X-Ordinary

c.a.2700

Ordinary’s POV – 18 years old.

“Ords,” Vesva calls my name, “Ordinary.”

I had been admiring the blood in the mirror. I pull out a piece of glass from my forearm, and the skin slowly heals and as it does, the blood runs dark.

“What is it, sir?” I turn to Vesva as smoke curls around us both.

“How do you feel after opening the wound in this city?” Vesva is wearing a grey suit that doesn’t stain – it remains spick and span in the smoke and ash settling around us. His gold eyes match mine.

“Peace is a terrible thing,” I repeat what he told me, “Complacency breeds ignorance.”

“How do you feel?” Vesva lowers his voice, raising a brow, “After opening the wound in this city, Ordinary?”

“Feel what?” I ask my father, my maker. He comes to me, seeing the blank stare I’d mastered so well to get out of my cage.

“Good,” Vesva approves of my answer, his eyes shine bright with pride at my obedience, as he comes even closer, forgetting I still hold the large shard of glass in my hand.

I had just slaughtered a whole room of peace officers, using whatever weapons I could make from the material around me. Glass was often good… it was sharp, it just hurt to hold.

Vesva grabs my shoulders, smiling.

My body tenses and then I strike. I’ve cut through his abdomen a second later, a deep slash, my hand tightening around the glass until it cuts through me too.

His fingers curl into me as Vesva collapses, I pull out of his grasp.

“You never listened! I never stopped feeling, I never stopped feeling!” I scream above him, as my maker bleeds out below, staring up at the smoke through the blasted ceiling…. slowly smiling in his death.

No.

NO!

I watch his body distort and haze away to nothing. I thought I had escaped. But I was still in the simulator? How? How?!

I drop the piece of red glass, as the room goes dark and Vesva speaks one more time, from somewhere far away, “Disappointing, Ordinary – trash this one. Her expiration has passed.”

Words I had been dreading to hear. But expected.

I feel a heavy weight spread across all my limbs, and before I know it, I’m out before I hit the ground.

****

Jace’s POV – 21 years old.

Jace.

Did he call to me?

“Jace. We have to head back. Mum’s waiting. She just made pancakes.”

I can’t really focus on Snyper, after searching through the trash pits all afternoon, I’d come across a metal coffin with a hazardous sign on the front labelled radioactive. Something about it doesn’t look right to me. Like it was just slapped on to distract from the contents inside. And I only looked at it because I thought I… heard something.

My brother puts a hand on my shoulder, and I turn to see Snyper looking worried, his blonde hair turned greasy from our exploration of Atlantis’ landfill. We had been searching through the rubbished Area X, looking for any outdated weapons we could fire into the trash or back engineer for fun.

“How did you move that out of the way,” Snyper changes his tone, looking at the steel beam I had lifted to bring out the prize underneath.

“I wanted to know what was in this box,” I explain, “So I just… I moved it… I thought I heard some girl so I just tried and I could lift the beam like nothing…”

“That box is probably haunted,” Snyper murmurs, “It’s almost sundown, come on, Jace, I’m starving – we’ll come back tomorrow.”

I hear a twang. Much louder.

Snyper hears it better than me.

“Oh, shit,” he pushes me out of the way to lean down and put his head next to the coffin’s lid, “You’re right, there’s some girl alive in there! We have to get her out! She’s asphyxiating. No oxy–”

“Oxygen,” I finish it for him, leaning down and grabbing the lid and trying to pry it off – but it’s welded shut.

We both grab the edge of the metal coffin and drag it out further toward the road.

Meanwhile we can hear the familiar rumble of a 4 by 4 SUV coming our way.

No, shit, bad timing!

“We’re so fucked, hide it,” Snyper panics, as do I. We both throw some trash over the metal box and turn around to see Ace’s SUV coming around the rubble. I can tell mum isn’t in the car. We’re extra fucked. It’s all our fathers. Ace is driving, Dale in the front, Jose, my dad, and Serge in the back.

We weren’t meant to fire weapons at all – let alone search for them.

I gulp as they skid to a fast stop in front of us, windows zoomed down, looking out at us, definitely pissed.

“How many fucking times,” Dale jumps out first, “This area is restricted for good reason, why the fuck do you come here,” as he slams the door shut, the others follow suit.

“I’ll handle this,” My father looks at me and I look down as he comes closer, about to grab my suit and haul me into the car.

“Everyone shut up for a second,” Ace walks around the front, glaring at Snyper but now putting a hand up for all of us to quieten down.

All of them, as one, look around for anything suspicious.

Ace is looking right at the coffin with the radioactive warning, and now they’ve all frozen.

“What have you found…?” Dale changes his tone.

“We need to open this,” Snyper begs his father, giving in, and I quickly beg the other three.

“There’s someone inside,” I add, “She’s dying – we think a girl is trapped inside that box–”

“Why didn’t you say something,” Dale calms right down, motioning for my dad, “Jose,” he calls him to move me out of the way, as he steps forward to grab my shoulder and haul me aside.

Snyper leaps to the right as Serge throws out his fingers and a projected and thin bolt of lightning cuts through the welding, then Jose takes out a gun and shoots off the hinges!!!

Snyper and I stand back and shoulder to shoulder, our mouths gaping – our dad’s never used guns. We didn’t even know they carried guns.

But now they’re all holding one in their hands, pulled from their coats from secret holsters. What the fuck?!

Regardless, in seconds the metal lid to the coffin is removed, but they all stand in our way, blocking the view.

Fuck, we can’t see what’s inside at all! Snyper and I try to dance closer on our tip toes, but my father holds out a tattooed hand to stop us, glaring at us not to move another inch.

They’ve gone very quiet.

Dale, being the doctor and the genius freak of the family, makes his assessment of whatever is in there.

“We need to get her to the hospital, get in the car,” Dale glares over his shoulder at us, “Now.”

Snyper runs back to the car, I skip back a step but wait, wanting to see her.

My dad reaches in to pick her up, and I see a naked girl covered in blood and bruises and cuts, so pale she looks like a corpse, but her eyes are open – and they’re staring at my father, as her lips open too and she rattles out a breath. She’s alive. But barely breathing. Her hair is so dirty I can’t tell what colour it is. But the colour of her eyes is nothing I’ve ever seen before.

Gold, like liquid metal.

Someone beat her bad. Who the fuck?

I feel my heart race in anger, as I turn before they find me staring.

I hop into the back with Snyper.

It was a massive car, we are in the third row of seats. Where are they going to put the naked chick?

We both watch, speechless, as they march back to the car.

My dad drives, Ace next to him in the front.

Serge and Dale hop in the back, keeping the girl across their laps as they check her pulses and her wounds.

“Since when do you carry?” Snyper asks, sounding betrayed. I do too, but I’m more worried about the chick.

“Why was she in a metal coffin left to die?” I ask the boss direct, Dale – it’s dangerous to ask him the wrong question, especially since all Snyper and I did was disobey his every word and cause a riot every time we left and disappeared for days. We knew when to reel it in but not enough. So we were… ah… permanent pains in the ass for our fathers? We hardly talked beyond being yelled at repeatedly to follow orders.

“Quickly, Jose,” Dale orders him to drive faster, “Seatbelts,” he looks back at me, shaking his head at the both of us, “Seatbelts.”

Snyper and I buckle up and sit back on the second order, keeping quiet.

“Some people are fucked up,” Serge explains, looking back at us.

“There’s no such thing as murder anymore on our planet,” I say, still in shock, “Someone tried to –”

“She’s not dead yet,” Serge cuts me off.

“Since when do you all carry?” Snyper tries to ask again, “You tell us weapons are bad – fucking hypocrites.”

“Kick them out,” Dale suggests.

“No!” I immediately complain, “No – Snyper shut up, man.”

“I’m shutting up, I’m shutting up,” Snyper puts up his hands, rolling his eyes.

“There’s a girl dying here, try not to make it about yourselves,” Ace yells back, “Shut the hell up!”

“Yes, dad,” Snyper growls and lowers his head to the back of their seats, looking down at the chick.

I also keep quiet.

“This is a priority, I want everything and everyone not occupied, at the back with me,” Dale murmurs quietly to Serge, as he uses his C-Link to make the arrangements, “…I also want my section locked out once we’re in, no one in, no one out.”

Just as they’ve communicated this, we drive through a Transpendiser on the highway – heading back to Frankincense City.

Shit. Dale wants all his tech and equipment at hand. This is about more than saving her life.

As our SUV drives down toward FC, the toll is up front – but we aren’t slowing down.

“Dad,” I speak, worried why he’s putting his foot down, “Dad! What the hell!”

Snyper and I gape as we swerve through the chain link fence, smashing it to pieces with the diamond grill.

We both look back at the shocked guards and personnel lining the toll entry point between cities.

“You’re going to jail,” Snyper calls out, “Holy hell, your dad’s going to jail for that, Jace, we’ll all be on the news for that,” he grins and elbows me.

“Shut up,” I snap back… but after a pause I ask… “…wait… what if he does get in trouble for that?”

There is an odd silence in the SUV.

Our fathers look a little tense, and when I spy through the rear-view mirror to see their expressions – they’re all fighting back smirks.

Um… suss?

Why?

They broke the fucking law. They never broke the law – and they’d threaten to kick our asses if we even tried to shoplift let alone do what they just did!

“What’s so fucking funny?” Snyper notices too, rubbing it in.

“Kick them out, Jose,” Dale orders again.

“Out. Now,” my dad agrees, slamming the breaks on and pulling up by the curb of the city, “Go home to your mother. Don’t make any detours.”

I open the door and hop out, swearing under my breath as Snyper also follows me. We kick the door back shut and they take off at top gun speed.

Snyper and I are speechless as they drift around a corner and out of sight.

We glance at each other and don’t know what to say.

However, my stomach does rumble and growl for me – about the same time as my bro.

“Fuck, I’m starving,” Snyper complains as he turns around, hands in pockets as we walk together, only a few blocks from our house.

Around us, the streets are peaceful, as everyone heads home from work. We got a few nasty stares from the public and I feel a bit embarrassed we got kicked out in front of everyone.

“I wonder who that girl was,” I murmur, still curious about her as we walk together, shoulder to shoulder.

“No idea, but she was beautiful,” Snyper says an off the cuff remark and I feel a surge of jealousy.

“Shut up,” I scowl, “Fuck.”

Snyper gives me a funny side look, picking up on my reaction.

He doesn’t say anything.

But I know he’ll hound me about it later. He had a mouth that ran off to places it shouldn’t – just like his dad, always pissing off Serge. Snyper was always pissing everyone off with his mouth.

I sigh.

Fuck it, I don’t care if he hounds me about her.

Every girl I had ever met in this city was pretty ordinary.

There was something about this girl’s eyes, though.

She was… extra ordinary.

I just hope the girl lives.

Whoever she is.