Still Writing...

I'm still working on my frozen child story, so I figured that since I just passed 5000 (took long enough...) I'd post another excerpt thing. It's verrry disconjoined, but it makes sense somewhat.
You guys are so sweet. :)

(continuing the last two sentences from the last chapter thing.)
...I sat Rachel down on a large rock nearby while I tore the tops off of radishes and placed them in the bowl Evan had carved out of stone, full of the water.
That’s when I lost her.


Chapter: Different Point of View:
“Very nice. She’s in great condition.”
Dr. Georgia Graeden stood next to her new intern, a senior in High School named Samuel Collins. He was looking intently at the little girl, subject A436 by the name of Rose. According to the records, he was related to her, making him her guardian. There was no record of how they were related, but he was amazed and appalled, not knowing about this little girl, frozen for 150 years.
“Doctor, can I see the other subjects?” he asked hopefully. Maybe someone in there would be familiar to him, and maybe they knew Rose.
Dr. Graeden looked up at him sharply. “What makes you think we have other subjects? This was a very risky experiment preformed in 2007, and I am even surprised A436 came out this well. Don’t push your luck, Collins.”
He nodded. Dr. Graeden was strict, and he knew it was rare for her even to appoint interns, especially when they had relatives involved in experimenting or research departments. So far, these last three days after she’d told him about Rose had been exciting, exhausting, and very hard. He’d worked for her for a year-and-a-half before she told him, but it had all been worth it. He’d seen people helped, cells mutated, and seemingly impossible things done in matters of seconds.
Now, as of thirty minutes ago, there was a relative of his, older than him by almost 137 years.
Rose was four, almost five, and couldn’t talk. It was one of the few things researchers still didn’t know about, but concluded she’d made the choice not to do. Sam, himself, didn’t believe it, but instead of getting grief over how fickle an argument between a soon-to-be senior and a Chief Research Scientist for a national organization, he dropped it.
Rose currently was in a state of induced sleep. She’d be like this for another estimated two and a half hours before she woke up, and time was seeming to slow down for Sam.
As Dr. Graeden looked at the boy, she felt sympathy, something very rare for a woman of her demeanor. He didn’t have a clue about the others, the chemicals, or even more so, the reasons Rose was frozen in the first place.
“Well, come on, Samuel. We’ve got to finish loading the dry ice into the cryogenic freezer. That and the antimn.”
Antimn was discovered only a year earlier to help the cryogenically frozen children keep performing bodily functions, feel fed, and anything else, including creating dreams of which the children all shared in order to keep of social ability. Now, all Dr. Graeden wanted was for this girl to come out perfectly fine and sensible, proving her great grandfathers theory on freezing human beings was correct.
Sam looked regretfully at Rose before walking out the steel door that would separate them until the end of the day, as Dr. Graeden led him out the door, rambling on about single-celled organisms.

Chapter Two:
Rachel had always loved to explore with one of us, but had never gone alone, so when I looked over at the rock and saw she wasn’t there, I panicked.
The radishes were no longer important, and as I ran to the beach, where Alice and the boys were gathered around a fire, cooking the fish, I didn’t notice that the part of the beach I was walking on was full of cracked shells that were piercing my feet.
“Evan!” I yelled, scared. He looked up in alarm, then said something to Alice before running up to meet me.
“Bloody hell, Sam. What did you do to your feet?”
I looked down. Blood was gushing through my toes and around my feet, but I didn’t bother explaining.
“Rachel’s gone. I set her down on the rock by the fire and wasn’t watching and when I looked over, she was gone, and now I feel really, really bad because I don’t know where she is and there’s coyotes on the island or something else that could eat her, and I-“
“Shh, Sam, it’s alright. She’ll be fine. She couldn’t have gotten far.”
I collapsed on the ground in tears. “We have to find her, Evan… I can’t believe I lost her.”
“We will.” He assured me, motioning to the kids who’d been watching the whole spectacle.
“Okay. Brendan and Haden, into the woods, around the edges. No going too deep. Alice, just walk the beaches.”
The nodded and headed off. I was still in the sand, my hands over my face, blood sticky on my feet.
“Sam,” Evan said gently. “I promise, it will be okay.”
“No…” I choked. “It won’t. She comes to the island alone, and I swear I’d take care of her like a mom, and now I don’t have a clue where she is… It’s not okay.”
Evan sat down on the sand next to me and hugged me. I was shocked at how much it reminded me of the first time I’d woken on the island. I’d cried, scared and afraid, not knowing anything about who I was or what I was doing here, and he’d held me like this, rocking me back and forth.
“I’ve got to find her.” I finally sighed, and he helped me stand up. “She’s my responsibility, and I’m not going to wait idly while she’s lost.”
Evan nodded in agreement. “I’ll go look in the deep woods. You need to get your feet bandaged first before you do anything.”
I told him I would, then as he headed off, started climbing the hill I’d just climbed down. This stupid, freaking island, I thought, has too many stupid, freaking hills.
My feet hurt horribly, especially since I’d just butchered them again, but I had to find Rachel. If she’d been hurt, it was going to take a lot more than cut up feet for me to feel better about losing her.
It didn’t take long for me to find the only thing I needed to find to know that she was gone: It was a tiny necklace, laying on the rock that she had been sitting on, with a stone carved into a heart tied onto a string of braided grass. Why I didn’t see it before, I didn’t know.
I didn’t say anything, but only picked it up and stared at it in shock. The realization of what had happened hit me suddenly.
Rachel, my Rachel, had disappeared from the island.
When I had first come to this place, I found myself wearing islander clothes and a necklace, exactly like the one I was holding in my hand, except with a stone carved into a swirling pattern, kind of like a cinnamon roll. Evan had a hand on his, Bradley had a star on his, Alice had a fish on hers (oh, the irony), and Haden’s had waves engraved on it. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get them off, even taking flame to them a few times. All we’d gotten out of it was several burn marks on our necks to show off.
Now, holding Rachel’s necklace in my hand, I knew no one, no matter how hard we looked, could find her. She was gone.
Evan chose that time to come up behind me, leading the other three members of the search party with him.
“No one could find her, but she’s got to be around here somewhere. Maybe she’s playing around, and following us while we’re… Sam?”
I sighed, tears once again threatening to wind that familiar trail down my face. When I talked, my voice came out tired with a trace of finality. “She’s gone.”
I turned around and threw the necklace on the sand in front of Evan, then turned and ran for the only alone place I knew: A small cave down under the shore.
It took me ten minutes to get there, running, my feet sorer than ever. No, I hadn’t let any form of harm come to my Rachel, I’d let her go to somewhere beyond an island. Somewhere I couldn’t get to, reach, or protect her.
I’d failed.
Knowing that, the tears were flowing, but it was dark and instead of focusing on crying and trying not to, I was concentrating on running as fast as I could and avoiding running into trees, though I didn’t quite manage as well as I thought. I noticed as soon as I was out of the forest, into a clearing. My arms were scratched to the point of bleeding, threatening to invoke infection if I took the small swim it required to go under the beach into my rocky cave. Who knew what was in this water and how it would affect open cuts?
Deciding I didn't care anymore, I dived into the water from the beach cliff and swam up into my cave.
When I got there, everything was as it had been before. The one good thing about a cave like this was that there was no wind to blow things over, just water to get it wet. Sadly, the temperature dropped quickly and deeply at night, and all I needed right now was a warm place, a soft bed, and non-radish food.
In other words, I needed to be off of this island and back with my family. I knew, though, that these people on this island with me were my family, and I couldn't leave them if I wanted to. It was like Rachel had been taken away by a goddess that loves her and we were left to die, wishing we could be where she...
No. I shook my head furiously to clear the thought. I don't want to be with her, I want her to be here, with the people she loves.
But then again, what if the people she loved were the people she was with now? Maybe her parents were holding her, loving her, and she was talking to them in a house with air, heat, and real food, not the stuff we had on the island.
With that crippling thought, I found a sharp rock, waiting patiently for me to grab it, and cut my thumb open vertically. I needed the pain, I missed her so much. I wanted out of this horror movie and into life again, back where we, I, came from.
I watched the blood for a while, then stuck it down in the cold, salty water. I was shivering with the cold and wetness, but fell asleep quickly from the exhaustion of it all.

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A suicidal MC... That's something new for me. Hope you enjoyed it! I have much more, but I didn't want to make it too long. :P

Lauren.

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I'll post some more in a few days. :D