Inside

by Kyra Anderson

  Clark tapped my shoulder, causing me to whirl around with a soft gasp. He smiled apologetically.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” I assured. “What’s up?”

  “Not much at the moment,” Clark admitted. “But…” He looked around slowly, making me nervous. “Mykail said we needed to do something before Eyna was finished?”

  My heart fell. “He’s done?”

  “No, no,” Clark said quickly. “But…something big happened. The entire security staff is worked up and came back with bruises and cuts after Eyna was pulled out of his cell, even Mark.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know, but considering how happy Dana is, I would think it’s something we need to worry about.”

  “Aw, Eyna’s not that dangerous,” a familiar cold voice said behind Clark. We both turned to face Dana’s shaded eyes.

  “Damn it!” I snapped. “Do you have to sneak up on people?!”

  “I do nothing of the sort,” Dana huffed. “You just don’t look around when you’re talking. Now, if you have something to hide, that could be detrimental to your plans.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” I growled.

  “Why are you worried about Eyna’s completion?” Dana asked, looking between the two of us.

  “Mark came back with claw marks across his face,” Clark said through his teeth. “What the hell happened in the lab?”

  “Oh, Eyna got a little testy and broke his restraints. Had to send all of the chinks to hold him down and sedate him. There was quite the scuffle.”

  “He…broke his restraints?” Clark gawked. “Didn’t you just replace those with triple restraints?”

  “For him, yes,” Dana affirmed. “The cuffs, the chains, and The Teeth. We even sedated him, but he’s gotten too powerful for that. We’ll have to up the security and the dosage.” Dana smiled widely. “It’s so exciting!”

  “Hardly,” Clark snapped. “Dana, he is now getting powerful enough to break out of the cells and if he gets out to the people…I can’t even imagine the chaos.”

  “He won’t get out.” Dana shook his head, waving the question away.

  “Maybe not out of the Commission, but he can get out of his cell,” Clark repeated.

  “And the first person he’s going to go after is you,” I said, staring at Dana.

  “You think so?”

  “Of course,” I scoffed. “You’ve tortured and mutilated him, and I’m sure he hates you more than anyone else.”

  “Ah, well, so be it,” Dana smiled and looked at me. I stared into his sunglasses, imagining the eyes behind them.

  “That’s it? So be it? That’s all you think?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Everything is fleeting. Nothing is permanent. Eyna is my favorite of everyone in the Commission so far. Bryant Morris was killed by his favorite. It would only be fitting that I be killed by mine.”

  “Oh, Dana, what on earth are you talking about?” my mother chuckled brokenly, stepping up to our conversation and breaking his concentration. I ground my teeth together, angry that she would interrupt. What made her intrusion worse was her coy act of flirting with Dana. It made me sick.

  “Nothing to be concerned about,” Dana assured, snaking a hand around her waist. “It has been a long time, Karen, since we have really spoken. Your husband has been so helpful with the transportation routes. I’m sorry I have been keeping him away.”

  I blinked. My father had been meeting with Dana? When?

  “No, I understand,” my mother assured as Dana’s hand dropped from her waist. I felt my stomach turn. My mother was falling under Dana’s spell. I realized too quickly that it was too late to save her.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Dana started. “I’ll look at my schedule and we can all meet up. After all, I have had Little Lily here with me after school and Tommy here for work, there is no reason that you shouldn’t come visit every now and then.”

  “Oh, thank you, Dana.” My mother smiled, covering her face demurely. “Lily, your father would like to introduce you to someone.”

  “Fine,” I said shortly, eager to leave. I walked away, not bothering to hide my disgust. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to throw up or cry. Clark stayed with my mother and Dana as I found my father.

  “Ah, Lily,” my father called, motioning to me. I stepped to his side and looked around at the group of suits with my father. “Paul, this is my daughter Lily,” he said before motioning to one of the men standing next to him who had grey hair and lines on his face. I extended my hand reflexively. “Lily, this is Paul Matthews, the Chair of Internal Affairs for Leader Simon.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “You, as well,” I said instinctively, though I was caught off-guard by his high position. “You’re a member of the Commission?”

  “Since I was a boy,” he affirmed. “My mother was brought into the Commission when I was six. Bryant Morris was still alive, then, of course, but I remember seeing Mr. Christenson when he was only Mr. Morris’ advisor. That was a long time ago, back when I was still young,” he chuckled.

  “Dana was Bryant Morris’ advisor?” I gaped.

  “Yes, or at least, that’s how Mr. Morris always introduced him,” Mr. Matthews told me. “I may be the oldest Legacy in the Commission, but the other Legacy members also remember.”

  “Like who?”

  “Lily,” my father said cautiously, warning me against asking more questions.

  “Sorry…” I said quickly, lowering my head, not really registering how well my father had me trained. “I didn’t me to pry.”

  “It’s alright,” Mr. Matthews assured. “I can understand her being curious about Mr. Christenson. He is quite the man, isn’t he?” The other four I should have known by name laughed around us. “If you are curious, Mr. Christenson has not changed at all in the time I’ve known him.”

  “He’s always acted this way? Always?”

  “I’m not that old,” he chuckled. “I’m actually younger than your father,” he teased. “As long as I’ve seen him, yes, he has been the same.”

  “How old was he when you first met him?” my father asked the question this time.

  “Oh…he said he was about twenty-two or twenty-three…I can’t rightly remember.”

  “So he’s…well, a lot older than he looks,” my father chuckled with a nervous tone.

  “No kidding,” another man agreed quickly. “My wife always talks about how, when she’s his age, she wants to look as good as he does.”

  The conversation diverted as I studied Mr. Matthews. He looked older than my father, but I understood that most people in the Leader’s Cabinet aged quickly due to the stress of the job. I memorized his features. He was a small link into Dana’s past, and if I could figure out where he came from, I might be able to find some weakness, or at least some way to bring the leader of the Commission down.

  I remained through the next conversation about the stock market, but it was cut short when there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see Mark, which surprised me. He had his glasses on, which made him blend in with the rest of the security detail filing into the room.

  “Mark,” I greeted brightly, though my heart fell when I saw the three large but shallow gashes across his left cheek. He smiled at me and lifted his hand, wiggling his fingers in an innocent greeting that made me grin wider. “Hello,” I chuckled. “Are you alright?”

  “Lily? Who is this?” my father asked.

  “This is…uh, Mark,” I started stupidly. “He’s…sort of, in charge of my security when I’m here.”

  “He’s part of Dana’s security detail?” my father tried to clarify.

  “Not only that,” Mr. Matthews interjected, “these guys are the internal security. They’re experiments themselves. Most of them can’t understand much English, though. They’re all…what’s the politically correct way to put it? Of East-Asian origin.”

  “You’re kidding,” my father g
asped, turning to Mark again. “What happened to his face?”

  “Probably some scuffle in the back. They’re pretty frequent.”

  “But if this is Mark, then this is the one that the Markus’ own. Dana gave him to them,” another man added.

  “No kidding, this is the one?” another chortled. “He’s shorter than I thought. Sean’s praised his skills to the high heavens.”

  I turned to Mark again and smiled apologetically. I couldn’t read his reaction to the conversation through his glasses, and I was too busy looking at the fresh wounds in his face, anyway.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, pointing to my own cheek. His hand lifted to his face and he gingerly touched the wounds before glancing at the blood on his fingertips. He lowered his hand and turned to me again before lifting his hand to his left ear and pulling on it discreetly.

  I’m sorry.

  He was always apologizing.

  The doors closing startled me and when I looked around, I saw I was not alone. Everyone scrambled to their seats. Mark nodded to some of the others in security as they spread around the room. I was really surprised to see how many were there. Some were women, most were men, a few of them were even black. Sean was standing near the stage, whispering something to Dana as Mrs. Markus called the meeting to order.

  As soon as she turned the microphone to Dana, he smiled broadly.

  “Today’s meeting is going to be unconventional,” he stated. “Recently, there has been immense progress made on the Machine of Neutralization Project. As you might have noticed—or heard, if you were here earlier—there was a bit of a scuffle because Eyna broke free of his restraints and basically caused havoc in Ward Six. Now, I would like to bring him before you and show you what progress has been made, so we have to do this quickly before the sedatives wear off.”

  A tremor went through the room, but it was not just from the members of the Commission, it was also through the security detail.

  “Boys, bring him in.” Dana motioned to two men by the back door, one of whom was Mark. Mark opened the door and reached through, grabbing the chains that were handed to him and guiding the experiment through the door as the man opposite Mark grabbed the second set of chains so the four people who had led the experiment to the meeting room could come forward.

  Everyone was silent as the Machine of Neutralization prototype stumbled and fell to his knees. He was dressed only in baggy shorts and chains. There were two cuffs around his wrists and ankles and one large one around his chest attached to four guiding chains. The cuff around his neck was connected to three guiding chains and the iron looked like it was weighing him down too heavily for him to stand.

  I did not fully remember what Eyna looked like from when I first saw him, so it was like seeing him for the first time. He looked to be in his late twenties, his light brown hair dirty and knotted. His pale skin was dotted with bruises and cuts and where the cuffs were biting into his flesh and blood was dripping down his body.

  That was when I saw that the cuffs were literally biting into his skin with sharp points facing inward, puncturing his skin whenever he moved, preventing excessive motion.

  He trembled as the other chains were separated between the four security agents who had brought him. Mark and the other man stepped back.

  One of the men holding Eyna tugged on the chain attached to his chest and I cringed with the experiment as the ridges lining the inside of the cuffs sliced into his skin. One of the men turned to Sean, who moved behind Eyna, hooking his arms under Eyna’s and pulling him upright so he could walk.

  “Be careful, Sean…” Mrs. Markus said nervously.

  “Don’t worry everyone, he’ll be safe for ten minutes or so. We pumped a lot of sedatives into him. He’s running at ten percent,” Dana explained to the worried room.

  Sean brought Eyna next to the podium and he fell to his knees once again, his head bent low in fatigue. Sean stepped to Dana’s side, standing between Dana and his favorite experiment.

  “Now, I know he doesn’t look like it now, but his DNA has been successfully infused with pieces of lion DNA,” Dana explained. “His strength, speed, and reflexes are at phenomenal levels, almost to the point where we cannot record them without assistance from the computers. Even some of our best cameras cannot capture his movement correctly.”

  The audience gasped, surprised and excited by the information. I on the other hand, was skeptical, sure that Dana was exaggerating.

  Dana walked to Eyna and lifted the experiment’s arm. Even sedated, he growled and flinched away from the touch, causing Dana to grin.

  “He’s got enough tranquilizers in him to put down an elephant, yet he can still growl and react to me,” he explained. He lifted the experiment’s arm high and wrapped his other hand around Eyna’s bicep. “His muscles have not grown at all, but they have not atrophied, either. He is currently able to lift something five times his body weight. You can see the results of the tests on the fifth slide of your presentations.”

  I wanted to study the results, as most members of the Commission did, but I was staring at Eyna. His shaggy hair was hiding his face from view as he looked at the ground, swaying. But even though I could not see his eyes, I could feel the power radiating off him, albeit barely, due to the sedatives. I tried to convince myself that Dana was working everyone up to believe that Eyna was more dangerous than any other experiment, but there was a part of me, an instinctual portion, that understood the experiment was exceptionally deadly.

  “For now, his testing will be halted and we will wait for him to fall into a normal routine before we start again. We will do another round of treatments and then start training him for the program itself,” Dana explained, dropping Eyna’s arm carelessly. He walked behind Eyna and wrapped a hand around his neck, lifting his chin so we could see his face.

  His eyes were mostly closed and his mouth was open as he breathed heavily. His face was pale, even though his cheeks were flushed red, a side-effect of the sedatives in his system.

  “Look at him, everyone. He’s the first one of the Machine of Neutralization program to reach this stage,” Dana announced. “Within a few years, we should be able to mass-produce these wonderful weapons. They will be more devastating than any WMD created so far.”

  “What do you plan to do with them?” a member of the Commission asked. “We’re not at war.”

  “Not now, no,” Dana admitted. “But it could happen. Who knows what’s brewing in the dark depths of the minds of other people?”

  He moved his hand away from Eyna’s face and the experiment let out a growl, opening his teeth to bite. But Dana’s reflexes were also fast, and he pulled his hand away as others gasped in fear.

  Eyna’s head dropped again, his breathing labored.

  Dana grinned.

  “You know the rules,” he chuckled. “If you bite me, I bite you.” He looked back at the members of the Commission. “I would like to put forth a proposal to the Commission of the People,” he called. “Given that Eyna is likely to be the first success of the Machine of Neutralization project, I would like to see if these changes we have made to his physiology could be passed through breeding. I have found Eyna’s sister in the holding cells and I would like to use her as the first female Machine of Neutralization and test the possibility of breeding.”

  “Are you not worried about inbreeding?”

  “At the moment, no,” Dana said. “We know Eyna’s reaction to the testing, and it would be easier to use his sister, who is from the same bloodline, to repeat the test and be sure that would succeed first. If she is a success, we can try breeding and see the results we get,” Dana explained. “I am putting this proposal in front of the Commission of the People. Will anyone second?”

  I prayed silently that everyone would remain silent.

  “I’ll second,” one of the men at the far right table called.

  “With the second, will all in agreement stand?” Dana asked.

  The sounds of chairs scraping
across the floor and people standing were much louder than normal. I dared not to look. I did not want to see the people standing in agreement for the plan. I just prayed it was not the majority.

  “Very well, as soon as we process her paperwork, we’ll transfer her into the lab and begin her testing,” Dana announced. “Please sit.”

  Eyna growled loudly and whirled to lunge at Dana, but the leader of the Commission stepped back easily, and the experiment fell to the ground, letting out a choked cry as the chest cuff punctured his skin from the fall.

  “Alright, we better get him back into his cell before he hurts himself,” Dana declared. “Take him back and be sure he does not get loose again,” he told the security staff sharply. “The drugs are obviously wearing off, so move quickly.”

  Everyone who had lined the room surrounded the Machine of Neutralization, standing him up and quickly leaving the room, everyone filing out the same door.

  “Exciting, isn’t it?” Dana smiled. He watched them leave and, as the final people were filing out, he turned his attention back to the room. “Alright, I have one other thing I would like to discuss with everyone,” he said slowly, pulling out his pocket watch, tossing it around in his palm as he paced the stage. “We have a problem.”

  My heart raced.

  “The Commission of the People has a lot of different responsibilities and, as you are all aware, I have come to realize that our younger members have been acting outside of what would be expected for people in this commission.” He looked over his captive audience. “Recently, you will remember, I took Miranda and Julie Jacobs under charges for illegal drug trafficking and firearm possession. Apparently, this has not settled well with the new generation of Commission members.” He looked around at the Commish Kids.

  “Would any of you like to say anything?”

  Three seconds of deafening silence passed before Dean stood.