The Walls of Orion

by T. D. Fox

  “No. I don’t want to go to your apartment. I don’t want to go home, either.”

  “What do you need, Mikey? Tell me.”

  “I just want to hang out at the coffee shop with you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I like staying here. Joey and I play videogames, and his mom cooks big dinners. You can’t cook.”

  Courtney laughed without meaning to. “You’re right. All I could make you is spaghetti.”

  “Dad couldn’t cook either.”

  Couldn’t. The past tense felt sharp.

  “I don’t want to be anywhere that...” The flat edge of his voice hiked up a little. “I just don’t want to be anywhere he was. Not right now.”

  The two of them listened to each other’s silence.

  “You can have as many chocolate muffins and hot cocoas as you want,” Courtney said. “I’ll hang out with you between all my shifts.” She hesitated. “Are you sure you want to come to my work? I can take time off, come stay with you.”

  “No. Joey’s mom is always trying to get me to talk about feelings and stuff. Just sitting around and...” His sigh crackled. “I’ll bring my phone, play on it and we can sit together and drink cocoa on your break. Is that okay?”

  “Of course it’s okay.” Courtney checked the time. “Do you want to come by tonight? My shift starts in twenty minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll come get you.”

  “No, I can take the bus.”

  “I don’t want you taking the bus at night.”

  “You walk at night. How is this any worse?”

  “You’re eleven.”

  “And I’m almost taller than you.”

  Courtney ran a hand over her face. “We are so related.”

  “Besides,” Michael said. “It’s only five o’clock. The real creepos don’t come out until way later.”

  If only he knew. “I’ll meet you at the bus station.”

  22. STRINGS

  DOCTOR CAMPBELL, YOU are needed in the Z-Ward immediately.”

  “I know!” Jeanine growled at the overhead speakers. The sharp crack of her heels echoed off the corridor walls. She heard her assistant’s half-jogging footsteps behind her, the staggered fluorescents rolling over them in harsh white bars.

  “It’s the Torch,” Evan panted. “Isn’t it?”

  “Don’t call him by his power title,” she snapped.

  “Patient 201.”

  “Murphy’s cell sent out the alarm, yes. Prepare yourself for anything.”

  “Shouldn’t we have brought more orderlies?” The kid tripped over his own feet. “Bigger than me, I mean.”

  “There are four down there already. You’re my insurance.”

  Door after door slid by. They jerked to a stop in front of Z-201, splashed red in the glow of the alert bulb. Jeanine jammed her thumb onto the fingerprint scanner.

  The door bleeped. She pushed it open. A blast of freezing air hit her.

  The scene before them took her all of four seconds to take in. Blood spattered the white walls. Two large bodies covered the ground. One moved, curled on his side and moaning. The other didn’t. Against the back wall of the cell, two huge men wrestled a third.

  Reginald Murphy laughed. Cheek squashed into the cement floor, arms wrenched behind him with a knee planted on his back, he lay there cackling. Blood seeped from under his bright orange hair. The orderlies flinched back with each laugh.

  “Jea-nine!” he gurgled.

  Dr. Campbell strode into the room. She held back a hand for Evan to wait at the door. “Mr. Murphy.”

  Reginald wheezed. His reply got lost in a strangled burble.

  “Let him up. I can’t understand him.”

  The orderlies looked at each other.

  “Now,” she ordered.

  Stiffly, the two of them lifted the pressure off the man on the ground. Reginald sat up. They kept their hands on his shoulders, his arms pressed back against his spine.

  Reginald grinned at her. Blood dripped from between his teeth. Before she could step back, he spat out a mouthful of something solid. Red sprayed across the floor.

  Jeanine looked down. A human finger rolled to a stop at her feet.

  “What brings ya to my neck of the woods?”

  She forced herself to look back up at him. His yellow eyes gleamed.

  “Come to finally put me down, eh?” Blood dribbled down his chin.

  “No.”

  “Really? You’re a lot of things, Jeanine, but a fool’s somethin’ I never took ya for. Y’all know it’s just a matter of time. I’ll get out, and I’ll kill ya. I’ll burn this whole place to the ground.”

  Jeanine decided to be equally frank. “You’re too valuable a case study to be euthanized yet.”

  He threw back his head. “There she is! The honesty.”

  “We both know how this ends.” She stepped forward. “The question is, how willing are you to extend your own life?”

  “You’ve got nothing to bargain with,” he laughed. “I could bite off the fingers off every peon in your department and you won’t do a damn thing. You’ve gotta study every last drop of my blood before you spill it. Because all you care about is science.”

  Scales rippled across his face. His yellow eyes clicked as he blinked. For a brief moment, Jeanine watched him, mesmerized.

  His bloodied grin split wider. “See? I fascinate ya.”

  “You’re not invaluable,” she retorted. “If you threaten the security of this compound, you will be dispensed with.”

  “All bark.” He sneered so wide a fresh wave of blood left his lips. “I wanna see your bite.”

  He moved. Fabric tore. Something scraped. Too fast to see what happened, the orderlies behind him flipped sideways, like something had knocked the feet out from under them. They landed hard on the concrete.

  Reginald leapt to his feet. Something scaly and alive swung behind him. It gleamed in the fluorescents, long and twisting, like a dragon’s tail. For a split second, he and Jeanine stared at each other—Jeanine’s brain racing with denials.

  He can’t Change in here. The cold. The medications. All the precautions they’d put in place.

  He grinned at her. His teeth were pointed spikes.

  Jeanine scrambled back. But she was too close. The snakelike appendage sliced between her feet, whipping them out from beneath her. She flung out her hands to brace her fall. The bones in her wrist crunched.

  “Evan!” she screamed.

  The Torch lunged for her. But one of the orderlies on the ground caught him by the foot. He tripped. The tail swept out to catch him before he fell. Jeanine used the distraction to roll backwards toward the door, crying out as she landed again on her wrist. Reginald turned and pounced on the orderly. But the second man was already scrambling to his feet. He launched himself onto the spiny tail, wrapping his arms and legs around it. The weight of his huge body anchored the Changer in place, even as Reginald spun to throw him off. The first orderly regained his feet. Diving under the Torch’s punch, he threw an arm around his neck and yanked him down into a chokehold.

  Reginald sputtered. His bony arms clawed at the orderly’s grip. Once a hulking man, the Torch’s fearsome brawn had withered under AITO’s care. His face purpled. Pale yellow eyes darted round the room, landing on her. Murder burned behind them.

  “Reginald,” said a soft voice.

  Jeanine looked up to see her assistant slip into the cell. Stepping gingerly over the bodies on the ground, he approached the Torch.

  “You,” one of the orderlies grunted. “You’re out of your depth here, kid. This isn’t some basket-case on a lower ward you can just talk down.”

  “Let him speak,” Jeanine snapped from the ground.

  Evan walked all the way up to the Torch, where the orderlies struggled to keep him pinned. Even half-starved and deprived of oxygen, the Changer was barely restrained. He kicked and clawed, nails leaving bloody tracks down the orderly’s arm. Evan st
epped right up to within an inch of his face. The Torch snarled. Evan leaned forward and whispered something in his ear.

  The Torch went still. As Evan moved back, his eyes followed him. Stepping away, Evan nodded to the orderly.

  “You can release him now.”

  “You’re crazier than he is!”

  But a sound drew all of their eyes. A clicking, slithering hiss emanated from under the second orderly. The man stumbled forward as the tail he was holding folded inward on itself, scales sliding into one another like sheaths. It shrank back up behind Reginald’s body and disappeared.

  The orderly’s chokehold loosened, and Reginald dragged in a lungful of air. Both orderlies tensed. But instead of renewing the fight, the Torch dropped his hands to his sides.

  The door beeped. As if on cue, a team of men in white suits entered the cell, carrying a straitjacket. They marched forward to relieve the two orderlies. Medics poured in behind them. Examining the fallen orderlies on the ground, they placed them on stretchers and carried them out.

  The Torch stood unmoving as they fitted him with the straitjacket. His eyes were locked on Evan. Jeanine’s assistant left the de-escalation team to their duties. Evan turned, extended a hand and helped her up.

  “Are you okay?” His soft voice held no trace of post-adrenaline.

  “Fine.” She cradled her arm to her chest.

  “Your wrist looks broken.”

  “Nothing the medics can’t fix.”

  They navigated their way past the de-escalation team to the door. Behind them, a rough, throaty laugh bubbled up. Jeanine glanced back to see the Torch doubling over, hiccupping giggles building until they bordered on hysteria.

  The door closed between them, sealing herself and Evan out of cell 201.

  The silence of the concrete hallway drilled into her.

  She fell into step beside her assistant’s slow strides toward the medical ward. “What do you say to them?”

  Evan shrugged. They walked past several cells without speaking. Jeanine wondered if her young protégé had ever had training in psychopathology. Perhaps he secretly studied hypnotism. She didn’t know much about his background. As for herself, she’d earned one of her PhDs in psychology. But for all her extensive training and knowledge—neurology, biophysics, biochemistry—none of it helped her with the Torch.

  The sharp pain in her wrist dulled to a deep ache. It would hurt later, she knew, when the adrenaline wore off. But she didn’t quicken her pace as they strode out of the Z-Ward. Her frustration with her most intriguing subject kept her mind well away from the pain.

  “I don’t want to euthanize him,” she confessed.

  Evan said nothing. Just walked quietly beside her.

  “His blood is like nothing I’ve ever seen. Even among the theriomutants we’ve collected, none of their cells come close to the potential for Change I’ve seen in his. He appears to have direct control over specific parts of his theriomutation. The tail, for example. He’s never been able to go full reptilian in that cell before. The AC units cool his blood. The Ativan dampens his rage. But he managed to do a partial-theriomutation. I’ve never seen a Changer do that.”

  “The vigilantes on the news do something similar,” Evan said. “The man with the wings. The giant.”

  “Yes, and what I wouldn’t give to get my hands on them. But for now, Murphy is all we have to study. To euthanize him would be a crime against science.”

  Evan hummed softly. “He killed an orderly today.”

  “I know.”

  They crossed into the F-Ward. As they passed cell after cell, Jeanine began to feel the silence throbbing worse than her wrist.

  “Do not judge me, Mr. Grimes. What I do here in this compound is for the good of our entire species. Everyone in AITO knows what they signed up for. From the top doctors in my department to the lowest orderly. For better or for worse, humanity’s next advance has come in the form of these volatile crackpots, and our job is to make all the sacrifices necessary to ensure this next jump in evolution is really that—a jump forward, and not backward into chaos and insanity.”

  “Crackpots,” Evan repeated, with a faint smile. “I believe that’s the most unscientific word I’ve ever heard you use.”

  “Do you have a better one?”

  He thought for a moment. “No.”

  They walked on. Jeanine examined her wrist, wincing as the pain edged deeper. She’d almost reached the medical ward when she realized Evan wasn’t following her. She looked back.

  He’d stopped at the end of the F-Ward.

  “Grimes?”

  Jeanine returned to where he stood looking into one of the cells. She glanced at the template on the door. Patient 221. Conrad P. Spencer.

  “This man is new,” Evan said.

  She peered through the thin window. A man sat slumped in the corner of the cell, looking small in his baggy jumpsuit. His unkempt short hair glowed copper in the fluorescents.

  “Oh,” she said. “Yes. They brought him in recently. I haven’t done my review with him yet, but his theriomutation looks fairly average, about as unstable as all the others. Nothing much to learn from him. We’ll take his blood samples and move him down to the X-Ward to be euthanized by the end of the week.”

  She started to walk away. Evan remained in front of the door.

  “Are you coming?” she asked.

  “Do you need my assistance in the medical ward?”

  “Not really, I suppose.”

  “Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll return to the office and continue organizing the research you assigned me.”

  “All right.”

  She turned and resumed walking, leaving him behind in the silent F-Ward.

  ⬥◆⬥

  Evan watched her go. As the click of her heels faded down the corridor, he turned back to Conrad Spencer’s cell. The man hadn’t moved from his dejected slouch. With his elbows on his knees, hands hanging limp at the wrists, Evan noticed his fingertips were red. Bloody. Behind him, on the wall, was a small red mark. And... something more. Evan squinted. Scratched into white paint were jagged letters. Lopsided names.

  C-O-U-R-T.

  M-I-K-E.

  Evan looked back at the man. Lifting his wrist, he pressed a button on the underside of his watch. A little red light gleamed at the bottom.

  “Ready on the home front,” he whispered.

  Four seconds ticked past. The watch buzzed. Two short, sharp vibrations.

  Lowering his hand, Evan slipped it into his pocket and continued down the corridor.

  ⬥◆⬥

  Thirteen days.

  Courtney didn’t know why she was counting. She didn’t realize she was doing it at first. When she did, she tried to stop. But it continued. A subconscious tally, like the steady ticking of a clock in the background, just loud enough to set her on edge.

  I don’t expect to ever see you again.

  The more distance she got, the more relief she expected to feel. Almost two weeks had passed since she’d woken up in her own apartment. Free, alone, without a trace of W.

  She felt more restless than ever.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  Courtney looked up, paper coffee cup frozen on her lips. Jasper stood watching her with a fading smile.

  They’d paused halfway across the old stone bridge next to Banbury Park. Sunshine streamed through the bare trees. Kids laughed and kicked soccer balls below while parents watched from the riverside. A vibrant Saturday morning. She and Jasper had grabbed coffee from a nearby café and decided to enjoy the slightly warmer weather, taking the routes she typically did when she wandered.

  “I asked if you wanted to see a movie. We both have the night off.”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  “You all right?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Courtney hummed into her coffee.

  They continued down the bridge.

  “How’s everything with Michael? He still hanging out with you at the café?”

&nb
sp; “He drops by every day after school,” she replied, forcing an upbeat note into her voice. “Sometimes we go out for a milkshake. He seems pretty much like his old self, only quieter.”

  “Kids are resilient. He’ll bounce back. A little quietness is normal, I suppose.”

  He let those words dangle between them for a moment. She sipped her coffee.

  They seemed to have less and less to talk about on these walks. She wasn’t sure if it was her fault. Her mind drifted. Half the time, she had to rewind the conversation as fast as she could in her head to make sure she hadn’t missed something important. She hoped he didn’t notice her delayed replies—hoped “yes” and “I agree” weren’t dead giveaways.

  Topics bounced between the weather, the latest releases at the theater, the holidays fast approaching. Jasper talked about how sick he was of hearing Christmas tunes at the station. Courtney agreed that Jess’ café seemed to have nothing else to play either. Then the conversation sort of fizzled. Neither of them mentioned the elephant looming. Jasper took the lead and steered the conversation into safer waters. A tiny Christmas between herself and a parentless Michael wasn’t something she felt ready to face.

  They wandered out of the park. Watery sunlight faded in and out between the buildings. Fewer people dotted the sidewalks as they moved deeper into the backstreets. Jasper’s voice trailed off as they rounded the corner. Courtney lifted her eyes to follow where he was looking.

  They’d emerged into an empty market square, hemmed in by storefronts with “closed on Saturdays” signs slung across their glass doors. On the corner stood a music shop. Handprints smudged the windows. Courtney didn’t see what had caught Jasper’s attention. She started to ask when he shouted:

  “Hey!”

  Two figures jumped. She hadn’t seen them until they moved. A teenager in a black hoodie and a small child crouched below the window display, half-hidden behind a pile of shipping crates. Glass crunched. The girl glanced back at them, trying to maneuver a violin through a jagged hole in the display.

  Jasper took a quick step forward. Lurching upright, the teen ripped the instrument through the glass. Shards flew. She wheeled around and sprinted across the courtyard. The child took off after her, oversized yellow coat flapping around her legs.