by L M Feldt
“It felt like acid.” I gripe. I am coming out of my dark mood. I hate the way it had to happen but I am very happy to be alive right now and not some mad creatures dinner.
“That is because the substance was un-knitting you and putting you back together properly. Undoubtedly a difficult experience.” Aito replies.
I grunt at his obvious understatement. ‘Difficult’? Really? I had never felt such pain in all my life.
“Tomorrow,” Aito continues, oblivious to my irritation, “I can set up a lab and do a test run.” Four sets of eyes pin him down. “Not that lab.” He quickly amends.
There is really no need to say it but not one of us is going back in there, ever.
Sleep comes to me eventually. Now that the adrenaline has worn off and my stomach is full, I feel listless and unsettled. I wonder what freakish twist I am descended from. Why my body was able to incorporate metal into my design….and wings….and what is the strange shimmering power that sometimes surrounds me in a fight? And orange eyes….why wasn’t I killed at birth? For some reason I think that Aito knows the answers. He wants a blood sample for his tests, fine. We will trade. Blood for information.
I wake from a deep sleep, suddenly gasping for air that will not come. I am pinned down by the neck and arms and my wings struggle beneath me, useless.
Thirty
Six arms and an angry blue face clear things up. He has come for the boy just like he said he would. I struggle and push him off.
“Where son?!” He rasps angrily in my ear.
“You let your son…? Never mind. He ran off. I haven’t found him yet.” Who lets their kid go off with strangers?
“No.” He shakes me. “Son never run.”
“He did run. He was the only smart one.” I reply. It makes sense to me now. This man and the boy have to be related. They are both marked by their serpent god. They are both crazy. I nod to the darkened doorway of the complex. “He’s still in there. He got lost while we were occupied.”
“Why? Why he not safe?”
I sigh. He has every right to be upset. I think my excuse it pretty good though. I was pretty busy at the time.
“I’m sorry. I will help look for him again. It is much larger inside than it looks from here.” The labs and various rooms interconnect and stream away in an endless maze. Getting lost is easy.
I look to the east. The sun is just starting to lighten the sky. I try to settle the six armed blue man, and rouse everyone. We had worked well as a team yesterday. I hope we can do it again to find the boy.
Hours later I am trudging down yet another corridor with the blue man and Micha and his dead pet. I feel like I have been walking for years down the same hallway. Everything is the same softly lit white. Same doors. Same…
“Blue.” The blue man says, tapping his arm and pointing at a blue line on the floor. “Go.”
Of course. It makes perfect sense. If you happen to be blue, follow the blue line. I stifle a giggle and trail after him. It isn’t funny. I know that. The boy must be terrified, alone and imagining the impossible monster he’d seen hunting for him, covered in our blood. He probably ran until he dropped. I know the feeling.
We follow the blue line for a while until we spill out into a huge open room. Tables fill the center and the edges are lined with odd machinery. There is dim lighting here, like the rest of the complex, the soft ambient light that chases away the darkness but doesn’t quite brighten anything. It is welcoming and spooky at the same time.
“Hoy aiee!” The shout in my ear takes me by surprise. I watch as the blue warrior dashes across the space with no regard for safety.
“Alive.” Mutters Micha to my left. I look down and his remnant gives me a glassy eyed stare.
We find the boy newly woken in his fathers arms and struggling for freedom.
“I’m fine. Fine. Stop papa.” He is surrounded by scores of odd wrappers, small things with writing on them. I pick one up. It smells funny, sweet.
“Stop papa.” The boy tries to push the man away. “I don’t feel so well.” He groans. There is a long whispered conversation which I ignore. I am comparing the wrapper in my hand with a small bar stuck in one of the machines along the wall. They are the same. I approach the machine looking for a way in but there is no door or opening that I can see. I hate this place, I really do. I pound the glass cover and punch the buttons on the front but nothing happens.
“Here.” The boy pushes me aside and drops a metal circle into a hole I hadn’t noticed. The bar drop down into a slotted space at the bottom of the machine. A skinny blue arm reaches in and pulls out the bar. He breaks the bar apart and hands a small piece to each of us. I swirl the piece around on my tongue and it is probably the finest thing I have ever put in my mouth. We all groan in unison when it is gone. The blue warrior slaps his sons shoulder approvingly.
I glance down at the boy. Very resourceful. Too bad he ate all the sweets though. No wonder he doesn’t feel so great.
The rest of the day is spent in hard labor. Our six armed blue friends have gone home leaving us to provide the manual labor for Aito’s lab. I dutifully carry obscure machinery and drop it where instructed but I have no interest in the outcome. I hate this place with it’s uniform pale walls closing me in and dead monsters soaking in vats of poison. It is unnatural and I can almost hear the evil whisperings of the men who played god here. I want to be away from this place, on our way to the city of lights.
“Aito says he is ready for you.” Naoaki appears suddenly at my elbow. She has been using her twist more than ever in this place and even though she has now startled me for the tenth time I understand her desire to stay invisible. This place plays on your fears and it is too easy to imagine another monstrous creation just around the next corner. I arrive at the reconstructed lab to find Aito sporting a white lab coat. I can’t imagine where he found it.
“You match the walls now.” I extend my arm and notice that I am the last to have my blood drawn. I had intended to ask some questions but now, with everyone in the same room, it doesn’t feel like the right time.
“It will take me a little time to separate and identify all the DNA markers I am looking for but I hope to have a testable serum sometime tomorrow.” Aito says.
It isn’t ready the next day or even three days later. Aito is holed up in his lab and I am starting to worry he won’t leave it. Naoaki brings him food but otherwise none of us enter the complex. I spend my time gathering edible roots with Naoaki while Khane tries to teach Micha to fish. I pause to watch them. Micha actually manages to get a fish on the line, a small wormy looking thing. He happily dangles it in front of his pet’s face jiggling the pole and making the tiny fish dance. Suddenly, the remnant hops forward and gulps down the fish, hook and all. They have to cut the line, leaving the hook still inside Micha’s pet. I crouch in the weeds, unnoticed, laughing silently. Why a dead thing would feel the urge to eat I have no idea, just an old habit maybe, but the memory of Micha’s shocked face has me chuckling the rest of the day.
Day four brings gray skies and the smell of rain. We pack everything up, including the dried fish and roots and move into one of the rooms nearest the entrance to stay dry. We check on Aito and from the flush in his face I know he is done with his elixir. But there is a hesitancy in his attitude rather than the expected prideful exuberance.
“So, you’ve created a healing potion….” I prompt.
“Sort of. I think it will help in extreme circumstances but it isn’t refined to the degree I’d like. I need better equipment for that and some of the ingredients are plant based, so I will need to identify and gather those. Later, when we reach the city.” He pauses and for the first time I think he is truly unsettled by something.
“What? Are we dying or something?” Naoaki bursts out.
“No! No…It’s just….I ran your samples and tested for everything I could think of. Khane has the marker for obesity in his DNA strand. Naoaki will have children with yellow eyes no matter the
father. Micha has within him the gene for long life. Keira, in addition to her high tolerance for pain she also has the ability to turn off targeted receptors at will.” Aito pauses again, hesitating. “And all but Micha are tagged with the blood of Royalty.”
“Oh!? You mean we’re related to Royalty?” Naoaki’s face lights up. She thinks this is good news but I know better as some of the pieces fall into place.
“He means,” I clarify, “That we are the bastard discards of Royals who stepped outside their respective marriages.”
“Is she right?” demands Naoaki.
“Yes. Mostly.”
“There’s more isn’t there?” I can see it in his eyes.
“Yes. As the offspring of a Royal I doubt any of you would have actually been Banished. They would have gone through the motions, had the Trials, cast you out….”
“But taken you away when no one was watching.” Finishes Micha. We all stare at him. “Don’t you remember when you found me? There was supposed to have been another person there with me, a girl.”
“My sister.” Says Khane flatly.
“Sorry, I guess I forgot that. They came for her just as I was shoved out the gates. In all the fuss no one noticed when they led her away.”
“Why did they take her, what happened to her?” asks Naoaki.
Khane looks lost and very sad. I think he knows the answer, that he’d been struggling with it the whole time I’d been carrying Fish on my damaged back.
“I don’t know for sure.” Aito hedges.
“You suspect, though. Why? Why did they take his sister?” Insists Naoaki.
Aito sighs.
“I think they keep those of Royal blood elsewhere when they come of age. Banishment is a tradition hundreds of years old and can’t be broken. When a Royal needs a replacement, if they’ve been hurt….they need to have easy access to a fresh material that’s compatible.”
“Oh god.” I mutter. It’s even worse than I’d thought.
“We’re replacement parts!” Naoaki is outraged.
“Yes. They can make anything from you to serve the Royal whose DNA you share. If they are sick they can test possible restorative measures on you first. If they have lost an arm.....” Says Aito.
“What about you? Are you of Royal decent too? Is that why you wanted to break out? Have you known all along?” Presses Naoaki.
“They were starting a harvest weren’t they?” I ask quietly. I knew Aito had broken into the labs. But he did that all the time. That last time had been different. Not only had I had to rescue him from what looked like the start of a very serious operation but I had killed the technicians in the process. “What did they want from you?”
“Well, they didn’t engage me in light conversation, it wasn’t a tea party, but from my quick peek at the paperwork before I was caught and from the tools they had lined up, I suspect they were after fresh bone marrow.” He says softly.
“And if you hadn’t been caught sneaking around you would have been ‘Banished’ and taken away.” I state. I am sickened by the extreme inhumanity of it. That people, any people could go along with something so monstrous….I may look like a monster but I could never, even in my nightmares, dream up something so terrible. I stare at Aito’s face and I sense he is still hiding something more. I am afraid to ask.
“What else?”
“Keira is a direct descendant of the Queen, not a bastard but the third daughter.” Aito holds up a hand to the raised voices. “The paperwork next to mine stated that she was next for harvesting. They needed her DNA to supplement the clones of her first two sisters who were killed in a recent rebel encounter. Without her there is no succession.”
“And what would happen to me?” I know the answer. Why do I keep asking these silly questions?
“They would take what they needed and your body would be discarded.”
Thirty One
We leave the island and it’s laboratory of horrors the next day. It is a silent group that packs up supplies and pushes off from shore, all of us lost in our thoughts. I watch the sun’s play on the water and I feel weightless, dazed and disconnected from everything around me. I am daughter to the Queen, not a cast off bastard but in direct line to the throne. Third daughter…with the orange eyes. That the Queen herself has visible mutations I don’t share with the others. Maybe my memories are faulty. The woman that had looked at me as a babe had love in her eyes. So, how did I come to be a source for body parts? Who could be so cold?
The day passes uneventfully for the most part. The serpent god is either sleeping or busy somewhere else. There is a breeze to cool the heat of the sun and clumps of reeds rustle as we pass by. This part of the lake is changing the further west we travel. The open water is getting smaller, breaking down into narrower waterways, rivers with floating shores of tall grasses and an occasional shrub. Small bird-like creatures with brilliant green and purple feathers call to each other and flutter and dart. It is idyllic and peaceful. Why are we leaving, I wonder. There is life here and safety of a sort. We could set down roots and carve out a place of our own, live long quiet lives without ever having to deal with the difficulties of what or who we are. A part of my heart will always live here but even as I think of staying I know down to my very bones that this shining, peaceful life is not my destiny.
Wistful, I help set up camp once we finally find land that is solid enough to support our weight. There are larger trees here and a set of tall gray stones, the outcropping we were told to look for. They look more like fangs then a gateway to another land. The blue man had called them Death’s Teeth and it feels right now that I see them. Tomorrow we leave the land of sunlight and life and I wonder what new horrors await us on the other side.
We have been traveling for four days now through an arid, rocky country. There is some vegetation and small animals to hunt so we do not have to dip into our supplies. It is quiet too which is a surprise to me. I think I have come to expect an attack or a waiting monster around every turn. The long days of monotonous walking have given me plenty of time to think. Some of the mystery of our existence is cleared up. I understand now why we are not all killed at birth. They want to keep us around for spare parts. Then we are ‘Banished’, and I while I do wonder how it is decided who is truly Banished and who is taken away, I am very glad that Aito insisted on our escape. Why he did not confide in me I am not sure, though he has always been secretive. Even now I wonder about the nights I have caught him communicating to some unknown person. Who is Aito really? Is he a member of this resistance I have only now learned of? Is he a spy for them? If so, why send a spy into a compound of royals’ discards? What would the resistance want with us?
I suppose that within a society based on succession it would be helpful to have a member of the family line, for leverage. None of us but Aito could pass for a norm, however, so even if they killed off a whole family and implanted Khane for example, society would still reject him. For something like that to work the whole system would have to be changed. I am finding, as I think about everything Aito revealed, that there are more questions than answers. I want to just ask Aito but there is a part of me that still doesn’t trust him and another part that suspects he won’t answer anyway. I am also relieved. If Aito was working for the government then he wouldn’t have insisted on our escape, right?
“Well, I think you would make a great Queen.” Says Khane as he sits down next to me.
We are eating roasted snake around our small campfire and I pause with my food halfway to my mouth. I wonder if Khane’s semi-loss of empathy has left him senseless. What an idiot thing to say.
“Are you stupid?” Asks Naoaki, saving me from having to say it.
Khane blushes and ducts his head.
“Don’t jump down his throat, we all have different ways of dealing with the thought of being spare parts….or not. I’m still wondering if I should be insulted that no one wanted anything from me.” Micha surprises us with his outburst. It may be the most I have e
ver heard him say in one sitting.
I wipe my fingers and turn to Aito.
“Why did they want me if they were just going to clone my sisters anyway?” I had been wondering ever since Aito first told us. If they have an exact copy, a clone, what part did they require from me? Aito pauses before answering and I can see he is considering deflecting the question like usual.
“How much do you know about genetic engineering?” He asks, finally I give him a blank stare. I know about mutations, everyone does, but that’s about all. Aito sees my look and sighs in exasperation.
“Human DNA is made up of two separate polynucleotide strands to make double—stranded DNA in the shape of a double helix. This is where the map of our makeup is kept, the ‘directions’ of how we grow and are put together. A clone has a double strand just like a regular human.” Aito pauses to be sure we are following. “Mutants, or twists, are called that because we have an extra strand, sometimes two. This strand holds the information for our particular twist and it is usually attached to one side of the normal dna strand. Within this extra strand are markers for things like resistance to disease and longevity….both very desirable to someone with only the normal double strand, like a clone. Also, without that extra strand, despite the markers for a possible mutation that it carries, the clones would not be considered true descendants. They would not be able to inherit the Throne.”