Two Wrongs Chapter 2

By

Jason Wilhelm

and

Bryan Nickelberry

Chapter 2

Smoke filled the sky as the buildings and trees burned in the distance, creating a false dawn that did nothing to improve Shahara’s current situation. The sound of gunfire, explosions, and people screaming surrounding her in every direction was almost nonexistent as she sat on her knees with her father's head in her lap. The shrapnel wounds to her father’s chest were too extensive for Shahara’s limited abilities and she sat there, elevating his head to keep him from choking on his own blood as he tried unsuccessfully to tell her his final thoughts. She knew what he was trying to tell her, and it was breaking her heart to see her father like this. His body shook violently as he took his last breath, deep green eyes focused on hers until his head fell limp into her lap. Shahara brought his head up to her blood soaked chest as she began crying into his hair. Her emotions were running every which direction as she mourned for her father. despair and rage were at the forefront of her mind as she started focusing on what caused her father’s injury and who was responsible for it.

Her mother was walking back up the blood soaked hill, stepping around bodies as she made her way back up to where her deceased husband and daughter were. She stopped a few feet away and just stood there, staring at Shahara with her usual disapproving look. It was a look Shahara was used to, it was about the only look she ever got from her mother. Nothing was ever good enough, never done correctly, never up to her standards. Being the daughter of a top Legion general meant that she was put to a higher standard than everyone else, most of the time an impossible one. Her father was the only one who she felt truly loved her, and now he was gone and it was all her mother's fault.

“That’s quite enough Shahara, we need to get moving” her mother said as she turned to start walking away. When she didn’t hear Shahara get up she stopped and without turning around said “We can’t do anything for him now.”

“How can you just walk away!” Shahara said as a little of the rage within her was starting to come to the surface. “How can you be so emotionless! How could you do this to him!” she screamed. Her mother turned back around to face her daughter.

“How could I do that to him? I'm not the one who planted that bomb, Shahara” her mother calmly replied.

“You sent him up here. He didn’t want to advance up this hill and you ordered him to anyway” Shahara said. She was no longer screaming, but the rage in her voice was greater than ever.

“I had no choice, Shahara. We had to take over this hill. Now come along, we need Shadow to keep going” her mother replied.

“That's all you’ve ever needed is Shadow. You probably would have gotten rid of me by now if it wasn’t for him” Shahara said.

“You ungrateful little brat, you will either stand up and follow me back down this hill on your own accord, or I will make you, your choice” Her mother said with a sternness in her voice that would send rabid dogs back into the tree line, but not Shahara. Shahara had secretly grabbed a knife from her father's belt earlier with a dangerous and crazy idea in mind for it. She wasn’t sure she could go through with it at first, but now she didn’t have a doubt in her mind.

Shahara lowered her head in hopes that her mother wouldn’t see the glow of her eyes as she summoned shadow. She needed every bit of luck she had and the element of surprise to get one up on her mother. Rage had taken over every other emotion in her body and was now running rampant as she stood up, facing her mother with what she supposed later on had to be one of the scariest looks she had ever had. Her mother knew something wasn’t right right away, but before she could do anything about it, Shadow materialized behind her mother and wrapped his arms around hers. It was all the distraction Shahara needed. While her mother took a second to turn her attention to Shadow, Shahara threw the knife she had taken from her father, aiming right for her mother’s heart. Her goal was to make her mother suffer the way her father had suffered right before he passed. However, her aim was still not the best when it came to throwing knives and she managed to plunge the knife right between her eyes, killing her before she even hit the ground. Shahara was furious. she screamed at the top of her lungs for several long seconds before she fell down to her knees and buried her head in her hands. Rage still filled her heart, but now the despair was creeping back up as she realized she was all on her own in a world consumed by war and she had no idea where she was going to go or what she was going to do. She was lost. She was openly crying with her head still in her hands and her knees on the cold, damp ground when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped at the soft touch as she tried to gain control of her emotions long enough to see who was trying to comfort her, only to jump again when she looked back to see it was her mother.

*****

Shahara awakened violently, as the shock of her flashback caused her to temporarily forget her current situation. That is until she tried to wipe the sweat off her forehead only to find her hands strapped in place at her side. It only took a couple of seconds to discover that her feet and waist were strapped down as well. Recent events slammed into Shahara’s mind like a freight train and she decided the best course of action was to summon Shadow to get her out of this mess once again. When she went to clear her mind to summon Shadow, she instantly became dizzy and her gut started rolling like she was going to puke, followed by a searing headache that traveled from the base of her neck to both of her temples. She writhed in pain on the cold table as she tried to calm the pain in her head and keep from getting sick all over herself.

“Don’t fret.” A strange voice just out of sight said in clear, crisp tones. “The pain will leave you shortly. It exists only to dissuade you from inviting your friend… out to play.” The pain was slowly starting to go away, though it was quickly being replaced by rage.

“I don’t know who you think you are, but when I get out of here, I'm going to make you pay in the slowest, most painful way I can think of, and I've already got a couple of ideas.” Shahara said as she struggled against the straps holding her down. Shahara heard laughter in the background, this time from right behind her, for only a few brief moments before his calm voice returned.

“We are not worried about that at this point in time. Without your little spirit friend here to help you, you are basically a helpless little girl.”

“His name is Shadow, and do not call me little girl. I’d tell you to ask the last person how that worked out, but you’ll have to wait until I send your soul to hell!” Shahara said.

“You are considerably feistier than our previous guests, which is good. Your determination and will may just help you survive.” Shahara’s table started spinning around until she could see a doorway, which she started to roll towards.

“Where are you taking me?”

“We need to be able to have a more civilized conversation without all of these straps on you. To do that though, we have to inflict a little bit of pain on you to assure compliance” said the same voice that she still couldn’t put a face to. They had made their way down a cold, metal lined hallway with no visible markings or changes to help her figure out far they had gone. She saw a pair of sliding doors open just ahead of her that automatically opened up to reveal what looked like an operating room full of equipment and some metallic looking tendrils hanging from the ceiling right above where she assumed she would be placed. For the first time in quite a while, Shahara was scared. Her table spun around once more as she was facing the now closed doors and she was slowly being lifted to an upright sitting position.

“There we are, much better now” said her captor. Shahara felt a pinch in her neck and realized that it was a needle when she felt something cold start working its way through the veins in her neck.

“Don’t worry, just a little something to keep you from moving around overly much while we operate. Don’t want to accidentally hit something vital.” Shahara was starting to freak out, and when she tried voicing her opinions, she discovered that she couldn’t talk. She couldn’t move her jaw, or any other part of her anatomy for that matter. She was past freaking out now and was full blown panicking now as she was trying to piece together what in the world they could possibly be doing to her. She quickly discovered that whatever they had given her had done nothing to block her from feeling pain in the body parts she couldn’t move when she felt an enormous needle enter both of her upper arms and one in her right forearm with the tendrils attached to the ends. The pain was almost unbearable and the only thing she could do was scream within her own mind. She could feel tears running down her face and a new wave of pain ran down every nerve of her body as four more needles entered her back at various points and were quickly followed by another pair in her hips and before she passed out from sheer overwhelming pain, she felt what she hoped was the last one enter just below the base of her skull and into her spine.

*****

Shahara woke up after what felt like forever to the same dismal surroundings she was in when she passed out. She looked down at her hand and tested to see if her fingers would work, which they did much to her surprise. It was then that Shahara realized that she was no longer strapped down to the table, at least not as tightly anyway. her ankles were still strapped to the table, but she had better than a couple of feet of chain connecting the straps to the table, giving her a little bit of motion to stretch out. The same was true for her arms, however it wasn’t enough length to get to the tendrils attached to her arms or her back. Shahara moved her head just enough to one side to feel the tendril in her head, which caused a rush of pain to go down her spine, through her arms and legs and into her fingers and toes. It was almost enough pain to make her puke all over herself.

Shahara had not noticed that she was no longer facing the door until she heard them open up behind her. She heard someone mess with a couple monitors before she heard the familiar voice of her captor once again.

“Are we awake now little girl? That was one heck of a fight you put up the other day, not many people make it past the ones going into their back.”

“What do you mean the other day?”

“You’ve been out for about...fifty two hours or so. You will need that rest for the next few days, depending on how well you cooperate, little girl.”

“I am not a little girl, my name is Shahara.”

“Yes yes, Shahara the Grim, we know good and well who you are. We know a lot about you, your family, your abilities, even whom you’ve been spending your evenings with here lately. It is not Information we want from you.” her captor said. Shahara was sick to her stomach. The only person who had any idea who she was doing this for let alone seeing regularly was Ego Blaster, and if she wasn’t angry enough with him before, she was really going to make him suffer now, that is if she could ever figure out a way out of this. Shahara heard what sounded like a chair being pulled across the floor right behind her, then the groaning of a middle aged man bending down to sit in the chair.

“What do you want from me then?” Shahara asked. “And why do you keep saying “we?”

“What we want is a little bit more complicated to obtain it seems.” The voice said, ignoring the latter question. “You might have wondered, but we will answer: You and the man from Legion are not the only ones with the ability to summon those spirit creatures to our realm. The question to us is the mechanism the two of you are using. At first we tried forceful recruitment, but apparently the soul of the creature cannot be assimilated in the same way that the host’s soul can be.” Shahara began to breathe faster as she realized she was the “host” in this case. “We figured we would try a new technique with you, one where we test your genetic makeup to see what it would take for us to summon our own demon creature.”

“He’s not a demon creature,” Shahara said with a quiet tone that surprised her.

“Does he not kill on your command? Is he not an extension of your own personality? Does he not move around as though he doesn’t belong in our realm of existence? In your servitude, no he is not a demon, but in ours, he would be worse than that” Her captor said.

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to brainwash your victims into working for you?”

“That has been attempted before, but the problem is that you never know if the brainwashing is going to stick or if someone will come along and screw up everything you’ve worked so hard to accomplish. We have found that assimilation works so much better, but then… that person must be worth adding to the collective.”

“Sounds like something you shouldn’t be telling to someone like me,” Shahara said.

“Makes no difference, you’ll most likely be dead in the next couple of days anyway. All we need is to study your genetic structure, and since you were stubborn enough to stay awake as long as you did while we inserted the tendrils into you, it would most likely be way too difficult to try and assimilate you.”

“Then why are you keeping me awake, or for that matter, alive?” Shahara asked, trying to sort out as much information as she could while he was still willing to talk.

“Giving us information willingly prolongs your own life. And as long as your information is good, then we are not going to continue our painful experimentation. Who else is going to sit here and listen to me monolog? Besides, I prefer to learn a little bit about each of my visitors while I have them here. You’d be surprised by what I've learned over the years doing my research.” Her captor said.

“Yeah, well, you’re not going to learn another thing from me,” Shahara said.

“Sure we will, starting with your pain tolerance. Now if you wouldn’t mind, please try to summon your Shadow friend, as you like to call him” her captor said.

“I don’t think so old man, I know what this shit you’ve got me on will do to me if I try, and what makes you think I want to make your job -” Shahara had no more than finished saying that when a strong electrical current ran through her body, similar to the electric current weapons those soldiers had used on her a few days ago. Her body convulsed with the current running through her body and was only reigned in by the shackles on her ankles and wrists. What was probably only a few seconds felt like eternity as the electrification of her body finally came to a stop and her body relaxed against the cold steel of her chair. Shahara looked at her forearm where one of the tendrils was located and noticed that the part that met her skin was glowing red hot. Looks like the tendrils served more purpose than just to collect her genetic info.

“Now, let’s try this again, shall we? Try and summon the shadow demon.” ordered her captor. Shahara started laughing, a small chuckle at first which grew to a full out, psychotic filled gleeful laugh.

“Go to hell” was all that Shahara could muster up before he hit her with the electricity again. Shahara started screaming as the pain flowed through her body, into every nerve and every part of her being. It was over as quick as it had started, and Shahara started chuckling to herself once again.

“Do you think this is a joke, little girl? do you not understand the gravity of your situation?” her captor asked her.

“I’ve changed my mind” Shahara said in between her gasping for air and the chuckling.

“Yeah, hell’s to good of a place for someone like you, besides, how would I be able to torture you for eternity when the devil has a restraining order on me?” Her captor hit the power once again, but instead of screaming in agony, Shahara only let out a loud laughter that would have even have scared her if she could’ve heard it. Shahara couldn’t feel the pain anymore, she only had rage and a determination to live long enough to make everyone pay for what they had done to her coursing through her veins now. Her captor finally let off the button and Shahara just slumped into her chair with little to no energy left to even taunt her captor.

“Your stubbornness will only make this longer and more painful. Cooperate and I will make this process as painless as even I can manage” said her captor.

“Sorry, but i'm really not the type of person to help make things easier on other people, let alone myself” Shahara finally got out before she passed out from the pain and exhaustion.