Venom and Earth

by Turnbull, Jessica

  “Close the door!” Braith yells in my ear.

  With my ears ringing, I slam the door as soon as Drea gets through, encasing us in total darkness.

  * * *

  “Well this is spooky,” Braith says, making ‘oohing’ sounds like a ghost.

  “Drea, you know what to do.” Marco pats his companion.

  The white dragon flicks her tail, lighting her tail tip up like a torch. The orange flames lick at the clubbed tip, making the white gemstones in it sparkle.

  We’re in another part of the lab, although this looks bigger. The darkness seems to stretch on for a while, so we must be in a larger part of the building.

  “Let’s go!” Braith shouts, skipping into the darkness before waiting for Drea to light the rest of the way.

  “Are you okay, Haze?” Marco catches my arm, whispering in my ear.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “It’s just that… You didn’t want to touch me earlier.”

  “You haven’t touched me in a week, Marco. I wanted your comfort but you moved away.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just been hard, okay?”

  “I know.”

  Wordlessly he takes my hand and we wander after our friends, the air still thick with tension.

  “What do ya think is down here?” Braith asks excitedly, scanning the darkness.

  “It is weird that we haven’t come across anything yet. It’s like it’s one giant hallway,” Marco muses.

  Drea suddenly stops, her head tilting at something in front of her. The white dragon swishes her tail to keep everyone back as she goes to investigate, disappearing into the darkness. Silence suffocates the room as we wait for her to return. Orange light fills the room as I open my mouth to call out to her. It takes a few seconds for our eyes to adjust, but once they do we take in our surroundings with a gasp.

  The room is filled with vats of the coloured dragon blood, bubbling and hissing as it makes its way down a set of tubes that snakes further down the room. Each vat is labelled with different letters, and numbers ranging from one to ten. Curiously, I approach one called ‘F-6’. There is a clipboard attached to the vat of the red liquid at the base. The clipboard is labelled ‘terminated’ in bold letters, with a short description underneath it.

  Dr T and Dr W tampered with this batch to create a new serum. Subject F-6 and all others in this batch did not develop elements by the time they reached fifteen years of age. Terminated. Upon eating their flesh, the Wyrms evolved to repel all Elemental attacks, which is a positive outcome to this failed batch.

  “What is all this?” Braith leans against one of the vats, titled Lt-4, and jumps when the liquid gargles, as if angered by her presence.

  “I have no idea. But it looks like it has something to do with the Wyrms.” I pick up a clipboard at the other end of the room, from a vat titled W-1.

  Terminated. Subject W-1 and all others in this batch died shortly after receiving the serum.

  Placing the clipboard back down, uneasiness fills my body as I stare into the vat of blue liquid. It looks like the one that Dr Gard connected me to when I was first brought here. All the vats of the blue liquid look the same, but are titled differently. If I had been given this W-1 batch, I would be dead. All of these vats are the failed batches. The room is filled with so many of the large vats that it’s a wonder they can all fit in here, but they’ve all been strategically placed with their batches. W-1 is only next to the other vats that end with a one. Clearly the scientists had many failed attempts at their research.

  “What do the Wyrms have to do with any of this?” I wonder, weaving between the vats to stare at the coloured liquid.

  “Oh shit…” Marco snatches a clipboard off of the vat labelled W-9.

  “What is it?” Braith pokes her head around a vat behind him.

  “Haze… This is you.”

  “What?”

  He holds the clipboard and I snatch it out of his hands, scanning the writing.

  Subject W-9, real name Hazel Adams, is ongoing. Grown in this facility using a donor egg and sperm and raised by volunteers Injected with the water serum at six months old, ready for consumption between the ages of sixteen to eighteen. DA and SA have agreed to adopt for a one-off fee along with E-9 to be raised as siblings.W-9’s parents have been given the sum of £9000 for the study and have consented to have their child return to be ingested by the Wyrms when they are ready. Predicted outcomes of this batch: sleeker scales or fins.

  My throat closes up as I read the clipboard over and over again, my eyes continuously drifting to the part where my parents give consent to have me eaten. Well, they’re not even my real parents. They adopted me. Rocky and I might not even be blood related. How could they not say anything? Especially Mum? My boyfriend wraps his arm around my waist, rocking me lovingly when I finally put the clipboard down.

  “Shit…” Braith snatches it up, staring at the blue liquid in front of us. “So that’s the serum? How did they create it?”

  “It’s from dragon blood. They suck them dry.” I glare at the blue liquid, as if it can feel my hatred for it.

  “Is that what…” Braith turns to her companion, who bows her head in shame. My friend chokes back a sob and rushes over to a vat labelled I-9. “This is me. I was injected at fourteen months. How could my parents do this?”

  “They’re not our real parents, that’s how. We were created here.” I reply venomously.

  Braith stares down at the vat, her jaw clenching. “But… Olwen…”

  “Might not even be your real sister.”

  “She is my sister! I don’t care about blood, she cared for me and I cared for her. That makes us sisters. Just like you and Rocky.”

  My brother is going to be heartbroken if he finds out. We could be from the same donor that makes us blood, but there’s a chance we could not.

  I look up at Braith again, who is now crouched in front of the vat, her forehead pressed against the glass.

  He’s my brother no matter what.

  “No wonder Dad walked away from us so easily.” I scoff. “We weren’t his real kids, so he saw no need to stick around.”

  “He’s just an asshole.” Braith sighs, squeezing my arm. “You don’t need him, you have us. We can be each other’s family now.”

  “So Mason is F-9…” Marco picks up the clipboard containing Mason’s details and skims through it, sighing and placing it back. “But what about me? Are we even twins?”

  “Does it say on his clipboard?” I ask him gently, plucking the clipboard from the vat to give it a quick scan.

  Unforeseen anomaly with F-9, the donor egg and sperm has split in two. The twins will be used in experiments together unless the tests state otherwise. Outcomes of this twin pregnancy have the capacity to yield the highest results.

  “You are brothers.” I tell him, pointing to the paragraph. “They hoped to experiment on you two together.”

  “Why didn’t they? Why did they spare me and take him instead?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  Looking around at all the vats makes me sick. Every single one represents a person. They all died for this study without getting the option to consent to it or not. It feels wrong looking at all of these clipboards, knowing that each person died to evolve the Wyrms. My eyes land on three larger vats at the other end of the room, each filled with a glittering brown liquid. Confused, I weave between the vats until I’m standing in front of one labelled Ey-9.

  Subject Ey-9, real name Violet Samuels, is ongoing. Injected at birth with what we have called the ‘Stellar serum’ after the legend of Stellar. Patient had to be admitted to hospital for forty-eight days while the serum took effect. Predicted scenarios for Ey-9: developing all of the elements or the serum reacting in a different way than expected and developing a completely new element. Volunteer DM has agreed to take both Ey-9 and Ea-9 for a one-off fee. Parent given sum of £20,000 and consent for child to be ingested by the Wyrms when old enough. Predicted outco
mes of this batch: unknown.

  Aqueous must have snuck up behind me while I was reading because feeling his cheek press against mine makes me jump. My stomach churns as I put the clipboard down, and I feel dizzy at all of this new information. The black dragon lets me lean up against him as the room starts to spin sickeningly.

  Mum signed Rocky and me up for this, knowing that we would die in the end.

  I expect it from my father – I never knew him – but I thought Mum cared. How did she meet up with us and chat with us knowing that she’d signed us up to die? Was the money really worth the possibility of losing both your children?

  Unless she thought nothing of us, seeing as we aren’t her flesh and blood.

  “What’s that?” Braith points towards a door behind me. She goes to open it, but it doesn’t budge. “Locked.”

  “At least it’s only a wooden door,” Marco comments.

  “What difference does that make?” As the words leave her mouth, Bluey charges into the door, splintering the thin wood and pushing shards out of the way to create an opening. “Oh, I see.”

  As the others go into the new room I take one last look at the vats, hatred and disgust rising in my stomach. Aqueous nudges me to follow the others, the room making him uncomfortable as well.

  “Woah!” Braith spins around on a wheeled chair as I walk in, tucking her legs in to gain more speed as Damayanti noses her to spin faster.

  The room is a lot smaller than the previous one, but is full of screens displaying various areas of the laboratory. Marco is trying a metal door next to one of the screens, but it’s locked as well. It looks too strong for Bluey to charge at it. Turning my attention back to the screens, I see that there is a camera in every room, including the one full of vats. The hallways are also covered, one screen showing the hallway that we escaped from, with various parts of Dr Gard scattered across the dimly lit hallway. There is at least one Wyrm on every screen, slithering around and poking at vent covers.

  “They’re trying to find a way to get to us.” I point to a screen that shows the door to the vat room, which is now surrounded by a mass of Wyrms weaving over each other.

  “So what do we do now? There’s still no exit.” Braith places a foot on the floor to slowly stop herself from spinning, her head tilted to one side.

  “There must be some way out. Dr Gard wanted us to come here for a reason.”

  “Maybe behind that door?”

  “Maybe, but it’s locked.”

  “Does the key not work?”

  “No, it’s a different keyhole to the others.” Marco tries the handle once more. “It’s too big for the key that Haze has.”

  “So now what? We give up?”

  Settling into a chair beside Braith to watch the screens, I say: “No, we’re not giving up. We’ll find a way; we’ve got this far.”

  There must be something we missed. Another key? A clear exit? We’re way too close now.

  Aqueous growls excitedly and noses a screen in front of him, nudging Braith to see.

  “What is it?” She leans in towards the screen, which is of the hallway we escaped from. “I don’t see anything but… ew, did they seriously not eat Dr Gard properly?”

  My companion rolls his eyes, now lit up with excitement. He pushes my head towards the screen and I scan it for whatever the black dragon is excited about. A Wyrm that looks slightly different from the others drops down from the ceiling before shooting back up, trying to find a way into the vents. Although the screens are fuzzy, I notice a chain with something dangling around its neck. With any luck, it could be a key.

  “It looked like it had a key on it.”

  “Are ya sure, Hazy? These screens aren’t the best.”

  “It looked like a key. Or at least something useful.”

  “Are you saying we need to go back out there?”

  “We have to.”

  Marco scoffs behind me. “How can we do that? They’re everywhere!”

  “We need to!”

  “Just because you saw some fuzzy could-be key? No way.”

  “Fine, then I’ll go out and get it.”

  “Are you crazy, Haze? We were lucky to escape!”

  “If it’s a key, then it could be for that room or even an exit. I’m going.”

  Marco grabs my arm and squeezes it. “Haze, please…”

  “What else can we do? We can’t just sit around here! We need to do something!”

  “But this something is crazy, Haze!” Braith grabs my other arm, the two of them manhandling me back into my seat. “What if it isn’t a key? Then we could be risking our lives off a hunch!”

  “Don’t we need to try?” I protest, trying to wriggle out of their joint grip to no avail.

  “Going back out there isn’t an option!” Marco hisses through gritted teeth, pinning me down in the leather chair.

  “What do you suggest then?” I lean back in my chair as they let me go and cross my arms, waiting for his response.

  Saying nothing, he turns his back on me. Aqueous nuzzles me while I watch the screen, the Wyrm continuously dropping down as it tries to crawl into the vent. We can’t just sit around here and hope they’ll go away. They won’t let us die in here either; they need us. One day I’ll be Wyrm food.

  30

  Chapter Thirty

  Rocky is awoken by a loud thud as the door above him is thrown open. Sadie struts in, carrying her new weapon, a wooden spear. She prods Eryk on the way down as he wakes up.

  “Rise and shine. Ray is having a meeting with the Wyrms. They’re going to decide if it’s time for all of you to become dinner.”

  “That means you too, you know,” Mason spits, his brown eyes blazing at the sight of his ex.

  The blonde girl snorts. “Ray has given me his word that I won’t be eaten.”

  “And you trust him?”

  “Yes, actually. It’s better than rotting down here with you lot.”

  “Please, take me with you!” Melia pleads, throwing herself at Sadie’s feet. “I can be helpful to Ray, I swear!”

  Receiving a swift kick to the jaw, Melia falls backwards, slamming her head against the cold concrete. “He doesn’t need you or want you. You’re pathetic.”

  “Is that the only reason you came down here?” Rocky rises to his feet, towering over the small blonde girl. “To rough us up a bit?”

  “Basically, yeah,” she grins darkly, waving her spear in her hand. “And to inform you about the meeting. Shouldn’t be too long. Then we’ll know if we can finally get rid of you all or not.”

  “You’re still missing two people.”

  The smile fades from Sadie’s face. “We’ll find them, don’t worry. There are Wyrms everywhere tracking their progress. They’ll be the first to be eaten, I hope.”

  Bristling from her words, Rocky leans in close to her face, making her gulp. “I hope Ray betrays you.”

  “Well, you’ll be disappointed when he doesn’t.” She swiftly makes her way back up the stairs and slams the door behind her.

  “You shouldn’t antagonise her, you know.” Mason rises to his feet to put a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “And she really shouldn’t be with Ray, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?” With that, Rocky slides down the wall next to his companion, who lifts her brown head and places it on his lap.

  “Come on, we need to find a way out of this mess!” Eryk shakes Rocky furiously, but he doesn’t respond. “We can’t let Ray do this!”

  “And what do you suggest, asshole?” Melia sits up, her eyes red and puffy from crying. “If it wasn’t for you losers I wouldn’t be in this mess right now!”

  “Newsflash: you would. Draca picked you.”

  This sends the pathetic girl into another round of sobbing, leaving David to nuzzle her. Rocky places his hands over his ears at the sound. It was bad enough that Melia was one of the nine that Draca picked; it’s worse that he’s stuck in a small room with her for several hours a day. The only reli
ef is when they are let out for school and dragon training. Ray keeps those going despite having the power to cancel them. It must be to keep the students happy so they don’t rebel.

  “Dear God, shut up!” Eryk screeches over her cries.

  In that moment, time seems to slow as a dark purple mist flies out of his mouth, shaping into the form of a bat that flaps around the room, squealing. The bat rushes straight into Melia and dissipates on impact, sending her flying backwards towards the wall. The only sound that can be heard is the roar of rage from David as the black and grey spotted dragon swings his spiked tail towards Eryk, only to be intercepted as Pirate grabs his long tail between his teeth and bites down hard. David squeals in pain and swings at Pirate with his claws. The white dragon predicts this attack and sidesteps, dropping the black tail. Before the two dragons can fight any further, Cerberus and Fortune jump between them, each squaring off to one of the fighting dragons.

  With the noise dying down, another one fills the room: a painful gasping. Eryk is slumped on the floor on all fours, sucking in breath as if he’s struggling to breathe. His long hair is stained with sweat and drooped over his face.

  “What’s happening?” Rocky demands, but Eryk doesn’t answer.

  Violet crawls towards him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and rocking him gently. The small girl whispers in his ears, seemingly offering words of comfort as he continues to rasp. Rocky goes to open his mouth again but Violet stops him with a hand, giving him a warning glare before turning her attention back to Eryk.

  Mason and Rocky share a confused look, but don’t get the chance to say anything before the door flies open and several Wyrms come into the room, taking up what is left of the little space. Ray follows them at a slower pace, Winter guarding the door behind him.

  “He used the power!” one Wyrm hisses excitedly, licking its lips.

  “They are almost ready for consumption,” another joins in.

  Cerberus moves her thin brown tail in front of Rocky as a Wyrm approaches to sniff him, and gives it a warning growl.