Phonetic

The Charlie Signal

Charlie.

I stand at the top of a building. Not just any building - the building that looks down perfectly upon the police station.

I told you; the operatic sirens, the waltzing lights - it's my Bat-signal. It's enchanting. I'm inside the ribs of it all.

I watch her ginger hair flicker excitedly in the wind. Her strides burst with confidence drooling from her shoes. Delta.

I pull my beanie further over my head and suck on the cigarette like it's a pacifier, which it is, of sorts.

You'll wanna watch this. This will be interesting. Delta. The fourth strongest of the twenty-six strolling towards the police station like it's her nightclub. There are only three people who stand a good chance at killing Delta, and fancy myself being one of them. It's perfect.

Everything's so perfectly laid out. Everything's so perfectly designed for the moon, the sun and the stars to be amused with. We're the entertainment, and so, we must entertain.

Delta takes to the stage. Glad I got here in time to watch.

Police officers begin exploding through the glass doors outside, some in swat uniforms with shields to lead them. How cowardly. At least face this sixteen year-old girl head on, right?

What's interesting about Delta is, despite being one of the youngest, she's quite possibly one of the most experienced. She was the first one of us to kill a man.

You see, something the lower letters won't tell you, is that we weren't released because of our 'limitations' as human beings. No, they could've easily overcome such an obstacle, as the Crazies indeed did. Very often Alpha would have these mental breakdowns and huge medical issues, but most just thought he was being his egotistical self. No, most definitely not. The Crazies were adapting him so his body could contain and use such a huge amount of hormones, and it was so strenuous, he began to physically and mentally fracture, but they had their ways around not letting him die.

They were some of the world's smartest, as far as I know. There's no way their prime subject was going to fail.

All of us, the top five, had this done to very specifically significant degrees. Adapted and changed. We are the twenty percent of the phonetics who really can't be called human anymore.

So, if not because of our limitations as beings, why would the Crazies abolish an experiment going exactly the way they wanted it to?

Delta pulls out her gun, the smile drawing from one of her ears to another as she pulls the slide back, and the rubbing of gold reaches my ears. Even from here, five storeys up, I can see her illuminated eyes like a lighthouse.

People are rushing away in droves. A stampede is storming out the city now. At the sight of Delta, people are abandoning their cars and escaping as soon as possible. It's pretty stupid to run. Didn't they ever learn that if you run from a predator, it will just want to chase you?

They're lucky Delta's so distracted, but it's not for long. Delta's one of the best shots there is. She much better than I ever was, but it's lucky we learnt to avoid them, not matter how accurate anyone could hope to be.

She swings the gun as she pulls the trigger, and the bullet curves and hits a swat member, completing swerving around the barricade in his hands and straight into his neck.

"Curveball," I whisper.

And after that, the bullets don't stop flying, and the bodies count doesn't stop falling until finally, the space in clear once again. Her path is clean - clean probably isn't the right word to use.