The Overhumans

Prologue: Morana

The day I died the sun didn't even show up from behind the clouds. So it was a day like any other. The dam was hidden behind the fog. I could only see the big lights staring at me like the eyes of a giant beast. And I couldn't see the mountain Krivlach either.

When I finished the work at my office in the presidential palace, the rain started to pour down on our little gray world. It was really dark outside. Sector A had enough streetlights, but that evening the fog was thicker than ever.

I was walking down the empty street in Sector A when someone knocked me out. The night before the incident I had finally finished a story about a girl kidnapped by a mad scientist. He put her to sleep with the chloroform and then experimented on her. Suddenly, I was about to meet the same destiny.

"Sleep tight, subject number seven," a velvety voice whispered. That was the last thing I heard before I lost my consciousness.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself tied to a metal bed in a small basement. Actually, it looked like a slaughterhouse, there was blood all over the floor; the bed itself was covered with stains and the stench almost knocked me down again. I felt a throbbing pain in my head.

The only way out led up the wooden stairs. There were no windows; the only source of light was a small lamp on the other side of the room. Not much furniture down here - just the bed, a table full of papers and books, shelves with a variety of bottles filled with strange fluids, a plastic container big enough for a person to hide inside, and, oh, there were also barrels of sulphuric acid.

So I knew right away. I tried to free myself, but that was of no use. Then the door opened and my kidnapper started to walk downstairs.

You know, I wasn't scared of death, I was about to leave the world on the edge of apocalypse, I lived resigned to the fate which might have come any day. And I wasn't leaving behind a loving family. Rather a bunch of rich big shots who never showed me much affection.

But I was scared of dying. Of being in pain, of being paralyzed, of these kinds of things...

"I see you are already awake," the kidnapper said with that velvety voice as he approached me. "No use in trying to get out of here," he added, grinning at me.

I could finally see him. I expected him to look different, to be older maybe, but instead he was in his early-twenties. Pale, skinny, a bit taller than me. His face would be handsome if it wasn't twisted in a creepy grimace. His emerald irises shined with an odd delight and amusement and there was also that weird too-happy grin. Messy honey-coloured locks fell to his forehead and I could see some gray hair too. His lips were chapped and he kept on biting them while smiling broadly.

A madman.

And yes, he really was (or pretended to be) a scientist or something, wearing a white lab coat with black framed glasses hanging on one of the pockets. And there was also a surgical mask hanging on his neck.

A mad scientist.

Fear rushed through my body.

"I will change your life. You will gain incredible powers. Well, if you really are worthy of them. So you better not disappoint me as those six fools before you did."

He injected something into my arm. My body became paralyzed. Then, he walked to one of the shelves with the bottles full of chemicals and he returned to me with a syringe containing red fluid similar to blood. He injected it into my heart.

"Control it! Don't let it consume you!" He whispered.

I wanted to scream, but I couldn't make a sound. I was in so much pain. In spite of the initial paralysis, my body started to jerk and twitch and my temperature was rising. I gasped for air. I began to vomit blood and it streamed from my nose as well.

When the torture ended, my arms were lacerated. The wounds resembled flames.

He was not satisfied with that.

"This wasn't supposed to happen again!" He yelled, pulling at his hair.

What is going on? I wondered, looking at his face. The face I would never forget.

I began to feel dizzy, the world was spinning around me and my vision was blurred. I knew I had lost too much blood. That man was insane. I wished he was dead. And suddenly I was saying to him:

"I will make sure you die in a terrible way. I will make sure you suffer for what you have done to me! You will seek redemption but there will be none for you. Your life will turn to hell!"

He only laughed.

"The one who will die is you. And I will get rid of your body so no one finds out. This is farewell, subject number seven."

Suddenly, sulphuric acid was the only thing I could think about.

The world was facing the apocalypse, but I was kidnapped and murdered before it could happen.

I died thinking that was it.

That was the end.

But in fact, I died at the very beginning of it all.