Thanks, Moestitia. I've tried to follow your suggestions. Here's the revision:
Cold, slimy, dark. Where am I? I feel a surface smooth and hard as a gun barrel. Some kind of door? Two hinged sections swing open as I lean on them, and I fall onto a metal floor cool as a tombstone. What am I doing here?
Opening my eyes, I find that strange men are watching me. Men with white hair and white coats. They stare inquisitively, frightening me for a reason I cannot understand. I stumble to my feet, slipping in an alien green ooze. My eyes go wide in terror.
Run. The word springs into my mind as an invisible glass wall shatters in front of me. I duck beneath the long table the strangers are sitting at, and they try to snag me by my long, black hair as I flee.
"X-9 is escaping!" I hear someone yell, but I neither know nor care the reason. I sprint down the hall, not realizing that I once was one of the children floating in the cylinders of translucent green slime I passed. The heavy door slows me down as I push it open.
I look over my shoulder and see an 'Authorized personnel only' sign above the door from which I flew. I glance beyond it and see men with suits black as the new moon. I sprint all the faster for these fearsome pursuers
Tall men in dark suits chase me into the street. As I flee into the cool dusk, cars screech to a halt as their drivers spot me in the middle of the road. Soon, the cars themselves become in my mind vicious hunters, joining the black-suited men in their selfish mission. The very houses seem menacing and filled bloodthirsty watching eyes.
Finally, I find my way to a park, where I hide under some bushes away from the path. Although I stay awake all night, I see no more of my unknown pursuers. The full moon is to me a melancholy companion.
Who were those people? What do they want with me? Why was I so afraid? I wonder.
"Who are you?"
Not discerning it from my own thoughts, I answer aloud, "What am I called? Let's see. The word 'Canora' sticks out in my mind. Yes, Canora must be my name."
"Umm..." I hear a bark, and realizing the true source of the noise, I scramble out from under the bush to face it. "Is something...the matter with you?"
"No! Er...yes. No, wait. Maybe? I don't know!" I sputter as she studies my plain, knee-length green-tinged dress. I pause for a moment, surveying her jeans, pink sweatshirt, and blonde hair, before saying, "Now that you know what my name is, tell me yours."
"Katrina." She says, "What were you doing under the bush?"
"The scary strangers were chasing me, and I-" Inhaling sharply, I jump back from her Irish Wolfhound.
"Don't worry, Nate wouldn't hurt a fly." Adopting a sweet voice used when speaking to canines exclusively, she continues, "Nate's a good little doggy! Yes he is! Yes he is!"
"I'm not a fly." I observe, paralyzed with fear.
"Nate wouldn't hurt anyone, especially not a nice girl like you." she resumed her sing-songy voice as she scratched behind his ears, "Good dog! What a nice little puppy dog!"
"He's not exactly a little doggy." I say, cringing as he licks my hand.
"See, he wants to be your friend."
"My...my friend?" I kneel down and begin to pet his coarse gray coat. "Nice, big, little puppy dog." He licks my face.
"I want to be your friend, too." Katrina smiles at me.
In that moment of happiness, I hug her. There is more to this world than old men in white coats and tall men in black suits. Now I have two friends, one with four legs and one with two. Katrina invites me to her house, and Nate leads the way down the cracked sidewalk.
Looking up at Katrina's compassionate face, I realize how much older she is. My head barely comes to her shoulder! She is definitely an adult, yet she doesn't act all grown-up.
Along the way we pick flowers, blazing stars Katrina says nobody wants. They're so beautiful, just like the heavenly bodies they are named for. I just cannot understand why nobody wants them. They are so very much like me.
Nate and I do not realize that it's my face on the "Lost Child" signs posted on telephone poles along the way, but Katrina does.
It's such a friendlier place in the daylight. I even recognize some of the houses and cars I was so terrified of last night. We even see a man with white hair in a black suit and tie. He's so very frightening, but my friends comfort me. In fact, he doesn't even recognize me! Maybe it was all just a bad dream.
She sees me shiver in the cold Saskatchewan breeze and offers me some of her smaller clothes to try on when we get to her house. Nothing fits, of course, but it's warmer than my old dress, and much prettier. Her knee-length yellow skirt is plenty long for me, and a navy blue sweatshirt fits once the sleeves are cuffed.
"I called your parents while you were changing." Katrina says as she slides her pink cell phone into her pocket.
"But I don't have parents." I say, honestly but ignorant of the true reason.
"Everyone has parents! Don't be silly. Oh!" She looks as though she caught herself saying something that might have hurt my feelings, "Never mind. It's okay."
An awkward silence follows, broken by the sound of my stomach growling. "You're hungry, aren't you? I'll find you something to eat." She leads me by the hand into her kitchen.
Katrina is evidently a huge fan of muffins, for her kitchen is stocked with a plethora of flavors. She offers me one, and I am faced with a decision between: chocolate chip, chocolate chocolate chip, oatmeal chocolate chip, banana chocolate chip, banana nut, blueberry, cinnamon swirl, apple cinnamon, apple raisin, zucchini, pumpkin spice and lemon and poppy seed. She invites me to try another titanic incarnation of goodness, but we hear a knock at the door as soon as I bite into it.
"Nate, keep Canora company while I answer the door, will you?"
As I stroke Nate's back, I hear Katrina speaking to a man I have never heard before.
"Hi."
"Hello, are you Katrina?"
"You're lookin' at her."
"Thank you so much for calling us! We were sick with worry."
"Canora! There's someone here to see you!" She says cheerfully, and I run to the front door, muffin in hand and with Nate on my heels.
"Canora?" The stranger looks from my face to Katrina's.
"Yes, Can-nor-ra." She says, over-enunciating every syllable of my name, "That's what she said her name is."
"What else did she tell you?" He says, with superficial befuddlement.
"Umm...something about being chased by scary men...or something...like that." I take a step back from the door at the mention of those dark memories.
"Come here, Josephine. Time to come home with Daddy. Mommy is so worried about you." He says softly.
"I don't know you." I say timidly.
"Do you feel sick, darling? Don't you remember me?" He says, crouching down eye-to-eye with me, "I'd better get a doctor to see her. Thank you again for calling us"
He picks me up and starts to carry me to his black, tinted-windowed van.
"Let go of me!" I scream, and I hear Nate barking.
"Don't worry, Canora! Daddy will take good care of you. Bye!" Katrina tries to re-console me.
"Katrina, save me!" I wail. Though I kick and struggle with all my might, I cannot escape his grip, tight as a troll's.
Inside the van, I see the same tall men who tried to capture me last night. Their suits are the same shade of midnight black as the guns they clutch. They sit hunched over in the back, like wolves awaiting their next hunt. I scream and scream for Nate and Katrina, my friends, but soon, they are blocks away.
They force me back into the cell marked 'X-9', but there is no slime-filled capsule now. The glass wall has been replaced with heavy black bars. The metal floor chills my body as being torn from my friends chills my heart.
As I curl up under the stainless steel bench, a man in a white coat pushes a stretcher past my cell. Nothing moves under the white sheet. His face is as expressive as a mannequin's.
While my paranoia returns, a boy my age in a cubical opposite mine asks, "What happened to you?"
I am too overcome to answer at first, but upon his repeating the inquiry, I fight tears to reply, "He tore me away from my friends."
"Friends?"
"Katrina and Nate. I miss them." I whimper as I begin to uncurl.
"Did you escape, X-9?"
"My name's Canora." I say, my feelings the slightest bit more hurt, "What's yours?"
"X-10"
"No, you need a real name." I deliberate a moment before saying, "I'll call you Felix." Seeing him smile for the first time, I start to smile too. He is different from the average young boy. Something around his eyes makes him look far more careworn than anyone who has seen less than ten summers should.
"Tell me how you escaped...Canora."
I begin to shrink back as I remember the scary men with white hair. " It was so...so terrifying. I, I..." The mere thought reduces me again to tears.
"Never mind that. Tell me about Katrina and Nate." Says Felix
It is so comforting to think of my friends. "Nate is Katrina's dog. He looks scary, but he's really quite nice. Katrina likes flowers, especially pink ones, and muffins. She had more flavors than you can count on your fingers! They were so huge! These are really her clothes, but she let me borrow them since it's so cold outside. That's why the shirt is so big on me." I notice that Felix' shorts are stained the same minty green color as my ugly, cold dress was.
More strangers come and slide metal trays of bland food under the bars to us. How I wish I was with my friends, eating one of Katrina's delicious banana chocolate chip muffins instead of this watery chicken-noodle soup. While we eat I tell Felix about the flowers and the sunshine I saw outside.
Before we even finish eating, the white-bearded men come to take Felix away. "Don't go!" I scream, hating to lose another friend. He faces it with defiant resoluteness, but I shrink back under the bench. Will they come to take me away, too?
Such a long time passes before I fancy I hear six feet approaching.
"Canora!"
"Katrina! Nate! You're here!" I Call as I scramble to the bars at the front of my cell.
"I'm so, so sorry, Canora." She says with evident regret, "I never should have let that scary man take you away. Could you ever forgive me?"
"Of course I forgive you, Katrina." I say, trying to hug her through the bars.
"We need to get you out of here." She says, pulling an unusual mechanical device from her backpack.
"what's that?" I ask.
"A lock pick." She smiles, "Once I locked my keys in my house, and to make a very long story short, I got this to get back in."
But a fingerprint-activated lock made it useless. For a long time, Nate stood guard while Katrina filed away at one of the bars of my cage.
Soon, though, he starts barking, and we hear footsteps echoing off the cement walls. It's them! One of the men in white coats, two of the dark-suited men, and Felix come to a halt near my cell.
"And what are you doing here?" The white-haired man asks, masking his selfish anger with a quaint accent. His face is just as frightening as it was last night, with his brow furrowed and wrinkled. He squints out from under his bushy eyebrows.
"Trespasser, you are under arrest. Specimen X-9 is government property." The tall man barks, leveling his gun at Katrina.
Nate pounces on the man in the white coat, and Felix takes the initiative by grappling with the dark suited man who is aiming at Katrina. She snatches a monkey wrench from her bag and charges at the other gun-carrying man. I hear a shot ring out. No, not Katrina!
I can't let my friends die! If only I could move these bars! Suddenly, one of the thick metal rods rips from the wall. Could it be? I will the bar to smash my friend's murderer, and it obeys my thought.
Another emphatic blast is heard. No, not Felix! A misfire, it seems. the old man lies motionless. Oh, I hope Nate is alright!
I lift the bar with my mind once more and slam the man with which Felix struggles. He seizes the fallen enemy's weapon.
"How did you do that?" His eyes, one green and one brown, are wide open.
"With...with my mind." I say, nearly as bewildered as he.
"So that... must be why they want us." He says, ponderously.
Further meditation is cut short by half a dozen more Myrmidons who had heard the gunfire. They burst through the door and point their guns at us. "We don't want to have to hurt you. Don't move, and this can all end peacefully."
"Nate, stay here!" I yell. I stand perfectly still while I telekinetically tear chunks of the wall away to block the dark-suited men and their bullets.
"We gotta get outta here!" Felix exclaims, taking me by the hand and running towards a door at the opposite end of the room.
"No! We can't forget Katrina!" I scream, breaking free from his grip to kneel by her side. Her pink sweatshirt is turning crimson.
"It's all right, Canora." She says, barely able to breathe, "You need to leave now. Take good care of Nate for me...Goodbye."
"No, Katrina! Come with us."
"Oh, Canora, I can't."
"But you must."
"Come on, Canora!" Felix interrupts, "They'll find us at any moment!" I can hear them trying to move the barrier of rubble and calling for others to search the building.
"Go on, Canora, I'll be alright." She gasps.
Tears streaming down my face, I whisper, "Goodbye, Katrina. I'll remember you whenever I see the blazing stars. I'll take care of Nate as well as ever I can. Goodbye, friend." I give her one last hug, a gift she is unable to return.
Silently, Nate and I join Felix at the door. I take one last look at Katrina's pale, but peaceful face. She opens her eyes and smiles at me. I follow Felix out the door. We hasten through the corridors, hoping to escape the legions of henchmen real and imagined.
Much to exasperation of Felix, I stop to pick a handful of blazing stars to remember Katrina by as soon as we leave the hated institute of science. I am free, but is it worth it? Katrina thought so. I look from the flowers, to Nate, to Felix. I still have a life to live, that hers might not have been given in vain.
Gender:
Points: 688
Reviews: 21