Ironclaw (Book 1): Characters and Prologue

As a part of an experiment to create supersoldiers, a group of sixteen teenagers is sent to an uninhabited barrier island off the coast of South Carolina. Each teen has been given over to the experiment, either by being sold to the company (New Horizons) performing the experiment illegally or by being rejected by their parents and kidnapped by New Horizons. All of the teens also have something in common; the company has altered them, giving them amazing but often uncontrollable powers, and along with them, crippling mental disorders. Being the ex-leader of a gang of delinquents, a fifteen-year old girl Vermillion DeLuna becomes the leader of these new children, dubbing them the Coyotes and teaching them how to live. Renaming herself Ironclaw, she prepares them for the mobilization of New Horizon's goal: to force them to fight against and kill brainwashed and bribed adults that they release on the island.

THE COYOTES
LEADER: The one in charge of the Coyotes.

IRONCLAW: born Vermillion DeLuna, African American female with pitch black hair and chocolate brown eyes. Left arm is a cybernetic implant. Always carries a butcher's knife on her hip.

ADVISOR: Next-in-line for the title of Leader, usually close to the Leader.

ROSEHEART: born Charlie Venicci, Italian/Asian female with reddish-brown hair and dark green eyes. Rose tattoo on left hip.

HEALER: The one who aids sick or injured Coyotes.

WOLFTHORN: born Lyla Braun, white/Native American female with brown hair and pale green eyes. Constantly carries a collection of herbs in her jacket to use if needed.

LEAD FIGHTER: The one in charge of mobilizing Coyotes during fighting.

HAWKCRY: born Quentin Lane, Native American male with black hair and black eyes. Uses a bow-and-arrow he crafted himself as his weapon of choice.

LEAD HUNTER: The one in charge of creating hunting patrols.

HALFTOOTH: born Riccardo Navi, Italian/Indian male with red hair and brown eyes. Named due to the missing half of his right canine. His other teeth are unusually sharp and long.

MESSENGER: The one who sends messages back and forth the Coyotes and outsiders.

FLIGHTFOOT: born Brenner Yates, white female with blonde hair and blue eyes. Has an unusual run which allows her to run faster and longer than most.

PROPHET: The one who is believed to have a direct link to the Ancestors.

SKYGAZER: born Moggie Rivers, British/Inuit female with dirty blonde hair and gray eyes. Is blind, but her unusual eye color is not caused from her blindness.

REDFEET Others who have no “special” rank.

COALRUNNER: born Tsari Zinobu, Jamaican female with brown hair and brown eyes. Has a long scar running from her neck to her shoulderblade.

LOCKJAW: born Berlioz Linne, French male with caramel blonde hair and amber eyes. Has a lopsided gait due to a broken hip that never healed right.

REDTAIL: born Gulliver Chin, Chinese male with brown hair and golden brown eyes. Partially deaf in one ear.

SLICKBACK: born Christopher Sarajevo, Hispanic male with yellow-brown hair and black eyes. Is known for his uncanny ability to dig out burrowing mammals and catch them.

WILDDOG: born Rose Blanche, French/Inuit male with pale ginger hair and dark brown eyes. Is known for his remarkable size and multiple tattoos.

SNAKETOOTH: born Shania Vellory, African American/Latina female with black-brown hair and odd Siamese blue eyes. Also called “the snake tamer”, makes anti-venom from venomous snakes on the island.

ICETONGUE: born Katarina Smith, Russian white female with pale, almost white blonde hair and deep golden eyes. Known for her strong swimming abilities.

LILYPAD: born Nathan Strausse, mixed-race brown skinned male with golden hair and hazel eyes. Main builder of the Coyotes.



NEW HORIZONS

Orion Nox: friend of Jeorges and co-founder of New Horizons

Jeorges Valier: founder of New Horizons

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In our society, it is common knowledge that he who has money has power. From the time we are but children, we are taught that your worth is determined by how much money you have in the bank, the quarters in your pocket, the dollars in daddy’s wallet. Whether this is taught directly or indirectly varies from person to person, but the underlying message is always there. Rich are powerful. Poor are weak. Those who dare to deviate from this mindset are lost to the tides of time, as they are fragile; they die poor and alone, their bodies decay in the streets.

Jeorges Valier knew this. It was why he spent every waking moment doing all that he could to gain wealth. You must focus on what will make you strong, and for Valier, it was cash—loads of it. Like a hound on the hunt, he slavered after it. Many said that he could smell even a single penny from a mile away. Jeorges targeted the weak, the poor, the destitute, the middle-class people looking to jump the barrier into high class. He didn’t just target them, though; no, it wasn’t enough. He needed real funds, funds that weren’t his own to get higher, higher than he was already.

He would need others who were just as greedy and filthy rich as he was to help him with this goal.

Of course, they wouldn’t be friends. No, they’d go down in history just like the families of famous people who were forgotten over time. Valier would keep all of the fame and fortune for himself, while they withered into dust. He couldn’t be sharing the spotlight. Valier was intelligent, at least, in that particular area of knowledge. He excelled at getting others to join his cause, excelled at convincing people to hand over their life savings. Had he been a religious man, he would have been a cult leader; had he been a politician, he would have been a dictator; but, as it were, Valier was a businessman, a businessman in a rapidly growing area of science that had taken a sudden, sharp, dark turn into the inky-blackness of ethics.

Valier owned a company known as New Horizons. Originally, in its foundation, it was made to be something of a biotechnological institute. Valier himself had studied bioengineering, and was quite familiar with the idea of genetics, eugenics, evolution, mutation, and the like. Around the time of its beginning, the idea for supersoldiers sprouted. Countries, especially those with militaries as large as the United States’, wanted soldiers whose abilities far surpassed that of even the strongest human. They wanted them stronger, bigger, faster, smarter, and they wanted them as soon as possible. Valier was smart enough to do it, of course, to create a race of superhumans, and the thought of how rich he would be, manufacturing and selling these artificial humans, made him tremble with want.

Cloning was out of the question. It would be too noticable. Too many genetically identical human beings could also result in inbreeding, which would result in undesireables, which would need to be disposed of in some way. Valier scratched it off before it could even become an idea.

Using adults for this purpose would also be useless. An adult’s brain was already finished growing and maturing, like clay that had hardened, and any attempt to change it would likely result in death, vegetative state, or permanent brain damage.
Fortunately, Valier figured, through some tests on teenage apes, that using teenagers, somewhere between thirteen and seventeen, would produce amazing results.

Unfortunately, a little thing called “ethics” got in the way.

The government wouldn’t help to fund something like this. It would be highly expensive, and highly unethical. If there was one thing that Valier hated about the United States, it was the political correctness. How could you focus on ethics when there was so much more to be gained from an experiment such as this? How could you worry about human lives when money was worth so much more? Valier couldn’t afford to give up, though. He had to keep going. Success was looming on the horizon, and there was absolutely no way Valier would be willing to waste the millions he could earn from this.

All was not lost. At the last moment, when Valier feared that he’d have to pull out a hefty deposit from his own savings, there was a miracle. A young man, Orion Nox, nearly as rich and possibly greedier than Valier himself appeared. The financial controller of hundreds of rich folk across the span of several countries and continents, Nox had about as many morals as a vulture. Intrigued by Valier’s idea, he was willing to aid him in funding the project, and in procuring subjects for such a thing. It would be easy, he said. The number of people who were already offering to sell their children was astonishing, and plucking runaways and homeless teenagers from the streets would almost be an insult to their intelligence. They’d be sucking on diamond spoons in no time, Nox assured him, smoking a cigarette in Valier’s bed.

Negotiations were made, bank accounts were created and destroyed simultaneously, people were contacted. Their headquarters were erected and built in the countryside of South Carolina. It was like laying eyes upon a newborn child for the first time, thought Valier as he stood with Nox at his side, cuddling under his arm and looking at him with eyes of a she-cat in heat. Work still had be done, though. They still had to procure their experiments.

The sun set on the tenth of January, 2013, and at 10:20 PM, the lights flickered on in the New Horizons building.