Mutant 74

| Drip Drop |

The boy that woke with a stifled cry was the first to see the broken world humankind had left behind... for them.

Drip.

"Stop!"

Drop.

He could hear his icy enclosure melting with a deafening clarity. Every time the ice crackled, it was like thunder booming across the sky. His own breaths, faint, escaped as roars. There was a constant thrumming in the vicinity that he likened to the sound of drums, and just as his breaths did, it tended to quicken and slow in its perpetual pace. His thoughts were so muddled that he never realized this drumming was the sound of his own, beating heart.

Drip. Drop. Drip.

The boy was a ghostly image of what was once strong and healthy. The ice around him was thick, but succumbing, slowly, to the warmth welcomed by the absence of cryogenic mechanisms. Still, his limbs were trapped within a cold prison. Hours prior, he couldn't feel them. He had been lucky back then, the numbness a blessing that had been disguised as a curse. That's what this was, a curse. If the boy could think properly, about something other than the clamor about him, he would wonder who had wished this upon him. Why the world was against him.

If he could think, and remember for just a moment, he'd realize it always had been. Always would be.

Drip. Drip.

He couldn't stop the noise, couldn't cover his ears, couldn't express his pain and sorrow without prompting more of it. So he suffered. All was foreign and strange and barbed with frosty malice. He screamed, and he sobbed—the sounds horrendous and inhuman—but there was no one else awake to listen. To help him.

His left arm was trapped within a frozen cuff that covered the length of his forearm. His right sat atop the ice, fingers curled and layered with a sheet of white. The ice over his chest was thinning and his head laid within a crude depression, some strands of his dark hair moist and matted to his skin while others were brittle. His lashes were frozen shut. To him, the world was nothing but an endless, chattering, bone-chilling night.

Drip. Drop.

Time was cruel. What was hours passed as days for the boy, stretching seconds into wearying minutes. When he opened his eyes, blinking away the stiffness, he thought he was seeing light after days of darkness. He squinted to see walls around him and dim light shining through a distant wind. Above him, he saw flashes amid the shadowy outline of machines.

He saw his right arm within a pool of water and strained to lift it, bending it upwards. Dark eyes wavering, he willed his fingers to stretch, but they barely twitched. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. The droplets continued to abuse his ears, dripping off of what he now saw to be a black platform.

Drip. Drip Dri—

"Argh!" His purple lips parted as he cried out. He writhed hopelessly.

This is hopeless, he realized, now that he could think. There was no escape from the ice, not until it was all gone, not until every drop and drip found its way to the floor below. He hadn't the strength to break free. His patience was already gone. All the virtues that might empower him to keep sane were far out of reach.

There was a tug in the back of his mind—a temptation to give in.

Drop. Crash! Drip. Crack!

The boy flinched away from the clamor, averting his gaze. Only when he dared to look again did he realize that one of the monitors that hung above him had fallen. He let out a delayed shout. The ice surrounding his abdomen was cracked from the monitor's descent, bits scattered across the room. His breaths were quicker, the drumming louder. He shook his head as he squirmed.

Drip. Drop.

Still, he kept trying. Kept writhing despite the strain. He soon managed a kick that sent ice flying and freed his foot. The ice around his thigh loosened, and through pained huffs, he struggled against the cold wrapped about his other leg. He was growing accustomed to the terrible, horrible noise and the incessance of the melting ice, but his strength, however meager, quickly faded.

He returned to crying once his foot slipped against the ice for the final time. The tears blurred his vision, but he didn't have a desire to see the grim situation nor the flickering wires left above with the absence of the monitor. He glimpsed his arm, though. His left forearm was still trapped, the icy cuff barely thinned, but the ice was nearly transparent. Faintly, he could make out a black inking upon his skin.

The boy sniffled, but decided he had one final task to complete before he could give in. For the following few hours, he had something to hang onto—to see what secrets his skin would reveal.

Drip.

His sobs lessened, the ice cleared. The mark became visible and read:

MUTANT 01

He didn't understand what this meant, his mind too foggy to see any familiarity. If he did, he would know one thing: he was important.

The boy watched marking for a long spell, then shut his eyes. He willed his breaths to slow and deepen. The thrumming grew slower. He realized the drums were his heartbeat now.

Drip. Drop.

He allowed the nagging tug in the back of his head to take over, relaxing. He had tried to survive. Perhaps he simply wasn't meant to. All the questions that he could have been asking, about where he was, or who he was, never came to mind. The only thing he comprehended was the coolness of the ice surround him. For some anomalous reason, this now calmed him.

But not for long.

A violent, ear-splitting roar forced his body to jerk upright, breaking him free of the ice that trapped his upper body except for the cuff around his forearm. He panted, gaze darting toward the source.

Shattered pieces of glass danced across the floor, indistinguishable from the ice they joined. The room was darkened by a large shadow moving through the broken window with low, echoing growls. He saw the claws first as they grazed against the floor. Its body was behemoth in size, covered in patches of shaggy hair and blotched skin. There were jaws too, slick with saliva and sharp with canines.

It snarled at him, nostrils flaring with malicious intent.

Mutant One was certain he had no voice left in him to scream with.

He was wrong.