She moved like a shadow; the hair covering her body, blending in with the darkness. Never stopping, even for an instant, her route kept her moving straight as an arrow for the heart of the dead city that surrounded her.
"Now that you're here, girl, what are you going to do now?" The words escaped her lips without her being aware of them. With no one anywhere near her, she realized she was talking to herself. Not that she cared. Anyone who'd ever been near her already thought she was crazy.
But then, anyone who'd been with her as she grew was now dead, everyone except the one she'd wanted dead the most. The General had broken and run to her secure room. From there she'd directed the rest of her people while they'd tried to prevent her escape. Not that her leadership had done them any good.
The body count must have been close to eighty by the time she'd made it to and out the front entrance. Covered with gore from her rampage, she'd fled, and had been on the run ever since.
At last she could unwind and come to her full speed. In the facility where she'd grown, there was no true room to run, so she'd never been able to test her true top speed. Now she was running flat out. The house's nothing but a blur on either side of her vision.
This was what she was born to do, if she'd been born at all. But either way, she'd felt free for the first time in her life. With a growl of pure joy, she shot out of the suburbs and into the outskirts of downtown. The structures that surrounded her began to change shape and size, morphing from family homes to larger and larger buildings. Soon they became taller than she could see out of the corners of her vision, their bases covering entire city blocks. Yet still she ran, she had to, to stop meant something that for her was worse than death, recapture.
From a distance you couldn't tell she was that different from anyone else. It was up close that the differences became startling apparent. The rags of what once had been a uniform hid fur that covered every square inch of her body. Eyes the color of the sun, with iris's of the green of deep meadows stared out from over a tiny nose and lips drawn into a thin line. Within her body was where most of the differences laid, her DNA had been grafted with at least six species of big cat, which meant she could run for a very long time, but even she needed rest. So with a spray of sparks she came to a stop on the remains of a concrete sidewalk, inch long claws that ended each of her fingers and toes, sent a pyrotechnic display out in front of her. Squatting on all fours, she instinctively raised her head as far as she could and took a long breath in through her nose. Holding it for a few seconds, her body quickly analyzed every scent molecule present in the sample taken.
Nothing, not that she'd have thought there would be. The men chasing her were good, very good. They wouldn't be after her if they weren't. They were driving her towards the water. Once there, they would surround her and bring her down. At least that was their plan. The General would want her back alive and mostly undamaged, mostly. But that at least gave her some advantage. They wanted her alive; she needed them all dead. It was the only way that she knew they would stop following her.
Deep down, she knew she wanted to kill no one. Ever since she'd awakened in the General's lab, they had tried to craft her in their image, ruthless, brutal, without mercy. They hadn't succeeded. She wanted nothing to do with the life they had tried to force upon her. But her dream, the life she'd always wanted, seemed so far out of reach she'd forced it out of her mind for so long she'd thought she'd forgotten about it. Being free had brought all those memories back to the surface. The one overriding image in her mind was of two glowing red eyes. They were always present when her thoughts strayed anywhere close to her dream of the life she wanted. They were alien, cold, menacing. She had no idea what they meant, but every time she closed her eyes they were there, staring back at her.
Now she had to focus, so she pushed all thoughts from her mind that didn't pertain to her current situation. She needed to shake those that were following her, her head shook from side to side. There was no shaking them, not with the dogs. Dogs with bodies the size of refrigerators, and minds of mouses. The General had them grown to do nothing but hunt her, only her. Their olfactory sense had been bonded with her scent. They could track her anywhere, no matter how far or fast she ran. So the first task she had was to take out those dogs.
Looking around, her eyes fell on a scene of complete and utter devastation. The city of Chicago had been hit and pacified within the first week of the invasion. Now the cities only inhabitant were rats, that and the few animals that had managed to escape from the zoo and survive. Nothing but wreckage as far as her eyes could see. Five years with no upkeep had not been kind to the gigantic structures that stuck like metal mountains out of the ground. They rose like a huge granite sentinels nestled beside one of the biggest bodies of fresh water on the planet.
Much to her surprise, the water was still clean. Not that she would go anywhere near it. Having her DNA mixed with six different species of big cat had given her an irrational fear of water. That and her handlers had used it to punish her when she failed, and now she would do anything to stay away from large bodies of water. She knew the water was clean because she could smell it.
Coming to a stop she inhaled another long drawn out breath through her nose. The water was to her right, the remains of the city center to her left. Those chasing her were attempting to drive her towards the water. They had seen the times she'd locked up, her fear of being near a large body of it causing her body to literally freeze from fright.
They might think they she was moving right where they wanted her. She, on the other hand, was not going to let the last five years of the best military training money can buy go to waste. She ran as close to the water as she could. She could feel the breeze from it, hear the water, but she didn't come close enough to see it. After running for about three hundred yards, she cut back deeper into the city's ruins, ran for about a mile and waited.
With a bit of time on her hands, she began to think on a little dilemma that had been bothering her for the last few days. The name given her by the General had been Six. Everyone had said it was because she was placed in the sixth cage in the kennel once she was old enough. The other five cages had already been occupied.
Now she needed a name. She would not accept the name given to her by that psychotic bitch. Only she had no idea what made a good name. With a sharp crack, she snapped her fingers together as a memory came back to her. Only three days out from her prison she had been staying in an old house when she'd found a tattered book under the remains of the bed she'd slept on. The bed had been rotted and the mattress moldy, but to her, compared to the cold concrete she had been forced to sleep on her entire life, it had been heaven. The book had so much water damage only a few pages had been readable. On a few of those pages had been a story about a young woman who had been raped by her half brother and avenged by her full brother, the girls name was Tamar. She liked the ring of it, so from now on she would be known as Tamar, just Tamar.
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He hung from the side of a teetering building that had once been over one hundred and fifty stories high. He clung to the outside of the ninety eighth, feeling the surface beneath his feet sway so minutely that the naked eye would never see it. But he could feel it, he could feel everything. Everything except the wind on his skin, the feel of grass under bare feet, the sharp bite of cold or the pain of heated touch. He was trapped in a prison from which there was no escape because his prison was everywhere. It surrounded him in a second skin that he couldn't take off and could never remove.
Opening his eyes caused twin glowing red orbs to allow light into his prison. They were the color of fresh blood against a sea of absolute black. Through them, he could see everything around him. Three hundred yards to his left and sixty stories down, a mouse was busy making its nest. Half a mile straight ahead of him and thirty stories off the ground, he watched a red-tailed hawk building a nest of its own. But what he was most interested in was the small girl he'd been following for the last six hours. She had caught his attention more from the fact of how she looked than anything else when he first saw her. She looked like a black cat. That was the only way he could describe her. Black fur covered every inch of her skin that was visible. What only could be a mane flowed from the top of her head and neck, cascading down her back and flowing out behind her as she ran?
Now she had stopped and seemed to be looking for something, so he zoomed his vision outward so he could see both the girl and the eight-man team that was following her. They had been on her trail ever since he had noticed her. His vision mode switched to infrared and the heat signatures of the nine persons in play lit up as blue for the girl, and red for those following her. The eight men had gotten out of their vehicles about three miles outside of what remained of downtown and were now on foot.
With them, scouting out in front, were the biggest dogs he had ever seen. They looked like pit bulls on steroids, all neck and head, their bodies serving only to deliver their four inch long teeth to the intended target.
"Man, those are some huge dogs." He muttered to himself. Only this time, like for the last six months, a voice answered him.
"Those dogs are not natural. All three have been grown, just as that girl's been. The genetic tampering that made those canines is the same that grew that girl."
"Really, I could have never figured that out for myself. They bred four hundred pound dogs all the time when I was young. People liked them, but they sold for about thirty grand so only the rich could afford them."
"Very funny, sir. All I'm trying to ask you is, why are we here? You heard the Captain's order. We are supposed to be heading back to the ship as we speak."
"We will head back when I want to. Besides, when have I ever followed orders. Now, lets get a closer look." At a mental command, the tiny spikes that had been securing him to the wall sucked back into his prison and he fell. After about twenty stories he kicked his legs out, planted both feet against the building and bounded outward, away from the structure.
Huge wings grew from the substance that surrounded him. They caught the air and turned his fall into a gentle glide. Circling, he spotted an eleven story building across from where the girl was hiding. Another command and the wings withdrew, sucked back into where they came from. He dropped onto the far side of the roof, away from the girl, and crouched. A slight shimmer later, and he faded from sight. This wasn't camouflage in the sense that he was bending light around him, or taking a picture of what was behind him and putting it in front of him, no. He literally became invisible. He left no sign of his passage, nothing to give him away, no waver, no shimmer, nothing. So as he crept towards the lip of the roof the only thing that could have given him away was if he'd made a noise, and he never made a sound, ever.
He made it to the edge just in time to see the girl slip down a hole in the roadway. Pulling up onto his HUD heads up display, a map of the city's subway system, he could see that she was in one of the systems triple decked lines. Whatever had hit this place must have been a shaped charge. The hole in the road was small, maybe three feet to a side, but look underneath and you'd see the extent of the destruction. He watched as she dropped the thirty feet to the bottom of the immense cavern the explosive had caused. For the next hour he looked on as the young woman prepared a clever trap.
In that hour the men closed in on her hiding place, took station around the hole, and waited.
It took them only five minutes to spread out and take position. Then Malachi Joseph Prey watched, as with metallic snaps they released the hounds.
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