The Killing: Chaos (Book 1)

INTRODUCTION

I won't forget their faces. Not for as long as I live. Which, to be fair, won't be for much longer. I won't forget what they looked like before I injected them.

I gritted my teeth as they led me down the corridors. I clutched the fabric of my white coat as I walked. One of the soldiers leading me, Sergeant Jay, turned around, smiling slightly from underneath his helmet.

"They can't hurt you. They're on the other side of the glass." Jay said, and he sounded like he was trying to sound sympathetic.

"Glass?" I questioned, my voice slightly wavering. "They're just behind glass?"

"Unbreakable glass," Jay stated, smirking. "They can't see us on the other side." I remember wondering if that could hold them. Hold the 'Z's.

That's what we called them - Zs. But when I walked into that room, I remember wondering why we call them that. Their official name was 'Revenant Beings', but in the lab we just called them Zs. We were never shown pictures, they never described what they looked like to us when they asked us to find a cure. So we just assumed they looked like the stereotypical zombies. Green, slow, disgusting, guts hanging out.

That's what I was expecting to see when I was shown into the room, clutching the briefcase with the hopefull cure in my hands. I wasn't expecting to see five children. Because that's what they were....or at least that's what they looked like. They looked like five, ten year old children. Two were talking in the corner, gripping each other's hands, but I wasn't able to hear what they were saying. One was sitting on the floor, knees clutched to his chest. Another boy was leaning against a wall, arms folded and smirking at nothing in particular, his dark hair a mess, like he'd been fighting. But the only one I'd really noticed was the girl with the blonde hair. She was facing the glass, and even though I knew they couldn't see us, she was looking straight forward, like she could see right through the glass. I didn't look for long, because they way she was looking at us made my stomach clench.

"Is this some kind of joke?" I asked, spinning around to face the guards. Jay stepped forward, gun in his hands, and had pointed at the glass. "Look," He said, "Really look." I shook my head, still convinced it was some sort of weird prank.

But then I looked.

Really looked.

The girl staring at us didn't have blonde hair like I first thought. It was an ashy colour, almost grey. Her skin was drab, with mottled grey spots and her lips were almost white. Her eyes weren't blue, or green or brown, but rather a stone colour so dark it was almost black. They were beautifully horrific. 

I took another step towards the glass, placing the briefcase I was carrying on the vinyl floor. The guards all held up their guns and tightened their fingers around the triggers, but they didn't stop me. I placed my hand on the glass, and gulped.

They all looked like that, the other girl and the three boys. The one leaning smugly against the wall's hair was a dark black, his skin so pale he looked almost translucent. They all looked like that, like they were stuck in a black and white film. 

"Jesus Christ," I swore under my breath.

"Dr. García, meet the five test subjects of Project Chaos," Jay said, taking a step closer so he was standing next to me.

"They're...they're..." I trailed off, unable to really believe that it was real. I mean, I'd been studying them in the lab for almost a year, but in that moment, seeing them in the flesh, with my very own eyes, suddenly it all became very real.

"Revenant Beings," Jay nodded, lowering his gun. "The undead, demons...zombies."

All the breath left my lungs. "They're real," I murmured. "They're actually real."