Experiment: Black Fire

Chapter 2

Experiment: Black Fire

{A/N: Here it is: Chapter 2. Please feel free to criticize, comment, or vote! I know that getting started on a story is hard, but bear with me!}

Chapter 2: Bodyguard

She exited the building with a sense of accomplishment. She had done the impossible, the unthinkable. She was taking the first step to freedom. But first, she knew that she needed money. She had snagged all the money she could. But taking money didn't seem right to her. She thought that was strange, seeing how she was responsible to more than a hundred deaths.

It was empty. The street was empty. No people walked around, no one was here. She had planned it that way. But it wasn't empty of objects. She hated the idea that people would die but objects would remain. It was one of the reasons why she had taken to destroying things. But of course, her overlarge memory stored the information down anyway.

She picked up a stray newspaper on the ground. It was slightly ripped but the print was still legible. She looked through its contents. She was on the verge of ripping it to shreds and burning it when a single word caught her eye.

Bodyguard.

That single word formed words, and the words formed an advertisement.

Looking for a bodyguard for young girl. Will give housing. Pay to be negotiated.

She smiled. She had found her source of money. She didn't know the way around the city, or where she had to go.

So for the first time in her short but agonizing life, she memorized on purpose. Her overlarge memory had always been a pain to her, repeating everything that she read again and again to her. She desperately threw all the nonsense stored in her brain away and began with a clean slate. Or so she tried. Her brain rejected the sudden clearing and only threw away some of the nonsense. Then she memorized the street signs, she memorized the buildings around her, she memorized everything of importance. What she got was an overload of information, however, she was satisfied with it.

She somehow found herself at the gate of the Fanning's mansion, though she had no idea who they were or what they had done to have a home that big. Her instincts told her to run away, far away, but she had thrown them away long ago. They could be police for all she knew, or worked for the government.

She had never been allowed outside the walls of the demolished building of where she had lived. She now relished in the darkness that didn't completely engulf her. In the grass that grew on the manicured lawn. (A/N: This is a description by the author--the main character wouldn't know what grass was.) The sky, the coolness of the early morning, the iron gate which stood proudly, she stood in wonder at all of the things that she had never encountered before. She had seen iron before, of course, but not in "gate" form.

She stretched her hands out to touch the cold metal. She traced the engraved "F" for Fanning and traced the design around it with her gloved finger.

She had been warned to never take it off unless she was being supervised. But she had taken it off when she set the building on fire. She had immediately put it back on. The leather glove had been infused with something that was indestructible. It was the only "Black Fire-proof" thing in existence. Well, to her knowledge, and since the geniuses at the lab hadn't been able to figure out something that was equal to its power, she was willing to bet that there wasn't much anything else that could stop her fire. She wasn't even sure where the gloves had come from in the first place.

She pushed against the metal door, frustrated when it didn't open. Frustration wasn't a new thing to her. She had felt it endless times back at the lab. She kicked it with all her might, knowing that it wouldn't open. She knew what security was--it had taken three years to figure out how to get past all the doors in the lab. She had to admit, she could have just burned everything down, but she wanted a challenge. Plus, she wasn't sure what a thirteen year old could have done outside the walls.