by K. C. Finn
“Hi girls.”
It sounded like she had cotton wool balls in her cheeks.
“What the Hell happened to you?” Owe asked.
Michaela’s puffy face deflated a little. As Doctor Lyons ushered the girls into the room, Lori made a sideways study of her petite new friend. Michaela’s acne had taken an explosive leap forward, making her face look like one of those relief models of mountain ranges that Lori recalled from high school geography. She looked like a bobble-head doll, sinking into her chair with hands rising to cover her crater-laden cheeks. Lori crossed the room to sit beside her, and Michaela’s smile returned.
“They found out what demon attacked me in my sleep because of this,” she mumbled, holding her face, “so that’s something.”
“Mmmm,” Doctor Lyons interjected. Lori spared her a glance. The woman’s lips were pursed. “And if you hadn’t had all that foundation on your face, we’d have found out weeks sooner.”
“But it’s still treatable, right?” Michaela’s eyes were small and pleading, lost among the pustules that had invaded her face. “Greg said-”
“That’s Mr Allardyce to you,” Lyons said, “and I’m afraid my colleague has a habit of speaking before time. The man couldn’t keep a secret if you paid him.”
Michaela nodded, her head sinking. Lori watched her small feet drag on the carpet for a moment.
“Why haven’t you changed?” Owe asked loudly.
Lori glanced up, surprised to find that Owe was talking to her.
“Changed into what?” Lori said.
“That,” Owe replied, pointing to Michaela’s poor face. “Or this.” She tapped one of her stumps. “Anything.”
Lori looked to Lyons, eyes wide, but the doctor was watching her like everyone else.
“I have changed,” she ventured. “I feel different. Strong. On Sunday, I shoved this woman and-”
“Yeah, but you don’t look different,” Owe cut in. Her bright eyes shone, brow furrowed over them. “How is it that you get to still look normal?”
Normal? You?
There was a real bitterness in Owe’s tone, and even Michaela had looked away. Lori had always been the big girl, the tall girl, the different girl. Here, she was envied for that. It made her throat twitch, and she shuffled in her seat.
“Will I change?” she asked, looking back to Lyons.
“Our job is to research and treat, Miss Blake, not to predict,” the doctor replied. “I’ve never personally worked with a Sown of Cervinae before. We thought there wouldn’t be any more cases. You’re a rarity, actually.”
Owe scoffed, throwing up her hood again.
“No more cases?” Lori said. “Why-”
Two firm knocks rattled the door, and Allardyce was already in before Lyons could respond. He held two files out to her, each with a name across the name. Lori couldn’t read them from where she sat.
“Faunus.” Allardyce nodded. “I hope it helps.”
“I’m sure it will,” Lyons answered. “Thanks Greg.”
But when the door had closed behind Allardyce, Lyons set the files aside with a little shake of her head. Lori was about to ask again about the rarity of being a Cervinae victim, but Lyons slapped her palms on her clipboard. The noise made every girl flinch.
“We’ll begin with the usual check-ups.” She got to her feet. “Height, weight, B.P. Come on girls, you know the drill.”
Lori volunteered to go first. This time, her mind was far from the awkwardness of being weighed in front of the others. She wanted all the checks over and done as quickly as possible. Once they were, it was Owe’s turn, and she kicked up a fuss straight away about removing her huge coat. Lori saw her opportunity, heart pounding in her chest.
“Doctor Lyons, I need the loo. Do you mind if I go?”
The doctor didn’t look at Lori, but she nodded over Owe’s noisy complaints.
“Take a left into the next corridor, and they’re on your right.” Lori crossed to the door with wide strides. As she opened it, Lyons added: “Don’t be long. Meditation and CBT session next.”
“Like that’s any use either,” Owe snapped.
Lori let the door close on the argument. Why did Owe keep coming back, if she hated what the D.C. were doing so much? She looked up into the ceiling of the corridor she was in, clearing her head. There were smoke detectors, but none of those circular camera things like they had on buses. As far as she could tell, nobody would see where she was going. Perhaps it made sense, not to have the D.C.’s secret hybrid teenagers on camera. Whatever the case, Lori thanked her luck as she backtracked down to the Records door.
Nine, six, nine, six.
There was no-one in the upper corridor as Lori opened the restricted door, but there were a few voices on the other side. Here the walls were a slightly darker shade of grey, and a metal staircase descended before her. The voices were muffled echoes, and Lori couldn’t see any shadows moving in the hallway down below, so she began to take the stairs. She walked lighter than she ever had in her life, careful not to make any clanging echoes on the steps. Her sweat-soaked palms teemed with nerves as she slid them down the banisters.
At the bottom of the staircase, the corridor branched off in two directions, and Lori realised there was a lot more going on downstairs than just records. To her left was a door marked ADMINISTRATION, and several other doors after that. To the right were two doors: one labelled WARD SISTER’S OFFICE, the other SANITATION. After that the corridor trailed off around a corner. The left-hand doors sounded more office-like and clerical, but as Lori began to walk towards them she heard voices echoing ahead again. She spun on her heel. Should she run for it?
Run? You? Right…
She bolted for the SANITATION door and it opened outwards into the hallway. It was chock-full of cleaning supplies with no space to leap into the closet and hide they did in the movies. All Lori could do was stand on the other side of the door, concealed from the approaching voices, and hope that they assumed a cleaner was getting their supplies out.
“Another one? That’s three this week,” said one voice, a male’s.
“It’s so frustrating,” replied another, this one female. “I really thought we’d cracked the code on the elevated heart rate at least.”
“Nope. She’s not responding to any of the new drugs,” the male replied. “Had to advance her.”
“Damn…”
A door creaked and closed with a click. Lori peeped out. The two people had gone. She had no idea which of the rooms they’d gone into, and the prickle in her spine warned her that they might come out again at any minute. She closed the door to the cleaning closet and set off down the right-hand corridor, light steps all the way. Perhaps she would find another way around or a place to hide while she waited for the strangers to clear the room again. She hadn’t come this far to find nothing.
There were more noises at the bend in the hallway, but these were the beeps and clicks of machines. Lori rounded the corner carefully, peeping first, hands gripping the wall in case she needed to pull herself back. At the sight that filled her eyes, her too-strong fingers crunched hard into the plaster of the wall. She let go, feeling the dent they’d caused, but not looking back. Lori approached a set of double doors with cross-hatching covering the windows, so you couldn’t see what was inside until you got fairly close. There was a sign beneath the windows, made from the same lettering as the ones upstairs:
BOYS’ GROUP A
She sidled close to the criss-cross of the glass. Lori saw six hospital beds in a long ward with no windows. They were arranged in three rows of two, facing one another, and each one contained a body. Some were shifting, thrashing under white sheets, whilst others lay still. Aside from its patients, the ward was deserted. Lori opened one of the double doors, scanning the ceiling again. Still no cameras. The tang of antiseptic invaded Lori’s nose, travelling down the back of her throat. She clicked her tongue at the foul taste, but stepped into the room all the same.
&nb
sp; The nearest bed contained a still figure whose head and torso were visible above his blankets. What was left of his human face looked about Lori’s age, though it was hard to tell through the scales. He had developed reptilian scales all over, shining green and silver in the fluorescent lights of the ward, and the fingers of his hands seemed to have morphed into fused pairs. A permanent Vulcan sign. The file at the end of his bed read DOUGLAS, OLIVER. Lori swallowed hard, stepping closer.
He was hooked up to two IVs that had thick needles, to piece the scales, Lori supposed. Her gut did a flip at the idea of the D.C. putting one of those in her arm. Oliver’s eyes were closed, silver lips fluttering with unspoken words, and his chest heaved out a shallow wheeze now and then. Was he dying? Those thick scales had to be weighing heavy on his lungs. They weren’t meant for a human body to carry. Lori found it hard to find any other explanation for him being down in that ward.
A noise from behind made her jump. Lori dashed a few paces back to the doors, but when she glanced around there was no sign of anyone. It was the patient in the middle right-hand bed, thrashing a bit more noisily than before. Had he noticed she was there? He was speaking now too, murmuring something that Lori had to step closer to hear.
“C-c-c-c-cold. C-c-c-c-c…”
Even as she reached the bed, Lori sensed the wave of heat coming from it. She let one hand drift over the thick blankets at the boy’s feet, sensing the warmth there. She listened for a familiar hum, then nodded. He had an electric blanket on, like the ones she and Mum had back at Fir Trees for the nastiest nights of winter. But the boy beneath the heated sheet was shivering, one wild limb thrashing now and then. His face was pale brown and terribly young, perhaps only about thirteen. The chart read PATEL, DIPESH. Lori picked it out of its holster, flipping it open. There were a lot of different medicines and dosages that she didn’t understand. Three pages of them, in fact. But after that, she found a profile with Dipesh’s details, and a series of dates.
PROJECTED VISITATION
This was the thing Owe had mentioned, the demonic check-up. Lori looked at the date and did a little calculation. This one had passed by ten months ago.
PROJECTED HARVEST
She gulped hard. Dipesh’s Harvest had passed too, at the end of August. He had survived it. The D.C. had apparently protected him from that, as they’d promised to, perhaps by keeping him locked away here. There was one final date on the list.
PROJECTED SATURATION
Tomorrow. The last date would be tomorrow’s.
“C-c-c-c-cold.” Dipesh rattled under his blankets again, his voice weak.
Lori wanted to reach out and soothe his frozen brow, but she remembered what had happened when she’d clashed with Owe’s bare shoulder. There were people she couldn’t touch anymore. She settled for resting her hands on the blanket over Dipesh’s chest. It burned her like Hell to touch it, but the boy’s contorted face relaxed. He let out a breath, his body still at last.
Lori looked around at the rest of the beds, watching each sick boy locked in his own struggle. Every one of them had drugs pumping into their arms and files at the bottom of their beds. Were they all reaching this ‘projected saturation’? Lori thought about what the word meant, and high school chemistry was the only thing she could recall. Saturation was the point where something had soaked up so much of something else that it couldn’t take any more. Like a sponge taking in water. Had these boys taken so much of the demon in that there was no room left?
Dipesh’s breathing slowed into the heavy depths of sleep. Lori let him go. She didn’t want to think about what was going to happen next for Boys’ Group A.
The other end of the ward had a matching set of double doors. Getting close to the cross-hatch, Lori looked through them and found another ward that mirrored the one she was in. If that was Girls’ Group A, she couldn’t bear to see it. Between the two wards there was a small corridor with a circular desk, which looked like a nurses’ station from a hospital. There was no-one at it, but Lori reasoned there was much more chance of getting caught if she carried on down that way.
She began to retrace her steps. When she’d crept her way back to the administration door, all was silent. She took a few more paces down the hallway, reading the other doors until one turned her eyes wide:
RECORDS
She put an ear to it, listening hard. No voices within. Lori opened the door, gently at first, waiting for the call of anyone who might be inside. When no noise came, she let her shaking hands swing the door open, slipping inside and closing it again as swiftly as she could. She fumbled for a light switch, eyes flashing in the sudden darkness. A second later, the flicker of a fluorescent bulb illuminated the room. It made her jump, and she looked around again for someone flipping the switch. Lori let a stunted sigh loose in the empty space. They must have been automatic.
Most of the small room was taken up by filing cabinets, though there was a paired bank of computers on standby to Lori’s right. Without a hope of finding the right passwords, the PCs were useless. Lori walked along the cabinets instead, reading various labels. The records here went back as far as 1970, grouped by gender and decade. Lori’s lips mouthed the labels as she walked on.
“Male, 1990 to 2000… Female, 2000 to 2010… Male… Ah…”
She pulled open the most recent drawer for males, glancing down into the files. They were like the ones Allardyce had brought up to Lyons, and the ones at the ends of the beds in the Group A wards. A last name, first name arrangement. Alphabetical order. Lori pushed her way through the files quickly. Parker. Patel. Porteous. Qadeer. Radmall. Rosenbloom. Rudge. Saed. Singh.
Lori frowned. She rifled again. No Ruiz. Perhaps she was on the wrong track after all. Yet the circumstances surrounding the Barcelona killings were too similar to ignore. The murders were only six months old. Surely Matiás would be filed here if the D.C. knew what he was? Lori shut the drawer. It gave a huge bang and she flinched immediately. Her newfound strength would take a lot getting used to. The next drawer caught her eye – the female records for recent cases. She toyed with her bottom lips for a moment. It was impossible to resist.
BLAKE, LORELAI
Lori held the file gently, perusing the first page full of details she already knew. Her vital stats from last week were there, plus the first prescription that had issued her. No doubt Doctor Lyons would be updating the same file later on. Were they expecting this medical record to end up as long as Dipesh’s? An endless list of treatments to solve a problem which clearly had no cure. A tight feeling tugged at her chest. Lori turned the page.
PROJECTED VISITATION
She gripped the file harder, the cardboard crumpling between her fingers. Next week. Her Visitation was expected next week. Lori fought against the hot, wet sensation clogging her throat.
PROJECTED HARVEST
June, next year. Was nine months all she had before that thing came back and devoured her for good? A bead of sweat dripped from the tip of her nose, soaking into the page. Had it always been so hot down here? There was a ring burning around her neck where her collar touched her skin. Lori didn’t want to read on, but her eyes were already travelling further down the page.
PROJECTED SATURATION
October, next year. Thirteen months. Thirteen months before… what exactly? Before she joined those poor kids in the Group A wards? Lori gulped hard. Perhaps Dipesh and the others were rare cases. They couldn’t all end up that way, abandoned and suffering, isolated from their parents and everyone who cared about them. And with only a vein-full of drugs to keep them under. They couldn’t. Lori gasped for air, and it was hot too swallow. She wouldn’t.
PROJECTED MANIFESTATION PATTERN: SOWN OF CERVINAE
Lori let out a scoff. So much for Lyons’s lie about the D.C. not predicting what was going to happen. There were some bullet points below the title: like a symptom-checker for when someone was having a stroke. She recognised the first few with a grimace:
Inability to cope with heat. Incr
eased strength. Bouts of sleepwalking. Cervinae are traditionally a shapeshifting species, capable of manifesting additional appendages to aid them in combat.
Lori’s mouth fell open, and she was too stunned to change that.
It’s unlikely that a Sown of Cervinae will manifest any outward physical characteristics when in a non-transformed state. Records indicate that partial or full manifestation of the demon form can be provoked by inducing distress. See also Alvarez, 1971; Wesley, 1984; Conor…
There were other names and dates, leading up to only a few years ago, but Lori’s eyes could take no more. She did her best to flatten out the file that her panicked fingers had mangled, replacing it in the drawer. A shapeshifter. She ran her hands over her body. Every lump and bump that she hated. She squeezed the flab here and there. She could change. Lori lifted her hands and ran them through her hair, lifting the weight of it from her warm brow. She thought of Owe’s stumps, and of the antlers of the Cervinae who’d attacked her.
You can change, said that horrible voice in her head. Become that monster. Anytime. Anywhere.
Lori refocused on the drawer. Perhaps she could do some good for the girls in her group, answer some questions that Lyons wouldn’t. She searched for Michaela Shaw, somewhere near the back. Lori’s eyes snapped to every name as she flicked the files by, every poor girl blindly suffering the same fate the whole world over. Her fingers froze suddenly. A connection. One she hadn’t expected to make.
RUIZ, GABRIELLA
The door clicked open, a firm voice filling the room before Lori even had time to turn.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Allardyce’s warm smile was absent. He had no sneer or grimace on his lips, but his dark eyes gleamed, and Lori’s heart tried to make a break for it up her throat. She straightened up, knocking the drawer shut with her knee. The tall official folded his arms.
“I didn’t see anything,” Lori lied, her words falling out in a jumble, “I was curious. I need to know what’s happening to me.”