So this story is something I wrote for the Gates of Redemption RP that I was a part of back in the first half of 2013. It's unfinished, but since I'm posting it on here and not on the RP group since it kind of died, I intend to finish it! (The RP is also planned on being revamped soon, so if you want to join, hit me up!)
Anyway, I should probably briefly explain what Gates of Redemption is about before I get into the story, because it probably won't make any sense if I don't.
- Year 2620 - The city of Gravidal is the setting, which is broken off from the outside world because of a meteor collision back in 2560. - An extraterrestrial life form (named Syndrome) began to infect citizens, turning them into Parasites with the intention of eliminating the human race. - The government's military, Annex, is responsible for protecting the city and preventing the takeover of Syndrome.
It had been five years since his mother told him he had a sister- a twin, no less. The heavy words had sent an eerie tingle down the back of his neck as if there was a chill that passed through their kitchen. He couldn't believe what had been spoken to him, even if they were intentionally said in a light manner to avoid a potentially bad reaction.
"Clarke, you have a sister- a fraternal twin," his mother had said with a nervous smile on her face, "Well, she's technically not your full biological twin. I was a surrogate and decided to have a child of my own as well, so they fertilized two sperm into my egg at the same time; one from your father and one from a man whose wife was infertile."
He, no matter how hard he tried in that moment, couldn't wrap his head around it. He had a sister? The only life he knew he'd lived as an only child with his parents... no relatives, no friends, and definitely no siblings. He was a cold boy that seemed to have no emotional capacity to feel, but this revelation was enough to boggle him. It was just out of nowhere. They had just been eating an innocent breakfast like any other ordinary day with his father already gone for work, and the next thing Clarke knew, he'd been caught completely off guard- and that was something that hardly ever happened.
"Why? Why are you telling me this now?" he had asked, still completely befuddled at the newly revealed information, "How have I not known her for the last fifteen years of my life?"
His mother sighed and rubbed her arm, looking more nervous at Clarke's questions. Diverting her brilliant blue eyes from him, she looked at the digital click sitting at the head of the kitchen threshold. She'd waited for too long and she finally gathered the courage to tell her only son the truth, but the words were caught up in her throat as if they were like barbed wire.
"I gave birth to you and your sister just right after the couple died in an accident," she said, finally looking back into her son's eyes. His were hard as stone against her soft ones, "Since I was just a surrogate, I couldn't keep her; she wasn't my child even if I did go through labor to birth her and she possessed half my genes. She stayed with us for a little while during the relocation process but after that short time, she was taken."
She reached out over the table and ruffled his light blonde hair, "I just wanted you to know, Clarke."
Clarke cut his wandering thoughts in that moment back in time. He slowly opened his eyes and was met with his paperwork's gaze, reminding him that he still had a mountain of work to go through. He heaved a sigh, threw down his pen on to the stack, and massaged his face with frustrated hands. His mind had been gallivant more than usual lately, and it was starting to regretfully cut into his work ethic; three mision reports were due the next day when he had an entire week to complete them. It would have been much easier if his damn Corporal accepted digital documents and didn't insist on handwritten reports. Clarke let his right arm fall back down on the desk and squeezed the bottom half of his face with his left hand- something he always did when he was bothered.
Five years. It was five years today. That was probably why his head was up farther in the clouds than it had been during other days. And it was four years ago that he had been initiated into Annex when he ultimately decided that it was the only means to provide him with the resources to find his long-lost sister. However, he sometimes found himself questioning why he was so dead set on finding his twin- someone he knew nothing about and whom he had no knowledge of her current appearance, since all he had of her was a picture straight after birth that his mother had given him. It almost frustrated him to no end at certain times, but his goal always remained the same under the false shroud of his oath to protect Gravidal.
It wasn't that he didn't want to protect the city he was born and raised in- he would have actually joined Annex even if he hadn't found out about his sister, though later in life- but for some deep, fraternal reason he felt it was also his duty to find her. If someone were to ask him why he wanted to find her so badly (even though no one knew of his true goal), his memories of a lonely childhood and a life of isolation would only surface in his mind. He would have no words to weave an answer with or an expression to convey a feeling, but in his mind he would know that he just wanted to find her. Perhaps the companionless juvenility was the source of his motivation, perhaps not. The clear answer was absent and had been absent for the last five years.
Clarke shook his head to rid of the thoughts and memories lingering in his mind, but was unsuccessful.
"What's her name?" his younger voice echoed in his head. He narrowed his eyes at nothing in particular and tightened his hand over his face.
"Her name is Claire."
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supertelle Crew
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Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2014 7:34 am
1. Discovery
"You sure you don't need immediate back-up, Clarke?" Relic's (my friend's OC) voice sounded through his earpiece.
"You know how I function, Sir," Clarke replied coolly as his footsteps pounded over the roofs of buildings, sprinting over them in a pursuit. The other soldiers were much too slow to be able to keep up with an exceptional Scout as he was. His speed and agility was by far one of the fastest on Annex's forces. He'd catch them in no time.
"Alright," Relic said, "Good work, Clarke. Voice in your coordinates once you've got them. We'll capture them right there."
"Roger."
Clarke continued to bound over the rooftops, his eyes scanning over every single nook and cranny he ran by and looked for any signs of fast moving bodies through the crowds of people. This was his first mission in the last few weeks due to the lack of emergency calls they've gotten and he intended it to be another clean victory on his record, especially when Lieutenant Relic had called him down into the field as means of locating their targets efficiently. They were described as two women, a man, and a boy who had apparently half destroyed a plaza in the middle of festivities. The description was odd, unlike anything Clarke had heard in any mission briefing. Two women, a single man, and a boy... usually it were thugs, vigilantes or just young troublemakers causing ruckus in public. There must be something special about that little group.
Then, from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of two bulky shadows sprinting through a crowd of people, dodging them left and right, then turning a corner into an empty alley. Clarke skidded on his heels and turned his direction towards where he'd seen them. He followed them in pursuit as they continued to weave through the spaces in between buildings, calculating the right time to interfere in their run for escape. When they turned on corner into a long alley, Clarke saw that it was the perfect place to finally make his entrance.
"Halt!" he yelled out and leapt up into the air in a somersault.
He smoothly landed down on to the pavement with an intimidating thud and his targets skidded to a stop a few yards away. He straightened up and put his fists up in front of him in a fighting stance, ready to fight if need to be right that second. The group was just as how they were described as: two women, one man and a kid. However, one of the women was on the black-haired man's back, covered in a coat and seemingly unconscious, and the kid was tucked under the other blonde woman's arm like a rag doll.
"Found them, Relic. Coordinates on sector grid: E-4, D-10," he said into his microphone piece without taking his solid gaze at them, then said to his opponents boldly, "By the order of Gravidal and Annex, you Parasites are to be taken into custody."
"I don't think so," the blonde woman and the man immediately said together, and a fist was thrown down onto the floor. The large crash cracked the pavement and in the midst of the chaos of flying rocks, Clarke caught a clearer view at the woman's face. His eyes flashed at the revelation and noticing that she looked oddly familiar... No, he'd never met this woman before- he remembered faces well. But there was still something eerie about it that he couldn't process in that split second. Similar hair, eyes, facial features... His view was then blocked by falling rocks and a veil of dust.
Claire? The name burst into his head and Clarke's body automatically crashed back to moving normally, but by the time he ran through the dust and smoke, he was met with the view of an empty alley and the sounds of running feet fading away.
They were gone.
"Clarke, what the ******** happened?" Relic asked through his earpiece, breaking Clarke away from his churning thoughts.
"I... I'm sorry, I lost them, Sir."
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That evening, still deep in his thoughts about the day's earlier events, Clarke spent his liesure time in his fellow Scout's room as he did every weekend night. Darion was around his age, a year younger to be exact, and had grown to be a sort of friend in the last two years due to having gone on the same missions multiple times. Though not as quick and agile as Clarke, Darion was exceptional in strategy and computers, making him one of the most successful Scouts as his blonde friend, though not as revered. That fact, in turn, pushed them together to make them a fearsome Scout duo with a skinny friendship and an odd balance of ying and yang in terms of opposite personalities.
The two were sitting on opposite sides of Darion's study table doing nothing productive in particular as they often shared comfortable silences while they occupied themselves. Clarke was sitting comfortable back on his chair just deep in his thoughts ever since he'd gotten back from his last mission. Darion, meanwhile, had been completely absorbed watching his show on the holographic screen in front of him, either laughing and frowning the whole time as he did.
"What happened today, man?" the brown haired suddenly man asked, but didn't look away from his screen, "It seemed like you had them back there, but then I heard you just froze."
Clarkes sighed and didn't bother to answer his friend's question. Indeed, he did freeze in place after he fully noticed the mysterious blonde woman's face. The realization had hit him so hard that his reaction time had been severely cut in half, allowing the Parasites to escape. It was his first failed mission ever since he'd joined Annex, but the idea that the woman was quite possibly his sister completely threw the anger he would have felt right under the rug. After four years of subtle searching and using Annex's resources to aid him, he hadn't found anything. But that day on a simple mission, he'd managed to find a lead- the blonde mystery woman that was one of his targets. Screw his record; he knew he finally found something worth much more after four, long years.
"Darion, can you pull up the security footage from that sector?" Clarke asked out of the blue. His fellow soldier looked him suspiciously with one eyebrow raised, not able to predict why he wanted to see them.
"You mean from earlier today? Yeah, I mean I could, but the security protocol-"
"Hack through it."
Darion continued to stare at his friend with ludicrousness and still did not know why the hell he wanted to look at the security feed. If it was any other day where there was no incident in the sector, yes, he'd be able to pull up the footage no problem since there would be no restrictions on them. But since there had been a need to call for Annex and a whole plaza had been destroyed, the footage was under security protocols and restricted to anyone who didn't posses the status to view them. He'd have to hack his way and if he didn't do it inconspicuously enough, he'd be caught in an instant.
"There's just something I want to confirm," Clarke said, his face softening when he realized he was being much too aggressive commanding Darion to break Annex rules. Darion noticed his sudden change and oddly detected a hint of desperation in the linings of his words. Clarke, in his stoic own ways, had been there for him when the computer whiz had no one to turn to in his difficult times in Annex. The two were really loners that had subtly come together as a matter of fate, it seemed like. Darion knew he owed him.
"Alright," he sighed and turned to his holographic screen on the desk, "But just this once, alright, Clarke?"
"Of course."
"First, I've got to break through the primary wall," Darion said as he put on the visor he'd personally constructed for the purpose of browsing through computer files quickly, "It'll be easy, but then I'd have to break through five more walls with much more complex encryptions. That's when it'll take a little longer, so bear with me, okay?"
"Thank you, Darion," Clarke said, nodding.
"Yeah, I know, I'm the best," Darion beamed and got to work.
------------------
An hour passed of Clarke merely observing as Darion hacked his way through multiple encryptions and dodging every routine security sweep that went through the system every ten minutes. The guy was exceptionally skilled with computers, Clarke noted, for a Scout or for any Annex class for that matter. He was working diligently with no waver in his focus and without saying a word to Clarke across from him.
"Alright, finally got in," Darion breathed as a mess of file spheres appeared, hovering over the desk in between them, "That last wall was pretty damn hard to get through, but I did it! I even got to the right sector folder alright. Now, what were the coordinates you said, again?"
"E-4, D-10," Clarke replied, looking up at the spheres above them, "There should be footage on those coordinates; I made sure Relic received them."
"Alright, E-4, D-10... E-4, D-10..." Darion mumbled as his visor efficiently tried to locate the file in the holographic mess in front of him, "E-4, D12... E-3, D-10... Jeez, whoever manages this security server really needs to organize a helluva lot better."
Clarke only continued to watch as his friend extracted and put back multiple holographic files in his hands, thoroughly searching for the correct file just in case it was bundled up with other ones. More minutes went by and it was taking a lot longer than he'd expected. He assumed that once Darion was able to hack into the pool of sphere files, it'd be easy to locate. Impatience from apprehension started to set in, but he held on to his sensible self enough to not push Darion in the middle of his work. His computer whiz of a friend was already doing him a favor.
"Ah," Darion said, turning a sphere in his hands, "I finally found it. E-4, D-10."
Clarke instantly went alert and sat up in his seat,
With his left hand, Darion casted aside the other files to one side of his living quarters and then tossed up the sphere in his right hand. The sphere exploded into one large 3D view of the alley Clarke had encountered the Parasites in. The footage started right after he'd given Relic the coordinates.
"By the order of Gravidal and Annex, you Parasites are to be taken into custody," they heard the holographic Clarke say. They watched as the two Parasites, the woman with blonde hair and the man with tall, black hair, said in unison, "I don't think so."
The woman then sent a punch down into the ground and the pavement violently split, shooting many pieces of rock up into the air.
"Pause it and zoom in on the blonde woman," Clarke said, and the scene instantly froze in place, then zoomed the view on to her as he'd instructed.
He got up from his seat and peered closer at the blonde woman's holographic 3D image that had been enlarged. Her face was exactly how he'd remembered- it was similar to his after all, though much more feminine- and saw that their similarities didn't just stop at their face. The color of her hair matched the light glow of his, her chin was slightly flat like his, their cheekbones casted similar shadows, and miraculously, her eyes were blue with grey linings... an odd feature exactly like his. This was definitely his long lost twin.
"That really is her," he breathed, "Claire."
"What? Her? Who is her? Who's this Claire?" Darion asked, taking off his visor as if taking it off would better his hearing and understanding, "What are you talking about?"
"My sister," Clarke said, his gaze and voice almost in a daze. He then looked at Darion with hard eyes, "Extract that file from the server and put a cloaking encryption on it. I want to keep it in my personal server."
"Wait, wait wait. Hold on for a second," Darion said with his hands up in front of him and shaking his head vigorously, "(1) Are you nuts? I can't extract a file and leave an empty space without it looking suspicious and (2) you have a sibling? That scary, foxy lady is your sister?"
"Yes, my twin. I'm almost completely sure of it... and she's apparently a Parasite."
