Inside

by Kyra Anderson

  In this absent-minded and uncomfortable manner, I passed the rest of the meeting, trying to focus, though I had been rendered incapable of comprehension.

  When the long two hours had passed and it was nearing midnight, the meeting was called to a close and people took their USBs from the laptops before gathering their belongings. I noticed that Mr. Christenson, though he was the leader of the Commission of the People, had not spoken up through the whole meeting. He had stood silently to the side, shifting his weight eagerly from his left foot to his right, as a child would when bored, or an animal when being restrained from chasing something.

  What worried me most was that he had his eyes on me the whole time. I tried to tell myself that I was being paranoid, that there was no reason for him to be staring at me and no way for me to tell the direction of his eyes from behind the glasses. But I could feel his gaze and it made my hair stand on end.

  When I had placed the USB in my bag, as everyone else had, I turned to Clark.

  “Thanks…” I managed to whisper.

  “You’re welcome.” I could tell that he knew I had not been paying attention through the entire meeting. He looked Mr. Christenson, who was still watching me—I dared not to look, but I knew all the same.

  “Be careful, Lily,” Clark whispered, leaning closer to me. “Please be careful.” He grabbed his chair and returned to his table, his head low.

  I was about to break down crying, but fear managed to keep me strong, even if it was only because I was frozen to the spot, afraid to move.

  My father stood, followed by my mother, so I got out of my chair clumsily. My father shook Mr. Lloyd’s hand with a tired smile. My mother also shook his hand, and then they both turned to me.

  “Come on, Lily,” they whispered urgently. I desperately needed to get out of the basement, so my heart sank when I realized they were walking to meet with Mr. Christenson rather than leaving.

  Everyone had gathered around the angel in the cage. It reminded me of the cages at shoddy zoos, where many people gathered to gawk at dangerous animals. It seemed cruel when it was animals. With a teenage boy, the spectacle was horrific.

  When my family approached, the others in the Commission let us through without protest. I tried to keep my head down, but I still took notice of the amazed and jealous glares around us.

  Standing in front of the cage, I was able to finally look over the boy’s features.

  He was looking between the three of us, clearly understanding that we were his new owners. My stomach turned at thought of us being owners of another human, even if that other human was unusual enough to have wings. At such close proximity, I could finally see the shackles that limited the range of motion on his pristine wings, the silver metal standing in sharp contrast to the white feathers.

  As I looked over the beautiful young man, I realized that the wings must have been exceptionally heavy due to their sheer size, which explained the strength I saw in his chest and shoulders and why he rested the wings on the cage floor behind him.

  He was beautiful. His bright blue eyes scanned us warily, moving over my father and mother first. When our eyes met, I felt my breath leave my body, stunned. I was starting to doubt that the boy was human at all. He was too beautiful to be anything but an angel. His eyes remained locked with mine, allowing me to become lost in the blue depths until my knees grew weak.

  “He is quite the specimen, isn’t he?” a cold voice said beside me. I whirled around to face the tall form of Mr. Christenson. His entire presence was far too intense to handle up close and it made me feel sick, my body shaking, barely remaining upright. I stared into the dark glasses, seeing my wide-eyed expression in the reflection. “Do you like him?”

  “…we will enjoy him immensely,” my father said slowly, unsure of the words. “But…forgive us, Mr. Christenson, we have so many questions.”

  “I know you do,” he assured. He turned to the angel, breaking his hold over me temporarily. “First of all, I will explain the rules about him and how he is to be treated. Then, I will answer your questions surrounding his origins.”

  Mr. Christenson stepped even closer to the cage, sharing a silent stare with the angel before reaching a hand into the cage.

  “Stand up, Mykail,” he whispered in a hypnotic voice. The angel shifted and reached forward, hesitantly taking the offered hand and pulling himself to his feet. He was tall but his wings were even taller, folded at his sides, the longer feathers dragging on the ground.

  “I don’t understand, Mr. Christenson,” one woman said in the crowd, shaking her head in disbelief. “He is a perfect specimen. Why are you not repeating this experiment?”

  “It was far too much work. It was an expensive experiment I did on a kick of inspiration,” Mr. Christenson explained. I blinked, trying to understand how Mr. Christenson could just decide one day to change a human in such a fashion—and how he had the resources to do so.

  Mr. Christenson turned to my parents to see their similar, confused reaction.

  “This is Mykail,” Mr. Christenson introduced us to him. “He’s a pretty quiet one, so he shouldn’t annoy you too much, but I will warn you that sometimes he has tantrums about the shackles.” He reached back to the wings and gently touched the sharp edges that would have sliced into his skin if he tried to fly. “However, I cannot stress the importance that these stay on,” the leader of the Commission growled. “His wings are very strong and he can fly. We don’t want him to escape. Imagine the PR disaster that would cause.”

  The angel turned to Mr. Christenson, making no effort to hide the hatred in his eyes. Mr. Christenson chuckled when he saw the glare. “Although, he does tend to stare. If that bothers you, just blindfold him. Don’t be afraid to discipline him, either, should he do anything unwanted.”

  My father was about to ask a question, but Mr. Christenson held up his hand.

  “We will transport him to your home and be sure you have the proper facility to contain him. I will pay for all the modification costs. However, I must tell you now,” Mr. Christenson’s tone turned serious, “he is never to leave the confines of your home. He cannot go outside. Not to the backyard, not on the roof, nowhere outside.” Mr. Christenson looked between all of us. “Tell me you understand.”

  “We understand,” we whispered, frightened by the cold tone in his voice.

  He turned to everyone else in the meeting room, silent, reading the feeling of the crowd. He threw his hands in the air.

  “Alright, alright,” he conceded with a laugh. “You can look at him a while longer. I will take the Sandovers into the back and you can all study him to your heart’s content.” He released Mykail’s hand and the angel stepped back, once again sitting and letting his wings rest on the floor of the cage.

  “I shouldn’t have to say this, but I know someone will try it otherwise. Don’t stick your hands in this cage. He is not yours. Deal with it.” Mr. Christenson turned back to us. “We will go to my office and then I will give you a tour of the Enterprises lab.”

  He walked past us, gently brushing my arm as he moved, which caused my entire body to shudder. We followed, but stopped when Mr. Christenson was approached by Mrs. Markus and Clark.

  “Are you in further need of us?” Mrs. Markus asked.

  “I’m always in need of you,” Mr. Christenson said with a strangely playful, yet sultry, tone. I blinked, startled by the sentence. I was particularly confused when Mrs. Markus blushed and smiled demurely, looking at her feet. Clark also looked down, a noticeable shiver running through his body. I wanted to study their reactions more, but Mr. Christenson started walking, so we all fell in step behind him, walking to the door next to the stage. The stationed guard bowed his head when Mr. Christenson turned to him.

  “Leave him there for five more minutes and then tell everyone to leave,” Mr. Christenson ordered. “Then take Mykail back to his cell.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Has Sean returned?”

  “He just called in
. He is on his way,” the guard answered.

  Mr. Christenson continued walking and we followed him down a hallway and around a corner. There were several large, ornately designed wooden doors down the long, dimly-lit hallway. As we passed, I noticed that random doors had name plates while others had no distinction. We reached the end of the hallway, walking through a door to our left, startling the guard stationed on the other side. He reached for his gun, but relaxed when he saw Mr. Christenson.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  Mr. Christenson did not acknowledge him. There was yet another hallway that had one door at the end of it and a bend to the right. Mr. Christenson turned the corner and led us down a short hallway to the final door.

  I was already lost.

  When we entered the last door, we were in the large office of the leader of the Commission of the People. Mr. Christenson’s office was dark and full of heavy-looking, intricately designed wooden furniture. His immense desk had papers scattered across its surface, and the bookshelves around the room were lined with large books on law and history. There was also a table to one side of the room with six chairs and more papers scattered on its surface.

  “Over here…” Mr. Christenson said quietly to himself, swerving to the table as if he had forgotten the layout of his own office. I looked at Clark, who looked back at me, his eyes apologetic. Mr. Christenson led us to his table and grabbed a bulky file as we crowded around him.

  He flipped through the file silently, occasionally lingering long enough on a page for me to catch glimpses of photos and notes scribbled on typed reports, though I could not discern the words. He finally found a folded piece of paper and pulled it free from the others in the file.

  Once he unfolded it and smoothed it over the table’s surface I saw it was a detailed blueprint of our house. My eyes went wide as I scanned the hand-written notes, my heartbeat quickening once more. “Master Bedroom: Thomas & Karen.” “Guest room 1: Empty.” “Guest room 2: Mykail?” “Guest Suite: Lily.”

  I looked at Mr. Christenson, who was smiling at me.

  “Is this correct?”

  “How do you know what room I’m in?” I hissed, my voice weak.

  “I don’t,” he said simply, though his tone suggested that he really did know. “I merely assumed that a young woman would prefer a room with a larger space and bathroom.” He flashed another chilling, white smile.

  “This is correct,” my mother confirmed slowly, motioning over the blueprint.

  “Is this where you want us to put him?” my father asked, motioning to Mykail’s supposed room.

  “This one will suffice,” Mr. Christenson said. “According to the measurements, he will have just enough space. I wouldn’t want to make a greater imposition.” Mr. Christenson looked over the large paper. “We will construct special barred grates over the windows and where the doors are. You will be able to close the door outside of the bars, that way you can hide him if you have company. I will have my men there on Wednesday. They should finish construction by Saturday, and on Sunday, I will bring him to you.”

  “This is all very generous, Mr. Christenson—”

  “Please, call me Dana. There is no need for formalities,” he interrupted my father.

  “Oh, um…thank you, Dana, for this wonderful gift. It is very generous,” my father continued.

  “You’re welcome.” Dana smiled. “Now,” he would not let my father continue, “there are a few other things that we need to discuss about Mykail that are a little more sensitive. This will also be reviewed with you when I bring him next Sunday, so that you understand the kind of care he will need.”

  “Before you continue with that, Dana,” my mother said bravely, “does he really need to be caged?”

  “When you are not with him, absolutely.” Dana nodded strongly. “And the bars must be specially engineered to stand up to the strength of his wings.”

  “I thought the shackles kept him from flapping his wings,” I interjected, making the mistake of looking at Dana directly.

  “That’s correct,” he affirmed. “However, he does not need the full range of his wings to cause damage.” Dana glanced at my parents and then back to me. “Do not make the mistake of thinking that Mykail is human. If you make one mistake with him, he can hurt you. He is very dangerous.”

  Dana folded the blueprint and placed it back in the folder before pulling out another smaller file. “This is all the information you will ever need on Mykail,” he said, opening it and handing my father a USB drive. “This is your copy.”

  My father hesitated momentarily before taking the flash drive.

  Dana leafed through the papers swiftly. I briefly wondered how he could see anything while wearing his dark glasses in such a dimly-lit room.

  He extracted a sheet of paper with three pictures of Mykail—one straight on, one from the back, and a profile picture, all with his wings spread.

  “He has six tracers in his body, the same type used to track dogs and cats but a little bigger. This way, we’ll be able to pinpoint his exact location at all times. Keep this in mind if something should happen. There is one in each ankle, each wrist, and one in the major joint of each wing,” he pointed to the places in the pictures as he spoke. “Up here,” he pointed to the joint at the top of the wings, “he has his disciplinary chips. If ever he misbehaves, you will use these to punish him.”

  “Punish him?” we echoed, almost choking on the words.

  “It’s just like owning any other pet,” Dana explained, grinning. “You wouldn’t let a dog who has made a mess in the living room go unpunished, would you?”

  We could only stare, dumbfounded, unable to comprehend how Dana could equate treating a person the same as an animal.

  “When I bring him to you, I will give you all a clicker to activate the discipline mechanism,” Dana continued, ignoring our obvious mortification.

  “What will it do to him?” my mother asked nervously. “Will it really hurt him?”

  “Oh, yes.” Dana nodded enthusiastically. “It will be excruciatingly painful. It causes an electric pulse to temporarily paralyze his wings and cause muscle spasms in his back. Really puts him on the ground.”

  “That sounds cruel,” I hissed.

  “How else do you think he will learn?” Dana challenged. “Pain is the best way to teach an animal the limits of the rules.” He rustled through some more papers.

  “I will reimburse your home for his food as well,” he continued. “He eats the same as any other human, except that he only eats red meat. No poultry for obvious reasons.”

  He chuckled, as did Mrs. Markus. I just blinked, not finding the joke at all funny. Clark shared a look with me showed he felt the same.

  “In any case, he does not have any special dietary needs or restrictions,” Dana said. “Just be sure he always has access to water.”

  The way the man spoke about Mykail made me feel sick. I felt as though we were buying an illegal animal off the black market…only it was far worse than that.

  “You will need to bathe him at least twice a week,” Dana explained. “As I’m sure you can imagine, his wings are exceptionally heavy, and he cannot maneuver himself to wash his back or his wings. Be especially mindful of the skin by his wing joint,” he showed us where he was talking about on the pictures. “If he moves too much, the skin can rip easily when dry. After you bathe him, you will need to put a special lotion on this area for the following two days to avoid a bloody mess and possible infection.”

  “Then, we really need to do that every day,” my father deduced.“Basically,” Dana confirmed. “I will show you where and how to apply the lotion when I bring him to you.”

  He shifted through his papers once more.

  “I believe that is all…” he said slowly. “Now, if he is in pain from his wings or his back, call my personal line. It will be number five in your phone. Also, if you have any other questions or concerns with him, you can call my line at any time, day or night.”
r />   “Aren’t you a busy man?” my mother pressed.

  “If you are unable to reach me directly, you may call my head of security, Sean. He will relay the message to me. He’s generally nearby.” Dana looked around at all of us as he stood straight. “Mykail is very dear to me. I want to keep a close watch on him.” Dana chuckled lightly. “After all, I spent a lot of money creating him.”

  My mother, father, and I looked at one another, wondering who was going to ask the questions of how and why Dana created Mykail.

  “What is it?” Dana asked, seeing the glance. “Do you have a question?”

  None of us spoke up. I turned to Clark, who cleared his throat.

  “I…I think, Mr. Christenson, that they are curious how you created Mykail.”

  “Oh, of course! Forgot about that.” Dana snapped his fingers. “Right this way.”

  He turned on his heel and led us out of his office. I saw my parents exchange a concerned glance before following Dana obediently. We were all feeling the same way—trapped, dumbfounded, and frightened.

  But we all knew better than to raise a fuss in the heart of the Commission of the People

  Clark stepped up beside me.

  “How are you holding up?” he whispered.

  “Ask me tomorrow.”

  We walked a short distance down the hall to the door we had passed on our way to Dana’s office. When we reached the door, Dana turned and we could all feel his demeanor change.

  “I should not need to remind you of the NDA you signed when you entered,” he started darkly. “Nothing you are about to see is to be discussed outside of the Commission. This is the same for Mykail. If you let anything slip, we will take care of you very quickly and discreetly.” Dana let the comment sink in. “Do we all understand each other?”

  “Y-yes,” we barely managed to mutter.

  He grinned. “Excellent.”

  Dana pushed the door open and we braced ourselves as best we could for the horror that waited on the other side.

  The air was colder beyond the door, but the room was brighter—very bright, in fact.