Chapter One of Her Champion
I sensed him before I saw him. Cipher. My only friend. My brother-in-arms. The man I trusted with my life.
He was being led past the reinforced viewing glass of my cell by one of the facility’s scientists. I inhaled sharply, my heartbeat surging at his slumped shoulders, his pronounced limp, where each step was slower than the last.
They’d pushed him too far.
My stomach hardened as he leaned over and coughed up blood right in front of me, his frantic eyes then meeting mine in a silent plea.
I froze for a couple of seconds before fury rose like a monster inside of me. I curled my hands into fists, then punched the reinforced glass, pounding it again and again until my knuckles burned and bled, and sparks of red-hot pain shot through my fingers, my hands.
The scientist crossed his arms and watched me with a smirk until, finally, the glass shuddered and cracked, fine lines spider-webbing across the pane. His eyes widened, his white coat flaring behind him as he lunged for the control panel, pressing the button to activate my cell’s metal shutters.
They slammed down, taking away the visual of my friend even as the single artificial light above me automatically flicked off and darkness rolled in.
Panic clawed at me, my wings—stripped of most of their feathers and therefore considered useless—thrashed against the walls. Little did the scientists know they still gave me speed and power, a way to turn my desperation into something forceful.
I stepped back until those same appendages hit the back wall. Then instinctively beating them up and down, I took off running. The added speed and momentum was almost inhuman, and when I slammed my shoulder into the metal, it groaned and buckled, denting under my force.
An alarm blared as I repeated my attempt to break out. Until finally the metal buckled completely, leaving a big enough gap beneath for me to squeeze through.
The scientist had already fled, abandoning Cipher.
My friend staggered, then fell to the floor just as I reached him, but his eyes never left mine. “Adler, leave here. Go and...survive. Live.” His voice hitched, his gaze burning. “Just, please...make the bastards pay for what they’ve done to us.”
I clutched his hand in mine. I’d never been an emotional type of guy, not like Cipher. That had always been in his nature. He’d been the most human of us by far.
Perhaps that was why he was dying while I still lived.
Grief, sharp and searing, quickly gave way to a rage that burned through me like hell itself. He was dying in front of my eyes and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to save him.
A tear leaked from my eye and I scrubbed it away even as I growled, “You have my word.”
More alarms screamed. Red lights strobed down the corridor, more steel shutters slamming shut, sealing in the genetically modified prisoners—the GMs—while sealing me out. Guards shouted orders, their boots hammering against the grated floors of another corridor nearby.
“Goodbye, my friend,” I whispered. “I’ll never forget you.”
I reluctantly released Cipher’s hand. But his eyes were already glassy, his chest still, his heart no longer pumping.
I threw my head back and roared, the sound echoing through the reinforced corridor. My wings flared wide, scraping the metal walls as I took off running, my instincts reverting to a predator’s.
I tore past sealed viewing rooms and half-lit labs, sterile glass flashing with reflections of my movement. Through the observation slits, I caught glimpses of other cells, of shapes moving, fists pounding, faces pressed against reinforced glass. Some screamed for help. Others didn’t even move.
The scent of antiseptic mixed with ozone and blood. Security doors hissed shut ahead, but I ran faster and slammed through them, momentum and fury lending me strength that no human—not even a crossbreed—should have.
Freedom was close. I could feel it, taste it through the recycled air and the stench of fear.
I barreled down the corridor like a freak storm, metal shutters rattling behind me, alarms chasing me. I didn’t think, not while emotion drove me and adrenaline poured through me. My bare feet somehow found purchase on grease-slicked grating, my wings and arms pumping like pistons.
My vision tunneled. Everything narrowed to the shape ahead. The scientists’ wing, their favorite lab and viewing room where they’d gathered like vultures to watch their prisoners break.
I sensed them there, clustered together for safety, their heartbeats pounding. Their nervous energy was so sharp I could almost taste it. I clenched my fists, wishing I had the talons so many others of my kind had as my raptor instincts kicked in.
The door was a slab of steel with a small observation hatch. I threw myself at it, my shoulder smashing against the lock they’d trusted a thousand times. It broke immediately, metal screeching.
Light spilled out of the sagging door, surgical lamps and screens blinking unreadable data. But the scientists were there, heads bent over a dozen different monitors, their pinched faces turning toward me slowly, painfully.
One of them—an aged, heartless man in a lab coat, his spectacles fogged—made the mistake of lifting a can of pepper spray.
I moved faster than he could blink, faster than he could press its nozzle.
I struck fast and hard. His skull cracked against a hard drive, his body folding as red sprayed the keyboard.
Others scrambled, their voices high and frantic, hands fumbling for emergency buttons and weapons.
I became someone else, more than predator, more than fury.
I was pure vengeance. Shoulder, elbow, a boot where it needed to be.
A man lunged with a Taser and I grabbed his wrist and twisted until the device popped and sparked, then I let my weight drive him back.
Metal shrieked as his body slammed against it, before he slumped, unmoving.
There was no triumph in the killing, only an enraged, animal focus.
One by one the scientists crumpled. The air filled with the metallic tang of their blood and the sickening scent of antiseptic.
Then finally, their pleas stopped, their faces slack and eyes sightless even as the alarms continued to keen.
Then I saw him. Dr. Brown. He wasn’t like the rest. He was young, not yet indoctrinated to the cruelty he’d witnessed. He cowered behind a screen with its endless data, his freckled palms over his face, his breathing shallow. He mouthed apologies to the ceiling, as if the roof had ears.
Even through the haze of my rage I remembered his hands shaking when he’d wielded a scalpel, remembered his pulse thudding erratically. Maybe he’d never enjoyed his part in the labs. Maybe he stayed out of fear, not malice.
He looked at me with wet eyes. Terrified, small, and suddenly too human in the ruins of what he’d helped build.
“You should have left,” I rasped. Fury still thickened my throat, but something else—some semblance of pity—kept my hands to my sides.
His throat bobbed. “I-I didn’t...I-I was scared.”
Such a pathetic thing to offer against the hell they’d set on us, but it didn’t change the blood on his hands. My breath dragged deep from my lungs. “You get to live. Go. Tell them I spared you. Tell them no more prisoners.”
I shoved him toward the exit. Though his hands shook and his legs were no doubt rubbery, he ran, stumbling into the red-lit corridor like a hunted thing.
I turned away from his escape, my heart rate barely settling as I stared at the room full of silenced, white-coated scientists and their toppled chairs, the once active screens sparking. My fingers were slick with blood, the same metallic taste coating the back of my throat.
I wanted nothing more than to stay and tear the place apart until it was rubble. Instead I turned off the emergency button, the sealed doors in the corridor lifting, then I ran, survival now my only goal.
With the doors no longer locked, I raced through unhindered. My bare feet banged against the metal and concrete floors even as I exited yet another opened door to the outside world.
Cold, night air struck my face as I narrowed my eyes. My eagle-vision took in the long sweep of lawn surrounded by a high fence and topped with barbed wire.
I stood still for a second, my wings rising and falling, as though I really could fly away from it all. How easy that would have been. Instead I lurched forward, using my wings once again for speed as I sprinted toward the fence, then leapt, grabbing hold of the wire and climbing fast.
A tower to one side of the facility suddenly came to life, a spotlight brightening the area just below me before it moved away, no doubt searching for me. I stayed still, frozen.
Moving would only give me away.
Only once it illuminated the opposite side of the perimeter did I climb even faster, the damn fence rattling along with the barbed-wire above.
It was only lucky the alarms masked all other sounds.
I grimaced as I wrapped my hands around the twisted, barbed prongs, the pain lancing through me secondary to the fact if I was caught, I’d be tortured or killed.
The latter would probably be too kind.
I was panting, almost screeching at the pain tearing through me as I pulled myself up and over, using my wings where I could to shield the rest of my flesh from the barbs pushing through them.
Blood spurted as I rolled then fell, my wings tearing as they ripped away from the wire thanks to my weight. The spotlight jerked back my way as I thudded to the ground, then pushed into a sprint.
I heard a guard shout, braced for the crack of gunfire. Nothing. No bullets tore through me, nothing flashed in the dark. With grim satisfaction, I realized I was too valuable. The guard had obviously been ordered not to shoot.
Outside the facility, an asphalt road gleamed in the distance, where a scattering of industrial buildings revealed I was probably close to civilization.
On the other side was a strange, tamed wilderness.
Broken paving that gave way to packed-down earth, then jagged shrubs and a scattering of trees, many of which had been felled by storms.
I chose the trees. Nature couldn’t be half as cruel as mankind.
I ran and ran, my bare feet pounding the leaf-littered ground, the sharp edges of rocks and sticks tearing into my soles.
I tested my wings, hoping they’d lift me as I flapped hard. They caught air and gave me a surge, but my ascent died fast. I skimmed a toppled tree, half-flying, half-plunging in a graceless arc, then landing heavily on the other side.
My chest heaved, my breaths ragged and raw as I tried again, leaping over broken trunks, my wings slashing. Each small attempt let me glide, little bursts of altitude, enough to sail over fallen logs, enough to stretch my stride into something like flight for a moment.
Not true flying. Not yet. But it was movement. It was escape.
When I finally slowed, my lungs burning, the air sharp and cold, dawn was struggling through the gray and pricking at my skin.
I was too wary to feel its warmth, and too exhausted to care.
Not when something else drew me—a human presence—someone separate from the damp scent of grass and water, a distant kindness that both unsettled me and made me ache to reach it.
I crept forward until the trees opened ahead. A green expanse of lawn filled my vision, along with a gleaming pond that reflected the sky. A single bench faced the water, a woman sitting there as if she belonged. As if this was her happy place.
She held a brown paper bag, one hand scattering some of its contents. Birdseed, I realized. Ducks waddled up to her, their sudden quacks filling the pristine air, pigeons swooping down and pecking at the grass.
She smiled and hummed a melody that barely stirred the air. She wasn’t forcing her presence, she was gently adapting to it. Though her profile was turned away from me, her blonde hair caught the sun like a halo.
For a second I couldn’t breathe, my fury draining from me like water from a drain. My chest no longer vibrated with fight or flight, it steadied with a new, ridiculous ache.
Her calmness was a slap to my face, a new reality I didn’t know existed.
I stayed still, silent, my eyesight sharpening, every tiny motion magnified. The way she smiled softly at the birds, the slight tilt of her head when a duck nudged her palm, the line of her throat when she bent a little lower.
Goodness radiated from her like heat. I felt it even from where I stood, felt it in a place inside me that had thought only about survival and retribution for too long.
It could have been an illusion. It could have been the aftereffects of too many alarms and flashing lights. But this was real. She was real. And for the first time since the facility, my hands unclenched without thinking.
I didn’t know her name. I didn’t know why she cared about birds. Perhaps my eagle side appreciated that in her? The only thing I for sure was that I had to know more.
I stepped forward—slowly, deliberately—because whatever I had been, whatever I’d done to get here, in this moment her calm offered me something far more dangerous...the possibility that someone might look at me and see less of a monster and more of a man.