Genesis the prequle
Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:00 pm
Well, I know very few of you care but i just thought i would show everyone what i can do when i have two months to work on 11 pages.
Enjoy
-Esy
Matthew stood arms crossed staring at the crate. Looking at it, something felt wrong; the very air around this strange box seemed to tingle with that feeling of wrongness. There was a living thing inside it, a breathing, sentient being, chained and tied. Matthew had been in this business for over four years now but still felt sick every time he that he came near or laid eyes upon one of these crates. There was just something inside of him that could not accept or become used to the idea of a living creature being treated like in such an inhumane manner; his heart simply refused to become hardened and callused. The young man absentmindedly ran his fingers through shaggy brown hair, taking his eyes off the crate.
“Why does it have to be me?” Matthew wondered aloud as he picked up the clipboard with information sheet attached and read through it again for perhaps the third time. The sheet still said the same thing it had the first and second time he had looked at it:
Name: Genesis
SIN: 1527E121S1
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Planet: Earth
Class: AA
The sheet continued with more technical information, but none of that made a lick of sense to him. Matthew, unlike the huge majority of beings in this galaxy, absolutely hated The War. So when it came down to such information on the sheet as the new state-of-the-art technologies this warrior was equipped with, or her track record of wins and losses, Matthew didn’t understand and didn’t bother to try to. But what Matthew did gather appalled him. A girl trapped within a cage, arms and legs chained down, blindfolded. The chills sent down his spine by the thought of this were evident.
Matthew thought to himself as he put down the clipboard, visibly shaken, “A human girl? Being sent into that deathtrap? What has our race come to?”
Though Matthew hated everything the War was and everything it stood for, but being associated with it somehow was unavoidable. The War simply dominated life and business. One could not get a job that did not have something to do with the War. Thus it was that Matthew, to do what he loved, had to put with and even work for the incarnation of everything he hated and opposed.
The War had been started after an intensive, exhaustive ten year diplomatic debate failed. The fundamental idea behind this tournament for galactic control was that a planet would use a specially trained warrior to settle their issues on the battlefield instead of immense armies and fleets of ships. Genetic alterations had long ago become a normal part of life and were morally accepted. The two prevailing means of genetic alteration were to either alter the genes of the unborn offspring in the early developmental stages of life, or to have a special kind of nano-chip bonded with and altered the brain in the desired ways. Parents could alter their unborn child to have blue eyes, yellow hair, or even a sense of humor. Around the age of ten, offspring are collected from their parents and given preliminary testing. It is the results of these tests that determine the career the progeny will have for the rest of its life. Matthew’s results in particular were interesting: since he was never altered at all, the test never game him a direct answer. It could not tell him what he was supposed to be; perhaps it was partly because of this that Matthew had floated through life from job to job, never finding the one that felt like his own.
Matthew paced restlessly around the ship during the lengthy refueling process. He wanted to just get this delivery over and done with. Finally the vessel had had its fill, and Matthew stepped out of the hatch to make a final inspection and prepare for departure. As he was slowly circling the ship, checking for damage, it became apparent to him from nearby conversations in the hangar that the content of his cargo was already known.
“You’re kidding me? A human? The Board of Regulation only just approved the use of humans a month ago. There’s no way in Space the Earthers could have engineered one in so short a time!” yelled one pilot.
“Earthers already had one in the making by then,” replied another.
“Lousy, no good, sons-of-a—”
“Be careful of what you say on their planet!” the second extraterrestrial interrupted, looking about in fear of an invisible enemy, “Those dirty Earthers could be watching us, even now.” Wary of the aliens that seemed to have a hate for Earth residents, Matthew began to head back into his own ship, where he felt he would be safe.
“You’re squirmy around the scary ones, aren’t you kid? The ones that have gone insane from all the messin’ around the geneticists did in their heads,” came a voice from behind him. Evidently, the group of conversing aliens had followed him back to his ship, wanting to see the newest prototype fighter. “The ones that rock the crate and scream the whole way, they freak you out, don’t they?”
The stunned Matthew didn’t know what to say, and the group took advantage of this to push past him and into the cargo hold. But what the small crowd of aliens beheld was not the normal War combatant who, still blindfolded, would have lunged at the sound of the holographic windows being opened. Instead they saw the most beautiful girl Matthew had ever seen, sitting serenely in the center of the cage, reading—she had somehow managed to remove her bindings and blindfold. She didn’t have the plastic, perfect model beauty that was so often associated with genetically altered beings, but a kind of wild, natural beauty refusing to be tamed. Her hair hung in wavy tresses of maple and her skin was smoother than silk. Without her blindfold, one could also see her stunning eyes, which flamed with passion and emotion. Matthew nearly gasped and could feel the blood rushing to his face.
“Well, ain’t that a sight,” slurped a squid-like being from behind Matthew. Matthew himself was speechless. He couldn’t believe that the spectacular young woman before him was actually the fighting machine that was supposed to reinvent the very way the War was played. The next few minutes passed by in a daze, as the onlookers slowly left Matthew’s shuttle and he lifted off and pulled out of the station. Getting on their way, Matthew set the ship on autopilot and went back to check on his ‘cargo’. To his surprise, Genesis looked up, smiled, and waved at him. Matthew jumped, startled and suddenly embarrassed, and practically ran back to the cockpit in the front of the ship. He didn’t want her to see him blushing.
Finally, the ship had reached its origin, and Matthew could make his drop-off. Matthew turned off the autopilot and assumed manual control, gently guiding the vessel to the planet’s surface. After landing, Matthew locked the ship into place and went back to assist the ground men in transporting Genesis. Three crewmen readied a second cage to move Genesis into; they thought that this was going to be a simple crate to crate movement, but the crewmen had counted on the fact that by this time in their voyage, most of the warriors had been broken and had lost most of their spirit of freedom and independence. Genesis was different than all of those before her. When they opened the top of her cramped crate, she dropped the book she was holding and launched herself through the man that had opened the crate, raking his face with her claw-like fingertips and dropping him to the ground, and out into the air. She landed and turned her head to see her opponents, a feral look in her eyes. Indeed this look was much different than the one Matthew had been given before. The two remaining crewmen advanced on her reluctantly, trying not to hurt their precious cargo or get hurt themselves. Genesis turned fully around and attacked, bringing another down in moments with a series of whirling slices from her claws. The last crewman signaled for help on his personal communicator and tried to run away, but Genesis wouldn’t let that happen. She tackled the last man and prepared to give him a bite to his neck that he would remember. Matthew stepped in and grabbed hold of Genesis’s arm, trying to pull her away. Suddenly she seemed to come to her senses, claws retracted and eyes returned to their normal hue.
“Thanks, you were a big help,” Genesis said surprisingly sweetly and sincerely to the man that was Matthew above her, holding her arm as armed guards busted into the cargo hold and pulled her away from him and on to her cell. In all the commotion, Matthew hadn’t seen a Suit make its way over to him. The man staring at Matthew wore a black and white business suit, shined black shoes, and no emotions. Matthew nearly stopped dead when he saw the suit; he had heard stories of their legendary ruthlessness and cruelty to anyone who stood in their path or even anyone in general.
“Not to worry,” the Suit oiled slimily, “you are not in any kind of trouble. The boss would simply like to speak to you about a proposal.” Matthew, still in shock from the sudden appearance of the Suit, didn’t question it and followed it dumbly to the office area of the complex. Matthew was taken to a large office, cold and void of almost any kind of furnishing. Any furnishing the room did have were made of cold steel, giving one the feeling that this was not a place for mercy.
“Please, have a seat,” the man behind the desk hissed in a near whisper to Matthew, “I have looked at your file and I see here that you have been a pilot and mechanic here with us for almost four years now. It says here that you have had no programming whatsoever, yet you manage to keep up with the best of them? How… unusual.” Matthew couldn’t tell where this conversation was going.
“I also see that you were the very pilot that brought us our latest attraction.” The man stopped and looked Matthew over, seeming to calculate Matthew’s worth to him, “Do you know much about how things operate around here, Mr. Cohen, isn’t it?” The man raised an eyebrow at Matthew.
“No, I’ve never really had much interest in the War,” Matthew stumbled through the understatement.
“Well, here is a little bit of new information for you, young man. My company does what it does for the War very well: we create high quality fighting machines. Effective and disposable. We are immensely proud of our record of nearly flawless warriors. But it has come to my attention that our latest success, the Genesis Project, has a rather dangerous flaw. She is excessively violent and uncontrollable, much like the tempests and storms of the days before weather control. We were at a loss on how to control our creation until you, Mr. Cohen, demonstrated the ability to somehow calm this wild beast.”
“So what are you getting at?” Matthew questioned interrupting the man’s speech.
“What I was getting at, Mr. Cohen,” the man behind the desk continued annoyed, “is that you are needed for a more important job than just piloting mere transport ships and fixing small mechanical problems. Your presence beside Genesis calmed her, and if you can make this happen on a regular basis, it could be the final thing that gives Earth victory in the War and control of the galaxy. I request of you to make this your job. How does that sound to you? A ‘handler’ of a sort for our champion fighter.” The man now looked him directly in the eye as if to say you have no choice other than to accept.
“So, your decision, Mr. Cohen?”
“I suppose I could do this,” replied Matthew hesitantly, a chill running up his spine. Matthew got the feeling that he had somehow just entangled himself within some kind of destiny that he was unaware of. What had he gotten himself into? Well, on the plus side he would get to see Genesis in less than hour.
Matthew soon found himself standing near the exit area that Genesis used, wearing his one of his old pilot flight suits—he had no other clothes. Genesis ventured out of the field blood-stained and wounded. She looked like she had just been in a vehicle crash and needed to go to the hospital. Her face was grim and she looked as if she were disgusted with all of life. But as she saw Matthew standing in the exit area, her face lit up and she glittered a smile at him.
“I’m so glad that you accepted, I don’t know how much longer I would have lasted without some kind real interaction,” Genesis bubbled in a voice that would have confused bees into thinking that she was a flower. Matthew found himself speechless and strained to say something.
“Yeah, don’t you need to have those wounds looked at?”
“Wounds?” Genesis laughed, “These are scratches in comparison to some what’s happened to me before. I’ll be fully healed in around an hour, but I wouldn’t mind a bite to eat,” Genesis suggested. They headed down to the mess hall.
It had been many weeks since the reunion of Matthew and Genesis, and Matthew had never experienced a happier time in all of his life. For once, he forgot about the horrors of the War and that the girl he found himself in love with was forever going to be a part of it. He was too happy to consider what might actually happen if Genesis lost, because that could never happen. He thought.
Genesis was undefeated, and still going strong. None had come even close yet to matching her skill. This was until some small planet along the fringes of the galaxy had produced her equal. This unknown fighter entered the ring, and the entire coliseum had gone quiet. The fighter had just had that kind of terrifying presence. Genesis herself was even a little shaken. The fight began and for the first time in any of her battles Genesis found herself having to fight to the top of her ability. And soon after that it became apparent that Genesis was in fact losing, and instead of an equal match it turned into a fight for her life. Matthew was there watching as the mysterious combatant that Genesis was fighting against outmatched her in speed, agility, skill, and even tactics. Finesse fought finesse. Matthew frantically tried to get Genesis to surrender and end the fight before she was seriously injured, but she didn’t. Genesis had never lost before in her life, perhaps she just didn’t understand how to give in. Whatever the case, Genesis continued on, despite being clearly beaten. Matthew watched as the mystifying competitor easily stepped to the side like a matador as Genesis charged him and then precisely kicked down at the back of her leg, tripping Genesis up and bringing her to the ground, skidding. She attempted to stand back up but failed, kicked in the throat pitilessly and sent back to the dirt. The enemy then prepared for the killing blow, his hand becoming like that of a dagger. He lunged at Genesis for the kill, but she rolled to the side in time to avoid the hit. She was not fast enough the second time, however, and felt herself viciously stabbed in the abdomen. The judge called the fight then, but the opponent did not quit, and Genesis received innumerable more wounds before the opposing fighter could be pulled away from her and sedated. Matthew ran to Genesis’s side and knelt beneath her, holding her head. The last images Genesis saw before losing consciousness was the face of a distressed and worried Matthew.
Genesis was carried away from the scene of the battle in a stretcher and was put in the hospital. It had been three days, and Matthew had hardly left her side through that time. Any other being would have died from such injuries, and despite her supernatural healing abilities, Matthew had still needed to donate some of his own blood for Genesis simply because her body couldn’t produce blood as fast as she had lost it.
Matthew had been getting a drink when he came back to find two Suits standing guard in front of the closed door to Genesis’s room. Matthew had forgotten about the actual consequences of Genesis’s loss. The boss was in the room overseeing the torture of Genesis. Matthew could see one of the other men in the room wielding what seemed to be an old sledgehammer. The boss was yelling and screaming, Genesis was crying and shaking. Matthew dropped his drink and lunged for the door. He felt the two men grab him by the arms and yank him away, slamming him up against the wall opposite the door. Holding him off the ground there, they wrenched his right and left arms out of their sockets before dropping him. Matthew fell to the ground in pain. He stood again and couldn’t even finish the retort, “You forgot to break my legs,” before one of the guards grabbed him by the neck and held him against the wall again, this time refusing to let go. Matthew beheld what happened in the hospital room next as his vision began to fade due to asphyxia.
“Do you understand how important that battle was, you worthless scum? Do you have any idea how much money we have sunk into you that is lost because of your injuries? Your job is to win, and you failed. You don’t deserve happiness anymore.” With that, he grabbed the device from the other man and slammed it down upon Genesis’s left hand, which had been secured flat to a table. Matthew swore he could hear her bones crunch under the force of the blow. Genesis. Matthew continued to struggle against his captor. As Genesis screamed again in agony, Matthew yelled out her name with what breath he had left. She yelled his. Suddenly the screaming stopped, and Matthew felt himself dropped to the floor as he lost awareness, hearing the sound of the boss:
“Mr. Cohen, your position has been terminated. Consider yourself fired. You have the rest of the day to say goodbye and clear your things out of the housing units. Your clearance has been reduced to Class K. You are never to associate with this little girl again.” The boss oiled his cruel words in a voice that was like the venom from the snake, finishing off its prey, “Have a nice day.”
Matthew came to some minutes later and scrambled to the knocked out Genesis. Matthew sat next to her until she awoke. He said nothing to her, just looked into her eyes. Matthew embraced her and she cried on his shoulder for half an hour. Genesis’s destiny was not that of a fighter; this role had been forced upon her. She was not the fighting machine she had been designed to be. There are some things you cannot change about someone. There is no gene for the human soul, and hers had just been broken.
“I want to leave this place forever,” Genesis whispered into his ear in between sobs.
“Then let’s leave.” Matthew replied.
“How?” Genesis asked, looking up at him with tear-streaked eyes.
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s just leave.”
“You would do that? Commit treason against the War, kidnap a champion warrior, enter restricted space, defy direct orders?”
“Anything,” Matthew replied assuringly. He held her close to him, a tear rolling down his cheek.
That night as the nearby sun disappeared behind the horizon of the War planet, a single ship slipped away carrying two escapees, but they would not be free forever. They realized that the Suits would follow them to the end, and that committing this act changed their lives to those of outlaws. What they did not discern was that in leaving they were initiating a series of events that would forever alter the galaxy. The destinies they had made for themselves were inevitably intertwined with the fate of the rest of the known universe. It would be the second beginning.
Enjoy
-Esy
Matthew stood arms crossed staring at the crate. Looking at it, something felt wrong; the very air around this strange box seemed to tingle with that feeling of wrongness. There was a living thing inside it, a breathing, sentient being, chained and tied. Matthew had been in this business for over four years now but still felt sick every time he that he came near or laid eyes upon one of these crates. There was just something inside of him that could not accept or become used to the idea of a living creature being treated like in such an inhumane manner; his heart simply refused to become hardened and callused. The young man absentmindedly ran his fingers through shaggy brown hair, taking his eyes off the crate.
“Why does it have to be me?” Matthew wondered aloud as he picked up the clipboard with information sheet attached and read through it again for perhaps the third time. The sheet still said the same thing it had the first and second time he had looked at it:
Name: Genesis
SIN: 1527E121S1
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Planet: Earth
Class: AA
The sheet continued with more technical information, but none of that made a lick of sense to him. Matthew, unlike the huge majority of beings in this galaxy, absolutely hated The War. So when it came down to such information on the sheet as the new state-of-the-art technologies this warrior was equipped with, or her track record of wins and losses, Matthew didn’t understand and didn’t bother to try to. But what Matthew did gather appalled him. A girl trapped within a cage, arms and legs chained down, blindfolded. The chills sent down his spine by the thought of this were evident.
Matthew thought to himself as he put down the clipboard, visibly shaken, “A human girl? Being sent into that deathtrap? What has our race come to?”
Though Matthew hated everything the War was and everything it stood for, but being associated with it somehow was unavoidable. The War simply dominated life and business. One could not get a job that did not have something to do with the War. Thus it was that Matthew, to do what he loved, had to put with and even work for the incarnation of everything he hated and opposed.
The War had been started after an intensive, exhaustive ten year diplomatic debate failed. The fundamental idea behind this tournament for galactic control was that a planet would use a specially trained warrior to settle their issues on the battlefield instead of immense armies and fleets of ships. Genetic alterations had long ago become a normal part of life and were morally accepted. The two prevailing means of genetic alteration were to either alter the genes of the unborn offspring in the early developmental stages of life, or to have a special kind of nano-chip bonded with and altered the brain in the desired ways. Parents could alter their unborn child to have blue eyes, yellow hair, or even a sense of humor. Around the age of ten, offspring are collected from their parents and given preliminary testing. It is the results of these tests that determine the career the progeny will have for the rest of its life. Matthew’s results in particular were interesting: since he was never altered at all, the test never game him a direct answer. It could not tell him what he was supposed to be; perhaps it was partly because of this that Matthew had floated through life from job to job, never finding the one that felt like his own.
Matthew paced restlessly around the ship during the lengthy refueling process. He wanted to just get this delivery over and done with. Finally the vessel had had its fill, and Matthew stepped out of the hatch to make a final inspection and prepare for departure. As he was slowly circling the ship, checking for damage, it became apparent to him from nearby conversations in the hangar that the content of his cargo was already known.
“You’re kidding me? A human? The Board of Regulation only just approved the use of humans a month ago. There’s no way in Space the Earthers could have engineered one in so short a time!” yelled one pilot.
“Earthers already had one in the making by then,” replied another.
“Lousy, no good, sons-of-a—”
“Be careful of what you say on their planet!” the second extraterrestrial interrupted, looking about in fear of an invisible enemy, “Those dirty Earthers could be watching us, even now.” Wary of the aliens that seemed to have a hate for Earth residents, Matthew began to head back into his own ship, where he felt he would be safe.
“You’re squirmy around the scary ones, aren’t you kid? The ones that have gone insane from all the messin’ around the geneticists did in their heads,” came a voice from behind him. Evidently, the group of conversing aliens had followed him back to his ship, wanting to see the newest prototype fighter. “The ones that rock the crate and scream the whole way, they freak you out, don’t they?”
The stunned Matthew didn’t know what to say, and the group took advantage of this to push past him and into the cargo hold. But what the small crowd of aliens beheld was not the normal War combatant who, still blindfolded, would have lunged at the sound of the holographic windows being opened. Instead they saw the most beautiful girl Matthew had ever seen, sitting serenely in the center of the cage, reading—she had somehow managed to remove her bindings and blindfold. She didn’t have the plastic, perfect model beauty that was so often associated with genetically altered beings, but a kind of wild, natural beauty refusing to be tamed. Her hair hung in wavy tresses of maple and her skin was smoother than silk. Without her blindfold, one could also see her stunning eyes, which flamed with passion and emotion. Matthew nearly gasped and could feel the blood rushing to his face.
“Well, ain’t that a sight,” slurped a squid-like being from behind Matthew. Matthew himself was speechless. He couldn’t believe that the spectacular young woman before him was actually the fighting machine that was supposed to reinvent the very way the War was played. The next few minutes passed by in a daze, as the onlookers slowly left Matthew’s shuttle and he lifted off and pulled out of the station. Getting on their way, Matthew set the ship on autopilot and went back to check on his ‘cargo’. To his surprise, Genesis looked up, smiled, and waved at him. Matthew jumped, startled and suddenly embarrassed, and practically ran back to the cockpit in the front of the ship. He didn’t want her to see him blushing.
Finally, the ship had reached its origin, and Matthew could make his drop-off. Matthew turned off the autopilot and assumed manual control, gently guiding the vessel to the planet’s surface. After landing, Matthew locked the ship into place and went back to assist the ground men in transporting Genesis. Three crewmen readied a second cage to move Genesis into; they thought that this was going to be a simple crate to crate movement, but the crewmen had counted on the fact that by this time in their voyage, most of the warriors had been broken and had lost most of their spirit of freedom and independence. Genesis was different than all of those before her. When they opened the top of her cramped crate, she dropped the book she was holding and launched herself through the man that had opened the crate, raking his face with her claw-like fingertips and dropping him to the ground, and out into the air. She landed and turned her head to see her opponents, a feral look in her eyes. Indeed this look was much different than the one Matthew had been given before. The two remaining crewmen advanced on her reluctantly, trying not to hurt their precious cargo or get hurt themselves. Genesis turned fully around and attacked, bringing another down in moments with a series of whirling slices from her claws. The last crewman signaled for help on his personal communicator and tried to run away, but Genesis wouldn’t let that happen. She tackled the last man and prepared to give him a bite to his neck that he would remember. Matthew stepped in and grabbed hold of Genesis’s arm, trying to pull her away. Suddenly she seemed to come to her senses, claws retracted and eyes returned to their normal hue.
“Thanks, you were a big help,” Genesis said surprisingly sweetly and sincerely to the man that was Matthew above her, holding her arm as armed guards busted into the cargo hold and pulled her away from him and on to her cell. In all the commotion, Matthew hadn’t seen a Suit make its way over to him. The man staring at Matthew wore a black and white business suit, shined black shoes, and no emotions. Matthew nearly stopped dead when he saw the suit; he had heard stories of their legendary ruthlessness and cruelty to anyone who stood in their path or even anyone in general.
“Not to worry,” the Suit oiled slimily, “you are not in any kind of trouble. The boss would simply like to speak to you about a proposal.” Matthew, still in shock from the sudden appearance of the Suit, didn’t question it and followed it dumbly to the office area of the complex. Matthew was taken to a large office, cold and void of almost any kind of furnishing. Any furnishing the room did have were made of cold steel, giving one the feeling that this was not a place for mercy.
“Please, have a seat,” the man behind the desk hissed in a near whisper to Matthew, “I have looked at your file and I see here that you have been a pilot and mechanic here with us for almost four years now. It says here that you have had no programming whatsoever, yet you manage to keep up with the best of them? How… unusual.” Matthew couldn’t tell where this conversation was going.
“I also see that you were the very pilot that brought us our latest attraction.” The man stopped and looked Matthew over, seeming to calculate Matthew’s worth to him, “Do you know much about how things operate around here, Mr. Cohen, isn’t it?” The man raised an eyebrow at Matthew.
“No, I’ve never really had much interest in the War,” Matthew stumbled through the understatement.
“Well, here is a little bit of new information for you, young man. My company does what it does for the War very well: we create high quality fighting machines. Effective and disposable. We are immensely proud of our record of nearly flawless warriors. But it has come to my attention that our latest success, the Genesis Project, has a rather dangerous flaw. She is excessively violent and uncontrollable, much like the tempests and storms of the days before weather control. We were at a loss on how to control our creation until you, Mr. Cohen, demonstrated the ability to somehow calm this wild beast.”
“So what are you getting at?” Matthew questioned interrupting the man’s speech.
“What I was getting at, Mr. Cohen,” the man behind the desk continued annoyed, “is that you are needed for a more important job than just piloting mere transport ships and fixing small mechanical problems. Your presence beside Genesis calmed her, and if you can make this happen on a regular basis, it could be the final thing that gives Earth victory in the War and control of the galaxy. I request of you to make this your job. How does that sound to you? A ‘handler’ of a sort for our champion fighter.” The man now looked him directly in the eye as if to say you have no choice other than to accept.
“So, your decision, Mr. Cohen?”
“I suppose I could do this,” replied Matthew hesitantly, a chill running up his spine. Matthew got the feeling that he had somehow just entangled himself within some kind of destiny that he was unaware of. What had he gotten himself into? Well, on the plus side he would get to see Genesis in less than hour.
Matthew soon found himself standing near the exit area that Genesis used, wearing his one of his old pilot flight suits—he had no other clothes. Genesis ventured out of the field blood-stained and wounded. She looked like she had just been in a vehicle crash and needed to go to the hospital. Her face was grim and she looked as if she were disgusted with all of life. But as she saw Matthew standing in the exit area, her face lit up and she glittered a smile at him.
“I’m so glad that you accepted, I don’t know how much longer I would have lasted without some kind real interaction,” Genesis bubbled in a voice that would have confused bees into thinking that she was a flower. Matthew found himself speechless and strained to say something.
“Yeah, don’t you need to have those wounds looked at?”
“Wounds?” Genesis laughed, “These are scratches in comparison to some what’s happened to me before. I’ll be fully healed in around an hour, but I wouldn’t mind a bite to eat,” Genesis suggested. They headed down to the mess hall.
It had been many weeks since the reunion of Matthew and Genesis, and Matthew had never experienced a happier time in all of his life. For once, he forgot about the horrors of the War and that the girl he found himself in love with was forever going to be a part of it. He was too happy to consider what might actually happen if Genesis lost, because that could never happen. He thought.
Genesis was undefeated, and still going strong. None had come even close yet to matching her skill. This was until some small planet along the fringes of the galaxy had produced her equal. This unknown fighter entered the ring, and the entire coliseum had gone quiet. The fighter had just had that kind of terrifying presence. Genesis herself was even a little shaken. The fight began and for the first time in any of her battles Genesis found herself having to fight to the top of her ability. And soon after that it became apparent that Genesis was in fact losing, and instead of an equal match it turned into a fight for her life. Matthew was there watching as the mysterious combatant that Genesis was fighting against outmatched her in speed, agility, skill, and even tactics. Finesse fought finesse. Matthew frantically tried to get Genesis to surrender and end the fight before she was seriously injured, but she didn’t. Genesis had never lost before in her life, perhaps she just didn’t understand how to give in. Whatever the case, Genesis continued on, despite being clearly beaten. Matthew watched as the mystifying competitor easily stepped to the side like a matador as Genesis charged him and then precisely kicked down at the back of her leg, tripping Genesis up and bringing her to the ground, skidding. She attempted to stand back up but failed, kicked in the throat pitilessly and sent back to the dirt. The enemy then prepared for the killing blow, his hand becoming like that of a dagger. He lunged at Genesis for the kill, but she rolled to the side in time to avoid the hit. She was not fast enough the second time, however, and felt herself viciously stabbed in the abdomen. The judge called the fight then, but the opponent did not quit, and Genesis received innumerable more wounds before the opposing fighter could be pulled away from her and sedated. Matthew ran to Genesis’s side and knelt beneath her, holding her head. The last images Genesis saw before losing consciousness was the face of a distressed and worried Matthew.
Genesis was carried away from the scene of the battle in a stretcher and was put in the hospital. It had been three days, and Matthew had hardly left her side through that time. Any other being would have died from such injuries, and despite her supernatural healing abilities, Matthew had still needed to donate some of his own blood for Genesis simply because her body couldn’t produce blood as fast as she had lost it.
Matthew had been getting a drink when he came back to find two Suits standing guard in front of the closed door to Genesis’s room. Matthew had forgotten about the actual consequences of Genesis’s loss. The boss was in the room overseeing the torture of Genesis. Matthew could see one of the other men in the room wielding what seemed to be an old sledgehammer. The boss was yelling and screaming, Genesis was crying and shaking. Matthew dropped his drink and lunged for the door. He felt the two men grab him by the arms and yank him away, slamming him up against the wall opposite the door. Holding him off the ground there, they wrenched his right and left arms out of their sockets before dropping him. Matthew fell to the ground in pain. He stood again and couldn’t even finish the retort, “You forgot to break my legs,” before one of the guards grabbed him by the neck and held him against the wall again, this time refusing to let go. Matthew beheld what happened in the hospital room next as his vision began to fade due to asphyxia.
“Do you understand how important that battle was, you worthless scum? Do you have any idea how much money we have sunk into you that is lost because of your injuries? Your job is to win, and you failed. You don’t deserve happiness anymore.” With that, he grabbed the device from the other man and slammed it down upon Genesis’s left hand, which had been secured flat to a table. Matthew swore he could hear her bones crunch under the force of the blow. Genesis. Matthew continued to struggle against his captor. As Genesis screamed again in agony, Matthew yelled out her name with what breath he had left. She yelled his. Suddenly the screaming stopped, and Matthew felt himself dropped to the floor as he lost awareness, hearing the sound of the boss:
“Mr. Cohen, your position has been terminated. Consider yourself fired. You have the rest of the day to say goodbye and clear your things out of the housing units. Your clearance has been reduced to Class K. You are never to associate with this little girl again.” The boss oiled his cruel words in a voice that was like the venom from the snake, finishing off its prey, “Have a nice day.”
Matthew came to some minutes later and scrambled to the knocked out Genesis. Matthew sat next to her until she awoke. He said nothing to her, just looked into her eyes. Matthew embraced her and she cried on his shoulder for half an hour. Genesis’s destiny was not that of a fighter; this role had been forced upon her. She was not the fighting machine she had been designed to be. There are some things you cannot change about someone. There is no gene for the human soul, and hers had just been broken.
“I want to leave this place forever,” Genesis whispered into his ear in between sobs.
“Then let’s leave.” Matthew replied.
“How?” Genesis asked, looking up at him with tear-streaked eyes.
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s just leave.”
“You would do that? Commit treason against the War, kidnap a champion warrior, enter restricted space, defy direct orders?”
“Anything,” Matthew replied assuringly. He held her close to him, a tear rolling down his cheek.
That night as the nearby sun disappeared behind the horizon of the War planet, a single ship slipped away carrying two escapees, but they would not be free forever. They realized that the Suits would follow them to the end, and that committing this act changed their lives to those of outlaws. What they did not discern was that in leaving they were initiating a series of events that would forever alter the galaxy. The destinies they had made for themselves were inevitably intertwined with the fate of the rest of the known universe. It would be the second beginning.
Too many cooks in the kitchen...