BREATH . OF . LIFE . ~ { ReGenisis Chronicles Book I }

Chapter Two [Part 1/5]: Cowards & Kings

"This is probably how she felt, before you took her life." I told him holding the knife up in front of myself, staring at the glistening red that dripped from it. "This agonising fear...only cowards torture their victims simply to kill them. Only cowards." I breathed, "I am no coward. I intend to leave you alive, but a little less a man. I need you to send a message back to those who sent you anyway..."

             * * *

 All around me the dizzying scent of coppery blood and dead leaves. Everywhere my eyes scanned there was some trace of crimson, most of all strewn about around the girl's limp body. 

I approached her slowly, kneeling down next to her body. My heart ached in my chest. I didn't know her, had never even heard her name. But I could still smell fear on her, I remembered what it was like being afraid in some distant memory. Scared of death, scared of pain. Her brown eyes were wide open, that pain and fear frozen in them. 

I closed my eyes to wish away the vision before me. Still the only thing I could see was her ripped up body. The stab wounds in her stomach and side, the cuts up her arms and just beneath her throat. I felt sick, if I'd been walking through this area not half hour earlier she may not have died. 

She didn't have to be dead, though. 

She could be alive again. 

If I had been given a second chance, couldn't she also get that restart? 

I opened my eyes and carefully pulled up her limp body from the muddy, leaf ridden path. I clasped her close to me. She was cold, so cold up against me. Motionless, all but the sway of her arm as it flopped down and her head as it tipped back. I adjusted her, as if it mattered how she was supported and started to run back to the only safe place I'd known since my restart. It wasn't home, but it was a sanctuary.

The sanctuary fortunately wasn't far away from the park and my legs were faster than they had been before. I was less concerned with being followed, perhaps, but I still kept an eye out over my shoulder.

The fact I had to watch no one followed me shouldn't come as a surprise, seeing as my destination bore a heavy name like 'Sanctuary' in the first place. It was an average, tucked away building, between others that were as unassuming. Only it came with long dark corridors and secrets hidden inside. Nicodemus was its founder, like a father to all those who were experiencing a restart or experimenting with things the Government would rather they not. Thing's we're not supposed to know about, thing's we're not supposed to be able to fight against, but do. We are kept right under the nose of all those who would destroy us.

          * * * 

When I got back into the Sanctuary, I swiftly pushed aside all of the glass tubes that covered a cold steel table in the main lab and slid the girl onto it. She looked paler now than she had then, even with drops of red splattered across her pale skin.

"Griffin..." Nicodemus, an elderly man with a hoarse voice growled in at me where he stood at the second doorway. I could see out of the side of my vision his grey eyes widening on the girl, his breath stifled, his hands shaking at his sides. 

Ignoring him completely; I rushed to a medicine locker, grabbing out a syringe and a little brown bottle from a safe inside it. I went back over to the dead girl and loaded the syringe with some of the contents of the brown bottle. 

"I'm bringing her back." I murmured finally.

"What...Griffin..." Nicodemus shrilled, his brows raising before they lowered like dark clouds over his earthy skin. He yanked at his white lab coat, flustered and fumbling.

"Are you sure you want to do this? Do you have any idea..." His voice raised again, a deeper sound this time. 

My jaw clenched, jutting out a little. "It doesn't matter. No one deserves to die this way..." I snapped, jabbing the needle into her neck.

As the needle left her body, I stepped back, swallowing my nerves and holding my breath for it to work. Her body started to judder uncontrollably, I watched a spark ignite in her eyes. The cold darkness of death vanishing into warm brown, her pupil responding finally to the light level in the room.

I heard it, that moment a heart starts to beat again. It was loud like a sonic boom in my ear, Nicodemus didn't have the pleasure or the pain of experiencing the sensation or hearing it for that matter. Then she gasped down her first breath of life, before her eyes snapped shut and her head flopped to the side. The serum was working its way through her system, soon her cuts would start to mend. She would be good as new, better than she had been before her life had been taken from her.

"Well, it's done now." Nicodemus sighed heavily, closing his eyes as if to push back the idea it was a mistake. "This is on your head, whatever happens. I only hope she was a good candidate."

"She will be." I assured him before lifting her back up, close to my body once more. I didn't want her waking up in this room.

"This is not the best time for you to become an optimist." Nicodemus muttered on, following me out the door. "Rin is going to kill you..."

I was heading for my room, ignoring his commentary. I walked down the hall and gently pushed my door open with the tip on my foot and stepped in sideways as not to bump the girls head on its frame. My room was small and dark, no windows or luxuries. Just a simple space with enough square metres for a bed and the essentials.

I laid the girl down over my covers. I would have to burn the sheets to get rid if the smell of her blood, else it would drive me to insanity, even if I washed it out a hundred times.  I stood above her, watching the marks on her wrists pulling together slowly. Becoming white little scars. The serum had to work on reparing damage before it could take to her system properly so it worked almost straight away. 

"Did you even think before...?" Nicodemus tried to scold only his frustration was bubbling too much and hindered his speech. He stood, leant up against my doorframe, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He almost always smelled like apple-cinnamon tea and chemicals. Right now his anxiousness was detectable too. "Do you realise what the wrong choice on this scale could mean?"

I flicked my eyes back at him over my shoulder for a moment before looking back at the girl. "You know me well enough." 

Nicodemus was stifled for a second. He huffed an exaggerated sigh, unable to combat me with any more pointless questions. "This doesn't mean Rin is going to be any easier on you."

"Let me deal with Rin." I murmured without looking back at him. The girls breathing had become easier, gentler, her heart beat was a slow thrum in her chest. Conserving needed energy in the repair.