by Jade White
“I don’t know what I did,” Alexia retorted. She hated that he swore she knew what she was doing. “I’m not hiding anything.” She hadn’t told him she’d dreamt of a little boy numerous times, and she was holding the little boy’s hand, soothing him of his fears as best she could. He was afraid of what he had become. Then, all of a sudden, he collapsed, and she looked behind her and saw a werebeing.... It was another weird dream probably implanted by Sector 12. Those couldn’t have been memories, could they?
“What did it feel like?” Ryker found himself asking. He had to know somehow; he could form theories while she slept. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight…
Alexia closed her eyes, vividly remembering how it felt. She felt weak yet strong at the same time. It felt like a jolt of electricity exited her fingers, effectively turning Caliban into a defenseless thing. “It wasn’t painful,” she said. “It just-it just happened.”
Ryker knew they needed to get to that doctor soon. He had to know about this condition, if it could kill her in the end…he shuddered at the idea. He hated the idea that she could die. “Get some sleep,” he said starkly.
He heard her shuffle under her makeshift roof, trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in. He looked back at the skies, and he could see it tinged with red, as if warning him of what wretchedness was to come.
Damned Merry Christmas to you, too, he thought bitterly.
CHAPTER TEN
He felt something touch his arm. Ryker bolted up, ready to shift at the sight of a middle-aged man holding something in both hands. It was a sawed-off shotgun that had gone out of circulation. Ryker raised both hands in surrender, knowing one false move could kill them. He was a poacher; Ryker could see he had ammunition slung over his shoulder.
“We mean no harm,” Ryker quietly said as he heard Alexia stir inside the tent. Had he been so careless? How could he not have heard him approach? Ryker felt his old wounds from yesterday open up a little, and blood slowly showed on his shirt.
Alexia sat up, her eyes wide open. There was a man in front of them. With a gun.
“Don’t move,” the poacher said. “I’ve seen your face before…you two are wanted, aren’t you?”
They didn’t say anything. Ryker was sizing him up. Even if he got shot, Alexia could still make a run for it. He couldn’t shift in an instant, but he could grapple the gun away from the poacher and maybe knock the daylights out of him…
“Get up,” the poacher motioned the two of them. They complied and stood up, Alexia crawling from her tent. She stood beside Ryker, her fingers intertwining with his. They watched as the poacher reached for his phone to dial the wanted hotline.
The poacher found himself grinning, excited at the prospect of getting his just rewards. He had been poaching werebeings, some as young as five, for a little over ten years now. This would be his biggest pot yet.
Ryker heard the hotline ring, and, in that temporary distraction, he lunged himself at the poacher, his phone falling to the snowy ground. Alexia quickly ran for it, stepping on it as hard as she could with her boot. The call ended with the screen splintering into pieces.
“Run!” Ryker shouted to Alexia.
She stared for a moment and came to her senses, but before she could make her move, another man appeared.
Ryker was too busy to notice this, as he bared his white teeth at the poacher, holding him down with one hand, one hand that had turned into a paw. In a mere thirty seconds, he had shifted into a werebear, violently swiping his claws at the poacher’s face as he shuddered, heavily bleeding, and his face was nearly unrecognizable. He was moaning something that Ryker didn’t want to understand. His animal rage took over, and he stomped and clawed at the man until he was nothing but pulp.
“Ryker…” Alexia whispered.
The werebear looked up, his eyes red with anger. There was another man there who had another gun. He began to charge his way to the man, ready to kill, when Alexia held out her hand to stop him, holding onto his fur which dragged her to the ground.
Ryker felt his legs give way, and his senses weakened. He fell to the snow, naked and heavily bruised from the altercation. “What-" he began. What was she doing? Why did she stop him? They were going to die now…
“I’ve been waiting for you,” the man in front of them said as Ryker faded into unconsciousness.
*
He heard people talking in hushed voices. He was dreaming, wasn’t he? But they were no longer in the forest, were they? The ground seemed too comfortable…he slowly opened his eyes and was surprised to see a roof with exposed beams. He looked sideways and saw people across him, seated. His vision focused.
Alexia was talking to a man. He quickly sat up, ready to shift; then, he groaned, falling back on the bed. Alexia had held onto him. She had done the same thing she did with X013. What did she do? For a moment, he felt betrayed.
“Ah, he’s awake,” the man said calmly.
Ryker eyed him, breathing in heavily. “Who in the hell are you?”
“I’m apparently the guy who saved you both and took care of that god-awful mess you made in the forest.”
The man grabbed a chair and sat across the bed, observing the young werebear. He had never seen a werebear shift, not in his whole life, until earlier.
Ryker looked at Alexia and saw her uncomfortable but not in immediate danger. She had a few bandages on her face and arms, but she was fine. All of a sudden, it hit him. He looked back at the man with his weathered face and his five o’clock shadow. He wore glasses and was collected, reminding him of Dr. Delaney somehow…
“Dr. Barrett?” he whispered.
The man in his mid-fifties nodded. “Ryker and Alexia, I presume. It was the last thing she told me before our contact stopped. I knew she had died by then. Was she executed when you escaped?”
Ryker shook his head. “I don’t know.” He wanted to say something more about how kind and determined Dr. Delaney was to help them, but he felt too weak. He had thought they were still probably two weeks away from getting to Dr. Barrett…he closed his eyes, feeling nausea take over him. He most certainly didn’t want to puke in someone else’s bed and house.
“He’s still feeling queasy,” Dr. Barrett said as Ryker closed his eyes. “I guess you won’t be eating anytime soon. There’s a bucket beside the bed if you really want to puke.”
Ryker immediately leaned over the bed and wretched as Dr. Barrett went back to sit close to Alexia.
“Edith and I-we didn’t have too much contact. I quit Sector 11 the day you came in the lab.”
“They call it Sector 12 now…” Alexia said, stopping that rush of bad memories.
“It was a bad place when I left; I’m guessing it was an even worse place when you did,” Dr. Barrett said, eyeing Ryker who was still reeling over. “There’s tissue on the nightstand,” he added, turning to face Alexia once more.
“You were such a pretty little girl when you came in. I couldn’t imagine them doing horrible experiments on you.”
“You mean as a baby, right?” Alexia said, confusion apparent on her face.
“No, no,” Dr. Barrett said. “You came in when you were five or six years old, I think.”
Alexia frowned. “They said-" she stopped, realizing lies had been fed to her from the moment she could remember. What had they done to her?
“I see the look on your face that says you don’t remember a damned thing,” the doctor sighed. “I was a little apprehensive to ask you this, but what exactly did they do to you in that Sector?”
Alexia closed her eyes. What could she tell him? Numerous things, a lot of bad things happened to her. They went from bad to worse to worst. She began to tell him in hushed tones as Ryker fell asleep again, obviously still weak from her grasp.
“So, they took your memories out of you.”
“How?”
Dr. Barrett sighed. “They had many ways. We did many tests. I, along with Dr. Wallace, did the prototypes for the selective mem
ory injections. We did other things, too. There were other medications that helped, I think. We dubbed them ‘vitamins.’”
“I had those. They did help me.”
“But only to a certain extent. I’m not quite sure if it made everyone completely submissive after.”
“I questioned my presence sometimes,” Alexia said, looking at her hands. “And what they did to me, to us. Is that why you left?”
Dr. Barrett gave an ironic laugh. “I was young, impulsive, and idealistic. I wanted results. Dr. Wallace, however, wanted me out. Instead of being his partner, he accused me of manipulating test results. I had other things in mind for the werebeings. Sure, they would get hurt, and sure, I was probably as cruel as he was, but I woke up early. I couldn’t stand what they were doing anymore, especially after he became head. I struck up a friendship with Edith, who disliked his methods, too.
I don’t claim to be innocent in all this. Sector 11 was an offshoot of another project. We used to claim all we wanted was proper results, for these subjects to become perfect soldiers or whatever the government wanted them to be. I worked with adults; the tests started with adults. Then, they found out kids took on the torture better. They suffered, and yet they thrived. And children showed the results we wanted.
That was the time I left, when I knew I couldn’t handle the guilt of doing that to children. I was summarily dismissed upon Dr. Wallace’s recommendation, and I was stripped of everything: my diploma, my masters, and my painstaking research.
I felt guilt for all of you inside that lab. I pioneered testing your kind of blood and DNA to werebeings who showed only a miniscule amount of werebeing in their systems. Years and years ago, they just concentrated on what made werebeings, werebeings. Wallace and I-we wanted to make sure any werebeing’s strength wouldn’t abate so quickly. We knew they healed faster than normal humans, but we wanted more. You see, Alexia, it was never enough; my ego and thirst for recognition and knowledge destroyed my career as a government scientist.”
“And Dr. Delaney?”
“She stuck with the job. Heck, kid, it paid well; it paid far better than any other normal hospital. She was still a fresh intern, and the moment she saw those children, she felt she needed to stay. She hadn’t known it would end up like that, all those experiments. If only she’d resigned early on. She could have worked in some obscure clinic with her memory altered. That’s how it works. Everyone who leaves has their memory altered.”
“But you?”
He smiled. “I made that memory altering drug; of course, I tweaked up a few vials, just to make sure I got my sanity out safely.”
“Can I get my memories back?” Alexia pressed on.
“Have you been dreaming a lot lately?”
“I started dreaming a lot a couple of months ago.”
“You just might. Mind you, it’s unpleasant. We’ve tested it on mature werebeings before, and we had to lock them up in an asylum right up until their deaths from old age or starvation or experimentation.”
“Who am I?” Alexia asked.
Barrett shrugged. “If I had any idea who you were, I’d tell you right now. No one deserves to have their memories taken from them, no matter how sad. It forms who we are. What are they about?”
“Blurred faces. Something close to family. It must be my family.”
“What about this Ryker boy here?”
“He’s an orphan.”
“He won the WereGames, didn’t he?” Barrett interrupted her. “He won, but they still ended up experimenting on him like he had never won at all. So, he got you out? Delaney sent me a coded message; not much on the details, of course, but I’m glad you made it out alive.”
“Maybe we won’t be for long…” Alexia said all of a sudden, reminded of every death trap they had escaped from and the lives they took with them.
“I wait every day for them to come and kill me. I guess Wallace is too high up on his pedestal to order a hit, huh? I’ve worked as a repairman in this little town of 300 residents, and most of them are vacationers. From doctor to repairman, how do you find that?”
“I don’t even know what a repairman repairs,” Alexia stammered, imagining any kind of machinery.
He laughed a short laugh. “TVs, washing machines, refrigerators, you name it.”
“And yet, no one knows who you are?”
“I had to craft a story to tell, but I’ll let you in on a little secret. I still am a scientist, and I do most of my work underneath this cottage,” he said, dropping his voice. “I made this cottage far away from the main village on purpose.”
“How did you know we were close by?”
“Instinct,” he grinned.
Alexia frowned. “Instinct?”
“Come,” he beckoned to her. He walked for a bookshelf and took out a book, pressing a button strategically placed in the middle. The bookshelf collapsed partially, revealing a hidden staircase that led to a dank basement. She eyed him, and he smiled.
“I won’t hurt you without your consent, of course.”
She wondered what it meant but could see he had no intention of harming her. Alexia followed him down, her fingers scraping against the rough stone surface. Her eyes widened, seeing what was underneath the house. It looked like a madman’s study space filled with papers and vials and an old refrigerator with a lock on it. There were outdated machines, and even his computer was heavily outdated.
“I got these from a garage sale. Some for free. Repairman perks,” he said. “The older the technology, the better. Every new bit of technology since Donovan Caledon took over is registered and, most likely, tapped. I don’t use the internet. It’s like I dropped off the face of the earth. All I have are books, bits of paper, and some of the data I had salvaged before I was let go. Oh, and my brain, whatever I could remember, and I remembered a lot.”
Alexia looked around. It was a crude version of Sector 12, except there were no gurneys or orderlies or military people who watched as you suffered. There were no scalpels or devices to electrocute anyone.
“I do have tissue samples. I saved a few over the years. This town had one werebeing who was immediately asked to leave, but not before I took tissue samples from the bandages he carelessly left in his bathroom while I repaired his TV.”
She seemed disgusted by it. “Wait, how do you know he was one?”
“He kept his injuries down low, and…let’s just say, I have my own undeveloped mutation. I can tell who is who. That’s why I was able to track you right away. That Ryker kid was bleeding, and I could smell him a mile away.”
“I couldn’t even tell you had repressed werebeing genes.”
“No one can tell unless you’re sliced open or the blood is forcibly taken out of you. That’s when the shifting of the cells start. A stressor.”
“They’ll be here,” she said, her voice suddenly trembling. “We have to leave; Ryker and I have to go to Alaska.”
“Alaska? Did Delaney send you on a goose chase? There’s nothing there but a barren, frozen wasteland. A lot of the nuclear exercises were done there; a big portion of the Second Civil War happened there. It’s a cemetery.”
“She sent us here first, for reasons only Ryker knows about.”
Barrett shrugged. “Well, I guess I’d better start making lunch then. I’m sure you need rest and food. We’ll continue this later.”
Alexia nodded, and they ascended the stairs, seeing Ryker sitting on the bed, flexing his fingers as best he could. He looked up at her and scowled.
“You okay now?” Alexia asked him, walking towards the bed.
“I still don’t understand what you did to me,” he growled, hating the feeling of being incapacitated like that. It was as if a thousand volts had been sent into his body, robbing him of every sense.
“I’m sorry,” Alexia said, holding his hand.
He nearly flinched, then realized he felt nothing except what he was currently feeling. He looked at Dr. Barrett who was observing them. “What are you looki
ng at?”
“Marveling at the changes she can do to any werebeing, no matter the kind, and you, the first werebear I’ve ever seen; pretty amazing stuff right here.”
“And you want to experiment on us, too?” Ryker snapped.
Barrett nodded with a grim smile. “Isn’t that why Dr. Delaney sent you two here in the first place?”
*
Dr. Barrett looked at Ryker’s eyes as he positioned the syringe needle on his inner elbow. “Now, you will probably feel a little sting-"
“I’ve had worse,” Ryker said as Barrett deftly inserted the needle in, drawing out his blood. He couldn’t believe he had agreed to this. Alexia was taking her well-deserved sleep after a light lunch in a small room that doubled as his entertainment room. It was merely filled with books.
The cottage wasn’t a large one, probably around forty square meters, but it housed a separate bedroom and an indoor bathroom. Ryker knew it was a house that could trap them in the event an assault happened.
“Young man, I’ve booby-trapped my place if it will help allay your worries.”
“What do you need me for? When Dr. Delaney specifically asked me to save Alexia and to take Alexia to you?”
“I think it’s reason enough that out of all the people she could have asked, she asked you. She must’ve seen something in you. She majored in behavioral psychology before switching to genetics.”
“She says you have a lab downstairs.”
“Ah, my pride and joy,” he said, carefully storing his blood in a special canister he had probably made himself. “While you’re here, I might need to take more blood from you.”
Ryker shrugged. “I still don’t fully trust you.”
“But Dr. Delaney trusted me enough.”
“And yet they never found out about you contacting her all this time?”
“We aim to be smarter than most, if not at least smarter than that Wallace.”
“You don’t like him? Well, we don’t either. He forced me to shift when I hadn’t done it in so long.”