1 Morningstar

Normally, the experiments they do on me are extremely painful - totally conscious heart surgery, response to high voltages, that kind of thing. But this one didn't hurt at all. Heck, they were even kind enough to throw an uncomfortable plastic chair in this time. It was just a woman wearing prisoner's garbs just like mine, sitting across from me at a wooden table, with the researchers and jailers behind a thick pane of one-way glass.

So why, then, was my heart practically trying to pound its way out of my chest? Why did beads of sweat line my brow? What was this pit in my stomach that seemed to only sink deeper the more I looked at the smirk of this woman before me?

"Afraid," she said quietly, still smiling like an idiot, that kind of proud, mocking smile that I hated.

"What?" I said.

"You're afraid of me, it's obvious. It's a common reaction."

"What do I have to fear from you?" I narrowed my eyes. "Who are you?"

Her smile widened. "Can't you tell just by looking at me? I'm a very scary person."

"No," I said, flatly. "You aren't."

I wasn't lying, either. She didn't look scary at all, pretty even, if a little androgynous - shoulder length sandy hair, a slim figure, clear and fair skin and a sharp face. But there was something about her... something else, that made my blood run dry...

My blood...

"Something's up with your shifters," I concluded. "Something real scary."

A dry laugh. "There is. But they don't know what it is. That's why I'm here."

"No."

For the first time, her smile finally began to thin as she raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Then why am I being held here in this prison?"

"It's not a prison, it's a research facility."

She laughed again, and her smile widened. "A research facility that keeps its test subjects prisoner."

"A research facility, researching immortality. You're one, too, aren't you? You don't die easily. I can feel it in my blood."

Her smirk suddenly vanished altogether, and her eyebrows furrowed in intrigue as she leaned towards me across the table - oh god, she was far too close. I was practically getting nauseous with fear. "Wait, you're an immortal as well? How could you tell I was one?"

"I told you, I could feel it in my blood. My shifters are messed up too."

Her eyes locked with mine. They were stormy grey, and the storm inside was making my stomach churn in terror.

"Do not lie to me. Who are you?"

That definitely felt like a threat, and it sure as hell wasn't empty either. So I tried to give her what she wanted. "My name is - "

"Subject 2," came the emotionless voice of one of the researchers, crackling through an old speaker in the corner of the room. "You are not permitted to answer that question."

The woman grabbed me roughly by the collar of my grey prison shirt, narrowing her eyes as she did so. "Oh, yes you are."

I tried to pull myself away, but she was surprisingly strong. "No," I said. "I'm not. If I tried to answer it they'd probably -"

"Kill you?" She began to laugh drily again, almost bordering on a cackle. "How can they kill you?"

"Subject 1," came the voice again. "Do not interfere. You are not permitted to -"

"Oh, shut up."

The woman let go of me roughly and walked towards the one-way glass - it looked like she was staring at a mirror, but I'm certain she was looking them straight in the eye, smiling a ridiculous smile.

"You can't tell me what I can and can't do. Nor can you kill me - that's what all these experiments are for, isn't it? You want to know how to kill a god. But I'm afraid that you're fresh out of them."

I frowned at her. "I'm sorry, are you insane?"

She turned back and leapt towards me - a devilish gleam was dancing in her eyes, her lip still curled in a mad grin. "They can't keep us here, my friend. They're much weaker than they let on."

It suddenly dawned on me what she was trying to do. "Are you planning on -"

"It's not a plan. It's fact. I've been able to escape the damned clutches of these idiots ever since I came here all those years ago. But I never did."

I recoiled in shock. "Years? I've only been here for a couple of months and I've never seen you. Where were you? Why didn't you bust yourself out? And why now?"

Her smile vanished. "They were hiding me from you," she sighed. "Probably to keep any experiments involving interactions between immortals a fair test. You know how scientists are. And as for why I never escaped... well..." She flushed slightly as she crossed her arms, looking down at the floor. "I was kinda lonely."

Excuse me.

What.

"You didn't escape from a lab that literally attempted to stop your heart because you were lonely?"

"Yeah, hearing you say it out loud now makes it sound stupid. But I'm being serious. It's a big world out there and I don't want to be alone. It'll get boring. That's why I asked who you were. I wanted to at least know the name of my ally."

I shook my head in disbelief. "I'm not buying it. It just sounds like you're making some asinine excuse for being unable to bust yourself out of here. I highly recommend that you try to talk to the guards about seeing a psychiatrist."

Speak of the devil, some of the guards had busted through the experiment room door at that moment, armed with heavy rifles and protected by thick bulletproof vests. It looks like the researchers took her threat of escaping seriously.

One of the guards rumbled a demand. "Cease and desist, subject 1. We will escort you back to your cell. Resistance will be met with force."

Her grin reappeared. That terrible grin that made me want to throttle her so she'd never make it again. That grin that scared me. "Finally," she mumbled under her breath. "I can let loose."

"Please, subject 1? What kind of name is that? Aren't we friends?"

Lightning began to spark at her fingertips, itching to be released, as she pointed a hand towards them. The lightning jumped from her fingers, passing a billion volts and a thousand amps through each of the guards before they could even raise their guns, turning their bodies to corpses and their corpses to ash without even giving them the time to scream. The lightning was soon gone just as fast as it had come.

"Call me Luci."

She turned back to me. Her hand was still sparking with unthinkable power, but when she saw my face, involuntarily contorted in horror and disgust, she frowned.

"What's with that face? You look like you've just been punched in the gut by a - " Her eyebrows furrowed. "Oh." Then, her eyes widened. "Oh!" She, unfortunately, began to smile again. "Ohhh! I get it!"

I managed to force my fear back under a blank face, wiping any trace of it away. "Do you?"

"Yeah! You're completely terrified of me, aren't you? I bet - " She began to chuckle hysterically. "I bet you haven't even seen a man die in front of you before!"

"What do you think I am, a soldier?"

"No, you look more like a serial killer, but that's beside the point. You're actually scared of me! Oh man, this is great!"

"I thought you said fear was a common reaction when people met you."

"Oh, no no no, I meant that like a joke. Who'd be scared of me? I look like a twenty-something literature student who talks too much, but - " Her smile vanished. "Hold on. You were afraid... when you met me?"

"Are you kidding? Your shifters are fucking insane. When you grabbed my shirt, I actually thought I was going to be sick. Being in the same room as you is painful."

Her eyes narrowed, and I could feel the shifters in her blood speeding up - her heart must be beating faster. That was weird, I thought.

"You can actually sense my shifters? I thought you were lying, or kidding or something. And what do you mean, they're insane?"

"Why would I joke about that? Didn't you say yourself that something was up with your shifters?"

She was silent for a moment before replying.

"I was lying. I didn't know if you were an immortal too. I didn't know who I could tell. But I thought my shifters were totally normal. What's wrong with them?"

The shifters were coursing even faster through her body now, her heartbeat getting more rapid by the second. Was she...?

"Are you afraid of me?"

Her eyes widened in shock, then her face contorted in rage as she dashed towards me, grabbing me by the neck as she raised a sparking finger towards my temple, ready to turn me to dust, and I could feel the killing intent, the fear about to drown me. But breaking through the terror, the shifters in her arm told me how she was doing it - shifters becoming photons, photons knocking electrons off of atoms in a single cell while breaking apart the atomic nuclei, leaving nothing but a stream of electrons to be released through a bolt of lightning. If I could do the same thing in my neck...

My mind commanded the shifters in my blood, my throat becoming impossibly hot and dry, but I could feel the crackling of current running through my flesh. I just needed a few more electrons and -

Luci's grip on my neck fell. Her finger stopped sparking, and the mask of anger she wore became blank.

"What?" I blurted out loud. The total disappearance of any killing intent had hit me with confusion.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled.

"Uh, it's alr - "

"There's no way I can leave you here. You're far too dangerous."

The confusion hit me again. "I - what?"

She smiled again, but this time it didn't make my blood churn in terror - heck, it was even mildly pleasant. I could still feel those nasty shifters bouncing around inside her, but they didn't bother me as much anymore.

"At first, I seriously just wanted someone else to travel with. Being an immortal sucks when you're alone, I'm sure of it. You'd find a pretty girlfriend, blink, and then she'd be a wrinkly old lady. But now I see there's a lot more to you than just being hard to kill.

"Your shifters really are fucked up, but with them you could be so much more. We could do so much more than just roam the earth until our hearts turn to dust."

I raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"

"You don't remember anything from before eight years ago either."

She stated that like a fact, but in all honesty I wasn't that surprised by her knowing that. I was thinking the same thing about her.

"We could find out what happened. We could find the secret to immortality and give it to the masses, or become the rulers of the world, or set it free from suffering. Leaving you here, killing you, would be a sin. So are you with me?"

I really, really did not want to go with this lady. In the seven-ish minutes I had known her, her mood had changed so much that calling them mood swings were an understatement - her mood was more like a totally unpredictable carousel from the depths of hell itself. But I looked at the room around me. A prison cell, with walls of three metre thick grey concrete, from which I probably would never escape on my own, and even if I did, what then? Living forever on scraps, running from city to city in fear for my life at every angle, alone? No. It would be better to die in here than be out there and perish from eating rat poison out of a dumpster. But with her, I at least wouldn't die alone. This was the only true option.

"I'm with you."

She smiled again, this time without the slightest mocking hint hidden within. It suited her well.

She outstretched an open palm to me. "Glad to have you on board, friend. What should I call you?"

I took her hand and shook it firmly - good god, her grip was intense. "Name's Sam. I would say it's a pleasure to meet you, but that wouldn't be entirely true."

She chuckled. "A snarky one, eh?"

"Yeah, a little, I guess." I tried to pull my hand away, but she grabbed it back. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, I wasn't trying to shake your hand. You're gonna want a firm grip on me for this."

Wait a second. Her shifters were moving again. Were they... spinning? I frowned. "Why? What are you planning?"

Suddenly, a boom erupted, and where there was once three metres of thick concrete was a pile of ash and a deep hole going through it, revealing on the other side a deep, dark night sky stretching over fields of endless grass. A voice boomed through what sounded like a megaphone.

"PRISONERS, RETURN TO YOUR CELLS, OR WE WILL DESTROY YOU."

Huh. Looks like the scientists sent a distress call for backup.

Luci laughed. "Idiots, carved an entrance out for us. Knew they'd do that. They're bloody terrified of us."

I looked at her, dead in the eye. Was she joking about this whole thing? "Listen closely," I said. "If you don't bust us out of here, I swear with all my power as an immortal, I will wreak such havoc upon you and your descendants you'll wish I'd torn you all up atom by atom instead."

"Oh?" She smirked. "A feisty one, too. Don't worry about it, we'll get out."

The air around us began to move.

"I have a plan."