Experiment X

23 | A Mission Given

23 | A Mission Given

The late afternoon sunlight falls on the mountainous hill of debris that had once been the building X had only destroyed the night before. Rambling winds whip through clogging, monstrous piles causing torn, yellowed, and forgotten leaflets of paper, flyers, and old newspapers to flap noisily, some detaching drifting in the dusty breeze. Other than these minimal sounds, there are no other detections of life here: it is emptily, and forlornly quiet. Suddenly, near the top of the spilling mounts of glass shards and pebbles begin to rattle. Something is stirring inside. Awakening.

The rifts of dirt and rubble slide spilling ground-ward as the rattling intensifies, and a grimed, bloody hand shoots up grasping at the air. The hand is groping for something to cling to—sturdy, and finds a bent unearthed pipe, and clutches onto the noticeable dent. There is a great pulling, and more debris makes way, parting from the collected hill as more of the tan body emerges, and then the glimmering of the silver suit, and a face appears wincing, covered in encrusted dirt and dried blood. It belongs to Zaden. He is alive.

Groaning, he lifts his other arm and in a matter seconds clears it from being hidden in the ruinous pile of earth and building. He rests there momentarily, gathering his stamina, closing his eyes, before he pushes with all his might his face straining, veins popping into existence on the side of his force, and with a final grunt removes himself from the suffocating mound, rolling down the hill. A cloud of dust arises as he hits the bottom an arm wrapped about his chest, and he cracks his eyes to the brilliance of the light of the sun, squinting letting his eyes adjust. He coughs and lets his arm fall, and rest beside of him as he just lays there exhausted.

The weight of that pile would have killed me, if it hadn’t been for my strengths, he thinks gratefully. He feels the sunlight warm his face, his tan skin, soaking it all in, before he sighs, deciding to get up. As he does shakily, he claps his hands together riding himself of the dust as much as possible, and continues to wipe them on his legs. Suddenly, a thought slams into him like a sledgehammer. My partner.

Number Seven. I hope she is still alive.

But as his brow furrows painfully, something tells him, she isn’t. Maybe it’s in the stillness of this place. The strange silence dwelling here. It’s too quiet here.

He steps forward and something makes a sickening squish beneath his bare foot, which draws him back. Zaden’s eyes gaze down, and widen in horror. His mouth falls open, as he takes in the unsettling sight of Lelani—but only her upper half staring up at him, her last look of terror still plagued in her fair features, in her flung open eyes now dilated and distant. Lifeless. Dark splattering blood and gore trails her bottom end, and Zaden refuses to look any further. His eyes clench together as he feels his insides twist with a tightening pang, tears burning. He collapses to his knees, body shuttering, muttering no—over and over.

He releases a heavy breath of air, opens his eyes, and carefully extends his own hand to close Lelani’s in a sign of respect, of peace. Somewhere in the back of his mind something speaks to him to give this girl, a girl who is more than the victim of a ruthless boy, but a victim of fate that is strangling them all, something savage, and unclear in its being—a proper burial. An act of rebellion. She deserves it, for she did not deserve to die. Not like this. And so quickly, Zaden makes haste.

After scouting the area, he finds a large, modular, bed-like piece of rubble and lifts it from its entrenched placement between the fallen building and a dust-smeared office house with pure ease. Zaden sets the smooth faced brick chunk of wall nearby the upper half of Lelani, and then goes to work. He takes Lelani’s upper-half gingerly and lays her on his make-shift bier, and then reluctantly goes in search for the other half. Finding her legs lost in the guttered ditch, he takes them, damp and blood stained to the bier, and lies them fitting together. He then looks up to the soft blue sky.