Blood line - Part One

Silence is blissful, is it not? The ever so serene and beautiful sound of nothingness is interrupted by not even a sudden gasp of terror, not a murmur or a harsh rasp of breath on the back of the neck of the night.

Arthur Mathentew enjoyed the night time silence too. He was a lonely man, lived a life of solitude in his flat in Isondon city, the new capital of the world. The North West quarter, fourteenth sector, sixth block, row four, building seven, floor eighteen, apartment 12. That was where he lived. Everything was known to the government now. Everything. From a single drop of blood they could trace your ancestry back over millennia, they could tell you who your great, great, great grandmothers step cousin once removed was, and where they lived, how they lived and when they died.

Arthur Mathentew lived alone. It was a large flat for one man, but all of the rooms in Isondon are the same. A single room, a television, a bed, with little else to furnish it, but that is the same everywhere. The televisions spew out the rampant propaganda, numbing the people’s minds into self delusion, blinding them to the atrocities that the government had, and will commit.

Mr Mathentew was a drug dealer. Only small time, but he was still large enough to merit ISAD wanting to pay him a visit. ISAD stood for the Isondon Secret Authority Department, but in reality they were on the very fringes of the law. They use Bounty Hunters and the like to get their aims, and then often kill the hunters to prevent a traceable crime from ever being discovered. The hunters have no choice, as either way they know that if ISAD catch them then either way they are dead, so they may as well enjoy one last kill.

Kaider was different. He had been found by the regular police, a grown man, aged mid twenties, naked in an Isondon Park. It wasn’t that he had no memory of his past; it was just that he didn’t have one, as if he had been just born an adult. There was no trace of him on any government computer. He was ‘unknown blood’. He soon decided to start off his own, new life of crime, working in the underground areas of Isondon, looking for bounty. He had only taken out three hits when the ISAP contacted him, requesting his company, and he knew that when ISAP request something, you don’t refuse. He met one of their bosses, a smart suited man by the name of Berdon. He told Kaider what was going to happen, and the consequences of refusal. Kaider was not afraid of death however, and refused anyway. Without a flicker of hesitation, Berdon nodded to the armed guards at either side of the door, who immediately grabbed Kaider in a more than vice like grip, and dragged him to the execution room.

Once there, the struggling man was intoxicated with one of the two drugs used in the execution process, used to initially sedate the victim. Kaider immediately fell to the floor. The guards then administered the second, initially safe second injection. The guards left, shutting the airlock doors behind them, the locking mechanism clearly visible though the mirrored glass wall. Berdon and another stood still watching the semi- unconscious man’s chest rising and falling with his wheezing breaths. Berdon pushes a button to his left. Acrid yellow smoke fills the room from several vents, containing a chemical accelerant that reacts with the new chemicals in the person’s blood. As the person breaths more, the person’s blood becomes clogged with new molecules, a type of virus that feeds on human tissue. The person is eaten alive by the virus, which also produces a strong acid, which dissolves the bone, leaving no trace of life in the room whatsoever. After three minutes in the room with no host, the virus dies out, and the smoke stops. So does the screaming. That is when the room is revealed, and the emptiness is shown.

Three minutes. The screams of agony stop. The smoke begins to thin. A smile begins to play around Berdon’s lips. These rebels will never grow any intelligence.

He blinked. In that split second, the smoke continued to clear, leaving behind the impossible. He was still there. And worst of all, he was breathing.

How? How? This was impossible. But there before him was a man who had just survived the certainty of death. Kaider got up, slowly, still weak on his feet, the initial weak anaesthetic slowly beginning to wear off. He was different now, his veins popping out from his arms, a vivid yellow to look at. He straightened out. He was also taller now, with bigger muscles, visible behind his partially ripped cloths. His teeth where sharp too; he looked like a sort of vampire from old literature, and they were curled up into a smile.

He slowly walked over to the mirrored glass wall. Smiled, almost intentionally at Berdon., and then punched his way through the glass before the man had a chance to press the button a second time. The glass completely shattered on Kaider’s second hit, sending splinters of black mirror in all directions, slicing Berdon’s companion across the face. The man keeled off his chair, onto the floor, clutching his freely bleeding face. He would bare the scare for the rest of his days, which were to be long, long indeed.

Berdon reacted quickly, pressing the panic button next to him. Alarm bells rang, the security light flashed on, and a dozen security officers twirled the lock on the door and flung themselves through the wide open space.

"Alive!" Berdon shouted over the siren. "Get him to me Alive!"

They all put up their weapons, set them to anaesthetic, and opened fire before he had a chance to turn around. These were highly trained soldiers, who fired at systematically and methodically, sending twelve titanium tipped darts with a core of pure Aneastium (an extremely high powered sedative), and they thought that would be the end for him; they had fired enough darts to take down a bull Masrakon from one hundred paces, and Masrakon are really, really big.

The darts all hit one after another with a quick thud-thud-thud-thud-thud. He went to the ground, the darts embedded in his chest, the Aneastium working slowly into his system. Five, four, three, two, one… he roars, and then leaps upwards. Literally, he punches his way through the roof. The soldiers taken completely by surprise can’t reload quickly enough. He smashes through from the other side of the roof, pounding his way into the floor, crushing those underneath his mighty fists. The others fall backwards from the impact; those caught underneath explode instantly in a mass of blood.

Some are able to get to their guns, and reload. They fire again, knocking him backwards in his deadly rage, roaring in pain and anger. The Aneastium is beginning to take effect, but he is not beaten yet. He runs at the nearest offending person, and simply ears their head from their neck as if he was a ragdoll. There is a muffled scream as the neck bone is removed from the spinal column, and the person is instantly dead, spewing their blood in all directions. Kaider then does something unusual. He putts the carcass to his lips and drinks deeply from the severed stump. He drains the corpse, then tosses it away, leaving it to crash against the far wall in a bloody heap.

Kaider’s veins grow further. They are nearly bulging completely from his wrists, as if they are about to jump out at any moment. And the yellow is gone, slowly, but visibly being replaced by a deep crimson. He licks the blood from his lips, using his slightly pointed finger to wipe away the excess, then smiles again. He gets hit with another volley of darts from the few remaining soldiers, and then collapses on the floor, leaving behind the total havoc he had created.