“I’m a survivor!”

The screamed echoed though the room, ricocheting through the thundering music, as I hit the heavy bag again. The staff left me had alone. Abandoned me just like everyone else did. The doctors ignored me because I screamed almost all the time when I was outside my cave. It was the only way though.

Only way to stay sane in a world where there was never true silence. Not for me.

A last slam of the bag sent it flying off the hook to explode over a pale pink plastered wall. I hated that color, too. My egg donor had been girly, liked pink and ponies as a child. Because she didn’t know better. Not her fault, she wasn’t even aware her eggs were harvested when she was a child. I don’t blame her for that, but oh, I blame every idiot that assumes I’m just like her because they stole her genetic material to create me. Blended some ancient thing back into the mix but we look alike.

I knew how they did it, had seen the process in dreams and memories and fucking presentations done to bring new members of the torture team up to date. I heard EVERYTHING, because I couldn’t stop hearing a being.

Well, unless they’re dead, I mused. At least the twins were finely gone. They’d been grating to have in my skull. Pretty damn dark for eighteen, true, but I’m not your normal eighteen-year-old.

Yes, they all say that, but I mean that shit. No, I will not correct my language, I will talk how I fucking like because everyone talks to me without my permission. I heard my grandfather when I was in the womb. Yes, I remember back then. It was scary to hear his voice whispering of realms to conquer when I was strong enough, of worlds to take and races of beings to enslave. You know, normal dad stories. My birth giver was loud as well, especially toward the end. She died while I was still trapped inside her, you know. Stopped breathing, no heartbeat, just dead. They brought her back, of course, mustn’t lose the specimen inside her. Though the idiot that grew me thought they cared about her. MacLeod wanted to know if they’d been spared for their chromosomes or if they were special. If that made their one brood special.

Said birth giver survived, probably because they extracted me early via surgery. Shouldn’t take more than a high school sex ed class to figure out that babies get bigger and if they have extra bits, that’ll take more space. So, to get a good maternal survival rate, take the gods-begotten spawn before the typical nine months.

Did they figure this out? No. Or they didn’t care about getting that maternal survival rate. Probably didn’t care. They suck like that.

I pulled myself up with my tendrils, climbing through my room to the enclosed shower in the back. I’d beat holes into the plaster over rock walls at intervals for me to grab onto. I refused to be caught at ground level in my cell. I slept in the cave I’d torn from the rock with my own limbs. I never slept on the ground. I had plenty of borrowed memories of what happened there, most bad.

They’d tried tranqing me to make me stop. Didn’t work, I dodged the darts because I could hear the guards aiming. Started catching them and throwing them at the guards after the first few. I got pretty accurate before the powers that be gave up and let me decorate how I wanted. It just wasn’t worth all the workmans comp suits to deal with me having climbing notches and a cave. Though what I really wanted was out.

To see the auroras and north stars I saw through #40’s eyes with my own.

To breath in the scent of the sea with my nose instead of #42-turned-Gwen’s.

Sad that it was their thoughts that sustained me when I hated the first for running away and the second for loving my egg creator. They’d never told Gwen about me, the ass, so she couldn’t love me. I think she would have, I listen for her a lot. She loves more than she probably should but, gods, it is warm inside her skull most the time. I hate her because I can’t have her love me, how pathetic is that?

I guess in some ways I’m like other kids though. Don’t most eighteen-year-olds want to be loved? Not that I know any. Not face to face at least. My “sisters” are as fucked up as I am in their own ways, a couple with Stockholm syndrome, a few that are just as hateful as I am, and two that got out. They’re the happiest and Gwen found love. Lots of love.

Did I get that? No, I did not. A slot in the door opened and dinner was pushed in. Some previously frozen dead thing with a side of bland carb things and a piece of fruit. I took it with me into my cave and ate anyway, used to the lack of flavors.

I was waiting, always waiting. Tormented by the endless stream of consciousness of those around me, voices no one else could hear thundering in my skull. The rock around me buffered the noises down to a tolerable volume most nights. Finishing, I tossed the tray out of my cave using a tendril and it slammed into the feeding slot in the door with surgical accuracy. Lots of practice.

I let my thoughts drift and the first thing I felt after many hours of concentrated on the cool nothingness of the stones was panic.

Sharp, straight to the soul panic.

I can’t hear them, I can’t hear them, I CAN’T HEAR THEM!!!

I sat up and slammed my fist into the wall, the pain helping me find distance between myself and Gwen. Something had happened and despite my hate, I was desperate to know. Through her panic, I felt a thread of fury at Daddio? Oh yeah, her pet name for our shared paternal unit. Not that he’d ever been fatherly to any of us and from what Gwen was thinking, he was making things worse on her end.

I could feel the panic in her veins, the cool water a shock to her bed-warmed skin as she dove in. Quieter, I heard the yelling of her wolf-man but she ignored it as she screamed underwater. Her son, the one with the star-fall marking on its side was at her side but she couldn’t hear him like she usually did. Saltwater soaks up tears as well as a mink blanket, I found seeing through her mind and crying in my own den.

She was hurt and in pain, unable to hear her son. I was furious over that. Her not being able to hear her two remaining sons was a travesty. Gwen needed to be happy. She had to be. She deserved to be, even if I hated her for not loving me.

I screamed and lashed at the rocks, the earth before me seeming to shudder. The pain of where my tendrils hit the rock pulled me from my mental journey and I feel back into my own skin fully with a howl of pain. Blood streaked my knuckles and I growled in frustration at the skin’s weakness.

Pulling myself from my cave, I heard warning klaxons going off and with my abilities heard the entire facility erupting into movement. The guard were scared, the last earthquake had led to an escape and another one would mean their heads. The company didn’t believe in third chances.

There hadn’t been an earthquake though, had there?

I stared at my tendril tips, my bloodied fists and the loss of external focus put me back into Gwen’s head enough to hear her keening on the deck of the ship she was on. I wished I could hold her, comfort her, tendril-bitch-slap the one who had taken her gifts and left me with my own.

Her panic was infecting me, my breathing, my body was shaking.

No, I wasn’t doing this.

I screamed as my fists and tendrils slammed into the bare rock below my cave. The earth shook again at the impact, screams of terror audible to my human ears this time. The earth rolled as I took a step back, shattered rock trickling down from the wall.

The lights flickered overhead before dimming. That meant we were on emergency generator power. They’d put in a backup system after the power outage let Gwen escape.

I hit the wall again, feeling bones break in my fist and not caring. The earth rolled again, the ceiling above me shifting. I felt the rock under my fist vibrate up the walls that had been caved from granite formed millennia ago.

A voice tried to whisper to me, tickling the edge of my mind, but I was too focused on this newfound ability. I tapped the wall with my tendrils and felt it shiver, the vibrations giving me information like a dolphin’s echolocation would through water. I could feel how deep under the surface I was. Could feel the depths of the testing facility.

Could feel the lay out of the hallways and doors, where the people in this hell hole were.

This could be useful, I mused, sinking to the floor. My hands were limp and bloody in my lap as I began to laugh. The sound brought a guard to my door and he yelled at me, something I didn’t care to hear. It didn’t matter, not when I could hit the earth and have it shudder at my will.

I could fuck this place up, bring it down around me.

Yeah, and fucking get smothered under the rocks, part of me shot back. That logical part sounded like my egg-donor. Like #40.

I heard humans yelling at my door again, keys going into locks and bars being moved.

They knelt in front of me, holding their hand out for my own.

I glared at the good doctor, my voice harsh as I spoke, “Why are you here, MacLeod?”

“To make sure you’re okay, #40-2,” they said, green eyes focused on the wellbeing of my physical body. I should not be surprised though, they didn’t care about their own daughter as anything more than a test subject. “Why did you hurt your hands?”

“Earthquake scared me,” I answered. Then realized they hadn’t spoken aloud to me. I’d answered their thoughts again and judging from the scowl on that stern face, they weren’t pleased about it. I sighed. “Look, earthquakes are scary, you fucking mad scientist bitch, get the fuck over yourself. Not like I enjoy hearing that you want to bang the new guard.”

A wrathful red stained their cheeks before a hand flew toward my face. For the first time, I caught it with a tendril and snapped the wrist in a quick movement. There was a gasp before I slapped them, the broken bones in my right hand making me gasp as well. Using their broken limb, I pulled them up to my face, other tendrils going to their throat.

Face to face with my tormenter, I gave a wicked grin full of pain and fury. “You did not welp me, you bitch. I have little love for you. My hands will heal faster than that wrist. Strike me again and I KEEP your hand, comprende?”

“Where did you learn that word,” they asked, always on their science. Even at the expense of their own flesh. I shook the limp I held, grinding bone against bone, making them cry out, “I understand!”

“Good,” I hissed and threw her at one of the two guards that had come in with her. I blocked a dart from one of them with a roll of my eyes. “That won’t work on me, Lucas. You can’t hit me either, so don’t take it out on your wife. Few more hits and she’ll lose the baby then go to the cops. Wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

Mind reading, great party trick, right?

He tried to hit me anyway, throwing his body at mine like an idiot. I enveloped him tendrils, each limb secured as I lifted him in front of me. Using the fool like a battering ram, I slammed him into the door until someone on the other side opened it. Taking my shield I walked out the newly opened portal.

Dr MacLeod yelled something behind me but I slammed the door shut, the bar on the outside falling with the finality of a guillotine. My new shield, that I took with me as I walked toward the guard station.

Gwen didn’t kill anyone when she left, though she’d hurt a few. I killed a few and hurt a great deal more as I made my way deeper into the facility. They expected me to go up and the camera’s weren’t working apparently. At least that’s what the control room people were yelling, so loud I could hear each word as if I stood in the room.

“Close the gates! She can’t escape!”

“Primary doors, sealed. Secondary doors sealed.”

“Dog teams ready in front of primary doors.”

“Stairwell doors sealed, she can’t go up. Who has a visual?”

Of course, I wasn’t going up. Not yet anyway.

I was going down, deep into the depths of the facility. Past the parts that had been covered over in plaster, past the eggshell paint. Into the areas painted maintenance green and blue. Past where the HVAC systems cleaned the smell from the geothermal systems that powered the facility.

My shield was unconscious from pain and tranq darts. I stripped its utility belt off with a couple of tendrils then threw the corpse at my chasers as I bolted further down, the air growing hotter as I went. My feet stung for the first few steps before the skin thickened. My lungs were seized with heat before relaxing, accepting the warmth.

The doors to the cavern that held the geothermal power plant gave easily under my tendrils. My hands were broken to the point of near uselessness, though they’d healed. I’d healed everything else done to me over the years, before I grew strong enough to keep everyone away from me. Before I got smart enough to fool them into thinking I was a mad, but docile, thing.

Memories from the engineer’s mind came back to me and I looked for the cracks that had been fitted with heavy pipes. I stood on the edge of the great crevice, nothing but darkness below with wafts of damp heat rising. I looked over my shoulder as the door behind me slamming open again. Theme of my fuckin’ night.

I gave a jaunty wave of a tendril before throwing myself into the abyss at my feet. If it killed me, at least I wouldn’t have to hear anyone else’s pain. If I lived…

Tendrils grabbed at cracks in the rock as I fell, body slamming into the pipe a couple of times before I grabbed onto it, slowing my fall but burning my skin against the hot metal. I bit my lip to stifle the screams that wanted to pour out and threw myself away from the pipe the second the crevasse widened.

Freefall. I’d never known anything like the weightless feeling with my own flesh.

A thundering impact as I hit the rock wall to slide down its curving slope. The crevice opened into a cavern, the sloping wall slowing my descent into bruising instead of breaking. I rolled to a stop an eternity later, flying ass over teakettle until I bled off enough momentum to stop.

I stood, chips of rock falling from my long silvery hair. There was no natural light in the cavern, but I could feel the rock around me. I could feel the depths of the scalding lake nearby that heated the water in the lead pipe before it returned to the surface.

A shift in the air guided me to a tunnel leading away from the pipes, from where man had shoved his will into the earth for his purposes. I walked into that tunnel with a limp, my right knee complaining about an injury taken during the fall. Once in the tunnel, I used my tendrils to brace against the wall and kept going.

Staying would be a slow death and I was not going to accept that.

There was a way out, the rock told me so in its steady whisper through my tendrils.