by Quil Carter
Leo walked in front of Greyson but Greyson stayed back, walking over to the mirror on the side of the wall.
The fur had started falling off of the little ones in thick chunks, and their flesh had turned a sick grey green. Their brains were nothing but masses of grey with thick black veins snaking all over them. Perish must have smashed their tiny skulls in.
Greyson wiped his eyes and went to turn from the mirror when he stopped. The mirror almost seemed to have moved. He shrugged it off and walked towards Leo and Doc. He had no desire to go into the enclosures the other animals had been kept in. The smell told him how their stories had ended. If there was a whipwolf in here somewhere it was surely dead.
Leo was looking down at Killian’s map, he looked stressed. His hazel eyes shot up to a far corner of the lab; Greyson followed his gaze and he saw what he was looking at. It was very small, but it was there, a camera in the corner. The red light was permanently shut off.
“Killian was never in his office, but I recognize this layout. It’s not altogether different from Kreig,” Leo said. He walked towards a door to the left and opened it. He grabbed a box and propped the door open.
“I’m going to look for some more medical supplies, you two do your thing,” Doc called; then he made a disgusted noise. “These fucking things smell worse than the Slaught House.”
Greyson drew his combat shotgun, just to be safe, and followed his husband, listening out for anything out of the ordinary. The lab was empty of all things living, though not of the dead.
As Leo carried on down a small hallway Greyson looked in every window. They both walked past a dozen or so incubator tubes filled with murky grey liquid, their contents now dead without their surrogate parent to tend to them.
There were jars and jars of preserved specimens in the rooms they passed, all neatly labelled and placed on shelves. Horrible monsters, some so deformed it was obvious why they had never lived. Others looked eerily human, small babies the size of your hand. Some covered in fur, others in scales.
Leo refused to look. Greyson knew why but knew better than to mention it.
“Here we go, yes, it has his name on it.” Leo stopped at a door. It had a small gold plaque on the front. With a quick scan of the card key they both walked inside.
Leo sat down at the computer and turned it on, letting out a small sigh of relief as it started up. “They’re still using the same operating system. I hope everything else is the same.” Leo wiped his face with his hand and took in a breath. “Are you going to look at the videos?”
“Only the parts with Nero, the rest I’ll leave. I’m having enough problems with Reaver as it is. If we get curious later we’ll have the files on the chip.” Greyson walked over and started massaging his husband’s shoulders; he was as tense as a cat in a deacon cage. “Are you sure you don’t want me here?”
He shook his head and put his hand on Greyson’s. “You know the saying, hun.”
“You can’t confess to something you don’t know.” Greyson sighed. He gave Leo one last squeeze.
“I know you don’t like it but I just have to make sure they didn’t try and make more after. I want to trust Elish but–”
The thought made Greyson’s mouth twitch. “From what we’ve heard he gave up after. Surely Elish has all this covered. You know he’s always two dozen steps ahead of us, even now.”
“I know. I just have to be sure.” Leo’s voice was a whisper. He brought out a small blue piece of plastic. To anyone else it looked like garbage, but it was computer memory. A small device that only King Silas’s scientists had.
“The memory is almost full, but Perish probably has a few of them.” Greyson tried to rub his shoulders again, anything to try and relax his husband. The stress of him being here was more than Greyson could comprehend. He had left that life behind many years ago. It had been a long time since they had been in an underground lab.
Like the one they had spent their first few months in together.
Greyson leaned down and kissed Leo on the cheek. “Radio me if you need any help, love.”
“I will.”
When Leo came to check on him, hours had gone by. Every file Greyson clicked had two hours of feed on it, and it had taken him an hour to find the day that Nero was there. By that time he had seen several things he wished he could un-see, but on the positive side he had pages and pages of notes regarding the goings-on of Skyfall’s lost scientist.
Though this wasn’t what was on the screen right now. Greyson had gotten distracted by the videos with Reaver in them. He was now watching Reaver being beaten by Perish.
This was when Reaver had first been captured; he was in the hallway stripped down to his t-shirt and boxers. The scientist was screaming at him and threatening him. Reaver wasn’t moving, wasn’t reacting, he was stone silent. Letting the mad man beat him. Very unlike the Reaver he had known, but Perish had the one thing that would make Reaver submit to him: Killian.
“I never thought I would see him like that.” Greyson shook his head. “I told you he’s ready. Look at him. He’s putting Killian ahead of himself, ahead of the pain and the taunting. He could kill Perish right now but he doesn’t.”
He could hear Leo grasp the chair he was sitting on. “Please… not now.”
Greyson turned around and motioned to the screen. “This is proof, this is proof right here. He’s ready. What still needs work Killian will do for him. I told you, I told you Killian was good for him.” Greyson let out an excited breath. “I think he’s ready for us to tell him.”
Dead silence. Just the humming of the computer and Leo’s fingers scraping against the back of the chair as they tensed.
“He’s too young,” Leo whispered. “He’s just a child.”
“He’s almost twenty. What were we doing at twenty?”
“Almost twenty,” Leo said. “And you promised me we would wait until he was twenty-one.”
“You made me promise fifteen, then you made me promise eighteen and then twenty-one. What next twenty-five? Forty? Sixty?”
“He just started dating Killian. They deserve time to be happy.”
“King Silas continues to destroy the future of the human race because you want Reaver and Killian to date a while longer? I’ve waited long enough.”
“He’s just a child.” Leo’s hesitation quickly turned to anger. “And he never asked for this, this is your dream and Elish’s, not his. He wants nothing to do with… he’s… he’s not a great wonderful hero, Greyson.”
“He can be!” Greyson raised his voice. “I see it in him, I see how he reacts to things now. There is hope. This hasn’t been a waste of time.”
Greyson repeated the words under his breath, “This hasn’t been a waste of time.”
“MY SON is not a waste of time!” Greyson jumped at the ferocity of his husband’s voice. “Don’t you ever say that saving him was a waste of time. We have a good son, who is a good person, no matter what issues he has, but he deserves to choose who he wants to be. Not have you two make the decisions for him.”
“If we let him choose he’ll be a common sentry for the rest of his fucking life and never leave Aras.” Greyson slammed the keyboard tray into the desk and stood up.
Leo’s eyes blazed, his stance firm and unwavering. “If that is what he wants.”
“When we took him in you said you would do this with me.”
“Then I realized how wrong it was to put that on a child. Especially one that hates helping people. Reaver isn’t the saviour of the wasteland, Greyson. He wasn’t born to be one, and no matter how much you train him, or how much Killian helps him, I think we should accept that, and give him a good, simple life.”
Greyson shook his head stubbornly. “He’s proving that my methods are working.”
“Even if they are working, I won’t put that on him; not yet, maybe not ever.”
Greyson pushed past Leo and stalked out of the room. “King Silas will continue his reign until time ends because you want
to give Reaver a mediocre life?” He glanced into one of the windows, seeing the rows of spliced specimens. “What a waste of talent.”
Leo followed him but remained silent. This aggravated Greyson; twenty years together and his husband’s actions still baffled him at times.
“For someone who has first-hand experience with how fucked up King Silas is, I fail to see why you are so against this.”
Leo exhaled and for a moment there was silence between them. When he did speak, his tone had changed. “I don’t know, Greyson, maybe it’s because I have experienced the fucked up things. And if you’re so willing to put Reaver in that situation, I don’t know. Maybe you’re the sociopath.”
Greyson seemed to ignore that comment. “Greater good, Lycos, greater good, remember?”
“Yeah, I’ve been hearing that since he was little. I have been saying that to myself every time I tucked him in at night. Greater good.” Leo slid the card key through the door and stepped into the lab.
“Greater good.”
Greyson barely slept that night and he knew from his breathing that Leo wasn’t sleeping either, but they didn’t speak. He could hear Carson Jr and Gini talking in low voices in the other room. Donny and Owen were outside patrolling the area.
Greyson had spent many lonely nights worrying about Reaver and who he was becoming. If he would be able to guide and train the boy properly, and more importantly: if he could be trained at all.
When Reaver was younger Greyson had almost given up on him, until they had figured out that interfering was what was causing him to act out, but now he was older and used to them not interfering in his life.
He needed guidance the most right now though. If Greyson didn’t tell him soon, his faint hopes of Reaver being the person he needed him to be would be destroyed.
Leo was wrong, Leo thought of Reaver as a son, nothing more. Greyson saw the boy as his own as well, but Reaver’s potential was so much more than that. Leo’s parental urges clouded that.
Greyson loved his son, dearly, but love didn’t equal sheltering, it didn’t equal selling Reaver’s potential short.
Killian had helped and Reaver was responding. He was showing signs, small ones, of caring about others, of showing empathy, compassion, remorse.
It was slow going… but it was going.
That’s what mattered.
Leo was wrong.
Even if he was wrong, he did love the idiot. Greyson kissed Leo on the cheek before getting out of their makeshift bed. Just a mattress and a couple of blankets. They had both slept in their clothes with their guns in reach in case anything had gone wrong, but as Reaver had said, Donnely was empty.
“Where are you going?” Leo asked. He was just as wide awake as his partner.
“Back to the lab. I want to watch some more of those videos, better than pretending I’m asleep,” Greyson said. He was about to get a flashlight out of their bag but he noticed it was getting lighter outside. Morning would be here soon.
“I’ll bring you some breakfast when it’s done then. I don’t want to go down there so early.”
“You’ll know where to find me,” Greyson said. He walked out of the room and past young Carson and Gini. “Go ahead and catch a few hours. Leo will be up soon.” The two were huddled over a game of poker from the looks of it, both dressed in black bulletproof vests and combat armour. They were invaluable to Aras, all of the Nevada family was.
Like Greyson’s family, the Nevada’s had been in Aras since the very beginning. There was always at least one Nevada on the council and one Nevada on the hill. It was a shame that Reno never burrowed himself into Reaver’s heart. When the two tiptoed around it when they were teens, both families thought it would become a sure thing.
It would have been nice to unite both families, even if Reaver wasn’t technically Merrik blood.
Greyson opened the door and slipped into the lab. Without Leo to tell him no he decided to make a pot of coffee. As it was brewing he rooted through the fridge and grabbed himself some fruit. The spaghetti and the meat in the fridge smelled like it was starting to turn so he left that be. If only they had been a few days earlier they could have had a feast. Now they would have to sacrifice it for Nero to find, at least the fruit he could eat.
He briefly wondered if Reaver and Killian’s minds had been blown when they first saw this place. All the pre-Fallocaust things Perish had, all the food, meat, technology. Leo’s lab had been smaller and wasn’t designed to grow food, but he still had coffee and other wonderful packaged things. He had thrown up the first time Leo had fed him cake. His body had never had so much sugar at once.
Chewing on a banana, he made his way down to the second level. He stayed in front of the door and leaned against it, deciding very smartly to finish at least his banana before entering.
As he chewed away he looked around the hallway. They all looked the same. White walls with a grey band halfway up, with white tile floors and a…
Greyson looked at the doorway to his left. He reached out and pulled on the handle but it was locked. Leo still had the card key; all the doors they needed to get in and out of had been propped open, even the one to the outside.
Where did this one go to though? Greyson looked down and noticed there was a faint bit of dried blood on the handle. He scratched it with his fingernail and rubbed it between his fingers.
As the blood flaked and fell onto the ground, something came to Greyson. He tossed the banana peel onto the floor and walked into the main lab area.
His nose wrinkled but besides that he managed to ignore the pungent smell. He looked at the mirror and scanned the edges and sides of it. He knew what kind of mirror this was.
There were many switches on the sides, all of them labelled of course. Perish was a perfectionist that was obvious. He found the one labelled mirror and flicked it on.
There was a flicker which immediately caught Greyson’s eyes, then the mirror turned into a window. Greyson shuddered as he walked in front of the two-way mirror, seeing the carnage in front of him. He was glad he hadn’t opened the door; the smell in the lab would be nothing compared to what it must smell like in that room.
It was well… it used to be the arians’ prison. What Killian had described, but now it was just a butcher’s shop of bloody chewed bones and rotting corpses twisted into each other to the point where you didn’t know where one person ended and another began.
The whipwolf was nowhere to be found. It must’ve been killed or perhaps Perish had let it go before Killian killed him.
Poor fucks. Greyson shook his head, but that was the wasteland. Survival of the fittest. Sure it wasn’t nice that Perish had caught them but there were slavers, clans, and ravers all across the greywastes that did the same thing. No one was safe in the wasteland.
The food looked rotten though. They wouldn’t be able to scavenge any of it. They wouldn’t enter this area of the labs. Though the blood was dried, he didn’t trust that they wouldn’t leave footprints. There was nothing for them inside anyway.
Greyson was about to turn the mirror back on when flicker caught his eye. He let out a shocked gasp as he saw movement.
He couldn’t believe his eyes. It was a man no older than Reaver, crouched into a corner rocking back and forth. He was sickly and gaunt, his tallow-coloured face stained with blood and ground in dirt. From his patched up, ratty clothing he looked like a waster. Everything he was wearing had been stained a dull brown from dirt and sweat, stitched together with shoe laces, or strips of leather.
In a prison of splintered, chewed bones, and dried-out rotting organs, someone was alive. Greyson looked at each corpse a bit more carefully but it was apparent, only one had managed to escape the fate that Perish had left for them.
Greyson got onto his radio. “I need Leo.”
A minute went by before Leo’s voice sounded on the other end of the radio. “What is it?”
“I found someone alive. Come down here with the card key and bring a sentry and an o
fficer.” No telling where the kid was mentally, he’d rather shoot him quickly and get it over with if he became hostile towards them.
Leo came running, his face stricken with shock. “How could someone survive this long? Where is he? She?”
“He. It’s a guy, early twenties I think, that mirror is two-way.” Greyson motioned Owen and Gini over. “Get your guns out but stay in the door. If he attacks us get a clear shot and we’ll end his suffering quick.”
Leo’s hands were shaking as he slid the card through the card reader. Immediately the tension in the room rose, and everyone was silent.
The light switched from red to green and the door clicked open.
Greyson drew his gun and opened the door with his shoulder, just enough for him to squeeze through.
“Hello? Are you clear of mind?” Greyson said into the room. His mask was forgotten in his pocket; he put his hand over his mouth and nose to lessen the smell.
There was silence for a second, and Greyson was about to signal Owen to draw his gun when there was an answer. The voice was weak but clear and audible.
“Yes.”
“Identify yourself, we’re not here to hurt you.”
“Asher Fallon, my family is… were raticaters. We were kidnapped.” His voice was a raspy weak whisper, every word sounded like an effort. He sounded sane and stable, though very exhausted. “Do you have any water?”
“Can you stand? Move?” Greyson took a step inside and motioned for Owen to follow him. The tall broad-shouldered sentry gave him a sober nod, his fingers resting beside the trigger.
As Greyson stepped over the decaying bodies and skeletal ruins, he saw the boy struggle to rise.
He was no threat, Greyson could see that clear as day. The boy’s hands shook from his ordeal, and his legs could only hold his weight for several seconds before they buckled.
Greyson handed his gun to Owen and helped the young man stand. His breathing was strained and his breath smelled of rotting flesh. No doubt he had been feeding on the dead arians to survive in here.
