Chapter Text
K13 felt two-inch thick glass shatter around him, in chunks as he broke through the door of the trash room. A klaxon howled gutturally as red light flashed every few seconds.
A voice boomed over the PA system, bright with panic, “We have a Code Green, Experiment 13 has breached containment, I repeat Experiment K, 1, 3, has breached containment, initiate Code Green.”
K13 had never been left to navigate these halls by himself before and he had no idea where he was going. He dashed down the hallway. Without the hamper of a kryptonite restraint, he could see through the wall of every room.
He passed training room 2, he passed the infirmary, which was right beside x-ray. K13 shook his head as he hit the end of the floor. There was no fire exit on K13’s floor.
He heard the sound of rows of boots on the tile trying to find him, kicking open doors, he could hear the rattle of their guns which held kryptonite darts if he was lucky, bullets if he wasn’t.
They’re going to put me down like they did K8, they’re going to do it!
As soon as he processed the fearful thought, K13 felt a burning behind his eyes, that he had only felt a few times before. Then all he could see was red light, vibrant in nature. His head was knocked back from the force of the beam, and it felt like fire behind his retinas.
When K13 stumbled backwards until he fell, he couldn’t stop the blast, and he felt the crumbling of rubble from the ceiling.
“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed a Cadmus employee, as he heard a dozen footsteps come to a sudden stop.
“Take the shot, take the shot!” commanded another as K13 flipped around to face them, not fully realizing what that would mean.
“OH, MOTHER OF GOD-!”
K13’s eyes watered until tears streamed down his cheeks as a shriek of agony pierced through the chaos. It was enough to stop the blast and the scene was finally clear to him, albeit, still tinted with red.
Eleven Cadmus guards dressed in thick, black padding and helmets, surrounded their wailing colleague, whose chest and stomach was split by a deep crevice that glowed like an ember. He could hear and feel the wind outside, from the hole K13 had created.
“I’m sorry- I didn’t mean to.” K13 said, because he really hadn’t, and he felt his stomach twist like a rolled up towel.
One of the guards hitched up his gun to take aim and K13 leapt backwards through the hole in the wall, until there was nothing but air and more air beneath him. K13’s free-falling body did an involuntary flip, and a blur of the concrete below passed through his vision.
It was almost soothing, falling like this.
Slam.
K13 smashed through the asphalt like it was paper, then smashed through the first layer of dirt. He momentarily laid on his back in the deep hole he now found himself in.
He was outside.
K13 was outside for the first time in his life. Truly outside, not in that fenced-in lofted garden. He stood up, staggering out of the crater and looked around him. There was the building, his birthplace, and the place he’d spent every moment of his brief, year and a half existence.
It was towering, blocky, and unmarked except for one sentence which said in simple, grey font “Embassy of the United States of America”.
Beyond the parking lot he’d crashed into, there was nothing but sand, sand and more sand, stretching as far as K13 could see.
The parking lot was surrounded by metal fencing, but that was no obstacle. K13 saw more guards pour out of the building, and he jumped into the air, hurtling past the top of the Cadmus lab, disguised as an embassy.
K13 wasn’t sure if he could fly on command, but when he didn’t drop down to the ground, he shot his body in one direction and he didn’t look back and he didn’t stop. K13 felt the wind move past his body faster and faster as sounds and smells overwhelmed him.
Sand turned to road, turned to sand, turned to a city. As he approached the city he was suddenly blasted with noise, like he’d never heard before. Cars beeped their horns as their engines growled, people conversed in a language K13 didn’t understand. A couple was fervently arguing. Their dog was very upset. Someone was transporting sheep, a child on a bike almost got hit by a car-
K13 hit something solid and metal while he was listening to the city below. He was knocked from flight and sent tumbling downwards like a wet moth.
He was also able to see what had knocked him down had been an enormous white commercial plane. K13 felt like he had no control. He was left untethered, no one was going to shock him, no one was going to hit him with green or blue k and instead of feeling freeing it felt terrifying.
K13 had been weakened with kryptonite more often than not, as far as he knew that was his default. He’d already zapped someone. He hadn’t meant to, but it happened.
How would he find out if they lived?
He crashed into the ground again as this thought occurred to him. No, not the ground.
Something splintered underneath K13 and he felt liquid soak his barely clothed body. That was the other thing. He was only wearing a pair of thin, white shorts as they had to examine him when he’d artificially stopped his heart.
K13 was probably lucky they had decided against an autopsy.
A voice shouted at him in that foreign language and K13 blinked sun out of his eyes to see an older, brown-skinned woman gesturing to him, frantically, waving towards the street, where a crowd had begun to gather. When he stood up, he saw what he’d crushed had been a wooden stand of melons that now sat squished and useless on the ground.
“I’m sorry!” She couldn’t understand him, most likely but he tried to tell her anyway.
K13 was staring at a row of held-out cell phones recording him as he scrambled to his feet. The world would be watching the footage they took. Should he say something?
“H-hello. M-my name’s K13. I am not dangerous, I’m just confused and afraid-“
K13 felt a painless crack on his head, as clay shards shattered across his face and down his chest. Someone behind him had broken a pot over his skull. The crowd gasped and took a step back as K13 turned to face the culprit behind him. A young man in a white apron stood, with a look of terror, holding another clay pot under his arm.
K13 felt the bubble of surprising amusement rise in his throat and he laughed. He didn’t expect to, but he did. The man muttered something in his language, flicking his eyes behind K13 and then back. K13 held out his hand for the other pot, and it was placed in his hand.
Hoping to communicate how little he cared if he was disrespected with a pot, K13 smashed it on his own head, and shrugged at him. The man laughed, like K13 had. The man abruptly stopped laughing as K13 heard the familiar sounds of rattling guns and boots on the ground. Police had now joined this gathering and had taken aim at him with little pistols, not at all like the hulking rifles he’d been threatened with just half an hour ago.
K13 didn’t want any of these people to get caught in a crossfire, so he bolted up into the sky again. His hopes were dashed as he felt a series of tapping sensations across his bare chest and stomach as bullets struck his body, then bounced off. K13 let out a cry in frustration.
“Look, I don’t know where I am, or where to go!” K13 tried to explain. “I didn’t mean to smash the stand! I’m gonna come back and fix it! I promise!”
~
K13 ended up wandering hopelessly around the earth, hopping from place to place and encountering very similar reactions everywhere he went. Fascination, gawking and fear. He knew he needed to put clothes on, and figure out how to get somewhere where someone spoke his language.
He found both when he landed on a rocky beach, by a cold and dark ocean. He had just come from a countryside in Germany, spoke to a boy there, and when he wasn’t understood, he took off again. K13 sat down on a kelp-covered rock, regretting his decisions.
He didn’t exactly regret breaking out . . . he’d rather do this than spend another night curled up on his plastic bed in the small room with the glass wall. But he regretted not gathering more information. And he regretted using heat vision on that poor guard.
K13 had never actually hurt anyone before in his little life.
The sound of the waves was deafening and he could hear a distant seal barking. The smell of salt hung heavily in the harsh, screeching wind.
“For fuck’s sakes, boy! You’re going to catch your death in that, are you dim?!” A woman’s voice shouted at him from behind him.
Her accent was thick, her “r”s mildly rolled, and she pronounced it “feck” instead of “fuck”, “dem” instead of “dim”.
K13 glanced up and witnessed the speaker, dressed in a long, grey sweater that she held tight around herself. Her body was stout, her hair was short, brown and wavy and she made her slow way down the stony hill with thick-soled brown clogs.
The woman huffed and grimaced every few steps as her hair was plastered to her face by the wind. “Come on, now!”
Though she shouted against the wind, K13 understood. He got up off the rock, and walked over to her, wanting to pick her up and carry her where she wanted just to save her the trouble, but he didn’t want to get shot at again.
He followed the woman up the hill, towards the direction from which a set of windchimes was rattling like crazy. Those turned out to be attached to a small, white, two-story house, with a wraparound deck. A plastic, white lawn chair was flipped over on the surface.
The woman opened the red-painted door, and K13 numbly followed, until the door shut behind him, warmth from the house covered his body and the cry of the wind became muffled. All across the wooden floor of the house were small rugs of varying colors and patterns, a red and yellow checkerboard one in front of the door, a purple paisley one in front of the fridge, a large white one with a blue whale under a kitchen chair.
K13 had entered what did appear to be a kitchen, and he could strongly smell ginger and pepper. The woman let out a shaky sigh, as she shivered in her cardigan.
“Now, what in the name of Mother Mary has brought you out here like this?” She asked him, facing him with sharp, grey eyes set far apart from each other, giving her a fish-like appearance.
“I . . . escaped from somewhere.” K13 confessed.
She pursed her lips as she looked him over, seemingly thinking on his answer. “What is your name?”
“K13.” he reported, blankly.
“What’s that?” she asked, cocking her head slightly.
“K13 . . .” he repeated.
“Are you alright if I just call you K?”
K13 knew that his name wasn’t really a name, it was a code, a way of differentiating him. He was referred to in Cadmus with terms like “the project”. But he wasn’t a person. He didn’t need a name.
So, K13 just shrugged at the woman’s prompting and asked, “What do I call you?”
“My name’s Holliday.”
“That’s a nice name.” And K13 thought it was.
He only knew names he heard that belonged to other people, names that were relevant to his education, or the occasional name of a Cadmus employee that slipped out. He’d never heard Holliday’s name in his education.
“Thank you,” Holliday smiled, in such a way that her eyes squinted slightly. “Now, I’ll see if I have anything to cover you up, but you’re a strapping boy, so I offer no promises.”
K13 didn’t know what that meant either, really, but he stood there, dripping water on her doorstep as Holliday disappeared from view.
Holliday gave him a pair of blue, nondescript shorts and a long-sleeved grey shirt that was a heavy, knit fabric, with cartoon blobs with eyes and tails on it . . . K13 figured out they were supposed to be blue whales based on the stream of water above them but he’d seen whales during education sessions and he didn’t think they looked much like whales.
“Thank you . . .” K13 said, after putting them on.
The texture of the shirt was irritating to his skin, uncomfortably heavy, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Discomfort was a fairly permanent state for K13.
“Are you hungry? I’ve got some leftover soda bread from the mainland.” Holliday offered.
K13 didn’t know what soda bread was. He knew what bread was but he’d never had it himself. K13 watched Holliday carefully as she cut hunks of bread and scraped butter on them, then placed them on a plate and set it on her small, shoddily painted white table. K13 had remained standing in the doorway, when Holliday waved her hand towards herself.
K13 approached her, not wanting to scare her by moving too quickly. Holliday huffed a little, widening her eyes in exasperation as she pointed to the wooden chair. K13 sat down in the chair, and picked up the bread, examining it. Its texture was soft and when he applied pressure, it popped back up. Holliday held her fist to her mouth as her shoulders shook.
“It’s bread, lad, not fucking octopus.” Holliday told him.
But K13 didn’t respond, too mesmerized by every miniscule pore in the brown, fluffy surface, glistening with butter. He then hesitantly took a bite. Then another, quickly followed by another.
“Thank you.” K13 told her, muffled by the bread.
“Sure . . .” Holliday shook her head a little, before leaving the room again.
K13 glanced out the window that was currently being battered by sheets of rain. The wind howled outside and the waves crashed. He heard a woman laughing from somewhere across the ocean, the mainland perhaps.
After K13 finished the bread, he remained sitting in front of the plate, unaware of what he should do. Then he heard Holliday’s voice again, in the other room.
“Hello, Leo, I’ve got a bit of a situation here- I know, I’m going to call them after- Listen, Leo, a boy or a young man appeared on my coast, half-naked, he’s telling me his name is some kind of serial number, ‘K13’?”
K13 could hear the man on the other end too saying, “What? Holly, are you having a laugh now?”
“No! He didn’t have a boat, or a raft or anything, he’s been in my house for about an hour! I need to call the police about this-”
Oh, no. That could not have been good. Any official would probably just take K13 back to Cadmus, he did belong to them, after all, didn’t he? He had tried not to scare Holliday but evidently that hadn’t worked. He stood up and walked out the door of the little house.
“Shit, I just heard my door open, one moment, Leo-” Holliday said, as K13 stepped onto the slick grass, preparing to fly away again.
The door swung open. “K! Where the fuck do you think you’re going in this?!”
“You’re going to call the police on me.” protested K13.
“Someone has to figure out who you are!” Holliday explained, her cardigan billowing behind her in the wind.
“I’m . . .” K13 levitated above the ground, and Holliday’s widened eyes followed him.
“What, are you fucking Superman?!” Holliday shouted.
K13 may not have known much, but he knew he didn’t want anyone around him screaming that name in particular. He shook his head and took off like a gannet in the direction from which the sounds of the mainland were coming from. He flew across the dark, growling waves of the ocean.
The wind was harsh to fly against and K13 saw a crack of lightning through the sky. He admittedly, had no idea where he was going. There was a flash of blue and red in front of him, and K13 was stopped in his path by what felt like a boulder hitting his torso.
“Okay, I got you, son.”
K13 only recognized the voice that spoke to him from his training. And it was that training that kicked in now. K13 felt his eyes burn behind his retinas and he blindly blasted a beam of heat vision, turning his head and thrusting his knee into the body of the man that was attempting to restrain him. Evidently Holliday had inadvertently called Superman, and he had an arm braced around K13’s stomach in an iron grip as they both hurtled over grey water.
“Ohh, okay, I didn’t wanna do this.” Superman said, as K13 was sent flying into the swirling sea.
K13 breached the surface of the water and sunk like a torpedo, his heat vision sputtering a little, before coming back. He sent that beam upwards into the dark water, so he could see nothing but red light.
His body slammed into the stony ocean floor, putting a stop to the heat vision at last. Distant whale calls sounded in his ears.
K13 had no idea of how long he spent down there, in the black water. He does know that he exceeded the amount of time he could hold his breath underwater. His world went dark, and cold water filled his body.