Stella



Chapter II

My training was ever changing. Never the same and always more difficult than the last time I went inside, it was the only thing I looked forward to every day. After making sure Vice was comfortable in the viewing box, I’d flown down the stairs and stepped up to the steel door eagerly. As the lights turned on and changed from red to green I rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck, my hearts racing as I prepared for the green light. There was a flash of green and the room went black. I listened for the soft click of the door and I leapt up and into the room.
Today the floor was replaced with bubbling lava and the ceiling was black smoke so thick even I couldn’t see through it. I floated in the air about twenty feet above the lava and warmed my hands over the extreme heat. I pulled my hood up and covered my face, then turned around slowly and searched for whatever might be my challenge. There was always a simple goal to accomplish in these things, it was just getting to it that caused me so much pain.
The black smoke started to lower itself down around me and I tensed, knowing soon enough the pain would start. The smoke was so thick I was having trouble breathing as it quickly wrapped around me. I pulled my face mask up enough to cover my nose and mouth and struggled with the lack of air as I waited tensely.
Suddenly a shot rang out and something sliced across my open hand. I gasped and wrapped myself entirely in my cape, lowering my head to protect my neck. Another shot sounded and something bounced off my back. My cape was specially made to protect me from most everything, even the silver bullets that were coming for me. I flew down some and the smoke cleared a little as I neared the lava.
A net fell over me and snatched me back up into the smoke. I stretched my arms out to easily break the thin strings and instead it tightened its hold on me. Surprised, I reached my hands out and touched the net only to cry out and jerk my hands back. The net was made of delicate silver strands that dug greedily into my flesh drawing from me my blue blood. I struggled again to force the net away from the safety of my cape and heard a strange buzzing sound.
The net lit up with electricity and shot through me from my wound. I screamed and lurched backward as my insides were charged. My hearts hammered against my chest in an uneven rhythm and the stone in my chest burned like fire as it tried to regain control over me. I forced myself to pull my bloodied hand under my cape and wrap it inside carefully. I balled into myself as the electrical current got stronger and the net tightened its hold even more.
I couldn’t manage to think correctly and right then I didn’t care what the goal was. My hand was twitching and a stray bullet found its way past my now exposed cheek. My hood had fallen back when I screamed and I didn’t have enough room, or strength, to pull it back up.
The net suddenly started falling and I gasped at the speed. I fell flat on my back into the lava and I forced myself down farther, the silver strings melting away as soon as it touched the heat. My hands healed and the sting in my cheek vanished. I was free from pain and for one second I had a chance to think. I knew I had to get rid of the smoke and the lava was a distraction. The smoke was hiding something, other than electric sliver nets, and I had to find it.
I pulled my hood up and my mask covered my mouth and nose once more. I drew strength from the stone in my chest and shot up and out of the lava in a second. I took a deep breath and my eyes burned golden from my power. I could easily see through the smoke now and saw the second net coming for me right then. I dove down and to the right, it just missing me. I flew up and grabbed my gloves from my belt and quickly slipped them on. The next net I grabbed and twisted it in on itself.
Something was twinkling on my right and I narrowed my eyes as I tried to see more clearly. A ruby the size of an apple seed dangled in the air only a few hundred feet away. I shook my head and started towards it slowly, not trusting the lack of precautions the system had taken to guard it against me.
Something shot out and I smashed it away with a simple swing of my arm. That was the wrong thing to do. The black goo stuck to me and was growing quickly all up and down my right arm. It weighed a ton and I struggled to keep myself up. I wondered if the lava would make it dissolve and found that the heat was actually making it grow faster. I flew up higher and the black goo slowed its progress a little.
More goo smacked into my legs and I fell ten feet before forcing myself back up into the thick smoke. The ruby had gone missing and my eyes darted around as I tried to find it once more. Wires fell over me and wrapped themselves around my wrists and ankles. They pulled tightly and stretched me out in all different directions. I groaned and fought against my restraints. A silver bullet bounced off my chest and I remembered the guns again.
The black goo was growing too quickly and the wires were pulling too tightly. More bullets came flying towards me and I knew all I needed to do was grab the small ruby and this would end. I closed my eyes and screamed as I pulled with all of my might. The wires snapped and the goo was thickening as it completely swallowed my legs and my right arm. I dove down and dipped my whole body into the lava. The goo loosened a little and I wiped it off with my free left hand.
I kicked upwards and a net fell over me again. It jerked me to the left and I pulled to the right. Making sure my gloves were on securely, I grabbed the net in both of my hands and ripped it apart. I flew in a zigzag pattern as nets and wires fell trying to capture me. Some of the goo smacked into my face and I ripped my mask off and threw it down.
The small ruby was within sight and I flew faster. A chain grabbed my waist and sent me tumbling backwards. I smashed into the wall and was stunned for too long. The black smoke was thickening even more and the strange buzzing started up, only this time it was more powerful. I peeled myself from the wall and floated in place as I realized in horror this was no regular smoke, but a conductor for electricity. And I was covered in it.
Everything lit up in flashes of light and my clothes were no exception. Silver bullets, now charged, hit me harder with more of a sting to them. Wires and nets and chains swung around crazily and reached for me. I darted down and hovered just over the lava, its heat melting the metal from my clothes. But it wouldn’t be enough. I had to get to the ruby and the power was only increasing.
Lava.
I flew in a circle as fast as I could to bring it up in a type of tornado. At first, it wasn’t working, it was actually making it start to harden. I took a deep breath and dove into it, then started in a wide circle again. It was hard and thick and I was struggling, but it was the only thing I could think of to get rid of the electrical smoke other than to take handfuls and throw it into the air. I managed to get the tornado going and steady at thirty feet, then I stopped and watched as it went on a crazy path in every which way. I steered it in the direction of the ruby and stayed in the safety of its heat as wires and chains melted all around me. As we finally approached the ruby, I dove down and removed the base of the tornado. It fell in splatters and I flew back up and grabbed the precious stone.
The room went dark and dead silent as everything went back to normal. I landed on the firm, cold steel and tossed the stone between my hands as I waited for the lights to come back on. I heard my training room door click and the room lit up as Vice walked in. There was no sign of what had just happened moments ago anywhere, it was even a cool 55 degrees.
“What,” Vice started with a shake of his head. “Was that?”
“A training program,” I replied. I tossed him the small ruby and he caught it easily.
“All of that, for this little thing?” Vice shook his head again and held it up to the light. “It isn’t even real.”
“Of course, it is not real, Handler Vice. The General would not give me real gems to practice with.”
“Just Vice, please, Stella.”
I bowed my head and nodded to the door. “I’ll train some more now, Vice.”
“Do you usually train in such strange ways?” Vice asked, tilting his head a little as though trying to understand me.
“Every time is different,” I answered. “Sometimes the General makes up a program, sometimes you will, and the other times the systems does it on it’s on. The stranger the better. I’ll never be put in that type of situation in real life, but it is fun to practice in. However, something like what I just did is only once every twenty-four hours. The rest of the day I will practice more normal things.”
“Like?”
“Lazars, silver bullets, electric nets, bombs, poisonous gas, acid rain, jumping, climbing, flying, hand-to-hand, swimming, such things as those.” I rolled my shoulders and inwardly laughed at the face Vice was making.
Looking horrified, impressed and thoroughly confused, Vice’s eyes were huge and questioning. He stood stock still and had his hands clasped behind his back. “What exactly are you, Stella?”
I stiffened at his question and tone of voice. “Not from here,” I said too sharply.
Vice shook his head quickly and looked at me apologetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I was rude. I just meant,” he stopped. “Never mind. I’m sorry.” He started for the door and turned back to me. “What time will you stop again?”
“Whenever you call the end of day. When we need to eat dinner.”
He nodded his head once and left without another word. I was glad he’d gone and a little upset he’d come in here in the first place. I had told him it was dangerous for a human to come in here and expressed the importance of remaining in the viewing box, and he hadn’t listened. I knew he wasn’t human, but he didn’t, and it was dangerous in my training room.
I went to the panel by the door and let it scan my hand and eye before quickly requesting a program I knew usually cleared my head. I didn’t want to think of anything but work right then and I needed to put my head back on track. If the General even slightly suspected I was getting along with my new handlers his threats would become my reality and Vice and Cherrie would be killed before they ever learned anything about themselves.
The room went black once more and the tick-tock of my timer started. I pulled my hood up and clipped it into place, then dropped low as I waited for the silver dust lazars. The one thing never in short supply here seemed to be silver. No matter what, the General always had more.

*****

I stared out my window and watched the wind spin up little snow storms and then fade away. The blinding white snow of Antarctica was a little less blinding at night. I could see clearly for miles and miles.
Every country in the world had a station here and not one of them documented this place. What they claimed to be doing was researching Antarctica, what they were actually doing was studying me. Because of my always 210 degree internal body heat, I needed a cold place to live, this continent was perfect for me. 29 degrees in the summer, 7 degrees in the winter and negative somethings at night helped keep me more than comfortable.
I was owned by none, property of all. At any time I worked for any government doing whatever was needed. Whoever paid the most was who had hired me for a day. And that was something else, my services couldn’t be owned for more than a day by any one person. Only the most important of people even knew I was alive, those who didn’t should count themselves lucky. When people of power fell it was my job to make sure rumors of me didn’t spread, and a body was required as proof of a job complete.
After eating dinner by myself and cleaning up the kitchen, I had taken my nightly visit to the beautiful and extremely warm and healing sun for an hour. Vice had been so engrossed in the news on Fox and Cherrie was consumed with her reading of my old reports I hadn’t even been noticed. Vice had let me know it was time for dinner and that was it, they hadn’t even known I’d come out of my room to eat.
After a cold shower, I was in my thick red velvet pajamas and barefooted. My hair hung loose and wet around my shoulders, a hairbrush held tightly in my hand as though it was a weapon I would use soon. I paced back and forth across my cold floor in front of my window watching my open door for any sign of Vice or Cherrie. I looked nothing like the severe and deadly weapon I was hired for, more like an ordinary girl stressed out about school or something.
Their pieces of silver were in the same place on the coffee table as they had left them earlier, entirely untouched for hours. They were apparently trying to make me trust them and I desperately wanted to, I just needed more than one day and one act of kindness to tell them everything.
Outside my window, the sun’s light was still blinding white against the snow.  The cold outside had my windows frosted around the edges in strange patterns and shapes. It was just warm enough inside to not let your breath show, but not warm enough to keep you comfortable. If you weren’t moving inside, then you were cold, unless you were me.
It was nearly time for bed and I was tired, but I wanted to know if something would show in my books about Vice and Cherrie. This was the only time I ever had to myself, I might as well take advantage of it. I went to my shelves and ran my fingers over the precious stones shining so beautifully in the natural light. I didn’t know how old Vice and Cherrie really were, but surely there would be something written in my books about a missing or hidden Reader and, I paused. What was Vice really?
I grabbed my N.O.V.E.L.S. (Notice Official: Volume Eternal, League of Sheltra) and curled up on my window seat. The book was easily a thousand pages long and forever changing as people were born and others died. I flipped to the index and found the “missing” section, then found page 582 and started down the impossibly long list. The book listed the missing for the last two thousand years and unless you had my sight, you would never be able to read the terribly small writing. I brushed my hair dry with my right hand and flipped pages with my left.
After nearly an hour of searching, I had only read a few hundred years of those missing and not one of them matched Vice or Cherrie’s descriptions. I marked the page and closed the thick book, setting it carefully on the seat beside me. I stared out my window and pulled my knees up to my chest, letting my hair fall around me like a wavy cocoon.
It was winter here and that meant the sun would not set for a couple of weeks. I could darken my glass as I wanted so the white outside would not be too much and most of the time I left it as it was, but this time of year made me more depressed than usual. It was around earth’s Christmas that I came here over four hundred years ago. Over four hundred years ago I had lost my family, my home. I had been cast out of my planet like a plague and never thought of again.
Not long after I was sent away, my parents had died and my siblings had sent word and a reward for anyone who found and brought me home safely. No one searched here and I never reported myself. What if my sibling thought and felt the same way as our parents? What if they found other “healers” who would try and finish the job my parents started? I would not live through another test. I could not live through another betrayal by people I believed loved me.
I had seen and been through so much on earth and no one would ever know. I had killed and saved so many, under the orders of the General and not. I had had fifty-seven handlers and watched as each one was buried in the ice outside, remarkably few of them I actually liked. I was treated as a slave by most and a friend by some.
I stood and went to close my door, pausing only a moment to see Vice still glued to the news and Cherrie reading my papers, her food untouched. I shook my head and went back to my bookshelves to grab my diary. I climbed under my thick comforter and pulled my ruby covered black leather diary onto my lap. I picked a pink pen from my nightstand drawer and quickly wrote out everything that had happened to me today, even my mixed feelings about Vice and Cherrie. As soon as I was done I set everything on my nightstand and pressed the button to blacken my windows. Turning on my side and balling into myself, I cried myself to sleep.