A Beast with a Smile
Chapter 15 (Scarlett): Every Gift Comes with a Price

I searched frantically for a pulse, but I felt no beats. I held my finger under her nose to see if she was breathing, but that was a negative too. Tears rolled down my cheeks, dropping onto her face.

She was so young, and Tyler slammed her down with the intent to kill. He wanted to hurt this little girl just because... well, I don’t know why he wanted to kill her.

I could hear Tyler scuffling around in his hole in the wall, trying to disengage his torso from pipes and drywall. The terminator arm was still jammed into the pillar near the vent and it also squirmed to get out.

Elly’s face was covered in blood and it continued to drip from the top of her skull. I rolled her over to see what damage had been done to the back of her adolescent head. Through the blood and hair, I could see a large, round metal end embedded in the skin.

I attempted to pull it out and blood spurted out like a water fountain. Tears began to overflow my eyes, making me blind and full of sorrow. The tears rolled off onto the wound and her long blonde hair. Wiping the tears away wasn’t helping and only created more fuzzy vision.

When I looked up, I realized that Tyler’s robotic arm had broken free and was moving towards Tyler. It screeched across the floor using the fingers to pull the arm closer to its evil host. The sound was equivalent to finger nails scratching across a chalk board.

I turned around and grabbed the arm, then bent it in half with my bare hands. It made a loud pop and started to spray liquids all over the place. I threw one half at Tyler and the other outside to a distance where it would never be found. Tyler screamed in anger, cursing at me with the whole dictionary.

I ignored him as I struggled to get the nail out of Elly’s skull. I gently laid her head down on the rug next to the demolished coffee table and ran to the janitor’s closet. In the small dark room, I was able to find a pair of pliers and returned to Elly’s corpse. I searched for the object that I had seen before, but it seemed to have disappeared entirely. I looked around her head more, looking for the entry wound by following the trail of blood, but even then, I couldn’t find the nail. I threw the pliers at Tyler and began to cry even harder.

I peered outside and saw the lights of the town begin to flicker. The power was about to reboot, and I knew that that meant the soldiers will are about to reboot too.

I looked at Tyler who had also noticed the lights preparing to return.

“Uh-oh. Looks like someone is going to forget all about what happened here,” he sneered.

I could see lights on the far side of town turning on one by one. I also saw a truck convoy heading this way.

“They’ll be here in seconds, Scarlett. Give up. You lost. You and giant vermin are not nearly strong enough for what’s coming.”

He began to laugh to himself and the lights all shot on in the hospital and the trucks outside. The soldiers began to make loud audible grunts as they got to their feet while holding their heads. I could hear some of them groaning about the headache, but most didn’t seem to notice Tyler and me or the giant bunny.

Tyler began to laugh harder and his body grew unlimited strength as he ripped the remaining limbs out of the wall. He started walking over to me when I we heard a horn from behind the dazed men on the front porch.

Tiny began to hop up and down in excitement as a rusty, old minivan sped up the stairs towards me and the lifeless body of Elly. The car skidded in front of me, blocking me from the sociopath. The sliding doors flung open and a boy in a bronze version of Elly’s armor stood there.

“Get in. We don’t have much time.”

He looked at Elly’s body and clenched his fists. I dragged her body into the van with urgency. Tyler was already very close to the car.

The boy pushed a button and the car’s roof opened up to a giant circular dish on a large antenna. He pushed another button and Tyler went flying, creating a second less deep hole in the wall. The boy floored it and the car was off to the races.

“What happened?” he asked, “Why is she covered in blood?”

“Tyler. He slammed her head into a coffee table when she wasn’t wearing the helmet. She’s…. she,” I choked up.

The boy in the bronze armor held out his hand. His hand turned white and bits of matter began to float through the air, like shredded paper. His palm was too bright to see, but the shape of the light began to form a long object. When the light cleared, the boy held a heartbeat monitor and began to attach it to Elly’s forehead.

“Um, don’t you need to plug it in?” I asked.

He looked up at me and stared as he pressed the plug on Elly’s skin.

“Could’ve done it with less sass,” I said.

“She’s a portable battery; a battery that isn’t dead yet,” he said, looking at the screen, “She’s alive... barely. We have to get her back to camp. Help me get her onto the seat.”

He picked up Elly’s feet and I gently lifted her head onto the bench that ran along the inside of the van.

A gunshot hit a few feet from my head and bronze boy pulled me into his rusty van. Tiny made a not so bunny sized screech and then jumped out onto the awoken soldiers. The boy floored the gas pedal and the van took off down the stairs.

The car rammed through a wall and popped out on the main road, heading out of town. Sirens rang all across town.

“We are in for some trouble now. I hope you were worth Elly risking all of our lives. Who are you?”

“Who am I? Who are you?” I asked with shock.

“Name’s Archy. Now care to let me know who I’m helping escape from the facility?”

“Scarlett,” I said.

The boys head twisted around in shock.

“Prove it. Show me a proof of I.D,” he commanded while frantically thrusting his hand into the back seat.

I reached into my pocket and realized I still had Nord’s coat on. Oh, the poor old man must’ve had to walk home freezing. I was still wearing my pajamas from this morning and they were now soaked in blood.

“I’m kind of still in my PJ’s. My wallets at home with some of my dignity.”

I heard a slight chuckle from the boy, “I guess I’ll just have to trust you.”

He swerved rapidly, avoiding pursuing trucks. Three black SUVs followed in pursuit from behind and a few black trucks boxed us in on the front. Archy swerved as bullets sprayed across the front windshield.

“Don’t worry about the windshield. It’s a special glass that I crafted. It’s nearly indestructible; bullets shouldn’t even make a dent.”

Bullets shattered parts of the glass near the passenger side window.

“Whoops. Forgot to mention it’s experimental.”

“Is the crappy minivan experimental too?” I asked.

“Looks can be deceiving. No one would expect the rouge super solider to be running around in a junky minivan.”

I’ll give it to him; it was a pretty decent plan.

“Natural camouflage. You succeed by hiding in plain sight. It’s a smart plan, but it’s major flaw is escaping when you’re found.”

More bullets sprayed into the glass; some were deflected by the glass, but others hit Archy in his armor. The back windows seemed to be holding up better than the front.

“Don’t worry, I have a backup plan,” Archy placed his hand on the dashboard and began to pump light into the vents.

The car began to shift. Pieces began to stretch and shrink, and some transformed into completely different parts. The doors shrank from the boxy minivan kind to a smaller mid-sized car. The trunk of the minivan shrunk and formed a smaller back window and a seat rose out of the floor. The seat then moved towards me, shrinking the car as it grew closer. The seat picked me and Elly up and scooted slightly closer to the new front end of the Dodge Charger we were now driving. The engine roared as Archy slammed on the gas pedal.

“The amount of time I’ve spent in the back of one of these, I’d say it’s about time that I have one for myself,” Archy said with a chuckle, hitting a button on a control panel that rose out of the stereo.

The lights on the car flickered and the wailing siren screamed its first breath. The red and blue lights lit up the road along with the eyes of some shocked Atom Bombs. The shock only ceased the fire for a few seconds. Who wouldn’t be shocked after a minivan turned into a cop car?

After they rubbed their eyes and drew conclusions about the metamorphosis of the minivan, they began their hail of gunfire again. This time Archy was able to dodge bullets with ease. Occasionally a bullet would hit the car and bounce off with a loud PLOP and fly off into the night sky.

Archy rammed the car to our right, making it bounce off the guardrail and plummet onto the grassy median. He slammed on the breaks and smashed the car behind us, leaving it with a tidal wave for a front end. The front car attempted to do the same to our car but crunched from the might of the cop car. The remaining car stopped in their tracks, giving up on their unwinnable pursuit.

“Told you I had a plan,” Archy said as he turned back with his helmet off.

He had short brown hair and big brown eyes. He was only about fifteen.

His eyes met Elly’s body with horror, “Um, hi,” he said nervously.

Confused, I looked down to see Elly rubbing her eyes and yawning. My spirit nearly jumped out of my body.

“You… you… you were dead. How are you even awake?” I asked.

The blood that covered my hands and body had disappeared. Elly sat up holding her head and I noticed that her blood-soaked hair was free of red; it was the goldilocks blonde again, as yellow and bright as sand. I spun her around quickly and lifted her hair to see blood ascending back towards her wound. It sucked back inside and when it had all returned, the nail popped out, closing the wound without the tiniest of scars.

“What I miss? Did we win?” she asked, yawning and stretching her arms.

“You… you were dead…” I continued to stutter.

“Almost dead,” Archy added.

“All of your blood… I... I was drenched in it,” I managed to spit out, “Your head was split open and you had a long nail shoved into the back of your cranium.”

Archy’s eyes began to water and he struggled to not cry.

“How did you heal her, Scarlett? How did you heal my sister?” he asked aggressively

“She’s your sister?” I asked

“Yes, he’s sort of my brother, but technically we are all the adopted kids of Atom. Now can someone tell me why we are in the back of a cop car and why my head feels like I got stomped on by Tiny?”

“It’s a long story, sis.”

“Tyler slammed you into a coffee table when your helmet was off, and he managed to lodge this nail deep inside your head. Then Archy here picked us up and we had to escape in a minivan.”

“Please tell me you got Tiny out of there,” her eyes grew wide and her body tensed.

“I am so sorry. I completely forgot about him. I was worried about you being dead in my arms.”

“How do you forget a huge bunny? Seriously, it’s hard to not miss him.”

“Relax, Elly. Hanzo got him,” Archy said rapidly.

She must truly love that Bunny if she completely ignored the fact that she was almost killed by a coffee table and came back to life in perfect health.

Archy still wasn’t paying attention to the road.

“Archy, shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, driving the car?” I glared.

“I am.”

Looking more closely, I could see his feet steering the car. Horrified at the sight of the dare devil like danger I said, “You need to use your hands if you’re going to drive.”

“Maybe for normal people.”

“What do you mean?”

“I built every part of this car. To me, I can feel it as if it was alive. The engine is the heartbeat, the lights the eyes, and the doors and tires are the limbs. I can tell you every little detail in or outside of the car. That applies to all of my creations. I replicated the armor that Elly and I are wearing and that’s how I found Elly and you.”

“I hit a distress beacon on my armor that calls to anyone with the suits we wear,” Elly clarified.

“How many suits are there? How many others are like you guys?”

“There’s only ten suits of armor and they were custom built for the burderner’s power. I put a static energy collector on Elly’s. Mine has spare parts in case I need more light to make more things. Oh, and there’s a whole collection of different upgrades that the others you’re about to meet will be glad to show you. For the second question there’s no countable number for how many people like us are out there, but we have over a hundred in our camp.”

“All with super powers?”

“Yes, but most need regular doses of Alpha-serum every few days because the older the age of the test subject, the lower the effectiveness of the serum,” Elly said, joining the conversation.

“What happens if they don’t get the serum?”

“They spontaneously combust, turn to ashes, then blow off in the wind,” Elly said, scratching the back of her head where her wound once laid.

“So, they die in a horrific way?”

“We wish they died after all of that,” Archy clenched his fist, “When they fly away with the wind, they aren’t dead. They are ash monsters we call the Oscuri. They are indestructible creatures that wreak havoc wherever they go. They retain no memories of who they were but manage to hang onto their abilities and feel nothing but anger.”

Bright headlights lit up the car, illuminating Elly’s and Archy’s armor, along with the rest of the car. It was a huge semi that had entered the highway on an on ramp. At the next exit another semi entered the highway, then a third and fourth. We had been driving for miles, yet there hadn’t been a single car that was trying to kill us.

Four semis aren’t a coincidence.

Two semis slammed on their brakes; Archy was able to swerve away at the last moment before we turned into fresh road side pancakes. They began to form a similar box formation around our car.

“Don’t worry. This car is also made out of nearly indestructible material. They can ram us all they want. It won’t affect a thing,” Archy said.

The side doors on the semi-trailer slid open to reveal a large minigun with an army of happy soldiers surrounding it.

“I don’t think they are going to ram us Archy,” Elly said.

The back door on the leading car opened with a similar twist, but had a familiar face manning the gun. Tyler lead the troops of the semi ambush and I could do more than imagine the smirk on his face. He screamed something and began to fire at the front end of our cop car.

Bullets sprayed up the hood, leaving swiss cheese sized holes and smoke as a bread trail. Archy ducked at the last second, avoiding the millions of sharp projectiles. The other semis joined in on the fun, both lighting up the sides of the car.

Elly was using her abilities and her armor to defend my defenseless skin against the deadly projectiles. Sinking into the floor seemed like the best shelter from the destruction. Elly was being tossed around the car. The bullet impacts were strong enough to slide her from seat to seat. Her armor seemed to hold up against the homicidal effect of the bullets and absorbed the lesser yet still painful impact.

She repeatedly screamed in intense agony, “I just want to go back to bed!”

She screamed before letting out an electric pulse. Archy wasn’t having much of a better time. Tyler was aiming for the head of the car to limit Archy’s sight and concentration. The car swerved side to side as Archy attempted to blindly dodge thousands of bullets. Clearly it wasn’t working.

“Ah,” Elly yelled in pain, holding her left shoulder where an armor plate was taken with the wind and a fresh wound took its place.

“Come here.”

I reached up and grabbed her down on the floor with me.

“I think it’s in there deep. I can feel it moving around. I think it’s going to my brain. Or it’s like the creepy alien thing that pops out of people’s chests from that one alien movie.”

“Alien?” Archy screamed back to us.

“Yeah it was an alien movie. I don’t remember what it was called. It’s from like the 1900’s.”

“Are you guys being serious right now? Do we not have four bigger problems outside the car?”

“She’s insulting a good movie.”

“Oh, please. It looked like fright night on Sesame Street,” Elly stated.

“You two knock it off or I will turn this car around,” I screamed, but got a crazy idea for an escape plan.

“Archy, turn the car around.”

“Oh, why didn’t I think of that? Oh, I know. Because there’s an eight-foot semi on every side of us unloading half of the earth’s available metal.”

“No, I mean use your powers to switch the front with the back.”

Archy was silent for a few seconds at the thought of my plan. The room was then filled with light and the car began to shift again. The floor we owed our lives to split and picked up Elly and me. The center console, wheels, and pedals all formed out of the floor boards.

I floored the car at the rear semi, which was the only one not shooting. Taken by surprise, the semi driver was easily displaced from the power of my ram. He bumped into one of the side semis, knocking them into the guardrail. I floored it into the new gap, but the trucks flew back to their designated spots. I clipped the rear of the truck and breached the semi’s wall into the free world.

“I hope Tyler can smell my smile,” Elly said, rubbing her hands together.

“We aren’t home yet, Elly. We still have a long time to go,” Archy said.

As I flew down the highway, going 100 mph, I hit a pothole and the whole front end of the car fell off, engine and all.

“And that’s why I should drive,” Archy said, huffing and puffing.

We crawled out of what was left of the cop car. The siren did a dying whoop as Archy placed his hands on the top of the car.

“Goodbye, old friend,” he whispered.

The car beeped one last time before the light from Archy’s hands engulfed the car and was absorbed back to its creator. Archy turned around with watery eyes.

“Archy... are you…”

“Please don’t. I’m fine. It was just a car,” he said, pushing past me.

He hopped the highway guardrail and fell thirty feet into the tree’s below.

“Archy!” I screamed, running over to the guardrail

“Scarlett, calm down. It’s ok. The armor protected him,” Elly soothed.

She stood on the guardrail and held out her hands, “Care to dance?” she asked.

I grabbed her hands and climbed up on the railing to join her. Most people would have felt fear falling from such a height. I did not feel fear from the fall, not even as I gazed into the darkness of the drop below; I felt no fear when the trucks surrounded us and shot enough bullets to wipe out China, and I felt no fear when Tyler laid his hand on me.

The only thing I fear is what I’m going to say when I find my dead best friend alive and well.

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