Alexander and I: 07 Ghost

Ch.1

I woke up, feeling a soft material under me. I flexed my hand, my eyes still closed.

A twitch struggled up my left arm, starting at my wrist. Suddenly there was a strong pain, as my mind searched for a hand, firing impulses to nerve endings that simply weren't there.

I let out a single, short breath. I looked around. On a table nearby, there was a military uniform, it was gold plated on one side, the design layer out on black fabric.

I supposed it was for me.

I stood, my world toppling for a few seconds before righting itself again.

I looked at my mutilated appendage again. The nerves in my wrist flared again, but this time I barely payed attention.

Someone passed in front of me, entering through a metal door on one end of the room.

Miroko.

The man who abandoned me, after he said I wasn't good enough. Dropping me into a place that felt like hell's ninth circle. I waved at him with my stump.

"So I lose an appendage, and you come running back to me." I drawled, looking at him with a disgusted look.

Captain Miroko smirked, rolling forward on his feet. "Do you really believe that, Hertz?"

I scowled at my old nickname. What an idiotic old man. I simply looked at him, staring through his droopy eye sockets.
Did I believe that? That he left me? Yes.

I would never trust him, or anyone again. Miroko smiled as he looked at my mistrusting eyes.

"It looks like you're ready." He said, standing as strait as a rod. My eyes widened, and his eyes glinted painfully.

"Put on your uniform, and come with me. Classes start in a few hours."

Classes?

I looked at the uniform, one that I had seen so many times, it looked like a mirage in front of my eyes.

The dirt was scrubbed from my body, and I was settled into the uniform.

The clean fabric enveloped me like a dark glove. Miroko looked at me, up and down, his eyes narrowing as he looked at my body. My chest puffed out slightly more than it had before he had dropped me into to that hell hole.

The edge of the fifth district. The ruined city full of thieves, prostitutes, and rapists. People with deadly glints in their hearts, and hollow looks in their eyes. Kids who had no legs, or arms that were too skinny, and looked unreal.

I had met the other side of the world. It was so different from where Miroko had trained me. It was the opposite of the bright clean rooms where I killed criminals, so broken compared to the game room where he taught me strategy and chess. It had taught me imperfection, and how to survive like a dog.

Perhaps that's what he wanted. The thought clouded into my head, and I automatically knew it had to be true. My steely eyes turned cold.

"Come with me. We have to get you ready. School starts tommorrow" He said, with a slight smile.

I walked, but not behind him, as he wanted me to before, but side by side.

First rule of surviving like a dog.
Never let your enemy walk ahead of you.

But I didn't miss the accomplished smile on his face.

Chairman Miroko was definitely a clever dog. Perhaps the one of the cleverest in the Barsburg empire.
But he was also an idiot.

He thought I was still on his side. I allowed him to see a small smirk, and as he caught the curve of my lips, his eyes widened, and his mouth disappeared into a straight line.

Clever dog indeed.

He passed me off to a female sklave.

She took off my uniform, replacing it with some boy's black pants, and a a white shirt.
She looked at me, and the two exchanged a few words. She guess turned to my body and to my hair. "Make HER army-ready." He stressed the word her, and the sklave's eyes widened as she understood what Miroko wanted. She nodded, bowing in obedience, and turning, as I accompanied her.

After all, girls weren't allowed in the academy.

She showed my how to compress my chest, handing me a special shirt, my eyes hardening as it pressed down.

she cut my dark black, slightly wavy hair to an appropriate 'boy's length'.

Over the compression undershirt, I put on a white (slightly wrinkled) dress shirt.

Her eyes glided over my stump. "Miroko prepared something for that." She said in a hushed tone.

My eyebrows raised. "My hand? What of it?"

She brought back a black box, and handed it to me, her head tilted downward.

"Please open it in your room, and read the instructions." The sklave said meekly. What a good little sklave.

I put the box between my left arm and my body. I quickly complied to the sklave, dismissing her, and heading out the room without a word of a knowledgment.

In my room, I closed the heavy metal door,locking it from the inside.

I opened the box, awkwardly with only one hand.

My breath caught at the object inside.

It was a mechanical hand. My eyes traced the levers and pulled, memorizing and understanding the way they worked in a heartbeat.

Zaiphon-powered. Clever. It glinted sharply, and I read the instructions before removing the bandage from my wrist, holding the metal contraption a few centimeters above my wrist, taking a deep breath, and releasing zaiphon like I would if my hand was still there.

She hand shuddered, and slight metal spirals sprung from the bottom, burrowing into the pink, unheralded flesh. It burned as it it were in fire, and then in ice. A scream ripped against my vocal chords, and tears sprung from my eyes, but in a second it was over. The nerve endings in my wrist connected to the metal ones in the mechanical hand, and the hand calibrated itself as I told my muscles to contract, sending impulses to move my hand, after a few spasms, it acclimated to my usual speed, and moved as if it were my own.

I smiled, pulling on a single white glove, to hide the whirring gears and glinting metal. It moved flawlessly now, and as I released a small ring of black, saturated zaiphon, it whirred in compliance.

The letters carved into the wall, and I smiled as I read them.

'How boring'

It was close to 7:00, and I exited the manor.

Second rule of living like a dog. Never stay long enough to start caring again.

Captain Miroko has lost control of me. He created the perfect general, but as I matured in front of him, he saw me surpass him.

And that's when he decided to have me killed.