Claimed

by Clarissa Cartharn

  He walked carefully towards the cliff’s edge overlooking the cold, Atlantic Ocean.

  “What do you think is on the other side, boy?” he whispered. “How must they be living? Like us? Or better than we do? Do they suffer the same corruption and oppression? Or do they have the freedom we all long for?”

  The waves beat against the rocks, its crashing sounds carried into the air, booming about him. He picked up a pebble and threw it into the ocean. It disappeared beneath the cold foamed waters without a sound, silenced by the angry waves that enveloped it.

  “Do you think we’d disappear like that Wolf? Without a trace? Without having done anything constructive with our lives?” Wolf whined as it nervously trotted along the edge of the cliff. It turned away wistfully to sniff at Jared’s ankles, slopping them with his wet nose.

  “The irrelevant duo; that is who we are,” he ruffled the dog’s thick fur.

  He sat down on the green turf of the grassland, his eyes on the looming horizon in the ocean. He was all alone in this corner of the world. There was nothing he could see that told him that this was once a busy port a thousand years ago. All remnants of a dock had been either pulled down or washed away into time, as had done all the beautiful cities he had heard of.

  “I’d give anything to see them, Wolf,” he muttered. “The ancient Sin City, the overly glamorous Hollywood and the Empire State Building in New York. What must have they been like sitting in one of them tall buildings and looking down upon everything else below?” Wolf licked his face and then lay beside him. He chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, it would have felt great. I suppose it would be no different than admiring those giant rocks below, seeing them as no bigger than this pebble in the palm of your hand.”

  He gave the stone a little toss in the air before flinging it into the water below.

  “They’ve all disappeared along with Pompeii and the incredible Maya cities,” he whispered.

  His mind contemplated their argument at breakfast, weighing in its different aspects. Tara was right. He was already a mutant. There was no point in wishing he was normal again because he would never be normal. His fate had been determined prior to his birth and there was no one other than his father who should be more burdened with the blame. He was angry because he couldn’t scream or rage at his father for making that decision. He only had James Saunders who annoyingly continuously addressed him as ‘son’. And if his mother had her way, there was every possibility that it was going to turn out to be just that.

  He always had looked upon his father with awe. He had always been the hero he wished he could be. But this mutation erased all reverent thoughts of his Da. He realized he didn’t know his father as well as he thought he did. Suddenly, the man he had emulated since he was a child was now shrouded in a cloud of mystery.

  “What do you think, Wolf? Should I go along with Saunders’ plans and give this revolution a go?”

  Wolf didn’t answer, but blinked sadly at the oceanic horizon.

  “That’s what I thought too, boy. It’s damned well confusing,” he muttered.

  The waves silkily washed into the white sandy beach. Its repetitiveness mesmerized him just as Ellie Callum had done a few days ago. She had strode into that hallway and taken away a piece of him with her when she had marched back out of it. No matter how hard he had tried to eradicate her existence from his memory, his body was very aware of how alive she was.

  He still remembered her sweet smell. Every cell within him was ingrained with the memory of her warmth and the touch of her skin against his.

  “But it isn’t like I would have stood a chance with her even if I was normal,” he whispered, his fingers combing through Wolf’s fur. “She’s a Callum and I am a poor resident of Sector 8 Central. What would have the probabilities been? And now that I’m a chimera, I just reduced that probability to a whole new level. I’m screwed either way, aren’t I Wolf?”

  Wolf made a small noise and closed his eyes.

  “Oh, you’re not gonna do that now,” he chuckled. “Up, you lazy ass! It’s time we head back home.”

  *****

  He found them sitting sporadically in the library. He could tell that his mother had been crying. Tara didn’t look too well either as she sat biting into her nails; a habit she succumbed to whenever she was stressed or anxious.

  He ambled into the room with his hands in his pockets. If they had seen him, they pretended not to.

  James lowered his head, turning the page over of a book on his lap.

  “When are you getting married?” Jared sighed, trying to break the figurative iceberg hovering between them.

  “You’d have to ask your mother that,” he replied, without looking up at him. “Right now, as it stands, we might possibly not be heading that way.”

  “Is it because of me?” Jared turned to his mother.

  “What do you think?” Tara answered sharply before her mother could. “This was the one opportunity for you to really contribute to a revolution; to make a change. And you decided to throw your hands up and bawl about how miserable your life is now. Well, I’ve got news for you, brother. This is not about you. This is about something bigger; something that could very well alter the lives of the people in this country. Yeah sure Da may have been wrong in making that decision for you, but in his favor he was envisioning a better future- a better world. And he really believed that if there was anyone who could do it, it would be his son. His blood ran in your veins and he believed in the power of that. He had faith in you because you came from him.”

  He pursed his lips in deep thought. “Okay,” he said finally.

  Tara stared at him blankly. Stella and James looked up, wondering if they had misheard.

  “O…kay?” Tara asked slowly.

  He shrugged. “Yeah. It’s not like the mutations are reversible. And I think I’ve done a fair bit of moaning and groaning. It’s time we should all just get on with it.”

  Tara squealed, racing up to throw her arms around him. Stella sobbed silently while James simply shook his head with disbelief.

  “I’m proud of you, Jared,” Stella said softly as she hugged him. “Your father would have been proud of you too.”

  His jaw tensed, his eyes grew steely cold. He hadn’t done this for his Da. No, he was still mad at his dead father for making an irrevocable life decision for him. This was for Tara and his mother so that they could live the lives he had always dreamt on giving them. This was for Fern and Mae so that they could have the future he would never have.

  CHAPTER 9

  He sat rigidly on the cold narrow hospital bed. He never liked his visits to Dr Langford’s secret clinic. They made him anxious; unnerving him about what the geneticist might discover next in his strange mutating body.

  He looked around, watching Dr Langford’s staff busily engaged in their daily routines of biological examinations, their white lab coats fluttering slightly as they raced about the lab.

  “What’s the lab above this one?” he asked curiously. He couldn’t help notice the duplicate laboratory situated at ground level and which he had come through to enter this one beneath it.

  “I need my supplies and funds to carry on my experiments,” Dr Langford said matter-of-factly as he prepared for his examinations on Jared. “The government and the corporations provide me projects and access to restricted medical and scientific supplies. The lab above is designed for those official tasks. This one isn’t on the record. I hand-pick my staff and because most of them are the financially deprived of in the sector, they contain a hunger driven passion to end the tyranny just as much as we do. Could you take your shirt off for me and extract your wings?” He turned to pull on his medical gloves as he waited for Jared. “This lab has two exits you may have noticed. So if ever officers come along to give the one above a check, we can easily disguise our movements as coming out from the other end of the house. Needless to say, we have several security cameras and full time staff monitoring the movements on the grounds and in the
house. It pays to be careful.”

  Jared threw his shirt over a chair and then straightened up to spread his wings out. “Aren’t you ever guilty about inoculating human embryos with animal genes? Does the morality ever bother you?”

  “Long long ago, it did. And then I realized that the more I chose morality and ethics over the tyranny and injustice around me, the lesser of a human being I was beginning to feel. What was the use of being all human when you’re not allowed to experience it? Desperation pushes you onto a path you would never otherwise have taken. I suppose this was mine. I presumed it was better a half-human end the evils of oppression than a full-blooded human live under it. When you decide to ignore the injustices around you, your silence makes you an accomplice by default. I didn’t think I was completely ready to carry such a burden.”

  Jared placed his hands on hips, his head lowered as he contemplated the older man’s words. He felt him fiddle with his wings.

  “Does this hurt?” Dr Langford asked as he pulled onto a feather.

  Jared grimaced. “Of course it does. Have you had someone tug a strand of your hair? It feels just about the same.”

  His wings fluttered involuntary.

  The scientist stepped back, impressed. “Did you do that?”

  Jared frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “That little jerk with your wing when I pulled onto a feather?”

  “No, it seemed to have twitched on its own. Is it something I should be worried about?”

  Dr Langford shook his head thoughtfully. “I don’t think so other than that was a very interesting display likened to a patellar reflex.”

  “A knee jerk?”

  “Yeah,” he pursed his lips as he picked up Jared’s hands. “It indicates that the nerves of your wings have well bonded to your spinal cord. But I think we should wait a little while longer to put your ability to fly to the test. Now, why don’t you show me those claws?”

  Jared flexed his fingers, popping out his feline claws. The doctor lowered his head, studying them intricately.

  “How is it going?” asked James, strolling into the room.

  “Looks good so far,” Dr Langford muttered, still in the midst of his observations.

  Jared’s wings caught his attention. “They’ve thickened impressively. And the span’s a very splendid length. Can those actually function or are they just an accessory like the penguins?” James asked with admiration.

  Jared grumbled. “Well, I had better not be another flightless bird. I still ain’t too pleased with all these mutations and certainly am not over being pissed to murdering one of you for what I’m going through right now.”

  James threw up his hands. “You have the doc. He’s the one who came up with the idea.”

  “Be careful, James,” the doctor mumbled. “You don’t want me implanting a pair of duck wings onto your back while you’re asleep. You seem fond of the ones Jared is carrying.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a pair of those if they really could do what they’re meant to do,” he said as he sat at the end of a table watching them.

  Dr Langford huffed and then added. “Did you bring the dog?”

  Jared glanced up in puzzlement. “What dog?”

  “Wolf,” said James, shifting uncomfortably. He knew how attached Jared was to his dog and the least he needed was for Jared to have another emotional outburst, disrupting the smoothness with which his plans had just begun to unfold.

  Jared straightened, looking questioningly at the wiry haired doctor. “Is there something I should know, Dr Langford?”

  Dr Langford drew his lips into a straight thin line, dropping Jared’s hand. “You might want to retract those claws first, Jared.”

  “Oh, they come out just as fast, doctor,” Jared retorted. “It just needs the right kind of negative news.”

  Dr Langford stepped back cautiously, floundering between the two men in the room. “Wolf is a chimera,” he blurted. “Just like you.”

  Jared stiffened, unsure of how he should respond. He had only begun to accept that he was never going to be normal again in his life. But now his best mate was cornered into being cursed a similar fate? “I would really like it if you could perhaps elaborate on that. What is it that you mean?”

  Dr Langford pulled out his gloves and threw them into the trash. He walked over to the sink and started sterilizing his hands. “Do you remember when your father first brought Wolf over to your house?” he spoke over the rumbling of the tap.

  Jared bit his lower lip, retracing those memories. “This was probably a few months before Da was arrested. Wolf was only a pup then.”

  The scientist nodded, wiping his hands dry with a paper towel. “He was a week old. Wolf was fertilized and bred in this very lab. Have you ever wondered why your Da called him Wolf?”

  Jared paled, sensing where the conversation was heading. “I always thought that that was because he was a Siberian husky and huskies are known to have similar features as wolves.”

  Dr Langford nodded again. “Yes, except that they’re overly friendly and make the worst guard dogs. We inoculated him specifically for that reason. He would give the false impression of being cute and harmless and at the same time, act as the ideal companion and weapon for a human chimera.”

  “And I presume that this inoculation was with the genes of a wolf?” Jared asked, hoping against all odds he would be wrong.

  “Yes. But just like you, Wolf showed no signs of a successful inoculation. And like you, we assumed that he had failed the experiments. Your father, who by then was a regular in the labs, assisting us with much of our work, took pity on the animal. We didn’t know what to do with him and couldn’t just let him loose into the wilds. We didn’t know if the experiments would have hindered his survival. We were in the process of putting him to sleep when your father suggested that he take him back home with him. I suppose he saw a bit of you in him,” Dr Langford said, growing silent for a few minutes. “When you arrived, we realized that Wolf’s mutations could have remained dormant just as yours had done. If you give us your consent, we would like to activate his genes.”

  Jared pulled off the bed and walked over slowly to the corner of the room. There wasn’t much of it to hide in but the corner at least gave him some awkward sense of seclusion to allow him to think. He exhaled, speaking out his concerns aloud, “And what if you don’t? What happens then?”

  “He needs to be released from his inhibited developments. If you don’t, this will only shorten his life span. It’s already a wonder that he’s lived as long as he has. But you should also know he can be stronger in his chimera form. Chimeras, including you, are generally stronger in brute strength and they’re far more resilient to diseases. They also have a faster pace of healing and recovery from injuries. We think of chimeras like an alloy- a metal alloy. When combined with other genes, the properties of chimeras are enhanced. But then this fusion again can be a double edged sword. What would have been its strength would be its greatest flaw if the mutations are suppressed and inhibited.”

  Jared closed his eyes, trying to release a placid breath of air. “Then I guess Wolf is as doomed to fate as I am.”

  *****

  Jared threw a ball into the air, watching Wolf carefully dart for it. He didn’t seem much different from the old Wolf he had always known. But seeing him mutate yesterday, watching his legs extend, his body bulk into the wilder animal, amazed him.

  Dr Langford had placed Wolf into a test cage with a full blooded wolf. Almost instantly, the animals had growled at each other, every warning signal on display. Wolf bared his teeth fangs, gnarling at his wilder but normal brother. They circled the arena slowly, their eyes glued upon each other as they readied to attack.

  Thankfully, Dr Langford hadn’t waited any longer. He had received all positive indications necessary to confirm that Wolf was indeed a fully developed chimera and drew him out of the cage immediately.

  “Wolf is too strong for him,” he had said.
“It would be an unfair match.”

  He watched him now, his strong legs pounce after the ball, his tongue hanging out gleefully, showing no remnants of the aggressive beast hidden within him.

  “Wolf seems to be coping well,” said James, strolling towards him.

  “Is that how I look? Normal to everyone else but me?” Jared asked, his eyebrow arched quizzically.

  James smiled. “We need to start preparing you to meet the elite social world now and we begin with the Callums.”

  The name roused tension in his veins. Jared turned away, trying to dissipate the pressure accumulating inside him. He didn’t know how he would keep up the ruse of being polite and friendly to the one family he had learnt to detest since he was a child. But recently, the name also brought in tidal memories of another sort. A woman with long dark hair, sweeping into the hallway in violet robes, whose skin smelt of lilacs, whose flesh was pale and soft, enticing him to feed on it with his lips, to run his hands through that luscious hair and cup those beautiful mounds of her breasts.

  His blood heated at the mere thought of her and he placed his hands into his pockets to stop them from trembling with the urge to see her.

  “What do you propose?” he asked, trying to divert his attention to anything but her.

  “I’ll soon be letting it fly loose that your mother and I have been married. The plan is that you are my son born out of an affair.”

  Jared raised his brow. “I don’t know if I like the sound of that. How does Ma feel about it?”

  James sighed. “She’s on board with it. Otherwise, it would be hard to even budge you into the elite circle, should anyone discover that you’re actually Michael Ryder’s son. You understand how that wouldn’t fare well with a man as proud as Aaron Callum. And we need Governor Callum to introduce you to the political aristocrats in the Capitol. I understand that he’s already got Edmund Farriss in training to succeed him. Perhaps, we should follow suit and learn a thing or two from Mr Farriss.”