Vigilant: Part 1

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I could feel the cold of the iron bars as my fingers wrapped around them tightly. I could hear the sirens in the distance telling me I needed to leave. I let go of the bars, dropping onto the alley below. Dashing from alley to alley, from street to street, I knew they wouldn’t find me, they never could.

After about an hour, I had successfully evaded the cops, and was on my way home. I entered the junkyard, and headed to an area where a bunch of shipping containers were stacked. I climbed to one of the shipping containers on the second level and entered. Inside was a mattress, some clothes sprawled on the floor, a desk with a few papers on it and a computer, an armor charging station, and a bunch of robot parts and junk everywhere. I took off my clothes and left them on a hanger just outside to dry. I had barely gotten a wink of sleep for the past few days, and now I had to get to work. I picked up some clothes off the ground near my mattress and saw a picture on the ground. I picked it up and stared at it. It was of my parents and me, back when there was any semblance of happiness in my life.

My parents were geniuses, experts in their field and got a job at a huge corporation where they worked on biological augmentation. They accomplished so much, but the company wanted more. The CEO wanted to create some sort of metahuman to fight wars and be the main police force. The CEO, Henry Jax, head of Jax Industries, wanted these metahumans because they were amazingly strong, and because this would grant him a lot of power since he would control our nation’s defense forces. Naturally, my parents declined, seeing what this would do, but let’s just say he didn’t take it kindly.

He threw me and my parents into cells for experimentation, we would be used as lab rats for his own cruel fun. My parents died after a week of experimentation, and I had no idea of this at the time. I didn’t break free until after a month had passed of painful experimenting. Through the torture and the sadistic fun, did they know that a lot of the chemicals they were injecting into me, actually made me stronger and enhanced my senses? My eye color became a chemical green, and my hair turned white through the entire ordeal, I was no longer the same 17 year old boy who entered the facility. I was different. I was a monster. Through the discovery of my newly found strength, I broke out, and raised the whole place to the ground. Henry had gotten away, but I knew I would get him one day. I buried my parents, and salvaged a bunch of materials from the facility: shock absorbers, night vision, thermal vision, electric field generator, and more. I built my own power armor from parts I had scavenged. The armor enhanced my strength. If I was gonna beat him, I was gonna have to be a one man army.

I took off my armor and put it on the charging station. I threw on a work uniform and ran outside. I had gotten a job as a cashier at a fast food place nearby recently; I needed money for mechanical parts and food, and stealing was against my nature. It was a pretty easy job for the most part, all my coworkers were nice and I got a decent wage. I arrived at the restaurant and greeted all my coworkers.

While I was working, I overheard some people at the far side of the restaurant discussing some recent gossip, at first it was nothing to take note of, but after a while something interesting slipped out.

“Hey you heard about the recent kidnappings around the city?” the man said taking a sip from his coffee.

“Nah, what about?” the friend sitting across from him said.

“Well apparently, random people have been getting kidnapped all across the city. The cops have been trying to piece it all together, but so far, there has been no solid evidence. Some people have been trying to link it to Jax Industries and some of their shady business dealings, but there’s no real connection, just paranoia. I don’t know, I just hope my kids are safe” he said.

I had no doubt that Jax was behind this, but the lab he was currently stationed at is completely destroyed. I burned that place to the ground; he has to have a secret underground lab somewhere, just where?

After I clocked out, I donned my armor again, and moved out to the city. I had no idea where these kidnappings were taking place, but if I had to guess, it would have to be a place not frequented by many people. I narrowed down my search radius to an area deep in the city, but even then, it was still a considerably big area.

I walked around, with no one insight. I had heard that this part of the city has been pretty much abandoned ever since newer parts of the city were made, making this place filled with old buildings that nobody wants. As I walked, all I could see were squatters and drunks either sleeping or to busy being drunk to notice me. 

Soon enough, I entered a street, completely empty, only lit by crappy street lamps that were seconds away from dimming. Silence filled the air, and a certain sharp taste entered my mouth. It was certainly a chilling place, right out of a slasher film, but horror tropes aside, I walked forward.

When I passed a dark alley, lights beamed from out of it, and a dark van drove out. I jumped back in surprise when two men came out from the truck charging me.