it was to save a life of someone who didn't deserve to die. I respected the hierarchy whether I agreed with it or not. The woman who came to my door despite being injured and with an infant, although undeserving of her fate, she was a wanted criminal. And yet, having never spoken a word to me, she managed to make me go against every superior officer. I left the home I loved and worked so hard for. I don't regret it, but I can't explain that as my answer to him either.

Truth is, I don't have a good answer for him. I just knew that every instinct in my mods told me that I had to protect him. Knowing his endless wandering mind, I know that response would drive him crazy since it left countless possibilities. He would try to determine which instincts in particular caused my need to protect, he would try to evaluate it on a psychological point as well.

Either way, I did enjoy how much and how creative his mind worked. Granted there were some nights I felt guilty for growling at him to go to bed, but if we're talking about countless possibilities then this boy's mind is filled with them. I have never seen someone with so much potential like he has. I wished I could keep all the data I would gather with the little test I would give them. But I couldn't risk accidently leaving something behind whenever we had pack up and move again. There's been a few close calls where I have caught the scent of some soldiers nearby but they never got close enough to get a look at the boy. The only things they know about him for sure is that he's eleven years old, a boy and that he has no mods due to natural birthing.

Anything else is unknown to him. That's how I plan to keep it. For how long, I don't know.