The Hybrids (chapter 3)

Chapter 3

Sarah

Not wanting to miss my chance to get out of this room without getting lost, I quickly get up and follow him. As I get passed the doorway I hear footsteps behind me and presume that the rest of the guys are following me. When I finish that thought I finally notice my surroundings. I know this place. I’ve had nightmares about this place and evil scientists. I abruptly stop, with all the chrome walls and elevator right in front of me, it’s just like in my nightmares.

I’m barely seven years old, all I see is chrome. The walls, the doors, even the elevators are chrome. People in white lab coats are dragging me down the hallway trying to get me to the experimentation room, but I don’t want to go there anymore. I try my hardest to slow their movements. I try to grab onto the walls, drag my feet and flail my arms, I even try to knock one of the doctors over to get away, but nothing works. I close my eyes to try and make myself wake up . . .

I blink rapidly as the memory fades. I hear someone talking to me but I can’t quite understand what words they are forming as my mind is trying to come back to the present. After a few minutes I hear a frantic Lamar who is suddenly in front of me shaking my shoulders and looking at me frantically.

“Sarah, what’s wrong!” Lamar says at the same time Marco echoes from beside him in a small voice, “Are you alright?”

Finally, I answer, “No, I’m not alright. Where did our parents do the experiments on us, and at what age?”

Demitri answers in a calm monotone voice from behind me, “They originally introduced the genes when we were three, but they ran tests on us after that until age eight, where they monitored our blood to see how many abilities were absorbed but the documents were destroyed, the ages three to eight is merely an estimate. It was thought to be done in this facility.”

“Are all the hallways in this facility chrome?” I ask trying to figure out where it occurred and if I stay, whether or not I’m going to be constantly reminded of it.

“No,” Demitri responds, “There are only four hallways that are chrome.”

“Well, one of them is the one I was dragged down when I was a child, it led to a lab where they would experiment on me. I remember it so vividly.” I say in a small voice, “The only problem is that I don’t remember seeing my parents during these . . . trials.” All of them were silent and sullen after I had spoken. With Dylan in front standing with his back to the elevator staring at me, with Marco and Lamar in front of me and Demitri behind me still blocking the doorway to the room that we just came out of. I could see Dylan’s, Marco’s, and Lamar’s reaction, and it was obvious. You could tell that they were extremely confused, and shocked by the looks they gave me. He didn’t understand how I knew this, or why I didn’t see my parents, or even how I remembered this. Trying to get out of explaining, I start to say shyly, “Why don’t we all go down to get something to eat.” They all just stare at me like I’ve grown another head.

Until finally Marco says, “How did you know that?”

I look down and away trying to ignore the looks that I’m getting from everyone, while folding my arms across my stomach. Finally I respond in a small voice, “Because, I’ve relived it multiple times in my dreams. The hallways look exactly like this." After a long pause I say, "Look, I didn't know at the time they were memories. I thought they were just nightmares." Before I can say more, I feel familiar arms envelop me in a hug and instead of fighting it, like I normally would, I lean into the hug, accepting the comfort that being in Lamar's arms brings me, as I lay my head on his right shoulder and my forehead in the crook of his neck. After what felt like hours but could only have been a few minutes, I suddenly hear someone clearing their throat and am abruptly reminded of the fact that we have an audience. Reluctantly I lift my head, with a sigh and say with false confidence, “So, where’s the cafeteria?”

Dylan leads the way in an awkward silence while everyone mulls over the scene that just occurred. We all pile into the chrome elevator that, luckily, isn’t chrome on the inside. I am able to decipher that we were on the thirteenth floor, and were riding up to the fifth. I’m instantly reminded of how many people I met in the short time this morning when the elevator was so crammed that if you were claustrophobic, you would be hyperventilating and possibly pass out. Thank god the elevator had music, it may be annoying but it’s definitely less awkward. As I finished forming that thought, the elevator dinged, the doors opened, and the music abruptly stopped.

I felt a lot better because the hallways were just a beige color with no chrome in sight. We all exited the elevator, Dylan and Lamar side by side walking in front of me with Demitri and Marco walking side by side behind me, needless to say, it felt really awkward when we passed other people who just stared at me like I was a newly discovered species on display for the world.

We were walking down a hall and I keep seeing these labeled brown wooden doors. It reminds me of high school and the never ending prisons that teachers run for all living human beings who just happen to be unlucky enough to be between the ages of 5 and 18 and not be home schooled.

After what feels like forever, we finally reach the cafeteria doors (that’s what I assume as we came to two double doors and abruptly stopped). Dylan is the one who opens one of the doors. He takes three steps in when he looks straight ahead and abruptly stops in front of me while grabbing onto Lamar’s arm and pulling him to a halting stop as well. I try to look around them and see what they are staring at when suddenly Marco, who can actually see over his brother, pulls me to the side up against the wall, with his arm around my shoulders. I’m curious as to why they are acting so weird when I hear a sudden crash of plastic and metal come from the cafeteria. The world slows suddenly and I feel something shift. It feels like my ears popped as all of a sudden my hearing becomes so acute that I can hear everyone’s heart beating, let alone the heavy breathing of whatever being is trashing the cafeteria.

I’m forced to close my eyes to the onslaught of all the data being stored and categorized in my mind. When my hearing is calming down and I’m about to open my eyes, I get hit with another wave of sensory overload as smells started being over exaggerated. I snap my eyes back shut and try to get over the headache that started with the first onslaught. As I’m trying to concentrate on one thing when I recognize the being is saying something that no one else could possibly hear as it’s at the same sound wave as the flow of their blood. The faint echo reaches my ear drums as I make out the words . . . “Finally, little one of the masters. I didn’t expect you here. I wanted to find you myself.” he says like he knows that I can hear him, “I am, after all the reason for you remarkable hearing, and I presume the smell has come full force as it did when I was just a young lad. You probably don’t remember me as you were made to forget so you would believe them now, but you wouldn’t remember that either would you.”

My mind is reeling with the new information as I respond, not realizing my voice is of normal volume, “What are you, and what do you mean you are the reason?”

With my eyes still closed I hear two heads swiveling towards me and heavy breathing when I suddenly get a response, “Yes, I remember your parents well. They thought I couldn’t understand, after all, I am just a low demon of the core, why would I understand language. They told me of their purpose for taking my essence, the blood of my veins and said it was used for a good cause. They said I would be used for great advances. My blood would be used to ensure you were as extraordinary as they wanted you to be. After so long and they were eliminated I started to make a plan, and when I caught their mingled scent on the Abarimon, I just knew that I needed to act. I could have gone a long time ago, but they promised you would be great and I declared you as mine.”

His declaration hit me like a punch to the gut as I lean against the wall and put my hand to my mouth with my eyes wide open and I faintly feel Marco’s hand on my shoulder. I can’t believe it, he is a Grimlock, and he claimed me. I can’t think. When the revelation of what he is hits me I immediately bring up every fact I remember about Grimlocks as I flash back to me reading in my parent’s enormous library. . .

I’m sitting on the nice blue couch in the middle of a library with the only books my parents keep, mythological. I’m reading about different creatures. While bored out of my mind I’m in the letter G category and see an interesting creature. Grey skinned demon is the first thing on the list it goes down in the traits.

-humanoid

-scaly

-blind

-impeccable hearing

-excellent sense of smell

-originate from the core of the earth

-come to surface for slaves and resources

-eat raw meat

-travel in packs

My shoulders are being shaken when I come back into the reality of now. I really need warning of these flashbacks. I blink multiple times before I’m able to come fully back to myself. I look up and see Marco looking at me with worry and horror etched on his face. I am still stunned from the revelation and it takes a little bit for me to comprehend what just happened. I’m not able to evaluate the situation before Marco suddenly but tentatively asks, “Sarah, what happened.”

I go over the information and select the most important. Oh my god, I inhale sharply and listen for the thing that was here a moment ago but can’t hear it. I frantically ask, “Where is it, where did the thing go?”

“We detained it Sarah, what else would we do?” Marco responds

I panic as I remember what it said, “No, it can get out anytime it wants, it said so. It was biding its time. Unless it was lying. Oh, this is so screwed up.” I start mumbling and pacing over what I heard, knocking Marco’s hands out of the way and off of my shoulders after quickly imagining the ribbon, and now all four of them, Demitri, Marco, Dylan, and Lamar, are looking at me with strange looks, when I see Lamar move to take the place of his brother. Now, that Lamar has taken ahold of my shoulders he makes me stop and look at him.

“What are you talking about, he didn’t say anything. Those things can’t speak and how did you know this?” I can hear his heart beat start to slow down as he speaks and our heart rhythms synchronize.

I respond while staring at the ground trying to rationalize it and gesturing slowly with my hands, “When Marco pulled me to the side I was hit with an onslaught of sounds and smells. I got hit with this wave and it felt like it was crushing me. I could hear all of your heartbeats along with the heartbeats of those five floors up or down, let alone voices that seem to come from farther away. I was finally able to focus when I heard it speak.”

Seeming to be taking all this in stride he asks calmly, curiosity evident in his voice as I hear the muscles in his face scrunch up and smell his pheromones change, “What did he say?”

“He said my parents told him I was going to be special and his blood would get me there. According to him, he can get out of holding but he wanted to wait for me, he said he declared me as his.” I repeat his words over and over in my head, trying to find a way out. They promised me you would be great and I declared you as mine. Well he has another thing coming if he thinks he can just claim me like I’m some sort of prize at the end of a contest. As the others stared, mouths hanging slightly open, I broke from my inner monologue and said with false confidence, “Well he can’t have me and I’m still starving. So how much damage was done to the cafeteria?”

Lamar responds, disbelief evident in his voice and underlying shift in his scent as clear as air freshener to me, “You just learned that you have power to hear minute sounds well over a mile away, smell probably just as far, have been claimed by a demon from, for lack of a better term, the underworld, and you’re worried about the state of the cafeteria?”

I respond, putting up a strong front against my racing thoughts that I now have to hear the motion of, “I am hungry, I can’t do anything about him right now, and if he can truly get out of his cell on his own then I will deal with it when he finds me. Until then, I am going to take everything as it’s thrown at me because frankly, I don’t have any other option and I sure as hell am not going to shut down, I’ve done that once in my life already and it achieves nothing.”

Stunned, they all look at me again, and Demitri is the first to say something, surprising everyone, “Well ok then.” The others still look at me strangely until one of them finally remembers my question of the cafeteria, “The cafeteria is, let’s just say it’s not in working order. From what I saw, it is going to need a lot of TLC. We can always take you up to the surface, only that food isn’t free,” Dylan responded.