by Jade White
Ryker was quiet as he turned on the car. “That’s why I only napped briefly. Who knows what they’ve got up their sleeves, especially after you did that to Caliban.”
Alexia looked at her hands as the car began to move deeper into the forest where the sun didn’t hit the floor. He needed to rest longer. She could see it in his eyes that he was tired, and she could hear it in his voice. Being with him every day had made her notice these changes…
“What are you staring at?” he asked her.
“You. You’re tired.”
“I’m not,” he told her.
“You’re becoming a terrible liar,” she said to him.
Ryker’s lips broke into a faint smile. “So I am. Must come with your magic powers or something. We should give it a name.”
“I don’t think this power’s very useful.”
“They’ll find uses for it, trust me,” Ryker said. “Like Dr. Barrett said, we have to keep you away from them. Every part of you they could use, and the idea of it--" Ryker stopped, taking a breath. He didn’t like the idea of it at all; he abhorred it, and it was a fear that grew in him every time they escaped from the military.
Distracting himself, he figured they were deep enough into the forest. That was the thing about the country having gone through another war. It reshuffled the places that communities preferred to live in, and vast spaces were now barren or filled with unchartered forests and new growth.
He stopped the car again by some fallen trees, and he quickly hopped out, covering it with bushes. Alexia began to help, but he told her to get into a cave he had seen nearby. It had been a bear’s, a real one, but it had been long uninhabited. Alexia picked up their backpacks and other supplies, taking them with her as Ryker finished the job.
Ryker approached the entrance of the cave and decided to cover it with fallen trees, just enough to make it inconspicuous.
“Is the solar flashlight still okay?” he asked her.
She nodded, feeling the cold earth underneath her buttocks. They were in a cave again after so long, after the comfort of a real home, a real bed, and warm food. She took a deep breath, willing herself to get accustomed to the darkness, to forget the luxuries she had experienced only a day before.
“How long will we have to be here?” she asked him.
“Only until nightfall, or whenever we lose the sun. They’ll know we’re on the move; they’ll know we’re in a car. The darker the night, the better.”
“It’s as if you only want to shift in shadows now,” she told him.
“I’d like to shift without the need for stressors,” he said. “I’d like to shift only when I feel that I need to.”
“You won’t shift, because you’ve seen what my hands can do,” she said, burying her face on her knees.
“I don’t think it’s just your hands,” he said. “Dr. Barrett probably meant that your whole body chemistry is changing, and anyone who gets in contact with you can and will revert to human form. In a way, it’s a good thing that your touch can’t force us to shift. That would be far deadlier.”
She nodded, knowing what he meant. There was a greater chance that any recessive genes could surface with her presence. Either way, they would still use her…
“Don’t think about what could happen to you inside a lab,” he told her. “Think of what could happen to you when you’re truly free from them.”
“We don’t even have a plan,” she said, smiling a little at his bravado. She had gotten a bit used to it already.
“We make our plans as we go along. That way we won’t have a pattern.”
“It’s like you’ve been trained to do this.”
“My dad was a great guy, and he kept the old ways in the now. I’ve got a lot to thank him for. Of course, I’ve forgotten some, but it’s helped us somehow.”
“And your mom?”
“She was,” he began with a smile, “your average homemaker. Still enjoyed tribal activities, though, before the whole town was placed under arrest. They weeded through the possible werebeings, but they kept their eyes out for me. I think I was the only thing they wanted.” His voice changed at the end, and he knew he was still affected by his parents’ deaths.
“You have no idea where you’re from?”
He shrugged. “They were my parents. They’ll be my only parents.” He had flashbacks when he dreamt, the faintest flashbacks, and he didn’t think much of them until Dr. Barrett discussed the medications that could alter memories. Was he a victim of it? Was he like Alexia? Raised in a lab with no other parental figures except the ones that hurt her?
He was a feral kid, as feral as a raccoon sifting through trash to survive.
“Ryker, if we ever get out of the country alive, and we’re free, what do you plan to do next?” she asked him, imagining a home on a peaceful lake, surrounded by nature and a ton of books.
Ryker smiled and shook his head. “A lot of things. I don’t know if I can finish high school fast enough. I’d like to be a doctor. Help people heal and not hurt them.”
A doctor. It was surprising to hear it from a werebeing who was tortured by doctors. Alexia smiled, hoping in secret it could happen for him.
“You?” he asked her, resting his head against the cave’s walls.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just want to sit and eat and read.”
Ryker laughed a quick laugh, but he hadn’t laughed like that in a while. “Isn’t that what everyone wants? I mean, I’d like that, too. Man, I have a lot to show you. I’d like to take you to cities and to restaurants that serve food from all over the world, and then we could go to public libraries and borrow books, and then we could climb up mountains and look at the view without being afraid anymore and--" he stopped. He was getting way over his head, he knew.
Wishful thinking for him and her. The fates were trying to help them, he thought. Dr. Barrett was supposedly in Washington, but he was closer to the border, something that was needed at their hour of desperation. He thought about the man he had killed in the forest, and he realized he remembered the screams and the carnage, but he could not remember his face. He shuddered.
“Is something wrong?” she asked him.
“Nothing,” he quickly replied.
“We have nothing else to do but talk,” she told him. “Who am I going to tell this to, anyway?”
She had a point…he sighed and shook his head. “That man I killed. I just remembered him, only I don’t remember what he looked like.”
“Does this always happen?” she asked him.
“I tend to forget. Or maybe I force myself to. It’s how I live with myself, I guess.”
“He wasn’t the first you killed-"
“It doesn’t make a difference. Every time I kill, there’s a part of me that wants to ignore it, but I know I can’t.”
“You did fine after the WereGames…”
“I seemed fine. Isn’t that why they make those games? For show?” he said in a bitter tone.
“The games didn’t turn you into a murderer, Ryker. You did what you had to do to survive,” Alexia told him.
“There’s a reason why they’ve wanted me since I was a child. I killed my first human at the age of nine. They were still after me. I couldn’t shake them off my trail. Maybe I wasn’t careful enough, maybe I didn’t learn well enough everything Philip had taught me.”
“Who was he?” she asked with a slight hesitation. This was a part of Ryker she had never heard of before. In fact, she hadn’t heard much about his life before they met.
“A soldier,” he finally replied after a few seconds of silence. “In fact, there were more than one.”
“Three?”
He shook his head, even if she couldn’t see it well that he did. “I killed fifteen,” his voice sounded hollow, as hollow as the cave they were in.
Alexia almost forgot to breathe. Fifteen humans. Fifteen men. Fifteen soldiers who had families, who had people they loved, who had lives. Fifteen people who merely follow
ed orders. They were victims of circumstance…
“I’m guessing your opinion of me has changed. I can’t say I blame you.”
She bit her lower lip. “You did what you had to do…” she began, trying to find the right words to say.
“What was so right about killing them?” he began. “My survival? Yeah, I just didn’t want to die. But it was too much. I lost control. I killed more than I should have, all for the fact that I shifted.”
He could hear their screams. Men screamed terribly compared to women. It was guttural, it was a plea for life. The gore was more than enough to fill an entire room. He couldn’t remember how it’d ended. He had woken up in a far-away place, caked blood on his skin…
“It doesn’t make you a bad person,” Alexia told him.
Ryker felt stupid. He shouldn’t have opened up to her. It was a mistake to talk. It was a mistake to have her listen to him. What did she know except the horrors she had faced inside that lab and the recent ones she had faced out of it? Her kindness and compassion would still hover over his barbaric actions as a child.
“And you still wonder why I’ve survived all these years,” he said to her.
“I’m glad you did,” she said quietly. “There’s a reason you survived. And that was to take me out of there.”
“Don’t turn this into some fateful story that we had to meet.”
“But we did. You heard me. You could hear me. Why?”
Ryker shrugged. “Because your DNA’s changed, according to Dr. Barrett.”
“You wanted to talk to me somehow; I could see it in your eyes. You were curious about who I was and what I was doing there.”
“You were just messing with my head,” Ryker told her.
“I think I messed it up the right way, if you’d agree.”
He bowed his head and sighed. “Alexia, I know you don’t approve of my choices.”
“You’re doing this to survive. You’re better at this than I am, right?”
“I’m not. I just think I am because I’ve been out in this world longer than you have been.”
“I think you’re doing a great job. I mean -- even if it isn’t a real job, I still think you are.”
Ryker looked sideways, staring at her profile. “Even if I kissed you?”
“Even if you kissed me.”
He could hear the smile in her voice. “I’ll make sure to ask permission the next time,” he added, and then he realized how stupid that sounded.
“How stupid is that?” she said with a small laugh.
“I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life, but being with you has upped everything I’ve done before. It’s more of stupid reckless and stupid crazy. Sometimes, I feel like I can do things better if I see you look happy at least.”
“Really?”
“Really. I almost didn’t want to leave Lydia and John’s house, because you looked so content and happy being there. I didn’t want to take that happiness away from you.”
“They were the closest feeling to a real family I’d had. Whatever werebeings came my way as a child, I tried to treat them like they were family. I knew the concept of it. Dr. Delaney told me. I just didn’t expect it would make me feel that way. When you sleep beside me, I feel happy, if that means anything.”
“Because I can turn into some fluffy teddy bear,” Ryker said sardonically.
“Because with you, I feel safe. Safer than I’ve ever felt in years,” she told him, trying to control her heartbeat. She was afraid Ryker could hear it inside the cave.
Ryker found himself smiling. Safer than she’d ever felt? He felt pride rise through him. Those were just words, but suddenly they meant the world to him. He didn’t want to tell her he felt happy when she asked for him to sleep beside her. It meant she wanted him, needed him close to her. She depended on him, and he needed to take care of someone…
He took a swallow of saliva, not knowing what else to say. In the silence, he found her hand in his, and she clasped it, a semblance of reassurance or affection; he didn’t care what it was, as long as she was with him.
CHAPTER 14
He knew that Caliban was starving. He saw that Caliban could smell the food from across the room, and his eyes glowed red for a second, a quick change. All this was observed by Dr. Wallace. It had been a mere five days since the last ops failure, and he knew Caliban was in need of something else.
For now, steroids would do the trick. The board of trustees for Sector 12 had pushed for the immediate retrieval of A129, knowing she was a threat and a pawn at the same time. He would exploit these to the fullest extent once he got her back alive in his lab.
“You injected three times the amount of steroids needed for X013 when I needed him out there today,” Stephen rushed inside while a few soldiers watched helplessly, unable to stop the president’s son.
Dr. Wallace waved the soldiers away as he observed the anger in the second son’s eyes. He smiled at the young lieutenant. “I was merely doing tests. I understand your team can’t track them well without a werebeing in hand.”
Stephen glowered. It was true. X014 was well-versed in hiding. It was something even sophisticated technology couldn’t beat, and this would be another source of ire for the president.
“I used another’s blood for the steroids. One of those kids brought in from Louisiana. It’s high time we injected some Southern inflection into this boy,” Dr. Wallace said, mocking a Southern accent.
“We haven’t even had these tested properly for-"
“Might I remind you that I’m the doctor here, and I’m in charge of your soldiers’ overall health and wellbeing?” Dr. Wallace told him mildly as Caliban began to eat his long overdue breakfast.
Stephen looked at his soldier. X013 had said nothing since he arrived. He hadn’t even acknowledged his superior. Dr. Wallace seemed to notice this.
“It’s a foreign object to him, despite it being a biological one. We’d been using A129’s blood for so long, it was as if X013 experienced withdrawals afterwards,” Wallace explained.
“So this is expected from every soldier who used A129’s blood?” Stephen asked, a frisson of worry stealing through him.
“We’ve tested it on twelve others, so yes. But with frequent dosages and the new donor steroid, they should be up and about in a few hours.”
“And this comes at what cost?”
“That remains to be seen,” Dr. Wallace told him. “Bartholomew will be with you as usual. Of course, he reports directly to me.”
Stephen shook his head. “He reports to General Caledon,” he said as calmly as he could.
Wallace shrugged, saying nothing. He walked over to a table where papers were to be signed for every werebeing’s dismissal today. He had high hopes that the werebeings would function well outside of the lab. They had enough steroids to keep them going for a month. He had nearly killed the child for doing so in hopes that the concentrated amount would suffice for his soldiers.
Wallace then watched as Stephen took the papers, telling him to be ready with Caliban’s release in an hour. He smiled. The boy was naïve, eager to please, and most of all, malleable. He was so unlike his older brother, poised and quick to make excellent, if not, questionable decisions. But it didn’t mean he liked the older brother. Magnus II was too…apposite, for lack of a better word. He looked at the young interns outside of the glass room, wondering what Dr. Delaney would have thought about this.
She would have thought about it negatively as usual. Anything he did for the betterment of the program, she refuted as much as she could; she never got very far. They kept her because she was good with the kids and even with the adults. Plus, she’d discovered A129’s blood properties. Ah, to think the only Caledon daughter has that in her gene pool. A werebeing enhancer that came straight out of her blood.
He knew who she had been all along, and he was itching for Alexia’s return. Alexia, he scoffed at her name. It was Edith’s idea to give the child some humanity by giving her a real name.
It was terribly close to Alexandra Caledon, and Edith had no idea it was.
The poor doctor had been found burnt to a crisp, and they had done a hasty burial with honors. Her immediate family hadn’t been informed until they had buried Edith six feet underground. He attended, of course. She had been one of his longest protégés, and she had stayed as that. He was glad he had gotten rid of his former bosom buddy and that he was finally dead.
Ah, Dr. Barrett. He had had fond memories of that man. Brilliant, but he was clouded by his humanity, and it was something that would never do. He had purposefully burned his entire home, leaving not a single amount of solid data for Stephen and his men to save. That part frustrated Wallace. He knew that Barrett was brilliant, far more brilliant than he was. Tactics were needed to have him taken out of the program. He would have held Sector 12 back…
There was no use crying over a dead man’s probable research, but Stephen confirmed he had a makeshift lab, evident in various paraphernalia. My, Wallace thought, how the brilliant have fallen. Barrett had been relegated to a basement lab, but who knows what the man had found there? Barrett had even made sure that he had burned his notes first…
Whatever it was, he would not know until he found A129 again. He needed her in this lab, immediately; he needed her so badly, and he was willing to kill someone himself just to get her back.
CHAPTER 15
President Caledon was calmly drinking his tea as he read through reports on paper. He liked some of the old ways, preferring paper to emails. This report was no exception. He enjoyed crushing the paper in his hand, feeling the texture against his skin, feeling his rage course through crumpled paper.
So they had escaped yet again. It seemed that Alexandra had become far more resilient outside of the lab than in it; with the help of that Ryker Locklear boy, of course. That boy had been a menace so far; well, he had been a menace since he was a boy. Wallace had personally tracked down Ryker as a child in the hopes of getting the werebear that had been rumored to live amongst the tribe. Of course, they’d protected him. He was the personification of the bear, after all. And that bear protected his daughter, the daughter he knew he needed if he wanted to increase his military’s might.
