Dark Creations: The Hunted (Part 4) (25 page)

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

“I wouldn’t have been if you didn’t show up when you did.”

He knew she was right, that had they arrived moments later, the scene they unearthed would have been different, worse, the damage far greater.  He was not happy about what had happened to her, but grateful for what hadn’t. 

A scuffle behind him interrupted his gratitude.  Jack lifted Jarrod up and dragged him out of the bedroom and down the hallway.  The sound of chairs scraping against wood floors suggested that the kitchen would serve as their interrogation room.

“Now, you’re going to tell me what I want to know,” he heard Jack begin.  

“You guys okay?” Gabriel asked him.

“Yeah, I think so,” he replied.

“I’m going to get Melissa and tell her you’re okay,” Gabriel said to Alexandra.  “I’ll be right back.”

Once they were alone, he sat on the bed beside her and put a hand on her leg and patted it gently.  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.  I can’t believe all this.  It’s like a nightmare.  And it’s my fault really.”

“What?” he asked incredulously.

“I should have been watching you, should have stayed right by your side,” she said softly.

“This is
not
your fault.  None of it.  Trust me.  These creations, their beyond anything I could have imagined, worse.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said and nodded to her cuffed wrists. 

“We’ll get you out of there soon, I promise.”

He hated seeing her, bound to bedposts and in a state of undress beneath the blanket.  He wanted to help her dress but didn’t dare offer his help.  She had been taken against her will and stripped of her freedom, her dignity and part of her clothing.  She was fragile despite the brave face she wore.  Melissa, her lifelong best friend would be better suited for such an undertaking.  

“We’ll take care of him,” he promised her.  “And the others.”

“Yoshi, these things, these creations, they’re not even close to human.  That guy Jarrod, he’s
sick
,” she spat.  “The psycho is so in love with himself, he kept going on and on about how I should be grateful to be with him, to be raped by someone as good-looking and evolved as him.  He told me that after he was done with me, he would kill me, said as calmly anyone else would say they were going to eat dinner.”

Her voice had dropped to a whisper as she concluded her recollection.  Tears fell from her eyes once again.  He brushed one from her cheek and felt his anger mounting anew.  Though Jarrod had not violated her sexually, he had violated her safety, and threatened her life.  His hand trembled with ire as he raised it to her face again and skimmed her moist skin.  She smiled weakly and he sprung to his feet.  He turned away from her and strode to the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked confused.

“Jarrod’s going to tell me everything,” he replied.

“How can you be so sure?  I thought he can’t, that it’s not possible for him to.”

“Trust me, he will,” he said and started to leave.  He paused before the doorway and wrestled with words he’d wanted to say for quite some time, words he had been too terrified to speak before now, but invigorated by adrenaline and rage, felt compelled to speak.  “Before I go, Alex, there’s just one thing I want to tell you,” he began.  She raised her brow at him in expectance.  “I’m in love with you.  I know my timing is shitty and I don’t want you to say anything just now.  I know you don’t feel the same way about me, but I just wanted you to know,” he said and looked at his feet, shame burning on his cheeks.  He turned his body from her and started toward the door.

“Hold on a sec.  How can you assume anything about how I feel?  From what I can tell, you know nothing.  I mean, God Yoshi!  Why do you think I spend so much time with you?  Are you really that dense?”

He wasn’t sure if he’d heard her correctly.  According to her, he was dense.  But to his dense ears, it sounded like she had feelings for him, feelings that were more than friendship.  He turned back to face her.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” he fumbled.

“Yes, I am,” she replied.

He shook his head and smiled and walked to the doorway.  He was about to leave when she called to him.

“You’re leaving,
now
?”

“I have to go take care of this thing with Jarrod.  I’ll be back though,” he said and felt a smile spread across his lips as he left the room.

Ice-cold water rained down Jarrod’s forehead like countless frozen spines piercing his skin at once, and brought him back to consciousness abruptly.  His eyes struggled to open.  He willed them to do so, but they felt unnaturally heavy, as if his eyelids could not fully separate from one another.  As a result, his field of vision had been compromised, reduced to slits obscured by his eyelashes.  He tried to lift his hands to his face, to rub his eyes or open them manually, and protect his tender flesh should another icy, barbed onslaught recommence.  His effort was in vain, however, as he soon realized his hands were bound behind him. 

Consciousness had brought with it not only the perception of intense stinging pain, but also the realization of his constraint.  He felt an immediate flash of anger as memories rushed back.  He had been tied to a chair in his kitchen, and beaten for information.  The frozen needles he felt were neither frozen nor needles.  Instead, it was cold tap water from his kitchen sink used to rouse him from blackout.  And while his circumstances should have riled him–being held captive in his own home–he was not upset to be confined to a chair.  What
did
upset him was the smarting pain in his face that indicated beyond a shadow of a doubt that his exquisite features were bruised.  His captors did not need to batter his face; it had been wholly unnecessary. 

Clearly a mark of their jealously, the average-looking humans could not stand that his other-worldly attractiveness surpassed theirs.  So instead of beating his body and preserving his beauty, they chose to callously pummel his glorious face.  The thought of the wretched barbarians gleefully,
enviously
defiling his magnificence evoked a powerful reaction.  Rage, that had formerly been considered an unheard of response from him, roiled inside him.  His appearance, once the epitome of perfection and symmetry, had been sullied, marred at the hands of the weak; the jealous.  He wanted nothing more than to free himself and return the favor, only he would not restrain his actions.  They held no information he desired.  He would simply exact revenge, joyous revenge.  He envisioned himself thrashing wildly, his fists striking cheekbones, noses and jawbones, crushing them.  His vision was interrupted though, by the sound of a man’s voice shouting.  The man’s shouts were directed at him.

“Where is my wife you fucking freak?” the man bellowed enunciating each word.

He strained and tried to open his eyes wider, against the swelling and pain.  He did not see details right away.  His eyes worked to focus, and when they did, a stocky man with bristly hair appeared.  He held a shotgun in both hands and jabbed it into Jarrod’s belly.

With the gun pressed against his midsection, Jarrod reflexively tried to moves his arms and legs, to place physical distance between him and the weapon, but was instantly reminded of his predicament.  All of his limbs were bound to the chair.  His ankles had been secured respectively to legs of the chair, while his wrists crisscrossed each other and were affixed to opposite sides of the chair’s back.  Releasing himself would be next to impossible.  He felt helpless.  Vulnerability was not an emotion he was acquainted with. He’d never experienced it.  But something more than vulnerability began to press him; something far more disconcerting and pervasive.  He gritted his teeth against it, and felt his throat constrict.  Warmth spread across his cheeks and down the length of his neck.  His eyes began to burn and his vision blurred.  He was suddenly able to name the foreign feeling as he recognized its warning signs.  Shame, another emotion he knew little about, blistered within him, and came with the realization of the reason for his predicament.  He had made a novice mistake, or more specifically, a
human
mistake. 

He quickly replayed the events of the day and knew that he should have killed the girl and the Oriental man then rushed to Jeff and Carol’s house to deal with Gabriel and Melissa who had been captured.  He should have.  But he had not.  Instead, he had kidnapped the girl, left the man free and unharmed, and had missed an opportunity.  A second opportunity had presented itself when he had attempted to reach them but was unable to do so.  The inability to reach a member was a red flag, a glaring red flag.  Yet he had chosen to ignore it, and delayed acting appropriately.  His decision on both occasions had been driven by desire, basic human desire. 

He felt suddenly sickened, revolted by the fact that
he
, a superiorly designed being, had made a mistake in the first place, much less an emotionally driven mistake at that.  Bile rose in his throat and threatened to spew.  He swallowed it back, determined to not mess his appearance further by vomiting on himself.  His desire driven misstep would likely cost him his life. The thought of leaving the planet without properly gracing it with his extended presence both sickened and saddened him.  He was the future of mankind, after all.  And the future would need him.  Tears stung and welled in his eyes and he fought to suppress their spillage, as well as the urge to retch.  His battered face was bad enough.  He did not want to soil himself with vomitus, or for tears to bloat his face further and distort his features any more than they already were.  If he were to die, he wanted to do so as visually appealingly as possible. 

While he envisioned his death, another thought occurred to him, one that lightened his mood considerably.  His death, though unfortunate and untimely, represented empirical proof of his maker’s accuracy.  Terzini was right.  Emotions
were
the root cause of humanity’s problems.  Though he never doubted his maker’s hypothesis outright, at times he had questioned it.  He had never fully understood how Terzini’s elaborate plan had been predicated on such a simplistic theory.  Human beings, motivated purely by emotion, were their own ruination.  It had seemed almost too simple.  Yet it had existed, and continued to exist, as the motivating force behind all of his creator’s actions.  The basis for creating members, such as him, free of the burden of emotionality, was to correct that specific defect inherent in mankind.  Jarrod had, for unidentified causes, succumbed to human emotion, assumed the defect of man, and would probably die because of it.  He chuckled at the irony of it all. Yet, he wished he would survive long enough to tell Terzini of his flaw, of the emotion that had evolved in him unexpectedly, so that the part of him that had failed could be amended.  He chuckled again, knowing that he would most likely die with crucial information to his maker’s cause, information that would alter the course of the creation of future members.

“So you think dying is funny, do you?” the burly man thundered.  “I’m guessing that’s what you’re laughing about.  Surely you must know we’re going to kill you if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”

Jarrod supposed the man had intended to terrify him with his threat, but his intention had failed. He sneered at the man.  Despite his lapse, he was still the exceptional creature among them.  He would exude his distinction as long as air filled his lungs.

“I wouldn’t tell you anything, you pathetic human, even if I were able to.”

Unexpectedly, the man descended upon him, grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed his face into the kitchen table in front of him.  Pain exploded in every direction from his nose and produced a dizzying kaleidoscope of colors behind his eyelids. Hot liquid poured from his nostrils and dripped into his mouth.  The salty, metallic taste offended his palate.  His blood had spilled.  And he was outraged.

“You think you can talk down to me, you disgusting rapist?” the stocky man prattled on.

Being referred to as a rapist distracted him momentarily from his indignation.  He was tempted to explain to the man that referring to him as such was absurd, utterly ridiculous, but decided the effort would be wasted on someone with such limited intelligence. He looked up from the pool of blood that had accumulated in his lap to meet the gaze of the man who charged him with untrue accusations.  Bursts of color still blinded him, along with searing pain.  His vision refocused long enough to see movement, and noticed that the small Asian man from earlier had entered the room.  Jarrod narrowed his eyes, curious about why he’d entered in such a hurry.  He squinted and studied the diminutive man’s face, tried read his expression.  Molten anger was etched in every hard line of his features.  And the anger seemed to be directed at him.  He supposed the man’s face would have otherwise been intimidating to another, would have likely chilled one’s blood even, had they been anyone else but him.  But Jarrod did not fear any man.  Least of all, a man half his size, even if the half-man wore an expression of anger so intense it nearly burned with palpable heat. 

He watched as the miniscule man stepped toward him, wearing his emotions plainly, like a badge of honor and righteousness.  Jarrod smiled broadly and nearly laughed out loud.  He thought for sure that his smile would draw a reaction, an outburst of some sort.  But it did not.  Instead, the Asian man blustered past him to the kitchen counter.  He stopped in front of an expensive butcher block that housed some of the finest carving knives in the world.  According to the informational commercial, the knives were capable of slicing through metal with ease.  Of course he had never tested them against this claim. He did not need to.  The expert featured in the commercial stated that his product was the best that money could buy, and that was enough for Jarrod.  The knives were the best in the world; and he deserved the best of everything.  He wondered what the miserable imp wanted with them, why he felt deserving of even looking at them.  He felt genuine shock when the pint-sized man extracted the largest, sharpest one in the set and strode toward him.  His look of pure hatred, though not frightening as it had been intended to be, was beginning to unsettle Jarrod.