The Rejected Ones

Chapter 1

There was someone I'd been trying to find for a couple of years. I didn't know where she was living or how old she was now. If the age I'd been given was correct, she was seven years old and her entire family was dead. What had happened to them? Why was she living alone? I had pulled up to all the addresses her family had inhabited over the years and I had found nothing. All the computers in the nation were connected and intertwining to help find her along with several others. She could have been one of the kidnapped children. Many of the computers mysteriously shot out and are holding back the entire investigation. I sighed to myself. This investigation was important, but this particular case was more important to me at the moment. Was it the same person, being, or group trafficking these children? Was it even trafficking? Had they been sold or was it wish fulfillment of some kind? Was it a murder fetish, a child predator, or a person who wanted to adopt? Many task force divisions were studying that. Many people didn't like to think it was real and ignored it, living normal lives, while others were hyper-paranoid and hid their families away from the rest of the world, all across the entire world.

I'd been hoping to unwind that can of worms. However, that's not what I wanted right now. How could I find Avery Beatrice? What if someone else or something else is following me, over my shoulder, waiting for me to lead them right to her if I find her? I don't know. I don't care as long as I find her. I have to! I made a promise! The promise I made is weighing on me, drilling through the invisible concrete that was my chest and freezing my erratic thoughts into a place where all I can think about is her. Where is she now? Irrational fear overshadows me, pressing into me and making me look back, my heart racing faster than ever. This could be why I haven't found her yet. I know this anxiety is pointless and is completely ridiculous, but it is powerful inside my own mind. The human mind is the most dangerous weapon ever invented or evolved. One part of me thinks one thing, while another part of me thinks differently. This is a game and I have to win it. Avery. I smile at the thought of her, but part of me winces and is afraid of what she may now be. Currently, I'm sitting with my archaic laptop computer, searching for vectors and DNA samples. Avery had her DNA sampled before at the doctor, in case a disappearance happened, but the DNA tracking usually never worked. DNA tracking and crossing vectors are something the kidnappers know how to circumvent. If the tracking works, it's less likely that she has been kidnapped by anything. 

"Yes!" I exclaim to myself, my chest currently tightened. The tracker was working. The computer glowed with a red dot showing her location. (REDACTED) I then zoom in on the location and see a satellite image of a cavernous house. The house is partially ripped up with peeling paint and cracking siding in a grey color. The windows are shaded and draped in curtains that block out all light. For all intents and purposes, this house is abandoned. No lights are on inside the house. It is ten o clock at night. No schools had records of Avery Beatrice attending for several years. Could this be where she had been? How did she get food and water? Did she get any schooling? Is she a rotting skeleton in this house? I didn't know, but I had to get there and get her out of there. I hoped I would get there first. I remember when I first saw her. She'd been in my arms after she'd arrived out of the hospital, all bundles of small paper and eyes. I had seen what she was more than anyone else had, even her own parents. Her skin was prickly, but it was soft where others not like me could see it. The paper skin was purplish-red and her eyes were black beads that could both change color. I wondered if she knew what she actually was beneath the human skin. I would help her know, but when I held her, I had branded her. She'll trust me when she meets me.

I haven't been a human very long, but I've been what they call mild-mannered and friendly in human terms. I had asked my family twenty-nine years ago if I could become a human. I wanted to know what it was like to be one of them and how they felt, how they behaved from the perspective of being a human. If I knew that, I could prevent other monster families from messing wrongfully with humans and I could further understand the deep mystery that is humanity. Humanity didn't seem like a mystery to me. They were like machines with different functions. You'd think us monsters being different and coming in several varieties wouldn't be interested by simple humans, but some of us are. A family friend of my old family, before the human one I received, named Mr. Lionel, referred to as many different names in the human world, had taken several people into his family, especially ones different from the normal human status quo. He caused the majority of missing cases in the world and he let all the people he'd kidnapped do whatever what they wanted. There was little to no discipline! Lionel always went on and on about uniqueness and letting children and teens live enjoyably, even though he used some of them as child soldiers. It didn't matter much to me, but I didn't want Lionel's well-intentioned black touch anywhere near Avery Beatrice! He was apathetic and insufferable at times. I think he believed himself to be righteous. By human standards, he was a crime lord who didn't know what he was doing at best and an indoctrinator to evil at worst. Lionel's charges usually didn't age unless they wanted to age in his charge. Back when I was full monster, I didn't see what Lionel was doing as wrong, but now as a human, I did. However, I understood the perspective. He wanted them to be unique, happy, and entertained, yet he wanted them to be whatever. He wanted them to accept being or want to be insane and corrupted. Lionel and I had talked before. He was well-mannered and had exquisite taste. You'd never know the possible murders he organized from the way he presented himself, always dressed to the nines. He was a shapeshifter just like I had been and he was complicated. I never knew his whole story.

As a human, I kept forgetting details of my old life, even when my human family was connected to my first one. I had wealth unlike ever believed and I got streams of money every single month from my endlessly wealthy monster family. I liked to shelter most of that wealth away to make my own way in the human world to figure out how most humans lived their lives. They fulfilled my request, but they told me that if I wanted to become a human, my shapeshifter past had to be locked deep away to better this new experience. I kept some of my past memories, but I didn't have all of them. Some came back in flashes and pieces. Whenever I wanted to tell information that I thought would help the kidnapping cases, it would always pass my mind and I wouldn't remember to tell the government about it. Monster loyalty, I guess. I figured out how to make myself shapeshift again, but it was harder and less natural. I would always keep that with me, no matter if my DNA and life force had been twisted close to humanity. My family barely kept in contact with me. Lionel nor any member of his family hadn't nabbed me and taken me to twisted Neverland yet. I remember Lionel telling me he would miss me as a human.

I hope Lionel would take me, but part of me doesn't wish that. Currently, I am twenty-nine years old as a human and I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. I remember my first birth. It was over one hundred years ago. I spawned out of the darkness in pitch black, flying up into the air held up by two of my sharp tentacles, and my different features developed. I only remember my first birth in bits and pieces. I remember the mix of antagonistic, lovely, shredded, flaccid, ornamental, unhinged, and divergent monster types all in one place. There were monsters with eyes and monsters without eyes. Some of them were pockmarked. Others weren't. The diversity in our race, Zeasin, was profound and transfixing. Mismatching and constructed matching of organic and cybernetics also could be seen at the birthing. There were also other species there. Some were birthed in different ways, some at this location while some were birthed at other locations. Binuthyes' race members like Narcotix Vaine creeped out of veins and different chemical makeups to form different species and subspecies of diverse creatures. Some species like the Rzxzal were more straightforward. They were chalk white and ranged from small to tall. They could travel throughout the entire world within minutes, scanning every single inch of it, but this was an ability few of them had. It took a while for this mass teleportation ability to develop. They had to turn into a substance like liquid. They could also create their own creations with their chalk powers. Some of the Rzxzal used their powers to bring joy and imagination to the world, while other ones used their powers to bring unexplainable disgusting terror, which they thought was funny, to the human world. 

At the birthing, there was a hesitant young teenage boy who unnerved some of the attendees and I didn't know exactly why at the time. He had solemn red eyes glistening with misery and beleaguerment, but his appearance was scintillating. His skin had obsidians, jades, emeralds, rubies, and other jewels embedded into it. He had two peak-physical human guards beside him and one was brutally scarred while the second one wasn't scarred. The guards didn't feel fully human. They felt like wolves in sheep's clothing, beings emitting pure evil. One of them had a face that was completely scarred all over every single inch as if the scars were new and their eyes were unnaturally wide. Looking back, it may have been one of Lionel's possible teenage charges, but it felt intrinsically darker than that. I don't know. Several Zeasin and Binuthyes, including other species, froze or reacted visibly to them. A couple of Binuthyes' veins popped and didn't come back together for several hours. Some reacted by pretending not to notice the bodyguards' presence there. Some did not at all. Some were busy going about other businesses. 

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