The WereGames III - Game Over: A Paranormal Dystopian Romance

by Jade White

  “Why are you so angry at the world?” she suddenly asked, her patience growing thin. She was tired of being rebuffed over and over again by this stranger when she had been nothing but kind. She had been taught to be patient. That was why they were still alive – because they were patient. This young man defied patience; he defied sociability.

  “Just because you’re a fellow werebeing doesn’t mean you have to be chummy to me,” he told her.

  “I’m just being nice. That’s how I am,” she said with a frown, and her dark hair tumbled into her face. She quickly pulled it back. “That’s how we all are here.”

  “You don’t know me. None of you know me.”

  “You think we all knew each other when we came here? Don’t make life difficult for yourself. We’re here to help. We’re here to help each other.”

  “Look, how many times do you have to come here just to see if I’ll be friendly or not?”

  “I’m doing my best, and I think you should, too,” Sarah found herself saying. She felt herself go red, and she looked away for a moment. “You’re not the only one suffering.”

  That stopped Ryker’s annoyance in its tracks. He took a breath. “We’re all suffering. As long as we’re like this.”

  “You don’t want to stay a werebeing?” she asked, not looking at him, afraid of rejection.

  “Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t,” Ryker found himself saying. “What do you do?” he asked, changing the topic. It was getting far too sensitive.

  “I’m an engineer of sorts. No degree, but I learned it all here,” she said. “You? What did you do before you got to Alaska?”

  “I- I worked for a guy who was into illegal business,” he said.

  “Illegal? Like, it’s banned by Caledon?”

  “Yeah, but they’re good at it. They can’t beat you guys, though. You’ve been hiding for so long. Anyway, what he made us do was beat people up if they couldn’t pay what they owed my boss. Sometimes I scared the hell out of them; it was easier than beating people up-”

  “You didn’t feel guilty?”

  “I did what I had to do to survive,” he said calmly. “I learned not to trust everyone, and I learned it the hard way.”

  “Surely some people must be nice. Everyone’s nice here.”

  It’s because you’re so contained. But he said nothing about that. “People aren’t that great outside of here, trust me on this. Like I said, I learned it the hard way.”

  “What happened to you, Ryker?” she asked, wanting to know more about him.

  He closed his eyes. She was prying into his life, and he didn’t like it. Alexia was the only one he could completely open up to, and that had taken effort, time, and a lot of near-death experiences.

  “What happens to the whole lot of us. I was hunted down; my parents were killed,” he said this matter-of-factly, knowing it had been so long ago and there was no reason to grieve.

  “I’m sorry,” she quickly said. “It’s never easy losing people you love.”

  Ryker didn’t ask her any more. He knew she had lost someone close to her heart, all for being a werebeing. “It’s not.”

  “Who was she?” she asked him. It was pretty obvious she was dying to know, but she still tried her best to play it down. “Family?”

  “A-” he stopped. What could he tell her? That she was a friend? Alexia was more than a friend, but there were no titles for their relationship. They weren’t a couple; they weren’t lovers. What were they? “She was a friend,” he decided. “We wanted to get away from the capital, from the people who’d hurt us.”

  “Did they hurt you so badly?”

  “They ripped us apart, over and over again-” He stopped, not wanting to remember the torture, not wanting to remember what they had done to Alexia to force him to shift.

  “I’m sorry I’m bringing up bad memories for you, but it’s the only way you can heal, and it’s the only way you can move on.”

  “We’ll leave it at that,” Ryker told her. “Bad memories should stay buried.”

  “It won’t help you bring this friend back…” she said quietly.

  Ryker took a deep breath. “I’ll be fine. I just need to rest for a few weeks, and then I’ll have to go back,” he said.

  “Go back where?” There was fear in her voice. She knew he was planning to leave.

  “To find her.”

  “You don’t even know where she is. Why don’t you stay here?”

  “Who said I was leaving today?” he asked her. “I have to earn my keep first. This community took me in,” he said, thinking about what Leopold had mentioned to him. He forced a smile, something he hadn’t done in a long time.

  She felt relief flood into her. So, he had decided to stay, even if only for a while. She stood up, eager to show him around. “Come with me; I’ll take you to our specialist center so we’ll know where you’re inclined to be assigned.”

  Ryker stood up, careful to keep the pictures under his bed. He followed her lead. Her lead was a frenzied, sugary one, and it was a friendship he wanted to go no further with.

  *

  “How’s the arm going?” Caledon asked his son as they had their bi-weekly dinner, a dinner that Magnus II hated but tolerated.

  Arm? What arm- JJ had almost forgotten, but then he nodded, remembering Stephen needed a new arm to replace his mangled and now rotten one. “It’s in the works.”

  “Have you seen it yet?” the senior demanded from him, placing his fork and knife down.

  JJ could see his father’s steak was bloody, and his porcelain plate was streaked with red and fat. He nodded. “Yes. Dr. Wallace decided on the black titanium and carbon fiber parts.”

  “When will it be tested?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Caledon Sr. resumed eating, occasionally taking sips from his glass of red wine. The large dining hall was quiet as JJ allowed himself to observe his father for what he truly was. There was no telling what he was thinking. Even today, his father scared him. Fear wasn’t his father’s primary intention for the people, but it was what surfaced most of the time.

  JJ knew his father was hated in many parts of the country, an open secret of sorts, but no rebels dared to do much, and whatever skirmishes and protests happened were quickly destroyed. His father had done that since he had taken the seat of power; his grandfather had gotten the brunt of the protests from the werebeings and sympathizers, and it was his grandfather who had molded the country’s current policies. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, for the President was to announce his mandatory yearly registration of all werebeings, and he would have newborns tested immediately for the gene.

  The younger Caledon knew it would prove disastrous for the population of the country, which hadn’t fully rebounded from the last war. The people would be afraid to conceive because the next werebeing baby would be whisked away to a laboratory with no further questions or proper requests. Was his father afraid? He wished he could sense it. His father looked unperturbed. How could it have come naturally to him? This meant resigning all the newborns to an immediate death, or to a lifetime of military service.

  He knew Alexandra was back at the lab, but he hadn’t seen her yet, and he opted not to for a while. He knew he was running out of time, and time wasn’t on his side. JJ had lost years of memories because his father had commanded it. Stephen had lost everything painful and wonderful from his childhood as well, with no recollection of Alexandra or Jared whatsoever. At first, he had thought that his father had only wanted to protect them from the harsh truth, but the moment he knew Alexandra had been part of major experiments for years, his outlook turned 180 degrees.

  She was known as Alexia now, as Edith had given her some humanity – humanity that could have been taken from her. From all accounts, she had been a well-behaved child, who had grown into a well-spoken teenager, self-educating despite the limitations. Records also showed she had taught children younger than she was, and these were children she had never seen again.
They both had lived through horrors, but Alexandra had lived through hell.

  How had she survived? marveled JJ. Their mother had died early, a victim of the bombings; Jared hadn’t lasted too long with the experiments and torture. He had desperately tried to track down his brother’s grave, to no avail. His mother had a beautiful mausoleum fit for a queen, with a golden statue in her likeness. It was a memorial that served as a macabre tourist site of sorts, with many citizens and foreigners paying their respects to a most excellent First Lady.

  If only you knew the terrible truth, mother, what father did to us, he thought as he glanced at his father while taking a sip of his sparkling water.

  “What was that?” he quickly said, hearing his father say something, but not quite clearly.

  “Grandchildren,” his father repeated, “when are you and Vanessa planning on having a baby?”

  “I don’t think it’s appropriate at this time, father,” he carefully said. “Vanessa’s been under a lot of stress with their company.” “Which you also have a stake in,” the President reminded him. “Why not relieve her of it?”

  JJ smiled and shook his head. “We just don’t feel like having children yet. There are more pressing matters to attend to, like Stephen.”

  “His wedding will be delayed by just a little.”

  JJ said nothing at first. His father was positioning for Stephen to marry Jeanne Callaway, the daughter of a prominent jet plane manufacturer. Of course, the Air Force needed an expensive and never-ending supply of planes at a fraction of the cost; he could sense his father’s disappointment with the delay.

  “Of course,” JJ finally said. He knew Stephen’s new appendage was going to be tested tomorrow, and he hoped it wouldn’t be too painful. He had discussed the results of A129’s most recent tests with the seasoned weresoldiers – results that were confusing, with inconsistencies for every werebeing it was tested on. They forced her to touch fully shifted werebeings, with no results; it was as if the werebeings cowered the moment she extended her hand.

  Something was there. Some bacteria, some virus or disease, which only Alexandra could wield. How strange it was that he was discussing Alexandra with his father, while his father pretended she was a mere test subject and he was doing the same. As if she meant nothing to them at all.

  He felt that burning hate rise in him, a hate he quenched by quickly drinking his glass of water.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I’ve decided I’ll work with you,” Ryker said in a clear, authoritative voice.

  Leopold’s head slowly lifted up from his table. It hadn’t taken long. He had decided within a single night, and it seemed the boy lacked sleep. He had thought about it indeed. Whoever that girl was, she mattered to him. A lot. There was something Ryker had to tell him, however, and he had to know about the girl.

  “Please, sit down,” Leopold paused reading through files. “Anything you want to tell me?”

  “Just that I don’t know where she is.”

  “Pertinent data, Mr. Auberon,” Leopold reminded him.

  “She was a friend, Alexia, but they called her A129,” Ryker began, closing his eyes for a moment. “I met her in the lab after poachers saw me help a little girl escape from them. I didn’t speak much to her, even through all the torture, and they would routinely drain her of blood and electrocute her if I didn’t shift. Or they would hurt her in ways no one else could have survived. Then, then someone asked me to escape, but only if I took her with me.”

  “Who was that?” Leopold’s head moved sideways.

  “A doctor. Dr. Delaney was the doctor who took care of a lot of us after tests. I saw her name plate; it read genetics, but she was far more than that. She told me to try and go to Alaska, some rumored place, a last standing paradise for our kind. She was one of the few kind people in that hell-hole. I think she died after I set the place on fire. I- I killed a lot of them…”

  “You didn’t mean to kill them. They were just part of the collateral damage,” Leopold told him calmly.

  Ryker’s eyes narrowed, but then he took a deep breath. “I guess not.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “She gave me something I’d never seen before. Told me it would scramble the security systems, and it did for a while. Then, I had to improvise. I found out the place was built into a part of a dam, or somewhere by the mountains. We fell into the water, but we survived, surprisingly, with Alexia half-conscious. Then we started that month-long trek across the country to get to Oregon. Dr. Delaney sent us to Dr. Barrett, who used to work at Sector 11.”

  “And what was the purpose of this journey?”

  Looking back, Ryker wasn’t sure. Yes, what was the whole point of that? When he and Alexia had been subjected to more trauma, the trauma of losing kind people. There was nothing he could do to allay their deaths, except for the thought that they could have avoided it, if they hadn’t stayed too long.

  “To find out about our condition,” Ryker finally said.

  “My boy, we’re not sick. We’re just different,” Leopold said to him. “We’re not molded to be like normal humans.”

  “It was just to see why they wanted her so badly. But in the end, they just threw her away because she didn’t produce the results they wanted.”

  “Was she a werebeing?”

  Ryker shook his head. “She was a human, but Dr. Barrett said she had highly recessive genes that could manipulate our kind. I don’t know what he meant by that-”

  “How is he?”

  “Dead.”

  “How unfortunate. He would have been very welcome here.”

  “Just staying there with him for a few hours killed him,” Ryker said, looking at the ceiling for a moment. “I think it’s what I do-”

  “Nonsense,” Leopold insisted. “This isn’t the time to bring yourself down. What else do I need to know about you and this young lady?”

  “Well, you already know I’m a werebear.”

  “You spoke of manipulation,” Leopold said, the fingers from his left hand curling on his jaw. “What does that mean?”

  “Something about her blood. That was why they had kept her in the lab for so long. Sometimes, it acted as a steroid for the weresoldiers they kept, and sometimes, it killed other werebeings.”

  “That sounds very curious indeed. They could have killed her, yet they took her back. Perhaps they found out something about her?”

  Ryker remembered the day the Jamesons had been killed. It suddenly seemed so long ago, and how they’d been killed in execution fashion seemed even more inhuman now that he recalled it. He remembered her touch. Yes, it was her touch.

  Ryker was on the ground, disoriented from Caliban’s blow. Alexia quickly stood up and ran for Caliban, just as the other werebeings ran to attack her.

  Stop!” she cried out, touching Caliban’s arm.

  Caliban looked at her and raised his paw at her, his red eyes ablaze with murder. All of a sudden, Caliban shook, and he shook violently. Two werebeings had gotten ahold of her, ready to slit her throat, when they stopped to see what was happening to their superior.

  “What did you do to me?” Caliban gurgled, his fur shedding away quicker than a heartbeat. He was trembling -- no, he was convulsing against something he had no control of. He was nearly naked, his military uniform in tatters as he lay on the ground, disoriented and weak…

  “Maybe they figured the other kids they had wouldn’t make it, so they took someone back, someone who was a veteran,” Ryker said in a soft voice.

  “Perhaps they plan to clone her?” Leopold asked, wondering if government-controlled werebeings posed an even bigger problem.

  “They can’t. For some reason, they can’t. They tried to replicate her blood’s properties, but it ended with the soldiers going close to insane or completely insane after a shot of her blood. I heard them talk about this and how they wanted to make an even better one soon.”

  “We haven’t scouted the capital in a while, Ryker. We need your he
lp with this.”

  “I know every back alley and sewage pass there is,” Ryker told him. “But what makes you so sure you’ll find her? The capital is home to a million people alone, and almost everyone thinks Caledon is some sort of god, while the rest that don’t, say nothing of it.”

  “My boy, we didn’t plan this for so many years, only to pretend we know what we’re doing. We have contact with dissidents, be it few. And the information we get isn’t constant either. We wait days, weeks- we wait years for valuable information.”

  Ryker had steered the conversation to this, and he wanted to know who their contacts were. He said nothing, though, wanting Leopold to open up to this himself. It was a sign of trust in him, no matter how shaky things were.

  Leopold suddenly looked tired. “Sometimes, I wish your grandfather were still here. It is not easy to lead this community, not while we’re hiding underground, but this life here, this is the kind of order you don’t get from up above. It’s not the kind Caledon would have wanted, either. He’s heard rumors about us; that’s why he’s been sending sporadic soldiers to man a few posts. This is just to quell his paranoia.”

  “Is that how he is? Paranoid?”

  “He’s a man of many things, and paranoid is always one of these things if you killed a President before you became one. He did it to your great-grandfather, and it means it could happen to the Caledons, too. He has everything to lose should he let his guard down.”

  Ryker was silent. This was why he’d steered clear of politics, even as a free man. Well, even as a pseudo-free man. He was in no position to give his opinion, anyway, but something about the whole situation made him uncomfortable. Still, he soldiered on. “I just want to get my friend back and keep her away from President Caledon for good.”

  “She must mean a lot to you.”

  “More than most people I’ve met,” Ryker said. “She’s the only one who can really get into my mind…” He almost choked on what he had said.

  Leopold smiled. “Ah, loyalty and love. Such wonderful emotions. It’s what kept your parents going, until they were killed and you were cruelly separated from our caravan.”