by Amy Cross
We walk on for a moment, but I can't stop thinking back to that moment in the parking lot.
“Okay, so that was a bad joke,” he continues. “The point is, we were all a little screwy for a few days after we got out. I guess that's what happens after you've spent most of your life cooped up in a cell in some secret underground facility and -”
“What facility?” I ask, stopping and turning to him.
“You don't even remember that? Seriously?”
“I have flashes of something,” I tell him. “Corridors. Cells, with iron bars on them. Pain. People were doing things to me. Is that... I remember hearing about some kind of place out at the edge of Middlewych. Is that the facility that you're talking about?”
“Kind of,” he replies cautiously. “The thing is, the whole of Middlewych is the facility, or at least part of it.”
“I don't understand.”
“That's where we were all created,” he continues. “The company behind it is called Chaos Gear. Over the years, they've received huge sums of money from the government, in order to carry out certain work that's deemed to be in the interests of national security.”
“What kind of work? Like... weapons?”
“That's one word for us.”
“Us?”
“Chaos Gear was set up by a man named Randall Crawford. They say he was pretty insane, but it turns out he might have been onto something. He believed that he could reverse engineer some of the most horrific creatures from mythologies all around the world. Basically, he thought that if vampires and werewolves and all those other things didn't exist, then why not create them instead?”
Staring at him, I realize that he's serious.
“Nothing was too off-the-wall for Crawford and his team,” he continues. “Obviously the vast majority of their projects were complete failures. Thousands died in Chaos Gear laboratories, but a few isolated specimens began to show promise. Crawford developed a technique that allowed him to fundamentally alter the DNA of children he acquired. He called this technique Chaos Gear, because he believed it pushed DNA into a higher gear, and because he was convinced that he could turn this seeming chaos into something powerful. By all accounts, he was a serious genius, and he didn't care how many lives had to be discarded along the way.”
“People died?”
“He took children, mainly,” he explains. “I don't know where he got them, but he seemed to have an almost limitless supply. I guess he had connections, and it probably wasn't hard to scoop up as many orphans as he needed. I ended up being turned into some kind of were-bear thing. I didn't even know those were supposed to exist, but I figure I was lucky. I'm one of the ones that actually worked out. So many others weren't as lucky as us. They ended up as screaming, gelatinous blobs on the floor, as their DNA literally exploded all through their bodies. I still remember the cries that I'd hear in the facility sometimes.” He pauses. “And then, one day, we broke out.”
“We did?”
“It was kind of your idea. You and Graves.”
“Graves?”
“Wow, you really have got amnesia. Lester was turned invisible. I know, it sounds like something from some schlocky old movie, but I guess that's where Crawford got most of his inspiration from. You and Graves were in adjacent cells, so you got to talking, and eventually you came up with a plan to break us all out of the Chaos Gear facility. At first, the rest of us thought you were crazy, but then one night it all came together. The cell doors opened and we all scarpered. A lot were captured pretty quickly, but a fair few of us made it all the way into the forest. Of course, that night just happened to be the first night of your test.”
“What test?”
“Middlewych isn't a real town. It's a mock-up, used to test us out in seemingly real surroundings. On the night we escaped, your memory was wiped and you were placed in a simulated small-town environment, to see how things would go. For a few hours, we definitely put the chaos into Chaos Gear.”
“But my family -”
“Actors,” he says, interrupting me. “Sorry, but there's no easy way to break it to you. And then, when they tested you again, they had to get new actors because you'd incinerated the first set.”
“Incinerated?”
“Yeah,” he adds, “that's kind of the next awkward part. I don't know if they underestimated you, or what, but your test got out of hand in more ways than one. Somehow, you ended up destroying the entire town.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“No,” I say firmly as I march back along the tunnel. “No, no, no, no no. Definitely not. I'm not listening to this anymore.”
“Annie!” Manny calls after me. “Wait! Don't you want to know the rest?”
“I want to go home,” I mutter under my breath. “I want to wake up in the morning, in my own bed, and I want everything to go back to normal.”
“Haven't you noticed how flimsy everything's been lately?” Manny asks. “When they rebuilt Middlewych, they did it in record time. Half the buildings are falling apart. Even the forest isn't very good, some of the trees literally fall over in a light breeze.”
“I'm not listening.”
“We were lucky when you destroyed the town,” he continues. “We were far enough away, but so far we haven't dared venture too far from Middlewych. From what we've heard, the human race doesn't take kindly to monsters, and that's how they'll see us. After all, it's how we see ourselves.”
“I'm not listening!” I say firmly. “I'm just -”
Suddenly as I reach a turn in the tunnel, I slam straight into somebody coming the other way. Startled, I step back and find that I'm face-to-face with Adam. He's got cuts and bruises on his face, and he's limping, but I immediately freeze as I realize that he suffered these injuries while he was helping me escape.
“There you are!” Manny says breathlessly as he reaches us. “Can you talk some sense into her? I've been trying to persuade her that -”
“Leave it with me,” Adam replies.
“I think we need to go through the whole thing again,” Manny continues, “right from the start, and -”
“Leave it with me,” Adam says again, turning to him. “I think the others need your help. Joseph's been trying to tell them what to do, and you know what he's like. I guess vampires were never known for their diplomatic skills. Any time someone disagrees with him, he keeps hissing at them.”
“He's never going to learn, is he?” Manny grumbles as he heads off along the tunnel. “He needs to learn how to moderate his tone.”
He's still muttering away to himself as he disappears into the distance.
“So did Manny fill you in on a few things?” Adam asks.
“I'm still not quite sure that I can believe it all,” I tell him. “I don't remember being in any kind of facility, and I sure don't remember escaping.”
“Technically, you didn't escape,” he replies. “The rest of us did, on the night of your first big test. You and Lester Graves had arranged for it all to happen. I think you ran into quite a few of us in the forest. Talk about bad timing, huh? You definitely bumped into Joseph, and me, and I think you met Julius too.”
“Julius?”
“He was a zombie.”
“Oh. Right. I don't know.”
“He got recaptured pretty quickly. Only a handful of us managed to stay out. The Bister sisters zoomed off somewhere, but the rest of us escapees never quite plucked up the courage to go too far.” He pauses. “I'm afraid I overruled Joseph on a few big decisions. I told him we had to stick around and wait to find you again. And Lester, if possible, although he's more of a tricky customer.”
“You waited for me?” I ask. “Why?”
“Because you and Lester are the ones who got us this far. You, more than Lester. You might not remember this, Annie, but back at the facility you really gave us hope. There were times when I didn't want hope, when I just wanted to sit in my cell and wait for the next experiment, but you kept on pushing and eventually... Well, you sai
d you'd get us out, and you did that. When you're really going for it, you can be very persuasive. You're a natural leader.”
“I don't feel like much of a leader right now,” I tell him.
“It'll come back. In time.”
“So you're seriously telling me that you're a werewolf?”
“I really need a full moon before I can show you again.”
“And that Joseph guy's a vampire?”
He nods.
“And Manny's some kind of... bear creature?”
“He's not happy about it either.”
“Everyone else is... the product of these experiments?”
“We've all been through the Chaos Gear process,” he replies, with a hint of fear in his voice. “We all know the pain.”
I pause for a moment, but there's one question that's really burning in my mind. I'm scared to hear the answer, but I figure I might as well get it over with.
“Okay,” I say finally, “then... what am I?”
“You didn't figure it out already?” He smiles. “Annie Mackenzie, you're a goddamn witch.”
“I'm a what?”
“They tried so many times to create a witch,” he continues. “I used to overhear Crawford's lackeys complaining about how hard it was. Anyway, it must have been worth the effort, because eventually they created you, and they stabilized you, and from what I hear they were pretty pleased with you. There were even rumors that you were going to be granted an audience with Randall Crawford himself. Assuming that he's still alive, that is.”
“I'm not a witch,” I tell him.
“Don't worry, it's not a bad thing. At least, it doesn't have to be. The most important part is that you really need to learn how to control your powers. And you need to learn what your powers are. Have you managed to do anything cool yet? Apart from disintegrating the entire town, I mean.”
“I don't have powers,” I reply, “and I never disintegrated anything.”
“You should be aware that Crawford tended to go for the grand, old-fashioned versions of his creations. So Joseph's a real old vampire in the tradition of Dracula, I'm designed to be like the werewolves from old books, like Wagner and all the others. So I'm pretty sure he'll have tried to turn you into a proper, cackling witch. I'm surprised he didn't give you some boils on your nose.”
I instinctively reach up and touch the discolored spot on the side of my nose.
“Oh,” Adam replies, clearly feeling a little uncomfortable, “sorry, I hadn't noticed that. Have you ever tasted eye of newt?”
“No, but I -”
Stopping suddenly, I think back to the tank of newts that I kept in my room. That never really made a lot of sense, since it was mainly Mom who wanted them to be there. I did spend a lot of time looking at them, however, and I'm starting to wonder whether that was some kind of sign.
“It's okay,” Adam says after a moment. “We'll be okay, as long as we all stick together. I've been telling the others that we should get as far away from here as possible.”
“Then why are you all still here?” I ask.
“I insisted that we should wait for you first,” he explains. “After you destroyed the town, you were taken back to the facility for further examination. Once the town had been rebuilt, they started your second test, but that only began a couple of days ago. It's not like we could just swoop in and grab you. We had to wait for our chance.”
“But why wait for me at all?” I reply. “Even if I actually believe all of this for a moment... why bother?”
“Because until recently, you were our leader,” he says. “And even if you weren't, there was no way I was ever going to leave you behind.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“So all these people were experimented on?” I ask Adam a short while later, once we've returned to the main tunnel where everyone's sheltering. “Every single one of them?”
“We're the lucky ones, I guess,” he replies. “Our bones didn't melt.”
I glance at him.
“Try not to remember that part,” he adds. “We all saw the results of the less successful experiments. For each one of us here now, there must be ten or twenty who died so that Crawford and his team could improve their techniques. I know for a fact that there were at least two dozen failed werewolf attempts before they finally created me. I just wish I could change form when there's no full moon. Frankly, I think Crawford stuck a little too closely to the classics.”
Hearing a voice up ahead, I see that Joseph is talking to some of the others.
“He's the same,” Adam adds. “He can't go out during the day, or he burns. He's repulsed by garlic. And he's absolutely terrified of wooden stakes.”
“Can he turn into a bat?”
“That might be a step too far, even for Chaos Gear,” he says with a smile. “I don't know why Crawford bothered to bake these limitations into us. Sometimes I think he was scared of our potential. We're supposed to be weapons, something that can be used by the military, and I guess they figured they needed a way to control us. I can't claim to understand it too well, but I'm sure nothing was done by accident. If they ever recapture us, I'm sure we'll soon find out exactly what they want us to do. And whatever it is, it won't be pleasant.”
“And here comes the lady of the hour now,” Joseph says, turning to me with a big, fake smile that allows his fangs to peek out. “Tell us, Annie Mackenzie, have you recovered any memories of your grandiose scheme to keep us all safe?”
“Ignore him,” Adam says, nudging my arm. “You and Joseph have had certain issues for a long time.”
He leads me past the group, but I'm fully aware that they're all watching me.
“No?” Joseph calls out. “Nothing, Annie? It's so unlike you to hold back like this. We can only assume that you're working on some grand plan that requires some degree of secrecy.”
As we reach another tunnel, I feel as if people here are starting to dislike me, and I don't understand why. What exactly happened before I lost my memory?
“We need to make a decision soon,” Adam says. “Now that you're back, it's time to think about moving on, but we need to decide where to go. For people like us, there might not be any safe locations. It's okay for the likes of you and me, we can more or less pass as normal in society, but some of the others...” His voice trails off for a moment. “The one thing I know is that we need to get as far as possible from Middlewych and Chaos Gear. That's something we fundamentally disagreed on before.”
“We did?”
“You wanted to fight,” he continues. “More than that, really. You wanted to go back and destroy the entire facility.”
“Why?”
“To stop them causing any more pain. I get it, honestly I do, but we're not exactly an army. We wouldn't stand a chance.”
“But I wanted to try anyway?”
“This might be difficult for you to believe,” he says, “but you were willing to do whatever it took in order to stop Chaos Gear. You told me you were even willing to die.” He pauses. “I don't think you'll be able to persuade anyone now. While you were away, Joseph took the opportunity to get everyone on his side. I managed to persuade them to wait for you to come back, but now they're all going to want to hit the road. I think... I think this time they might be right.”
“But you said you don't know where we should go,” I remind him.
“We'll find somewhere.”
As we reach the end of the tunnel, I see the cave's opening up ahead. The sun is beginning to rise, over what feels like a completely different world. I still can't quite believe that my hometown is fake, that my life isn't real, that my mother and my brother were just actors, but at the same time I know that no dream or nightmare could possibly last this long. It's as if the world has turned upside-down and nothing makes sense anymore. I can't help thinking that if I just go home, everything will be normal again.
“This is our chance,” Adam says suddenly.
I turn to him.
“We talked
so many times about what we'd do once we got free from the facility. Often it just seemed like a fantasy, like something that would never happen, but now here we are. Chaos Gear don't know about these caves, but we can't hide here forever. There's a new world out there, Annie, and we have to go find it.” He steps closer and puts a hand on the side of my arm. “I wish you could remember,” he adds. “All our hopes, all our dreams... We've finally made it. We can't go back now.”
Looking down at his hand, I realize that he seems so tender with me, and I can't help wondering how close we were before I lost my memory. I look him in the eyes, and I feel as if we've definitely stood like this before. Closer, even. After a moment, however, he pulls back, as if suddenly thinking that something's wrong.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he replies, clearly troubled, “it's just... the way you looked at me just now. For the first time since we all escaped, it was like the old you.”
I honestly don't know how to respond to that, but I feel a little flustered by the thought that I don't remember our relationship. Not that it probably even was a relationship, not in that sense, but I'm definitely at a disadvantage here and yet I don't want to flat-out ask him to tell me the truth. That'd just be pathetic.
“So you can only turn into a wolf during a full moon?” I ask.
“Great, isn't it?” he replies. “And then I don't have a choice.”
“Shame you can't turn it on and off at will.”
“Actually, I've been practicing. It's early days, but I'm making progress. I think eventually I might have more control after all. I guess Crawford's limitations might not have stuck quite so hard.”
“I'm sure you'll be a master werewolf in no time.”
“Huh.” He pauses. “You know, I think you once said those exact words to me before. In fact, you're the one who encouraged me to start trying.”
I open my mouth to ask what else I might have told him, but suddenly I realize that I can hear a scrabbling sound coming from outside. Adam obviously hears the same thing, because he turns to look down the rough path that leads into the forest. I want to ask him if everything's okay, but then suddenly something flies between us and lands just a few feet away.
