The Rogues

24- Armor

"Give in and this will all be over."

"Over my dead body." I growled

"Then so be it..." He stepped up to the lab, punching numbers into a code as the shiny white doors slid open, painfully greeting me inside. "...Over your dead body." He released his grip and thrusted me inside. I tumbled over and a group of doctors swarmed around me, catching my fall. They grabbed a hold of my arms and shoulders, my body flailing to break free, but there were just too many.

"He's back?"

"He needs more tests. Stronger ones. He's been misbehaving."

My chest was heaved quickly with each rapid breath I sucked through my nostrils. My body, almost limp in the doctor's familiar grip, my neck falling forward so my dark hair dropped over my eyes, a pool of sweat on my brow.

"Remember what I said about rats?" The trooper slowly walked up to me, lifting my head up as he placed his gloved fingers on my chin. "...they're only a variable in an experiment. You were born so you could be manipulated."

The trooper dropped my chin. My mind fumed with anger...with how badly I wanted the trooper to pay...to feel the pain I felt. Worse if it was possible. I wanted to do something, but my limbs were immovable, held steady by the doctors. What could I even do? Then, as the trooper was moving his hand away, I eyed up his fingers, and did the only thing I could think of.

"Son of a bitch!" The trooper yelped in pain, with a wrenching scream that sounded like a wailing child. He grasped his finger with his opposite hand tightly, I could almost hear it throbbing from where I stood.

"That little bastard just bit me!"

The doctors around me gripped my limbs tighter. I couldn't help the small smirk that unfurled across my lips. I couldn't see his face, but I knew the trooper had a priceless look in his eyes. His childlike wail alone satisfied me enough. Could you blame me though? I just ripped the pride out of a mighty soldier by gnawing his finger. He said I was a rat right? And what else do rats do?

They bite.

"Wipe that goddamn smile off your face!" He roared in anger, snatching the rifle out his holster and plunging the butt of it into my stomach. I curled forward, the doctors barely stopping me from tumbling to my knees.

A wrenching pain rose in my lower body, like my insides were punching through the lines of my stomach. I could taste the shitty bread rising in my throat.

Swallow it back Dom.

I caught my breath and painfully stood up. My sharp eyes lit with a fire, a burning anger. I hoped they would pierce through the trooper's soul and rip out his heart. They seemed to have that effect on people.

Your eyes are so pale they could be white. My mother told me once. Is that a bad thing? I replied.

Not at all. Eyes like yours are the perfect deceivers. They come across as bright, almost transparent, like a glimmering ocean. The thing about the ocean is that the surface appears to be crisp, nothing more than what the eye sees. But the further down you go, the deeper things you discover.

Of course six year old me had no idea what she meant, I nodded pretending to understand. At sixteen though, my perspective on things had changed. I didn't know if the change was good or bad.

The only bad thing about your eyes, she laughed, is that you might not be able to look at the sun longer than a second.

"Take him away." The trooper shouted, still grasping his pointer is pain. The doctors moved, dragging me backwards into one of the lab rooms. I didn't fight, I didn't squeal, I didn't move. What was I to do anyways?