The low rumble of a motorcycle's engine penetrated the stifling silence the low, thick fog produced. The headlights did nothing but illuminate the black asphalt that lay just beneath the front tire, giving the rider a small spotlight in which to look for guidance on the dangerous trek home. The young cadet was only half paying attention to the road, his mind wandering other places not of immediate importance. It wasn't until a nearly missed curve jostled his handlebars and the wind whipped his ponytail in his face that Alex snapped out of his lethargy, blue eyes going wide. Yanking hard to right his bike, the cigarette the near-soldier held gingerly between his teeth was lost to the wind which drew a sigh from the boy's tired lips. As if my day couldn't get any worse. Seeing no trace of the military police, he revved the bike's engine once before giving it the gas and speeding off into the haze of ground-clouds. Alex couldn't see where he was going, but he had driven this road often enough to know each and every turn as he raced closer to Dog Green Sector, the eastern cadet branch of the main military headquarters.
Once again, his mind had drifted off and he was unaware of the sign that warned him of a landslide that had happened a few hours after he had departed on his personal day of skipping his training courses. In the darkness the sign was just a blur of yellow, only eye-catching enough to steal a glimpse at, but not process what the black lettering had read. Probably nothing... The boy was too exhausted to care. He'd gone to town for the day, had a few shots to dull his edge a bit after the...'incident' that had happened the day before, and was now speeding down the road on a foggy night. Alone.
Just a mile or so more and he'd be able to wheel his motorcycle in through the side gate and sneak back into the dorms. If he got caught, he'd have a hell of a time explaining why he was returning late and why he had been absent from his courses to the training brass. And, why he had been absent from the funeral. I hope you can forgive me for that. Almost as soon as this thought had been completed, Alex felt his front tire hit something which, in turn, lifted the entire motorcycle due to the object's immense size. For a second and a half, he rode on the back of his bike in a dangerous limbo of flying sparks and trying to regain control of the vehicle in vain as the handlebars only turned slightly in his stiff-armed grip. Shit, shit, shit! Fall, remember how to fall! The cadet knew this would turn very bad, very quickly when he felt something knock into his exposed gas tank, and then the spray of the warm fluid it held drip into his simple civilian walking shoes. The force of the impact made him lose what little balance he had and took the motorcycle sideways with him when he hit the ground hard, skidding for a few feet before letting go of the handlebars and rolling to a stop approximately three yards away. This was just enough time for the loose sparks to ignite the gasoline into a stream of roaring, orange and white flame.
The flash of fire lingered on the edge of Alex's peripheral vision as he lay there, wincing from the impact of the fall and the road rash the debris-littered asphalt dealt him. Feeling not much of anything at that moment, too shocked, too full of adrenaline, the young man did nothing but stare off into the seemingly endless fog; not even the heavy trickle of blood that came from a cut on his forehead could spark some stir of motion. I might as well... What else can I do...? This thought had surfaced from the deepest corners of his mind, only brought forth by hidden insecurities that finally snapped like a taunt bowstring when he wrecked. A soft exhale of breath was emitted, eyes closing as he rolled over onto his back, feeling the heat from the fire fade as the motorcycle's engine stalled, stopping the flow of gasoline that leaked from the fuel line. The world seemed to be moving in slow motion, like the hourglass of time had stopped its trickle of sand. Had the various sounds of the wreck been swallowed up by this blasted fog, or had no one been awake to hear it? It's past midnight, the sentries would have heard it. They won't send anyone. As far as they know...all the cadets are back in the dorms. A bitter smile formed and Alex could taste iron—it had to be the blood leaking from that nasty gash near his eyebrow, the one he was now aware of. It was just as well he die here. On a lonely highway or on the battlefield, the risk of death for a soldier was always much higher than the average person's.
Just as he began to mull over this, the cadet swore he heard the blare of sirens in the distance. Sirens? Ambulance sirens? He thought for a moment that he was maybe imagining things—he lost too much blood, his cracked his skull, SOMETHING—but the sound would not go away. It seemed to be getting closer, although he could not be sure. After all, such thick fog would distort sound waves, that much he remembered from his mandatory science course. Come on, Alex. Don't kid yourself. The military will just notice you're not there in the morning and send out some higher ranked kid to look for you... But not before you bleed to death here. Why don't you move? Oh yeah, you don't want to deal with the guilt, do you? His brows furrowed in a bout of self-hate, but the action quickly dissipated and he grimaced, remembering that he was injured. Suddenly, he found himself placing both palms—bloody from his rough landing—on either side of him, fingertips pressing into the black rock. Muscles shook as he exerted pressure, trying to heave himself into a sitting position that took all of the soldier's will power. His jaw clenched in something similar to determination and his knees hit the ground, arms hanging limply at his sides. Alex took a deep breath; a small, simple inhalation of oxygen. And he knelt there, staring almost lifelessly at the ground, seeing past the spots of blood and the fuel from his mangled means of transportation. Just as he thought he might be able to stand, the cadet's body decided otherwise and he lapsed into a hacking cough just as the high-beams of the military ambulance fell upon him. The screams of the sirens made his head ache and he opened his eyes to blurry vision, seeing two young men make their way toward him with a stretcher. They said something he didn't quite catch over the sound of wheels moving over the gritty pavement, sending the little pebbles every which way.
“This guy's beat up,” one mentioned as he pushed the stretcher down so it lay just a few inches off the ground. “Guess he didn't see the sign.”
“Yeah,” the other put in with a look of sympathy, eying the motor bike and puddles of gasoline. Both were dressed in a fitted red t-shirt and cargo pants of a similar shade.
Alex registered the uniform in his mind slowly and remembered that the carmine garments were worn so blood from the injured would not leave much of a stain and were only worn by field paramedics—which meant these guys were here to save him by some miracle he had yet to understand.
Slowly, the man knelt behind Alex, hand raised to touch the kid's shoulder. The gesture quickly required both hands as the cadet fell backwards, leaning on the paramedic's chest heavily, finally giving in to his exhaustion and lapsing into the limbo between the conscious and unconscious world.. Gray eyes scanned over the body he now held and were drawn to the double metallic rectangles that hung from a chain around Alex's neck. “Yo, Joey. This kid's got Puppy-tags. 'Cadet Major Alexander Raptis; Dog Green Sector'. Reckon he came from the camp not too far from here.” Dropping the tags, he expertly checked for a pulse before raising a hand to his partner, indicating that the young man wasn't in any immediate danger. “Let's load him up. Good thing someone heard the wreck and reported it—Alexander here would have been dead if we hadn't come along. He's got road-rash though, and possibly a concussion.”
The two lifted the cadet's limp and battered body onto the padded stretcher and secured him so he wouldn't roll off before pulling the contraption upwards so the metal joints could lock into place. Once it was ready, the paramedics wheeled him into the ambulance where a nurse was waiting in the back, a concerned expression evident on her facial features. It was one she wore for all patients she saw to on site. A few words were exchanged between her and the men before the lights on top of the white vehicle were flicked back on, and they carefully backed up and slowly began to maneuver through the dense, gray haze to their destination, and the place Alex—had he been conscious—would have wanted to avoid at all costs.
Ugh...What's that smell? It kinda burns... With a groan, Alex pressed his eyes shut tighter to shield them from the assaulting light from above, slowly returning to the waking world. What had happened? He just remembered wrecking, fire and...an embrace, and then darkness. He was unsure if he correctly recalled there being an ambulance and was too sore to give himself the benefit of doubt. Reaching out one arm, feeling a twinge of pain from the IV that was taped to his vein, the scuffed up cadet felt around and heard a clunk followed by the coolness of fresh water.
“Ack! What did you do that for!?” a familiar voice asked, the tone used not at all approving. “Really, I can't believe you were so stupid to do what you did, Alex.”
“What I did...?” Cracking an eye open, Alex ignored the pain it caused to observe the female who was left to care for him. Suddenly, he found himself staring wide-eyed at her, not quite in shock and not quite in relief. “Riz, what are you doing here? Where am I?”
The girl glanced toward him as she cleaned up the spill with a hand-towel, looking generally displeased. “You're in the medical ward because from what I heard, you had a little mishap with your motorcycle and crashed.” Her words were clipped as she tried to contain the anger that threatened, and was very close to bubbling over the top. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Alex frowned as his gaze finally drifted over the rest of the room and saw that it was true. The stark, white walls, the intravenous drip in his arm, his basic lack of clothing gave it away that he was, in fact, in a hospital. And since Rizilia was there, he knew he had to be in the military's on-site medical unit. “Great. But, why are you here? You're only a tech; you're still in training.”
Riz gave a heavy sigh, not in the mood to deal with her friend's questions. “The doctors had other patients to see to. You have a broken rib, lacerations, scrapes and bruises, and a minor concussion, but nothing to put your life at risk,” she explained with a vague wave of her hand. “What I'd like to know, Alex, is what possessed you to skip classes to go drinking, THEN drive home in the dark and the fog, THEN not pay attention to the signs, all while NOT wearing a HELMET. Good Lord, the things I do for you.” It was becoming increasingly hard to control herself and this was evident to the young man lying in the hospital bed, covered with only a few blankets.
He went to sit up, ignoring the dull ache in his ribcage and the other pains in various other places. A hand automatically came to rest on the bandages that covered most of his torso, feeling the small rises where stitches had been placed after flesh was cut open in order to set the bone properly. Another thing he noticed was that his hair was falling loose around his shoulders, no longer up tied up by a rubber band. That explained the light, tickling sensations he felt on his neck. “And tell me, Riz, what did you do for me?” His tone was inquiring, pressing, almost like he was trying to interrogate her.
The young woman stopped what she was doing and something inside her seemed to snap as she whirled around, white lab coat adding a dramatic effect as it fanned out behind her. “I stayed up all night with you to make sure that concussion didn't pull you into a coma. I put a cold compress on your head even though the doctor said to leave it be because I didn't want you to have a splitting migraine when you woke up. I changed your sheets in the middle of the night when the pain medicine we gave you made you lose control of your bladder! You're...you're so CLUELESS sometimes, Alex.” She was gesticulating furiously to add emphasis to her words and she knew it was having an impact as a look of horror passed over her patient's eyes. Good. That boy needed some sense scared into him and hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Out of all the things Riz had mentioned in the form of shouting, one thing stood out to the poor cadet's shattered mind. “I...I wet the bed!?” he yelped, feeling absolutely mortified and not even bothering to address the selfless acts the medical tech had bestowed upon him. “I'm seventeen! I can't...Gah! Where are my clothes? I'm getting out of here!” Fumbling with the bandage that held the needle for the fluids in his vein, Alex was about to rip it off when a hand slapped down over the sensitive area. He winced, refusing to look up and he started fidgeting when the painful pressure didn't let up. Finally, his gaze was turned upwards and he found himself locked with Riz's glare of complete and utter doom. The sheer intensity of emotions in her eyes made a chill crawl down his spine. By then, Alex knew he had absolutely no choice but to back down. “O...Okay...” Feeling her hand lift away, he straightened his blankets and laid back on the bed, unrestrained hand brushing stray strands of hair back from his face. ...What did she say? She really did all those things for me? She didn't have to try to break my arm. I have good reason to leave the stupid hospital. He wished he did. I guess it couldn't hurt to just stay here, at least until the doctor says I'm good to go. It'd make her happy. Alex looked over and found that the girl in question had returned to flipping through his medical files for the umpteenth time, wanting to make absolutely sure she hadn't missed something. Her dedication was nearly radiating and he swore that if she left, all the pleasant heat in the room would evaporate. God damn, Riz, you're going to work yourself to death. ...If you haven't already. Usually observant eyes had finally noticed the bloodstains—the fresh bloodstains—that decorated the sleeves of the tech's coat. “What happened there?”
A sigh forced itself up and Riz rubbed her temples with two fingers, feeling a headache coming on. “Too many questions. You were right to join the Investigations team.” A glance was cast down to the place he was referring and only saw the red splotches as a sign of a job well done. “You were bleeding when you got here and I checked over you when the doctor was busy getting stuff ready to cut you open.” The way she said it made it sound like she had done nothing important; in fact, she sounded completely humble. “A soak in hydrogen peroxide will lift the stains right out. Now, shut up and stop being so nosy.”
Part of him wanted to retort and say that being nosy was an endearing trait he possessed, but decided against it for both of their sakes. She looked like she was about to kill something, anyway. Is she like this to all of her patients? If she is, I highly doubt any of them would get hurt again. She's terrifying. Alex went back to observing her, absently shifting his bandages in order to fit his hand through them, running his fingertips over the stitches that were placed in his chest. For some obscure reason, he figured his injuries were worse than he thought. After all, he clearly remembered falling into a deep cough when he sat up and gasping for air before going unconscious. That was the last thing he could recall from the night before. I bet there's stitches on my insides too. I'll find out when these pain meds wear off. ...What if...would she kill me? I wonder. “Riz?”
“Didn't I JUST tell you to shut up?”
“...Would you like to, uh, go out sometime?” It was an attempt to show how much he actually appreciated what she did. 'Thank you' didn't cut it, those were just words. He wanted to show her how much he cared.
Rizilia stared at him and said nothing. Didn't move, didn't speak for what seemed like an eternity. Did he really just ask that? After all that happened? Did he even understand how much he'd hurt her by hurting himself? Finally, she grabbed a scalpel and lowered it point-blank at him in a way that said 'I am trained in the usage of this and can inflict massive amounts of pain'. “Unless you'd like to become sterile, I wholeheartedly recommend you shut it, and we both pretend you never asked that question.” It was a flat-out rejection, but it happened only due to a miscommunication. “I have another patient I have to look at, so you stay here. I'll be back later.” She set the sharp, medical implement down without another word and left the room, long strides carrying her out the door before Alexander could jump at the slim chance to respond.
Sitting in silence for a long moment, he withdrew his hand, refraining from touching the wound as he knew it might become irritated and inflame. THEN Riz would surely kill him. He had been completely rejected, but he probably deserved it. Maybe some other time she would agree, when he hadn't given her the scare of her life, but for now, all he could do was try to heal and wait to be discharged. An uncertain military fate lingered in his mind.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Someday we'll reach our goal
“And where are you now?”
He spoke to the sky.
A soft mumble, hands in his pockets, eyes cast upwards as the moon cast a pale halo of light.
“Are you where I can remember? A place where the same sky I see stretches into?”
Of course he wouldn't hear an answer. The distance was too great.
But he could hope.
And how he hoped for some sort of sign, be it physical or celestial.
“Wish you were here...I miss your smiles. I haven't seen them in such a long time.”
A palm was thrust toward the sky, a breeze drifting by tickling the skin.
The young man was determined that he would reach his goal.
~~~
“I miss him.”
One girl said to the other as they stared up at the sky.
The endless starry blanket expanded into the horizon and beyond.
She noticed it just for the first time, how broken they were when seperated.
“We'll find him. He isn't dead.”
The other female said this in response.
“We'll see his goofy smile again. You know he's not dead. Just have to follow the sky.”
Reaching up their hands, the women shut fists around bunches of smoke.
It seeped through their fingers like the wind.
But they would make it someday.
He spoke to the sky.
A soft mumble, hands in his pockets, eyes cast upwards as the moon cast a pale halo of light.
“Are you where I can remember? A place where the same sky I see stretches into?”
Of course he wouldn't hear an answer. The distance was too great.
But he could hope.
And how he hoped for some sort of sign, be it physical or celestial.
“Wish you were here...I miss your smiles. I haven't seen them in such a long time.”
A palm was thrust toward the sky, a breeze drifting by tickling the skin.
The young man was determined that he would reach his goal.
~~~
“I miss him.”
One girl said to the other as they stared up at the sky.
The endless starry blanket expanded into the horizon and beyond.
She noticed it just for the first time, how broken they were when seperated.
“We'll find him. He isn't dead.”
The other female said this in response.
“We'll see his goofy smile again. You know he's not dead. Just have to follow the sky.”
Reaching up their hands, the women shut fists around bunches of smoke.
It seeped through their fingers like the wind.
But they would make it someday.
Musings of Man
It's philosophical, really. How we get on with our lives day by day; the only judge we have to fear is the one living within us. Earth-bound from the day we are born until the day we die, and they say that life is a miracle. If that's so, then we are over populating the world with these so called “miracles”. Maybe that word, like love, is being tossed around so carelessly that it will soon be so diluted and will lack a proper definition. Futhermore, how can we be so certain what we feel is love? Isn't love just a form of attraction, a primal urge that make procreation possible? Animals fight to prove they are the most worthy to mate with the female. They give off hormones and sing songs to attract the opposite gender. What makes humans so different, despite the fact that our brains are so much more complex and we have the ability that no other creature on earth has: to make predictions about the far future. With this power, we have been able to survive and adapt, change the environment to how we saw fit. Is our goal as a species to sculpt the natural world into one we feel is best? To live out our lives droning onwards to the buzz of the electrical blood that powers the cities of the world would be a life less than significant. Do we, as humans, really have that little to live for? Animals live to reproduce. Humans live to live. And we have yet to find a greater purpose.
Love Lost to Blood
Shrapnel flew through the air, barely cutting the young man's face with its razor edges. His face was already streaked with blood and soot, sweat making small trails through the layers that were caked on his jaw and neck. A quick motion found a match lit and a round bomb hissing as its fuse began the dangerous countdown. The explosives expert hurled the weapon onto the opposing ship, using his free hand to wipe the salty fluid that dripped down into his eyes. Within that second, he found a gun being thrust into his hand.
“Watch out, Frankie,” the Irishman muttered as he turned away, shooting a member of Gabriella's crew in he back of the skull with no trace of mercy present. He quickly rejoined the Captain in the fight, using that expertise of the handgun that made him so feared.
Placing the long-range weapon on a near-by barrel, the man ran a marked hand through his hair, leaving streaks of black powder in its chestnut strands. His heart hammered in his chest, tinting the edges of his visions with a blurry, white border. Pale blue eyes jumped around, not fully taking in the battle scene—that was, until, he caught a glimpse of Smith being cornered by three large men. The barrel of a pistol was lowered to his forehead as he stared up in terror.
The same feeling streaked through Frankie and then he heard a gunshot. Saw nothing but blackness, felt the warm red of blood ooze from a wound in his chest. He'd been hit. Him, not Smith. “Thank God...” he muttered as he dropped to his knees, staring blankly up at the sky as the red liquid, colored darker by gunpowder, gushed from his heart.
“Hey, Smith, are you playing vith dolls again?” Frankie remarked, poking his head over the other pirate's shoulder.
“Uh...Uh...They were a gift...I have to do something with them.” It was a futile excuse, but it was the best one he had at the moment.
Smirking a bit, the Russian placed a hand on top of Smith's head, messing up his bandana. “Vhatever you say...”
Suddenly, he was aware that his dear friend was still in danger. Forcing himself to stand, though he swayed dangerously, one foot found its way in front of the other. A lumbering walk. The men were still surrounding him, saying something he couldn't quite make out. English was a foreign language to his mind. What were they saying? “Oof!” Someone colliding with his weakening body made him flop over, hitting the deck hard, causing the air to be forced from his lungs in a bloody gurgle. Frankie blacked out for a second or two until his eyes just barely focused, just enough to take in the world around him.
Smoke. Guns. Cannons. Screams, splashes, bodies falling into the ocean. It was all so familiar, except...
Feeling around his belt, his hand came across a last-ditch effort. A bomb he had been working on that would be able to kill multiple people, using only a small blast radius. The cold, stained canvas it was wrapped in felt like a million pounds in the young man's shaking hands. He was bleeding to death. He knew it, he knew he was dying, and yet he forced himself up once more. Standing on unsteady legs, Frankie lit another match and touched the head of it to the makeshift wick that stuck out of the deadly parcel. It ended tonight.
He found himself running toward the men, gasping for breath. Had to get there before the bomb went off...
A seagull circled overhead, carrying a piece of bread, stolen from the disgruntled Russian sitting there, yelling Russian curses at it. Those stupid birds were always so bothersome, and Salem wasn't around at the moment to take care of their pesky antics. He was with the Captain and Leon in her quarters, but doing what? He'd make you guess.
A stone whizzed by Frankie's ear, which caught him off guard. It hit the bird, which caused it to drop the food it held back onto the deck as it flew off with a loud sqwack. Whirling around, the Russian only saw Smith tucking a well-worn slingshot into his belt. Where had he gotten such good aim?
Even as he got closer, Frankie couldn't make out any voices. Part of him wondered what significance these flashbacks held; is this what men saw before they died? He didn't have the time to ponder about it as his shoulder connected with the waist of one man, pushing him out of the way.
Standing in front of Smith so protectively, he would have looked heroic, but the blood dripping down his soaked shirt stated that he was in no shape to fight. The bomb in his hand, however, said otherwise. Without a word, the Russian grabbed the frightened Smith and roughly threw him far to the side, hearing a sudden stammer of objection. But he would have none of it. The bomb was about to go off, the wick no longer visible. There would be no time for him get out of the blast's range if he wanted to kill these men who had tried to hurt his friend.
Cold winds blew down from the north, making France colder than it was normally this time of year. Paris, the city of lovers. He scoffed and pulled his bearskin coat tighter around him. Both fur jacket and Russian-style hat were lightly covered in snow. Suddenly, he heard a voice behind him and he spun around, coming face to face with the man whom played with dolls. “Smith?”
“The Captain's been looking for you. We're about to leave port, so you can't just be wandering around. Everyone's waiting.” The tone in the other man's voice was just the slightest bit scolding which shook at the end as a shiver crept across his body.
“...Vhat? Oh, sorry. I'll be zhere in a little vhile,” Frankie said slowly, as if he was trying to make up his mind.
“But the Captain'll be angry if we don't...” Suddenly, Smith found himself encased in a thick coat of fur, pressed right up against the explosives expert's warmth. “I...We can't...we...we can wait another minute.”
“Zhat's vhat I thought.”
With his last ounce of strength, Franklin Volkov made his final stand. Before the men could get away, he threw the bomb hard onto the deck, giving it a delayed reaction.
“Frankie! What are you doing!?” Smith cried, trying to get closer, trying to stop this madness. “Stop! Run away, you're going to get blown up!”
“No! I'm already dying! I vill bleed to death if I don't!” he shouted back, drawing a ragged breath. He slipped into his native tongue, giving him a final sense of resolution. “Для тебя, мой друг, в тысячу раз. не думайте, что я никогда не любила. Я.” He'd have to ask Doc for a translation.
In the middle of the raging battle, the explosive went off with a blinding flash of light, and bang. Metal barbs flew out of the canvas, killing anyone who was close enough, including the man who made such a deathtrap. But as the Russian went down, he managed a salute directed at the crew of the Raven—whom paused in their fighting just long enough to look over when they heard the blast. A pool of his own blood cushioned his fall.
“Watch out, Frankie,” the Irishman muttered as he turned away, shooting a member of Gabriella's crew in he back of the skull with no trace of mercy present. He quickly rejoined the Captain in the fight, using that expertise of the handgun that made him so feared.
Placing the long-range weapon on a near-by barrel, the man ran a marked hand through his hair, leaving streaks of black powder in its chestnut strands. His heart hammered in his chest, tinting the edges of his visions with a blurry, white border. Pale blue eyes jumped around, not fully taking in the battle scene—that was, until, he caught a glimpse of Smith being cornered by three large men. The barrel of a pistol was lowered to his forehead as he stared up in terror.
The same feeling streaked through Frankie and then he heard a gunshot. Saw nothing but blackness, felt the warm red of blood ooze from a wound in his chest. He'd been hit. Him, not Smith. “Thank God...” he muttered as he dropped to his knees, staring blankly up at the sky as the red liquid, colored darker by gunpowder, gushed from his heart.
“Hey, Smith, are you playing vith dolls again?” Frankie remarked, poking his head over the other pirate's shoulder.
“Uh...Uh...They were a gift...I have to do something with them.” It was a futile excuse, but it was the best one he had at the moment.
Smirking a bit, the Russian placed a hand on top of Smith's head, messing up his bandana. “Vhatever you say...”
Suddenly, he was aware that his dear friend was still in danger. Forcing himself to stand, though he swayed dangerously, one foot found its way in front of the other. A lumbering walk. The men were still surrounding him, saying something he couldn't quite make out. English was a foreign language to his mind. What were they saying? “Oof!” Someone colliding with his weakening body made him flop over, hitting the deck hard, causing the air to be forced from his lungs in a bloody gurgle. Frankie blacked out for a second or two until his eyes just barely focused, just enough to take in the world around him.
Smoke. Guns. Cannons. Screams, splashes, bodies falling into the ocean. It was all so familiar, except...
Feeling around his belt, his hand came across a last-ditch effort. A bomb he had been working on that would be able to kill multiple people, using only a small blast radius. The cold, stained canvas it was wrapped in felt like a million pounds in the young man's shaking hands. He was bleeding to death. He knew it, he knew he was dying, and yet he forced himself up once more. Standing on unsteady legs, Frankie lit another match and touched the head of it to the makeshift wick that stuck out of the deadly parcel. It ended tonight.
He found himself running toward the men, gasping for breath. Had to get there before the bomb went off...
A seagull circled overhead, carrying a piece of bread, stolen from the disgruntled Russian sitting there, yelling Russian curses at it. Those stupid birds were always so bothersome, and Salem wasn't around at the moment to take care of their pesky antics. He was with the Captain and Leon in her quarters, but doing what? He'd make you guess.
A stone whizzed by Frankie's ear, which caught him off guard. It hit the bird, which caused it to drop the food it held back onto the deck as it flew off with a loud sqwack. Whirling around, the Russian only saw Smith tucking a well-worn slingshot into his belt. Where had he gotten such good aim?
Even as he got closer, Frankie couldn't make out any voices. Part of him wondered what significance these flashbacks held; is this what men saw before they died? He didn't have the time to ponder about it as his shoulder connected with the waist of one man, pushing him out of the way.
Standing in front of Smith so protectively, he would have looked heroic, but the blood dripping down his soaked shirt stated that he was in no shape to fight. The bomb in his hand, however, said otherwise. Without a word, the Russian grabbed the frightened Smith and roughly threw him far to the side, hearing a sudden stammer of objection. But he would have none of it. The bomb was about to go off, the wick no longer visible. There would be no time for him get out of the blast's range if he wanted to kill these men who had tried to hurt his friend.
Cold winds blew down from the north, making France colder than it was normally this time of year. Paris, the city of lovers. He scoffed and pulled his bearskin coat tighter around him. Both fur jacket and Russian-style hat were lightly covered in snow. Suddenly, he heard a voice behind him and he spun around, coming face to face with the man whom played with dolls. “Smith?”
“The Captain's been looking for you. We're about to leave port, so you can't just be wandering around. Everyone's waiting.” The tone in the other man's voice was just the slightest bit scolding which shook at the end as a shiver crept across his body.
“...Vhat? Oh, sorry. I'll be zhere in a little vhile,” Frankie said slowly, as if he was trying to make up his mind.
“But the Captain'll be angry if we don't...” Suddenly, Smith found himself encased in a thick coat of fur, pressed right up against the explosives expert's warmth. “I...We can't...we...we can wait another minute.”
“Zhat's vhat I thought.”
With his last ounce of strength, Franklin Volkov made his final stand. Before the men could get away, he threw the bomb hard onto the deck, giving it a delayed reaction.
“Frankie! What are you doing!?” Smith cried, trying to get closer, trying to stop this madness. “Stop! Run away, you're going to get blown up!”
“No! I'm already dying! I vill bleed to death if I don't!” he shouted back, drawing a ragged breath. He slipped into his native tongue, giving him a final sense of resolution. “Для тебя, мой друг, в тысячу раз. не думайте, что я никогда не любила. Я.” He'd have to ask Doc for a translation.
In the middle of the raging battle, the explosive went off with a blinding flash of light, and bang. Metal barbs flew out of the canvas, killing anyone who was close enough, including the man who made such a deathtrap. But as the Russian went down, he managed a salute directed at the crew of the Raven—whom paused in their fighting just long enough to look over when they heard the blast. A pool of his own blood cushioned his fall.
Stranger Like Me
The screams died down in rhythm with the evaporating surges of alchemical power. Another person robbed of his humanity for illegal experimentation, not even given a chance to fight back. The bearded man would then carry them in by their collar and place them in a cage with an older chimera so they could have guidance. It was the last shred of mercy the man possessed. In this hell that smelled of sharp, metal and chemical odors, it was the last thing you could ever hope for.
A cage door slid open with a sound similar to nails on a chalkboard—or more accurately, rusted metal against rusted hinges—and a body was dumped in with a thump, the numerical tag on his collar faintly jingling. I cracked open an eye and saw that I was face to face with the newest addition to the chimera family. And he looked...human. Surprised beyond that of which I was able to convey, I shuffled forward on my belly and pressed my nose against his forehead, giving a faint sigh.
These days, I was terribly lethargic and had little energy. I knew I was dying a long, drawn-out death and for some reason I couldn't quite comprehend, I was okay with that.
“It's...okay...I...have...you...” I told him—#203—even though I was pretty sure he couldn't hear me. #201, the chimera before me, had passed away a few months before and I had been alone since then, save for the man who called himself Michael Varinski.
When I first met him, I thought he was nice. After all, he saved me from the fate of living out my life, until I turned sixteen, in that orphanage; that had to count for something, right? He gained my trust, treated me like a girl of nine years ought to be treated. Then, he lead me into that side room, the one with the bloodstained floor and the array drawn in crisp, white chalk. That's when it all changed and I saw him for what he truly was: a sociopath—no, a monster.
“#203...Please...don't die. Please...” I moved closer to him, my claws scraping lightly against the bottom of the cage as I forced my paws to work correctly. (I had long since come to accept that I was no longer a human, nor did I have the mindset of the eleven year old I was. I gained wisdom beyond my years, living like this.) Nuzzling my way into this boy's arms, I pressed myself against him, sharing the what body heat my furred self had to offer. The contact made him stir slightly and he mumbled something, sounding like he was caught in a nightmare. At that moment, I wished I knew his name so I could say something familiar, something that might offer some sort of comfort to the confused and battered chimera. I huddled closer, and caught the scent of blood, and a sedative that I didn't know the name of, coming from a puncture wound on #203's neck. I winced, and let out a soft whine in empathy; I knew that Varinski had put the drugs straight into the boy's throat instead of his shoulder, indicating that he probably put up a fight. I lifted my muzzle and ran my tongue over the injury gently, until I was certain I had cleaned it thoroughly.
“Rrrgh...”
My eyes snapped open, thinking I heard something, some evidence that this boy was still alive. “...Again...?”
#203's lips twitched slightly and he lifted a hand, fingertips brushing against my leg. He looked sort of confused and pained, letting his hand rest where in landed. He would be in pain for a while—he was lucky to come out of the transmutation alive—since his entire molecular structure that been broken apart, and then rearranged. “...I...Nnn...”
My heart began to beat faster and I pushed my nose against his chest, knowing its coldness would send some sort of jolt to urge him into consciousness. “Again.”
A gasp was drawn from him and the newer chimera squirmed, trying to move away from the cold, his fingers burying into my fur. Slowly, his eyelids pulled upwards and—much to my dismay—revealed a pair of clouded, blue eyes. He was blind! “...Dog?”
Dog? ...Dog! Me! He saw me! Or, at least guessed it was me. I pulled my muzzle into the best smile I could and gave a nod, thrilled that he had said something. “Again...say again.” This was the first test. #203 looked human, but if his mental capacity or his motor skills were lacking, Varinski would take him to a back room and he wouldn't come out.
“...Huh?” The bat—I think he was a bat, he had wings—still seemed confused and shook his head, not seeming to understand. Reaching out his hand again, he ran it carefully over my face, fingers seeming to draw in every detail to make up for lack of sight.
Although the joy in the moment was diminishing, I leaned into his hand, taking this small comfort for what it was, though I really should have been more cautious. “Try...say...name?” Maybe this would work. If he remembered his name, that was a huge leap in the right direction. I, myself, could not remember mine; for as long as I had been in this lab, I had been called #202 and adopted that as my name, if I had even had one before.
#203's brows furrowed in concentration and he bit his lip, trying to force some memory to surface. However, he seemed unaware that his newly formed fangs drew blood from the soft tissue. “My name? My name is...It's Victor,” he told me, after what seemed like the longest time. “Victor O'Brian. ...Wait, wait! You're a dog! D-dogs can't talk. Wh...where AM I?” Sent into a panic, the bat sat up quickly, causing me to have to duck my head in order to avoid getting elbowed in the face.
“Chimera,” I corrected, watching through wide eyes as this boy was overcome with pain and hunkered down in the corner farthest from me.
I said nothing else, just observed as his sides rose and fell with each breath. Out of instinct, he curled his wings around him as far as they would go without being painful. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized he was crying and trying to make sense of it all. I forced myself to stand squarely onto my paws and took a few lumbering steps toward #203, a soft whine pulling itself from my throat. “Vic...Vic...tor? Victor?” I had trouble pronouncing the 'vic' part of his name and tried to make up for it by nudging my muzzle under his arm in a gesture of affection.
“A-ah!” Victor jerked away from my touch and let out a shrill squeak, one of his ears flicking backwards in a way that seemed to be against his will. His breath began to come faster as his panic rose, tears flowing freely down the sides of his face. “No, what happened? Why...I don't feel right...Where's Rachael and Alexis? Where are...Where are my sisters?” The tone in his voice was quivering—I could tell that he was close to losing it, and that all I wanted to do more than anything in my life was to help him. The coyote in me had already sworn herself to her bat.
“They're not...here. Bad things...bad...happened,” I wheezed, this talking not good for the lungs I knew were failing. But, I had to try. For his sake. “Lie down... You need...rest.” I drew closer to him, thinking that he might be uncomfortable due to lack of clothing, but there was nothing I could give him. “Vic...tor...?”
The muscles in his shoulder twitched and suddenly he whirled around and faced me, not bothering to hide any of the things that obviously made him male. “Bad things happened! I'm not a human...I don't know WHAT I am and you're telling me BAD THINGS HAPPENED!?” He sat as tall as he could, letting out breath after angry breath as red tinted the very edges of his eyes, no doubt his rising blood pressure.
Cowering down a little submissively, as I was intimidated at his sudden outburst, I tried once again to talk some sense into this boy. “Don't...bad things happen...when you get...m...mad...” I knew myself what would happen, I had experienced it. I wasn't certain Victor would suffer the same fate, but as long as he was a chimera, there was a high possibility.
“NO! You listen here! I'm gonna be mad as HELL until I figure out what. Is. Going. ON!” he shouted, gesticulating to prove his point. Lost in a rant, the bat gripped the bars of the cage and bashed his head into one of the metal rods multiple times, making some sort of incoherent squeaking noise as blood splattered everywhere from a quickly opened wound.
This was what I had been afraid of; the human and animal parts that had been forced together in his brain were at war, causing their owner to lose control and try to separate the halves by force. I emitted a low growl and jumped at him, promptly knocking him over and holding him pinned down to the floor of the cage—as scared as I was, it's possible I drew energy from some unknown reserve. “VICTOR!” I growled, pushing my muzzle into his face, the smell of fresh blood hitting me like a train. “Listen to me!” Of course I didn't want it to succumb to this, but it was my duty to keep my bat alive and he wasn't making it easy. Only when I noticed the terrified look on his face did I remember that this boy couldn't see, and here I was with my fangs bared, looming over him like some sort of vicious animal. I'd like to believe my eyes watered with sadness, but it was really just a side effect of my illness. Nevertheless, I bowed my head and lapped at where Victor had split his forehead open in his rampage, feeling endlessly terrible about what I had just done and feeling the need to basically pamper him. He'd just gone through hell and back, after all. “Sorry...”
Breath hitching, he looked up at me, although I figured all he could see was darkness. Then suddenly, I felt something tugging on the fur around my neck and glanced down, seeing two shaking hands clutching handfuls of the downy hair. I feared that maybe I had hurt him, but I was pulled down so that I lay on top of the bat while he pressed his face into my chest, sobbing without holding back. My heart pained to see him in such distress. How could I feel so deeply about this boy whom I had just met? Was there some sort of inseparable bond that formed between two chimera, locked in a cage and basically sealed to their fate? Victor speaking brought me back to this world.
“I-I'm scared...” he admitted through hiccuping sobs. “I don't know what happened, or where I am, or where my family is...” His voice broke and I gave a soft whimper of understanding. “I...I'm not myself anymore. I can't remember what happened, all I remember is a guy grabbing me...then something went into my neck and I blacked out. And I woke up and there was this light and something really fuckin' hurt and all I could hear were screams—were those mine? Was I screaming? Then I think I blacked out again...And now I'm here with you... Wh...What IS this place?”
Part of me wanted to stay silent to avoid having to speak, it really was tiring for me to do so. This boy was lucky, as a chimera, to speak full sentences without the slightest—except for a small, barely noticeable lisp that came from getting used to new fangs—impediment that hindered his words. The other part of me wanted to give a long, emotional speech but I knew that wasn't within my range. “Victor...this place is...a lab. It is...bad. Very bad. You're...a chimera, human-animal. Get...out...while you can. Don't...die here.” I settled for these words, putting all my hope into that he would suffer a fate better than I, with my lungs weakening and my immune system deteriorating. Had it not been for the medicine Varinski kept me on night and day, I would have crossed the trench to the sweet—or, was it not so sweet?—embrace of death.
An expression of complete and utter sadness came over Victor's features and he began to bawl, once again, without any abandon. And I let him do so. It wasn't my place, nor my right to deny him the very thing that made him still human. No. I couldn't take that away from him.
An hour ticked by until he had finally quieted down to small sniffles and the occasional hiccup; by now, salty tears dripped off the ends of my fur. I think I had fallen asleep once or twice, my body just unable to keep up with my mind. This took a lot out of me, and Victor too it seemed, as the boy was nearly asleep as he still clung to me. Right now, he didn't smell quite as dead now that the drugs were beginning to wear off. (The sedatives really did give people a noticeable scent that lingered like the scent of death.) For the first in my life, I felt like I had something to hold on to that would make my time on this earth worthwhile. Even though Victor might not feel the same, he could go on without knowing how happy he made me, and that was fine. He would be moved into a different cage as soon as Varinski was certain he would live past the first week—part of me prayed that he would allow the bat to stay, for his sake as much as my own. It truly drove a person—chimera—to madness when they sat alone, in the corner of a cold and steel box, with no other breathing being in which to share their fears and worries.
“...#202, was it?” The voice was small and hoarse sounding, no doubt from its previous wailing. “I'm...I'm sorry. I know it don't mean much, but I was so scared. I still don't know what a chimera is, even though I...” he paused, still trying to come to terms with the fact. “am one... But if I want to make it out of here, since you say it's bad, I hafta look on the bright side of things, huh?”
I gave a sort of chortle that expressed my agreement and rolled off of my bat so I lay at his side and not on top of his still aching form where he had held me for so long. Rubbing the side of my face against the hollow of his throat, I thought of what to say. “This place...not happy. But you...make...me happy. You need...to be... happy too...”
He merely looked at me, or, at least listened intently to my voice, in complete silence. Finally, he gave a tiny, content sounding sigh, as if he were accepting his fate. And much to my surprise, his hand found the top of my head and he petted me; what really surprised me was the fact that the touch wasn't what someone would give a dog, it was the kind you would give a small child who had done well, or needed some sort of reassurance. It was...affectionate.
“Y'know...I bet you've never seen a fifteen year old boy cry that much at one time.” Victor waited for me to say something, but I couldn't quite draw the strength to speak. When I didn't respond, he continued. “I don't like crying much. Rachael always bugged me about it when I did. She always said she was more man than I was. I was always, yeah right. You don't have the right equipment. She always ended up winning all of our arguments somehow, when Alexis didn't break us up. Alexis swore up'n down that if Rach ever met a boy as stubborn as she was, the world would end.” The bat stopped once more, looking a bit more pleasant as he talked about the girls I assumed were the sisters he had mentioned earlier. These memories seemed to bring good thoughts to the surface of his mind and I was glad for that, as I really hated to see my boy cry. “...I wonder where they are now...Me and Rachael got in a pretty bad fight and I ran off. That's when I remember getting stabbed with... whatever that thing was.” He moved his hand away from me and rubbed the puncture on his neck, looking troubled. “I cracked my walking stick over the guy's head before I blacked out; I hope it gave him a concussion. Say, is he the same bastard that...uhm...transmutated—trans...transmuted me?”
“Mmh?” Blinking slowly, my eyes fell upon Victor, glazed with exhaustion. I had fallen into a limbo that wasn't quite sleep, but not quite wakefulness as he talked. I never stopped listening to him, his voice making me smile inwardly as the only voice besides Varinski's that I had heard in two years. #201 lacked the ability to communicate vocally, but that didn't cause me to love him less. “Yes... He does all...this. Monster. Bad.” It was a sentence I had to force out of my lungs, which left me wheezing and fighting for breath at the end. This had been the most I talked since I was transmuted; Varinski wasn't a pleasant man to talk to, now that I knew what he was, and #201 and I never needed words to understand each other.
“Guess he really as bad as you say he is, if he did this to me, to you.” The bat sounded like he had a question to ask, but seemed to have decided against it. “Maybe I could...squeeze through these bars...” Wrapping one hand around a metal cylinder, Victor pressed the point of his shoulder through the gap, wriggling to get his chest in position.
My heart was frantic and I struggled to my feet, shaking and panting. “N...N....N-n...No...” It was a low whisper, the best I could manage. If he went through those bars, he would be in trouble. The collar would send off those invisible signals, saying that he was out of the designated area, and he could very well be shocked to kingdom come. I took a single step forward before my joints simply gave up and allowed me to fall heavily to the floor. This new angle allowed me to see the man I so hated walk down the rows of empty “holding chambers” as he sometimes liked to call these prison cells. The look on his face was nothing short of indifferent.
“Almost...There. I think I got it!” He had half his torso out of the cage before he ducked his head down, pushing it through. That was when the silent alarm went off. Electricity crackled and the new chimera found himself yelping and tugging at the collar in a frenzy, trying to rid himself of the painful jolts. “The FUCK is this!?”
“The thing to keep you from running off,” said a smooth, cold voice that reminded me of a knife. Varinski. He approached Victor, but stopped a few feet short and simply watched the younger man struggle. It was easy to see he was pleased to find out that “#203” could speak properly, and that he also had the intelligence to try to form an escape route. I had this intelligence, but often times, the chimera would have a more animalistic mindset and would not even think about escaping. They would merely sulk in a corner.
“Garh...S...s-stop...stop...” From those words, I knew my boy was a fighter. Even with the collar shocking his life from him, he made the garbled sentence sound like nothing less than a demand, an order, not a plea like most would think. Bloody froth formed at the corners of Victor's mouth as he doubled over, curled into a ball. One of his legs kicked out against the floor and he trembled before rolling onto his back and arching his spine upwards, giving a shrill call before he twitched slowly, until he was motionless.
By now, I had forced myself against the bars of the cage, one paw stretched through the bars, wanting to pull him back into what safety there was here. But with those final movements, I could smell death on him, and I knew somehow, that his heart had given out. If I was capable of crying, I would have been able to flood that entire room in tears at that very moment. I knew death. I had grown up with it. I had seen all of the dozen “practice experiments” that stemmed between myself and #203 lose their lives. But this was my boy...my...Victor.
“Seems his heart was unstable,” the alchemist remarked coolly as he paced forward to the bat's body, looking over him from head to toe as he switched the collars to off, cutting the flow of electrodes. “I could let him die...” I swore my heart stopped. “But I am actually quite happy with how he turned out. He's a break-through in science, from what I can tell. The first chimera who looks human, save for a few...flaws.” The way he said that word sent shivers down my spine. “And the material I used is too precious to waste. The bat I fused #203 with was rather hard to track down, but I thought an animal which had eyesight, or lack thereof, similar to his would make the transmutation smoother. It is just a matter of time before I will find out if he can use the same echolocation techniques to find his way around.”
I wanted to rip out his throat. Kill him. The man was just standing there, blabbering away to me, or himself, I didn't know or care. His so called “precious material” was DYING on the FLOOR.
Just as soon as I was about to raise my voice to bark, Varinski took a hold on Victor's collar and drug him to the far wall, which housed a defibrillator. Taking out the device, he warmed it up, filling the air with the faint cackle of static before placing each paddle on the chimera's bare chest. Pressing a button on each defibrillator, a jolt was sent straight to Victor's essential blood supplying organ, making his torso lurch up. No reaction. Another attempt was preformed. No reaction. I bowed my head in respect for the dead—the dead whom I had come to love so very quickly, due to some unexplainable bond.
Another attempt, and, life!
“There we are. That shock did quite a number on you, #203. I hope you learned your lesson.” He began dragging Victor's body back to our 'home' and opened the cage door with a slightly disgruntled expression plaguing his features as he set the bat next to me. “Make sure he doesn't die, #202.” With that, he left.
Was that it? Make sure he doesn't die, huh? Varinski could be sure that I would not take my eye off my cagemate for a single second. I nudged my nose up under his chin, feeling the flicker of the pule that had returned. Giving a choked sob, feeling so god damn horrible for not being able to prevent this from happening, I curled up next to him, feeling the slight coldness of his body. And I prayed. I prayed to any god, celestial being, anything that might listen to my wish that my boy would pull through, that he wouldn't suffer something like brain damage, heart problems... that he would be as normal and healthy as a sin created from taboo could possibly be. I highly doubted there were any sort of gods out there, however. Would a god who 'loved his people' let things like his lab happen? Let so many people die here, without a proper place to call home, stolen from their friends and family... Robbed of their very humanity. I began to quiver, filled up by this maelstrom of emotions with no way to vent them. It was one of the things I learned to get used to, when I realized I couldn't shed tears. Sometimes, when I was alone at night, I would just howl and howl until I had exhausted myself enough that I could pass out and drift into a dreamless sleep. That was the best sleep I ever got. Tonight, I knew, I would try my very best to not pass out, as I had a life basically hanging in my paws. If something happened to him, and I wasn't aware of it, I would never forgive myself. I would curl into a ball in the corner of my cage, and wait for death to pull me from this world.
“Ugh...Everything hurts,” a voice croaked. It was no doubt Victor pulling out from his unconscious state that had lasted about two and a half hours. “And when I say that...I mean everything.” A shaking appendage was raised; he pressed the flat of his palm onto his chest and moved it in a slow circle, feeling the bruised and slightly burned skin. (Varinski hadn't been exactly gentle with the machine.) The hand dropped, in defeat, and the bat brought his knees up to his chest and rolled onto his side, trying to make himself seem small so maybe he would disappear. The blind gaze stared on straight ahead, something disconcerting about it. It seemed...lost. Like he was giving up. “I'm stuck here. I can't get out and this collar won't come off,” he whispered, letting his eyelids droop as the confidence and optimism I felt earlier evaporated into the stale air. His face was pale, and I only noticed now the dark circles under his eyes. Whether he had those before, or after all of this, I wasn't quite sure. “Why does he do this? Why?” Victor asked, his voice prying for answers, and at the same time, wanting to push away all thought of this lab and of himself.
“He...” I attempted to give a halfhearted answer, but his eyes flicked toward the sound of my voice and his brows furrowed. I fell quiet and moved to a corner of the metal box and slid to the ground to sulk. So many lives lost here. Locked up in this prison and sooner or later, they all became insane. I, myself, didn't even know the day, or the month. Just the general time of year that my heat cycles fell into naturally. I didn't know whether it was night or day. I slept when I was tired, which was becoming more often than not.
Victor curled up tighter, letting one limp wing drape over his body like a blanket, covering his paper-white skin. Looked like he was waiting for death, as I was. Could I blame him? “I give up, #202. I give up. There's no damned way out of here. I'm going to die in this cage and there's nothing you or anyone can do about it.” His voice was bitter, sad. “Even if I did get out... what would I do? No one would accept a freak like me, with these...wings and...whatever.”
I reached out to him a bit, scooting closer to comfort him, but found a fist connecting with the end of my muzzle. I yelped, my eyes widening as I saw the bat withdraw, moving to the farthest corner of the cage. Blood began to drip down from where I was struck and I sat there, dumbfounded for a moment, trying to realize fully what had just happened. He...hit me. Never since I had been a chimera, had I been dealt a physical blow such as that. And he hit me. I didn't know how to respond to that. Ignore it and try to talk to him? Mope some more? Or...bite him back? More than any of that...I wanted to break down sobbing like I used to when I was a little kid, sharing one bedroom with thirteen other girls at the orphanage.
The bat's knuckles had a few red smudges on them, duplicating the marks on his chest when he pressed his fingers against it, trying to control the trembling. “Leave me alone...” he rasped, turning away in shame, leaning his head against the cold, metallic floor. That didn't seem like a blind punch. How did he know where he was aiming...? “Leave me alone, damn you,” he repeated, eyes closing tightly as if that action could banish me from existence.
I knew I could no longer push the subject. It hurt, almost irreversibly hurt. So I retreated and withdrew into myself, my body going numb. A single thought bounced in my head: “Had I acted that that toward #201? Scared, in pain, not knowing what happened?” I couldn't remember anything from the first few days after the transmutation. I hung in the limbo of death. Later, I learned that I had nearly died when a bad case of acid reflux burned off the lining of my throat and infection set in, but Varinski was quick to put me on antibiotics. Some days, it really felt like the man cared. Other days, I knew he only did this was so he could “fix his mistakes” and make better chimeras. He said one time, to me, that he wanted to work his way to create one super powerful chimera that had the strength, cunning of an animal, but the full looks of a human. I didn't know if it was possible, but looking at Victor compared to myself... he was definitely improving. As long as that happened, more of us would die, more would be turned into creatures not fit to walk this earth.
And I could only hope that someone, something, would intervene and save us from this nightmare. I hope that it won't end like this.
A cage door slid open with a sound similar to nails on a chalkboard—or more accurately, rusted metal against rusted hinges—and a body was dumped in with a thump, the numerical tag on his collar faintly jingling. I cracked open an eye and saw that I was face to face with the newest addition to the chimera family. And he looked...human. Surprised beyond that of which I was able to convey, I shuffled forward on my belly and pressed my nose against his forehead, giving a faint sigh.
These days, I was terribly lethargic and had little energy. I knew I was dying a long, drawn-out death and for some reason I couldn't quite comprehend, I was okay with that.
“It's...okay...I...have...you...” I told him—#203—even though I was pretty sure he couldn't hear me. #201, the chimera before me, had passed away a few months before and I had been alone since then, save for the man who called himself Michael Varinski.
When I first met him, I thought he was nice. After all, he saved me from the fate of living out my life, until I turned sixteen, in that orphanage; that had to count for something, right? He gained my trust, treated me like a girl of nine years ought to be treated. Then, he lead me into that side room, the one with the bloodstained floor and the array drawn in crisp, white chalk. That's when it all changed and I saw him for what he truly was: a sociopath—no, a monster.
“#203...Please...don't die. Please...” I moved closer to him, my claws scraping lightly against the bottom of the cage as I forced my paws to work correctly. (I had long since come to accept that I was no longer a human, nor did I have the mindset of the eleven year old I was. I gained wisdom beyond my years, living like this.) Nuzzling my way into this boy's arms, I pressed myself against him, sharing the what body heat my furred self had to offer. The contact made him stir slightly and he mumbled something, sounding like he was caught in a nightmare. At that moment, I wished I knew his name so I could say something familiar, something that might offer some sort of comfort to the confused and battered chimera. I huddled closer, and caught the scent of blood, and a sedative that I didn't know the name of, coming from a puncture wound on #203's neck. I winced, and let out a soft whine in empathy; I knew that Varinski had put the drugs straight into the boy's throat instead of his shoulder, indicating that he probably put up a fight. I lifted my muzzle and ran my tongue over the injury gently, until I was certain I had cleaned it thoroughly.
“Rrrgh...”
My eyes snapped open, thinking I heard something, some evidence that this boy was still alive. “...Again...?”
#203's lips twitched slightly and he lifted a hand, fingertips brushing against my leg. He looked sort of confused and pained, letting his hand rest where in landed. He would be in pain for a while—he was lucky to come out of the transmutation alive—since his entire molecular structure that been broken apart, and then rearranged. “...I...Nnn...”
My heart began to beat faster and I pushed my nose against his chest, knowing its coldness would send some sort of jolt to urge him into consciousness. “Again.”
A gasp was drawn from him and the newer chimera squirmed, trying to move away from the cold, his fingers burying into my fur. Slowly, his eyelids pulled upwards and—much to my dismay—revealed a pair of clouded, blue eyes. He was blind! “...Dog?”
Dog? ...Dog! Me! He saw me! Or, at least guessed it was me. I pulled my muzzle into the best smile I could and gave a nod, thrilled that he had said something. “Again...say again.” This was the first test. #203 looked human, but if his mental capacity or his motor skills were lacking, Varinski would take him to a back room and he wouldn't come out.
“...Huh?” The bat—I think he was a bat, he had wings—still seemed confused and shook his head, not seeming to understand. Reaching out his hand again, he ran it carefully over my face, fingers seeming to draw in every detail to make up for lack of sight.
Although the joy in the moment was diminishing, I leaned into his hand, taking this small comfort for what it was, though I really should have been more cautious. “Try...say...name?” Maybe this would work. If he remembered his name, that was a huge leap in the right direction. I, myself, could not remember mine; for as long as I had been in this lab, I had been called #202 and adopted that as my name, if I had even had one before.
#203's brows furrowed in concentration and he bit his lip, trying to force some memory to surface. However, he seemed unaware that his newly formed fangs drew blood from the soft tissue. “My name? My name is...It's Victor,” he told me, after what seemed like the longest time. “Victor O'Brian. ...Wait, wait! You're a dog! D-dogs can't talk. Wh...where AM I?” Sent into a panic, the bat sat up quickly, causing me to have to duck my head in order to avoid getting elbowed in the face.
“Chimera,” I corrected, watching through wide eyes as this boy was overcome with pain and hunkered down in the corner farthest from me.
I said nothing else, just observed as his sides rose and fell with each breath. Out of instinct, he curled his wings around him as far as they would go without being painful. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized he was crying and trying to make sense of it all. I forced myself to stand squarely onto my paws and took a few lumbering steps toward #203, a soft whine pulling itself from my throat. “Vic...Vic...tor? Victor?” I had trouble pronouncing the 'vic' part of his name and tried to make up for it by nudging my muzzle under his arm in a gesture of affection.
“A-ah!” Victor jerked away from my touch and let out a shrill squeak, one of his ears flicking backwards in a way that seemed to be against his will. His breath began to come faster as his panic rose, tears flowing freely down the sides of his face. “No, what happened? Why...I don't feel right...Where's Rachael and Alexis? Where are...Where are my sisters?” The tone in his voice was quivering—I could tell that he was close to losing it, and that all I wanted to do more than anything in my life was to help him. The coyote in me had already sworn herself to her bat.
“They're not...here. Bad things...bad...happened,” I wheezed, this talking not good for the lungs I knew were failing. But, I had to try. For his sake. “Lie down... You need...rest.” I drew closer to him, thinking that he might be uncomfortable due to lack of clothing, but there was nothing I could give him. “Vic...tor...?”
The muscles in his shoulder twitched and suddenly he whirled around and faced me, not bothering to hide any of the things that obviously made him male. “Bad things happened! I'm not a human...I don't know WHAT I am and you're telling me BAD THINGS HAPPENED!?” He sat as tall as he could, letting out breath after angry breath as red tinted the very edges of his eyes, no doubt his rising blood pressure.
Cowering down a little submissively, as I was intimidated at his sudden outburst, I tried once again to talk some sense into this boy. “Don't...bad things happen...when you get...m...mad...” I knew myself what would happen, I had experienced it. I wasn't certain Victor would suffer the same fate, but as long as he was a chimera, there was a high possibility.
“NO! You listen here! I'm gonna be mad as HELL until I figure out what. Is. Going. ON!” he shouted, gesticulating to prove his point. Lost in a rant, the bat gripped the bars of the cage and bashed his head into one of the metal rods multiple times, making some sort of incoherent squeaking noise as blood splattered everywhere from a quickly opened wound.
This was what I had been afraid of; the human and animal parts that had been forced together in his brain were at war, causing their owner to lose control and try to separate the halves by force. I emitted a low growl and jumped at him, promptly knocking him over and holding him pinned down to the floor of the cage—as scared as I was, it's possible I drew energy from some unknown reserve. “VICTOR!” I growled, pushing my muzzle into his face, the smell of fresh blood hitting me like a train. “Listen to me!” Of course I didn't want it to succumb to this, but it was my duty to keep my bat alive and he wasn't making it easy. Only when I noticed the terrified look on his face did I remember that this boy couldn't see, and here I was with my fangs bared, looming over him like some sort of vicious animal. I'd like to believe my eyes watered with sadness, but it was really just a side effect of my illness. Nevertheless, I bowed my head and lapped at where Victor had split his forehead open in his rampage, feeling endlessly terrible about what I had just done and feeling the need to basically pamper him. He'd just gone through hell and back, after all. “Sorry...”
Breath hitching, he looked up at me, although I figured all he could see was darkness. Then suddenly, I felt something tugging on the fur around my neck and glanced down, seeing two shaking hands clutching handfuls of the downy hair. I feared that maybe I had hurt him, but I was pulled down so that I lay on top of the bat while he pressed his face into my chest, sobbing without holding back. My heart pained to see him in such distress. How could I feel so deeply about this boy whom I had just met? Was there some sort of inseparable bond that formed between two chimera, locked in a cage and basically sealed to their fate? Victor speaking brought me back to this world.
“I-I'm scared...” he admitted through hiccuping sobs. “I don't know what happened, or where I am, or where my family is...” His voice broke and I gave a soft whimper of understanding. “I...I'm not myself anymore. I can't remember what happened, all I remember is a guy grabbing me...then something went into my neck and I blacked out. And I woke up and there was this light and something really fuckin' hurt and all I could hear were screams—were those mine? Was I screaming? Then I think I blacked out again...And now I'm here with you... Wh...What IS this place?”
Part of me wanted to stay silent to avoid having to speak, it really was tiring for me to do so. This boy was lucky, as a chimera, to speak full sentences without the slightest—except for a small, barely noticeable lisp that came from getting used to new fangs—impediment that hindered his words. The other part of me wanted to give a long, emotional speech but I knew that wasn't within my range. “Victor...this place is...a lab. It is...bad. Very bad. You're...a chimera, human-animal. Get...out...while you can. Don't...die here.” I settled for these words, putting all my hope into that he would suffer a fate better than I, with my lungs weakening and my immune system deteriorating. Had it not been for the medicine Varinski kept me on night and day, I would have crossed the trench to the sweet—or, was it not so sweet?—embrace of death.
An expression of complete and utter sadness came over Victor's features and he began to bawl, once again, without any abandon. And I let him do so. It wasn't my place, nor my right to deny him the very thing that made him still human. No. I couldn't take that away from him.
An hour ticked by until he had finally quieted down to small sniffles and the occasional hiccup; by now, salty tears dripped off the ends of my fur. I think I had fallen asleep once or twice, my body just unable to keep up with my mind. This took a lot out of me, and Victor too it seemed, as the boy was nearly asleep as he still clung to me. Right now, he didn't smell quite as dead now that the drugs were beginning to wear off. (The sedatives really did give people a noticeable scent that lingered like the scent of death.) For the first in my life, I felt like I had something to hold on to that would make my time on this earth worthwhile. Even though Victor might not feel the same, he could go on without knowing how happy he made me, and that was fine. He would be moved into a different cage as soon as Varinski was certain he would live past the first week—part of me prayed that he would allow the bat to stay, for his sake as much as my own. It truly drove a person—chimera—to madness when they sat alone, in the corner of a cold and steel box, with no other breathing being in which to share their fears and worries.
“...#202, was it?” The voice was small and hoarse sounding, no doubt from its previous wailing. “I'm...I'm sorry. I know it don't mean much, but I was so scared. I still don't know what a chimera is, even though I...” he paused, still trying to come to terms with the fact. “am one... But if I want to make it out of here, since you say it's bad, I hafta look on the bright side of things, huh?”
I gave a sort of chortle that expressed my agreement and rolled off of my bat so I lay at his side and not on top of his still aching form where he had held me for so long. Rubbing the side of my face against the hollow of his throat, I thought of what to say. “This place...not happy. But you...make...me happy. You need...to be... happy too...”
He merely looked at me, or, at least listened intently to my voice, in complete silence. Finally, he gave a tiny, content sounding sigh, as if he were accepting his fate. And much to my surprise, his hand found the top of my head and he petted me; what really surprised me was the fact that the touch wasn't what someone would give a dog, it was the kind you would give a small child who had done well, or needed some sort of reassurance. It was...affectionate.
“Y'know...I bet you've never seen a fifteen year old boy cry that much at one time.” Victor waited for me to say something, but I couldn't quite draw the strength to speak. When I didn't respond, he continued. “I don't like crying much. Rachael always bugged me about it when I did. She always said she was more man than I was. I was always, yeah right. You don't have the right equipment. She always ended up winning all of our arguments somehow, when Alexis didn't break us up. Alexis swore up'n down that if Rach ever met a boy as stubborn as she was, the world would end.” The bat stopped once more, looking a bit more pleasant as he talked about the girls I assumed were the sisters he had mentioned earlier. These memories seemed to bring good thoughts to the surface of his mind and I was glad for that, as I really hated to see my boy cry. “...I wonder where they are now...Me and Rachael got in a pretty bad fight and I ran off. That's when I remember getting stabbed with... whatever that thing was.” He moved his hand away from me and rubbed the puncture on his neck, looking troubled. “I cracked my walking stick over the guy's head before I blacked out; I hope it gave him a concussion. Say, is he the same bastard that...uhm...transmutated—trans...transmuted me?”
“Mmh?” Blinking slowly, my eyes fell upon Victor, glazed with exhaustion. I had fallen into a limbo that wasn't quite sleep, but not quite wakefulness as he talked. I never stopped listening to him, his voice making me smile inwardly as the only voice besides Varinski's that I had heard in two years. #201 lacked the ability to communicate vocally, but that didn't cause me to love him less. “Yes... He does all...this. Monster. Bad.” It was a sentence I had to force out of my lungs, which left me wheezing and fighting for breath at the end. This had been the most I talked since I was transmuted; Varinski wasn't a pleasant man to talk to, now that I knew what he was, and #201 and I never needed words to understand each other.
“Guess he really as bad as you say he is, if he did this to me, to you.” The bat sounded like he had a question to ask, but seemed to have decided against it. “Maybe I could...squeeze through these bars...” Wrapping one hand around a metal cylinder, Victor pressed the point of his shoulder through the gap, wriggling to get his chest in position.
My heart was frantic and I struggled to my feet, shaking and panting. “N...N....N-n...No...” It was a low whisper, the best I could manage. If he went through those bars, he would be in trouble. The collar would send off those invisible signals, saying that he was out of the designated area, and he could very well be shocked to kingdom come. I took a single step forward before my joints simply gave up and allowed me to fall heavily to the floor. This new angle allowed me to see the man I so hated walk down the rows of empty “holding chambers” as he sometimes liked to call these prison cells. The look on his face was nothing short of indifferent.
“Almost...There. I think I got it!” He had half his torso out of the cage before he ducked his head down, pushing it through. That was when the silent alarm went off. Electricity crackled and the new chimera found himself yelping and tugging at the collar in a frenzy, trying to rid himself of the painful jolts. “The FUCK is this!?”
“The thing to keep you from running off,” said a smooth, cold voice that reminded me of a knife. Varinski. He approached Victor, but stopped a few feet short and simply watched the younger man struggle. It was easy to see he was pleased to find out that “#203” could speak properly, and that he also had the intelligence to try to form an escape route. I had this intelligence, but often times, the chimera would have a more animalistic mindset and would not even think about escaping. They would merely sulk in a corner.
“Garh...S...s-stop...stop...” From those words, I knew my boy was a fighter. Even with the collar shocking his life from him, he made the garbled sentence sound like nothing less than a demand, an order, not a plea like most would think. Bloody froth formed at the corners of Victor's mouth as he doubled over, curled into a ball. One of his legs kicked out against the floor and he trembled before rolling onto his back and arching his spine upwards, giving a shrill call before he twitched slowly, until he was motionless.
By now, I had forced myself against the bars of the cage, one paw stretched through the bars, wanting to pull him back into what safety there was here. But with those final movements, I could smell death on him, and I knew somehow, that his heart had given out. If I was capable of crying, I would have been able to flood that entire room in tears at that very moment. I knew death. I had grown up with it. I had seen all of the dozen “practice experiments” that stemmed between myself and #203 lose their lives. But this was my boy...my...Victor.
“Seems his heart was unstable,” the alchemist remarked coolly as he paced forward to the bat's body, looking over him from head to toe as he switched the collars to off, cutting the flow of electrodes. “I could let him die...” I swore my heart stopped. “But I am actually quite happy with how he turned out. He's a break-through in science, from what I can tell. The first chimera who looks human, save for a few...flaws.” The way he said that word sent shivers down my spine. “And the material I used is too precious to waste. The bat I fused #203 with was rather hard to track down, but I thought an animal which had eyesight, or lack thereof, similar to his would make the transmutation smoother. It is just a matter of time before I will find out if he can use the same echolocation techniques to find his way around.”
I wanted to rip out his throat. Kill him. The man was just standing there, blabbering away to me, or himself, I didn't know or care. His so called “precious material” was DYING on the FLOOR.
Just as soon as I was about to raise my voice to bark, Varinski took a hold on Victor's collar and drug him to the far wall, which housed a defibrillator. Taking out the device, he warmed it up, filling the air with the faint cackle of static before placing each paddle on the chimera's bare chest. Pressing a button on each defibrillator, a jolt was sent straight to Victor's essential blood supplying organ, making his torso lurch up. No reaction. Another attempt was preformed. No reaction. I bowed my head in respect for the dead—the dead whom I had come to love so very quickly, due to some unexplainable bond.
Another attempt, and, life!
“There we are. That shock did quite a number on you, #203. I hope you learned your lesson.” He began dragging Victor's body back to our 'home' and opened the cage door with a slightly disgruntled expression plaguing his features as he set the bat next to me. “Make sure he doesn't die, #202.” With that, he left.
Was that it? Make sure he doesn't die, huh? Varinski could be sure that I would not take my eye off my cagemate for a single second. I nudged my nose up under his chin, feeling the flicker of the pule that had returned. Giving a choked sob, feeling so god damn horrible for not being able to prevent this from happening, I curled up next to him, feeling the slight coldness of his body. And I prayed. I prayed to any god, celestial being, anything that might listen to my wish that my boy would pull through, that he wouldn't suffer something like brain damage, heart problems... that he would be as normal and healthy as a sin created from taboo could possibly be. I highly doubted there were any sort of gods out there, however. Would a god who 'loved his people' let things like his lab happen? Let so many people die here, without a proper place to call home, stolen from their friends and family... Robbed of their very humanity. I began to quiver, filled up by this maelstrom of emotions with no way to vent them. It was one of the things I learned to get used to, when I realized I couldn't shed tears. Sometimes, when I was alone at night, I would just howl and howl until I had exhausted myself enough that I could pass out and drift into a dreamless sleep. That was the best sleep I ever got. Tonight, I knew, I would try my very best to not pass out, as I had a life basically hanging in my paws. If something happened to him, and I wasn't aware of it, I would never forgive myself. I would curl into a ball in the corner of my cage, and wait for death to pull me from this world.
“Ugh...Everything hurts,” a voice croaked. It was no doubt Victor pulling out from his unconscious state that had lasted about two and a half hours. “And when I say that...I mean everything.” A shaking appendage was raised; he pressed the flat of his palm onto his chest and moved it in a slow circle, feeling the bruised and slightly burned skin. (Varinski hadn't been exactly gentle with the machine.) The hand dropped, in defeat, and the bat brought his knees up to his chest and rolled onto his side, trying to make himself seem small so maybe he would disappear. The blind gaze stared on straight ahead, something disconcerting about it. It seemed...lost. Like he was giving up. “I'm stuck here. I can't get out and this collar won't come off,” he whispered, letting his eyelids droop as the confidence and optimism I felt earlier evaporated into the stale air. His face was pale, and I only noticed now the dark circles under his eyes. Whether he had those before, or after all of this, I wasn't quite sure. “Why does he do this? Why?” Victor asked, his voice prying for answers, and at the same time, wanting to push away all thought of this lab and of himself.
“He...” I attempted to give a halfhearted answer, but his eyes flicked toward the sound of my voice and his brows furrowed. I fell quiet and moved to a corner of the metal box and slid to the ground to sulk. So many lives lost here. Locked up in this prison and sooner or later, they all became insane. I, myself, didn't even know the day, or the month. Just the general time of year that my heat cycles fell into naturally. I didn't know whether it was night or day. I slept when I was tired, which was becoming more often than not.
Victor curled up tighter, letting one limp wing drape over his body like a blanket, covering his paper-white skin. Looked like he was waiting for death, as I was. Could I blame him? “I give up, #202. I give up. There's no damned way out of here. I'm going to die in this cage and there's nothing you or anyone can do about it.” His voice was bitter, sad. “Even if I did get out... what would I do? No one would accept a freak like me, with these...wings and...whatever.”
I reached out to him a bit, scooting closer to comfort him, but found a fist connecting with the end of my muzzle. I yelped, my eyes widening as I saw the bat withdraw, moving to the farthest corner of the cage. Blood began to drip down from where I was struck and I sat there, dumbfounded for a moment, trying to realize fully what had just happened. He...hit me. Never since I had been a chimera, had I been dealt a physical blow such as that. And he hit me. I didn't know how to respond to that. Ignore it and try to talk to him? Mope some more? Or...bite him back? More than any of that...I wanted to break down sobbing like I used to when I was a little kid, sharing one bedroom with thirteen other girls at the orphanage.
The bat's knuckles had a few red smudges on them, duplicating the marks on his chest when he pressed his fingers against it, trying to control the trembling. “Leave me alone...” he rasped, turning away in shame, leaning his head against the cold, metallic floor. That didn't seem like a blind punch. How did he know where he was aiming...? “Leave me alone, damn you,” he repeated, eyes closing tightly as if that action could banish me from existence.
I knew I could no longer push the subject. It hurt, almost irreversibly hurt. So I retreated and withdrew into myself, my body going numb. A single thought bounced in my head: “Had I acted that that toward #201? Scared, in pain, not knowing what happened?” I couldn't remember anything from the first few days after the transmutation. I hung in the limbo of death. Later, I learned that I had nearly died when a bad case of acid reflux burned off the lining of my throat and infection set in, but Varinski was quick to put me on antibiotics. Some days, it really felt like the man cared. Other days, I knew he only did this was so he could “fix his mistakes” and make better chimeras. He said one time, to me, that he wanted to work his way to create one super powerful chimera that had the strength, cunning of an animal, but the full looks of a human. I didn't know if it was possible, but looking at Victor compared to myself... he was definitely improving. As long as that happened, more of us would die, more would be turned into creatures not fit to walk this earth.
And I could only hope that someone, something, would intervene and save us from this nightmare. I hope that it won't end like this.
Warning, ye who enter.
Well, lookit here. I HAVE A BLOG AMAZING. Here, I'll be sharing my works of literature (or whatever you wanna call it. :'D). Since I have quite a bit to get up this will be updated like crazy tonight. Have fun.
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