by Alisha Rai
“Darn right you won’t.”
As she straightened, her flashlight swung over the left cage. Erik hadn’t made a single sound since she’d entered the room with the good doctor. She hadn’t expected a rousing cheer, but some acknowledgment probably wouldn’t have been amiss.
Whoa. Weren’t prisoners supposed to waste away? Erik looked bigger, his shoulders taking up more space than she would have thought possible. Stock-still in the far corner of the cage, he had his knees drawn up, his head hunched forward and his arms completely covering his head in a sitting fetal position. A chill ran down her spine. Was he okay? Would he be able to make it out on his own? There was no way she’d be able to carry Erik version 2.0.
“You have no idea what you’re playing with,” the doctor bleated.
From her brief interaction with Carrie, she knew the girl was bruised, but Erik looked like a mass of blue and purple flesh. The bruises mingled with cuts and scars. As the light ran over his body, she could see the thin tracery of whip marks. Unlike Carrie, he didn’t wear a shirt. His bottom half was covered, barely, in some ragged and dirty cloth. His cage was the filthiest, as if no one even bothered to make a token effort to clean it.
Manacles were clamped around his ankles, linked to chains which ran outside his cage, secured to hooks in the wall.
“The male subject is ours. You have no concept of how much time and energy has been expended in creating him.”
She finally tore her gaze away from the defeated, still figure of what had once been a strong and powerful man. What had once been her friend, a man who had saved her life, who had laughed and eaten and teased with her. Before he’d been taken and caged, like the lowliest of animals.
She didn’t consciously register flipping the gun around in her hand or swinging it through the air. The reverberation from the impact of the gun against the doctor’s hard temple went up her arm.
He fell to the ground without a peep.
Life was better without the man’s babbling.
She crossed to Carrie’s cage and fumbled for the key to open it while the girl struggled to her feet. After a few unsuccessful tries, Jules found the correct key and swung the door open. The girl stepped out, her coltish legs wobbly and tentative, as if she feared this was nothing more than a trap.
“I’m really not going to be terminated?” she asked quietly.
Whatever remorse she’d felt over killing Dr. Bitch? Burned clean away by righteousness right now.
She held out the flashlight and pressed it and her gun into the girl’s hand. “Not a chance. Hold this and go stand by the door, okay? I’m going to see what our friend’s situation is over there, and I need you to shine the light for me. Keep the gun trained on the doctor, and make sure you’re standing far away from him.”
“Okay,” Carrie said, accepting the light and the gun. Her hands were clumsy with both, her amber eyes very large in her white face. She scampered over to stand by the door. The light bobbed and weaved with her shaking hands.
Jules turned toward her old friend. Erik hadn’t budged, which worried her. Was he more hurt than she’d initially thought? Perhaps he had gone into some catatonic state. Since she didn’t know how long the guards and the doctor would be restrained—or, God forbid, if and when reinforcements would come—they didn’t have much time.
Jules slowly unlocked the door to Erik’s cage and stepped inside. “Hey there, Erik. I’m back, just like I said.”
The weak flashlight Carrie was holding bobbled above the guy’s head. It steadied over the male, spotlighting him. Jules crept closer, trying her best to avoid sudden movements. “I’m going to take off this shackle, okay, Erik? The three of us are going to blow this popsicle stand. I’ll take you somewhere where no one will hurt you, I promise.” Distantly, she realized that she was using her talk nice to the crazy man voice, and she really hoped he wouldn’t take offense. Even allegedly starved and shackled, the muscles in his biceps and legs were bulging. Hell, even his hands and forearms, where they covered his head, looked tough with sinewy muscle and large bones.
She sank to her knees and slightly to the side so the light could show her what she needed to do. After studying the lock, she grabbed the most likely looking key. She inserted it and gave a sigh when the shackle on his ankle clicked open. She opened the other shackle and removed them, tossing them to the floor.
Jules dared to place a hand on his naked back. He wasn’t completely still, she realized. Small shivers were running through him, like he was going through a withdrawal of his own. “Erik? You’re free. Can you stand up?”
She didn’t know if the giant shudder that ran through him was a nod of acknowledgment or a reaction to her words. “My collar,” he said, the words muffled.
The sound of his familiar voice reassured her. She came to his side and tried to examine the collar, though it was difficult with his hands still covering his head. Since it was dark, she used her hands to run around the back of his neck. He stiffened, barely breathing.
This collar was different from hers, not as slick or polished. She’d heard of electroshock collars before. Pre-Illness, they’d been a controversial way of controlling high-risk prisoners. The guards carried the controllers. Keep it flipped on and come within range of the collar, steady charges would shoot through the prisoner, keeping him down on the ground and incapacitated. Or it could be toggled to deliver sharp, shooting pulses of electricity.
There was a keyhole there, but it was small, far smaller than any of the keys on the ring. She quickly tested a few of the most promising ones, but none did the trick. “The key isn’t on here.”
“It has to come off.”
She tried again, but no luck. “Erik, none of these will work.”
“It has to come off.”
Urgency drove her. “We gotta get out of here. We can try to get it off some other way. Let’s go.”
Ever so slowly, his hands started to sink down from his head, revealing the light strands of coarse, shorn hair.
Wait. Light strands?
Erik had been as dark as her.
Jules frowned and stood, taking a step back. The light dropped to his feet as his head came up. Carrie lifted it again, and with each inch revealed as the man straightened and came to stand on his feet, Jules found herself backing away. The pool of light fell first over Erik’s bare feet and legs, clad in tattered army fatigues that had clearly once belonged to someone far smaller than him. Carrie shone the light on a bare broad chest, hands like hammers and bulging biceps. And finally, finally, the light fell over his face. That face. Its chiseled perfection was marred by the dirt and his now-crooked nose.
Not to mention the pigmentless silver of his hair and eyes.
She shook her head in disbelief, not willing to believe what she was seeing. How was this possible? No Shadow who was far gone enough to have lost their hair and eye color retained their skin pigment. He’d spoken to her. Shadows didn’t speak. Oh, and a Shadow would be slavering to get at her blood right now.
On second thought, maybe that’s what he was considering. He took a step and lurched against the bars, rattling them. Soulless eyes were focused dead on her.
Jules prided herself on never backing down. Send her out to a homestead to offer help to a crazy-eyed hermit with a sawed-off shotgun and she’d keep trekking toward that front door even when others would quit.
She was definitely willing to back down now, or at the very least give this Not-Erik some space. She backed out of the cage, and he followed, not taking his gaze from her.
A humorless smile curved the lips that had once grinned at her happily. “Shocked?”
She swallowed as he took another few steps, putting him outside the cage too. “You could say that. What the fuck, Erik? What are you?”
“They call me a hybrid.” He shrugged. “The good doctors’ greatest success story, don’t you know?”
“But…why?”
“Come now, Jules. Think like a megalomaniac for a mome
nt. They’ve created someone who’s not quite human, not quite Shadow. Strength, speed, bloodlust, and the light can’t kill me.”
The puzzle pieces fit together, giving her a picture she liked even less than the one she’d originally had, of researchers with God complexes experimenting willy-nilly.
There were Shadows and humans, and never the twain shall meet. Unless, yanno, some idiots were kidnapping humans, experimenting on them and creating some mutant army. Or something.
A weapon. They were creating weapons of humans with all the strengths of the Shadows but none of the weaknesses. Sentient superhumans who could be controlled. An army of men like this could take over the world in a way the Shadows couldn’t. “Jesus Christ.”
“He couldn’t save me either.” Erik shook his head. “My apologies. This is not a very good reunion.”
She glared at him, finding it easier to be angry than to give in to the despair and fear she felt over the change in her old friend. “It would have been nice if you’d given me some warning. A ‘hey, by the way, I’m sorta similar to the people you run around killing’ would have been nice.”
He managed another lurching step, and pain flashed in his face. He stopped, his breath gusting, and fell to his knees.
“Erik!” Carrie cried and came running to his side. The girl tossed her gun and flashlight down. The light bounced over the opposite wall, turning the two figures on the ground into shadows.
“Go away. Jules, get her away from here.”
The obvious struggle he was undergoing finally got through to her. She took a few steps forward and picked up the flashlight. “Are you okay?”
He glared at her, ignoring the girl’s hands stroking his shoulders. “Did you not hear me?”
“I did.” Jules licked her lips. “And I told you, I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Well, that caught him off guard, she could tell. “Can’t you see I’m not normal anymore?”
Yeah, she could see that. Her world felt like it had shifted on its axis. But he was still her friend. No matter what, she couldn’t believe that the man she’d searched for was completely gone. “Tell me what you need to get out of here.”
“He’s starved,” Carrie said. Her fragile fingers were locked around his arm. She was looking none too steady herself, swaying on her knees.
“Okay…” Jules dared to place her own hand on his shoulder. “What do you—?”
She didn’t get to finish the sentence because the doctor made a noise, as if he were coming to. With more strength than she would have given him credit for, Erik knocked both of their hands off him, sending Jules flying a foot to land on her ass while Carrie tumbled away.
He moved so fast, he appeared a blur in the dimness of the room. He leapt on top of the doctor. The fallen flashlight lit the bizarre embrace. The other man gave a keening cry before his screech cut off abruptly. His arms hung limp, the life in his gaze fading quickly as Erik drank thirstily from his neck. Bloodlust transformed Erik’s face, his eyes closed in an almost pained expression.
“Ay cabrón,” Jules whispered. Her brain could not compute what she was seeing. “Erik, wait!”
She struggled to come to her feet, but she had another body to contend with when Carrie flung herself across her. The girl had surprise on her side, or her small amount of body weight wouldn’t have so much as budged Jules.
“Don’t stop him. He needs to eat.” The girl’s voice was filled with more firmness than she’d imagined Carrie possessed. Like it was normal to eat another person. This was the world she lived in.
“Not the doctor. We need him for questioning, damn it.” Jules hadn’t planned on taking the man as a hostage, but after seeing what had been done to Erik, she had no real choice. Compound needed whatever information was stored in the scientist’s brain.
Careful not to hurt Carrie, Jules gripped her arms and rolled her to her back, coming to a crouch next to her. Tackling Jules had expended much of the girl’s energy. She lay on the ground, rapid pants coming from her chest. Jules cursed at the fresh red stain soaking Carrie’s shoulder. The wound must have reopened when the teen launched at Jules.
The thump behind her made her look back to Erik. She picked up the flashlight again and shone it over the limp body on the floor. “Goddamn it. Tell me you didn’t kill him.”
She lifted the light to Erik’s face. Blood streamed from the corner of his mouth. His tongue gathered the blood and flicked back inside. “I can’t tell you that. I can tell you that he deserved it.”
She huffed out a breath. “I don’t disbelieve you. But you realize you killed possibly the only other person who might have the slightest idea of what was done to you?”
His face hardened. “That may be so. But there is no way I would be able to leave here, starved as I was. I’d do it again.”
“Great. That’s just great.” She came to her feet and staggered, her head spinning as if the blood had rushed away from her brain. Instantly, he was there, bracing her arm.
Unable to help herself, she flinched away. He didn’t react, dropping his hand, but she felt compelled to explain. “I’m not used to being touched—”
“No doubt. Especially by a bloodsucking cannibal.”
She licked her lips. “It’s a shock. You have to understand that.”
“Trust me, when I woke up for the first time like this, it was a shock to me too.” His gaze went past her, found the girl on the floor. “Carrie? What’s wrong?” He crouched next to the now-motionless girl.
At some point, while she and Erik had been arguing, the girl’s eyes had closed, Jules realized with a pang. She looked on while Erik checked Carrie’s pulse and then glanced up. “She’s unconscious. We have to get her out of here.”
He’s not a bloodsucking fiend, if he can be this concerned over the girl, she reminded herself.
He stood, easily raising the girl in his arms and holding her close to his chest. A few pints of blood had really done a number for him. With a jerk of his chin, he gestured for her to leave first.
With her gun safely in her hand, Jules looked both ways and left the room. If she hadn’t known the man was behind her, she would have been surprised. He was incredibly light on his feet.
“Do you know how to get out of here?” she whispered.
“Go left. That is how they would take us to the yard.”
“For exercise?”
“To see how we would fight against the Shadows.”
There was no inflection in his voice, but Jules glanced over her shoulder. The dim red emergency lights of the hallway gleamed over his naked torso. When they got in brighter lights, she wondered how bad his various scars and healed injuries would appear. What she’d seen was bad enough.
Another dim hallway lit only by the flashlight in her hands, another dark set of stairs, and they came out to a large lobby and a boarded-up door.
Jules turned the deadbolt and opened the door, the crisp night air launching goose bumps on her arms.
She took a deep breath, letting the clean oxygen drift into her lungs. Perhaps she took too big of a breath because that same high-altitude dizziness overcame her.
“You okay?”
She shook off the feeling and turned and touched the girl’s arm. “Yeah. Almost home free, Carrie.” As long as there aren’t any Shadows between here and the van.
No, Jules didn’t back down from a fight, but the thought of doing any kind of battle right now was almost enough to exhaust her.
The cold air had revived the girl. Her eyes were half lidded as they left the place, and she was looking up at the starless sky like she’d never seen it before. “Smells good,” she whispered. Her head lolled against Erik’s chest. “It’s okay if I die, Erik.”
“You won’t die, child,” Erik said. That firm tone was so familiar.
I don’t wanna die, Jules had said, when she’d been sweating and shivering on a cot in Erik’s room.
You won’t die.
Jules inhaled. “Yo
u two are both martyrs. I told you, no one’s gonna die. Come on now, let’s shake a leg.”
She glanced around. She knew she was still on the same university campus but no idea where on the map. Looking up, she spotted the distinctive bell tower near the library. Hopefully, her van remained parked where she’d abandoned it. She nodded at it, “That way,” and started to sprint, trusting Erik to keep up with her. He did, moving easily by her side, even with the girl in his arms.
Actually, he was doing better than her. Jules had never been a runner, but she had stamina. About ten minutes in, she started to feel sluggish, like her legs were churning through water. She slowed to a walk, but that was even harder.
“What’s wrong?”
Erik’s voice was too loud. So was his breathing. Inhale, exhale, inhale, until she couldn’t hear anything else, until she couldn’t figure out where her breaths started and his ended. She blinked and frowned, her skin arranging and rearranging as if her face was made of clay.
Focus. Must get away. Must check on the kid.
“Jules?”
The van wasn’t far. A few hundred feet. She could see it.
She collapsed to the ground, her legs giving way beneath her. Jules knew that she needed to get to her feet, but knowing and doing were two wildly different things. She managed to get to her knees before she cried out and fell back to her butt.
She looked up to find Erik gazing down at her, thick black brows pulled even over his silver eyes. “What is wrong with you?”
What the hell was wrong with her? Was she in shock? She needed to snap the hell out of it if she was.
She shook her head and braced her arm behind her, but the sudden motion shot a red-hot poker of pain through her arm. She craned her neck down and studied the red rash that had appeared on her biceps and forearm.
That looked wrong.
She heard Erik’s succinct, “Shit,” before her head started to spin. Her body heated and sweat broke out, pouring out of her as if she’d run a marathon.
Erik’s hard arms wrapped around her, and the world turned upside down as he hoisted her into a fireman’s carry. She couldn’t even work up the energy to wonder over how strong he must be, to carry both her and Carrie. Whatever.
