Invictus

Chapter 36: Slaying Dragons

The Freaks standing beside Helena looked absolutely terrifying.

All of them wore the same navy colored body suits with combat boots, but that was the only thing made them similar. What made them distinct from one another was that each of the five were hideously disfigured in their own unique way.

These must have been the deformed that Helena had spoken of, the ones who'd been subjected to the horrors of father's twisted genetic testing.

The first was a white haired albino girl with lined tattoos along her wrist and hands; next was a faceless man whose ears, eyes, nose, and mouth had been burned shut. He also had some kind of device drilled into the side of his head; the one next to him, whose gender was indiscernible, seemed to be a combination of dirt and living human tissue. The dark soil atop his skin was crawling with insects; the fourth looked to be another female. She had two slits instead of a nose, yellow eyes, and a forked tongue; But the most frightening of all of them was the young girl Helena had conferred with before walking off, the one with the thinning black hair and six fingers on her hands.

She was something out of a nightmare.

The parts of her face she still had were so badly cut that the scar tissue made her look like she was wearing a grotesque halloween mask. Her eyes and parts of her body had also been replaced with some kind of eerie metal machinery that seemed to be causing parts of her body to spasm.

I nearly gagged at the sight of her.

Helena stopped, smacking her arms to her side and turned back. "You know what, that was rude of me." She started walking towards us again. "Let me give you all a proper introduction."

Helena walked over towards the albino girl. "Freaks," Helena said motioning to us.

"You read minds too? How you know we call each other that?" I asked her.

"I don't read minds. But Eric Kerrigan the psychiatrist from New York does. He's right behind one of those trees back there. He's a useful tool when I want to know what my enemy is thinking, or better yet, what their battle plans are."

We all looked to Trenton nervously.

"How do you think I know about all that awkward tension between you and Miss. Helmier?"

I blushed and turned to Kya, our pained faces meeting once again. 

"You're in way over your head Mr. Taylor. There's an army of us and only five of you. I'll give you all one last chance —"

"To surrender?" Kya cursed at Helena, "Let's get this over with." Two icy knives appeared in Kya's hands.

Helena smiled, "As you wish... this is Bone's."  She then pointed towards the albino woman.

Helena tilted her head over towards the faceless man. "That over there is Houdini. The one with the earthworms all over him is Mud." Helena then approached the girl with the yellow eyes, "This is Snake. She's the one who's been tracking you." She tickled the woman's nose as she walked by her. 

Helena finally stopped in front of the woman with the Halloween mask for a face. "And this is DCCCVIII." Helena lifted up her own hand and tapped the 'IV' burned onto it as she spoke.

"We call her Twitch. Took us a long time to get her right." She laid a hand on Twitch's spasming shoulder. "Still a few more edits to go before she's perfected. You'll enjoy her Mr. Taylor, her spirit's almost as unrelenting as yours. Tore her own face off in a training exercise just to overcome one of her opponents."  Helena chuckled. "Try not to stare to much, she hates that."

Helena began to backpedal away from us, and as she did I felt the rage kicking into high gear. The embers and ash that I'd been dowsing to keep myself from destroying everything, and everyone, around me relit as that uncontrollable anger of mine smoldered.