The Devil whispered in my ear, "You're not strong enough to withstand the storm."
I whispered back in the Devil's ear, "I am the storm." – Anonymous
***
Alma wakes up on a cold hard surface, her head still throbbing from the impact of the attack. She feels dizzy, cold, hungry, and fear. Judging from how cold the place she lied on and how both of her hand and foot is chained in both sides of her body, resembling someone who gets crucified. She knew immediately that she was taken to the laboratory.
Alma gulped, imagining the torture they might do to her. 'Am I going to die today?' she thought.
Alma looked around the room where she is now, it's a wide room with some big racks and many tools. She can also see an operation lamp right on top of her bed. Cold sweat runs on her face when she thinks they might mutilate her alive. Alma tried to yank the chain in her body, but it doesn't budge an inch.
The girl breathes slowly calming herself, she knows if she panicked things will be worse. She needs to think of a way to get out from here, maybe she can pretend to comply and then run when they lower the watch?
But before Alma can think more about her plan, the door to the laboratory opened. A group of green-clothed people coming inside, all of them wear a surgical mask and white rubber gloves. Alma squints her eyes, trying to recognize the people who now stand near her but it's impossible with the mask.
Then, another man coming, he has a bigger and taller build than the rest of the people. More importantly, he doesn't wear a mask, so Alma can see his face.
"Uncle Kai?!" Alma said with a shocked voice. She can't believe that the man standing here is her uncle.
She knows that her relationship with her uncle isn't good, but to think he joins the people who might kill her is beyond Alma's expectation.
"Why do you do this, Uncle Kai?! I'm your niece!" Alma shouted to the man who still has an indifferent expression on his face.
"You don't need to know, all you need to understand is I'm doing this for our family's sake. Don't worry Alma, after this, you will thank me because you will get a power beyond anything you can imagine." Kai said with a calm voice.
"What do you mean by that Uncle Kai? Don't you feel guilty for doing this?! Please release me, you can't do this to me. Emily will hate you if she knows about this!"
"Emily is dead Alma."
"What? Why? How? When?" Alma asked consecutively.
"It doesn't matter now, you can know that after this experiment end. I hope you will make it Alma."
With that, two people restrain Alma's body and one of them injects something into Alma's body. Alma's consciousness begins to be hazy once again.
"Wait.. uncle, please… release me…" Alma begged Kai.
"See you soon Alma."
***
"How is the preparation going?" A man asked while gazing outside from a big window. This man has long grey hair.
"Everything is according to the plan, sir," answered the other man.
"Good, proceed to the next phase."
"Yes sir," the other man then bends before leaving the spacious office.
"Soon, everything will begin," whispered the man with grey hair.
***
Alma wakes up once again with terrible feelings and excruciating pain on her whole body. After she opened her eyes, she immediately shut it again. She can't even tell which part is not hurt. It feels like her body just get hit by a truck, but instead of being dead, she miraculously still alive. Alma doesn't know if she rather is alive and experiencing this insane pain or if she rather just die. At least now she isn't in the cold and hard surface but on a fluffy bed in a different room that looked like a normal room.
"She wakes up Doc" a man's voice can be heard near Alma. But Alma can't bother to open her eyes when she tried to be sane with the amount of pain her body in.
"How do you feel Alma?" Kai asked her.
But Alma chose not to answer her uncle and stay silent. She will never forgive what her uncle did to her.
"I know you're angry with me, but believe me when I said this is for the sake of our family. You asked me about Emily's death before, now I can answer those questions. Emily passed away one year ago in a fight against Aeternum. All this time I covered it and pretend that she's on a long-time mission, but the truth is she already died. The only thing that remained from her was her right hand. That's the only part of her body they can found. I know it's her because she's my daughter and on that hand is the ring she got from my wife. You know how much she cherished that ring because it's her mother's memento," Kai explained. For the first time, Alma can hear the emotion in his voice like sadness mixing with anger and hate.
"I don't want to make anyone experienced what I've experienced, so I made an experiment. Do you know what is it? I combined Aeternum DNA with our DNA to make us evolve and have their power. It's so difficult, I failed so many times. But finally, I found that if we drain Aeternum blood and our blood then replace our blood with theirs it will give the effect I want! I'm so close to my goal Alma if we can get their power we don't need to fear them again!" Kai said with a somewhat crazed voice. Alma opened her eyes and sees her uncle looking like a crazy maniac.
"When I thought that I have succeeded, one by one my experimental subject began to reject the new blood in their body until we found two exceptions," Kai looked to Alma.
"Those exceptions are your parents, Alma. I took blood samples from every member of our family and I found that your parent's blood doesn't reject Aeternum blood. So, I kidnapped them and made them my new experiment subject. Of course, the higher up supports me so they said your parents died on a mission when the fact they were being a test subject."
"Why..why did you do that Uncle?! Dad is your sibling he is your little brother!" Alma shouted with a hoarse voice. Her body winced from the pain when she talked, but she doesn't care. This man in front of her is the one that makes her family crumble.
"Why? I told you before, it's for our family's sake. They should be grateful they can be useful for our family. Besides that, even if I didn't do anything, the higher up still going to kill them because they knew about confidential information and plan to expose it."
"What kind of confidential information can make them deserved to be killed? I don't believe that they will betray the family without a valid reason."
"Oh, they just found that we experiment using humans, and most of them are from our family. We don't care if it's elderly or kids, as long as we need it we will make them into our subject. If they exposed it to the rest of the family, the family will be in chaos. After all, we fight against the monster here," Kai explained nonchalantly.
"We fight the monster?! From what you said, we are the monster uncle! They use the elderly to a kid for an experiment and even people from our own family! What is that if not a monster?!!!"
"Everything needs a sacrifice, Alma. It's all for a greater cause."
"You are crazy uncle."
"You won't understand anyway. Now where I was? Ah yes, unfortunately after we did experiment with your parent they didn't last two days. They died one day after the experiment. But we didn't give up, we think that there's something special in your parents' DNA but we aren't sure what it is. So we made your brother studied with us, poor boy, she didn't know the specimen he studied was his parents. It's not his fault though we did make your parent's corpse unrecognizable. But your brother is a smart person Alma, soon he realized the truth. After that, he tried to run away. Unfortunately, all of his moves are under our prediction. So we made him into our specimen too."
"So… my brother…"
"He already died two weeks ago, he only lasts for three days. But with him, we finally found a clue what makes your family blood don't reject Aeternum blood which brings us to now. You must feel pain in all of your body, don't worry that's normal. It's just your blood assimilating with Aeternum blood. If you can pass this process, you will be able to get Aeternum gifts and also have a long life like them. Don't you think it's exciting? Don't worry you can thank me later if you don't die three days again, hahahahaha!" Kai laughed maniacally.
Tears rain down Alma's face. She feels devastated, disappointed, and fear. Why this is happening to her? She doesn't want to lose her parents, her brother, she doesn't want this pain, and she doesn't want to fight Aeternum. She just wants a normal life. Outside of Alma's room, the sky slowly turns dark, a storm is coming.