by Quil Carter
“Then why do you hate me?” I asked quietly.
He kept staring forward not answering me, his black eyes fixed and focusing on something. Suddenly I realized what was happening.
“Reaver… do you see something in the corner?”
It looked like he was trying to turn his head to where I was, but his eyes still stayed fixed. “I’m slowly cutting his cock and balls off, the knife is dull… I’m sawing through it,” the robot said to me. He managed to hold his head up enough make eye contact. “You’re screaming for me to stop.” A smile crept over his face.
“They’re more real to me than you.”
Day eight of no sleep.
I took his hand gently and pulled him out of the bathroom and into Perish’s room. He followed automatically, his eyes moving in every direction as he saw things only he could see.
Then while I was leading Reaver, Perish burst through the door to the lab in the bottom level. He looked at me in shock.
“Why are you going to the bedroom?” he asked. He was holding a stack of disks in a plastic container.
“He needs clothes, he hasn’t slept in eight days, he’s harmless right now. Can I unchain him and get him some proper clothing?” I asked. “Every place he has shackles and chains on is infected. Please, Perry?”
Perish handed me the plastic container and started checking out Reaver’s shackles. He sucked in a breath. “Bad bad… okay.” He dug into his pocket. “I don’t have the key on me, wait here.” He disappeared down the hallway. I watched where he was going and so did Reaver. He went into the room that I had suspected, a small closet beside the food storage.
“Give me two seconds, I’ll have my key,” Reaver mumbled. I reached into my lab coat and gave him my worn keycard. Without even looking at me, or away from his hallucinations, he took it and pocketed it.
As we waited for Perish I started leafing through the plastic containers of disks. They all had labels on them in black pen. Most had Garrett’s name beside them, or were annotated with ‘Experiment’ then some random number. I wanted to pocket a few of them, but I had a feeling the scientist savant kept track of every single one.
Perish came back with the keys. He unshackled Reaver. I thought Reaver might attack Perish the moment he became free but he didn’t move. My robot just stayed there and only moved when I let him to the bedroom.
I gave him a pair of jeans and a button-down to wear. I stepped out of the room hoping he was with it enough to dress himself, and he was. He came out looking absolutely dapper. If it wasn’t for his injuries and the vacant expression on his face he would have looked like a movie star. I put on some nicer clothes myself, but still pulled the lab coat over me. Perish loved it when I wore the lab coat and it made me feel smart.
I brought Reaver to the kitchen area and sat him down on the kitchen table. I started getting him some food to eat.
“I want to go back to my room,” Reaver said after I put some left-over ham and fried potato and onion in front of him. He didn’t even look at the food.
“Why?” I felt hurt.
“I want to see what he’s doing,” Reaver said. “What he’s collecting, what his brother does while he is here.”
“Eat first, love.” I brushed his hair back but he jerked his head away from me, his onyx eyes blazing with black flames.
“Don’t touch me.” His voice dripped acid.
I burst into tears. I turned from him.
“You want to keep him alive,” Reaver’s cold voice bit. I could hear tones of mockery in it, taunting. “You want to bring him back to Aras and keep him for a pet like the fucking cat.”
“No!” I said angrily. His cold and indifferent tone had struck a nerve with me. “You… you said you would forgive me for doing that!”
“Doing what? Finger fucking him? How did it feel? Did you lick his cum off of–”
I don’t know what came over me, maybe I was just tired of being scared, or tired of having to deal with Perish’s advances, tired of being the only one able to get us out of this. I turned around and raised my hand to hit him.
Eight days of no sleep and his reflexes were as sharp as they had ever been. He grabbed my wrist and crushed it under his grip. He watched as I opened my mouth and let out a painful cry. He brought me to my knees as he bent my arm back.
Reaver watched as the tears ran down my face. His blank, emotionless eyes were dead and distant.
“Are you killing me in your head?” I asked.
Reaver bent my hand back further. I gave out another cry.
That snapped him out of it. He dropped my hand and without another word, grabbed the food and walked back to his room.
I didn’t follow him. I sat on the kitchen floor and cried, holding my arm.
I knew he was sleep-deprived. I knew he was mad at me, in pain and frustrated. I forgave him, like I’d had to understand and forgive the scientist’s problems. I understood how badly this was taking a toll on my boyfriend. It just made me more determined to make it home and take care of him.
“Killian, what’s wrong? Don’t be scared of Nero, I’ll hide you.” Perish appeared in the doorway.
He dropped an armload of fruit and vegetables into the sink and turned around, dusting the black dirt off of his lab coat.
“I need to cook him food now, Killian. Will you help me cook Nero food?”
I nodded and got up, wiping my nose and drying my eyes off with the lab coat sleeve. “I love to cook, sure.”
Perish put his arms around me and kissed my cheek. I hugged him back, and cried on his shoulder for a few minutes. My arm ached, I think Reaver might have sprained it.
Perish pulled back and clasped his hands together. “Have you ever made spaghetti? I’ll teach you, just watch.”
I gave him a smile and he beamed back at me. I started shelling onions and garlic and as I did, I found fresh tears coming to my eyes.
I realized then what Reaver had already sensed in me. I didn’t want Perish to die.
I stuffed my satchel with spices whenever he left the kitchen. My satchel which never left my side was filled with things now. It was heavy on my arm when I carried it, but with such great contents inside I toughed it out.
Perish read off the recipe so we could make egg noodles. He had chickens at one point but they ended up dying, so he had been having to use egg substitute. We had a few chickens in Aras, owned by the Dill family, but they only laid one egg a day and the family usually ate or sold it. To buy it usually set you back at least three dollars. I might save though; noodles were hard to come by, or at least the egg noodle kind. The merchants sold out long before they got to Aras.
“I wish you looked at me like you look at that package of chilli powder,” Perish said in a light tone. He glanced over at me and smiled. I was stirring meat, onions, and spices in a frying pan.
“Unfortunately chilli powder is just as rare in the greywastes as nice guys, luckily I have both.” I moved to the side as Perish dumped in some canned tomato sauce and started dashing in more spices. I hoped to be able to bring some to Reaver, though I was rather sore towards him now.
I jumped as Perish reached over and squeezed my backside. I moved away and smacked him with the spoon. I had a smile on my lips as he laughed. I hit him a few more times for good measure, both of us smiling and laughing.
Then everything changed.
A siren sound came from a speaker in the wall of the living room. It echoed all around us, coming from every speaker in the underground lab.
Perish’s face fell. He grabbed the cooked spaghetti noodles and dumped them into the pan of sauce and meat, before running out of the room without saying another word.
Someone was early.
I stirred the noodles in and started cleaning up. I didn’t know if I should hide, or stand here and keep cleaning. So I just cleaned, even though inside the anxiety was growing.
Eventually Perish came bursting back into the kitchen, dressed in a fresh lab coat. “Hide, hide, hide,
he’s coming!” Perish said anxiously. For fuck sakes he said he was going to hide us.
I grabbed my satchel and turned to him. He looked terrified.
“Where?” I asked. As he pulled me towards the stairs leading to the labs. I pulled back. “I want to stay with Reaver, bring me to his room.”
Perish nodded and ran ahead of me towards the surveillance room. I quickly followed.
“Please be quiet, please, please be quiet,” Perish pleaded to me. I felt awful for him. “I can’t lose you, please be quiet. Not a word, no watching, turn the TVs off. Please, be quiet.” He was begging and begging, all I could do was keep repeating that we would be quiet.
His poor hands were shaking. Before he could open the door to Reaver’s, I stopped him. I put my hands on his face. His vivid blue eyes were rimmed with red, he couldn’t keep still.
“You’ll be fine,” I whispered and kissed him quickly but softly on the lips. “Perish, what’s the password for outside? If I think he’s going to find us. We can hide in the city until you come get us.”
“No… it’s… it’s unsafe,” Perish whispered. I could barely hear him over the loud sirens.
I hugged him. “I understand, I just don’t want anything to happen to me, in case he looks. If he starts looking we can see on the cameras and just hide out. Then I’ll return to you.”
Perish pulled back. He wiped his eyes and shook his head. “No, sweety.”
My heart clenched. I nodded and kissed him again a bit more slowly, for what I knew would be the last time, before I opened the door and slipped into Reaver’s room.
“Reaver, he’s coming,” I said, ignoring the intense smell of dirt and rotting garbage.
Reaver was sitting in the metal chair again. He didn’t look at me he just gave me a slight nod.
“We need be as quiet as we can, okay?” I said. I extended my hand out to touch his shoulder but retracted it, remembering the fights that happened when I touched him.
Reaver
I fiddled with all of the dials to see if I could get any audio. Most of the feeds didn’t have sound but there were ones that did. The bedroom where I heard Killian finger fuck the scientist was one of them, and the lab with the embryos and the carcass. Also the living room, kitchen and a few hallways. I turned the audio up on all of them, just enough for my ears to hear. Not Killian’s or anyone outside of my cage.
The boy was behind me, his voice was just a low thrumming of mashed words. He was distracting me from the screens. I had to watch each one. All of them at once. I only looked away when they started to melt and bleed the coloured goo everywhere. If I squinted my eyes and looked at the ceiling light, my vision would fix itself.
I watched as Nero Dekker came into the feed. He entered through a secret door I hadn’t seen on any of the video cameras. It was on the second level, possibly a level I didn’t know about yet without cameras. When he entered, the sirens stopped.
Silence now… but low talking. Killian talked to me, he put his hand on my shoulder but I didn’t move. I was watching Nero and watching Perish.
The wimpy little scientist was cowering, doing his clasping hands tick and nodding a lot. He bowed his head to Nero and they walked to the kitchen.
Nero was taller than Perish and bigger too. He towered over Perish, not just from height but from dominance. He had short black hair and a thick, perfectly muscular body hidden underneath leather combat armour, black pants and a cape that stopped a foot from the ground. I also observed a silver chain around his neck and wrists.
He was extremely handsome. His jaw was defined, and he had a neatly trimmed beard. He carried himself like royalty, unlike his younger chimera brother, who carried himself like a cowering dog most of the time.
As Dr. Perish showed him papers and things on the computer screen, I watched them interact with each other. It was fascinating. Perish never stopped moving, he kept pointing and showing Nero things he probably hoped he could impress his master with. Nero looked at each item, nodding his head sometimes, but mostly seemed uninterested.
I turned my gaze to another TV for a moment. Nero had brought with him a group of legionaries who were waiting on the other end of the lower level in a kind of air lock. They were settling in with food and handheld game systems so I think they were prepared to be there for a while. Sometimes one of them would come over and take boxes from Nero that were full of disks and vials but that was it.
Killian mumbled something to me, but I didn’t hear him. Perish was leading Nero to the room with the abominations now. He was showing him each one.
Nero didn’t look happy, which I was mildly surprised at. I would think it would take a lot of work to get those human hybrids to function on their own. I reached to turn up the audio but I could only hear muffled voices from the next video camera a room away.
Nero banged on the deacon-human’s window. I smirked to myself thinking it was going to scare the shit out of him, but when the dog-man lunged at the glass Nero didn’t flinch. He turned to Perish and started screaming at him.
“Useless, untameable, what good will it do to the Legion?” Those were the words I could read from his lips. Perish backed away, putting his hands up submissively and led Nero to the cage with the babies.
Nero still wasn’t impressed. He poked the deacon-human baby in the face making it bite him. That seemed to tick him off. He smacked the little fuzz ball in the face. I could hear the squeal from the camera in the other room. Perish didn’t move. He rubbed his hands and paced around, talking rapidly to Nero.
They went to the garden. Perish ran around some more and showed Nero all the shit he had grown and after that it was to the living room for the food he and Killian had made.
This one did have audio. I turned it up a slight bit and listened in.
“Can I hear too?” a meek voice said behind me. I told him to fuck off. He could go melt in a corner. Which I think he did because he started murmuring through whimpers.
“It’s a very hard process, Nero,” Perish said. They had sat down with the noodles and sauce, with cold pop beside them. Nero had rum in his. “The dog splicing makes them too docile, the deacon splicing makes them into werewolves.”
Use deacdogs then you retarded fuck.
“Werewolves?” Nero looked at him, putting some more rum into his pop. He took a swig of the bottle and set it down with a clank. I could see the ice melting off of the bottle. God dammit I wanted one.
“They’re… mythology. A human who turns into a human wolf hybrid on the full moon, legend says–”
Nero put up a hand. “I don’t need to hear your magical shit, Perish.”
“Okay,” Perish said. His submissive voice rivalled Killian’s.
“How’s Master?” Perish asked. “Does he ask about me?”
“Never.”
There was a whimper. “Not… once? Not even after I gave him the embryos?”
Nero shook his head and kept eating. Perish did too, his head hung low and his shoulders slumped. What a fucking wimp. I would have sic’d the human-dog-thing on him by now. No wonder Killian had his nose up his ass, he loved mothering weakness.
“How’s Drake? Does he miss me?” Perish said. Nero pushed his empty plate towards him. As Perish picked it up and cleared it, Nero took the last drink of his pop and got up.
“No one misses you, Perish. When you look in the mirror do you see someone that would be missed?”
I heard Killian gasp behind me. I managed to look in his direction.
The boy’s eyes were red; I supposed he could hear everything. He was sitting there, grabbing the sleeves of his coat. I shifted back in my chair.
“Sit,” I said. I wanted him to hear Nero, or maybe I just wanted a larger audience as I heard Nero berate the retard.
Killian sat between my legs, his eyes glued to the screen.
“I’m disappointed, Perish,” Nero said getting up from the kitchen table. “I would have thought the deacon splice would be ready and breeding soon. Now
you’ve set the Legion back six months at the very least.”
Perish leaned up against his stove, his fingers clenching nervously. “The boras… if you see, this one weighs a hundred extra pounds… and… the bananas–”
“I promised Kessler I would be bringing him back at least two adolescent whipwolves. All you have for me is a rabid beast that will kill anyone who comes near it, and puppies,” Nero snapped. “Not to mention the fact that your last week of research has half the work it usually does. You expect me to bring this back to Silas? It’s garbage, all of it.”
“But the boras, the food–”
“Silas doesn’t give a fuck about feeding those disgusting dirt-covered savages; he wants to keep them in line.”
Surprisingly Perish looked angry. He slammed his hands against the stove. “I have been busy, okay?” His shoulders rose and fell, his face twitched and his arms ticked. “I… I’m not ashamed of the deacon-human, I have plans for him. He’s… he’s exactly what I wanted him to be. Don’t talk bad about Gianni.”
“You’re a fucking retard,” Nero snapped, stalking out of the doorway. Perish followed him like a dog. I turned the audio into the hall on and heard them both walk by.
“– and I’m getting tired of being disappointed every time I visit you.”
“I’m not a disappointment,” I could hear Perish cry off screen. “I’m… I’m gifted scientist. I do great work and you’re wrong. Someone would miss me, someone does love me.”
I could feel Killian go rigid. Nero gave a cruel laugh. I could only see his shoulder from the video feed. “Oh? Did you train the dog-human to fuck you? Or are you sticking your cock in the feed humans again?”
“Just leave me alone, Nero!” Perish screamed, like a little kid fighting with his brother. “Get what you need and just leave. I don’t want you here and you–”
The smack was loud. I could see a flash of Nero’s fist though I couldn’t see the impact on Perish’s face. I gave a laugh and heard a sob come from Killian. A moment later there was a thunk as Perish hit the floor. I laughed harder.
