Project Rebirth #CreatureFeature

Part Two

He was playing God.

And he knew it, he relished in it.

The thrill of being the one in control.

Deciding which person to pluck from the streets, the one who would die at his hand. He was twisting fate, and he knew sooner or later bad karma would catch up to him.

The November cold stung his fingertips as he adjusted the needle in his pocket and kept walking. One dose of the Pariah gene inhibitor combined with a powerful sedative. Powerful enough to keep him in control and not the other way round. He kept his gaze low and turned up the collar on his navy trench coat as he recited the plan in his head.

Mere minutes after he'd failed to appear in the cremation chamber the red protocol had been initiated and the building had gone into lock-down. There was only so many minutes he could evade the police, evade the elite Reaper squad even, and a man of his calibre, a scientist no less, knew that sod's law always caught up to you in the end.

He had chosen his target, a young woman whose name he didn't want to remember. Forever twenty-eight years old. He didn't know her, not personally, but he could recite the woman's file from memory like it was his favourite book. He'd studied it before and tossed it aside in his lab back in the blacksite to be buried deep among all his other science experiments. She was a Pariah, there was no doubt about that. He'd termed her as a Generation Zero Pariah, coined the term on some whim and caffeine infused notion. Someone who existed before the explosion.

The ones that came before.

He had never kidnapped someone before, imprisoning Subject Twelve was different, it was for her safety. Yet his hands trembled and shook like some amature. He smiled at that, Alice had always called him 'her paradox' the man too qualified for her and yet too ignorant about the nature of his work. The government gave him firm instructions: protect her, monitor her, die for her. How was he to know she would jump? She was his experiment, and he was her keeper. He loved her the way a man loved his wife.

The streets were slick with slush from the sleet that drizzled from the sky, it softened the sound of his boots upon the pavement as he closed in on his target. She was only ten metres in front of him, waiting for a bus, her hands deep in her pockets and her headphones tucked in her ears.

Perfect, the beast inside of him crooned.

He stepped up to her and sat down on the bench, she glanced at him but said no more.

"The buses are late tonight," he said, nodding at the notice board. "I can give you a ride, if you like?"

She cautiously took out a headphone and eyed him up. He smiled gently, keeping his body very still, waves of fright rolled off her the second they made eye-contact.

Ah, there it is. Those signature silver flecks in her eyes.

I know what you are.

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice sounded off, tight.

He lunged, he didn't want to draw it out any longer. Driving his arm up and through her scarf he impaled the needle into her throat, pushing it flush against her skin as he pulled her forwards onto his lap. She struggled, her nails slicing across his cheek as she thumped and thumped his chest until each strike got weaker. The drug working its magic through her system. Gradually she slumped against him, her eyes glassy and distant, fully reclaimed by the medicine. The whole act was over in less than ten seconds.

He quickly pocketed the needle and pulled out his car keys. Was anyone watching? Were the police coming? His gaze flickered at the crowd wandering the street around him, the happy group of Christmas shoppers didn't seem to notice them.

They were just a couple waiting for a bus after all.

And as quickly as he had drugged her, they disappeared into the shadows.