Wild-born

by Adrian Howell

  “Where are you?” I yawned, sitting up on the bed and stretching.

  “I will see you in person presently. However, please understand that at our first meeting, your powers will be restrained.”

  I looked down at myself. I had been cleaned up and dressed in a white short-sleeve shirt and long white pants which I guessed might be made of cotton. My somewhat loose-fitting clothes matched the decor well. In fact, aside from the mirror, there was hardly anything in the room that wasn’t white.

  I also noticed that I still had a pair of control bands on me. They were different from the ones I was tortured in. These were slightly smaller and fit more snugly around my wrists. I noticed some markings on the casings and examined one closer. “P-47” was stenciled across it in black ink.

  I stared at the mirror, suspecting that this Dr. Otis was behind it, and asked, “What is this place?”

  “This is the Psionic Research Center,” answered the voice of Dr. Otis. “I am here with Dr. Kellogg, and it is our job today to explain to you the conditions of your stay with us.”

  “Where is Alia?” I asked the mirror.

  “If you cooperate, you will see her very soon.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “We are going to restrain your psionic powers and then enter the room. Please remain seated on the bed.”

  I felt the little motors spin in my control bands, and the dull and heavy sensation of draining washed over me. A door slid open automatically, and in walked two men. The older of the two looked to be about sixty and was dressed in white doctors’ garb and a lab coat. The other man, who I guessed was in his mid-thirties, looked a bit like Mark, with a shaggy beard and round glasses. He was wearing a tattered brown suit. They stood a few feet away from me.

  “This is Dr. Kellogg,” said the man in the lab coat, “who is our resident psychologist. I am Dr. Reuben Otis, and, as I said over the speaker a moment ago, I am the head researcher at this facility.”

  “Hello, Adrian,” said the brown-suited man that Dr. Otis had introduced as Dr. Kellogg.

  “Hi,” I said, trying not to show how nervous I was.

  Dr. Kellogg smiled warmly.

  Dr. Otis continued, “We understand that the loss of your powers causes you physical discomfort, and I apologize that we must do it this way. I will try to keep this short. Firstly, we are not responsible for the way you were treated before you arrived here. Here, you will live under our care, and as long as you behave, you will not be harmed.”

  “Under your care?” I repeated.

  Dr. Otis nodded. “Life as you knew it, whatever that may have been for you, is over now. You have been involuntarily committed to this facility. That means you cannot leave here. You will cooperate with our experiments, and, in return, you will be permitted to live in relative comfort.”

  “I’m a prisoner?”

  “You are a research subject,” Dr. Otis contradicted smilingly. “Many great minds wish to know how psionic power works, and why certain people have it. You can move things without touching them, and the girl you came in with can rapidly heal wounds. If we could discover how such talents work and recreate them in a controlled environment, it would greatly advance our knowledge of science and medicine.”

  I stared at him. “I don’t have a choice?”

  “You have two choices,” replied Dr. Otis, his voice remaining quiet and businesslike. “You can make the best of things and learn to live here. Or, you can be uncooperative and suffer the consequences.”

  “What happens if I don’t cooperate?” I asked, trying to keep my tone casual.

  “Many of the tests can be done without your cooperation, though they could be considerably less comfortable for you,” said Dr. Otis, looking me in the eye and no longer smiling. “I do not condone violence myself, but this facility is run by the military, and there are people here who believe that the research subjects should be motivated to cooperate through, uh… forceful persuasion.”

  I gulped.

  Dr. Otis continued calmly, “Please make no mistake about this. In the sixty-some years since this facility has been occupied, no one has ever escaped. It would be in your best interests to remain in our good books.”

  “And Alia?” I asked.

  Dr. Otis nodded. “She will stay with us too.”

  “I want to see her.”

  “You want to see her?” Dr. Otis repeated sharply, raising his eyebrows.

  “Please,” I said as humbly as I could. “Please may I see her now?”

  Dr. Otis glanced at Dr. Kellogg, who nodded. Then Dr. Otis asked me in a kinder tone, “Can you walk in your condition?”

  “A little,” I answered. “But my balance is really bad.”

  Dr. Otis smiled understandingly and said, “We’ll get a wheelchair.”

  They wheeled me down a spotless white corridor. There were doors lining both sides, as well as identical white passages leading off in other directions. It looked like the inside of a big hospital, but there were ceiling-mounted cameras every few yards, and the few people who were walking along the corridors either wore lab coats and carried clipboards, or wore military uniforms and carried machineguns.

  We arrived at a silver metal door that had no knob or handle.

  Dr. Otis turned to me, saying, “Dr. Kellogg wishes you to see Alia alone, so we will not enter with you. Your control rods will be retracted once you are inside. But just remember, Adrian, that this facility is under 24-hour monitoring. There are cameras and microphones in every room. We are ten stories underground, and the entire facility is encased in thick, multilayered metal shielding. Please do not abuse our trust.”

  Dr. Otis pulled out a blue plastic card from his pocket and held it up against a small scanner-like device mounted on the wall next to the doorframe. The metal door slid open, and Dr. Otis pushed my wheelchair into a short and narrow space no bigger than a closet. There was another identical metal door in front of me, and I realized that I was in an airlock. Dr. Otis exited back into the corridor, and the outer door closed between us. I felt the control rods retract in my bracelets, and stood up as the door in front of me slid open automatically.

  It was a cozy one-room apartment. There was a small but comfortable-looking bed in one corner, and a wooden writing desk with a cushioned stool in another. There was also a dining table that was not much bigger than the desk and only had one dining chair. An empty bookshelf stood against the wall opposite the bed. There was another door on the other side of the room. It had a plastic doorknob and I assumed that it led to the bath and toilet.

  Alia was sitting on the floor next to the bed. Her chains had been removed and she was dressed in a white cotton shirt and pants just like mine. Her back was to me, and she didn’t turn around. As I stepped into the room, the airlock’s inner door quietly slid shut behind me.

  “Ali?” I whispered. “Alia?”

  Alia slowly stood up and looked at me.

  “Addy…” I heard her voice faintly in my head.

  I knelt in front of her and peered into her face. The bruise on her left cheek was gone, as were her other injuries. Her eyes, however, were still slightly vacant.

  “Ali, come here,” I said quietly.

  Alia slumped into my arms, weeping softly with her face pressed onto my chest. I held her gently, more relieved than I ever remember feeling. Alia crying was Alia with human emotions. Anything was better than the silent, hollow Alia I had seen after the Wolves’ interrogation. I realized that I was crying too. I didn’t care if anyone was watching us through a camera.

  I waited until Alia cried herself out, and then I picked her up and sat with her on the bed. For a while, all she did was quietly call my name over and over in my head. I put an arm around her, lightly stroking her long walnut-brown hair. I asked myself what Cindy would do. I could almost hear her voice answering, “Give her time.”

  “Adrian, may I come in?” asked Dr. Kellogg through a speaker mounted on the ceiling.

  I wa
sn’t keen on being drained again, but thought it unwise to refuse, so I answered, “Yes.”

  The airlock door slid open, and Dr. Kellogg entered the room. Alia drew herself closer to me, rigid with fright. No doubt sensing her fear, Dr. Kellogg politely kept his distance. I realized that my control bands had not extended their rods.

  “I’m very happy to see you two getting along,” Dr. Kellogg said smilingly. “Quite frankly, I didn’t know how to help Alia here. You see, I am a psychologist, but I have very little experience with children. We have never had any children here before. We’re not exactly equipped for it.”

  I looked up at him and said, “I take it you don’t usually stand unprotected in a room with people like us.”

  “That is correct,” said Dr. Kellogg, frowning slightly as he sat down on the desk stool. “You would normally be restrained by your control bands, and possibly physically restrained as well.”

  “But not with me?”

  “Dr. Otis thinks I’m being rash, but I believe I can trust you.”

  “Why?” I asked, and Dr. Kellogg understood that it wasn’t a challenge, but a question.

  “You are a child – well, a young man, perhaps. And watching you with Alia here convinced me that you would not risk her life.”

  Alia seemed to relax just a little, though she refused to let go of me as she stared down at Dr. Kellogg’s feet. The psychologist had Mark’s calm demeanor, and despite all that we had come through and the apparent hopelessness of our current situation, I felt a reluctant liking for him.

  I asked, “Would it be okay if I stay with her until she is calmer?”

  “But of course,” replied Dr. Kellogg. “The testing schedule will not begin until you are properly settled here, so you will have plenty of time to spend with her.”

  “Thank you.”

  Dr. Kellogg smiled, and I decided to ask my most pressing question. “Doctor, will Alia have to participate in the testing – the research?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. Everyone participates,” he said apologetically. “She is our first healer, so no doubt there will be an extensive program for her.”

  “She’s just a kid,” I said at once. I thought about telling him Alia’s history so that perhaps he would be more sympathetic to her, but I didn’t want to go into details in front of Alia.

  “We understand,” said Dr. Kellogg, “and we will take her age into consideration when planning our experiments.”

  “Thank you,” I said again, though I wasn’t particularly grateful to hear that answer.

  “Oh yes, I almost forgot,” said Dr. Kellogg as he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a violet stone on a leather cord. “This is yours, I take it?”

  I nodded.

  Dr. Kellogg leaned forward on the stool, stretching his arm out, and I took Cat’s pendant and put it back around my neck.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” I said, fingering the smooth stone. “This means a lot to me. Thank you so much.”

  “Politeness goes a long way, Adrian,” Dr. Kellogg said approvingly. “You will soon find out anyway, so I’ll tell you that there are presently four other psionics at this facility, and you might even see one or two of them from time to time. However, with the exception of one, their level of cooperation with our research is nearly none. I am hopeful that you will be more willing to work with us.”

  I sat pondering this for a moment. Dr. Otis had said that the research was for the advancement of science and medicine, but I had a difficult time believing in the merits of such progress. Alia’s healing power, perhaps, but what if everyone on the planet had the ability to break things with their minds? Wouldn’t that be like giving everyone a loaded gun? Did we really need to make it any easier for people to hurt each other? And what about research on mind control? Who would benefit, and at whose expense? I decided to be honest and tell Dr. Kellogg about my concern.

  “You are not the first psionic to say just that,” Dr. Kellogg answered gravely. “We have had others who refused to cooperate on moral principles. I sometimes wonder about the logic of it myself. But Adrian, we are currently living in a world where a very select few have psionic power, and some of them are not to be trusted with it.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I said, thinking of Ralph, “but that still doesn’t mean we should hand it out to everyone.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Dr. Kellogg, nodding. “Unfortunately, scientific progress is like that. Once something is known, there’s no way to unlearn it. You can be sure that ours isn’t the only country researching psionics. If we don’t learn how it works, we may end up being the only ones who don’t know.”

  I thought about that and decided he might have a point, but even so, it just didn’t feel like the right thing to do. As if it weren’t enough that I was trapped underground with a frightened little girl and facing the looming prospect of being the object of who-knew-what kind of scientific research under the carefully guised threat of torture, I now had to think of the moral side of cooperation with the doctors here.

  No, that was really just too much. I had to keep my priorities straight.

  “I’ll cooperate…” I began slowly.

  “Good,” said Dr. Kellogg.

  “…if you’ll let me take care of Alia.”

  Dr. Kellogg gave me a curious look and asked, “What does that mean?”

  “I want to be with her during her experiments,” I told him. “I want some say in what you make her do.”

  “I see,” said Dr. Kellogg. “And in return?”

  “I’ll do anything you ask.”

  Dr. Kellogg sat stroking his beard for a moment, and then answered carefully, “I can’t promise that your requests regarding Alia’s testing will always be respected, Adrian, but if you are truly willing to cooperate, then perhaps we can strike a deal. I’ll speak to Dr. Otis for you later.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Kellogg.”

  Dr. Kellogg smiled. “It’ll be my pleasure. It is nearly lunchtime, and I was going to show you your room first, but if you like, you can eat here with Alia and take the tour later. I doubt you are looking forward to being restrained again, but it is a required security protocol in the corridors. Oh, and I am also sorry about the tattoos, but those are military-side protocols as well.”

  “Tattoos?” I asked.

  Dr. Kellogg tapped his upper left arm near the shoulder. I lifted up my left shirtsleeve and found what he was talking about. Just like on my control bands, there was a black stencil-like tattoo that read “P-47.” I lifted Alia’s sleeve and saw that she had one too.

  “P-46,” I read, and frowned at Dr. Kellogg.

  He shrugged, saying, “Everyone here gets marked, Adrian.”

  “So what’s written on your arm?” I asked dryly.

  Dr. Kellogg chuckled. “Touché.”

  “What do the numbers mean?” I asked, guessing what the “P” stood for.

  “It is the order that you arrived here,” explained Dr. Kellogg. “You are the forty-seventh psionic to come to this facility.”

  “Only forty-seven psionics in sixty years?”

  “We do not use the same coding system for the ones who come in already deceased. You see, it’s the military’s job to hunt down psionics, and whenever possible, deliver them alive, but it often is not possible.”

  I gaped, realizing that the Wolf who had tortured me would never have killed Alia. It had been an empty threat to trick me into giving Cindy away before she could escape, and I had fallen for it. I wondered if she had been killed.

  Lunch arrived on a plastic trolley that had been pushed into the airlock. Switching places with the trolley, Dr. Kellogg left Alia and me in the room to eat by ourselves. Our meal turned out to be spaghetti meat sauce, which, though not quite up to Cindy’s standards, tasted wonderful after who-knew-how-many intravenous feedings. I sat with Alia at the small dining table. I used the desk stool, which was a bit short for the table, but so was Alia on the dining chair, so we were almost evenly matched
.

  Alia hardly ever opened her mouth except to eat, so I hadn’t noticed it until now, but she was down two additional baby teeth thanks to her time with the Wolf. Both had been coming loose anyway, but seeing the gaping hole in her upper front teeth was a stinging reminder of what Alia had been put through. I wasn’t sure who I hated more at the moment, though: the Wolf or my own stupid self.

  Alia looked thinner than I remembered, but she ate well enough, and after lunch I played with her until she got sleepy and curled up into a ball on the bed for her afternoon nap.

  Having nothing to do and not being in the mood for meditation, I sat on the side of the bed and watched Alia sleep. Dr. Kellogg returned about half an hour later, quietly slipping in and tapping me on my shoulder.

  I obediently followed him into the airlock, sat in my wheelchair, and felt the control rods touch my wrists as the inner door slid shut. The outer door opened and Dr. Kellogg wheeled me out. He took me down the corridor to another room, a few doors from Alia’s. Once through the airlock, my control rods retracted again, and I looked around at my new cell. It was identical to Alia’s right down to the location of the bathroom door on the wall opposite the airlock. I looked up at the camera and speaker mounted on the ceiling, and wondered briefly where the microphone was hidden. I sat down on the bed and Dr. Kellogg sat on the stool.

  “I spoke to Dr. Otis over lunch about your proposal,” began Dr. Kellogg.

  I looked hopefully at him. “And?”

  “He said he will think about it. Dr. Otis is a cautious man. Most people here are, considering the nature of our work. You will have to convince him of your good intentions yourself.”

  “How do I do that?” I asked, wondering if Dr. Otis was watching me through the camera right now.

  “Well, you said that you will cooperate in any way you can, so perhaps you can start by answering some of my questions,” said Dr. Kellogg. When I nodded, he asked, “Firstly, why can’t Alia speak?”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “We know that she’s a healer,” said Dr. Kellogg, “and that she has numerous scars from what appear to be long-term physical abuse. Aside from that, however, we don’t really know anything.”