❦❧Deck of heroes❧❦ PROLOGUE

Instructions

Prologue General Sandra Eremas General Sandra Eremas opened the door to the control room and stepped inside. It was a large room, full of screens and monitors and little cubelike workspaces. Most of the screens were showing live security feeds from everywhere around base. Despite the importance of the room, there was only one other person in it. She recognized him immediately. It was Commander Ryan Pennan, head of security and her most trusted advisor. And he was exactly the person that she’d come to see. “General Eremas!” he exclaimed, rising from his seat at his humongous desk. It was the biggest desk in the room, and had the most important feeds: the ones of the mutant’s cells. “There is no time for pleasantries, Commander,” General Eremas said in reply. “We have new orders from the Doctor herself.” Commander Pennan nodded, sank back into his seat, and asked “What does she want this time? Orders for the uhhh… subjects again?” He said the word subjects with distaste. “Of course,” the general said. “But it’s not the usual plans for new trials. The message said, quite clearly, that the experiments are over. The prototypes held in this base are all now marked as failures.” Pennan gasped. And she wasn't surprised that he had. The experiments had been going on for almost 17 years. Stopping them came as a surprise to everyone who knew. Which, admittedly, wasn't many people. That kind of thing was extremely classified. At least half of the workers on base didn’t even know that the mutants existed. “Wait a second,” Pennan said. He stood up suddenly. “If the experiments are over, what do we do with her failed subjects? Kill them all?” “No! We put 16 & ½ years of work into them! We are NOT killing them!” General Eremas exclaimed. Pennan looked startled. She couldn’t blame him. She’d startled herself! “No, we have orders from the Doctor on what to do with them,” she reassured Pennan. “Well, then tell me what to do, General!” he said with a hint of irritation in his tone. “Right, right. Sorry. So subjects 1,2,& 3 are being moved to base 17, in Illinois. Subject 4 is to go with them. They all are to be memory wiped into thinking that subject 5 never existed. He will be… ugh, he has to be killed. Too dangerous for transportation and all that. I personally think that they should just leave him here, but it's Doctor's orders.” “Yeah, seems like a wasted effort, but oh well,” Pennan remarked, sitting down and pivoting to face his computer screens. “Permission to give the orders, General?” “Go for it, Commander.” General Eremas replied. In response, Pennan recorded a short message and sent it to a few soldiers. “Now we just sit back and watch.” General Eremas pulled a chair over to Pennan’s desk and sat down. On the screens, 4 soldiers marched in unison towards the cells. They entered the cell of subject 5, grabbed him and marched out of the cell. They shoved him into an empty room. General Eremas looked away as the leading soldier pulled out his gun. Pennan was more used to death, as he was a former soldier himself, but that didn’t mean he wanted to watch. They both fixed their gazes on the floor and waited for the gunshot. It never came. Instead, a shrill alarm rang out. General Eremas jumped and whirled around to face the commander. He had gasped(again) when the alarm had started, but now he was furiously checking all of his alerts and messages. “RYAN, WHAT’S HAPPENING?” she yelled over the alarm. He pressed something, and the alarm stopped, though red warning lights still flashed and many screens had large print alerts insistently begging to be read. Pennan slowly turned to face her. In a deathly quiet whisper, he said 6 words that somehow shook the world. “The mutant, subject five, has escaped.”