Sowing Seeds

Project Shadow

"Vitals on the Project?"

He heard it again. Voices. Sometimes, he couldn't separate them from his own sparse thoughts and memories. Things mostly replayed in his mind, however. These voices were new.

"Blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and temperature all normal."
"It's been steady for 50 years, you'd think we wouldn't need to keep checking on it."

All those voices — agreeing, naysaying — he'd never heard them before. A sudden awareness of wet fur and quills crept up on his skin. Burning liquid filtered into his lungs, keeping him alive. Yet, he knew he needn't anything but air.

His eyes squinted slowly open, seeing translucent orange wavering before a reflective glass. Beyond that, he could barely make out a darkened room, humans in white lab coats monitoring panels; uncertainty, obscurity. He tried to remember how he'd gotten here. The fragments of memories he attempted to piece together were nothing more than confusing baubles of an enigmatic puzzle. But there was one thing... The humans... His human... Her blonde hair and blue eyes, her familial smile that had brightened his mind once, long ago.

Maria.

His eyes shot open, power flooding his bones and streaming through his veins.

"Vitals increasing! Heart rate at 150 beats, blood pressure 160 over 90!"

Maria's blood poured before him, memories becoming a painfully real cogitation. He'd been contained, trapped, encapsulated by brittle glass. Cracks ran through it as he invoked the power rushing inside of him. Liquid poured, electronic beeping screeched wildly, voices screamed and scrambled for answers.

He would happily clarify.

With a single burst, the glass around him shattered and flew, orange life's blood creating a wave along the cold floors below, floors he refused to touch as he floated midair, his finally outstretched limbs free from their fetal prison.

His shoes allowed him to hover, keeping him high above the panicked humans. Some had been thrown to the ground by the water, others pressed buttons frantically on panels, calling for backup or trying to find their escape. He wouldn't allow it. His gloved hands ran along the air, scanning across the monitors below. They burst into fire and electricity, and he did the same with his other hand, destroying the laboratory around him. Humans and their technology; he knew it well, from Gerald and his lab, and...

Maria.

Another burst of power forced its way out of him, sending a field of translucent yellow in all directions around him. It flung people into walls, decimated everything in its path, and launched debris at those unfortunate enough to be awake when it hit them. A single white coat-wearing human lay across the ground, a transmitter in his grasp.

"Project Shadow has escaped its confines! I repeat, Project Shadow—!"

His voice was stopped as he — Project Shadow... Yes, that's right. Shadow. As Shadow grasped the air before him, crushing the man's esophagus and lungs within his enclosed fist. The man dropped the transmitter and reached up for the invisible force that disallowed airflow. Shadow brought the man closer, levitating him off the ground.

"Human," he said, voice rasped but strong. "Where am I?" Shadow released the man's windpipe, allowing him to speak.
"Y-You're in the G.U.N stronghold! On Prison Island!"
Shadow's parroted words were calm and poignant. "Prison Island?"
"Yes, I-I swear! Pl-Please, let me go — don't kill me! My family, my daughter—!"

Shadow dropped him immediately, only hearing him thud to the floor, mind wrapped up in explosive thoughts of Maria. He had to focus. Not on the pain of Maria's blood proverbially upon his pristine white gloves, not on the pulse-pounding fear he'd experienced before his apparent 50-year long stasis, but on his forthcoming escape; to the outside world, to the place where humans seemed to exist in spades.