by Jade White
*
It had to be done in a couple of hours. The first attack on the capital had to be done that day. .
He had given them that time frame, and that alone, just so they could make their move. He had purposefully placed his own men, the men manning the radars. It was the riskiest move of his career, and it was one he was willing to make. He had sent his wife away on vacation. Vanessa would be safe in Western Europe, far away from the malady of the country, the country his father controlled. All those years of planning, and it had come to this.
Magnus II knew only a fool would feel unapprehensive. He had an inkling he would not make it out alive, and if he did, peace would never come into his life. He would have to meet with Alexia today, his first and last unless someone brought the two of them together. It was strange. He’d had all that time to meet his sister, but he had never initiated it before..
His father would be busy with the werebeing registration and amnesty program, something he knew would bring enjoyment to his father, once Magnus found out how many were to be killed. The airstrike was to happen simultaneously with the rescue of Alexia and any werebeing who had the fortune to be saved by them, by those from Alaska.
He walked down the hallway, armed with his all access identification. Of course, no one bothered to stop him. He was the son of the president, a member of the board of trustees for Sector 13. He felt his breathing go shallow and his hands cold. He would be meeting up with her. Finally. After so long, after so many years. He had seen her, seen how they hurt her, and when he remembered who she was, he couldn’t bring himself to see her again because he’d known he could do nothing at that moment. He had hatched a plan that had taken more than three years, a plan filled with extreme self-control, stealth, and the courage to turn his back against his own father.
He pressed his key card against the door, and they hissed open. There she was, his little sister who was little no more. She was staring listlessly at a window, a window that had been heavily reinforced, and the trees outside seemed to mock her for being imprisoned as their leaves danced in the wind.
She had been transferred to this room, thanks to his coercion. Here, she would be safe; here, there would be no listening devices or monitors. She was pale, obviously still healing. It had been a mere few days since her suicide attempt. He had breathed a secret sigh of relief, after finding out she had survived—Dr. Wallace had made sure she would.
Alexia was sitting on her bed, her back aided by propped up pillows. They had made sure she would be comfortable, despite the hassle she had given them. They still wanted to use her, after all. She didn’t look at him as he walked in. He saw the bandages on her neck and hands. They looked fresh, free from dried blood. Slowly, her head turned to face him.
She blinked at him, and he realized she couldn’t talk too well yet. They had told him that her vocal chords were nearly damaged. She was on heavy painkillers, as well. Her eyes looked lucid; it was what he noticed first. Seeing her eyes this close sent a shockwave of memories to his heart. She had eyes just like their mother. His mother had come to life through her…
He cleared his throat, trying to find the right words to say. What could he say? There was no time for sentimentality, but there was something that choked in him, and he felt like a little boy who wanted to bawl his eyes out, seeing someone he had loved and had forgotten all this time.
“Alexia,” he finally breathed out.
“Who are you?” she whispered, in obvious pain. Her hand was against her throat, as if holding onto it like there were stitches.
“General Magnus Caledon the Second,” he told her, taking a chair and sitting beside her.
She blinked. Magnus Caledon the Second. Was he the president’s son?
“I’ve come to see how you’re doing,” he began. “What prompted you to do that?” he asked her, not caring if her answer was going be inaudible or just one word.
“Dreams,” she uttered out. Dreams. Those painful dreams, those painful yet loving dreams that she wanted to have in real life.
“What were they about, Alexia?” his voice was calm, reassuring.
Was he another Dr. Wallace? Alexia closed her eyes, not wanting to say anything else. It could be used against her; they could hurt her again, when she had failed at hurting herself until death came. The drugs kept her from feeling the urge to attempt once more. It made her feel tired, and this stranger, this other Caledon, was making her feel even more tired. She shook her head and looked the other way; her mind was thinking desperately about a young man, the young man she didn’t want to forget…
“What were they about?” he asked her again.
“People,” she finally said, biting her lower lip from the mental anguish and the physical pain. “People who knew me.”
“Your family?” he asked her. “Was it family? People who loved you?”
Her eyes widened, and she stared at the man in his late twenties. He could see the frown on his face, a frown she had seen before… or had she? Or was she forcing conjured memories just to soothe herself in her isolation?
She slowly found herself nodding.
“Do you remember their names? Did the people in your dreams have names?” he continued asking her. He could see she was getting agitated, and she didn’t want to be bothered. “I just need to know a few things, Alexia. Magnus, Juliet-”
Alexia’s eyes widened further, and a gasp escaped her lips. What were the odds that she had heard of that name before? Juliet. That name sounded familiar. There was a farm… the young man was there. The young man she loved.
“JJ, Stephen, Jared-” JJ continued.
Jared. Jared. His name felt heavy in her heart. Jared. She had heard of Jared. There was a little boy named Jared. He had been killed, killed in a place just like this. He was hurting, she remembered the little boy had been hurting, and she had reached out to grab him…
“Alexandra,” JJ finally said, his hand slowly inching for hers.
Alexandra. The name was ingrained somewhere deep in her. There was a little girl named Alexandra. She had been taken away from her family, forcibly taken away. “Who are you?” she croaked, seeing his hand resting on the edge of her bed.
“I’m your brother,” he said with quivering lips. “I’m JJ. You’re the youngest among four siblings. Your mother was Juliet; your father was- is still Magnus Caledon the First.”
She shook her head. No. No. Brother? What was he saying? She was born in this lab; she’d grown up here. She had survived test after test, had survived an explosion. She was not Alexandra. She was not a Caledon. She was not!
She kept shaking her head, and JJ reached for her hand to help her calm down, but she snapped it away, recoiling from him, and her entire body shook as she curled up, as if hurting from what he had said. She saw him reach for something in his pocket, and he pulled out a photograph, sliding it beside her feet.
“I didn’t want to break it to you at a time like this, but we’re running out of time. You and I. Someone’s out to get you, to bring you to safety, and to take you far away from here. This isn’t the life I wanted for you to have, Alexia.”
She stared at the photo, and finally, she took it with shaking hands. There they were. There was the president, there was Juliet his wife, there was JJ and the rest of the names he had mentioned- and then, there was a little girl, seated on a chair of her own. A girl who had eyes just like hers. Was this a part of the experiments? Was he checking on her mental faculties? She let go of the photo, flinging it away.
JJ quickly pocketed it. He had painstakingly looked for this photo, and it was the only photo he had found where the family had been complete. It seemed that his father had been desperate to destroy all existing records of the family, all to preserve the illusion that certain family members had been killed. Even the public had no idea what had happened to them.
“Alexia, I’m not here to lie to you. I want you free. I orchestrated that you escape with Ryker Locklear months ago-”
Ryk
er. Ryker. That name. She dredged up smoky memories from her mind, and she realized it was probably the young man she had seen every night in her dreams. Who was Ryker? Why couldn’t she have a concrete image of his face?
“They took you back, but your freedom is the only thing I can give to you, after years of not even knowing you were here. I can’t give you back your childhood, but I can give you a future—one that isn’t confined, one that isn’t in Sector 13.”
Her eyes were still wide open, and her mouth hung open as well. What? He was offering her a way out? Was this some ruse to test her loyalty as a subject? The picture was worth a thousand disjointed memories. She squeezed her eyes shut, her breathing growing shallow, and her heartbeat elevating. Her vitals shot up, and the monitor began to beep.
“Please, calm yourself down. I don’t have much time with you,” he pleaded to her. “Listen to me. I want you to get away from here, and the best way is to be with Ryker and my contacts. You were supposed to get to Alaska. You were there already, only they caught up with you.”
They? Who was they? She forced herself to remember this; she forced herself to calm down. He was her brother, and yet she couldn’t remember any semblance of familial love from him. What difference did his sincerity make? There was no escaping here. If she had indeed tried before, they had still brought her back here, and she couldn’t remember anything about it.
“Who-?” her voice was caught up in her throat.
“Find Ryker Locklear. Find him, and you’ll be safe. Find Silver Fox,” JJ breathed out. He reached out to hold her hand, and surprisingly, she didn’t back away.
She looked at him, her eyes absorbing everything he was trying to say. It was all too much at one time. If he was indeed her brother, shouldn’t they have had more time together? If he was the son of the president, shouldn’t he have more command over the situation? Was Caledon that ruthless- even to his own children?
Of course, he had been ruthless. Was that why she had been taken away from them? They had been a family once. Her separation from them had left her with no one, and yet, her supposed brother sauntered in, telling her of his plans at the very last minute. She wanted to scream, she wanted to throw things, break things, and she wanted to slap him over and over again.
“Mother-” she began, feeling the muscles in her throat strain. What had happened to their mother? Where had she been all these years?
JJ shook his head. “Our mother died many years ago. She was supposedly killed during an air raid. You only have two brothers left, Alexandra. That’s me and Stephen, Stephen was the one who brought you back, and it cost him his arm. He still wants Ryker Locklear dead, and we can’t have that, not now that I know he’s changed. You’re important, far more important than some medical experiment in a lab. You’re the future of this country; the blood that runs in your veins alone can either make or break the power the country has.”
She looked terrified. What did she have? Everyone had blood. What kind of blood was he talking about? She saw blood every day. Most of it was hers.
“You have something that Dr. Wallace and our father desperately want, and what that is exactly, we don’t know yet, but they know it has qualities that can improve our soldiers’ strength during shifting. There’s something else in you, too. You can cause werebeings to revert back to human form with just a touch. I want you out of here before they harvest every cell in your body for their gain.”
Alexia shuddered. She had wanted to die by her own hand and not by anyone else’s. The thought that she would be tortured until she died had been trigger enough. The fact that her own supposed father had exploited her, sent her stomach roiling. They all wanted her dead in the end. She should have stabbed her neck instead of slit it…
“Alexia, did you listen to me?” he asked, his voice sounding more urgent than ever.
She couldn’t bring herself to nod. She was another lab rat. She was like those white critters stuck behind aquariums, waiting for death via torture. “How do I get out-” she finally uttered, holding her hand against her throat. She felt blood in her mouth again, but she focused on the young man’s face. If she couldn’t remember much of the past, that not so distant past, she knew she might as well remember her older brother’s face now.
“They’ll come for you. You’ll be transferred to another Sector within the day. That’s the only window I can give Silver Fox and Ryker. A window of an hour before they put you on a plane, to bring you to the Appalachians,” he said. He looked at his sister, the sister he hadn’t seen in over twelve years. Despite what their father and the lab had done to her, she was still a gentle soul. She didn’t deserve any of this. “I want you to live a long life; I want you to be the happiest you’ll ever be. I want you to be happy for the rest of your life. I want to give you that chance to be free from everything that’s destroyed our family,” his voice choked.
She slowly reached out to hold his hand, and she held his hand gently, as he gripped hers tightly. His head was bowed down, and his eyes had misted over. He cleared his throat after a deep breath. “You’ll remember things soon, Alexandra,” he told her. “You’ll remember everything, and I want you to be safe when you do.”
She wanted to remember. She squeezed her eyes shut, desperate for the slightest memories to return. Then she remembered they were still monitoring her vitals, and she forced herself to calm down.
“Aren’t you going with me?” she whispered almost inaudibly.
JJ shook his head. “I can’t. I have to stay here so the plans can push through. I wish- I wish we had more time together,” he said, squeezing her hand, then he let go of it. “You’ll do great, Alexandra Caledon.”
He forced a smile, and she did the same. Then he stood up, taking another deep breath, and he couldn’t help but shed a tear, knowing that he was seeing her for the first, and the last, time. He turned his back, not wanting to see her cry. He wanted to remember her smiling face. If he survived this, it would take many years before he could see her again.
“JJ,” she croaked, “I’ll see you.”
JJ nodded, unable to face her. “Take care, my sister. I’ll see you soon.” The conviction in his voice was unmistakable, and it was unmistakable in hers. The clock was ticking. Stephen and his escorts would be here in two hours.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Drones had spotted a lone aircraft near the capital’s airspace. It was an unauthorized jet, which almost looked like it belonged to the country’s military fleet. It was unmanned, according to the sensors. How was that possible? The military had been sent into a near panic, and they scrambled about to bring down the jet with minimal damage to the city.
Stephen frowned. He was supposed to be somewhere else, but he had become far more useful now that he had a bionic arm. He had become indispensable to his father. His own father now wanted him, needed him far more than JJ. All he needed was self-control. All he needed were a few medications, steroids from their very own A129, to keep his body’s rejection of the new arm at bay.
That was the explanation that Dr. Wallace had given him—his arm was alien to his body, and he needed a mediator; he needed steroids to make it work for him all the better. So, there he was, on that cold and dreary afternoon, with a preceding snowstorm, impatiently waiting for feedback from JJ’s side on that loose jet the radars had seen.
The President had trusted him in a span of a week, after he had gotten back from therapy, and it was an honor, despite it not being part of his job. He was a lieutenant, not a nurse that took care of some patient. The brief contained details of A129’s transfer, somewhere deep in the North Carolina forests, another Sector where Dr. Wallace could practice in peace, without the prying eyes of the board and the other doctors. There, he could be as depraved as he wanted to be, and he knew it was Dr. Wallace’s accolade from the President, for all that he had achieved in all his years of service.
Where was JJ, anyway? He had to leave in a few minutes to be on schedule. There were many things to do, apart from bab
ysitting. His weresoldiers were on standby, and he could feel the apprehension off them, that they were transporting the young woman who could revert them to human form, no matter their willpower and no matter their strength.
He had assured his team that A129 would be contained, where she could not touch any of them. He had made sure Caliban would not be a part of the team, knowing his emotions would get the best of him and delay the operations. The drones were a blessing in disguise in regard to Caliban’s presence. It would keep everyone busy.
Stephen’s impatience had gotten the better of him, and he called JJ on his phone. His brother was not answering. Gritting his teeth, he dialed again, only to find out his call had been redirected. He had to wait for another superior, unless he took matters into his own hands. The amnesty program had gone well, just as his father had expected.
They now had a growing database of the names of every werebeing in the capital. The rest of the states had been granted permission to make their own census, with the results to be collated within two days. He had half-expected that last year’s champion would submit himself for the program the President had generously given, but he hoped that X014 was truly dead because if he wasn’t, Stephen knew he needed to take out X014’s arm first, before killing him off slowly.
*
The jet had been an expensive ruse, but it had proved to be a good one. The capital’s security system needed only a few minutes to figure out that the jet was on auto-pilot. The city, then, would be on full alert for potential terrorist activity amid the amnesty program.
Ryker’s feet and hands were cold. It was not because of the weather—that he knew; it was because of the strict time-frame they had to follow. It had been a long, arduous journey just to get back to the city that he’d thought he would never see again. Leopold had sent seven of his best men, all werebeings, to aid Ryker in getting this certain Alexia back. Ryker knew Leopold would be willing to do everything, as long as he was on their side, and that he would represent their cause in the highly likely event of a rebellion.