PROLOGUE
Nightmare Started
It was a rather drab winter day when a young girl and her father walked into the building. A nice young woman greeted them and told them to have a seat in the waiting room.
Her exact words had been, "The doctor will be with you in a moment."
And he had been with them in a moment. No more than five minutes later, a tall man with gray hair and a pair of those frameless glasses came up to where the pair were sitting. All doctors were the same with their well-groomed hair and immaculate business wear, the girl thought. This doctor was wearing a dove gray suit, a baby pink shirt with a darker pink tie. The shoes were hilarious to her. Who in their right mind would wear black and white wingtip dress shoes.
It had been an hour since the doctor had shown the father and daughter into an office to discuss the treatment the girl was going to go through. It was some kind of breakthrough medication that would suppress the rages.
Did she like anything? Was there anything in the world that she wanted to change for? She loved making clothing and quilts or anything to do with fabric and sewing. It calmed her down when the rages hit. The shrink had said that was odd.
It wasn't her fault she was like this. She had just seen too much. Too much trauma, death, drugs, alcohol and other horrors. It wasn't her fault about the baby; she had gotten raped and then tried throwing herself off the roof of the house trailer when she was four months along. The blood had been such a pretty red once she caught her breath and stood. She watched rivulets of blood run down her legs, pooling at her feet in the scrub grass.
Her mother had just taken her to the hospital. Her father was the one that won custody after the incident and tried to help by having her talk to people. Yes, she was messed up mentally but some kids just had more problems than others.
So the good Doctor Rhire, for that was his name, had taken her father through another door because her dad wanted to see what exactly what the place looked like and what his daughter would be dealing with.
Thirty minutes had passed since then.
Perhaps she should have just stayed in that chair, it would have caused a lot less problems had she not left the office. The teenager wasn't about to have patience when she didn't want to be there. She went through the same door.
The first thing she saw was the doctor holding up a needle and then jamming it into her father's neck. He crumpled to the floor.
Was he dead? Why wasn't he moving? Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! She didn't want to go back to her mother's house. Her mother let bad things happen to her. Daddy was the only one who cared and wanted to help. If he just got off the floor and said something to her, she'd cooperate with the different treatments. She'd be a better kid. She wouldn't go crazy.
He didn't move. His chest didn't rise or fall by breathing. He was dead. He was gone.
There was a flash of pink as the doctor turned to where the girl stood. Anger flooded her brain and she could feel the primal scream that erupted from her throat. She attempted to run at the man. The girl didn't even get close enough to harm the doctor. She was on the floor, covered by two large men with her arms pinned behind her back, growling and screaming like an animal. The girl hoped the erection from the guy who was holding her legs down wasn't because she was struggling.
"Now that you're restrained you have two options. Cooperate and this goes smoothly. Fight me and I'll make sure you spend the rest of your days in a dark padded room," the doctor said to her as he squatted down. "And I'll make sure that they're hellish, my dear girl. You'll never touch the things you love the most."
The pink tie and shirt came into view as one of the burly men grabbed her hair, yanking her head up. Rage bristled along her spine and she made an attempt to lunge at Rhire although she was pinned down and laying on the floor.
"Right, you want hell." The tall man stood and turned from the girl. She watched as he walked over to an intercom, pressed a button then spoke. "Bring down two doses."
When she opened her eyes there was nothing. Blackness surrounded her. She was going to panic. She was trying to scream. This couldn't happen. This couldn't happen! She needed light! She wanted something real.
In the distance, on the horizon, a soft orange glow bloomed. The girl then realized she was sitting in a field of dry grass. How could see see how golden the blades were when the sky was still black? What had made the sky glow? Had someone had turned a light on? She could see almost perfectly. She was so preoccupied with studying the environment that she missed the slight crunch of footsteps.
"Welcome." A silky voice said from behind her. The girl screamed and jumped up from where she had been sitting in the grass. She whirled around to see who addressed her.
A man, if you could call it that, was leaning up against a tree that rose out of the ground. It a lush and green tree that this thing was leaning against. It looked very out of place in the middle of a field of dried grass. "Who are you?"
"Who are you?" he repeated.
The girl opened her mouth to speak but slowly closed it. Who was she? Why couldn't she remember? What had happened? "Who am I?"
"I've got a name for you girl."
"Who are you? Come closer, I can't tell what you look like," the girl said then bit her lip.
The moment the man stepped out from the shade of the tree, the girl wished she hadn't said anything. The screams started again and everything went black.
The doctor pulled the injection needle out slowly. He smiled and gently patted the young sleeping face then nodded to the nurse who began to clean the wound on the girl's head.
"She should be online in about two hours, sir. It's really a simple process," another man said. He was sitting at a desk just feet away from the examination table. "You inject the serum, insert the chip, wait for the patient to come online and then you track them. They won't remember anything."
"And you're sure that this will help my patients? Their quirks and such will disappear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good work Chip. Now since you are one of my patients and you helped me; I want to help you." The tall man walked behind the other man and patted his shoulder.
"Awesome! I hope you're thinking of giving me a couple of free sessions. That'd help me. With my wife out of work and my project getting cut back-"
The man sitting at the desk slumped over and the doctor motioned for the nurse to hand him another syringe that held one of the tracking chips. He handed her a syringe that had a black residue on the inside. The doctor couldn't understand why the serum wouldn't change to a different color. People who needed this were unsettled by colored medication. His patients and test subjects tended to melt down when they saw the hypodermic needle full of black liquid.