Holmcross Project (Year 1)

Chapter 10: Rafael

Colt stared blankly up at the bright lights above him, listening to the machines around him. "Dr. Tiggs? How much longer am I going to lie here?" He asked, not moving his eyes from the lights. He kept thinking that if he did, they might jump at him. Maybe he'd been lying too long.

"Almost finished." Tiggs reassured from behind a console. She'd said that a dozen times already it seemed. "I'm just getting the last layer of scan inputted."

"Aaaaaaaalllllriiiiiiiight." Colt droned, blinking towards the lights to see if that would make the looming effect go away. Nope, just made it worse. Now it seemed to be moving closer whenever he blinked. Creepy.

Tiggs sighed and shook her head with a smile. "Honestly, you sound like Wesson over there. How old are you?" She didn't really wait for a reply but continued on typing until the console produced a distinct chime. "There!" She removed a data storage device and placed it inside a nearby lock-box in a drawer. She pressed a button and started towards Colt.

Colt felt a whoosh of air around him as the bed he laid upon slid out of the scanning device. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, looking very thoughtful. Tiggs pushed his wheelchair towards him and stopped short when she caught his expression.

"Something on your mind?" She asked.

"Thirty divided by two." Colt finally said, looking at her. "That's how old I am."

Tiggs cocked an eyebrow. "All that time to think about it and that's the best way you could think of to tell me '15'?" She helped him off the bed and into his seat. "Honestly, Colt. You need to brush up on your math skills."

"Seven times two plus one is seven plus x. Answer for x." Colt grinned.

"What about eight? Are you hungry again?" She moved some equipment out of the way and helped him into the hall. "And you still haven't proven you can do math above Wesson's level."

"Wesson reads college-level textbooks when it comes to math." Colt argued. "He's better."

"Goodness, I forgot about that!" Tiggs touched her chin thoughtfully. "That's it then. He must have siphoned your math skills while you slept."

"Math skills? What math skills?" Colt raised an eyebrow and grinned. "All I do is point and shoot."

"Aaalright, meat-head. I've got work to do. Go find something intellectually stimulating to do."

"Yes, ma'am." Colt said with a playful smile as he wheeled himself away.

Tiggs waved and was about to head into her lab when she stopped short and turned back to him. "Wait a minute. You're a sniper! You use math all the time!"

Colt laughed as he turned the corner, heading out into the yard to find the shooting range. As he wheeled in with one hand, he picked up his rifle and smiled. "Let's play."

"Don't play too hard." The attendant said as he passed him by.

Colt grabbed a pair of earmuffs and put them on before wheeling over to a target and taking aim. An almost sinister grin graced his features and then he fired, hitting the body-shaped target right in the head. Letting out a sigh of contentment, he proceeded to fire on the target's heart, both arms, and then it's belly. Were this a person they would be long-since dead; even a demon. After he'd sufficiently murdered the target, he lowered his rifle.

He noticed eyes on him and glanced over towards a figure off to the side behind him. "So, you like watching?" He asked as he pulled off the earmuffs and turned to the figure. "Who are you, kid?"

The kid couldn't have been more than six or seven years old. His hair was dark brown and short and he was decked up in a thick camouflage coat like he had just come in off the snowmobile. He had a light complexion, not unusual here where they didn't get much sun. His ice-blue eyes glanced back at Colt, but otherwise he seemed transfixed on the targets Colt had just been shooting.