Locked Gates: Prologue

I

          Light. Richard’s eyes stung as he opened them. Nothing but a great, white light. He tried to move his arms, but they felt more like arms of lead than flesh. Why was that light so bright? He could feel his legs… he could feel them being there but he just couldn’t… move them. His eyes began to burn as the light shrunk to focusing point.
His whole body drunk, Richard could do nothing but lie there… wherever he was. Which opened a new question in his head… where as he? And why was he here? Squinting as he did, Richard tried to turn his head to the right… just to see…
The light’s glare was thankfully reduced as Richard screwed up his left eye, relying completely on his right for sight. Slowly the white blur faded from his vision and he could see the room he was in. Was it a hospital? What had he done that deserved going to hospital? It had been his thirteenth birthday, true, and there had been a lot of drinking, yes… but nothing serious had happened… nothing at all…
A shadow fell over him and Richard looked up into the giant eyes of a surgeon. Masked from the eyes down, the man stared at Richard with such sincerity that a spark of fear was lit within him. He tried opening his mouth to speak, but his jaw seemed to weigh a tonne. The man turned away, to talk to someone else; there were others!

          A whole room surgeons.

          Richard could only watch as a woman with long black hair handed the male surgeon a scalpel. What? But Richard was awake! They wouldn’t just cut him open with him being awake! He had to tell them!

          Richard struggled with his weight to speak, but his jaw still refused to move. Hell. The man raised the scalpel, a line of light running across the blade. Richard’s eyes screamed as the man lowered the blade, cutting into his own stomach.

          What the hell?! Wake up! Move! Shout! Scream! Do something! Panic was tearing through Richard’s body as he struggled within himself to move, if only he could struggle with his own body as well! He could feel the blade’s cold kiss running down his stomach. He wanted to scream with agony… only that he felt none.

          He could feel the blade. He could actually feel the coldness of the metal running through his flesh. He could feel it on the inside as well as the out. And yet…
The male doctor said something to the others, Richard couldn’t distinguish through the muffled, echoing groans what the man had actually said. But the other surgeons laughed… the man must have told some sort of joke.
Suddenly a woman turned to look at Richard, her right hand flew to something out of view. Next thing he knew, a breathing mask was being shoved into Richard’s face. What the hell? Richard could feel energy returning to him from the moment the scalpel had cut him, like a new strength… and now that strength was being sapped away by the mask.
The blur returned to Richard’s eyes as he felt his eyelids droop, and yet, even as conscious left him, Richard saw the horrifying sight that he would never forget.
The wound was closing itself up.






II

          “Sir! Sir!” Yariman turned to see the young man come bursting into the room. “Sir! She’s been born!” the man gasped, “The girl’s been born!” Whatever reaction the man had been expecting from Yariman; he didn’t receive it.
The short, but imperious boss of the group known only as The Organisation did nothing but turn back to his sheets of paper. But then slowly, he rose from his seat and fixated the man with an icy stare.
          “How are the parents?” He asked finally.
          “Both are fine.” The man said quietly, “The woman didn’t bleed at all.” He added, sensing Yariman’s questions.
          “And did you get any of the blood samples we needed?” Yariman asked, leaning over the table to stare imperiously at the messenger.
          “Y-yes sir,” The messenger said with a trembling voice, “I have it… Here.” And he withdrew from his bag, a case. Yariman snatched it from him with a greedy glint in his eyes, and with impatient hands, flipped open the case. Inside were a series of vials, three of which were half way filled with dark and congealing blood.           Each vial had their own label; Himura, Toryama, Shino, and Shino. The last one however, was completely empty.
          “What’s the second Shino for?” Yariman asked, looking up.
          “Well, the family said that they might be planning for a second child, so we all thought it might be safe to reserve…”
          “That won’t happen.” Yariman growled, looking over his tiny glasses at the man before him, “We will not let it happen. Do I make myself clear.”
          “Yes sir.” The man said, nodding silently and looking away from Yariman; trying to distract himself with the assortment of television screens, books and weapons. “Sir, if I may ask…” he said quietly after a few seconds of silence, in which Yariman had busied himself with studying the four vials. “Why do you want the Toryama sample? Didn’t you say that Jax was a failed subject?”
          “I did, didn’t I…” Yariman said absently, lifting one of the vials to the light, “Oh well… No matter…” he spoke dreamily, almost as if in a daze, “The White Skulls can do all they want with Jax Toryama, but I’ll have him back someday… Got to have someone to cancel out our little Shino, don’t we? I mean, we can hardly have our dear Himura doing it, can we?”
          “Sir, I must ask…” The man said, shuffling his feet nervously.
          “My dear Albert, you have no need to fear me…” Yariman said soothingly, but still turning around. Albert swallowed, took a second’s breath before speaking again, choosing his words as carefully as he could.
          “It’s just I’ve always kind of wondered… Well, with all these tests… I mean, what you had done to that boy, Richard, and now enlisting your own personal assassin, to kill people… You seem to have two agendas. And I’m afraid that I really don’t know exactly what they are…” Albert stopped, and waiting, wondering what was going to happen next.
          “I’m afraid that at this moment…” Yariman cooed quietly, “Not even I know what my agendas are… Of course, I have the main plan, but I think that everyone has that at the moment… The main plan is simply nothing more than a mask for the true ideal, and for that, I need the things that happened to Richard to continue…”
          “But sir, it just doesn’t seem necessary…” Yariman whirled around, a glint of a knife in hand. An instant later, and Albert crumpled to the floor, the blade of the knife firmly lodged in his forehead.
          “Well, some may say that that didn’t seem necessary…” Yariman mused, looking down at the man’s limp body.

III

          “So, the girl’s been born has she?” The head of the White Skulls looked up from his book and slowly removed his reading glasses, “Has it been nine months already?” His co-head nodded and smiled.
          “Yariman has been alerted of this as well, and it seems as if he’s already making plans for the girl.”
          “Aww, sweet Judas…” The head said quietly, looking up at the ceiling with an amused expression, “So arrogant and yet so naïve…” Resting his head on his the palm of his hands, the man leant back, stretching. “Well, I suppose it is easier having him believing this little fairy tale…”
          “And, what are we going to do for now?”
          “Well, we can let Yariman believe for now that he actually has some control over the situation for the moment, it will be fun to see the expression on his face when he finds out the true agenda behind these children.”
          “Speaking of which,” the co-head said, leaning back to pick up a pile of sheets, “What are you planning to do with the boy, Jax?”
          “Just treat him how they’re going to treat the girl. Hell, maybe our two groups could grow our own warriors, and then maybe, one day, the two of them could meet… now wouldn’t that be a fight to watch?” Smiling to himself, the head looked over at his partner, “I don’t suppose you know what’s happened to the Assassin’s son?”
          “What, Justin?” the co-head asked, slightly blind sighted, “As far as I know, he’s still growing up peacefully in central London. With his family.”
          “Good, keep it that way…” Mused the head quietly, closing his eyes and taking a deep, tired breath, “And then, on his seventh birthday, kill his mum.”
          “I’ll note that down in my diary…” the co-head smiled, miming writing down in an imaginary notebook. “But until then, are there any special… I don’t know… events, shall we say, that we should take note of?”
          “Well, just to have Jax brought up properly. Remember,” The head looked over at his partner and a smile spread across his aging face, “no one acts better than when they have something to protect…” The co-head smiled and nodded, before…
          “How do you mean?”
          “Pride, love, a special person; anything!” The head waved his arms dramatically, before raising himself from his seat, “Just remember that we’re here to royally screw up the minds of whomever we know. Yariman, the MP, Jax, this Justin, and now especially, this little newborn baby bomb…” The head gave an evil grin before turning on the spot and walking silently from the room.
          “Oh, and…” The co-head called after him, “What about Yariman… Is there anything that we should be remembering? Maybe to help everything develop properly?”
          “Just remember these key points.” The head said, turning around and facing the co-head with an amused expression on his face, “One; puppy, every girl loves a baby puppy. Two; St. Marauders. Three, her thirteenth birthday… Although I suppose that this will kind of tie in with the St. Marauders… Hmm…”
          “And anything else sir?”
          “Well, you know what else girls like, beside puppies?” His partner shook his head slowly, “Boys.” The head said, an evil grin spreading across his face once more, “Make sure that everything goes smoothly… Because we can screw with peoples’ minds as much as we want, but that doesn’t mean we can’t also screw with someone’s… heart.”