Page 19 of Born Savage

My jaw clenched in direct response to how tight my muscles had become. Her eyes managed to penetrate mine and what had also struck me, but not until inside the bowels of the tunnel was how her eye color was exactly the same shade as mine. The deep green changed at various light levels but always held a shimmer that I’d yet to see with anyone else.

The life I’d had until I was almost eight years old had ended and there was no sense in languishing over events that would never be repeated.

And still, the female had managed to get under my skin. I turned away, determined to keep her from invading any more of my mind.

As Wrath approached, I noticed he was still perplexed by the events of the evening. Not only with her unusual abilities but also with my reaction to her. He and the others were used to seeing me restless yet rarely talkative and certainly never emotional about anything.

Scientists had warned that one major side effect of the genetic study and reappropriation of my DNA was the loss of most emotions. We were supposed to be good little soldiers after all, built to follow orders and nothing else. I’d done so accordingly until betrayal had demolished the honor and code instilled in every Savage.

“What are we doing?” he asked as he joined me on the ground.

“Following orders.”

“This wasn’t an order, Rage. This was a request and one that you were groomed to accept from day one of entering the hospital campus.”

Hospital campus. The three of us had been spared, alongside dozens within the Resistance who’d gained access to the city via the underground tunnels. We’d been captured, forced into the prison system where we endured weeks of torture. It had been worth it to get close to the king, the plan working beautifully until it hadn’t.

We’d underestimated the response of the first-generation Savages. Hundreds of the strongest soldiers in the Resistance had perished.

After the bloody battle I’d started under the direction of those with far more credentials than mine, the three of us had been pulled away by an entirely different group of men, all masked, all refusing to identify themselves.

We’d been drugged and I believed taken to prison, yet when we’d awakened, we’d been in a place of healing. Not like what Wren was capable of, but something straight out of science fiction.

I studied him, realizing for the first time he was unhappy with being tasked to join me. “We were all informed as to the importance of this mission. You volunteered.”

“What choice did I really have? We were told of the importance but not the reason behind it. I’m surprised you of all men wouldn’t demand answers. Who is this girl?” Wrath was almost angry.

“Of all men? I’m no longer certain that any of what I once was still exists.”

“There isn’t one of us who doesn’t wish we could erase the past, but here we are with much better capabilities for fighting the war.”

The war. That was supposed to have ended the moment the bombs struck, but as with every other period of history, what had surfaced from the rubble first were those capable of profiting from society’s collapse. Now, instead of fighting unseen faces from another country, we were fighting members of a powerful army comprised of our former neighbors and friends.

The irony hadn’t been lost in the years of significant pain and growth.

Perhaps of anyone, Wrath knew me the best. We’d once been in a unique space together, held in the same testing facility. Lab rats to a group of scientists tasked to provide the ultimate in protection for our country. They’d only accepted the finest candidates, those considered cream of the crop in various attributes.

Tests performed had confirmed our superiority physically, mentally, and emotionally. It had been an honor to be chosen, family members offered a one-way ticket to wealth and prosperity while the subject endured the most extreme makeover ever envisioned.

Originally and prior to my admittance to the program, at least two dozen facilities had been spread across the country in undisclosed locations guarded by military personnel for several reasons. From what I’d heard, the participants had thought of themselves as soldiers preparing for war. That had made the tests and experiments tolerable, pretending they were on a covert operation.

In a way the original volunteers had been, their existence only known by a select few in the government, a weapon being built to rival anything on Earth and beyond. The project had been so secretive that every detail about their existence had been wiped from every database. There’d been no pictures left, no school records, nothing.

That had been before the war when hope still existed, people keeping faith in the government to provide protection. No one had known what went on behind closed doors because they’d wanted to believe their world was safe.

Several thousand men and woman had endured the agony and time spent in isolation only to discover when their special skills had been needed, there’d been a huge flaw in calculations. They’d fought valiantly only to die from an uncalculated effect of radiation poisoning.

They’d gone crazy and turned on those who’d created them. That had laid the groundwork for hatred and fear, Savages wound up like the violent monsters they’d become. There was no telling how many of them remained, but they were even more dangerous than had been believed.

All the hard work hadn’t stopped the collapse of society or the takeover of government. It certainly hadn’t stopped a widening of societal classes.

As with all tragedies, the rich became much richer as well as offered protection from the dangers of outside the domed cities. All while the poor had been stripped of everything meaningful including humanity, enduring hardships unlike anything the world had seen before.

The outside had become known as the Graveyard because of endless deaths and violence.

Only years later and after millions of people had perished, the program had been reborn, but under a new name and without the glory and honor surrounding the original.

The Verndari Project had been similar, but the name change had said it all. Verndari was based in Norse mythology, savages rising from the ashes of crisis. There couldn’t have been a more appropriate name. Only what we were protecting was no longer countrywide and certainly not global but a location important to us all.