Experiment Sixteen

The last time my species was on this planet we were worshiped as gods, now, we are hunted by the inhabitants. I write this for those inhabitants understanding enough to ask our purpose before trying to annihilate us, we are here peacefully and seek only a chance to prove this, every race and species has radicals who decide that the current system is wrong and should be ignored. It is our belief that in order to allow peace to flourish between our two peoples we must send our ambassadors back to a time before such barbaric weapons as the nuclear bomb, which renders the planet's surface unlivable. Do not try to prevent us. Your species has evolved at an alarmingly stunted rate due to your own infighting and murderous nature, it is our intent to bread this out of you before our arrival.

-

The message was clear, we were not to interfere with these so called invader's plan, yet the world governments would not stand to be summarily wiped from existence so they created me and others like me, we were designated protocols instead of our given names, I became the last of Sixteen. We were each taken to a white washed room where we were trained in the use of every weapon known to man, and some experimental or procured from the invaders, but the most powerful "gift" we were given was the ability to extend our mind and control the resulting energy, they called it psionics, we called it unnatural. I never learned if it was due to our dosage or if it just turned out this way, but the higher our designation was the more powerful we were, being the last, I was the strongest, and also the most resistant to the pressure to act.

Protocol One was the most aggressive of us, otherwise it varied from person to person, Protocol Five and I were probably the most intent on figuring out why they were here, the aliens. Protocol Two and Thirteen were reluctant to commit violent acts but they also carried the most reason to hate the aliens, they had killed their family. Three and Seven were almost irreversibly damaged by the so called gifts, they were "discarded" the fancy term they used when they decided to kill us. Four and Twelve were twins, when near one another their power almost exceeds my own, almost. Eight and Eleven disappeared halfway through being taught how to project themselves. Nine had a mental break on her first mission. Ten, Fourteen, and Fifteen were all part of my team, because they thought that the three of them could overpower me if I got out of hand, they are wrong. Six was, arguably, the most powerful of us all, she had a unique ability to not only influence decisions but actually control the minds of regular humans. Any of us who were deemed uncontrollable were inhibited by collars they put on our necks, just beneath the skin so it almost looked like a natural scar, until you saw a light flash.

How they expect us to prevent the aliens from going back in time, I do not know, but I think they intend to send us back with them, we were trained in the use of whatever weapon we had at hand, from our current magnetic technology to the ancient wooden club, we were lethal with them all. Most of us were either considered dead to the outside world or like Four and Twelve, the only people who cared were here with us. The youngest of us was Six, she was eight years old when the induction began, and hadn't aged mentally at all apparently that's allowed when the threat is non-terrestrial.

The days were fairly predictable for the most part, we would wake up in our room then be escorted to a dining hall. After breakfast came weapons training for three hours with no psionics, followed by two hours of combat training while maintaining levitation on multiple objects. Lunch was served at what I could guess was noon, we weren't allowed to know the time or date and any time we would start to talk about where we came from the collars would light up yellow as a warning.

One day they came for us all, we were taken to a room I hadn't seen before, it had a large metal stage in the center with wires and other equipment hooked into it, somehow there were no visible seams or welds.

"Attack It, starting with One and working up to Sixteen, then start combining your power in the same order." Said the man I had so affectionately taken to calling fool A. So, being completely predictable, One attacked it, it's still unclear how but the disc somehow reflected it, and not just at the same strength but almost near my level.

"STOP, if anybody else attacks this thing we will all die, that blast was returned to One with almost 130 times the power, if Two were to hit it with even a half-hearted shot, it would destroy everything within 300 yards." Everyone stopped and looked at Five like she had something on her face, she never spoke up unless her own life was on the line, so naturally Two decided to give it a 25% shot, by this point I had already made up my mind to listen to Five on this, so I redirected the shot at a nearby wall.

"What the hell, Sixteen, why did you prevent his attack from connecting?" Fool A was starting to get on my nerves.

"Because, you guys supply my food, and I have no idea where we are, so even if I

survived this ridiculous trial I would probably die of starvation before I got anywhere with decent food." Being a sarcastic twenty something year old surrounded by mostly old men who were so far past their prime it made dinosaurs look young had some perks.

"Not a good enough reason!" He said as he pressed a button linked to my collar, the look on his face when it did nothing was priceless, I had long since learned to put up a shield around the collar that prevented incoming signals.

"Not this time, you ignorant old man. I just remembered, you used to do tests on us to see if our power increased with our emotional state, what was the result of that again? Oh right, when we are experiencing extreme emotions such as anger we gain power at an exponential rate, as Bruce Banner once said, 'I'm always angry', I suggest you disarm our collars now, otherwise I will attack that damned platform with every ounce of power I can put into one attack and shield us all, sure the regular humans will most likely die, but as you have always told us, we're better than regular humans now right?!" I saw a light flash on One and Five's necks, one that I hadn't seen since Seven and Three were killed.

"Bad move, I linked myself to everyone here, their lives won't end unless mine does, you should have hit the other button."

-

I had never seen Sixteen this angry, the power radiating off of him was reaching a level that had started to manifest in a purple-red glow around his body, when the doctor hit the button on his remote, flames started to dance at the edge of his new aura as he mustered power for a blast, the link that he was talking about, can I feel it, yes it's there, I didn't notice it until now because of the external pressure but it was like the other power we had felt from him during link training was a leak, and this was the faucet turned to full. Even as we all passed out from the toxin entering our bloodstream I saw his aura expand and form a shell around us as the raw power he had been building was launched at the disc, then a noise, like in the movies when there's an explosion in space and all you hear is an extreme bass line.

As I regained consciousness I realized that all twelve of us were sitting or standing in a crater, it was snowing.

"I thought we were in a desert, how is it snowing?" I asked, trying to break the ringing silence.

"It's not snow, it's ash Five. Everything is gone, the complex, the doctors, the research, all of it." Replied Thirteen.

"Good, I don't know about the rest of you but I'm going to get as far away from Sixteen as I possibly can, guy's a monster!" One started to fade out like he was about to teleport away, something we were restricted from doing with the collars on.

"Not so fast hotshot, I need all of you to fix this damn planet, starting by going back and seeing what happened when the aliens first arrived. It pains me to admit, but even I don't have enough raw power to bend time, although apparently when my power is at 25% I can obliterate Madagascar, which is good to know." Sixteen was just as confident as ever, even though if the rest of us had tried to do 4 things at once we would have passed out for days. Just then something fell out of the sky, it was the platform.

-

The platform was lying there at my feet, almost calling to me, begging me to step on and find out what it did, but instead I teleported all the remaining Protocols and myself to my home town. It actually was snowing, not unusual for the mountains, but it did give me an idea what season it was.

"I'm calling in the favors you owe me, One, Four, Five, Twelve, Fifteen and I are the only ones able to manipulate space around us, the rest of you can do whatever, you're staying with me though. If there are any problems with that speak up now," I looked each of them in the eye as I said their names.

"Damn right I have a problem with it, you can teleport all of us wherever you want, you can prevent the rest of us from teleporting, and apparently you can multitask to the point of godhood, I don't want to follow you, I want to try and kill you, just to see if I can do it!" One's defiant outburst was followed with dead silence.

Almost two minutes later Ten spoke up, "IDIOT, if you wanted to leave you should have done it as soon as the detonation happened and you weren't collared, otherwise I guess we're all stuck with you, even though YOU are probably going to get US all killed."

Everybody just stared at her, then started cracking up laughing, Ten never spoke so nobody realized, she was a he. He just sat there staring back at us trying to figure it out, then Two spoke, "WOW, you're a guy, I thought you were just a really ugly woman." That only served to make the rest of us laugh harder and Ten to start blushing.

-

Once the crater incident was over we decided we should decide what to do from then on, Sixteen said we should be near his hometown, so we chose, as a group, to go check it out. On the way there we saw a trucker drive by and flagged him down, when Six saw him she freaked out a little and started to control him.

"Six, you shouldn't go around controlling people just because you get a little scared alright? You need to learn some self control." Fourteen tried to calm her down.

Six just hid behind him and poked her head out to say sorry to the driver, who was looking at her dumbfounded.

"You kids need a ride into town? There's room in the back, it's not heated but it's better than walking." The driver asked.

"What do you think guys? Should we get in?" Twelve looked around.

In the end we decided, nothing the guy could do would be nearly as bad as what had already been done to us. When we got to town one of the first things Two did was find a newspaper, the year said 3028.

"That's not possible, I was sixteen in 2024, how is it over a thousand years later?" While Thirteen consoled him the rest of us listed off the year we thought it was before then, turns out we were all under the impression it was a different year, besides the twins.

"Hold on, does anybody actually remember going to the facility? I mean like the car ride there, somebody coming for you, or even what you were doing before arriving there." Inquired Five.

"Of course I remember, I was.... I was, it was my birthday, my grandma and I were supposed to be going out to my favorite restaurant." As One calmed down he started to look disturbed, like something was wrong, "I don't actually remember anything from that day though.."

"Anybody else? Anybody remember seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary, a surprise visit from a relative, a salesman who wouldn't leave, anything?" Everyone just stopped.

"Well, we were all taken from the same century at least, that's something. I was twenty-two last I remember so I guess that makes me the oldest biologically." Sixteen remarked.

"Nope, guess again blue eyes, I was twenty-three, besides, you're already the most powerful so there was no reason to bring age into this great struggle for control that you and One seem be having. Regardless, if we're going off of age then wouldn't Six be older than all of us? She was technically born almost twenty years before us all." Thirteen did look older than him, but nobody asked about the rest of us.

"I'm older than all of you, you were all born in the year 2000 or later, I was born in 1930, the last thing I remember was Germany being a big deal." Nine was mumbling into her scarf, but Ten heard her.

"Guys, Nine just spoke, did you hear it, she says she was born in the 1930's. I guess that means she's older than all of us combined, almost."

-

We all decided we should find a quiet place to talk this all through, so I went into a store and asked for directions to the nearest hotel. We checked in under seven names, completely fake, pulled out of One's head as the names of some team from his life. We were all walking to Sixteen's room when Five spoke up.

"Who's sleeping in which room?"

Everybody stopped talking when she asked that. Nine was actually the first one to speak up. "I can't sleep in the same room as a man I'm not married to. The rest of you may not have an issue with looking like a hussy, but some of us have standards!"

We wound up splitting 3 rooms total, with the combinations being One, Ten, Fourteen, and Sixteen in one room, the siblings in another, Two, Four, Twelve, and Thirteen, with the rest of the girls, Six, Nine and I in the last room.

-

We woke up to Nine freaking out "I saw a rat, filthy animals, doesn't this hotel have cleaning staff?!" She was standing on the bed hovering over Six.

I felt Six start building her energy out of response to Nine's fear, and quickly intervened "Nine, remember what you can do, are you really going to let a furry little vermin frighten you like this? Just teleport it to a different country if it gets that bad."

Nine's eyes lit up with a surprisingly dark glint in them "Now that you mention it, I have a plan... We're going to see if we can scare the boys! Six, sweetie, would you mind catching that filthy creature? Alive if possible?"

I saw where she was going with this and jumped out of bed to get dressed before the mayhem started, last time someone tried to prank One he passed out for a week from using his powers in response.

"You know, if you do this, you have to leave Six and I out of it right? I don't want to make any more bad blood between our little group than we already have, and Six is just a little kid, she would probably kill someone if they tried to punish her for it."

Nine looked at me unsure if I was serious, then just shrugged and said "I'm the oldest remember?" and stuck her tongue out at me, which didn't help me maintain a straight face.

-

I woke up feeling a couple pounds heavier on my chest, so I looked down to see if I had activated my powers in my sleep again, and all I saw was a lump crawling up the blanket towards me, then it squeaked and I freaked out "SHIT, SHIT, What the hell is that!?" as I increased my density to protect myself, completely forgetting that we were on the second floor of a rundown hotel.

Ten was on the same bed at the time, what with us only being able to afford 3 rooms and all, and he came to a few seconds after my screaming, having dealt with worse in the field, the kid calmly walked over, pulled back the blanket from the now shredded bed frame, picked up the rat and walked it to the door, which he blew off it's hinges with a thought, sending the door flying 20 feet across the street, then dropped the rat outside and went back to sleep.

Threw this whole ordeal, Sixteen was out cold in the now slightly drafty and split-level hotel room. The cost of his power usage the other day finally having caught up to him, he would be unconscious for another few weeks at least.

-

"Captain, we just got a call about a bomb going off at that hotel on 3rd street, the rundown one we arrested that hooker at the other day. How should we respond?"

"Send a tac team, if the bombers are still there, take them into custody, treat them as armed and dangerous, we don't know if they have another bomb or not." The captain responded while looking at the list of twelve twenty somethings and little kids laid out on his desk with corresponding mug shots.