The Genesis Project

"I'm Jennifer." She finally introducing herself to Linus and Amber. Without another word, she led the both of them to her quarters. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door. It was a gruesome sight.

The doctors was as she left him. His mouth gaped open, drooling blood. His cheat collapsed due to his now vacant lungs. Jennifer grimaced, and turned to bury her face awkwardly in Ambers chest.

"I can't go in there..." She sobbed. A small gust of wind buffeted Amber.

Amber dreaded their destination. As Jennifer turned to lead them to her room, Amber had taken Linus by the hand and gently pulled him along, but she hated having to bring him into this. Children needed to be protected from this kind of carnage, but the councilor did not trust her colleagues to not scar the boy more than seeing a corpse.

They reached the girl’s chamber in little time as all of the children’s quarters were in the same area. This was another stupid move on the part of whoever had planned the layout of the ship. The children needed sanctuary from each other, at least for the first part of their training, not only for time to reflect, but also to grant a safety buffer should a child’s powers get out of control.

Jennifer opened the door and Amber immediately placed herself between Linus and the gruesome scene within the room, doing her best to block his view. Jennifer, however, could not be spared from the view and caught a refresher of the carnage that was once a doctor-slash-scientist.

"I can't go in there..." the girl moaned, attempting to burrow her face into Amber’s chest. Once again, Jennifer’s ability was manifest by her emotion, and Amber felt a breeze upon her face that stank of the blood and excrement from within the room. Amber breathed through her mouth, wrapping her arms around the girl.

“I will take care of this, but I need to breathe again. You have to control your power.” Or you could kill again, Amber thought to herself, her eyes drawn to the doctor on the floor. “Jennifer, I need you to stay with Linus while I go in. If you see someone coming, go in the room across the hall and close the door. I will come back to you as soon as I can. For now, I want you to sit here on the floor in the hallway together. You guys need to protect each other.”

Amber disengaged the girls arms from her waist and gently eased her away. Once she was free, Amber slipped into the room and closed the door. She knelt over the body and contemplated the danger the entire ship was in if those in charge did not change their methods. This man had been forcibly purged of air, and his body had responded like a tin can, collapsing upon the sudden void. Blood still dripped sluggishly from his mouth and ears, and his chest was unnaturally thin. Sharp ridges and points were visible on his chest, and Amber knew that under his shirt, his ribs had cracked and pierced through his skin.

The woman shuddered as she stood, because she knew for a fact that death had not been instant. He had lived for several seconds with the knowledge that his body was broken beyond repair as blood had gushed from his mouth and apparently his rectum, spraying the bed, Jennifer and the wall as he had fallen back, one or several of his ribs crushing his heart.

Amber shuddered, walking over to the dressed partially sprayed with blood and bits of ripped tissue. Amber leaned her head back and looked to the ceiling where the emergency sprinkler system had shower heads poking discreetly through the hard plastic. A shower would do the room good, she decided, opening her mouth and blowing a controlled stream of air at the head. She focused heat into her breath, and could see the air before her eyes distort with it. The plastic around the showerhead darkened and warped, but maintained its shape. The showerhead, under slight pressure from behind, popped through the weakened plastic and began to spray the room with water. Amber immediately turned her head down, avoiding the water getting in her mouth or eyes as a shrill alarm began to ring, indicating that there was a fire hazard.

The water served it’s purpose, and began to wash the blood and gore towards the drains discretely placed around the edges of the room, most likely heading to the purification center where it would be filtered for re-use.

Some of the mess would not be helped; the bed was destroyed by the blood and was now soaking wet, and the floor around the dead man was a dark pink as his blood blended with the falling water, but the walls and the dresser were coming clean, the blood not having the time to congeal completely. Amber pulled the sopping sheet from the bed and used it as a shroud to cover the corpse, the water and alarm cutting off abruptly as no doubt one of the ship’s security or maintenance crew took control of the situation.

Amber breathed deeply, fighting off the chill from being soaking wet. Steam began to wisp off of her body as she moved heat over her skin to dry the water and warm her body. As she worked on her clothing, steam (and wrinkles) leaving her jumpsuit, Amber opened the dresser and withdrew a few sets of clothing; a jumpsuit similar to her own in style and a t-shirt with linen pants similar to hospital scrubs. Shoes were no where to be found, so Amber wrapped several pairs of socks into her bundle of clothes. The last thing she did was take the pillowcase from one of the other beds that were soaked but untouched by blood and stuff the sheet from the bed into it. This would act as a washcloth to clean up the girl until they could get her to a shower.

With dry clothes in one hand and the sopping cleaning apparatus in the other, Amber opened the door to join Jennifer and Linus in the hall, her own hair and jumpsuit barely damp.

Linus had been fortunately shielded from the carnage or he might have become sick or fainted. As Amber disappeared into the room, closing the door behind her, Linus glanced uncertainly at the sobbing Jennifer.

"D-don't worry...i-it'll be alright," he said naively, putting a tentative hand on her shoulder, "Miss Amber's really nice and she'll be able to fix everything. D-don't cry."

When Amber did finally return, he waited quietly, not saying a word. What were they going to do now? He still wasn't sure that he understood.

x

Jennifer stood in front of Linus, with her arms crossed. This kid seemed to take a liking to Amber, and if that was the case, she couldn't be all that bad. She knelt down, bringing herself to his hieght as the kid tried to reassure her. It was almost funny.

"Thanks Linus. I sure hope so." Jennifer tried a half smile.

Jennifer tensed up as she heard the sudden rush of running water, but Amber didn't seem to be alarmed, so she continued to wait patiently. Eventually Amber emerged with a bundle of clothing and a damp pillow case. Wordlessly she took the pillow case from amber and began to wipe the blood off of her face.

The pillow case quickly turned a light shade of pink, but the good news was that Jennifer suddenly looked like a girl again, and not some monster from a horror movie. She passed the pillow case back to Amber, and took the clothes.

"Where should I change?" She asked her new guardian.

Captain Grey Trask sat at his desk reviewing the security footage of the children’s training. Physical durability, Air Manipulation, Telekinesis and a handful of other useful abilities and they had yet to even hatch all of the little bastards from their pods. The captain smiled to himself, already creating battle scenarios incorporating the known talents with those reported but as of yet, unconfirmed.

Trask had only one speck on his good mood, and she was currently on one of his screens in a sleeping room containing a corpse. His attention had been drawn to the area by the fire alarm, and a review of the footage had revealed a promising display of survival instinct as a doctor was savagely separated from the air within his body as he attempted to euthanize one of the children. He had then used the security feed to track the girl to another room and found the bitch that was currently a thorn in his side. If her actions and demeanor were any indication, she was a Councilor.

A digital copy of her personnel file was currently displayed on his clip board, the file pulled up from the tracking chip embedded somewhere on her body and transmitted via the scanner attached to every security camera. Grey looked it over once more, his mouth set in a hard line.

Amber Sword, trained in conflict resolution, mediation, negotiation and a full three pages of other useless crap with powers of heat and fire manipulation, astounding capacity for learning and heightened regenerative capability. She would have made an excellent soldier, had he gotten to her first, but he had not learned of her existence until he had watched her undo a full week of conditioning on the little mover with her pansy-ass coddling. By the time he was aware of her unique talents, her head had been filled with that other bleeding heart shit. Why couldn’t she have been affected by massive amnesia like some of the others? If he could start out with a blank slate…

Trask flicked the electronic clipboard with a finger and the personnel file vanished, the device shutting off. It was too late for that now. Forty-two trained counselors were now rotting in their pods, victims of tragic mechanical failures such as defective life support machines, leaky seals or good old electrocution. Trask chuckled as he recalled snuffing out a few of the counselors before their pods were even closed for the first time, and their shock and bewilderment as the metal spike was jammed between their ribs.

It had been his thought that the kids needed less coddling and more survival instinct. He would not be the captain of a daycare center, and so had removed the opposition to his specialized training techniques right off the bat; mainly the councilors who had been trained in exactly the type of mommy-ing behavior he detested, but a few of the doctors and scientists had suffered “mishaps” as well.. How this Amber had escaped the purge was a mystery to him, but it hardly mattered, as he was about to end the problem.

Trask pressed the button on the key pad that connected him to the security frequency. “I have a renegade on level three, section H in the sleeping quarters. She has two of our actives and I need her eliminated. And for crying out loud, do not injure the kids she has with her. Last thing we need is to lose a week of training time while they recuperate from a bullet wound.”

“We are on it, Sir,” a female voice replied.

Trask watched a screen as the nearest officers moved into position, approaching the trio standing in the hallway.

Finally Jennifer was out of her bloodied night gown, and into some dry, clean clothing. It was the same dull grey as the rest of her wardrobe, but she was not one for complaining at the moment. Amber began to lead the small group towards the elevator to see the 'people in charge'. Whoever they were. They were only several yards away from the elevator, when suddenly the lights all shut off, leaving the three in total darkness.

Well almost total.

The elevator control panel was still illuminated. The up and down buttons and the floor counter still glowed in the distance. The elevator was coming down. 2, 3, 4, the red lights ticked ominously. Jennifer forgot what floor they were on, but it couldn't be long before whoever was in the elevator got to them.

"Amber. I'm scared. I don't know if I can hold back my power much longer..." Jennifer moved closer to her guardian.

---

In the elevator shaft, five armed men conversed. They were all dressed in black, holding semi-automatic weapons, and wore hardened expressions. The oldest man, as shown by his greying beard, distributed orders.

"All right. We go in dark. Have your nights on." He said in a light voice. In response, the other men pulled night vision googles over their eyes.

"Check your targets. We are only here to take out the guardian bitch. She's also got two young Users with her. Don't hit 'em or I'll plug you myself." In response, the men adjusted their guns, made sure they were all loaded.

The leader donned his own set of goggles. "Three floors to go. Don't fuck this up."

Amber did not assist the girl as she changed clothes, allowing the meek child to establish some independence. Once changed, the girl no longer appeared to be an extra in a horror movie, and now appeared to be the extra in a movie centered around a mental hospital. An improvement, of course, but Amber wondered if there were normal clothes on the ship, or if all wardrobes consisted of this monotonous garb in order to foster unity with the children and crew.

Amber favored the clean and freshly dressed Jennifer with an encouraging smile and took Linus by the hand, leading her charges towards the elevator. Amber had no idea how the ship was organized, as she had been in stasis when she was loaded onto the craft, but she was sure there would be someone somewhere who could direct her to someone with authority and clout, and intended to visit every floor until she found them.

They were a short distance from the elevator when the lights went out, leaving the hall in the pale illumination of the key pad beside the elevator. Amber felt a ball form in the pit of her stomach even as the slight shift in air told her that Jennifer was also becoming anxious. Whoever was in that elevator was coming for them.

"Amber, I'm scared. I don't know if I can hold back my power much longer..." Jennifer spoke softly, moving closer.

Amber pulled and pushed the children through the doorway to their right and into another room with beds. She held the children behind her as she leaned just far enough out of the room to watch the elevator doors.

“Jennifer, you have to breathe,” she ordered softly, not looking away from the elevator. “In and out, just like I showed you. Imagine the air swirling around you is your favorite color, and focus on it. Keep it moving with your breathing…”

Amber went silent as the elevator reached their floor and the doors slid open, the heavily armed men inside slightly illuminated by the ambient lighting as they stepped out, their weapons raised and at the ready and their faces deformed by illuminating goggles.

Amber pulled her head back into the room before she could be spotted and leaned against the wall. “Let me talk to them,” she whispered. “I will explain that the death was a self-defense accident. Stay here together.”

Amber leaned closer to the doorway. “Gentlemen, I know why you are here, and I assure you that it was all a misunderstanding. She did not mean to hurt anyone.”

The leader of the group raised his weapon and aimed at the doorway where the voice seemed to be coming from. “Come on out and we can get this all cleared up,” he called.

Something was wrong; Amber felt it in her guts. She grabbed a pillow from the bed and lightly tossed it out the doorway. Mid flight, it was torn to pieces by a spray of bullets.

The leader realized the mistake immediately and gestured for the group to close in, striding towards the doorway.

“Close your eyes and cover your ears,” Amber ordered, pushing the children down to the floor against the wall together. Facing the door, Amber began to draw on her power. “Don’t open your eyes until I say.”

The first man to enter the doorway saw only a sharp gesture, Amber’s hand rapidly expanding from fist to open palm. The heat she had pulled from her own body immediately blossomed inside the man’s head and his eyeballs ruptured, his brain boiling at the intense heat. He dropped like a stone without a sound.

The next man saw his comrade fall and reached around the doorway with just an arm, intending to fire blindly into the enclosed space. Amber was waiting against the wall and grabbed his arm, shoving his barrel upward while digging her fingers into his wrist. Where her skin was in contact with his, the man’s bodyheat flooded into her in a flash, his legs, other arm and head frosting over as the heat energy was leeched out of him. This man managed a low moan before the frost killed him.

Amber felt the heat stolen from the man flooding through her, and she let him go, his frozen corpse cracking on the hard floor. Three more men remained, but they were not about to rush in and meet fates similar to those of their colleagues.

Amber waited for them to make a move, flickering light swirling over her hands as the stolen heat energy waited to be used.