'The Psychotic Biotic' is a triology about Jack's early life, surviving the horrors of the Teltin Facility and becoming one of the most notorious criminals in the galaxy. Due to the tragic nature of Jack's childhood and adolescence, young readers are warned that this story contains violence, sexual references and language that some readers may find inappropriate.

'The Psychotic Biotic' is a prequel to my 50 chapter story, 'Biotic Beginnings', but the two stories can be read in any order or completely independent of each other. But of course, I strongly recommend that you read 'Biotic Beginnings' either before or after reading 'The Psychotic Biotic'.

This is the first chapter. It is called 'Subject Zero'. Enjoy.

Subject Zero

The Teltin Facility – Pragia – 2171 CE

"Good morning, Zero," the man in the white coat said. She had never met this particular man before, but she knew that his pleasant tone was just an act, it always was.

She sat on her bed with her hands in her lap and watched as the man looked around her room. She felt like he was judging it, and she wondered if she would be punished for not keeping it tidy enough. It wasn't like she had many toys to make a mess with, just a few books, and they were sitting on her desk in a relatively neat stack.

Without saying anything, the man started walking around the room. For a moment, he lingered at the window, looking out at the other children.

"They can't see you," Zero said. She knew, for she had been waving at them for years, knocking on the glass and shouting, but they never seemed to notice anything.

The man just nodded, but continued to stare at the children outside.

"It is your birthday today," he said without taking his eyes off the children playing outside. "I've been told you know what that means."

She nodded. It meant that she was born 10 years ago, but more importantly: "Tests," she said.

The man finally faced her and nodded slowly. Zero hated birthdays. She didn't know if it was the same for other children, but her birthdays were always extremely painful and usually ended with her crying herself to sleep.

She scratched at a long scar that ran down the side of her neck. She didn't remember exactly how she had gotten that particular mark. One of the adults had put a needle in her, and when she woke up, she had a sore scar reaching from her jaw to the collarbone. This was one of the newer scars, but she had many. Several were from fights with the other children.

She was never allowed to leave her room, only when the adults escorted her outside. This rarely happened, but these were the only times she ever met other children. However, she was not allowed to talk to them. Not that she wanted to. The other children absolutely hated her. She did not know why.

Perhaps it was because of the fights. She always won, even against the big boys, and she often hurt the other children. She even thought that she might have killed some of them. But she hadn't wanted to. It was the adults who forced her to do it. She assumed it was the same for the other children, the ones she had to fight. So why would the children be angry with her? She did not understand.

Monster, they called her. Zero knew that word very well. It appeared often in the books her teacher had given her to read. But she didn't think she was a monster. When she looked in her mirror, she looked like a regular girl with freckles and a ponytail.

The man in the white coat looked at the desk, perusing her books.

"You have to fight today," he said, not even looking at her.

"I don't want to," she said, knowing this was dangerous. She would not have dared if it had not been a new adult. They usually did not hit her on the first visit.

SMACK!

Zero fell off her bed and curled up on the floor, holding her burning cheek. This man was not nice.

Whimpering, she held out her left arm, expecting him to inject something with a needle. They usually did before a fight.

"No," the man said, shaking his head. "No injections today."

Zero looked up at him, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. She was confused. There had always been needles, often a multitude, before a fight.

The man took her by the wrist and yanked her to her feet. "We want to see you fighting on your own," he said.

She did not understand. She always fought alone, sometimes even against several other children. So what did he mean 'on your own'?

The man pulled a metal collar out of his pocket and put it around her neck, it was tight and she felt like she could not breathe.

"What is that?" she asked and tried to loosen the collar, but the man slapped her hand, hard.

"Motivation," he simply said.

Then he took her by the arm and led her out of the room, where two armed guards joined them. They walked down a short hallway and exited into a much larger room filled with other children, all wearing the same grey uniform. Her clothes were different, black, white and golden yellow.

As soon as she stepped into the room, all the children started making hissing noises.

"Monster!" she heard the now familiar call.

A boy, probably a few years older than her, broke free from the crowd and ran straight for her, raising his fist as if he was about to punch her. But one of the guards jumped between them and drove the butt of his rifle into the boy's forehead. The child almost flipped in the air, so hard was the hit, and he landed limply on the floor. A moan travelled through the room, and other children looked like they were going to attack. Zero was shocked. Why were the children behaving this way?

A few more children ran for her and were intercepted by the guards. But one girl slipped through and grabbed Zero, who stared fearfully at the other girl. She looked to be around her own age. Her face was radiating hatred.

Panicked, Zero tried to push the other girl away. But instead of simply being shoved back, the girl was blasted off her feet, flew through the air all the way to the other end of the room, where she collided with the wall. Her body made a horrible crunching sound and slid down the wall, until it landed on the floor with a dull thud. Zero looked fearfully down at her glowing hands. She had never done something like that before. She was almost certain that she had just killed the other girl.

All the other children started screaming and crying, but instead of charging at her, they moved away, so Zero and the man in the white coat could walk to the center of the room.

For some reason, the man next to Zero was smirking despite all this commotion, and he looked down at her with something akin to pride.

Zero kept throwing glances to the other end of the room, wondering if she would see the girl she had just slammed against the wall getting back on her feet. She doubted it. Constantly, she was turning her head, watching the other children, wondering which one of them would be the next to attack her.

She tried to avoid eye contact. There was too much hatred. She wanted to look down at her feet so bad, but she had to be alert in case there was another attack. How could she possibly have deserved this? Didn't the other children know that she only wanted to talk to them?

Another group of guards pushed through the crowd and joined Zero and the man with the white coat in the middle of the room. Behind them, wearing a metallic collar similar to the one around Zero's neck, was a tall boy. He must have been at least four years older than Zero.

The boy was obviously very angry. He glared at her with eyes looking as if they were about to pop out of their sockets. He was sweating profusely and had foam at the corner of his mouth. Every few seconds, his hands glowed brightly, and Zero knew that he had powers just like her.

The older boy scared her, and she tried to hide behind the man in the white coat, but he pulled hard on her ponytail, forcing her to stand her ground.

The boy screamed something that Zero didn't understand, spit flew out of his mouth. He lunged forward with his arms outstretched, and Zero flinched. The guards held the boy back, but they were struggling.

"Attack him," the man in the white coat ordered.

Zero didn't want to. She shook her head.

Immediately, the collar around her neck sent a sharp jolt through her body and all her muscles contracted. She didn't know how long she was writhing on the floor before it finally stopped.

She whimpered, trying to remove the collar, but one of the guards stepped on her hand.

"Get up," the man in the white coat said.

Sobbing, Zero pulled her hand out from under the guard's boot and got back on her feet. Her legs wobbled under her weight. Her muscles were sore from the electric shock.

Instead of ordering her to attack again, the man in the white coat simply signaled to the guards to release the boy who had been constantly fighting to get to Zero.

The boy ran forward, screaming and glowing brightly. Surprised, Zero only just dodged his first punch, but was caught on the chin by his other first. Her head violently snapped back, and she slid across the floor. For a moment, she lay there, looking up at the ceiling. Everything was a bit fuzzy. She could hear the other children cheering all around her and felt them spitting in her face.

"Monster!" Someone shouted again, other children laughed at her pain.

Then she felt her body being lifted into the air, and she saw the boy standing there with his arm outstretched, laughing maniacally as she soared higher and higher.

"Slam! Slam! Slam!" she heard the children cheering.

And that was exactly what happened. The boy brought his hand down, and she was thrown back down, smashing against the floor.

Everything was black and quiet for a moment, before she finally was able to see again, then came the overwhelming roar of the crowd, then the pain.

She screamed and curled herself into a ball.

"Fight back!" the man in the white coat shouted, and she felt another crippling electric jolt going through her body.

It finally stopped, and she lay panting on the floor.

"Attack!" the man shouted.

"Fight!" another guard yelled.

One of the spectating children ran forward and kicked her hard in the stomach. She groaned, looking up at the girl standing above her, holding her hands in the air as she was congratulated by the rest of the children.

Zero didn't know exactly what happened, but suddenly she was on her feet and had her fingers around the other girl's throat. The girl appeared shocked, and tried to grab her forearm. But Zero squeezed until her nails penetrated the other girl's skin. Slowly, the tips of Zero's fingers disappeared into the girl's neck until she reached the windpipe. With one quick motion, she ripped out the girl's windpipe and stepped back as blood sprayed out onto the floor.

The boy she had been fighting tried to punch her again, but she ducked and brought her glowing fist up to the underside of his chin. The boy landed on the floor with a dull thud, and Zero jumped on top him, pummeling her small, bloody hands into his face. The boy was already limp, but she continued to slam her fists into his face, screaming and crying at the same time. It was as if everything around her was blurred, and the pain she had felt was gone. She only felt anger.

She continued to punch the boy, whose face was reduced to a bloody pulp at this point, until a guard tried to grab her shoulder. She spun around and hissed at him with gritted teeth, there was a flash of blue light, and the guard was shoved back into the crowd of children.

A few of the other children also tried to stop her, but she sent them flying away, not quite sure if she had killed them or not.

Then she felt another jolt coming out of the collar and going through her body, and she fell off the boy as she lost control of her muscles. The man in the white coat hurried forward, pulled out a massive needle and injected some pink liquid into the side of her neck.

Slowly, as the collar stopped sending electric currents through her body, she could feel whatever she had been injected with beginning to work. Everything suddenly seemed so pleasant, and, for some reason, she could not stop smiling. She sat up and ran her hands through the blood pool on the floor. It was warm and the feeling sent delightful tingles up through her spine. Something compelled her to put two fingers into her mouth, and she tasted the blood. It was delicious.

"Monster!" she heard another outraged cry from the crowd, but she just smiled and continued to lick her fingers individually.

Still sitting in the middle of a pool of blood, she looked at the two corpses, she felt proud, and another wave of pleasant tingles rolled through her body. Even the man in the white coat seemed happy now.

"Remember this feeling," he said, his voice sounded strange, as if he was speaking in slow motion.

She nodded slowly. She wanted to remember. She wanted to do anything as long as she could feel like this all the time.

"Can I fight again?" she asked the man. Her own voice sounded much deeper than usual. It was strange.

His smile broadened. "Not right now."

Zero frowned, drawing circles in the blood with her finger.

When she was escorted back to her room, she followed quietly, humming to herself all the way. As she entered the room, she could feel the effect of the injection wearing off, and she became more aware of her surroundings again.

"Didn't you want to do tests today?" she asked, as the man in the white coat walked her over to the shower in the corner of her room.

"Later," he said. "Shower first."

She looked down herself, noticing that she was covered in blood. The original white, black and yellow colors of her clothes had almost disappeared in a sea of red.

Sobering from her injection, she gasped and ran to the mirror above the sink. There was blood all over her face and in her hair as well.

She looked at the man in the white coat. He just smiled back at her, gesturing towards the shower.

Zero kicked off her shoes, pulled the shirt over her head and dropped her pants. She looked up at the man before taking off her panties.

"Aren't you going to leave?" she asked. The adults usually left her alone when she had to use the toilet or took a shower.

The man slowly shook his head and motioned for her to continue undressing. So she pulled down her panties and stepped into the shower.

The man dragged the chair from the desk, placed it in front of the shower and sat down to watch her wash herself.

"You had a slow start today, Zero," he said. "But you did well in the end."

She didn't know what to say to that, so she continued to wash herself in silence. Looking down at the drain in the floor, she saw how the red liquid ran down her legs and eventually disappeared.

The man leaned back in his chair, still staring at her.

"You missed a spot on your forehead," he said.

Zero allowed the water to hit her face and rubbed her forehead as hard as she could with her hands.

When she opened her eyes again, the man was standing right next to her, holding out a towel. "I think that's enough," he said and turned off the shower.

Zero grabbed the towel, dried herself quickly and wrapped it around her body. She didn't like the way the man looked at her.

"You will have at least one fight like this every week from now on," he said, as another adult walked in and placed a tray with food on the desk. "You should get something to eat. I'll be back later for those tests."

The man was about to leave.

"Wait!" Zero said, holding the towel tightly to her slender form. "What is your name?"

He took a few steps back towards her, Zero swallowed hard.

"Why does it matter to you?" he asked. He did not sound angry, mostly curious.

She shrugged. Actually, she did not know exactly why she wanted to know the man's name. Maybe it was because the adults who visited her room, even though they did not treat her nicely, were the only personal relations she had. She did not know the names of any of the other children, only that her own name was Subject Zero. At least she should get to know the names of the adults. And she did know a few of their names.

"You can call me Dr. Pavlov," he said and left Zero alone with her food.

-X-X-X-

The Teltin Facility – Pragia – 42 Months later (2174 CE)

Subject Zero, now 13 years old, was on her back, looking up into the lab ceiling, blinking away tears. Her feet had been strapped into stirrups, while a doctor was examining her down below.

She gasped and fought against the restraints as he touched her with a cold instrument.

"Easy now, Zero," Dr. Pavlov, who was standing next to her, said.

The doctor stopped touching her and looked up for a moment.

"Continue," Pavlov told him, and the doctor stuck his instrument back in. Zero whimpered.

"Are you sure you haven't been bleeding?" Dr. Pavlov asked.

She shook her head. "I have bled before. Many times."

"I'm not talking about bleeding because someone hit you in the arena," he said.

Zero was confused. What else would make her bleed?

To her relief, the doctor pulled his instrument out again. "She is speaking the truth," he said, turning off the lamp attached to his head. Zero wondered what he could possibly tell by looking up there.

She looked up at Dr. Pavlov, hoping that he would be satisfied now and declare this examination over. She felt very exposed, lying naked on the table with her feet strapped into stirrups.

"What else can you say?" Pavlov asked his colleague, who was placing his instruments on a tray held by a nurse.

"I think it is unlikely she will ever menstruate or have children," the doctor said, pulling off his rubber gloves. "Her biology is too altered at this point."

Dr. Pavlov nodded. "So breeding is off the table?" he asked.

The doctor wiped sweat from his brow. "I would say so. But we should run tests on some of the other subjects."

Zero, who was mostly just satisfied that the doctor had left her alone, did not care that she apparently would never have children. In her experience, children were not particularly nice anyway.

Dr. Pavlov released her straps and Zero pulled her feet out of the stirrups. She was cold and could not wait to get her clothes back on.

"You are growing," Pavlov noted, looking up and down her naked body as she stood on the freezing lab floor in front of him.

She looked down herself. She too had noticed that she was growing in certain places and becoming taller. But the most remarkable changes were all the new scars. She didn't like them, and she was starting to suspect that the adults were coming into her room at night and operating on her. She often found a new scar when she woke up and was sore.

She was also becoming stronger, and she found that she was getting better and better at controlling her powers. Except when she was angry or scared, then her body would just hurt others whether she wanted to or not. She was terrified when this happened. She hated not being in control of her own powers, but had to admit that she wasn't. The adults had also realized that her powers were evolving. Zero no longer just fought another kid in the arena fights. Instead, she was pitted against groups of up to five children. Sometimes she even fought adults, so called 'inmates' that Dr. Pavlov had bought for her to 'play' with.

She ran her hand along the straps that she had just been tied down with. This was another consequence of her increasing power. The adults had begun to put her in restraints whenever they thought she might object to an activity. She also constantly wore the collar and could be shocked to unconsciousness if she did not behave as the adults wanted her to behave.

She reached out for her clothes, and Dr. Pavlov handed them to her. She quickly put on her uniform, hoping to get some warmth back into her body on the walk back to her room.

She was escorted by Pavlov, who was walking a few steps behind her, holding the remote control for her collar in his hand. As they walked down a long hallway, a group of guards came around the corner. They were escorting a boy around Zero's age. She almost never met any of the other children, except when she was fighting. It sometimes happened when they crossed paths in the hallways like this. But the other children usually called her names and tried to spit at her, usually leading to them being hit by the guards.

Zero had never seen this boy before. Not in the arena, and not when she was looking out of the window in her room. He was new. That usually meant that he wouldn't be as mean to her as the other children. But that always changed after the first fight.

This boy was definitely new. She would have noticed him. He was tall, had black hair and appeared not to fear the guards.

Looking at him, Zero felt a weird sensation in her stomach. Something that she had never felt before. For some reason, she wanted this boy to notice her, to talk to her.

She had given up on trying to make friends with the other children at this point. They always ignored her when she tried to communicate with them through her window, and the tension in the arena was only getting more and more hostile for every fight. But something about this boy made her want to give it one last chance.

He was smiling at her as they passed each other, and she shyly smiled back.

"Hi," the boy said, waving at her, but one of the guards hit him with his baton, breaking the boy's arm. He screamed and grabbed his elbow.

Zero had stopped in the middle of the hallway, glaring at the guard with the baton. Dr. Pavlov tried to nudge her forward, but she had started to glow.

"Zero…" Pavlov said in a warning tone, holding up the remote control for her collar. "Calm down!"

She looked down at the boy, sitting on the floor, crying and holding on to his limp arm. Still glowing brightly, she looked back at the guard, who raised his baton and took a step towards her. Without realizing that she had done anything, the guard was suddenly thrown into the wall with such force that he turned into red mist, covering all the other guards, Dr. Pavlov, the crying boy and Zero herself in blood.

She smiled down at the boy, who had stopped crying. But this time he didn't smile back. Instead, he looked absolutely terrified. She was just able to register a current pulsing through her body from the collar, before everything went black and she collapsed on the floor.

Zero woke up and found Dr. Pavlov sitting in a chair next to her bed. She wondered how long she been out. She looked down and noticed that she been washed and dressed in a new uniform.

Dr. Pavlov looked concerned.

"You killed a man," he said.

Zero sat up in her bed. This was not the mood he was usually in when she had killed someone. She knew why, she was not allowed to harm the adults.

She nodded. "What happened to that boy?" she asked.

"Don't you worry about him!" Pavlov shouted angrily. "You will be punished tonight, Zero, after the fight… Do you understand that?"

"But…"

Pavlov pressed his remote control, and Zero felt another current rolling through her already sore muscles, passing through her heart and making her mind go blank. All she could sense was the pain. She rolled around on her bed, screaming, kicking and flailing her arms. When it finally stopped and she regained control of her body, she noticed that she had peed herself.

"Filthy animal," Pavlov sighed, noticing the wet patch on her pants and the bedsheet.

Zero started to cry, and Pavlov pushed her face into the mattress. "Pull yourself together," he shouted and stormed out of the room.

She knew that he would be back soon. She had to fight. But she had never felt less like fighting. Not only had the electrical shocks made her muscles very sore, but she felt pathetic as she laid there, crying on her mattress, soaked in her own urine.

Perhaps it would be easiest if she just allowed the other kids or the inmates, or whoever she had to fight, to kill her. She didn't think she could survive much longer. Unfortunately, she had been unable to kill herself. She was being monitored day and night, and every time she had come close, guards had rushed in to stop her, often by using the collar to knock her out.

Of course, the guards had removed all the objects that Zero might potentially use to commit suicide from her room, but she was still experimenting. Lately, she had been tying the sheets around her wrists and tried to rip them off.

Zero rolled out of her bed, tossed away her wet clothes and crawled under her desk to cry. She sat there with her knees pulled up to her chin and cried until a guard came in, carrying a fresh uniform.

She peeked out from under the table, expecting the guard to just leave the clothes on the desk and leave, but he still stood there, glaring at her.

Scared, Zero quickly crawled back under the table. But the man grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her out. She screamed and tried to hold on to the table, but she couldn't get a grip. Her naked body slid across the floor, until the guard stopped dragging and pressed his knee into her chest, pinning her to the ground.

"That man you killed," he sneered. "He was my brother."

Zero couldn't breathe, she tried to push against the man's leg, but she couldn't move him.

"Your brother was a dick!" she gasped. She almost hoped that the guard would just kill her.

He placed his hand around her thin neck, squeezing just above her collar. Zero coughed and tried to kick the guard. Even though a part of her just wanted to die, she simply wasn't able to let him choke her. Her body was fighting back.

Seconds before she slipped in unconsciousness, the guard suddenly started floating upwards and his grip around Zero's neck loosened. She blinked her eyes, and the guard was slammed back down to the floor, landing right next to her with a horrible crunch.

Zero coughed and tried to take deep breaths to get some oxygen back into her system. The guard, who she had assumed was dead, started groaning, and she quickly crawled backwards away from him.

Then, in a sudden fit of rage, she ran back to the guard, who was lying face-down, still groaning, grabbed a handful of his hair and smashed his head into the floor until he was quiet.

Dr. Pavlov entered just as she slammed the guard's head into the floor for the last time and sat down on top of his body.

"I didn't want to…" she panted, gasping for breath. "He…"

Pavlov waved his hand dismissively, and Zero shut up.

"He shouldn't have been in here," Dr. Pavlov said.

Zero didn't feel the least bit safer with Pavlov than she had with the guard who tried to strangle her, and she hurried back to the desk, planning to crawl back under it. But Pavlov stopped her.

"Put your uniform on," he said, pointing to the clothes on the table. "We're going to the arena."

Wasn't it enough that she had killed two people in one day already? Pavlov still wanted her to fight?

When she hesitated, Dr. Pavlov raised his hand and wriggled the remote control. Zero sighed and put on her uniform.

"I'm tired," she complained, zipping her jacket. She didn't know why she said it. It was not likely to change Dr. Pavlov's mind about sending her to the arena.

"Here's a suggestion," the doctor replied as they walked out of her room. "Just attack when I tell you to attack today. If you don't force me to shock you, and if you attack before your opponent can hurt you, you could save yourself a lot of pain."

As always, the abuse was instant when Zero and Pavlov entered the arena. The other children spat on her and yelled terrible things, as they carved their way through the crowd.

"I hate you!" she heard someone yell.

"Fuck you, bitch!" shouted another.

"I hope they fucking kill you!" a girl, no older than eight, screamed.

Zero had stopped trying to figure out why they were so mean to her. As far as she knew, they were able to play, but she had to stay by herself all the time. She had it so much worse than them, and she was not the one who wanted to fight all the time. She couldn't help if she was stronger than them and always ended up winning. That was not her fault.

She had come to terms with the fact that the other children simply just hated her. And with the way she was being treated, she hated them just as much. She didn't even feel bad about killing them any longer, all though she still didn't exactly enjoy it.

Pavlov and Zero stopped in the middle of the room, and the doctor held out a syringe with pink liquid. Zero eyed it hungrily. There was the wonderful needle that would make all her pain, all her horrible thoughts, all of it, go away. She wanted it. She needed it. Now!

She tried to grab the syringe, but Dr. Pavlov quickly put it back inside his white coat.

"Win the fight for me, Zero," he whispered in her ear. "And I'll give you a double dose."

She had to have that injection. If she had to kill a few more of these kids who hated her anyway, what did it matter? All she could think about was the sensation that pink liquid would give her when she won.

As usual, the children in the crowd, all in grey uniforms, parted to make room for a group of guards, bringing in whomever she had to fight. This time, it looked like she would be up against four other children.

All four, three boys and a girl, seemed to be a few years younger than her, but they looked like they couldn't wait to attack her. The guards had to hold them back.

She readied herself, envisioning Dr. Pavlov's needle piercing her skin and the pink liquid being pumped into her blood, spreading a feeling of warmth and invincibility.

Suddenly, her four opponents were released and sprinted towards her. Zero took off and tackled the first boy to the ground. Another boy swung his fist wildly, but she grabbed his wrist, and broke his arm with a biotic punch to the elbow joint.

The girl grabbed her from behind, and while her arms were locked against her sides, the last boy kicked her hard in the stomach. She coughed, but quickly jumped into the air and threw her bodyweight backwards. She landed on her back, on top of the girl, who groaned and let go of Zero's arms.

The boy she had tackled to the ground was back on his feet and tried to attack Zero while she was lying down, but when he tried to punch her, Zero kicked him hard in the chest, sending him flying backwards into the crowd. She was certain she had punctured the boy's lungs with his broken ribs.

She quickly rolled off the girl and jumped to her feet. Assuming that the boy with punctured lungs was out of the fight, she only had to defeat three more, one of them with a broken arm, to get her prize.

Not surprisingly, the boy with the broken arm allowed the two others to attack first. The girl, who seemed to have caught her breath, had a wild look in her eyes and tried to use her powers to lift Zero into the air, but her power was no match, and Zero was able to keep her feet on the ground. She could feel that some force was trying to pull her towards the ceiling, but she was able to fight it, and it quickly faded.

Zero rushed forward, grabbed the girl's pigtails and yanked her head down while moving her knee upwards. Her knee, with a considerable amount of biotic power behind it, absolutely crushed the girl's skull, and Zero threw her dead body into the horrified crowd.

The two remaining boys simultaneously tried to grab her, but she smashed their heads together and they fell to the floor.

She took a deep breath, believing that the fight was over, but the guards started pushing other kids from the crowd towards her. She was quickly surrounded, as the children gathered around her.

Feeling cheated out of her reward, she angrily sent out a shockwave, knocking down several of her new opponents. The rest attacked her, and she felt herself losing control. She tried to fight it, but eventually just had to let go and give into her rage.

The first boy who reached her had his throat ripped out. The second, a much older boy, almost an adult, managed to grab the collar of her uniform, but she drove her charged fist into his stomach, passing straight through his intestines. She closed her fingers and pulled a bloody handful of slimy strings back out. The boy collapsed on the floor, and Zero sent two girls, who had almost reached her, flying across the room.

The guards kept pushing children towards her, and Zero killed one after the other. Covered in blood, she had lost all control and had lost count of how many she had killed. She had just punched a small boy to death and spun around herself, looking for the next attacker, when another boy was shoved in front of her. He looked familiar. It was the boy who had actually smiled to her earlier in the hallway.

She hesitated for a moment. Did she really want to kill him?

But the boy didn't smile at her now, he was horrified and angry. Like the other children, he tried to grab her, and Zero kicked him just above the kneecap, forcing him to the ground, where she stomped on his head until she couldn't recognize his face anymore.

Finally, the guards stopped pushing children towards her, and Zero collapsed on the floor, trying to catch her breath. She was surrounded by dead bodies, and if she was not given her syringe immediately, Zero was certain she would soon be dead herself. She was too tired to move, but inside her, the rage was still boiling. She could have killed them all, everyone in the room. She could literally hear herself growling like a wild animal as she stared up into the ceiling.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dr. Pavlov coming closer, stepping over the bodies. In his hand was the syringe with the pink liquid. She closed her eyes and waited for the sweet sting of the needle, the moment of miniscule pain that indicated that so much indescribable pleasure was coming.

A few seconds later, she felt the needle plunging into the side of her neck, and she relaxed as she felt the pink liquid being pumped through her system. Then it came. A rush of warmth spreading from her chest and all the way up to her head and out to her fingers and toes, taking away all the pain and clearing her head of all thoughts.

"Was that a double dose?" she asked drowsily, remembering something about a promise along those lines.

Pavlov nodded and pulled her to her feet. "Any more would stop your heart," he said.

"Just give me another shot then," she said, patting his pockets for another syringe.

He took a step back, and she felt one of the guards picking her up. She didn't like being carried around, but she felt too good to complain. She closed her eyes and just enjoyed the way her body was feeling. When she opened them again, she was back in her room, lying on her bed in the darkness.

She could feel the effect of the pink liquid was wearing off. She did not know how long it had been since her fight, but the lights were off in her room and outside her window. It had to be night. Her bedsheets had obviously been changed, and she noticed that she was not wearing any clothes. They had probably washed her after the fight.

She tried to sit up in her bed, but it felt like every single muscle in her body was burning. Moaning, she crawled out of the bed towards the toilet in the corner of the room. She reached it just in time and threw up into the bowl.

She groaned and flushed, before pulling herself up to the sink next to the toilet. She greedily drank, feeling like the water just couldn't come out of the tap fast enough. When she finally could not drink any more, she looked in the mirror and jumped. Staring back at her was a girl covered completely in glistening blood. It took a second before Zero realized that it was herself. But she was not covered in blood, only her reflection in the mirror.

"You killed that boy," the bloody reflection accused.

Zero trembled. "No, you did! I liked him!"

Her reflection shrugged, and licked the blood off the palm of her hand, "It's all the same. He's dead, isn't he?"

Zero nodded. He was dead. She looked down at her own, clean palms.

"You're so weak!" the reflection laughed, even her teeth were tainted with blood.

"Fuck you!" Zero screamed. "Fuck you! I hate you!"

She turned around and limped back towards her bed where she crawled under her sheet and began to cry. She almost wished she was back in the arena. At least she was not alone with her own thoughts there.

-X-X-X-

The Teltin Facility – Pragia - 8 Months Later (2175 CE)

"Cerberus," she whispered to herself, pounding her forehead into the tabletop. "Cerberus, Cerberus, Cerberus," she repeated, banging her head into the table every time.

Her forehead was bruised and very sore, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. There was an entire world out there. A world with different planets and aliens, not just humans like all the ones she had met so far in her life. She had overheard some of the guards talking about it. Apparently, the world was far greater than what she had believed her entire life.

She had asked Dr. Pavlov about it, but he had just slapped her and told her not to worry about the size of the world. This was the reason for Zero's current mood. She knew that there was another world out there, somewhere. But she would never get to see any of it.

"Cerberus," she sighed and banged her head on the table again.

The adults had been giving her reading material containing this word since she was six years old. She was still not sure exactly what it was. But she was almost certain that it had something to do with the logo that she was seeing all over the place. It was on her own uniform, on Dr. Pavlov's white coat, on all the guards and on the grey uniforms worn by all the other children.

"Cerberus," she chanted and pounded her head against the table. She had been thinking about that word a lot lately, as evidenced by her bruised head and bloodstained table. But no matter how hard she hit her head, she just couldn't get the word out of there.

She could sit like that for hours if the guards did not come in to stop her. On several occasions, Dr. Pavlov had asked her why she was doing it. She could not provide a good answer. He had assumed that she was bored, which she could not deny. But instead of giving her new books or letting her leave her room, as she had hoped he would, he had arranged daily fights. And she found that she was actually enjoying the fights. Not only was it the only time she was allowed to leave her room, but she was no longer reliant on Pavlov's needles to bring forth the warm feeling. All she needed was the thrill of the fight, and a particular good kill would have her smiling for hours.

Having just turned 14, she was still growing rapidly. She could feel herself changing, and it confused her. She did not dare talk to Dr. Pavlov about it. He would just conduct experiments on her, but some of the changes were too obvious to try and hide from him, like her growing breasts.

Other changes were internal. She sometimes had a strong urge to touch herself underneath her blanket at night, and sometimes, when she was looking out at some of the older kids outside her window, she even wished that they would touch her in the same way. It was extremely confusing, but absolutely not something she would be talking to Dr. Pavlov about.

She finally stopped banging her head on the table and decided to take a shower. She had been doing that a lot lately. She did not know why, probably because she did not have anything better to do.

Standing under the shower, she noticed how all the children outside her window suddenly started running in the same direction and disappeared through a doorway. She had seen them behaving strangely many times, but this was different.

A moment later, an earsplitting alarm started howling and all the doors in the room outside her window opened. Suddenly, children started pouring through the doors before disappearing through the same exit that the others had taken.

Zero turned off the shower, toweled off and put her clothes on quickly. She ran to her window, slammed two hands on the glass and pressed her sore forehead against it. She didn't want to miss a single detail. It seemed like something important was going on outside.

The alarm continued to howl. It didn't exactly help her get over her headache. Then she heard a series of loud bangs, and she felt the glass vibrating.

"What is going on?" she shouted to no avail. She was all alone.

There was another loud explosion, and the window vibrated so much that Zero thought it would shatter. Unfortunately, it didn't.

There was a single loud beep, and Zero whirled around to see the door to her room opening. But the hallway outside was empty. As soon as the door was all the way open, an even louder alarm started.

"Subject Zero is loose!" someone shouted through the loudspeakers.

Zero looked around her empty room. She was all by herself and the door was open. Could this be real? Sensing that this was her opportunity to see the world outside, she hurried out of the door before it was closed again.

She slowly walked down the hallway, barefoot and with wet hair. It was surreal to be outside her room without an escort.

A door further down the hallway opened, and two guards rushed through. They were holding rifles, and immediately pointed them at Zero.

"Go back in your cell, Zero!" one of them shouted.

She was scared and just about to just turn around and hide under her desk back in the safety of her room.

But this was her opportunity, unlike any she had ever had before.

"No," she said, stomping determinedly with her naked foot.

The two guards slowly moved forward, pointing their rifles at her.

"Zero!" the same guard shouted again. He sounded very angry. "Go back inside, now!"

She had begun to glow, bathing the hallway in blue.

"Take this collar off," she said, pointing to the metal ring around her neck.

The guard shook his head. "Go back!"

Zero moved her hand quickly, and he was slammed into the wall and slumped to the ground.

The other guard fired his rifle, but Zero held out her arms and created a barrier, like a giant blue bubble, around herself. The bullets lost their momentum and fell to the ground.

The guard looked scared.

"Take it off!" Zero shouted, and the rifle flew out of the guards hand and shattered against the wall. "TAKE IT OFF!"

The guard reached his hands in the air. "I can't! You'll need Dr. Pavlov," he spoke quickly.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"I don't know," the guard replied.

Zero moved her hand quickly upwards, and the man shot up into the ceiling, breaking his neck. His body fell back down, and Zero quickly ran out of the door the two guards had come through. She could hear her heart pounding along with the pitter-patter of her feet against the cold floor.

Nothing looked familiar and she didn't know where she was. She had only ever been to the labs and the arena, so it didn't take long for her to lose her bearings in the maze-like halls.

"Warning all Cerberus personnel. Subject Zero is loose. I repeat. Subject Zero is loose. Facility-wide order: Switch to tranquilizer ammunition. This is an order: Tranquilizer ammunition only!"

Zero rounded a corner just as the message finished and surprised a guard who was in the process of exchanging his ammunition for tranquilizer rounds.

"Hey!" he yelled, but she had already tackled him to the ground, pulled his sidearm out of its holster and shoved the barrel into his mouth, preventing him from calling backup.

"Pavlov?" she asked, sitting on the man's chest with his own pistol resting on his tongue.

He shook his head, and Zero pulled the trigger. She was surprised by the way it felt when she fired the pistol, and she almost dropped it. She decided to leave it on the guard's body and continued through the facility.

Running through an open door, she suddenly found herself in the arena. She had entered from the opposite site of the room of the entrance she usually used.

The room was a chaos of children and guards fighting each other. There were bodies all over the floor, mostly children in grey uniforms. It looked like they had been gunned down.

"Zero!" a boy shouted. He was fighting two guards with batons.

She paused. She hadn't heard any of the other children calling her anything other than Monster, Freak or Bitch for years.

"Zero!" the boy shouted again, before one of the guards managed to hit him square in the face with his baton.

Another guard noticed her, just standing there in the entrance, and he quickly raised his rifle and fired at her. She had no idea if he was using tranquilizer ammunition or not. In either case, she quickly raised a barrier and held it until the guard's rifle stopped firing. She then sent a shockwave into the crowd, ripping both guards and children to pieces.

A group of children started running towards her. She instinctively threw them away and sent a series of shockwaves through the room, destroying most of the people in there and scattering the rest.

Even more children came running towards her, but she caught them in a singularity, which she then detonated, spreading their little body parts throughout the room.

A door on the opposite side of the room opened and Dr. Pavlov entered the arena along with two guards. He looked across the room and noticed Zero. She saw him pulling the remote control for her collar out of his pocket, but before he could press the button, Zero had disappeared in a flash of blue light and reappeared right in front of him, knocking the remote out of his hand.

Before the two guards could react, she had lifted them both into the air, slammed them together and let them fall back down to the ground right behind Dr. Pavlov, who stood frozen with his empty hand outstretched.

"Zero," he said, "It's me."

He held his hand out to her, as if he was inviting her to take it so he could just follow her back to her room.

Zero reached up and wrapped her long, slender fingers around his hand. Pavlov smiled, until she broke his wrist and twisted his arm behind his back, dislocating his shoulder with a loud popping noise.

Pavlov screamed and fell to his knees in front of her.

"Don't move," she whispered in his ear and bent down to pick up the remote control that Pavlov had dropped on the floor.

She could still hear the children and the guards fighting in other parts of the facility, but she had the arena and Dr. Pavlov all to herself.

The remote control was small and had a dial with six different settings. She assumed that could be used to control the strength of the shock. Another button was labeled with a lightning bolt. That had to be the actual trigger mechanism. And the last button, the smallest, was green with a symbol that could look like an open collar.

She held the remote right in front of Pavlov's face.

"Is this how I take it off?" she asked, pointing to the green button.

She did not want to risk shocking herself to unconsciousness, so she wanted to be sure that she was pressing the correct button.

"Yes," sobbed Pavlov.

Zero twisted his arm a little further, and he screamed. "Are you sure?"

"YES!" he cried.

To minimize the risk, Zero turned the dial to the lowest setting and pressed the green button. There was a soft click, and she could remove the collar. Being free from this device that had been strapped to her neck for four years, a constant threat of being tortured or knocked out, was amazing.

She rubbed her neck and enjoyed that she could rotate her head without the metal pinching her skin.

"Zero," Pavlov whispered between his quick breaths. "Zero… Please… You have to understand..."

But Zero didn't want to hear Pavlov begging for his life. She just needed him to show her the way out. So she ripped his jacket and his shirt off without any consideration for Pavlov's dislocated shoulder and broken wrist. His neck was too thick for the collar, but she was able to place it tightly around his bicep.

"Let's see how this works," she said, turned the dial to level four and pressed the button.

Dr. Pavlov rolled around on the floor in violent spasms until Zero realized that she had to turn off the collar by pressing the button again.

"Oops," she said gleefully, noticing how Pavlov had bitten his tongue and was bleeding profusely from his mouth.

She kicked him between the legs. An area, she had learned through her many fights in this very room, where boys were very sensitive. She did not know why. But it seemed to work on Dr. Pavlov, who doubled over and coughed, spitting blood out onto the floor.

Zero gave him another burst of electricity, but made sure to stop before Pavlov lost consciousness. On his arm, she could see the skin reddening around the collar, and she wondered how her own neck looked where the collar had sat.

"Get up!" she said, biotically lifting the doctor to his feet. "And take me to the other world."

"The other world?" he cried. He could barely speak with his bitten tongue and so much blood in his mouth.

"Get me out of here!" she yelled and held up the remote control in a threatening manner, just as he had done to her almost daily since she was 10 years old. "WALK!"

Pavlov started limping out of the arena, and Zero followed.

They walked through the station, and wherever they met guards, doctors or children, Zero murdered them all. She wanted to destroy everyone. She could barely control herself, having to walk right behind Dr. Pavlov. She wanted to kill him, right there and then. But she had no idea how to get out on her own.

She could feel her head throbbing and her vision was blurred. She was losing control of her temperament, and the constant howling of the alarm and the flashing lights were not helping at all.

"This way," Pavlov said, limping around a corner.

"SHUT UP!" Zero shouted, trying to cover her ears.

The shirtless Pavlov stopped and looked back at her. She was fighting against a thousand inner voices, screaming at her to kill him immediately.

"SHUT UP!" she shouted again, ripped a loudspeaker down from the wall and smashed it to pieces. "SHUT UP!"

Two children came running around a corner, and Zero used her powers to pull them towards her. She strangled them both, pretending they had Dr. Pavlov's face. The violence made her feel better, and she was able to push Pavlov forward without murdering him.

Finally, they reached a huge door, and Dr. Pavlov stopped.

"This is it," he said, pressed a button and the door opened slowly.

Zero was hit by a wall of hot, moist air and a thousand different smells that she had never encountered before. It was a greater sensory overload than she could handle, and various objects in the reception next to the entrance started floating towards the ceiling.

She took a few deep breaths and calmed herself, and the datapads, coffee mugs and office chairs that were floating around inside the offices fell back down.

She turned to Pavlov, who seemed to have realized that this was it for him.

"What is Cerberus?" she asked him, doing everything she could to resist ripping him to shreds. "Tell me, and I will make it quick."

But Dr. Pavlov never got to say a word. A group of guards had caught up with them, and as soon as they came around the corner, they shot Pavlov right in the face.

"No!" Zero screamed. "He was mine!"

She threw away the remote to the now useless collar and put up a barrier to protect herself from the guards' bullets. She was so angry, she couldn't even concentrate enough to count the number of guards. She waved her hand, and Pavlov's body flew through the air, taking out one of the guards. Zero used the commotion to close the distance between herself and the remaining guards. She twisted one's neck and used his rifle to kill the rest.

Pavlov's dead body was lying on top of the guard, who was still groaning. Zero quickly crushed his windpipe by stomping on his neck. Then she picked up Pavlov's body and dragged him back to the entrance, where she placed him, sitting up against the wall by the reception. She plunged two fingers into his bloody mouth and used the blood to write 'Cerberus?' across his naked chest. She did not know why she did it, but she felt that he owed her an explanation.

She then hurried outside and was once again overwhelmed by seeing, feeling, smelling and hearing all these things that she had never experienced before.

There was no ceiling above her, only sky. And hanging up there, shining so bright that it hurt her eyes to look at it, was the sun. The feeling of its warm rays on her pale face was amazing.

She breathed in the air. It had a nice smell, and she fully enjoyed it filling her lungs. Outside was great! There were enormous green plants and bird noises instead of flashing lights and beeping alarms.

She started running through the grass on her bare feet, enjoying how soft and warm it was, compared to the cold floors on the inside. She could even appreciate how the blades of grass tickled her.

She ran far away from the entrance, but stayed along the perimeter of the building. Finally, she laid down on her back, hidden in the tall grass, and she started crying. She cried and cried, not quite sure why, she was so happy.

It was too hot outside for her uniform, and she quickly pulled off her pants and her jacket and left them in the grass. Just wearing her panties and t-shirt, she jumped up and continued to run along the perimeter of the facility. Eventually, she came to a large open space where rows of weird-looking machines stood. They all had the same logo on the side. The logo that had also been on her uniform. She saw a doctor running out of the facility, climb into one of the machines. A few seconds later, the machine started floating off the ground until it flew straight up into the sky.

"Whoa," Zero said, sneaking closer.

She had just figured out a way to get far away from the facility. Keeping her head low, she ran to the nearest machine and climbed in just like the doctor had done. On the inside, there was a single seat in the front and several rows of seats in the back. She sat down in the front seat and looked at the abundance of buttons in front of her.

"Do I have to fly myself?" she sighed. She was getting a headache just from trying to count the number of buttons in front of her.

There was also a vertical stick. Zero grabbed it, and the buttons in front of her lit up.

"Underage operator detected," a female voice said. "Would you like to activate auto-pilot?"

Zero jumped in her seat. "Who are you?"

"I am your shuttle VI. Would you like me to fly for you today, miss? I must remind you that it is against Cerberus regulations for minors to operate shuttles."

Zero nodded. "Um, yes. Fly for me!"

"Where to, miss?"

"Away!"

"Is there an emergency?" the shuttle VI asked.

"YES!" Zero shouted frustratedly. She wanted to punch the machine.

"Acknowledged. Prepare for takeoff to Pragia orbit."

Zero screamed, as she thought someone had grabbed her from behind, but it was just an automatic safety harness, holding her tightly in her seat while the shuttle took off.

A few minutes later, the safety harness finally released her, and Zero climbed onto her seat and looked down.

"Shit!" she shouted and sat back down. "That's a long way down. Where are we?"

"We are currently orbiting the planet Pragia in the Dakka system," the lady inside the machine said. "The surface is approximately 300 kilometers below us."

"Fuck me," Zero sighed. "Where can I go?"

"There are no other habitable planets in this system," the shuttle VI answered.

"What about another system?" Zero asked without knowing exactly what was meant by 'system'.

"We do not have sufficient fuel to leave the system," the VI warned.

"Fuck!" Zero cursed. "Just get me as far away from this place as possible!"

"Warning: Spending all our fuel would leave the shuttle dead in space. Eventually, we would run out of oxygen as well, and any humans onboard would suffocate. Are you sure you wish to proceed?"

"Yes!" Zero shouted.

"Acknowledged," the VI said, and the shuttle left Pragia's orbit.

Zero crawled to the back of the machine and laid down on the first row of seats. She tried to fall asleep, satisfied with the machine flying on its own. But sleep didn't come easily. She couldn't stop thinking about everything that had happened, Dr. Pavlov, the new exciting world she had discovered and the mysterious Cerberus.

Eventually, she did fall asleep and didn't wake up until she heard a loud alarm. For a brief moment, she thought she was back at the facility.

"Warning! Warning!" the shuttle VI announced. "The shuttle is being boarded."

Zero jumped to her feet. Had the adults caught up with her?

The door in the side of the shuttle opened and a sharp light blinded her.

"It's just a kid," someone shouted, as several dark silhouettes entered.

Zero backed up against the other side of the shuttle.

"It's okay," one of the dark silhouettes said.

Then someone turned on the light in the shuttle, and Zero screamed. In front of her stood three tall monsters. They had four eyes and greenish skin.

"Easy, easy," one of them said. "Have you never seen a batarian before, human?"

Author's notes:

Thank you for reading. If you liked it, make sure to follow this story so you will be alerted when part 2 is published. Once again, I strongly recommend reading 'Biotic Beginnings' as well. If you like this story and especially if you liked 'Biotic Beginnings', I would also recommend following me (10tonsoffun). I will be putting out one-shots that are spin-offs of 'Biotic Beginnings' in the future. So follow me to make sure you are alerted when that happens.

Oh, and make sure to leave me a review. They are my pink liquid injection.