The 8ight

By Maxine Kia McClendon

There were 8.

Emmitt, Tess, Luke, Pepper, Fabian, Demi, Jude, and Silvia.

Eight children, each one with an unknown hidden superhuman ability. When their families are slaughtered and the children are abducted by a powerful and sinister organization for the purpose of unlocking a secret buried deep within their genetic code, they must learn to put aside their differences, discover their amazing shared origins, and develop their unique abilities to escape the torturous confines of the Company. Or face death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456601935

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Playing God

Facility 536A: Level 9

The alarms wouldn’t stop blaring. The halls were filled with red, blinking lights and everyone was scurrying to the nearest exits. All, that is, except for Claire. She walked briskly through the emptying halls, ignoring the cold, mechanical voice demanding everyone leave, ignoring the frightened scientists who only grew more frightened as they realized their boss, a chief officer of the Company, strode among them.

Her brown eyes were burning with anger, her black hair moved as if a wind was rustling it. She finally came upon a door at the end of the hallway and kicked it open, closing it behind her to seal out the sounds of the blaring alarms and the panicked personnel. The two lab assistants in the room turned around to face her. Panic, guilt, and fear ran across their faces when they saw who had come for them. One was holding a bag, and the other was stuffing several vials in to it.

Be good boys and hand over that bag, Claire said, taking a slow step towards them, her customary cold smile on her lips.

You know this is wrong, Claire, said the tech holding the bag. His name tag read Clark, and his hands trembled with fear. We didn’t sign up for this. This madness has to stop!

It’s too late to stop it, Claire spat back. It’s inevitable. Don’t make me hurt you.

The other assistant glared at her. Philip was his name, and his voice spoke with more resolve than Clark’s. We won’t let you corrupt our work like this, he declared as he vacuum sealed the bag, automatically triggering the immolation device that flash-burned all of the contents in the bag.

Claire’s eyes turned red. She glared back at the man intently, watching his face turn white as he fell to his knees, blood slowly dripping from his nose.

What are you doing to him? Clark demanded, Stop it!

Claire answered calmly, I’m slowly boiling his blood. You may have destroyed the remaining batches of serum, but you will tell me where the rest of the research team is. Where is Dr. Rao? Where are the stolen specimens? You have destroyed and stolen Company property, and you know there is only one response to that. Tell me where they are and I will kill you quickly, she said, talking to Clark but never taking her eyes off of Philip. Or suffer the same fate as your misguided friend here. Phillip’s face suddenly turned bright red as every inch of his skin swelled with the tremendously building pressure of his boiling blood. His mouth opened in a silent scream just as his entire body exploded. Blood covered everything, but Claire barely flinched as his bones fell to the ground. Her eyes moved to Clark who was looking at her with dawning horror in his eyes.

You injected yourself with the serum? he asked. Now it all makes sense. All the heightened security the past year, all the seized research notes and test subjects disappearing. You tried it on yourself? Why?

You think the Company was going to continue to pour billions of dollars into research on animals? she asked derisively. Once Dr. Rao developed his procedure, it was only a matter of time before it would be tested on humans. What did you think was going to happen? She slowly licked the blood off of her hands as she strode closer to him.

He darted to the left in an effort to run around her, but one look into her eyes and he froze in terror. She raised one eyebrow mockingly as she slowly began to raise the temperature of his blood. He fell to the floor suddenly, his body blanketed in frightened sweat and quivering in pain.

Well? she asked Clark menacingly. Where is Dr. Rao? She reached up and wiped at the blood and body tissue that ran slowly down her face. Lips quivering, hands held up in a vain attempt to ward off any blows, he told her everything she wanted to know.

Please, that’s all I know! he blubbered, clinging to her legs as tears and snot rolled down his face.

There, there, see that wasn’t so bad, Claire said as she stroked his head. She grabbed him by the hair and bent his head painfully back until his eyes met hers. I always keep my promises, she said just as she focused the full extent of her powers on him.

His blood instantly boiled, popping his eyeballs right out of his head a microsecond before his entire body ruptured and exploded. Claire grabbed onto the edge of the desk and rode out the waves of pain. Using her abilities in such a degree twice in rapid succession caused extreme dizziness and an intense headache. But she couldn’t afford to waste time. She keyed her communication mike attached to her earpiece.

This is Control. We’re picking you up loud and clear. Go, said a tiny voice in her ear.

Control, this is Claire. I have the whereabouts of Dr. Rao and the specimens.

Copy that. All personnel are ordered to evacuate the premises immediately. What is your ETA on Dr. Rao?

"I cannot get to him by conventional means in time. He is located two levels below me, and he has probably hacked into the computer override system. Elevators and Rapid Personnel Transportation Tubes are inaccessible. Send me two blink! dogs ASAP."

"Roger that. Blinks! should be arriving right about…now."

Claire straightened up fully and turned to face the newly arrived additions. Take me to Dr. Rao, she said as her eyes lit with anticipation.

Facility 536A: Level 11

Warning! Warning! Self-destruct sequence initiated. Total facility annihilation in 10 minutes and counting. All personnel: please evacuate! The mechanical voice calmly urged Dr. Rao to abandon his mission.

But he could not. The voice had come over the facility loudspeakers more than 10 minutes ago when he first entered the self-destruct sequence. He was hoping that in the ensuing chaos, his assistant, Dr. Yagamuchi and her research team would be able to get away with the specimens. Specimens? He still thought of them in that clinical, detached way, but be honest, he thought, the specim… the babies, he firmly told himself, were of the utmost importance. His job now was to make sure this distraction kept all eyes on him. If he failed and they were both captured, then it was all for nothing. His betrayal to the Company would not go unpunished. In fact, he was sure he would not be able to avoid the detonation that would destroy all 15 levels of the underground facility where he had spent the last 12 years of his life engaging in fantastic experiments in enhancing different life forms.

As a scientist in the employ of the Company, he enjoyed the latest state-of-the-art equipment, unlimited funding, a large staff who answered to his every whim, and every researcher’ dream: free reign to research and experiment on whatever he wanted without any fear of government sanctions or ethical morals getting in the way. The only caveat was that anything he discovered or created was the property of the Company, for them to do with or further develop as they saw fit.

For years, Dr. Rao did not mind that stipulation. His particular interest was in animal cell and then gravitated to gene manipulation. As a child, he always imagined common animals with physical attributes of other animals, and with the unlimited resources of the Company and the deep underground labs hidden away from prying eyes, Dr. Rao was indeed able to bring his childhood curiosities to life. He began by splicing the genes of animals together, to create new and interesting forms of life. He created butterflies with scorpion tails, wingless birds with frog legs, cats with wings, and rats with porcupine quills. He developed hamsters with forked tongues, squirrels with beaks, and turtles with octopus tentacles. He gave eagle eyes to blind mole rats, the kangaroos’ jumping ability to hippopotami and gills to lions and tigers. He enlarged hummingbirds to the size of elephants (of course they couldn’t fly) and he reduced elephants to the size of hummingbirds (and delighted in amazement as those could fly!). He gave a cheetah’s legs and speed to a tiger shark with a mammal’s lungs and watched as it hunted wildebeests with turtle shells on the Serengeti.

His research soon branched off into cell manipulation, and he attempted to increase the intelligence of the most intelligent animals on the planet: dogs, dolphins, and primates. This was where he had the biggest breakthrough in his career. For years he only had marginal success while manipulating the area of the brain believed to harbor intelligence. Compared to his earlier work, it was no big deal to develop chimpanzees that could read and write, or dolphins that could perform basic arithmetic. Dogs that could tell time and recognize letters were cool, but had no practical application for the Company and before long, Dr. Rao began to feel the pressure of coming up with the next big breakthrough. He began to work longer hours, and sleep less, and perform longer experiments on his subjects. His nerves began to fray from the lack of sleep, and one fateful day, while electrically stimulating the fully exposed brain of his favorite chimpanzee, Gilligan, his eyes closed briefly and his probe slipped a little too far to the left of the unused (or so believed!) portion of the brain.

Unexplainably, although heavily sedated, Gilligan sprang awake, screeching at the top of his lungs and jarring Dr. Rao from his daze. Jerking the probe out and pushing back from the operating table in a panic, Dr. Rao watched as all of Gilligan’s vitals momentarily flat-lined and then resumed on their own. The earsplitting shrieking stopped instantly. Shaken, Dr. Rao and his team closed up the cranial cavity and monitored Gilligan’s vitals for the next several days. Everything seemed fine, and although he viewed his error again and again on the recording automatically taken of all his experiments, he began to believe Gilligan suffered no ill effects.

Warning! Warning! Self-destruct sequence initiated. Total facility annihilation in 5 minutes and counting. All personnel: please evacuate! The mechanical voice briefly interrupted his musings of that fateful discovery all those years ago.

He ran to every computer workstation in the lab and uploaded the virus he specifically designed to erase all of his work. He could not let the Company further distort his work! He had to be sure the horror he discovered earlier that night would not be repeated!

It’s all my fault! he thought, as he pulled out every flash drive and encrypted disc and threw them in the metal trash can right before setting them afire.

He thought back again to that fateful day, sitting in his lab finalizing notes as Gilligan sat in his cage finishing a banana he had given him. He rattled his cage, indicating he wanted the one Dr. Rao was eating as well.

Oh, no, Gilligan, Dr. Rao said as he put the half-eaten banana down, reaching for another file. That’s enough for you. He turned his back to Gilligan and resumed his work, listening to the rattling of the cage.

This was normal behavior for Gilligan lately, becoming more demanding, and eventually Dr. Rao would give in, if nothing else to just quiet him down so he could finish his work. But on this day, the rattling stopped before Rao could give him the half-eaten banana, and when he absently reached for it to give to Gilligan, he discovered it wasn’t beside him where he left it. He looked under the desk and moved his files around but couldn’t locate it. When he turned around, he saw Gilligan calmly eating the banana! He looked to his lunch, and then back to Gilligan in amazement, still locked in his cage on the other side of the lab, over 30 feet away from where the half-eaten banana had once lay! Dr. Rao took another banana out of his drawer and placed it beside him. He watched Gilligan intently. At first nothing happened. He watched Gilligan and Gilligan watched him. Gilligan’s eyes slowly travelled to the banana and turned red. He stretched his arm out of the cage toward the banana. He looked at the banana, never blinking for long minutes. Dr. Rao watched, and a small gasp escaped him when the banana slowly lifted up off the table and drifted over to Gilligan’s outstretched palm! It was unbelievable! Dr. Rao was amazed, and knew right away that his mistake, his unintentional electrical stimulating of the unused portion of Gilligan’s brain had awaken some sort of… hidden potential, some sort of telekinesis!

The research moved at a blinding pace after that. He developed a serum that would mimic the effects of the electrical brain manipulation, and from that point on, it was discovery after discovery. By replicating his mistake, this time with purposeful intent, he was able to awaken a specific amazing ability in his animal lab specimens. He was unable to explain why each species seemed to have their own unique ability, but discovering what they were and developing uses for it catapulted him quickly back into favor with the Company. That lasted only as long as it took him to discover that as great as this discovery was, it was minimized by the discovery of an insurmountable weakness along with the ability.

His chimpanzees developed limited telekinesis, although it only seemed to work on retrieving something they wanted desperately. They could only do this several times a day before intense headaches set in. Using the power also greatly diminished the chimp’s life span; Gilligan expired three months after first demonstrating his ability and dozens of other chimps didn’t last one week as Dr. Rao did experiment after experiment to determine the depth of their abilities. His dolphin specimens gained the ability to levitate, but they were only able to do this when they initiated a jump out of the water. This made them able to jump much higher out of the water than before and perform an insane number of somersaults before hitting the water again. They too suffered a greatly reduced life span; the more they used their new-found ability the sooner they lost their ability to swim, slowly sinking to the bottom of the pool, and unable to get the oxygen they desperately needed, they drowned.

He had the most success with dogs. They developed varying levels of teleportation. Depending on the size, breed, and disposition of the