I have to tell you this part of the story. Not because it is important to me, but… But the truth is that her life is a part of this story. Therefore, it is important. I have to admit, my personal bias weighed heavily on not shining a light on this person’s life. But since I’ve told you something about everyone else, leaving out Charlene isn’t right. After all, it wasn’t her decision to be a part of this. It wasn’t her choice to become a weapon. She may have surrendered to her darker self, but those that brought her here made sure she didn’t see any other option.
Before she was brought in, there had been a darkness in her. I don’t know if it was something she always had or if it was her experiences that twisted and rooted the dark into her. Maybe she would have been a different person if she had a different life. I wish I knew for sure. What I do know is that the person I’d encountered enjoyed the pain she inflicted. I think I did hate her. Maybe a part of me still feels that way. That part of me doesn’t want to ever forgive her for the things she’s done. But too much time has passed to hold onto the anger. If for nothing else, I have to forgive her because I don’t want to give hate any room to take root in my heart. I also need to forgive Charlene because if she can be forgiven for being a monster, then so can I.
I forgive you, Charlene. I should have done it a long time ago. Now I’m going to tell your story.
This was two years before the hotel explosion. Charlene Thompson was sixteen and living in Daytona, Florida. She had gotten used to surviving on her own. Charlene was a street kid. Her clothing hung loose on a frame that was dangerously undernourished. What makeup she could scrounge helped mask the increasingly sunken features on her face. Life for Charlene was hungry and desperate. She had a few different places she could crash for the night. Some of them known only to her. Weather and safety permitting, she slept outside. She always liked the outdoors. You could apply various clichés to her story. Not enough attention at home. Dad was a drunk. Mom was self-centered and obsessed with appearance. Or as Charlene would describe it, she lived with an asshole and a bitch.
The boys at school had only really cared that she looked the way she did and only really wanted one thing from her. She bent to the pressure to find some form of closeness to make up for what she was never given at home. Her reward was a reputation and she resented those that gave it to her. She began to hate herself for seeking the empty intimacy and for needing the real thing. Charlene began to numb herself by whatever intoxicating, tranquilizing, and narcotic means she could find. No one really expected anything else from her after that. Mom only cared that having an easy, junkie daughter made her look bad. Fights got bigger and more often. Dad just got drunk and hid because he didn’t want to piss off mom. When he didn’t hide, he hit. Mom hit too. Eventually she left home. She didn’t remember exactly what the final straw was. She was a little high at the time. She does remember flipping off her mom before she ran away. No one seemed to care.
She learned to survive on her own, and with a year on the street she grew more bitter and angrier. It always seemed that if anyone showed any kind of interest, it was only because of something she could give them. They were not interested in how she felt or what she wanted. Not that she knew what she wanted, but that doesn’t excuse anything. She was just a teenage girl with no home and a hopeless life in front of her. She felt like everyone put her here. Everyone was either against her or just wanted to use her. If she had the power to make them pay, she would. And she would enjoy it. She would make everyone pay for grinding her down into this life. She wished she could punish them all. Someday Charlene would be the one to inflict the pain. Then one day Charlene got her wish. It came with a high price.
The night was rainy. She was sleeping in the office space of an abandoned warehouse. Or, more accurately, sleeping off some pills and drinks she had that night. She groggily woke to a voice. Her head was still foggy. Someone was in the room with her. Sobriety comes quickly with fear. A hand clamped around her throat and she was lifted off the floor. A big guy in tactical gear was holding her off the ground at arm’s length. The tight grip on her neck kept her from screaming. She clawed, punched, kicked, but he was unaffected by her frail attack on his arm. She noticed other people in the room. Five other men also dressed like a SWAT team without any badges or patches. And there was some smug-looking guy in a suit. Charlene was losing her strength. The kicking and punching had withered down to weakly clawing at the gloved hand choking her. The man in the suit spoke.
“This… is the one?” Morden said, sounding unimpressed. “You’re absolutely sure?”
He was speaking to someone but none of the guys with him responded.
“Okay,” he said, sounding unsure.
Charlene, with her consciousness fading, thought he must be on a call or something. Morden addressed the men around him.
“Box her up. No witnesses.”
There were some other kids sleeping in the warehouse, too. Not her friends. But they all had a mutual understanding not to mess with each other. The men drew suppressed pistols as the big guy dumped her into a big metal crate. She briefly regained some clarity from the adrenaline rush and being able to breathe again. But the lid closed and locked on her before she could try to escape. Charlene could barely hear it, but the other kids were running and screaming. The screams stopped with the muffled thumps of death darting from suppressed metal chambers. Charlene was screaming, too. She flailed her arms and legs inside the box but it did not budge.
“Would you please shut her up,” said Morden.
The big guy cracked open the lid and sprayed her in the face with something. She passed out a few seconds later. This was her nightmare. Mom used to lock her up in a small closet. Because of that, Charlene couldn’t handle small spaces. They freaked her out a lot. Small dark places were even worse for her. She wasn’t afraid of the dark itself. But an enclosed darkness was a suffocating terror that smothered her and drained her breath. When Charlene woke up, she was strapped to a hospital bed in an exam room. Morden was there with a nurse.
“Good afternoon. You have been chosen to become very useful,” he said as he rubbed her now bald head with his hand.
There was a mirror on the ceiling so she could see the state she was in. Her situation really began to sink in. There was pure fear in her eyes. She tried to scream but her mouth was gagged. She tried to move but her hands and legs were strapped down. So was her torso. Her hair was gone, her clothes were gone, and she was wearing a hospital gown. This threw her panic into overdrive. She was trying to scream and fight hard against the restraints, but there was nothing she could do. She was powerless.
“I apologize for your hair being shaved off, you had very lovely hair after all, but unfortunately the procedure required it,” said Morden with a smile.
Charlene had never been this afraid and the mention of a procedure pushed her into even deeper levels of panic, anxiety, and crying. Morden smiled again.
“I’m kidding. I never apologize,” he said.
The nurse held up a mirror in front of Charlene. She could see closer now. There was a long line of stitches going around her scalp. Only then did she realize the soreness in her head. She noticed scans of her brain on the wall as well as notes. There were also files and memos on a desk in the room. These were the records of what they did to her. She could not see them but I can. They cut into her frontal lobe. I remember reading that injuries to the frontal lobe sometimes result in a loss of empathy. Some soldiers and others who’ve suffered brain injuries have experienced this. Therapy could return a semblance of empathy but I doubt that was part of the plan. Morden sought to remove whatever humanity she had left. It was step one in erasing Charlene.
“An acquaintance had already made some adjustments to your brain. But we needed to make some more,” said Morden.
People have used Charlene before and done things to her. But this… She didn’t know what they did to her. The knowledge that they cut her open and then showed her the scars on her shaven head, this was a new kind of violation. She snapped. The fear turned to blinding rage. She thrashed in the bed, futilely trying to break free. And she very nearly did. Her screams were more guttural now. Even gagged, she sounded frightening. Morden chuckled to himself. She wanted to break free and kill the man doing this to her. And the nurse. She was dead too. But both just stood there. They did not need to fear or worry. Charlene was not a threat.
“And there is the little monster we need to foster. But as amusing as this is. I can’t let our investment in you be wasted if you damage yourself,” said Morden.
The pain struck her hard in her head. It was strong and fast like a nail gun firing white hot metal into her brain. And then the pain lingered, never deviating from its height of agony. She couldn’t recall if her eyes were open or closed. All she experienced was the pain. Her body went rigid and her back arched as her muscles contracted. And then it suddenly stopped. Charlene was left gasping for breath.
“That was lesson one. I can make you feel that whenever I want. But there is a more important lesson,” he said.
The nurse removed the strap across her chest. Charlene was in fight mode, but she was sharp enough to not miss an opportunity. Then the nurse removed the restraints from Charlene’s wrist and then the restraint on Charlene’s head. Jabbing the nurse’s eye would give her the opening she needed. She made her move. At least she tried to. Nothing happened. Charlene’s body wasn’t moving. The nurse calmly stood by the bed. Charlene wanted to move but nothing was happening. Fear and confusion began to return. Then she sat straight up in the bed. But this time she wasn’t trying to sit up.
“Lesson two,” said Morden as he leaned in close. “You are mine to control. You will be doing everything and anything I tell you to do. If you don’t do it, I will just make you do it. I could just give you pain, but I find straight control more efficient at breaking someone’s will.”
He straightened back up. Charlene laid back down on the bed, her arms to her sides. She didn’t want to do this, but her body betrayed her.
“You will carry out my orders, freely or not. You have no choice but to do as I command. If you behave, I’ll let you speak. If you keep cooperating I’ll allow you to go do whatever you want to whoever you want to your little black heart’s content. But remember, your only worth is what I command you to be,” Morden told her.
The tears started to flow again. This was it. This was her life now. She couldn’t even control her own body. The nurse began to strap her down.
“You may be wondering why we are strapping you down again. Well, you are a very broken and weak little girl. We are going to rebuild you into something better and I don’t want you getting in the way of your own evolution,” said Morden.
The nurse inserted an IV into Charlene’s arm and began attaching various medical monitors to her body. She then moved a metal stand with an IV bag next to the bed and hooked up the bag to the IV in Charlene’s arm. The only label on the bag was a bar code and a letter with numbers. P010.
“Since the Powers Virus does not seem to affect you, we had to come up with a workaround. A special formula just for you. It’s a little crude but I was assured that it will do the job,” said Morden.
He leaned in again.
“This is going to hurt a lot. You will feel like your body is literally on fire, inside and out. And I’m going to keep you awake for all of it because I need to make sure you are fully broken in mind and spirit. This worthless version of you needs to be deleted,” he said.
Charlene was really crying now. Her panic went onto overload and she began to hyperventilate.
“No, no, no,” said Morden.
Then her heart rate slowed and her breathing began to calm down.
“Sorry. I can’t have you doing that. I really need you to go through this without anything dulling the experience,” he said.
He turned and walked to the door and stopped just short of it.
“You can take this one little thing as a comfort. Your services will not be sexual. It will sometimes be very illegal, violent, and murderous, but sex isn’t going to be involved. I’m not that kind of monster,” he said.
Then Morden walked out of the room. You could see the thoughts in her eyes. “I hate him.” “I hate this nurse.” “I hate everyone.” If you could listen to her thoughts, they were far more explicit, but they boiled down to those. She was going to kill everyone. The nurse double checked all the equipment attached to Charlene and it was then that she noticed that the nurse’s eyes had kind of a glassy, somewhere else look to them. The nurse was being controlled too. But it didn’t matter. Charlene still hated her. She was still going to kill her one day.
Charlene began to feel it start. She stared at herself in the mirror above, directly at the needle in her arm. The skin was starting to redden. As the nurse turned to exit the room the warm and tingling slowly began to spread. And then the burning followed. It went from red to white hot. She would scream if she could and her body would have thrashed from the pain but Morden’s command kept her still and silent. The nurse turned out the lights, exited the room, then closed and locked the door behind her. The lights on the medical equipment had been taped over. Charlene was locked in a small room, in the pitch dark, and she couldn’t move. Step two in creating the monster had begun.
She was back in her nightmare. But now it was so much worse. She couldn’t struggle. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even pass out. Now real pain was added to her terror and she was going to stay awake and lucid for the whole experience. All she could do was release tears from her eyes and experience the fear and the pain of her body feeling like it was on fire. A fire that was consuming her in a small room with the heavy dark pressing in. Charlene then realized that there was someone she hated more than anyone. The person she felt was the most responsible for letting things get so bad. Charlene hated Charlene. Deep in the back of her mind she felt that this was everything she deserved.
It wasn’t true. This was not her fault and it’s not what she deserved. No one deserved this. I have sympathy for her. But other people go through hell and don’t come out monsters on the other side. Though I guess I shouldn't talk. I was made into a monster too. Maybe the only difference between Charlene and I was that someone cared enough to bring me back. She never had that. No one even tried. And certainly no one tried to erase the part of me that wasn’t a monster.
The procedure only needed a couple of hours. She was left alone for two days. There was thirst, hunger, and no way to control her body’s need to relieve itself of waste. These too were methods chosen to break her down. In the enclosing, suffocating dark, full of pain, fear, shame, and rage, she fully gave herself over to the hate. Charlene died. The monster was created. Daytona was born.167Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8YnhRnlG3d
