A Beast with a Smile

“Scarlett? How did you do that?” Archy asked with an unhinged jaw.

We all sat and watched the indestructible door open. The metal cried as it rubbed together, and an annoying alarm rang like an unwanted door bell.

“I had a vision. How sick that they would use the date that they killed him as the door code. It wasn’t enough that they took his family away was it?” she tensed with her fists held tight in a ball.

“Salt in a deep wound,” she muttered silently.

“How lucky are we to have your repressed memories to guide us?” Archy said.

“So, my sister’s in here?” I asked, breaking the awkward silence.

Scarlett turned and faced me.

“I think so,” she smiled at me.

It was a comforting smile; one so bright and beautiful had never looked at me in such a loving way. She barely knew me, yet she risked her life to protect me from danger.

She still owes me one for saving her from the fall and from, well I think his name was Ore, but I knew him as my friend Darla’s dad. She didn’t look right, but she was still nice to me like when she used to visit me and Elizabeth when we lived here.

“Be careful to not touch the door, Clark. It’s meant to keep our kind out,” Archy warned as he stepped through the doorway, followed by Scarlett.

Both moved slowly like they were playing operation with the frame and the vault door. The sound of a frying pan banging on concrete was what woke me up and Scarlett’s hand sliding back into place made sure I’d never want to sleep again.

I took a running start and leaped through the doorway, making sure I wouldn’t touch the door and have my hand end up like Scarlett’s. I somersaulted on my landing and crashed into a dark room much farther than where I intended to land. I smacked into a cart of some sorts and knocked over a bunch of trays that echoed through the hall.

“Clark! I told you to be careful! We have to be quiet in here,” Archy shouted in a whisper.

“Are you okay, Clark?” Scarlett asked, running over to me and clearing the mess off of my back.

I looked up into her emerald green eyes and saw a flicker of blue light flash in them.

“Archy, shield your eyes. She’s glowing again!” I yelled, trying to find a stick to smack him with.

Scarlett had no reaction. While her eyes didn’t drift into the glowing blue like they had been when we fell from the plane, she looked around not blinking like there were others with us in the room. Her face was conflicted with a mixture of anger, confusion, and pain. Each emotion took turns quivering her lips, raising her eyebrows, or clenching her fists. Her eyes focused on me again and finally she was allowed to blink again.

She smiled at me and I noticed something rolling down her cheek. When it fell, it planted itself onto my forehead. Where it touched, I felt a soothing sensation that I had never felt before. The pain I felt from the crash faded away and I sensed only a warm glow in my tummy.

“Did you spit on me?” I asked, confused about the liquid on my head.

She wiped her cheeks free of any more rain drops and turned on the light before sitting in the hospital bed.

“What are you two doing? You’re going to get us caught,” Archy demanded, trying to look around the corner to the next room.

“I need a moment,” Scarlett answered, still wiping away tears and staring at me.

“Scavenger said that my memory would return, and I think that the biggest part that was taken finally came back to me.”

“Did you find it?” I asked while climbing onto the medical bed with her, my feet dangling off the edge.

“Half of it. We still need to find the other half,” she grinned, sniffling with red eyes.

I hugged her with a smile of my own. I don’t know why I hugged her. I think that was the first hug that I had ever given or received.

“Someone’s coming,” Archy whispered, running in the room and crouching behind the bed.

Scarlett picked me up, then slide behind the bed joining Archy. I could hear footsteps clicking through the hallway opposite of where we came from.

“I’m telling you, Ralph. I heard something,” one of the voices said.

Her voice echoed through the hall.

“You always hear something,” the other grumbled, stomping his feet heavily and panting from the short walk.

The footsteps grew closer until they stopped just outside the doorway. An annoying pulse kept beating on my back at a rapid rate. I looked at Scarlett and saw the fear in her eyes, holding me closer with the site of my face.

“How did this light turn on?” the girl asked, shocked.

“Oh, no! A light is on! How will we ever defend ourselves from a rebellious bulb?” the man said sarcastically.

He flipped the switch and the room was dark again.

“It means someone could be in here,” the woman said impatiently, causing the man to sigh.

“There can’t be any children in here. We should go back to B.W now because there is nothing here,” he hinted.

They know where we are, I thought, jumping up and sprinting towards them.

They both shrieked in fear and began to run away from me as I chased them down, yelling my signature war cry.

“Clark, stop,” Archy and Scarlett both called, chasing after me.

The two people that I chased had no weapons or armor and lacked any athletic abilities at all. They wore white coats that flapped in the wind as they ran. The man was short and chubby with long orange hair and freckles and the woman was tall with brown hair that reached her butt. They ran down the hallway from which they came and led me into a large, bright room filled with floating black spheres that looked like gigantic versions of marbles.

The fat one ran up a glass stairway while the lady reached for a button on a desk under the stairway. A steel arrow landed in between the webbing of her fingers on the desk, holding her frozen in fear.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hopper. We both know I can’t let you do that,” Archy barked, holding a new compound bow and a quiver full of a hundred arrow.

She turned around and raised her hands. Her face dripped with tears.

“Please keep that little demon away from me!” she yelled.

I disregarded her and chased after the man. The other had made it to the top of the stairs and entered a glass room with the same door as the entrance.

When I reached the top of the stairs I saw four people in the room made of glass where the man hid. I saw three others cuffed to chairs with helmets strapped to their heads and tubes attached to their bodies.

Two were strapped to an oval white chair: a man and a woman, both bald. The third was a little girl placed in a black throne with the helmet in the shape of a crown. I hadn’t seen her in over a year at this point, not since Tyler’s second attempt to murder us in our sleep. Her face had grown the same shade as milk and her body was skin and bones.

“That’s Elizabeth isn’t it?” Scarlett asked, sneaking up behind me on the stairs.

“Yes, at least I think so. She doesn’t look like herself. They’ve done something to her and I won’t rest until they pay for it,” I shouted at the fat man while raising my arms in anger.

He ducked behind the bald people’s chairs, trying to hide. It was then that I realized why the two were so terrified of me. One arm was completely engulfed in flames and the other drowned in water.

Guess that’s one less thing the kids at school can tease me for.

The wall in the corner of the room opened and revealed a hidden elevator. The scientist tried to run to it as the doors opened, but he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, falling onto his face and sliding towards the elevator.

Scarlett tried to cover my eyes for some odd reason. The man was just clumsy, and she acted as if I hadn’t seen someone trip before. Through the holes in her fingers I could see a man in a white tuxedo and aviator sunglasses walking out of the elevator, holding a glowing green gun that smoked from the barrel. Scarlett must have noticed my creeping eyes and turned me around as he walked over the fallen scientist.

“You’re a monster, Atom! He was on your side!” Scarlett cried, holding my eyes in a pit of darkness no matter how hard I clawed at her hands.

“He let in three uninvited guests into my most precious observatory. You know how much money I spent on these walls? More than this guy could make in a hundred years. And now they are stained with his jelly donut blood,” Atom sneered.

The conversation took Scarlett’s attention off of me and I slipped from her handmade blindfold to look into the black eyes of a beast. His eyes met mine as he shifted his glasses onto his nose.

“Look at home much you’ve grown! And I see you’ve discovered your powers. Too bad they aren’t as useful as your sister’s over here. Might have spared your life if they were,” he laughed and smiled maniacally.

Scarlett punched the glass where his dumb, smiling face hid behind and cracked the glass slightly. Atom’s smile faded quickly.

“Now that is promising. This glass, that door, and this room are all supposed to make any person who is special into an everyday human,” he said impressed while walking towards a key panel on the wall.

“And when I get past this wall, I’m going to make you eat that smile,” Scarlett answered, sliding a dislocated wrist back into place.

“I look forward to it… assuming you survive,” he challenged, pressing a button on the key-pad, triggering an alarm.

The black marbles began to lower, humming like electricity. Two crates rose from the floor behind us, sucking Archy in through the hole they came in through. His body stiffened, and he took aim at the two crates.

“Miss your old toys, Archentavious? I know how much you adored these two, but I think you’ll enjoy this next reunion even more!”

Atom pushed one more button and the white room began to glow rosey red and navy blue as red wine and the blue sea flowed through the tubes of the two bald people. Two pods were gently set on the ground after descending from somewhere above.

One was as red as the flames that power the sun and the other was as blue as a gentle sky.