The Athena Projects

Ch. 1

The Little Door Down The Forgotten Hallway
"Hey, Farrell, Wait up!" Morgan came flying down the hallway with her backpack open and papers going everywhere.

"Calm down Morgan, I'm not going anywhere," I said as she came within earshot. She looked relieved when she caught up with me and stopped to gather the contents of her backpack together.

"Good, because my parents finally loosened up enough to let me have some friends over tomorrow night for a movie night. I'm going to invite you and a few other people I know. Can you come?" She looked up at me with those pleading eyes of hers "I'm going to need your help to set everything up," She said in a voice just dripping with honey.

"Well." I was about to tell her the truth, tell her that I lived in an orphanage and there was no way I would be allowed to go but after seeing the hopeful look in her , I've never been good at saying no or telling the truth. "I guess I could ask if I can come - that would be really fun." She brightened up as I said those words and smiled one of her toothy grins.

Despite this I couldn't stop thinking of how disappointed she would be when I couldn't make it. Mrs. Parker, the director of the Children's Center, (A.K.A the Wicked Witch of the West) was never going to let me go. "Give me a day or two to get permission and I'll help you with whatever you want. Kay?"

"Okay." Again she smiled her brilliant smile "I'll see you tomorrow!" Morgan then quickly rushed off to catch her now-departing bus.

I sighed deeply - How was I going to get Mrs. Parker to let me go to the party? She hated me enough without me asking for favors.

Morgan was lucky - no matter how much she complained that her parents just didn't get it, - she was one oft the lucky ones. My parents had left me when I was little; I guess they just didn't love me that much. I couldn't really remember much of what happened while I was growing up on the streets. But I did remember a few years ago when Mrs. Parker found me and took me in (personally I still didn't believe that Mrs. Parker would ever do anything that nice for another human being - especially me).

I haven't really told any of my friends from school about how I live in an orphanage- wait, I take that back, I haven't told Morgan, she's the only person who ever talks to me anyway. I was afraid she would label me a reject and never speak to me again. It was silly and I knew she would never do that; I just didn't want her to know.

I walked silently to the nearest bus stop, wrapped in my own thoughts. Already waiting there were Brian and Jesse - I had known them for as long as I can remember. They had come to live in the Center long before me. Apparently their parents had been junkies and had left the two babies to fend for themselves on a street corner. Both Brain and Jesse had dark eyes and light, blonde hair- there was no doubting they were twins. They had always taken care of me as two older siblings would. Likewise, they thought of me as their kid sister

"Hey kid, what's the matter? You're looking depressed." Brain asked looking a little concerned.

"Nothing much, just the usual." I answered.

"Ah, Mrs. Parker." Said Jesse.

"How'd ya guess?" I replied sardonically.

"Well, good luck, I hope it works out." Brain said. I knew he wanted to help me but we both knew it would do me, and him, no good - Mrs. Parker hated him almost as much as she hated me.

Just about then, the bright blue bus that we always rode home came to a stop in front of us. It took us right to the door of a large yellow building. Across the front of the gate it said "Port County Children's Center" In big blue letters.

We waked through the gate in silence, but as soon as we opened the doors, the sounds that always dominated the air inside the Center immediately greeted us: little toddlers screaming, babies bawling and the volunteer hands swearing that they're never going to volunteer here again.

I really didn't have any friends my own age at the orphanage. First of all, there were only about three other kids my age, and they all avoided me for some reason. They acted as if I was a time bomb waiting to blow.

I silently slipped through the crowd to a little door down a forgotten hallway. This was the entrance to my room. Which, to tell you the truth, wasn't much to look at. It was a small cubicle painted white, with only a bed, a night table and a desk in it. There were only two things on the wall. The first one was a large poster of a beautiful waterfall. It reminded me that the world was not such a horrible place and that there was so much out there that I hadn't experienced. Sometimes I imagined that I was there instead of here, free as a bird flying through the skies.

The second thing was a love letter from someone I didn't know to someone else I didn't know. I can't remember how I got it, but I assumed I got it before I came to the Center. It was a very sweet letter all the same. On the front it just said 'Heaven' and the simple words he wrote her said that he loved her and he told her how much he was going to miss her. He didn't say where she was going or why he couldn't go with her, but I suspected they had already talked about it. The words kept me awake for hours wishing that someone loved me enough to say those sorts of things to me and wondering about the two lover's story.

I laid all my stuff on my bed, and plopped down beside it, just thinking about the day's events and what I had to do for homework. Just about then my door swung open to show an enraged Mrs. Parker framed in the small doorway. She was not a very tall woman but she had perfected the art of using all of her height to its greatest advantage.

"And what exactly do you think you're doing?! Lying around in your room while other people are working? You ungrateful child!" She growled, pulling me off the bed with her heavily ringed hand.

"I'm sorry ma'am but I didn't know it was a federal offense." I knew I was being childish and I couldn't imagine what drove me to say that, but once I had said it, I knew it had been the wrong thing to say. Her face turned purple with rage and a little vein out in the corner of her eye, throbbing with too much pressure. She always got this way when she was mad.

Her hand came around and slapped the side of my face. Pain lanced through my cheek as the sound of flesh on flesh echoed through the tiny room. I could feel that the tissue under my eye was bruised.

"Now listen here you horrible little brat, I took you in off the streets, I fed you and gave you decent clothes, not to mention I taught you how to act civil. And unless you want me to think you want to be back on the streets, fighting for your food, and sleeping in telephone booths, then I suggest you use the manners I taught you and keep a civil tongue when you speak to me. Now change and go clean up the playpen for the Munchkins.

"Then you will take two night shifts." She held up her hand as I started to protest. "Don't give me any lip and get on with it, girl!" With that Mrs. Parker turned on her heel and stalked out of my room.

Both night shifts? I have school in the morning! I thought. Usually two people took night shifts to make sure all the babies sleep okay. That meant that I was going to be up all night and there was nothing I could do about it.

"Farrell, thank god you're here! The little brats are giving me a headache. Why don't you play with them, it's not like you have a life or anything." Said Kathy, one of my non-friends my own age. She was a heartless witch to say the least but I still felt a little bit sorry for her.

None of the Munchkins liked her and they always tried to make life hard for her (almost as hard as she made my life). They did things like putting peanut butter in her hair brush, replacing her lip gloss with glue and so on and so forth. She handed me the stuffed animal she had been attempting to entertain them with and walked quickly in the direction of her room.

Better get stared on cleaning or I'll need those two shifts just to get this done. All of the toddlers were gathered around my knees, pulling on my socks sleeves and pants.

"Sorry, guys, I can't play with any of you, I have to clean your." There was a scramble of little legs and arms and by the time I looked up everything was absolutely spotless. ".Playpen" I finished my mouth hanging open in amazement. I felt a tugging on my arm and when I looked down I realized that it was little Sarah. I bent closer to hear what she had to say.

"Farry, ca' you rea' us story?" She said in her 3-year-old speech.

"Sure, why not?" I replied, hearing quickly stifled happy squeals coming from one or two mouths. So, for the rest of the night, I read to them their favorite stories- every time one story ended, they had another ready. At long last, the little Munchkins started dozing off one by one. So I tucked them all into bed, gave them all goodnight kisses and turned out the light.

~Dimitri~

I looked through the window at the little children playing and giving the girl that was attempting to entertain them. One of the boys in the building, according to our scanner, was one of the missing kids from the Athena Projects. I had been a part of the Project myself but then I had figured out what was happening. So I started the Resistance - a force that helped liberate and train lost Project kids. Basically we tried to save all the 'experiments' from the streets and tell them what little I knew about the Project itself, which wasn't much.

We knew that a lab, under military funding, had kidnapped a bunch of women and had implanted modified sperm inside them. The scientists then did testing on the barely developed embryos. What they added or took away was different for every one, but the overall plan was to create a super human soldier, one devoted to the cause and with good street smarts. Basically they wanted war gods - hence the name.

Athena, the goddess of war was always clear headed and wise in times of war unlike her male counterpart - Mars.

When the child was born, they raised and trained him and found out what the tampering had given the child, and what it had taken away. The child's memory was then erased when he was about ten years old. They dropped all the children off at a corner somewhere to see if they could adapt to the real world without knowledge of their powers. The idea of this being to give them an idea of the way the world works and how to adapt to it before they were sent off to defend their country.

But the military hadn't counted on one thing - the children would eventually remember.

That's basically what happened, my gang of misfits and I had remembered everything and had been trying to locate all the victims of the still on- going Project while trying to avoid being recaptured ourselves.

But that wasn't the end of it, I had hated to admit it, but the boys in blue weren't all that stupid and eventually figured out what was happening. They had been trying their best to recapture us and had done a pretty good job too; they had kidnapped almost everyone out of my original test group - test group Alpha, including Farrell.

Thinking of her always made my heart ache. I had stopped talking about her a while ago but I never stopped thinking about her. She had been the only girl ever in the Athena Projects and was more powerful then us all. That's probably why they had taken great pains to recapture her. They didn't want someone like her against them or in the wrong hands.

Now I was determined to rescue everyone and strengthen the Resistance against the United States military. Easier said then done.

This one boy alone had eluded out scanners for weeks and I still hadn't been able to pin it down to any less then a building full.

Finally my watching paid off in a very weird way. Suddenly every kid in the room had the special energy signature that meant that they were Project kids. I couldn't believe it, there couldn't be a whole room of them at once. That was impossible! Then I saw that someone else had just entered the room. She was small, with raven black hair and gray eyes, exactly like mine and looked about my age.

I recognized her at once of course, I could never forget that beautiful face - it was Farrell. That solved the mystery of why I had had such a hard time pinning the source down - Farrell always projected her power, and used it to manipulate other things, but we had never found the total extent of what she could do.

But why is she here? I thought she had been recaptured. I thought to myself. It was definitely her; no one else had such a beautiful face or so much power. The question was, what was she doing here and was she the person I had been tracking all this time? There was another question on my mind but I was not about to admit it even to myself, let alone anyone else. I just watched as she read story after story to the now attentive children. None of them even fidgeted once while she was reading, and I couldn't help but wonder why that was.