Planet Redemption: Episode One - 5. Dead and Snow

Danni stood in the middle of the street with the razor still in his hand. He was too lost within himself to know about the danger coming up behind him. Blood dripped off the blade of his razor. It was all over his face, all over his clothes. He could smell it and taste it. It was funny how he thought of it as his razor now. Victors deserve a price, he thought. Isn't that how it goes in the real world?

Something magnificent had just happened. A revelation had been made. He understood what his father had wanted, only Alexander wasn't really his father. He was Alexander. Alexander had wanted a better Alexander, a perfect Alexander. One that was superior to everyone else. A weapon. And Danni realized what Alexander's mistake had been: having a woman carry him. The very woman that had died giving birth to him. The very woman that had named him. If there was anything that made Danni human if only was slightly was her. If only he knew her name. If only she wasn't just a hazy, smiling face. She was the only reason why he was an individual. Perhaps she was even the reason why he liked men instead of women.

Perhaps Alexander had realized his mistake but couldn't bring himself to fix it. So he let Danni keep his name, kept him locked in a glass box where the world never find out about him. Only Danni didn't want to be locked in a box. He wanted to be free. He wanted to smell Earth's air. He'd put Alexander at risk. He was a weapon that couldn't quite function properly. He'd always known this about himself but until now it had never really mattered to him. He had only ever understood one thing and that was survival. Surviving was a full time job. There simply wasn't time to explore his own identity-

Bam!

The sound split the air like thunder. Before he could turn around and investigate what the sound was a searing pain hit him from behind, tearing his shoulder blade open. The force of the impact drove him to his knees. He grunted, too surprised to feel the pain. He looked down at his hands. They were completely soaked in blood now. The blood of the men that he'd killed and now his own blood. He still held the razor in his hand. My razor.

He straightened up. The simple act of doing so caused a pain to course through him, a pain unlike anything he'd ever felt. The arm that had been shot was completely ruined. Useless. Out of the corner of his eye he could see blood, torn flesh, and bone. Despite the pain he rose to his feet. His mind raced like a computer spitting out commands for his body to follow. He was in danger and it had to be dealt with. He turned around and faced Mike Meize. The sheriff was standing in the cold, smoke billowing out from the muzzle of the shot gun. The smell of gunpowder overpowered the smell of blood and guts.

"Wow-eee!" Mike hooted at the night sky. "How the fuck anyone gets up like that is beyond me!" His black eyes glittered and he became more serious. "What the fuck are you?"

Danni stalked towards him, razor in his good hand. The useless one hung limp at his side. There was only one thing on his mind: murder.

Mike leveled the shotgun at Danni's legs and shot out both his kneecaps. Danni fell into the snow. He managed to roll over on his back so that he was facing the night sky. He could see the stars, billions of them all held -within the line of his view. They're beautiful, he thought. So beautiful. I'm going to die tonight. That's okay with me. It's not like the universe wanted me around anyway.

Mike blocked his view of the stars. The sheriff knelt down next to him. "I'm going to ask again: what the fuck are you?"

Danny grinned, blood and saliva gushing from his mouth. "Don't you get it? I'm not built like you." Just for fun he slashed at Mike with his good arm. Mike's head turned to the side and when he looked back at Danni blood was dripping from a three inch gash on his cheek. He spat into the snow. "I suppose I deserve that so I'm going to let you have a freebie." He wrenched the razor out of Danni's hand and tucked it into his jacket pocket. "I'm going to hang onto this if you don't mind."

Danni wasn't in the mood to give him an answer.

Somewhere outside of Danni's line of vision he heard someone say, "What the fuck are you doing over there?"

Mike looked in the direction of the speaker. "None of your damn business Vera. Get back in your apartment before I shoot you too."

Apparently Vera had done what he'd said because she didn't ask anymore questions.

Through another bloody cough, Danni said, "Are you going to fuck me?"

"Yes," Mike said. "Probably more than once, I don't know. But first there's something I want to show you. Can you stand?"

Danni laughed. It wasn't from the loss of blood so much as he actually found this situation to be quite amusing. For the first time in his existence he felt truly alive, not just an animated mass of cells grown in a vat. "You blew my legs out. What the fuck do you think?"

"I take that has a no. I'll help you into the vehicle."

Mike dragged him back towards the snowmobile leaving a long blood trail behind. "So what are you?" Mike grunted as he pulled. "Are you some kind of extraterrestrial? That would be fascinating as hell if you were."

"I'm a clone," Danni said.

"Really? They do that now? It that a common thing back on Earth now?"

"Not officially. I wouldn't know. I lived a sheltered life."

They were now at the snowmobile. Mike could see people peeking from the windows of their apartments, their faces shadowed. He had an audience. Good, he thought. Let them watch.

He pulled the door open and tossed the gun way in the back so that it was out of Danni's reach. He hefted the freak into the passenger's seat, slammed the door shut and went over to the other side. He climbed in and started the engine. Heat started blasting from the vents. He hit the gas and started for the mountain ranges where Benji was buried. Of course there wasn't a grave marker to spot Benjamin's grave but at least he would be in the general vicinity.

"So who's clone are you?" Mike glanced at Danni. "Jesus, you're getting blood all over my seats."

"Alexander Aamodt's," Danni said.

"No shit? The guy who created Aethyx."

"No shit."

"And he put you here?"

"Yes."

"Because he didn't want people to know that he made a genetically modified clone of himself?"

"Yes."

"That's fucked up. Seriously, that's cold."

"And this isn't?" Danni said.

"At least it's not personal," Mike replied. "How you doing over there? Most people would probably be dead from blood loss. Your daddy must have made you extra special."

"Where are you taking me?" Danni asked.

"To the place where I killed Benji."

Benji. The name sounded familiar but Danni couldn't immediately place it. His mind was foggy from the pain. Then he was back in Duke's room, listening to Duke beg Benji for forgiveness. His mind opened without his wanting it to and the truth rushed in. Pictures flashed through his mind like a psychic movie. He could see Duke and Mike dragging Benji out of the vehicle and throwing him into the snow. Benji mouth was gagged. His hands were tied behind his back.

"No," Danni moaned, in another time. "No more. I don't want to see anymore."

"I don't want to do this," Angel said. "I've helped as much as I'm going to."

"No," Mike said, as he yanked Benji's pants down and whipped out his cock. "You're going to go all the way. What I do you'll do. Because if you don't I'll do the same to your sister. You know I will and there's nothing you can do to stop me. You know that..."

"Nononono!" Danni screamed, sobbing. The pain he was feeling now was worse than the physical pain he was in. It was the pain of his heart breaking as the Duke he'd thought he'd known was wrenched away. "Nonono!"

"Yesyesyes!" Mike cried back in cruel delight. "You're newfound friend isn't as easy as he led you to believe!"

With all the force he could muster, Danni used his good arm to open the door of snowmobile. Air and snow was rushing into the cabin, batting at his face.

"What the fuck?" Mike cried, reaching for Danni and trying to steer at the same time.

Before Mike could grab him Danni threw himself out into the night. Hitting the snow was like hitting a brick wall. He hit with such momentum that he went rolling, falling down a steep hill of snow. Each roll sent a fresh wave of pain through his mangled arm. Finally he came to a stop and just laid there, the wind chopping at him with the sharpness of a thousand white-hot blades. His body was bruised and battered and everything hurt. If he had to choose between dying due to exposure of the cold or at the hands of Mike then it was the cold.

When he looked up Mike was half stumbling half running towards him. He grinned at Danni. "Well that plan worked out pretty well didn't it? Did you accomplish what you wanted?"

Before Danni could reply, Mike kicked him in the face with the heel of the boot hard enough to send Danni rolling down another few feet. Danni landed on his stomach. Fresh blood poured from his mouth and a gash in his forehead. How much more can my genetically modified body take before I finally die? he wondered. How much more punishment must I endure simply because I was someone else's failed experiment?

He heard Mike's chuffing as he made his way over to Danni. "Now comes the good part," he heard him say. Mike rolled him over long enough to yank off his pants and underwear. The second the cold air touched the nerves and bone of his kneecap he screamed himself hoarse. There was no one out here to hear his screams. Not Duke. Not the ghost of Benji. Not even God. Mike rolled him back over. Danni heard him unbuckle his pants and then felt Mike press himself down on top of him.

Everything about this moment was wrong. It was not like how it had been with Juan or Duke. Feeling their weight upon him, on top of him, holding him, kissing him had made him feel safe, loved. He'd loved sex and he'd loved them for sharing it with him, for giving him a few moments' bliss. It had been far too intimate not to appreciate. But when Mike let his full weight crush down on him it was like being smothered into the alien planet, the air slowly being crushed out his body.

When Mike thrust into him there was no pleasure in the pain. Mike wasn't just fucking him for pleasure. He was fucking him to show Danni that he was lesser than Mike. He was fucking him to cause him pain. It was the worst thing you could do to them, to force them to endure a pain they couldn't fight back against.

Mike kept thrusting into him as hard as he could, shoving Danni's face into the snow. Danni tried to scream only to choke on the snow and his own blood. After a few minutes his body went limp. That didn't stop Mike from finishing his business. He came in great amounts, filling Danni's insides with his seed. When he pulled his cock out it was covered in blood and shit and semen.

He kicked the boy's body just to make sure he was dead and not just faking. The boy didn't budge one inch. Satisfied, Mike began making his way back up the hill towards the snowmobile.

Two hours before sunrise Danni rose like Lazarus from the dead. He was completely submerged in snow and had to drag himself out with his good arm. By this time the nanites in his body had begun to work on the extensive damage that had been done to his body. Up until now he had no idea about the nanites that Alexander Aamodt had put in his body as an infant. This didn't mean that Danni was invincible. He could still be killed. It just meant that it was extremely hard to do.

By the time he had managed to dig himself out of two feet of snow the muscles and nerves around his knee caps had been repaired enough for him to be able to walk. It would be quite a bit longer before the tissue to heal as well as the shoulder wound. He walked with a limp. It took him an hour and a half to make it back to Colony 12.

People were already up and moving about, snowmobiles making their way towards desired destinations. Those who were a little more forgiving to the planet's icy terrain milled about stolidly, not in a rush to get anywhere. Planet Revelation's twin suns were just starting to touch the horizon.

The first one to actually spot Danni Aamodt that day was Duke's younger sister Cecilia. When she saw him her heart stopped. She didn't know it was him at first because Danni did not look like Danni. He looked more like a walking zombie. His skin was grey and covered in snow diamonds, his eyes blood were livid. The back of his shoulder blade still hung open to show a mixture of bone and muscle and tissue. It essentially resembled fruit salad with bone fragments mixed in just for kicks. The torn flesh around it had turned grey and freezer burned. Cecilia did not scream, she was too frightened too. But some other people did. Women and children mostly. Some of the men made crosses over their chests and others took an extra long swig from their whiskey bottles.

Danni paid them no never mind. At the moment he was more dead than alive. He headed in the direction of his dormitory. As soon as his back was turned Cecilia ran home and woke Duke up out of bed.

"What?" he said, sitting up. He felt a chill race up his spine when he saw the fear on his younger sister's face. She didn't scare easy.

"You have to come quick!" she said. "Grab your rifle!"

It didn't take them long to track down the thing that had come into town. Half of the colony was crammed into the hallway of Danni's dormitory standing outside his door. They had weapons: knives, guns, forks, anything that they could grab a hold of within a second's notice.

"Out of the way," Duke boomed, shoving his way through the crowd. His voice was deep and authoritative. He had no problem throwing his muscle around to get to where he needed to be although he still wasn't as evil or pompous as Meize.

"It's in there," Sylvia Harris said, her blonde hair piled on top of her head. She'd brought her AK-47 that she kept under the bed. Her son Calvin Harris, who was twelve, held a Desert Eagle. "You want us to go in there and kill it for you?"

"Just stay back," Duke said to all of them, not just her. He gripped his rifle in his hands and kicked the door open.

He stepped into Danni's dormitory. A long trail of blood led into the bathroom. Moving slowly with several faces peering in curiously, he nudged the door open and stepped inside. He shut the bathroom door behind him.

Danni Aamodt sat in a bathtub of cold water, his arms propped up against the edge of the tub. He looked at Duke but said nothing. Duke stood frozen to the spot, muzzle pointed at Danni, trying to understand what this thing was sitting in Danni's bathtub. And where was Danni? Had this thing done something to him?

And then he understood. This was Danni.

He saw the torn arm, saw the kneecaps sticking out of the rose-red water, the torn flesh and the bone sticking out. Whoever had done this to him, Danni should have been alive. Which meant that Danni wasn't human. Not really.

Like the people standing outside of Danni's dormitory, Duke Ruiz didn't understand what he was seeing. His brain couldn't fully process it. Like the other people on the Planet Redemption he didn't have the education that people on Earth had. He was the equivalent of a backwoods hick. But just like how some people are predispositioned to come down with depression or become a rapist or a murderer, others are predispositioned to be more humane and show emotional qualities that most human beings simply don't possess. Sometimes such qualities skip a generation. And sometimes it just means you're the black sheep.

Duke set his rifle against the door and knelt down beside Danni. He could feel Danni's blood seeping through the fabric of his pants but he didn't care. He reached towards Danni. Danni flinched back, looking back at him like a frightened animal. His lips were drawn back in a snarl.

"Don't," Danni said.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said.

"You hurt Benjamin," he said. "You raped him just like Mike did. He begged for you to help him and you didn't even try."

How do you know about that? Duke wanted to ask. But he decided he didn't care about that either. It didn't matter. He gulped. Swallowing his spit was like trying to swallow a gulf ball his mouth was so dry. "I will spend the rest of my life trying to atone for that. Every second of every day. I can understand if you think I'm a monster. I can understand if you're afraid of me."

"I'm a monster too," Danni said after a moment. "Are you afraid of me?"

"No," Duke replied without hesitation. "On this planet we are all monsters. Did Mike do this to you?"

Danni nodded and began to sob.

Duke, Diana, and Natalia sat around Diana's desk. Outside another snow storm had taken over the streets of Colony 12, the wind blowing so hard that it made the building creak and groan. It was a good thing that the buildings had been made with constant extreme weather in mind.

"The rate at which Danni is recovering is nothing short of amazing," Natalia said to Diana. She held a manilla folder in her lap. The folder was thick with lab results, CAT scan photos, and photos of Danni's body. "As soon as I pulled out the two bullets in his left shoulder and knee caps the tissue instantly began to regenerate. Within eight hours the wound was completely healed as if it had never been there at all. I did a blood test and couldn't pinpoint what blood type he was. I did find this however." She pulled out a photo and handed it to Diana.

Photos taken by a medical camera showed the thousands of little insect mites that existed in Danni's blood. They were so small that they were microscopic. Diana studied the photo for several silent moments, trying to process exactly what it was she she was seeing. This is nothing short of amazing, she thought. "What are they?" she asked. She took a long drag from her cigarette and crumpled what was left of the butt in her ashtray.

"My guess. Some kind of nanite technology. I would say it's the cause of the tissue regeneration but I can't be sure. However it's the only explanation I can think of. Also I did find traces of semen in his body. It's Mike's to be sure. No doubt about it."

"Good. Continue to keep him quarantined and keep running tests. I want to know as much as I can about what makes him tick."

This whole time Duke had been silent, merely watching and listening. But now he spoke up, disturbed by what he was hearing the warden saying. "When are you going to release him?"

"I don't know if I should."

"Why not?"

"He scares people. The general consensus is that I should put him down. But from what Natalia just said I don't know if there is a way to put him down. So we're going to take advantage of the moment and study him for now, see what scientific advancements we can make."

Duke stood up. "Jesus Christ Diana do you hear what you're saying? Do you hear the words that are coming out of your mouth? You're talking about him as if he's a lab rat. He's not a lab rat."

Diana met his gaze evenly. "Then what is he?"

Duke didn't know how to answer the question. "Does it matter?"

"Yes it matters. He killed four men. God knows what else he's capable of."

"It was self defense."

"So? What if he decides to go crazy and go on a killing spree. I can't have that." Diana's eyes were wide, almost pleading. She was actually pleading for him to be convinced by her logic.

"So all of the sudden you're trying to get the warden of the year award, huh?" Duke said. "I can't follow you. Not on this. You're on your own, understand? What are you going to do about Meize?"

Diana sighed. "I don't know."

"He needs to be punished."

"I know."

"Let me kill him."

Both of the women looked at him in silent surprise. Natalia looked like a deer caught in the headlights, someone who had been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. She wished she had heard none of this conversation. She didn't like what was coming out of either one of their mouths.

"What makes you think I would let you do that?" Diana asked. "Who would take his place?"

"I guess I would."

"And who would take your place?" Diana reached for the pack of cigarettes sitting on her desk. She pulled out another one, lit it.

"You'll figure it out. You always do."

"Fine," she said after a moment's consideration, blowing out smoke. "But don't expect me to help you clean up the mess."

"I bet you feel like a pretty big badass with pressing the gun to my head like that," Mike said, stumbling awkwardly through. The snow went all of the way up to his knees. The fact that his hands were cuffed behind his back made the journey more difficult.

Duke had his breathing mask on and was dressed for the cold weather. The snowmobile was several yards behind them. "Shut up," he said, clocking Mike up side the head with his gun. Mike barely seemed to notice the blow. Duke restrained himself from hitting him so that he would feel it.

"I imagine that you'll be taking my place," Mike said as they drew ever closer to the mountain range. "Then you'll have the very power that I wield. I get to decide who lives and who dies and all of that-until now, I passed out the justice how I saw fit. I got away with all kinds of shit, had all kinds of fun. I fucked whoever I wanted and no one said shit about it." He turned around to face Duke, glaring at him with his beady brown eyes. "But I guess you decided to take a page from my book, take justice into your own hands then, huh?"

Duke kept the gun leveled at Mike's head.

"Can I ask you something before you kill me?" Mike asked.

"Of course," Duke said.

"Why do you give a shit about that thing back there? He's not even human. I shot him, fucked him until my cock was covered in his shit and blood, and buried him in the snow. I left him out to do die. Not a day later he's walking around Colony 12." Mike's eyes widened, showing fear for the first time since Duke had dragged him out here. "Duke, he's not even human."

"Neither are we," Duke said.

And then he pulled the trigger.