Chapter 1: Night Colors

Sleep eluded me, as often it did after being moved to yet another "home." I was unusually tired. The night before I hadn't slept either. I had lay awake, scared to close my eyes for fear of seeing metal bars closing in on me, scared that I would fall into a deep sleep in which I would dream of the feel of the cold, hard metal table they used to strap me to during operations. In my dreams, blurry faces of people in white coats and surgical masks hovered just outside my sight, flickering like ghosts in and out of my peripheral vision.

But none of those images were as terrifying as the feeling that haunted me in my sleep as well as my waking hours. I try not to think about it, about the inevitability of it all; about the crushing weight that wraps itself around my chest.

Violence is my name and, as people often remind me, my nature. It is said that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Surprisingly, it's a very popular saying. But if there is one thing I have learned since I have been released from the labs, it is that people always base their judgments on appearances, above all else. I did not used to be a person people looked at and cringed. I did not used to frighten people by moving to fast. I hardly remember the time when I was still close enough to normal that I could go unnoticed, when people weren't revolted by my very existence, repulsed that scientists would create such an abomination of nature.

I do not claim to be a creature of non-violence, unjustly labeled as such. It is true I possess a violent nature, but given my situation this is hardly avoidable.

I am an orphan. Usually this would evoke sympathy; however I am not a human orphan. I am a GE orphan.

When I was twelve, the government passed a law that banned any form of Genetic Engineering on humans, and so they stopped working on me. Or, more accurately, I was taken out of my creators lab and thrust into the system. After The Ban was passed and several other laws regarding Genetic Engineering, there were a lot of humans forming movements to exterminate GE's. The movements were already there during the Era of the Superficials, but at that time they had been content to simply rant about the abominations that scientist were creating. It wasn't until they began releasing us out into the world that they started getting violent. Some people hunted us with guns and cars. Genetically Engineered Humanoids are faster, stronger, better than humans. But we were outnumbered.

So many of us died.

I remember the fear that ran through me when I saw it on the news; three more GE's, rooted out, run down and shot to death in Mississippi. How many bullet they must have had to use, it took a long time for us to bleed out. Our deaths are always slow and painful, our bodies cling to life to tightly. It makes leaving this world much more painful for us.

I remember how that fear had made me strong, in a way. One year out of the labs, in homes among humans that would threaten and taunt me, and I learned to be bullet proof. I learned that showing fear was like slitting your wrists while standing in a pool full of sharks. They would have eaten me alive, had I not been able to fight. Violence became a necessity. I learned quickly how to tolerate the pain, but more importantly I learned how to inflict pain on others. But it came with a price. Every time I hurt another person it would cause me pain as well, terrible pain that would sometimes stay with me for days.

Obviously no one had wanted too adopt me, so they threw me into the system. I've lived in different homes ever since. I got into fights at every one of the institutions they sent me to. And I always won. Luckily I could always taste when someone was getting angry enough to strike. I knew the subtle difference between the taste of anger which seared my mouth, when they would only shout threats, and overpowering, burning, hostility, which is when they would strike. My Taste Sense had helped me out a lot over the years. I guess I have Him to thank for that, though he doesn't know about his semi-unintentional gift.

After three years of trying to get someone to adopt me, they gave up and stuffed my file in an old cabinet, where no one would find it. If I had been any other kid, they would have thrown me in juvie by now. Kids aren't usually so careful about leaving evidence. But I was. I saw things that human kids wouldn't, that the authorities might have noticed. After my first stint in juvie, and after almost being knifed twice for being a GE, I learned to leave no lose ends. Humans I fought I made sure to scare them enough to keep them from talking.

And so, when the social workers and lawyers figured out they wouldn't be able too catch me and put me behind bars, they lost me in the proverbial cracks known as the "home system".

And so here I was.

I sighed, sitting up and gazing at my unfamiliar surroundings. The orphanage, or as rich, blissfully ignorant people liked to call it, the "Home," that I had been moved too was located in an Oakland slum in The Bottoms. The room I was in was transformed in the odd shades darkness brought with it. Night colors are beautiful to look at.

'What would this room look like if I were human?' I wondered.

Unwilling as the thought was, it ran through my head almost every night. I had been asking myself that question for longer then I cared to remember, and every time it ran through my mind it brought with it the feeling that I had lost something important. Something I could never get back. If people could get into my head, my being, the way they did, was it possible that some of me was getting out? There's a reason that a person's mind is limited to the inner-self. I am proof of that; the emptiness that continues to grow within me is proof of that. There's a reason I feel so empty: all that felt belong to someone else; the man standing beside me at a bus stop or a scared mother clutching her baby and looking at me in fear and disgust. The hatred, heaving and unceasing. I felt it all, crushing me from the outside and filling me up from the inside. I am always angry, and I always thought that I knew why. There is a lot for me to be angry about. But maybe what I feel is not mine at all. Maybe it is all the feelings, the emotions that twist and turn around me, those that belong to others. I don't think I can tell the difference anymore.

I closed my eyes, blocking out my unnatural night vision. Though I couldn't see, I could still sense everything that was going on around me. To my left, a moth fluttered past my ear and settled on the wall. People shifted in their beds on the floor below me and the floor below them. People on the street three stories down coughed and muttered to themselves as they shuffled past.

I opened my eyes and climbed out of bed, feeling restless.

'Why do I feel this way?' I thought to myself, frustrated, 'I worked out hard today'

I sighed, walking over to the small window in the left corner of the wall opposite my bed.

'It could be worse' I pointed out to my self.

It could definitely be worse.

I looked out at the streets below. I was in the very top of the old brick building that used to be a factory of some sort. It was now my new home. I didn't share my room with anyone. In fact, I didn't even share the floor with anyone. This room was the only on fit to live in on this floor, and in this case the term "fit for living" was being used for loosely.

The GE and Human Rights Union, better known as GEHRU, marked me as a potential threat after I beat up the last moron who had been my room mate. In my defense, she had been touching the one picture I possessed of my mother. That is how I ended up in juvie. So, no more room mates for me.

'Lucky me' I thought with a bitter smile.

As I stared out the window absently, a hunched figure shuffled into view. The person was pushing a shopping cart filled with bottles. Acting on instinct I let my Taste Sense flow out to touch the edge of the persons mind. As soon as I made contact I recoiled both physically and mentally. I doubled over, surprised by the feeling that suddenly ceased my body. I collapsed on the floor and curled up, waiting for the shudders that wracked my body to pass. It wasn't quiet as bad as obsession. This was just my body reacting to the unfamiliar feeling of being addicted to an illegal substance. Only intricate combinations of strong emotions could provoke a physical reaction to them aside from taste.

'I need, I need, I need' my head chanted, yet at the same time I could feel myself behind the feeling, calm, not really in need of a fix.

I gasped, trying to catch my breathe. I stayed very still, waiting for my heartbeat to slow. I tried to stand up again and fell to knees, dry heaving.

'Idiot!'

I sighed at myself, 'why are you so careless? you should really work on that. You should know better than to make contact with a mind like that. A drug addict'

I stood up and squinted out the window.

'What drug is this human addicted to?' I wondered, letting my eyes drift out of focus up close and into focus far away.

His eyes were bloodshot and he was mumbling to himself. Every couple of seconds he would jerk his head up as if he had heard something than itch his neck manically.

'Probably poltergeist' I decided, stepping away from the window. I pondered the obsessive hunger I had felt upon making contact with this human mind. Just a blind animal need.

'And humans accuse me of being an animal' I thought, a hollow anger rising in me.

A quit snarl slipped pass my lips. Someone on the second floor shifted uneasily in their bed. I snapped my teeth together loudly, cutting the low guttural sound off.

'Chill out' I wished I could tell whichever human I had spooked. They're so easily frightened.

I took a deep breath and glanced at the clock by my bed.

5:32 it read in glowing red numbers.