Subject Seventeen: Wraith Among Shadows
Chapter 31

Fourteen staggers backwards before he regains his composure. He looks up with a small smile on his face; the look he usually gets whenever he feels like he’s done a good job. I avert my gaze from him and rest it on Seventeen who has fallen backwards and hit the wall. Is he alright?

“Did you do it?” I ask.

“Hey, hey…” Fourteen moans. “Who did you think I am? Of course I did it. By the way he has some pretty fond memories of you, Two. Or should I say Sky? Or Florence Thea Smoke? Hah, what sort of name is that?”

I don’t know why but I feel slightly irritated when I hear the name Florence. I give Fourteen one look telling him to shut the hell up. He just waves his hand to dismiss my look and smirks.

“Anyways,” he says. “As soon as he wakes up we should probably get moving to replace Sanders. And no, I’m not going to give you a chance to blast me with lightning. I can hear your thoughts remember. Stop being so aggressive and violent… Jeez…”

I sigh and turn my back to Fourteen. Damn. He’s doing a similar thing to what Thirteen does. How much of a nuisance could one person be? I watch as Seventeen begins to stir. Soon enough he opens his eye. I could swear I see them turn from a deep blue back to his usual pure black when he opens them. What the hell?

“Have a nice sleep?” I say. “If you hadn’t noticed, we’re kind of in a rush. Want to get a move on, Seventeen?”

“I guess that’s my name now, right?” Seventeen says while getting to his feet.

“What are you on about mate?”

“Hah, don’t you worry. Just glad to see you’re alright, Sky. Or maybe I should call you Florence.”

Something in me stirs and I replace myself irritated for no particular reason. I glare at him but I fight the urge to hit him back down. I turn my attention back to Fourteen.

“So I guess you restored his memories, right?”

“Yeah,” Fourteen replies.

“I’m surprised. Last time Five restored a portion of his memories and he freaked out.”

“Well,” Seventeen says. “I’ve had time to adjust. Bizarre as it seems I understand the situation we’re in. I wish I could take some time to sit here and process this, but unfortunately we’ve got to go. If I’m not mistaken, I’ve got a job to do.”

I see Seventeen’s right hand shaking uncontrollably and I can swear it lights up a sort of whitish-orange colour before he quickly hides it from view behind his back.

The look on Seventeen’s face takes me by surprise. He looks so much older and mature now. In his eyes I feel some sort of strength or willpower. It’s as if he’s a completely different person. I watch him exchange a few looks with Fourteen which confuses me. It takes me a second to realise that they’re talking via telepathy. Great. Have a private conversation without me.

“Let’s go then!” I spit at them. I don’t know why I’m so worked up after hearing the name Florence. What the heck is going on with me?

Seventeen grins – a look that feels so warm but so alien at the same time – and Fourteen and him begin moving. We all start sprinting down the corridor. I don’t know what the heck is going through Seventeen’s head now that he’s got his memories back, but the look in his eye – especially the one he has when he looks at me – fills me with confidence. I’m completely sure that he won’t supernova like Nine said before. It doesn’t seem as if getting his memories back has made him unstable from a lack of being unable to control his emotions.

“Right there!” Seventeen says, pointing at a big green automatic door in front of us. He better be right about this stupid energy trail thing. I’m about to blast the door open with lightning when Seventeen flings his arm forward and the door is blasted off its hinges. I notice his surprise and a cheeky grin on his face when he does this. He’s almost like a child when he succeeds in doing something really well for the first time. I don’t understand him. It’s not like it's the first time he’s used his powers.

Maybe it's because he has his memories back. I suppose that means he's almost like a different person? I bet it feels like he's using his abilities for the first time. This also means he must know about me. Sometime later I'll get the chance to question him as much as I want and replace out exactly who I am, but right now that idiot needs to focus on the task ahead and stop grinning like a fool.

We head straight through the broken door and I almost trip when I see what’s inside. This could very well be the worst nightmare I’ve ever had. All three of us completely disregard the fact that Nine is on the floor and covered in blood and breathing heavily. All three of us disregard the fact that the Doctor is standing about sixty feet ahead of us with Sanders – who still has that weird looking gun with him – with smug looks on their faces. All three of us disregard the fact that we should really be healing Nine and getting the hell out of here. We can only focus on what we see around us.

God knows how big the room is but it is filled with thousands of stasis pods. Thousands. And they’re not empty. Every single one of them is occupied by a person. Someone that's probably just like us. A genetically engineered soldier. And all of them are just teenagers. All have a code number written on their pods, like A-2056 or V-0092. What the hell is going on? There is no way all these kids are Shadows. They can’t be. Nine specifically pointed out the success rate being so low it would be impossible to mass produce Shadows. Hell no. No way. I must just be seeing things.

“Took you kids some time,” Sanders says. “I see you’re all a bit confused, so let me introduce you. Shadow Squad, meet the Forgotten.”

"Is that supposed to be some sort of cool code-name?" Seventeen half jokes.

“Run!” Nine croaks. I’m surprised he can even talk in that state. “Tell Thirteen to get the hell out of here now! Now!”

“What the hell is this…” Fourteen says, his voice trailing off.

“What does it look like?” the Doctor says. “The Forgotten are complete Shadows.”

“Huh?” I say. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Did you really think we’d risk creating an entire perfect squad when we were still unable to completely control all of you? You fools. You’ve all merely been tools for our use. After analysing Fourteen’s abilities, we managed to create a new version of the borrachero that absolutely dominates free will and memories with no chance of recovery. We’ve been creating Shadow Soldiers for years. It’s no surprise to us that ungrateful kids like you would rebel when you found out the truth, hence the reason we planned to put you down one by one.”

“You mean to tell me,” Seventeen says, his voice shaking. “You mean to tell me… That every single child in here is a Shadow Soldier that you’ve brainwashed? Are you bloody kidding me?!”

The anger in Seventeen’s voice shocks me so much that I back away from him instinctively. So he can feel such intense emotions now? The borrachero must be out of his system completely. Wait… Hang on a minute, isn’t that bad? Like not the normal sort of bad but the real mega bad sort of bad?

“Haven’t you kids noticed that you all have some sort of defect?” the Doctor continues. This catches my attention. “You’re all just failed experiments who don’t have bodies that have completely adapted to host your abilities.”

“Oh,” Seventeen says quietly. “Would you like to elaborate before I kill you?”

“What a pompous little boy,” the Doctor says while laughing.

I want to hit him in the face just for the fact he talks like such a snob, but I hold myself back so he can finish explaining.

“Very well," he continues. "One’s abilities take a toll on her bones which cannot withstand the constant abuse of tremors running through her body. Her legs and arms give out easily. She may as well be disabled. You, Two,” he says pointing at me. “Have you failed to take into account your heart failure in addition to your abnormal body mass index? The very wind which you control is hollowing out your bones and even making you lighter as a result.”

I see. This is starting to explain a lot of things. So we are – or rather, were – just pawns in their little plan. Now they plan to toss us away just because we are rebelling. No, they planned to throw us away even if we didn’t fight back.

“Seventeen,” the Doctor says, extending his arm. “Reconsider. Think about it logically; you are capable of that much after all. Wouldn’t it be beneficial for you to join us? We can fix you. Make you better. You can be reborn as something more. Something much more.”

Seventeen looks taken aback for a second and it looks as if he’s considering it. I slowly build up the lightning in my hand just in case I need to fry him too. Then Seventeen holds up his middle finger at the Doctor and Sanders, causing the Doctor to shake his head and laugh a bit. I try to steer the conversation back on track.

“What about Three?” I say. “Isn’t she your daughter, Sanders?”

“Did you really think Sanders cared?” the Doctor says. “His loyalty is to the Youdu and to his country. In any case, Three is only eight years old. A child with such a defect is not fit to accompany us on the path to true greatness.”

“What?!”

“Do you think it is easy to instantly dematerialise and materialise in different locations? Normally a person would have died long before they reach their destination judging by how long the transfer would take. She simply hasn’t aged as much as she should have because of the Baltec coursing through her veins. It truly works wonders.”

“How the-?” I say.

I’m cut off by Seventeen. He simply raises his arm and aims it at Sanders with his hand wide open. I already know what is going to happen before it does. He closes it with frightening speed and I watch as Sanders collapses into a heap on the floor. I watch in shock while knowing I can’t do anything to stop him. It all happened too fast.

The Doctor doesn’t seem too surprised about what just happened. Instead the Doctor just laughs.

“How dare you…” Seventeen says. “How dare you let your own daughter be experimented on? How could you be so heartless?!”

I want to point out that he is talking to a dead man but I’m still in shock. All this time we had been fretting about how difficult it was to kill Sanders or whether we should even kill Sanders, but he did it so fast and with such ease.

“Thank you for that,” the Doctor says. “It was about time to kill him. Anyways, farewell. I shall let the Forgotten clean up this mess and kill you.”

“Do you really think a bunch of brainwashed Shadows will take us down?” Nine croaks out. He’s still alive.

“Oh, no doubt they will. After all, every single one of them here is modelled after Ten, Twelve and Fifteen, our greatest achievements. It'll be like having a legion of super-powered robots at our beck and call. Seven-hundred and thirty-three of each type to be precise. Please, do enjoy yourselves. I must congratulate you too. After all, we would never have made it here without all your efforts.”

With that the Doctor literally vanishes into thin air. What the heck is going on? I look at Seventeen and point at Nine. He rushes over straight away and begins to heal him. I stay standing where I am and look up above with a sigh. Everything is just getting more and more complicated. It’s reached the point where I feel like giving up and not caring anymore.

“Thanks guys,” Nine says, standing up. He nods at Fourteen. “Nice to see you, Fourteen. Anyways, Two. Do you remember?”

“Huh?” I say. “Remember what?”

“Before all this crap started. Do you remember me telling you I was working on something to help us out?”

I seem to remember writing something like that in my diary but I can’t remember exactly. Too many things have happened within the week for me to be able to remember anything that wasn’t significant. I shake my head at him. He pulls out a small chip from his pocket and holds it up.

“A master data-drive.”

“A what?”

“Basically, it’s a device capable of remotely extracting all information from any server or database within a two mile radius. Every single bit of information we need in this facility all on one drive. It’ll tell us everything we need to know about the Doctor, Youdu, Sanders weapon, the Forgotten, you name it.”

“Nine,” Seventeen says. His face is completely pale. He’s pointing behind Nine. I notice his hand very briefly flash a bright white-orange colour twice but I don’t pay attention to it too much. I look at what he’s pointing at. Behind Nine is one of the Forgotten. Looking around I see all the pods sliding open and all the Forgotten are staring at us with the intent to kill in their eyes. This isn’t a very good situation to be in. No shit. Not a good situation at all. I’m not even sure how worried I should be right now. All I know is that running is the best thing to do.

“Nine! Duck!” Seventeen yells.

Nine obeys Seventeen’s instruction just as a searing fireball skips the top of his head. The Forgotten are here to kill us.

“Run!” Nine screams at us, already sprinting down the same path we entered. All of us don’t wait for his instruction and have already started running after him. What the hell is going on?

“Seriously?” Fourteen yells. “Are you kidding me? There are over a thousand of those brainwashed Shadows coming after us!”

“Shut up and run!” Nine screams at him.

I’m thrown off my feet and sent flying forward as something burning hot hits my back. I scream out in pain as I fall to the floor. The others turn around in surprise as two Forgotten appear behind us, propelling themselves forward with flames. Fourteen hauls me up while Nine pushes them away with his telekinesis. The pain of my back being burned is almost unbearable and I can’t help but scream out again in pain.

“Nine!” Fourteen says. “We can’t stay here. They’ll catch us with ease!”

Nine looks towards Seventeen, his eyes begging him to do something. Seventeen takes one look at me and then looks back at Nine and nods. The next thing I see is a black mist envelope as all.