The Experiment

Chapter One

     I feel that it is important that I tell you that I wasn't truly created, not in the sense that a synthetic fabric is manufactured. I was born, to a loving mother and a doting father on December 9, 1991. In fact if it weren't for the fact that I was the most accident-prone person in the world, I probably would have grown up a happy, healthy, and normal person. But when I was six, I kicked that opportunity out the door.

     Mother had warned me that when paying ball in the front yard I had to be extra careful, in fact she told me to never play ball in the front yard. But I had a tendency to not listen, something that had daddy threatening to send me away to boarding school, and so there I was, two weeks away from starting first grade, playing in the front yard.

     When my ball rolled out into the road, I made sure to look both ways before I went to get it. Figuring that the rules we had been taught at day-care, if followed, would make me into some super human who could dent a car before sustaining any damage. Besides, no one drove fast in my neighborhood it was a col-de-sac. But my teenage neighbor had just gotten her licenses and thought that speed limits were more a suggestion than a law.

      So despite the fact that there was no car coming when I put my foot onto the road, by the time I had my ball and was headed back to the safety of my yard there was a Ford bearing down on me.

      I remember hearing a loud squeal of a break and a high scream, and I remember being slightly terrified that mother would be mad at me, but it didn't really occur to me that I was about to die, at the time I still thought that my hamster had run away to go live the mice in our crawl space, so death wasn't a real, permanent thing to me yet.

     I do not remember pain, at all, or any form of after life, although I did learn that I was clinically dead for five minutes, two more than I should have been able to have with out brain damage. It was a miracle, I was a miracle, and when I woke from a yearlong coma it wasn't long before the Experiment was hounding on my door.

     They had found their viable human for experimentation. It didn't matter that she was a seven year old.

      For their part, mother and father did not want to give me up. They fought tooth and nail to keep me together with them and my two older sisters, but when the Experiment started to threaten to get the Child Protective Agency involved, they proved that my parents had the option of losing just me, or losing my sisters and me.

      I remember my mother telling me that she would come visit, something that I later learned to be a lie, something that my mother knew was a lie, but told me so that I would go willingly with the Scientists of the experiment. I remember Daddy crying, something that wasn't unusual, as he cried at most things, but there was something different about this time. I remember that my sisters didn't come to say goodbye to me; they had a party.

     Once I was at the complex, the experiments began.

      They started off innocent enough, disguised as games that I was to play to prove my physical fitness and my IQ. Once there was a base line, something that took close to a month, the scientists then set out to improve me. I had to be in top physical and mental state in order to survive the experiments.

       As I was trained more kids showed up and started their training, acting as back-ups in case Experiment Codename: Aries failed. I was never allowed to talk to the other kids; in fact I was never really allowed to talk in general. None of the scientists wanted to see me as a child, so they never let me ramble on as most children my age did. I was constantly being shushed and silenced, pushed away when I would start crying until it became a second nature to comfort myself in silence, clutching onto the stuffed bear and ragged blanket the I had managed to keep as mementos of a home that was already fading from my mind.

       By the time I was "ready" for the actual surgery that would change the very foundation of what I was, I had already changed too much to be recognized as the little girl who had miraculously survived a direct hit from a couple ton truck.

      That little girl had been full of rebellion and energy, only silent when she was asleep, and even then she was prone to little mumbles. Now, now I stood still and silent, with wide brown eyes that were filled with thoughts beyond my years.

                                                             * * * * * * * * * * *

      The scientist put Tess McGovern under anesthesia at 6:47 on May 19, 2001. On May 22, 2001 Tess McGovern was declared dead, and Experiment Codename: Aries, was created.

      With the creation of Aries, the creation of me the doors to a super human army were opened, and the Government was more than happy to jump through.

      That year, fifty other children, varying in age but all older than Tess, were operated on, and only five others survived to become what the scientist continued to call Creatures. The scientist continued to keep us apart while they were monitored, while they were watched to see which of the lynx's abilities and features that they developed.

      We developed the expected skills, increased speed and senses, as well as some other added benefits. We were stronger, more intelligent, and our skills were strengthened. My knack for lying increased to the point where the scientists were nearly insane with trying to tell when I was being truthful.

      The true fun, however, didn't become apparent until seven years later, when all six of the Creatures met.