They Say That in the Army (revised)

Prologue

  Ever since Serenity was young there was one story that had been drilled into her head by her parents, teachers and any other elders she would encounter. This was the story of the scientist who had started the war. Each person had their unique way of telling this story, most thought of the scientist as mad but there were a select few people who took pity on her and saw her as lonely. Serenity was one of these few, she always wanted to believe that the scientist created the clone to be good but made a mistake in the process and it turned out evil. So Serenity's favourite version was this one.

           

   More than 100 years ago there was a brilliant scientist who lived in a secluded cottage on the South side of the world, her name was Sicili. She created many great things for people but did not like crowds so she shied away from most people. She was very lonely though and since she did not get along well with others she decided to try to create a clone of herself. This was something that had been thought of but never tried and she had many failures in the process of making the clone.

           

  Finally after years of trying she was able to make a clone that looked the same as her when she was a teenager but was stronger, faster and had the brain capacity of a small child. She named the child Illicis and vowed to raise it on her own, teaching it all she knew about science so it could one day be as bright as she was. Unfortunately Sicili died a year later and the child was left to its own devices. The child grew up in horrible seclusion and never understood why it was abandoned and forgotten about. Eventually she went mad with these questions and set out for revenge against humans. When she killed the first victim a huge burst of pain shot through her skull and she fell to her knees screaming in agony. When the pain subsided she reached up to her head and realized that there were two little bumps now present there. She did not understand what was happening and guessed that this was the way that the humans were striking back so she continued attacking.

           

  She was chased back into seclusion after 3 weeks of relentless killing and a wall was built up between her and the humans. By this time her bumps had turned to horns and then grown as large as deer antlers, growing with each murder she committed. She realized that she would need an army if she wanted to continue her revenge. So she went back to the cottage where she was made and used her creator's work on clones to help her. By this time doctors kept a log of each person's DNA in their systems so she hacked them and cloned each living person in the world at that point and raised them to hate humans as she did. 

           

   15 years later her army was ready and she released a surprise attack on the unsuspecting humans. Thousands of humans died and each time a new one was born a faster and stronger clone was also created. This army became known as the Vixen because of the unexplainable antlers that grew from their skull with each murder committed and in human's pursuit to defeat them they started to send teenagers into battles and kept the middle age people out of war in an effort to try and repopulate the world.

  The war was still fought like this in Serenity's time now, the government took one sibling from each family on their 16th birthday to be drafted into the army. If they were lucky enough to live until they were 18, many did not, then they were granted a ticket out of the war and the honour of repopulating for the rest of their life. If you were lucky enough to turn 18 while your older sibling was in the army then you never got drafted and you were also granted with the honour to breed.

           

  Serenity had always been quite optimistic about her chances to skip over being drafted and go right into motherhood, since she had 3 older brothers to go before her, but her nightmares never failed to convey the worst scenarios.