Inner Predator: Unleashed

Chapter 2

It takes me a second to realize that the loud shifting sounds of metal gears are not the sounds welcoming me into whatever afterlife might exist for beings like myself. It’s not the sound of death at all. It’s the sound of life. Of freedom.

            The wall is rising up, the whole thing, in front of me just lifting and disappearing into the ceiling. That explains the whole lack of a door thing, but it seems highly inefficient and not at all cost effective. I don’t spend too much time pondering the plans of the evil running this place, or the blueprints of how it’s engineered. This is it. This is the moment I never thought would come. 

            Not one to waste an excellent opportunity for escape, I stand up and cautiously walk out of the room. The buzzing, that I now realize is the alarm is still going off, so I assume something big must be up. Glancing to my left and then to my right I see about a dozen other Supernaturals who look just as lost as I’m sure I do.

It won’t be long before someone running this place realizes what has happened and I don’t want to be here for that. I pick a direction and start to move. There’s a chance I’m running in the wrong way, but anything beats staying here. I get a few steps and realize everyone else is standing still as if in some sort of trance.

“Hey,” I shout as loud as I can over the alarm. A few people look at me, one small girl who doesn’t look older than six or seven catches my eye.

Children. I can hardly breath where I stand. I can’t believe they took kids in and held them prisoner. Experimenting and poking and prodding someone who isn’t even old enough to how to spell the word experiment… It’s unfathomable.

Evil is always something that’s been hard for me to grasp. I have trouble believing that anyone is innately evil. Even Housen who held me captive and killed one of my best friends. There was something that set him off. The death of his family. He wanted vengeance. He wasn’t just evil for the sake of it.

But these humans, I think they are. I can forgive them for doing this to me and to other adults. I know it’s twisted and no one deserves what they’re doing to us, but I can work past it. But this—experimenting on little girls. It’s unforgivable.

 “What’s your name?” I ask as I walk back toward her. She looks awful. Underfed and terrified… so we’re both in pretty much the same position, except I have a decade on her. She’s visibly shaking and the white outfit she wears matches mine, except for the pants. Where mine are dry and relatively clean, hers are soaked in pee.

“Penelope,” she says so quietly that I almost miss it over the chaos. My heart breaks in the instant that she speaks. Her voice is too frail and scared. No child should sound like this, or look like this, ever. But she does. I start to wonder where her parents are, if they’re here or even alive but quickly push past the thoughts. Once we get out of here I’ll worry about everything else. 

“Come on.” I take her tiny hand in mine. “We gotta get out of here, ok?” She nods and latches on to me.

I open my mouth to tell her that I’ll keep her safe. I’ll do my best to get us out of here, but I can’t bring myself to make promises I don’t know if I can keep. I close my mouth and her small voice speaks up.

“I know,” she says. “You can get out of here.”

I pause, confused but don’t really have time to think about this. We have to go. Together we run in the direction I intended. A few others snap out of their shock or fear and run behind us. We run down a long hall unsure which path to turn down, but we don’t slow down.

Penelope starts to slow as we wonder through what feels like a maze with no way out. I continue running, practically dragging her behind me.

“In pursuit of hostile,” an out of breath voice shouts. I chance a glance back and see a soldier just down the hall. Two other Supernaturals are just behind Penelope and I, the others have either been captured or split off down a different hall at some point. I’m not so worried about them, they’re all adults.