WnW 6.5

“Dad.”

Why did my voice sound strange? It quivered like a child’s does when introduced to one of their first fears.

The light fell as a pale shroud, sterilizing everything of colour. Laboratory walls arranged themselves as harsh barriers beneath an artificial sun. There were pictures on the walls that moved when I did. This hallway felt so vast and empty, but that was how being a young kid felt. Dad’s sweaty hand should have felt warm but this place took that away too.

“Dad,” I repeated plaintively.

He did not turn his face down towards me. Instead he stared hollowly at the doors that led further into the lab.

“Dad!” I was practically screaming now.

He stirred but he still didn’t face me. “What is it?”

“Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. Then his voice seemed to spill out of him, a truth born in his heart becoming heavy and slippery until it fell out. “This is the end. You’ve failed at every turn. There must be consequences. So I’m going to cut you and place drugs inside. You aren’t using your body properly. So I will.”

Each word came with a wrenching pain. Each consonant dragging me up, stretching my tendons and muscles until I was taller than my father.

“This isn’t how it happened,” I said.

“It is. Face it like a man.”

“No. You never spoke to me like this.” Fear crept into my voice. “What’s happening? We already went through this. I moved on.”

“Are you so sure?”

I stood my ground, straightening up and squaring my shoulders. “Yes. There’s nothing to be afraid of here.”

“Nothing?” His voice caught like clothes snagging on a thorn bush.

He finally turned towards me and I saw his eyes. They were so full of fear, bulging at the sockets, widening hungrily to take in everything. A fear that ate instead of hiding. They weren’t my father’s eyes. They were mine.

“Go to the basement. See that nothing for yourself.” His crooked finger pointed.

On the wall sat a deeply recessed threshold. It was as if the doorway had shrunk back in lurches, being pulled deeper and deeper into the wall and leaving behind the appearance of stairs on the floor, ceiling, and walls. All stepping downwards into the dark maw of a doorway.

Air moved from that darkness like the breath of a hungry animal. 

I descended. Why was it that my fear drove me forward instead of away? It was as though I wished to bash myself against its unknown form until it broke me.

Now I felt a thrum. The vibration was familiar to me, although it was not the one I had been born with. I stepped lower and lower and my head craned higher and higher until I glimpsed that red beating drum. My heart, which hung above my head, swelled and raced with dread. Each anticipatory beat marked a step I took into blackness.

And at the bottom, my heart stopped. Everything fell silent. It’s too much. I lowered my eyes to the floor that I was trying so hard not to reach. One more step and I was there. An upturned palm sat, waiting for my final step. I traced the slender palm with my gaze, following the tensed wrist and twitching forearm. A shoulder came after leading to the starkly raised collarbone, a glimpse of her neck and then…

A head of tangled hair. Who?

She lay face down, steeping in a pool of her own warm blood.

It’s too much to bear. The crimson fluid dripped up the steps, staining each stair irreparably. My eyes filled with liquid as I started to drown. Soon I was suspended in a soundless sea. A dark shadow swam in the carmine deep.

It grew closer and closer, looming large, larger than a whale. Its mouth opened and it swallowed me whole.

When I woke up, the world was quiet. My muscles ached as though I’d been standing in one position for a long time. My cheek brushed something soft and I flinched, my mind growing clearer from the stimulus. 

I was peering through the eye sockets of my helmet and it was harder to see than normal. I realized that this was because the helmet had elongated, stretching out in front of me like the skull of a deer. In the dim light I saw all colours. Blues, warm reds and startling yellows, pale minty greens and mottled purple. They were flowers, petals of every shape and size grew on me. The flowers seemed to shift as I watched them, forming patterns that never repeated. The half-formed images made primal emotions stir within, like I was looking at the fake eyes of a butterfly. 

There was something moving beneath the flowers. A sluggish flow of flesh. I followed the river of biomatter to where it ran along a twisting branch that ended in a person.

Alek. He lay pinned by my flowering branches, panting heavily, spit trailing away from his open mouth. His eyes bulged with the same animal instinct, one that sought to take in everything, to see all that there was to fear. 

In that moment, I knew. He had seen my nightmare.

Alek mouthed something but I couldn’t hear him. My ears were shot. Not that I would have listened. We were too far gone for that.

And so I began to eat.

The flow of flesh reversed. Every touch became a point of claim. Mine. Alek didn’t fight back and visibly diminished with every second. His face still contorted in fear even as the flowers began to be sucked in, bending under a mudslide they disappeared into the river of biomass, bleeding their colours.

It felt good. Filling. Satisfying. My mind sharpened. I wanted to strip it all away, layer by layer. Alek’s skin remained somewhat intact, instead his body shriveled as muscles, fat, and moisture were poached.

Then I started to feel little flashes of emotion. At first I assumed it was some small effect of the Tree, but no, this was different. The emotions had baggage. Little bits attached to them. Faces, places, smells. Only glimpses of larger scenes. Memories. It was happening again. 

Helen’s face flashed in my mind again and I felt a strong attraction to her. I winced and clamped down on the memory. No. I don’t want to understand. My own memories of Helen proved stronger and I could stamp out the feeling. This mechanism was so alien to me that it took all of my focus to make sure that I wasn’t swept along.

I will not become Alek. I felt the words in my throat even if I couldn’t hear myself speak them.

While my wounds were healing, my ears didn’t seem to get the message. I’d never learned how to fix them. Nell hadn’t taught me.

A hand settled on my shoulder and I immediately stopped assimilating. It took considerable effort to break away and perceive outwards instead of inwards.

Alek was spent. He was emaciated to the point that his skin was shrink-wrapped around his ribs. There were strange depressions in his body, as if I had removed certain bones during the process. The drum in his chest was gone. His skin sagged and had a strange dullness to it. Even now he was trying to say something, but I had no means to know if it was intelligible or not.

I turned towards the hand. Tom’s red hair was lighter than the blood that matted it into clumps. For a moment I thought Aleks’ vibrations had started again, but it was only the tremors from Tom’s hand. His lips moved and by his face I could tell he was asking me something.

I shook my head and tapped my ear, which had dried blood on the lobe. I can’t hear you, I mouthed, self-conscious of speaking too loudly.

Tom’s face was grim and that alone unsettled me. He pulled at my shoulders and I let him guide me, soundlessly breaking off the branch connected to Alek. A simple turn made me face my fears all over again. 

Kay was lying on her side, clutching her stomach where she had been struck by Alek. Blood bubbled from her half-open mouth. Her face was stricken with pain.

I clutched at Tom’s shirt. “Get help,” I said, my voice felt rough and strained without me even hearing the words.

He shook his head and then spoke two words that filled me with hopelessness. I could read his lips clearly enough. No time. They were followed by another two, an instruction, Hold her. When I didn’t move, he guided my hands to Kay’s shoulders. Then he patted me on the back and sprinted out the door.

I was left with a half-conscious Kay whose eyes were clouded by agony. My hands lifted off of her. Why? That was a stupid thought. Because it was my fault. Touch was such a complicated thing. It could be so harmful, even more so for a Wolf. But what of comfort? Didn’t she deserve that at least?

Slowly, I lowered my fingers down again, lightly rubbing her shoulder. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry,” I said over and over. Kay didn’t respond. I didn’t know if she could hear me. I cradled her head, trying to make her neck more comfortable. Warm blood reached my fingertips. “I’m sorry.” Time seemed to tick by in eternities. The silence played tricks on me, phantom noises making me think that Tom had returned.

Then finally he reappeared at the door and hurried to our side. He clutched a backpack in his grip. My heart clenched, unsure if it should sink or soar. Within the backpack was Dice. I stared at the benign plastic buckles that held the top pocket closed. Then I turned to Tom who met my gaze. We both wanted to know if this was okay. But that was just to feel better about our own guilt. I recognized that.

So let the blame fall on me.

I nodded. Tom reached into the backpack and withdrew a small case. He managed to pop it open with shaky fingers to reveal the vials of clear substance nestled within. Each vial was labeled with a serial number. A needle lay inside the vial, triggered by pressure, it would spring out and inject the fluid into a person. Tom picked one out at random, glancing at me again for reassurance. The serial numbers gave no clue as to what this one would do. I wondered if even Organ knew before they injected their subjects. I nodded all the same.

Tom shakily removed the protective cap and moved the vial over Kay’s exposed neck. I shuddered at my memory of Sullivan injecting Omar, the man who had become the Tongue.

One final exchange of fearful looks, one final nod. Tom pressed the vial into Kay’s neck and we both watched the fluid drain from the vial.

Then it was finished and Tom pitched the empty vial over our heads. There were vestiges of his jester persona trying to reassert, the corners of his mouth twitched and his eyes were restlessly searching for something.

And then his gaze settled back on the case of Dice. A look crossed his face and my arm shot out to stop him from grabbing another vial.

“No,” I said, the silence eating up my conviction.

His eyes burned not with prankster energy but grim determination. Let me, he mouthed. The sentiment was clear. If Kay had to go through this, he would too.

I didn’t really know why I relented. Was this Tom’s way of sharing the responsibility, the blame? Or was he trying to punish himself? Tom lingered on Kay’s pained expression and then he pressed the vial against his neck.

I looked away. My hope was that the Dice would heal Kay. It made some sense. Aberrants demonstrated impossibly rapid growth, I imagined Casts would be the same. But I couldn’t help but note that I had never witnessed this awful substance turn someone into a Cast, only an Aberrant. I prayed that things would be different. Kay didn’t deserve any less.

We sat in that huge empty room, watching Kay’s chest rise and fall with only the arrhythmic beats of the Tree to mark the passage of time.

About half an hour passed before I began to witness the cost of our decision, as Kay’s skin began to blacken and fall off.