Superhuman

The last time Steven saw his dad, was when he was being hoisted into the back of a van. Looking back to that day made Steven laugh. Seeing his father drunk, waving his Sam Adams bottle through the air as if he was waving goodbye. But he knew he wasn’t saying goodbye. He was just too damn drunk, the lines between what was real or fake getting more blurry by the sip. Thinking back, that’s probably why he had let Steven go. His dad just didn’t know what was happening.

“So, where are we going?” Steven asked as the van doors slid closed.

He noticed that besides him, there were only two other men.

“Don’t ask questions,” the man sitting next to him ordered.

Steven flew backward as the van accelerated away from the curb, not even slowing down at the stop sign at the end of their street. Steven’s favorite red sox baseball cap bounced on his head. Everytime Steven touched the embroidered Red Sox, memories from the past when his family was an actual family flooded his mind. This cap was the only item that his mom had given to him that remained. Everything else had been sold by his father. The van screeched down the street. Stevn’s head crashed on the roof as they hit a speed bump. Steven looked closely at the back pocket of the driver. Something black and shiny caught the reflection of the sun.

“Why do you have a gun?” Steven asked.

No answer.

“I want to get out,” Steven said beginning to stand up.

The man sitting next to him grabbed Steven’s arm. Steven struggled, but to no avail. The man had ang iron grip.

Hey, let go!” Steven demanded.

The man threw him to the ground, slamming Steven’s head to the floor of the van. Steven sat up groggily. Something was put over his head, and suddenly he couldn’t breath. Struggling for air, his arms were flailing around in a sad attempt to grab at anything. Everything around him began to get fuzzy, and slowly his his muscles relaxed and his body went limp.

 

Everything shot back into focus. Surrounding him was a low chatter of voices. The room was dark and super musty. The stench nearly made him choke.

“Steven, is that you?” a very familiar voice asked.

Steven turned his head and his eyes laid on another pair of distinctable icy blue eyes. His eyes closed again.

 

Slipping in and out of consciousness, every time Steven woke he noticed a new detail in the room. By the time he had woken up for good, the hot musty air was unbearable. Crowded, with only a single dim flickering light bulb, the room and its concrete walls would become his grave.

“How long have we been here?” Dawn asked, “two, three, four hours?”

At that moment, Steven could only scream, “It’s like I said the last four times, I don’t know!”

Heads whirled around and 10 pairs of eyes focus on him. On the far side of the room, a baby started to wail and its mother gave Steven a deadly glare.

“Sorry everyone,” Steven murmured apologetically while giving Dawn his signature, “seriously” look.

Dawn was like a little sister to Steven. They had grown up in the same neighborhood and met in a shelter when Steven ran away for the first time. She had lived a life of abuse, but hid it under lots of makeup. She looked like your typical california girl, blonde hair, icy blue eyes, and always wore tank tops. Steven’s brown hair was messy under his Red Sox cap. His jeans were stained and shirt was torn. It was 3 sizes too big for him anyway, so Steven didn’t mind.

Footsteps echoed through the hallway on the other side of the door. The people inside the room became anxious, inching away from the door. Suddenly, the door busted open, the sound of metal grinding concrete reverberating across the room. People whimpered as the two armed men entered the dark and humid room. They scanned the room as an awkward silence began to fill it.

“The following names, follow us,” guard one said breaking the silence. “Shawn, Rick, Serena, Dawn, and Steven.”

Steven’s heart skipped a beat when his name was called.  He slowly turned toward Dawn, the same worried expression plastered on her face. All of the names called stood up and were hustled into the bright hallway. Stumbling over his feet, eyes adjusting to the light Steven was shoved onward. The endless turns and junctions made him lose track of time. After about 50 turns, the group found themselves in front of a bolted metal door.

“This way,” huffed the second guard.

The lock clicked and the rusted door was swung open, and what Steven saw, stopped him right in his tracks.

 

The chamber itself was strange, everything seeming to have a blue tinge to it, but it was what occupied the room that sent a shudder through his body. Rows of kids and adults were in hospital beds, IV cords littered the floor, and doctors bustled around like bees.

“How the hell are we gonna escape?” Dawn asked. “They have guns, more men, hell we don’t even know where we are, much less anyone else does.”

Wistfully, Steven replied, “I don’t think we can.”

Suddenly, Steven felt something prick the back of his neck. Reaching for the spot, he instead encountered an arm wrapping around his body and hoisting him off the ground. His vision began to fade and his muscles seemed unresponsive. He could see Dawn screaming something while being held back by the guards, but he couldn’t tell what she was saying. His eyes slowly rolled to the back of his head, and finally, his body became limp.

 

Everything slowly came into focus. Steven tried sitting up, but couldn’t. He looked at his hands and feet, realizing they were chained to the bed.

“Did you really think we would let you roam about?” a raspy voice asked.

Steven turned toward his left, and sitting in a chair about 3 feet away, was a small old man resembling a sloth. A sloth in a lab coat holding a taser, obviously. Despite being chained and drugged, Steven felt powerful. That’s when everything flooded back into his memory and a wave of nausea crashed against him.

“Where’s Dawn?!” he demanded.

“OOhhhh, tsk tsk, she wasn’t one of the lucky ones,” he said. “She should be on her way to the morgue.”

Suddenly everything around Steven went cold, as if all the happiness in the world had left. He couldn’t believe it.

“She’s dead?” he croaked.

“And she won’t be the last one,” the doctor replied.

At that moment, something inside Steven just clicked. All the anger and hatred he had experienced was condensing into a storm within him. All the painful memories mixed into a fiery stew.

“Ahh yes, I see you have unlocked your new power,” the doctor said. “You see this facility takes children and mutates their DNA to turn them into superhumans. Beings with 10 fold the intelligence, strength, and speed of a normal human. The future is now thanks to science!” he exclaimed.

Steven felt his anger begin to rise within himself.

“Fret not,” the doctor said, “it’ll all be over in a flash. You see this is only temporary. You will die once our experiment with you is finished, however you are showing increasingly high data. Perhaps it’s your loss,” the doctor said jotting down something in his pad.

Steven’s vision began to blur and the noises around him slurred together.

“You won’t be the last,” the doctor hissed slowly getting right into Steven’s face.

A monitor next to Steven began to beep. A graph appeared with a line that was climbing nearly to the top. The doctor stared at it.

“Well this isn’t supposed to happen, it looks like your energy levels are unusually high,” the doctor murmured.

The beeping increased in volume and the building began to shake with energy. The doctor gave Steven a look of horror.

“Code red, I repeat, code red!” the doctor shouted  

Steven finally let it out. All his rage and sorrows that was stored in his core finally exploded, and everything else with it.

 

 

 

3 hours later

 

“Officer James on scene,” said James through his radio. Ambulances and cops were meandering around the wreckage.

“Some boom, huh,” said officer Jethro.

“Ya,” replied James, “some boom”

“It must’ve been one hell of an explosion to take out a building this big,” James thought to himself. “Gas leak maybe?”

Then he noticed something in the rubble. A small navy blue object protruded from the rubble. James walked over to it cautiously, one step at a time. He picked it up and turned it over. In his hand, was a navy blue baseball cap, with a very disquingitable Red Sox logo on the front. Suddenly, a hand shot out of the rubble, reaching for the hat but grabbing Officer James’ wrist. James’s gun was right in the boy’s face in a flash, finger on the trigger.

“Come out slowly,” James ordered.

Obeying the command, a boy slowly crawled from underneath the concrete. He looked about 15 and wore a bulky sweatshirt that was clearly too big for him. The strange thing was, this boy didn’t have a scratch. In fact, he didn’t even seem fazed.

“What’s your name son?” James asked.

The boy took a look around. After a minute of silence, the boy turned and ran.

“Hey stop!” James yelled.

Too late. The boy had vanished.