EVO Universe 1: The First (12 page)

“Oh…oh god…my back,” he gasped in excruciating pain; “I think you broke my back…”

Sophia went in after him stalking him, her Hippocratic Oath was officially tossed out the window as she did not care how much agonizing pain he was in; the same way he did not care he was pounding his helpless wife like a heavy bag.

“Come here you filthy son of a bitch,” Sophia seethed, “you like beating on women? Get your ass up!”

She grabbed him off the floor with one arm ignoring his cries dragging him effortlessly by his torn shirt out of the bathroom back into the bedroom. She did not even notice Tammy huddled into a corner watching her haul what was left of her husband over to the doors of their balcony. She booted them open snapping the lock that held them together.

The force of the kick shattered the glass before they ripped partially from the hinges they were on waking up part of the neighborhood that was sleeping. She then dragged him over to the front of the balcony. With her left hand, she grabbed the guardrail ripping it out of the cemented concrete, and chucked it down making sure it came down on top of Craig’s Mercedes Benz parked in the driveway below smashing out his windshield. She really did not have to do it; it was extra, but she wanted to put the fear of God in him, not to mention she just wanted to fuck his shit up nice and proper. She then pulled him up facing her, grabbed him by his throat with her right hand and proceeded to suspend the broken and beaten man ready to drop him two floors to his death.

Craig weakly grabbed her forearm holding on, while begging for his life, “Please…Please…don’t…please…”

“You will leave…tonight…never to come back,” she ordered, “You will give your wife a divorce…you will leave her the house…her car…you’ll pay her for pain and suffering for every year she had to put up with your miserable ass along with alimony and
child support
. You will do everything I just told you to do, because if you do not…I will hunt you down and find you underneath whatever rock you crawl under. I will rip each of your limbs off by the joint one by one…nice…and slow…and with your last dying breath you will watch as I beat you to death….with a limb of my choosing…do you understand?”

Craig Martin whimpered and sobbed nodding his head with tears and snot pouring down his face, which only enraged Sophia further.

Sophia wanted to hurl him to his death and watch his skull crack open like an egg on the concrete below, but witnesses were already peeping out their windows, some sticking their necks out of their doors, and she could pretty much hear police sirens away off getting closer and closer.

She screamed almost blowing out his eardrums, “Do…you…hear…me?!”

Craig Martin acknowledged with a saliva-spitting whimper, “Yes…yes…oh god…yes…”

She pulled him back in dropping him onto the balcony deck where he curled up into a ball trembling as he sobbed and cried, it only made her want to really kill him. However, she did not have time; she really had to leave before Houston’s finest swarmed the place. She went to go back out the way she came, when her ears heard the most unbelievable thing.

“What have you done?” uttered a badly beaten and barely coherent Tammy.

A borderline postal Sophia, who did not want to get involved in the first place asked, “Say what?”

“What have you done?” babbled on Tammy Martin, “You ruined my marriage…because of you my marriage is over…”

Sophia’s lips quivered, she no longer cared about the sirens getting closer as she now lunged for Tammy ripping her off the floor. Tammy screamed as Sophia dragged her in front of a full-length mirror forcing her to look at herself.

“Look at your face,” Sophia screamed at her, “Look at it! Look what he did to you in front of your son!”

Sheepishly, Tammy looked at her face, literally destroyed on the left side and broke into bitter tears.

She wrapped her arms around herself trying to stop the violent shaking as feelings of embarrassment and shame washed over her. She wanted to die right there on the spot, a part of her wished that Craig had killed her. She came from a happy normal family as one could have, her father never raising a hand to her mother, much less an unkind word, and they both loved her very much.

She was the girl who came from a Midwest lower income home with laughter and love who moved to the closest big city falling for a prince charming story that turned out to be a life of upper class misery, humiliation and sorrow.

Her father had warned Craig the next time he put his hand on her, would be the first and last time Craig would see him with his shotgun. Because of that, and not wanting to see her father possibly go to prison she stopped going home.

She only finished high school, because Craig demanded that she stay home she never finished her nursing degree, and he paid for and dealt with everything. Common rational sense was to leave him, but she did not have a clue how to survive without him.

“Look at me,” Sophia came with a softer tone, realizing she had enough being yelled at, “Tammy…look at me.”

Tammy turned looking at the woman before her, it did not click that she called her by her first name. She was everything she was not a billion times over, intimidating, tall and powerful; the hood covering the upper part of her face made her look like something straight out of a comic book, but there was something eerily familiar about her.

Sophia motioned to little Ethan standing in the corner crying and shaking, “If you love your son…you don’t want him to see you looking like this.”

“You don’t want him to grow up to be like
that
,” she motioned to Craig still sniveling on the floor, “It’s time to draw a damn line in the sand and
fight
for him if not for yourself.”

She probably had less than a minute before the vehicles pulled up, but she could not leave just yet as she walked over to little Ethan kneeling down to his height as he stood in the corner sniffling while tears continued to pour from his eyes.

She gently rubbed his little bicep to give him comfort, “I promise you…daddy won’t hurt mommy anymore…okay?”

Ethan nodded wiping his eyes even though the tears continued to pour. Sophia whispered to him to go to his mother, and he timorously obeyed walking over to her, no doubt fearful of the state of her face.

It only broke her heart more as Tammy knelt down to embrace her son tightly, “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…”

Ethan hugged her back which made her cry harder, Sophia realizing she was out of time headed to the smashed up balcony for an exit.

Tammy mustered enough strength to ask her a question, “Wait…who you are?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Sophia not looking at her, “You’ll never see me again.”

She continued to head for the balcony but stopped for one more second to deliver a message to a still cowering and sniveling Craig Martin, “But you’ll see me “real” soon if you don’t do what you’re told.”

Craig curled up deeper into his human ball thinking she was going to put a boot to him, instead Sophia broke into a quick run and leaped off the balcony; she imagined all the action movies she’d seen where the hero or heroine jumped from dangerous heights making a break for it landed safely to the ground.

She stuck the landing much to her surprise only causing slight damage to the concrete on impact; she figured she would crash and burn sprawling out in the middle of her former street; not that it would hurt her, but it would be downright embarrassing.

She made a break for it just as the patrol cars turned around the corner running through the Morrison’s yard across the street. She hurdled over the Anderson’s eight-foot gate Lolo Jone’s style. She would be long gone before the officers stepped out of their car, but they would now know she was in Houston, which meant whatever she was doing, she had to act fast.

CHAPTER NINE

1:05 A.M., Charles Hampton yawned as he entered his building, checked his mail box and proceeded to take the elevator up to his studio apartment, he did not look like it but the word doctor also followed his name. Although he was one of leading doctors in Stem Cell Research and biophysics, he looked like he belonged in a boy band with his five o'clock shadow and long slick jet-black hair. He was fumbling with his blackberry as he searched for his keys to enter his apartment. It had been a long day for him especially with the F.B.I walking into his facility asking him a million and one questions that he did not have the answers to, especially the whereabouts of his once good friend now escape convict Sophia Dennison who apparently broke out of prison before her execution. Obviously, the F.B.I did not tell him the full story.

Even though he would never give her up, he honestly did not know her whereabouts. She cut off all contact with him three months after her sentence to Mountain View; right up until then after locking his door, flipping on the lights, and turning to see a tall dark figure with a hood covering her face standing almost nose to nose with him.

“Sweet baby Jesus!” he screamed falling back against the door.

Sophia calmly walked up to him cupping his mouth, removing her hood from her head, “Sssssh….”

Charles calmed himself as she removed her hand from his mouth, he winced his eyes to make sure they were not deceiving him, “Sophia?”

“Hi Charlie,” She smiled.

“How…how…did you get in here?” he began to babble, “Do you know
everyone
is looking for you?! How the hell did you escape from?!”

She calmly shut his mouth again, “I climbed up here…sorry about the window…yes I know they’re looking for me…I was executed…I came back to life…twice…and I broke out…no I am not a zombie…nor am I crazy…and right now…I need your help…”

As she slowly removed her hand from his lips again, he calmly looked her up and down realizing the severe changes in his former friend, “You’re a lot…taller than I remembered…”

“You don’t know the half…” she let out a breath finally in front of a true friend again.

About an hour and a half later of explanation and showing him that she was not jerking his leg by crushing two of his sharpest cutlery knives with her bare hand without drawing any blood. Hampton sat in his chair across from her sitting on the arm of his sofa with a blank dumbfounded expression on his face unable to understand or comprehend what he just heard and witnessed.

“So you were executed,” he began summarizing her entire ordeal, “And then you came back to life…then you got shot…several times…and then you came back to life again…and then you broke out of prison…and now you have super strength and your bullet proof…”

“And I can run…really…really fast…” she added.

To which he inquisitively asked, “How fast?”

“I ran from Gatesville to Cypress in under an hour and a half…barefoot…to Houston I think only took forty-five minutes,” Sophia estimated.

Charles sat there with a blank stunned look on his face, “Okay…add super human speed…Can you see through walls? Heat vision? Freeze things with your breath?”

“No you jackass,” she rolled her eyes, “And I can’t fly either…I also don’t get tired…”

“You don’t get tired?” he asked for a clarification.

“I’ve been up for over twenty-four hours including the Guinness book human land speed marathon I just ran,” she estimated again, “I didn’t get winded after the run, and I haven’t hit the fatigue wall yet. In fact I feel the opposite…like I can go and keep going…”

Charles went into doctor mode considering diagnoses and symptoms, “Could be your body no longer produces fatigue toxins…do you eat…?”

“Like a horse,” she confirmed.

“Do you feel weakened if you don’t eat?” he asked again checking to see if it is a possible weakness.

“No…just hungry…” she shrugged.

“Anything else?” he asked to see if she forgot anything.

Sophia leaned forward with a stone cold look on her face, “My memory…I remember…everything?”

“About the night,” he nervously asked.

“Not just the night,” she tried her best to explain, “My entire life until now…I remember being in my mother’s womb and being born.”

Charles leaned back a bit in disbelief, even though she had shown him the impossible already, “That’s…not…possible.”

“Dude…I had a four inch growth spurt,” she said a bit frustrated, “And I can javelin a cop car, so don’t tell me about “not possible” anymore.”

She tried her best to put it into understandable words, “I can’t explain it…the first time I woke up it was like my brain got rebooted, and memories of things I’d forgotten or shouldn’t even remember just flooded my skull all at once all the way up until now. All I have to do is think of something and the memory pops up in detail. And I mean I can see it, hear it, even remember the scent, touch, or taste of something.”

Sophia paused to give Charles a demonstration, “From birth I can literally see inside my mother’s womb…feel the contractions pushing me out. I could feel the scorning of my lungs after breathing air for the first time, and the cold air within the room. I saw my mother drenched in sweat and crying as she looked at me, while Dr. Roper with his huge bi-focal glasses cut my umbilical cord, the nurse with this huge afro wrapped me in a green hospital blanket and handing me to my mother. My dad came into the room crying, falling on his ass and crawling over to the bed. My mom laughed like crazy as she held me, then he kissed my mom, took me in his arms. He kept kissing me on my nose till I fell asleep, and it smelled like he was drinking a lot of coffee. I can break down in detail what the room looked like, and what everyone was wearing. The memories are also more intense if I’m near something familiar. Sometimes if I’m not careful, more than one memory will come out at once. Sometimes if it’s too intense it can leave me in a trance where I have to forcefully pull myself out of it.”