by Jade White
Then, Ryker suddenly sat up straight. There was another scent in the air, something he had never smelled before. It was a different werebeing, and it had his senses on full alert now. He reached for Three, who promptly woke up, startled.
Ryker put a finger on his lips and pointed west. Three’s eyes widened, suddenly smelling the newcomer who was a mere kilometer away. Three leaned forward to lightly tap Six’s leg to wake her up. Six woke up, immediately shielding her face, thinking she was being attacked.
She frowned seeing Three, who then motioned to a direction. Then she inhaled the hot air and smelled another werebeing. Her eyes were suddenly gripped with fear.
“What is it?” Three mouthed.
“It’s the weretiger…” she whispered, almost inaudibly. Her hands started to shake. “He’s here; he wants me dead…”
“He wants us all dead,” Ryker told her. “Get up, we have to move.”
“No, you don’t understand. He won’t stop,” Six told them with a trembling voice and trembling hands.
“Well, we stop him here. Then, you two can decide who wins,” Ryker said.
Three looked at him dubiously. “Are you kidding me? Thirteen is responsible for more than half the kills here. He’s out for manslaughter.”
“And there’s three of us. We can stop him.”
“We can’t. But maybe you can…” Six responded.
Ryker shook his head. “I said we’d do this together.”
“He’ll kill us,” Six moaned quietly, “he’ll stop at nothing. I was with another, and escaped.”
“You didn’t tell us this,” Three accused her.
“This isn’t the time to blame her. He’s a weretiger. He’s tracked us down for days,” Ryker said.
“The end goal is you, Fourteen,” Three told him. “You’re the star here. We’re just ordinary werebeings.”
Ryker sighed. “You have got to be kidding me. Don’t place me on a pedestal just because they say I’m a werebear. We do the best we can, then decide who among the two of you wins, and that’s final,” Ryker insisted.
“No, you’re a werebear for a reason,” Six protested.
“We’re all werebeings for reasons we don’t know,” Ryker said, almost angrily. “Now, we have to move, unless you want to face-” Ryker stopped. It was too late now.
His heart pounded as someone else stepped into the small clearing. Six and Three looked to where he was facing, and then Six slowly backed away. Facing them was a six foot and five inch tall young man, with a shock of white hair on one parted side. He had a long scar on his cheek from something that had recently occurred.
“How is it possible,” the weretiger began, “that the supposed werebear, the only werebear here, is smaller than I am?” His voice was a low growl, and his eyes had yellow irises. “Ah, Six, I’ve been looking for you…” he said, eyeing the small, tawny-furred werewolf.
Six and Three had quickly shifted, their eyes still watery from the pain of the change. Three was almost as large as Six, despite being a werefox.
“How about we make this fair and square? You two,” Thirteen began, facing Six and Three, “you kill each other while I finish off our celebrated werebear here.”
They moved, but they stood behind Ryker this time, growling and snapping at him.
“You have an army to back you up,” Thirteen began, still not shifting at all. He was still menacing in his human form, and he meant to intimidate with every minuscule move. There was something in his eyes, some history of pain and torture and every imaginable anguish that had to be let out. Ryker saw that he was itching to kill him in front of the other werebeings and give the spectators a show to talk about in the years to come.
Was he willing to give them a show? Ryker knew he had to be in control of the situation, whether he wanted to be in it or not. And the younger werebeings counted on him, he who was but a mere two years older. He, who had nothing to show to them, except what he had learned and experienced in all those years of loneliness and constant running.
“Why don’t we settle this ourselves? Seeing you’re all riled up to bully these two into submission,” Ryker replied.
“Into submission? You’ve got it wrong, werebear; that is, if you truly are one. I’m not set to see them grovel before me. I’m here to kill them, and I’m here to kill you. There can only be one winner,” Thirteen told him in a low voice. “Once I’m through with them, I’m all set for dinner, and then I just might have you for seconds.”
“Cannibal,” Ryker said disdainfully, his feet firmly planted on the ground.
“Watch me,” Thirteen replied.
With the blink of an eye, Thirteen shifted into a larger than life weretiger, all white with black stripes; his teeth menacing, and his paws filled with sharp claws. Had he grown so accustomed to shifting that there were no traces of pain as he did so?
The weretiger snarled at Ryker, snapping its jaws in a display of intimidation and power. His eyes blazed yellow and red, ready to lunge at anyone’s neck to snap it. He prowled about sensuously, as if trying to distract the three remaining werebeings with his rippling fur. Ryker stared in amazement. It was the first time he had seen a weretiger shift right in front of him.
Behind Ryker, the younger werebeings were riled up with excitement. It was that animalistic side of them taking over; a kill was a kill, no matter what.
“Stay behind me,” Ryker warned the younger and overeager werebeings. “Don’t you dare move...”
He heard Six huff in frustration, and Three let out a small growl. I know, I know, he thought. A connection was made for any werebeing that had accepted a fellow werebeing, and it seemed like it was nothing short of mental telepathy for them. He could not read Thirteen’s mind, however. There was a sadism in Thirteen that Ryker could not swallow, and it prevented him from speaking to the weretiger.
Thirteen snarled back at them, angry at Ryker. He had wanted to kill the nuisance contenders first. Without another breath, Thirteen lunged at Ryker, sending Ryker reeling to the ground, his paws on top of Ryker’s chest.
Ryker groaned, feeling the claws dig into his skin.
“Stay back!” he shouted to the other werebeings.
Six looked at Three, her eyes glowering at him. She knew they needed to do something, but they had to follow the alpha male. She fought off every inch of temptation to launch an attack against the weretiger that was threatening the life of the only werebear.
The weretiger’s saliva dripped on Ryker’s chest, and then he raised a paw high in the air to swipe at Ryker’s throat. Ryker caught his paw just in time with both hands, but Thirteen wasn’t deterred. Instead, he raised another paw, swiping it at Ryker.
Ryker felt the blow on his jaw, the sharp nails peeling off skin and muscle. Ryker groaned, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. He heard Six yelp, and Three pounced forward. Thirteen snarled in his face, and the bellowing of the weretiger echoed in Ryker’s ears, rendering him partially deaf and disoriented.
That was when Three jumped into the air and onto Thirteen’s back, biting into fur and skin. The weretiger wailed, quickly reaching onto his back, and pulling behind to grab the werefox, flinging him against a rock. Without another moment wasted, Six launched an attack, biting onto Thirteen’s paws. She clung onto his paws for as long as she could, and Ryker scrambled away from them as Three went for Thirteen’s throat. The once pristine weretiger now had blood trailing all over his fur, but he held onto Six’s throat, his claws burying themselves into Six.
Six began to choke, her legs flailed inches off the ground, and Three was doing his best to chomp on Thirteen’s neck. Using both hands, he wrung on Six’s neck, squeezing the life out of her. Satisfied, he flung her to the ground; her eyes had become unseeing.
Ryker gasped, knowing Six was dead. Three had become ferocious, ripping the skin off of Thirteen, angry at how he had ended Six’s life so easily. Thirteen tried to shake Three off of him and then decided to grab him by the tail, chucking Three bac
k and forth like a wet rag on the solid ground.
“We’re giving them the show they all want. That final face-off between the last of us,” Thirteen hissed in an animal-like voice, as he let go of Three who crumpled in a heap.
Ryker’s eyes widened as he stared at Thirteen. The weretiger could talk; talk in human words! How was this possible? No one else could… he had thought he was the only one who could.
Thirteen gave a laugh, a laugh that was a cross between an animal’s howl and a human’s. It sounded sadistic; it sounded wicked. “You thought I couldn’t speak? And that I had to be emotionally connected to you?” he taunted at Ryker. “You, who refuses to bend to the will of the games? You think you can be human for so long when you’re here?”
Thirteen’s steps thudded as he bent down to pick Three. He held Three in both hands and elevated the unconscious werefox high in the air. Then he began to tear the young boy apart as Ryker watched in horror.
“Stop it!” Ryker shouted, “Stop it!”
The weretiger didn’t hear him. He was intent on spilling blood and showing them all what he was truly capable of. He was built to be a soldier; he was built to take commands and orders. He was built to kill. He heard bones break, and he smiled, but before he could begin to grip his claws on the young man’s body, Ryker hurled himself at him, and Thirteen stumbled, taking Three down with him on the ground.
One look at Three’s eyes, and Ryker knew he was dead, too. He felt an anger grow inside him, an anger that had been violently suppressed as a child, suppressed even more when he saw his parents inside plain wooden coffins, lowered onto the earth. He felt a rage that he had glimpsed when they had shocked that poor girl in the facility; he felt a rage that he was imprisoned once more, when he had avoided the government’s trappings all this time.
He had escaped for nothing; his childhood had ended, and now his adolescence would, too. Blood rushed into his head, into his hands, his legs. He felt a heat that raged into a fever. His jaw felt like breaking, his bones felt like breaking. His mouth salivated, and he could feel the sharp pain of his back. He began to shift, and Thirteen could only watch in awe.
In a heartbeat, and now in front of Thirteen, was the werebear that everyone had waited to see for so long.
CHAPTER 12
“Good god…” one research worker gasped, seeing what had unfolded live on the screen. They had stopped their work to view the day’s events, thinking it would be just another one of those days where the werebeings had to survive while looking for food and shelter.
They were more than glad that they had called for a break from the microscopes and centrifuges. There was a sizable crowd around the screen that hovered a few feet above the ground. Even Edith was watching in rapt attention, her mind churning with possibilities. The werebear was as amazing and as daunting as she had last seen it. It roared, causing birds to fly in scattered directions, all miles away.
She saw the others in the lab take notes, and she didn’t even need to tell them to. This was entertainment and work at the same time. She quietly slipped out and headed for Alexia’s quarters, knowing everyone was too embroiled in the games.
By the time she got to Alexia’s room, she saw the girl curled up in the corner of her bed, her back against the wall. She was reading a book and didn’t bother to look up, as if knowing who was outside her door already.
Dr. Delaney took a breath and strode for her, taking a seat across the bed. Alexia looked up.
“Come to bother me again?” Alexia said, her eyes narrowed.
Edith hid her smile. The girl had become quite spunky the past few days, after the werebear had shifted in front of everyone.
“I’m rooting for Ryker.”
“Ryker?”
“X014,” Edith told her.
“Because he’s got a chance?” Alexia said, disbelieving.
“Because he is the chance,” Edith told her. “They’re fighting now. He’s shifted, if you’d like to see.”
Alexia slowly put the book down, knowing she couldn’t deny herself this. She hadn’t seen him shift in person, only in videos that Edith had shown her. It was a replay, exactly twenty minutes behind the live footage. Alexia watched in rapt attention, seeing the brutality that Caliban wreaked among them. She closed her eyes, remembering how Caliban had always been such a hot-tempered subject, even as a child…
He had been test subject 1013 ever since she knew him. Destined to be put in the WereGames when he was deemed ready by the facility. It was no fair fight, but that was the whole point of it, to see if these genetically enhanced werebeings would come out as alpha among the others who were born as such.
Caliban had always been a serious child, one who’d had sparse interactions with her, but they spoke nonetheless. It was part of the testing, after all. She saw him first, as a bald, thin boy of about nine, dark hair and dark eyes, and with a multitude of scars on his back that wouldn’t heal, no matter what the doctors injected him with. They did skin grafting operations, but the scars resurfaced, as if in defiance to wiping his slate clean.
She had taught him to read in the rarest of moments when they were stuck in the same large room with the rest of the children who had been forcibly brought in or brainwashed. Caliban could not remember where he was from or what his family was like -- a story similar to hers.
He was a sad and angry child who would not hesitate to bite. His first kill had been at age ten, when he had shifted into a weretiger after a full year of testing. He had killed another research subject while she watched in rapt attention. A month later, he killed a new laboratory assistant who had ignored protocol. Blood was on his face and in his mouth, and he had been placed in solitary confinement until he learned who he had to follow…
That was the Caliban that was on the screen. He hadn’t been sent to war, not just yet. This was his final test before he was worthy of the titles that were waiting for him. He had told her as a boy that he would be the first werebeing General in the history of the country. He was going to be a weapon of mass destruction, useful alive and useful dead, as long as the collateral damage was there.
“Caliban is in his element now,” Edith commented.
“He’s always wanted that. I’d nearly forgotten he had a name, aside from the numbers you call us…” Alexia’s voice trailed off. “He was kind to me…”
“But not to the others,” Edith told her. “Who are you rooting for, Alexia?”
Alexia swallowed some saliva. There were childhood memories of her and Caliban, no matter how faint, but there was a part of her that wanted to see Ryker pull through. There can only be one winner, someone’s voice echoed in her head. It was either Caliban or Ryker as the champion, and it was something she had no hold against. She could talk to the werebeings, in their minds, if only for the briefest moment. She could hear their thoughts in close proximity, feel their pain -- and it was something she hated. She didn’t need to inflict more pain on them by letting them know she could peer into their minds.
“No one,” she said in a small voice, seeing Ryker shift into full werebear form on the screen. She knew Ryker could no longer control his rage. The other werebeings were dead. This was a showdown that guaranteed riches pouring into the government’s coffers. It was a display of power; something that the government craved, despite their already indomitable standing.
Ryker was now snarling on screen, and gone was that defiant young man who had desperately tried not to shift in the facility. She had been used as his weakness, made into one. She saw the weretiger claw at Ryker’s face, successfully scratching it. Ryker responded by throwing his large bear body against Caliban, pinning him down to the ground.
It was a vicious show of might and ferocity, with teeth bared and sharpened claws. Now that Ryker had shifted, he wasted no time pummeling Caliban with the same cruelty Caliban had shown him and the other werebeings.
Dr. Delaney saw it in Alexia’s eyes, and she knew right then who Alexia was rooting for. She said nothing about i
t, though. “Did you eat well?” she asked her seventeen-year-old test subject.
She nodded, not looking at Edith, still engrossed in the fight. Alexia saw Caliban swipe a large paw at Ryker’s snout, and blood began to drip from his injured flesh. In retaliation, Ryker bit the weretiger’s back, drawing blood as well. Caliban shrieked as Ryker bit deeper into his flesh, enjoying the taste of raw blood. The weretiger thrashed under his hold, snarling and desperately trying to shake Ryker off.
It had been years since Alexia had seen a fight from the WereGames, and this was a fight she didn’t want to see but couldn’t stop staring at. Blood left her face as soon as she saw Ryker on the ground, with Caliban pinning him down.
The games were ending today.
*
Ryker found himself under the weight of the weretiger. Thirteen wasn’t going down until someone was dead, and he knew Thirteen was making sure it was him. Thirteen’s saliva was dripping down his face and chest, and he saw blood on his mouth as well. He could smell the weretiger’s putrid breath, his cannibalism evident.
“I’m enjoying every moment of this, Fourteen,” X013 growled at him. “I’ll enjoy eating your flesh even more. I’ve never tried bear on my palate, yet.”
“Bastard,” Ryker hissed at him, thrashing underneath his weight.
“We gave them the show they all wanted, didn’t we?” Thirteen continued. “And despite your best efforts in shifting to a form everyone wants to see, I’ll still get to kill you.”
“You’re not trying hard enough,” Ryker told him, one paw wriggling free from Thirteen’s hold. With one powerful swipe, he knocked the weretiger away from him. Standing up, Ryker began clawing at him, each paw inflicting damage, and Thirteen bled heavily.
Thirteen roared as Ryker put in blow after blow, and he felt himself fall into a crumbling heap. He parried the werebear’s paws desperately, unwilling to accept defeat. The werebear’s anger had been awakened, and he was receiving the brunt of his rage. It was something he had never seen or felt in his entire life; even if he had spent half of his life tortured and trained to receive pain. In a split second, he found himself laughing -- laughing violently, waiting for Fourteen to tire out.