Halfblood Heritage

by Rheaume, Laura

  “Well, all your kind does, much quicker than Humans. So...you went on some secret mission. Did you accomplish anything important?”

  “Um, no, not really.”

  “Well, that sounds like a waste of resources to me; it’s just as well that you won’t be returning.”

  Scythe felt the first spurts of real panic and pulled at his cold cloak to slow it down, but it was hooked up on something and wouldn’t come out. “I won’t?”

  “Oh, no. A gunshot wound at fourteen years old? No, you’ll be much safer here.”

  Of course she knew that he had recently passed his birth date. She knew everything about his body, down to the smallest detail. She had been experimenting on him the entire time he had been in Menelaus. Seeing her again, now that he knew that, sent a creepy chill up his back. Or maybe it was the way she was talking that was scaring him. Under her polite, cheerful professionalism was something new, something subtle but eerie.

  “But, when can I talk...”

  “Who would you want to talk to? Your mother is dead. You have no friends. No one cares that you are gone...” By the time she was done, her tone had lost all air of concern.

  He swallowed. “I think, the woman who asked me to help will...”

  “Will what? Care about a little halfbreed Kin? Why? You couldn’t help her out, so you’re useless.” Her voice had become harsh, matching her disdainful expression. “Listen, Scythe, play whatever games you want to, for your own benefit or the others here, but I remember you. I know you aren’t a scared little kid. You’re a sarcastic smart-ass who, despite being uncommonly intelligent, has absolutely no potential for contributing in any way to our society. Luckily, I’ve found a way that you can contribute.”

  “What way is that?” His fear wasn’t an act now.

  “Lay there and live for a while. That’s it. So simple, really.” She turned to the nurse. “I want him sedated all the time. He’s smart and it’s obvious from the way you were talking when I came in that he’s already tried to trick you. Try to maintain some level of professionalism. In addition, you can see that he is extremely fit and would have no trouble overpowering you, so he is never to be released. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, doctor.” The nurse stared at Scythe, and it was easy to see that her embarrassment was what fueled her resentful expression. She wasn’t going to be any help to him.

  “I don’t see why we can’t put him on the feeding tube as soon as possible. Schedule it. Then he never need be awake.”

  A feeding tube? He’d be just as helpless as the other Kin in the room. Scythe felt desperation overtake him, and he begged, “Please, I’ll cooperate. Don’t keep me out all the time.”

  The doctor looked at the nurse, “Do you see?” When the nurse nodded, she continued, “He is not to be trusted, none of them are. Keep him sedated.”

  She turned back to Scythe. “You should know that you, or rather your blood, has really made a big impact on our work here. Your blood and my research allowed for great leaps in the development of our project.”

  “What project is that?”

  “The reestablishment of the Human race, little halfbreed. Here’s your soup. Eat up and then it’s nighttime.” She swept past the orderly standing in the doorway with a tray of dishes.

  Scythe tried several more times to get information about where the hospital was or how many other patients there were, but the nurse, who had become both angry and wary, refused to speak to him again. He also tried to talk to the other Kin in their language, but the only one that was awake never responded. He just stared with a befuddled frown at Scythe and the nurse.

  As soon as his food was gone, she injected his drip tube with a syringe and soon after, he passed out.

  -----------

  Scythe didn’t know how much time had passed since he had woken up as a prisoner in the hospital. It seemed to him sometimes that he had been there weeks, but he couldn’t really gauge it. He was allowed to stay awake only long enough to eat. There wasn’t any extra time before or after, because the nurse had figured out exactly when he would wake up. She always had his food ready for him. She fed him and knocked him out again without acknowledging his pleas for information.

  During his first week, he tried everything he could think of to get her sympathy: pleading, crying, refusing to eat, even bullying, but nothing had worked. After a few days, she refused to even look at him. A couple of times, he woke up to find another nurse attending him, but this one was equally unresponsive. The other patients were usually unconscious, too, except for the one man who seemed demented.

  After a time, he felt his belief in escape, and then his will to escape, diminish. He started to have nightmares centered around what his doctor had told him a lifetime ago: Your mother is dead. You have no friends. No one cares that you are gone.

  When he woke from them, he tried to think about the people who mattered to him: Smoke, Rend, the rest of the Blades, Lena, Ian, Ian’s little daughter and his wife. He tried to remember his experiences with them, but he found that the constant inaction and the drugs were affecting his mind. His body felt heavy, and he couldn’t organize his thoughts. Sometimes, he would panic, because he couldn’t remember what their faces looked like.

  Once, not expecting an answer, he commented, “I never got that feeding tube.”

  He was surprised when she uncharacteristically responded. Putting aside his meal tray and preparing the sedative, she said blandly, “Oh? I must have forgotten.”

  Too apathetic to even smile, he nevertheless joked, “I do that all the time, now.”

  That was the end of their only conversation. As the haze spread over his mind, he stared at the Kin man plodding along on the treadmill, a daily activity that had kept the surviving Kin at a minimal level of fitness, an activity which Scythe was forbidden to engage in.

  After another week of silence, he spoke again, uncaring if she answered or not, “You know, this is nothing compared to finding a bunch of asps in your room.”

  “Asps?”

  “Poisonous snakes.”

  “Really? What happened?”

  “The plan was to breed them until we had a bunch and then set them loose in the barracks.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Naw, it’s all in fun,” he watched her inject his tube, closed his eyes and waited. “Thank you, by the way, for the ear plugs. They help a lot."

  He didn’t see his doctor again, but one day he was eating when the male doctor from his first day came in. He didn’t address Scythe or the nurse, but went straight to the display, checking the data and making annotations on his pad. He informed the nurse finally, “The boy is well enough to start the tests now. He is nearly fully recovered from his injury and the operation. I will upload the data and we’ll start him tomorrow. It’s redundant, at this point, but no use wasting a viable subject. I don’t expect anything but the usual reaction, so we’ll use him to boost the percentages.”

  He turned to go, not pausing when Scythe weakly spoke up, “Excuse me, doctor, could I please ask a question?”

  The doctor left the room.

  Scythe closed his eyes, not caring enough to even get upset.

  “What do you want to know?” asked his nurse.

  Scythe opened his eyes, looking over at the nurse as she prepared his injection. She commented, “After tomorrow, you’ll start to deteriorate like the others, so go ahead and ask.”

  “What...what is the experiment?”

  “It’s a disease, originally genetically engineered to target the Kin. It will wipe out eighty percent of them, if it spreads the way it’s supposed to, within two years of the first infected host.”

  Scythe closed and then opened his eyes, feeling the food in his stomach roll around. He almost closed his eyes and gave in to his weariness, but one thing pestered him enough for him to push forward, “Why...why was my blood so important?”

  “Well, they’d been working on this disease at the theoretical level for some twe
nty years, secretly of course. It took forever for them to come up with something that they thought would affect Kin but not Humans; we are very close genetically, you know. When they believed they had something that would work, they decided to go ahead with their research. They had been experimenting on the one or two Kin that they had snatched from the wilds or who knows where, but suddenly, they needed a larger number to test the virus on.

  “After they raided the Kin city, they had their subjects, with no one the wiser. At first, the Kin didn’t respond as predicted. A larger number than predicted proved resistant to the virus.

  "That's when we had an unexpected breakthrough. Dr. Mendus identified a new, unknown virus that was sitting dormant in your blood. She crossed it with our virus and came up with one that was effective. Unfortunately, it also worked on Humans. They never were able to come up with a Kin specific form, but they were able to develop a treatment that could be used on Humans. Beginning last month, Humans in all the cities began to be inoculated. When the cities are safe, the bordertowns will be treated and then the war on the Kin will begin and rapidly end.”

  Weakly, Scythe muttered, “It’s madness.”

  “It does seem like that at times to me, too.”

  “The Kin aren’t monsters, you know.”

  “I know.” After a moment, she said, “It’s really nothing personal, or racist, it’s just...Humans are on their last legs, you know? We want to survive and we are gonna do whatever it takes to do that.”

  “Thanks, for telling me.” He closed his eyes, wishing he were dead already.

  The next day, he awoke feeling strangely jittery. He lifted his eyes to the nurse, holding the question in them.

  She nodded, “You were infected this morning.”

  Scythe opened his mouth for the food. After a while, he asked, “What happens to me now?”

  “Well, if you react as predicted, you’ll enter the first stages of the disease within twenty-four hours. It will feel like a minor respiratory infection at first, but shortly you will enter stage two. Your major organs will begin to fail, you will have increasingly limited mental capacity and you will die within a week.”

  “Those guys should be dead then,” Scythe noticed.

  “They are responding to one of two different treatments that counter the symptoms. There is also a cure which is highly effective. Unfortunately, the doctor doesn’t want you treated, so, unless you prove resistant, which only sixteen percent do, or the virus mutates, which has only happened once, you will die.”

  “You know, I think I’ll be okay with that.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I don’t really want to live in the new and improved Human world.”

  She nodded, giving him the last of the food and wiping his mouth. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back and waited for oblivion.

  Scythe dreamt that he was an immense canyon, and his child was the river that wound its way around his feet: fresh, cool water that charged around the bends and crashed playfully into his walls, reaching up, up to embrace him and then turning to dive down and scamper about some more. He watched as proud as any father from the high cliffs, until he felt the change in him. It burst forth from a new spring, not of his making, right there: a rancid pollution that spread over and through and along the bottom of the riverbed, surrounding, infusing, choking and then changing his precious life.

  No rocks could break it. It just flowed around them. No walls could stop it. It ground them down. He sent his breath in great gusts and then his tears in a terrible storm to wipe off the stain, but it splashed and laughed at his wind, and then soaked into his rain. Soon there was nothing but a perverted slick clogging his veins.

  For a long while, nothing wound through the canyon but a sorrowful howling wind.

  After a time, he heard a voice in the wind.

  “We can’t have my son’s father dying, now can we? Fight, Scythe. You have not yet traveled all your life’s path.”

  Then, he felt the heat. Not the sun, because the sun came from above. This warmth rose up from the earth, from him. It seeped through his stone body, and the pollution tried to escape it by pulling away from the walls of the canyon. Undaunted, the heat pursued it, flowing into the channel easily. It engulfed its prey and then consumed it. Soon the fire in his veins had burned the last of the foul corruption away.

  Of the cool, sweet water, there remained only the memory of its passage: stark, high, barren walls carved by a once playful river. Taking his lost child’s place: a wild, blazing river of flame.

  Chapter 12

  He awoke, reeling from the host of excited voices that whirled around the room. His head, for the first time in weeks, wasn’t clouded over and he didn’t feel as weak as he normally did. He opened his eyes to see the head doctor, his nurse and some six other people referring to the main display, checking his machines, and conferring with each other animatedly.

  His nurse turned, startled, and checked her datapad, “You are awake early.”

  “Well, it is hard to get a good rest with all this racket.”

  She blinked at his atypically forward response and then nodded, “You are quite the celebrity around here. The virus mutated and everyone wants to check you out.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The mutation? It means the virus has changed and is acting differently; it has only happened once before. The subject had to be terminated, I’m afraid, due to the nature of the symptoms. We’re waiting to see how your halfbreed body reacts.”

  “I know what a mutation is. I’m asking…”

  They both turned their attention to the doctor who came over to the side of the bed, pushed Scythe’s head back and pulled on his eyelid to flash a light in his eye.

  “Pupils are...” He stopped when Scythe yanked his head back and shot him a nasty look. “Ah, energy levels are up to at least normal. Expected to exceed normal levels shortly. We are going to have to get the bed fitted with the full body harness.”

  Dr. Mendus walked in, and several people rushed over to her and started talking all at once.

  One short woman in a lab coat said, “Welcome back! Good timing, on your part.”

  His old doctor acknowledged them briefly before heading to Scythe’s bed.

  She smiled and said smugly, “I told them you were a special case. We should have expected this.”

  “Expected what?” Scythe challenged, enjoying the way his blood was boiling. He was enjoying feeling anything for the first time in a while. His teeth took turns clenching and grinding together in his mouth.

  She grinned wider at his reaction, “Expected you to be the one to show us the way to the next stage of our research. Now we can look in another direction: making ourselves some powerful little halfbreed soldiers.”

  Scythe stared at her, horrified by the casual way she accepted her own depravity.

  Dismissing Scythe, she turned to the doctor, saying, “If the first is any indication, then he’ll be even more resistant to infection, his cells will regenerate faster, at least twice as fast as his Kin counterparts, his muscle mass will increase...”

  “Yes, yes, but will we be able to duplicate it? And what about the mental instability? We need to monitor that very closely; the last one was a disaster.” He headed towards the door.

  Dr. Mendus announced, “Okay, everyone, meeting in ten.” She smiled proudly at Scythe and followed the other scientists out the door.

  Scythe took a deep breath, held it and then let it out slowly. He looked around the room, studying it closely. He felt strong and capable, and more importantly, he was filled with the will to fight again. He had completely abandoned his resignation. In fact, he felt a strong urge to get the hell out of the bed, the room, the hospital. He tested the straps binding his arms and legs, but found them still too tough to break out of.

  He tried to think of a way to get the nurse to help him, but he couldn’t. Then, he remembered a late night conversation and a particularly strong c
onviction he had once had. He leaned back, eyes droopy, reaching deep inside himself for the calm he used to embrace daily. The cold sprung forward, ready, but he passed it by, seeking something richer, a truly powerful force. It seeped into him, spreading throughout his body like the swell of the ocean pushing onto the shore, inevitable. In the back of his mind, he noted that it had never felt so strong before.

  He said, “I think the doctor scratched my eye. Can you check it?”

  He heard the nurse shuffle over from the table after laying down her datapad. “Open up,” she said, clicking a light on.

  Scythe turned his head and looked right into her eyes, searching inside himself for the compulsion that had joined him and Night in the hall outside of Keyrin’s office. He focused on that nearly abandoned corner of his mind that had once seen blue flames where no fire burned and felt soft ribbons made of light brush his skin. It was right...there. He immediately felt the connection between himself and the nurse.

  She was startled and curious, but not yet cautious, commenting, “Your eyes were not this green; at least, I don’t remember...” She began to lift the light, but her hand paused in midair, along with her mind.

  Scythe felt a powerful sensation surge inside of him, and he watched as the color of her eyes thinned and then went completely clear. Clear like glass. Then even the glass was gone and he stepped through the opening. He separated from his body; he existed only in his mind as a strange, disconnected traveler. In front of him was her mind, a whole world for him to explore. He only needed to move forward to see more. But, now that he was there, he became afraid of what he might uncover there, because it was obvious that everything before him was foreign in a very elemental way. Everything there was not him or his. So, he merely probed, looking for something that would help him.