by Jade White
“I suppose we can’t converse like normal humans, now, can we?”
“You’re an idiot if you think we’re normal,” Lee snapped at him, standing on all fours this time. “There’s a reason why we’re all here.”
“To die,” Ryker said. “Sacrifice.”
“To see who the alpha animal is,” Lee rebutted. “You know where we’ll end up once we die? In little jars, as bits and pieces, like sushi. Heck, do you even know what sushi is?” He gave a hollow laugh.
“In that case, I don’t want to die,” Ryker said, flexing his fingers this time.
Lee snarled once more. “The feeling is mutual, and one of us is going down tonight!” The fully formed werewolf launched an attack on Ryker, and his howls filled the night.
*
“Look at them go,” someone whispered.
It was past ten in the evening, and a few of the sector 8 staff were huddled in an empty laboratory with a large screen on display. On the monitor was the fight between X014 and X009, and it was a bloody one, as the cameras on night mode had shown.
The two looked like specters in pale green against the rain and foliage. Lee’s paw rose high in the air, landing on the ground with a loud thud. Ryker slid and kicked Lee’s abdomen with both feet, and Lee staggered to the ground with a howl.
“Why doesn’t he shift?” someone wondered aloud.
“Because he just doesn’t want to,” another replied, drinking a soda.
“You know eating and drinking isn’t allowed,” Bartholomew told him.
“Dr. Delaney isn’t here,” the soda drinker named Justin replied. “Besides, where’s the fun in not drinking or eating anything if you’re watching something as entertaining as this?”
Bartholomew shook his head and continued to watch. It was true, the kid named Ryker had yet to shift on live feed. He was exerting too much self-control, unwilling to let the beast in him explode out of proportion and into the minds of millions of watchers.
The show went on for 24 hours, on a government sponsored channel, and anyone could watch it, as long as it didn’t impede with their work. Dr. Delaney, for some reason, avoided watching it, and he wondered if the esteemed doctor had a life outside of work. She was a workaholic, sometimes sleeping in her office to finish reports. Bartholomew wondered if she was still in the facility.
And she was, but no one else was with her. She was busy reading through the files. Every day, the architects of the games sent reports to the facility, with regard to the performance of the test subjects, enhanced and natural. She read through the first day’s tests. Nothing remarkable. What was even more unremarkable was the fact the Ryker, or X014, hadn’t shifted yet, the only one who didn’t adapt to the surroundings. He stayed as a human. Then Dr. Delaney received a text message, asking her to come to the third testing room. Ryker and an enhanced werewolf were fighting. She sighed and got up, hoping this would be worth the watch. Edith had had enough of brutality in her twenty-five year career as a facility doctor and didn’t want to add more violence to her waking moments. She slowly walked toward that room, where the rest of her younger counterparts were.
As soon as she walked in, she saw Justin drinking soda. Her eyes narrowed, meeting Justin’s, and Justin found himself choking. “Drinking in testing premises, I see.”
“Sorry, Doctor,” Justin said, still reeling from the soda he had quickly swallowed. “Just thought it would be a bit more festive, that’s all.”
What was so festive about young people killing each other? Edith forced a smile. “I want that can out of here before I sit down to see what the fuss it all about.”
Justin quickly stood up while someone gave Edith a swivel chair. Bartholomew had texted her, and here she was, watching something she barely watched in her entire life. Not everyone has to be a fan, she had thought before, only I have to serve the people who are the fans -- or who are fearful of Caledon and his cronies…
She saw Ryker, and then Lee; it was a blur of fighting under the torrent of rain. The lightning was controlled. In fact, there was a whole different facility for the architecture of the games, something she had been in only once in her life. The people there were as callous as they were to the werebeings that were sent to fight and then die.
Some of them didn’t have the necessary life skills, like X005 and X010. They were children, plucked from their homes at too young an age. The others had grown up in their facility since they had been toddlers. Some had the genes, but these genes were suppressed. Through their constant experiments, the werebeings came about; some took years, and the others took months. They were like little soldiers in training, and she had long given up the fact that she couldn’t mother them all. So she focused on the ‘givers,’ the ones who had to give up their blood, and even body parts, to let the werebeings survive and thrive, instead.
Alexia was one of those, well, she was the only one left. She had seen her grow up, stunted though. She had come into the facility without a family name. She was only known was Alexia, the girl with the gray eyes. She wanted to give Alexia hope, and she gave it with the smallest acts of kindness, undetectable to the callous researchers and soldiers that manned the facility.
Now, she watched as Ryker was pinned down by the werewolf’s menacing paws. Was this going to be the end of X014? She was surprised she found herself rooting for him. Was it because he was the only werebear in the games? Was it because he had shown a great amount of empathy for Alexia twice?
Come on, Ryker, she thought. Live. Live through this.
CHAPTER TEN
“The feeling is mutual, and one of us is going down tonight!”
Lee’s voice echoed in his mind as he kicked the werewolf off the edge of the cliff with all the strength he could muster. The werewolf let out a howl, and it echoed into the night. Ryker’s heart was pounding as he stood an inch away from the fall.
He had just killed a fellow werebeing. Shouldn’t he have been thrilled that his life had been spared? Shouldn’t he have gotten used to the blood on his hands? The rain had washed most of the blood away from his face. He had taken a beating, and his nose was bleeding profusely, and there was a huge gash on his throat, missing a vein by an inch.
He knew he had a few fractures somewhere, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he would heal in a couple of days… which he didn’t have. He had to shift to heal faster, something he had avoided doing, but obviously, he couldn’t keep up with the human façade forever.
He shuddered, realizing the werebeing that fell could have been him. He had fought a werebeing without changing into one himself. He had done the unthinkable, fighting against a fully shifted werewolf. Had it been sheer guts? The adrenaline? That fine line between a werebear’s strength and his human DNA?
Ryker looked up to see a hovering camera, with a special light shining down on him, on them. He stared, his eyes glistening under night-mode, and it was displayed on every screen possible in the country. He looked back, beyond the crevice, and he could still hear the rushing water. Was he dead? Had he successfully killed the werewolf? Had he successfully killed Lee?
I shouldn’t even wait, Ryker thought. He turned and began to walk away, as quickly as he could. He had lost his boots along the way and knew he was in for a cold night. Any caves in sight were welcome, as long as no one was there. He needed to get better, and he needed to hide for that. If he faced another werebeing, it was sure defeat unless he shifted, and shifting was even more painful than a broken rib or two.
He stumbled as he walked, holding onto boulders and low lying branches, feeling his vision blur. This was not good. Blood loss from a wound, he knew. The werewolf had bitten him on the arm, hitting a major artery. He was going to bleed to death unless he placed a tourniquet on it. His shirt was still with him, he thought, and he found a large tree with large leaves, and took shelter underneath it.
With shivering hands, he tore his shirt apart, using his teeth as well. He felt cold, and although he couldn’t see the wound, he
knew it was enough to kill him. Don’t go into shock, he told himself. Keep it together. It hadn’t been his first encounter with a werewolf, but it had been the first time he had been attacked by one. No empty threats were spoken; the wolf had gunned for his throat.
Ryker tried desperately to focus on making a tourniquet. His father had taught him this before, and he tapped into that old memory of his father and him practicing first aid, since his father had said, ‘First aid is vital if you’re alone and hurt.’
He was alone, and hurt, and in need of vital aid. Of course, no one would send him aid. They were at each other’s mercy; he was no longer the hunter. Whoever won was the hunter. He tried to stop the panic growing in him. It was too soon to panic. He had been alone before, as a child; he had been hunted and had been public enemy number one. This was supposed to be nothing new.
Gritting his teeth, he tightened the tourniquet and suppressed a cry. He closed his eyes, feeling blood spurt out as he tied it off. He was gasping now, trying to find some relief under the leaves, still bleeding (although lesser, this time), feeling his broken bones strain against his organs.
Run, Ryker, run! His mother’s voice echoed in his head as he faded into unconsciousness.
*
Alexia woke up with a start, gasping and surprisingly sweating as she did. She’d had a bad dream, one she couldn’t remember anymore. Was it morning already? She strained to find some light above the slits but could find none. She slowly looked at her hands, seeing the multiple injection marks and other injuries that were a result of the experimentations.
If there was one thing she learned, it was that werebeings healed when she gave her blood, but she didn’t heal too well on her own, at least not without the intervention of the facility staff. Those daily vitamins were needed at least thrice a day if the tests were considered strenuous.
She didn’t know what time it was but decided she would take a shower. She ached all over but knew she could still stand. Besides, she was hungry, which meant she was better. Slowly, she stood up. The past few days, she had been ignoring her books. She had stopped drawing. She had stopped conversing with everyone who came in and out of her room. They didn’t need her, not since the games started. They would need her again after the games. It was always the case, and she thought this was a vacation of sorts for her, inside the facility.
She spent the days oversleeping, stuck in dreams and nightmares. There was no hope, awake or asleep. Alexia was going to remain A129 for the rest of her life. She would never know family, never know trees or mountains or the feel of the sun on her skin.
Sliding into her bathtub, she felt the heat of the water enter the pores of her body. Dr. Delaney had insisted the bathtub remain in her room, telling superiors that soaking in a tub was therapeutic for test subjects. They relented in the end but grumbled at how it was a luxury for a test subject to even have one.
She was the only one who had survived to near adulthood, and in her mind, she wanted to tell them she deserved a bathtub and books. She didn’t, of course, even though punishments were rare and few for her outside of the testing rooms. Alexia had begun to fall asleep again when she heard someone call her name.
Her eyes quickly opened, and for a moment, she was afraid of who was there. It was only Dr. Delaney who called her Alexia. She calmed down after a while but refused to move from her bathtub. She was on vacation, isn’t this what people did? Ignore their work when it beckoned?
“Alexia,” Edith called again, “I’ll wait here until you’re done.”
Alexia sighed and finally stood up, grabbing a towel. She got out and tied her wet hair in a bun, placing a towel around her upper body.
“Would you like to see the games?” Edith asked her without asking how she was.
“Why? I’ve seen it before,” she responded carefully.
“You’d be interested to know that he hasn’t shifted yet, even though he was close to death earlier.”
Alexia knew exactly who Dr. Delaney was talking about. She froze in place. Then she regained her senses and took the towel off, naked and in full view of the doctor. She didn’t mind this; she had been so used to being partially clothed or fully naked for their tests, and she didn’t know it made others feel uncomfortable. She was still a nubile woman, after all.
Edith didn’t say anything. She merely waited for Alexia to put on her hospital shirt and pajamas, and she only had these in two colors, either white or pale blue. She had wanted to bring Alexia some clothes that normal girls her age wore, but she knew it was against protocol.
Alexia didn’t say anything, but she took a seat across Dr. Delaney who sat on the edge of her unmade bed. She didn’t look at her. Instead, she waited for Edith to say something.
“When you were in that room with him, did you say anything to him that made him not want to change?” Edith asked her.
Alexia looked up. “How can I say something when I was being electrocuted?”
“You weren’t electrocuted, Alexia,” Dr. Delaney sighed.
“It’s almost as if you want me dead.”
“Trust me, I want you alive.”
“Well, they want me dead.”
“Of course they don’t.”
“Because I’m useful? Because you haven’t cracked the code of their evolution and mine? Why can’t you just accept the fact that I was born this way? And that they were born that way, too? Why are you wasting your life here, when you should be out, living your life? When you should be out, smelling in fresh air, sitting on a beach?”
Edith closed her eyes. Alexia was questioning her existence, and she hadn’t been this vocal until today. She took mental notes of this. “I have to do my duties, Alexia,” she sensibly replied. “I chose this for myself-“
“You chose to open up children, to hurt them and keep them locked away?” Alexia whispered.
Dr. Delaney’s lips pursed. “Alexia, would you like to see how X014 is doing?”
She was changing the topic. Adults thought they knew so much about the world, but in reality, they were as lost as she was; they were as lost as the kids they had experimented on.
“I’m not allowed out,” Alexia finally said, playing along with Dr. Delaney’s conversation.
“That’s why I’m here,” Edith gave a quick smile, whipping out her tablet.
She placed this on the table and clicked on a channel. The feed was a replay of the fight between X014 and X009. Her patient watched in rapt attention, her eyes widening as the werewolf lunged for X014, his claws digging onto the ground, missing X014 by inches. She heard Alexia gasp as X009 swiped a large paw on X014, and the night-mode scene showed blood spurting out of the wound inflicted. X014 side-swiped the werewolf as he fell, causing the werewolf to crash on the muddy ground. As soon as X014 stood up, the werewolf did too, and quite shakily at that. Without another moment wasted, X014 kicked X009 with all he could muster, sending the werewolf falling to a torrent of fast-moving sludge.
Alexia stared at Ryker. She had heard his voice, heard how painful the shifting was, and she told him not to, trying to help him.
“Don’t,” she had thought looking at him. “Don’t shift…”
Ryker had looked back at her, anguish in his eyes as his breathing came in rasps. Don’t shift, and she knew her voice had magnified in his head…
He didn’t want to shift because it pained him? Or he didn’t want to shift because he didn’t want the world to see his true form? X014 was now running, stumbling while looking for shelter. He was still bleeding, and the commentator announced that he had probably broken a few bones in the process. Alexia shivered when he tried to bandage his arm and blood gushed out as he did. He saw him closing his eyes, finally overcome with exhaustion and pain.
He should have shifted, Alexia thought; he should shift now. He was hurting beyond human comprehension, and turning into a werebear would put a stop to that…
Alexia looked away, closing her eyes. “Why did you show this to me?” she asked Dr. Delaney,
her voice shaking.
“You made an impact on him, one way or another.”
“Is this why he isn’t shifting? I’m not even there…” Alexia whispered. “You showed me this to upset me on purpose.”
Dr. Delaney shook her heads. “That is the last thing I want to do. I’m showing you this to show you that you still have a reason to fight. You fight with him.”
Alexia said nothing. How would she fight? Defy examinations? Escape? There was no escaping here. All she could do was wait, until she died, or until they tired of her and by some miracle, they would let go of her, without the necessary skills to survive the real world that did not involve electroshock and injections and near daily blood transfusions.
“It’s almost six o’clock. I expect you’ll be having your breakfast soon. Eat it; you’ll need the strength and stamina once the games are over.”
But of course, it was back to the painful daily grind. How much more could she take? She was still quiet as Dr. Delaney left her room. Moments later, the doors hissed open, and in came her breakfast. It was no pauper’s breakfast; they fed her the right amount of nutrients needed. She didn’t say her thanks, which the staffer noticed. His eyes narrowed, wondering if the fatigue had finally gotten to the poor test subject.
She stared at her meal; her utensils were made out of plastic. She had never held metal or stainless steel cutlery. Even her water was inside a plastic bottle. Maybe she could steal a scalpel soon enough… she bit her lower lip, marveling at her pattern of thought, and then she ate an omelet with two slices of toast. There was a plastic glass of milk, as well, for her calcium (which still didn’t heal her broken bones quickly enough).
Eat it, Dr. Delaney had told her.
She felt there was something else in those words, something Dr. Delaney had wanted her to find out. So she chewed, her mind now wandering to X014’s face. It was strange how she still had an appetite, even if she had just seen someone die. Had she grown so accustomed to death? Years and years of being stuck in the same facility had desensitized her, but X014’s mind wouldn’t leave her. She liked his name and wondered what it meant. Ryker. Ryker what?
