V didn’t know much about homes other than the damp, colorless walls and concrete ground that surrounded her. She did recall a past, when her life wasn’t like this, but that was a while ago, wasn’t it? Or maybe it was just yesterday…
She hummed, her bloody nails leaving streaks of crimson in the dirt as she drew circles, over and over, over and over… There was the whine of her cell door being thrown open, the clicks of three sets of feet against the ground.
She twitched her tail as she sensed someone standing behind her. Her wings, on instinct, curled forward. In the reflection of the metal that connected the bones of her wings, she saw a man. Or was it a man? It could’ve been a bear, for all she knew. For all she knew! How much she knew… She giggled, the high-pitched sounds echoing off the walls. [nice language/tone here]
“Is she…” The man spoke. “Stable?”
V knew he wasn’t speaking to her. Yet, she turned around, a twisted grin on her face. “Stable?” Her voice was dry and brittle, yet raspy with excitement. The man took a step back. In the shadows of her cell, she couldn’t make out his face, but she could guess he was one of the investors who would sometimes come along to look at her. Since the completion of her genetic modifications, there have been more of them. She stared at him for a moment longer. Her head tilted to the side, her grin fading.
And then she cackled again. “That’s for horses!”
She turned back to the corner of the cell, staring at the empty wall, at the reflection in her wings. She flicked her tail again. Pain shot up her spine at the small movement, but after a while, you become numb to the pain. Numb to everything, really. Behind her, voices murmured. One of the two scientists s who had entered the cell along with the investor was reassuring him of something.
“Don’t worry…yes, experiment…only successful one…yes, unfortunately, no others are available at this moment…”
Oh wow! She was the only successful one! Didn’t they hear that? She was successful, at last!
She had to stop herself from giggling physically. Her parents would be proud of success, she was sure. Or maybe not. Maybe they’d cry over it! Pretty soon, the scientists and investor left the room. She turned her head completely around to watch them—one of the benefits of getting her bones modified, she supposed.
V got up and walked toward her cell door, her wings dragging along the ground, titanium against concrete. Two guards were standing outside, as usual.
“Hello.” One of the guards jumped. V’s eye disk spun; the faint neon orange light sparkling in her left eye made the girl appear even more abnormal. The guard narrowed his eyes, turning away.
What was with this girl and jump scares? He knew her insanity was due to the pain, but they could’ve at least made her more pleasant to look at. He glanced at her again. A messy mop of black hair, big eyes, a petite nose… He guessed she would’ve been pretty if not for the fact that she was an experiment. Anyways, he wasn’t supposed to talk to, about, or with her. He shifted his weight onto his other leg, his gaze drifting away.
V swayed her tail against the ground lazily. The cell was too small for her. Well, not for her, but for her wings. If she tried to extend her wings fully, she’d need at least twenty-something feet of open space. But for now, she kept them folded carefully along her side, waiting like titanium dogs.
If these were truly the scientists who had the brightest minds in the entire world, they’d have given her very, very powerful add-ons.
She hummed, her head cocking to the side as she studied the guards. Full-body armor and giant guns. Oh well.
V’s grin widened before slamming the spike on the end of her tail through the bars of her cell and into the back of the guard who had jumped earlier. He inhaled sharply before collapsing onto the ground, his body now a mangled mess of intestines and blood. Some of the blood was on V’s face, which she licked off of the area around her mouth. The other guard was screaming instead of running. Bad, bad choice. In less than a second, she ripped her tail out of the first guard’s body, spraying more blood into the air, and sent it flying into the other’s throat.
It stopped his screaming, she supposed.
The sudden silence that followed in the empty hall made V pause. Had no one heard the screaming? She knew she was the only prisoner in this wing of the building…but there were still more people, more scientists, more guards working here, were there not?
An alarm started blaring, flashing red lights onto the walls.
V groaned. Of course, there were alarms. She needed to get out of her cell—fast. V took a step back before launching forward and slamming her wing into the bars as hard as she could. She assumed she’d have to do it a few more times before the bars gave fully away, but, with a crash, the door flew from its hinges.
Hmm. She tilted her head again, studying the mess of bones and tendons that connected her wings to her back. If her cell door was this easy to break out of, then they must’ve really bought her whole “insane” act.
In the distance, V could hear the pounding of footsteps against the ground. More guards were coming. She didn’t run; she knew she could never outrun them, never had. Instead, she stretched her wings out, all twenty-something-feet of them, observing them underneath the red-tinted lights.
They sparkled, ever so slightly, in that dangerous way of theirs.
She smiled.
She couldn’t wait to see what she could do with them.
The concrete was stained a crimson red. Across the walls, splatters of red were dripping down. The scent of iron was heavy in the air.
V dragged the final body across the ground, tossing it with the rest carelessly. She looked down at her wings and tail, which drooped tiredly down on the floor, dragging in the pool of blood. The wings were titanium, she knew. And so was her tail. She tried shaking the blood off, but the red smears refused to let go.
Oh well. Not like she was trying to hide the fact that she had just committed thirty-something murders anyway. She peered up at the security camera, giving the watchers a mock bow. For her performance, pretending she was insane. For pretending she was anything less than a genius.
Suddenly, she doubled over, letting out a hiss of pain. They were spinning the disks in her eyes—the ones that made her pupils neon orange. The ones that were supposed to allow them to control her.
She focused on her breathing.
In…
She shut her eyes, the headache that came with the pain almost causing her to pass out.
Out…
Pain pounded through her mind, down her spine, echoing throughout her entire body.
In…
Pure, unadulterated agony froze her limbs, making her crumple to the ground. She covered her body with a wing, not giving the watchers the satisfaction of seeing her in pain.
Out…
Her pulse steadied. Her breath slowed. Slowly, shakily, she climbed to her feet. She stared back up at the camera. The camera stared back, blinking its red light.
They hadn’t noticed, but she had stopped taking her pain meds for six months. Six months of suffering, of sitting quietly through the agony, of pretending the pain had driven her to madness. The torment had made her numb. She had become numb. To survive, she supposed. At least her acting skills were on point.
The scientists had bought her act without much investigation. She doubted they thought she was smart enough to come up with a scheme like this. But if you looked hard enough, underneath that manic gleam in her eyes, underneath that too-wide smile, you would’ve seen it. The calculating mind of a young woman, weighing the risks and the odds, gambling her way through lies and truths.
It seems the odds had tipped in her favor, if only a little.
That was fine. A little was all she needed.
She straightened, flicked her tail. Tilted her face to smirk at the camera. And then she stabbed her tail through the glass, effectively letting it fall and shatter onto the red concrete beneath.
They didn’t need to look to know that she was coming for them.
“Wait…wait…”
The scientist cowered into the concrete wall behind him, one of the only places that wasn’t stained with blood.
V didn’t smile. Her hand—curled around the handle of a gun she had swiped from a guard—didn’t shake. Her head tilted, and her eyes narrowed. “Wait? Wait?” Her words were soft, yet the scientist flinched. “And why should I wait? Should I wait for those twelve years you locked me up in here? For all those times you split me open? All those times you took me apart just to put me back together again?” Her voice rose, her words cracking along the edges.
The scientist curled further into himself, but to his credit, he replied, though his voice shook. “Without us, you would be nothing.”
“No,” V spat out the word. “Without me, you would be nothing.”
And then she pulled the trigger.
