Ironclaw Prologue Re-Write

[Note: I am re-writing this story to make it flow better and to finish it for NaNoWriMo this month. Criticism/critique is accepted and wanted. I've decided to cut out the allegiances because I don't think they're needed anymore. Thanks for reading!]

Summary: 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. Being the ex-leader of a gang of delinquents, a seventeen-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.

In our society, it is common knowledge that he who has money has power. From the time we are but children, our teachers teach us that our worth gets determined by how much money you have. In the bank, the quarters in your pocket, the dollars in daddy’s wallet, are what really matter. Whether they teach this 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 become 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; 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 became forgotten over time. Valier would keep all 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. 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 a military 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. 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 noticeable. Too many genetically identical human beings could also result in inbreeding, which would result in undesirables, 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 expensive and 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 gain 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. He had to keep going. Success was looming on the horizon, and there was 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, almost as rich and maybe even greedier than Valier himself appeared. Controlling 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 created and destroyed, people 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 like the pampered wife of a rich mobster. There was still work to do, though. They still had to get their experiments.

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