The Wilds

IV - Orion

Two years after

    “How did you get it?” asked the voice, and 0872’s focus snapped up yet again to meet the man’s eyes. He was an anxious thing – wearing glasses too big for his face and smelling strongly of coffee, and also tall for a human, though he seemed to want to shrink in himself, shoulders hunched nearly to the jawline.

   As if he didn’t want to be there.

   0872 didn’t, either.

    “What?” 0872 asked, voice coming out rougher than he meant to. He sounded impatient, and perhaps he was indeed, but he knew just as well the sharp tone in his words was doing nothing besides make the man on the other side of the table squirm uncomfortably on his seat, visibly wanting to leave though they both knew he couldn’t. For better or for worse, the two of them were stuck with each other until 0872 gave the man what he wanted.

   The question being whether he could.

    “The scar on your eyebrow, how did you get it?” the man asked again, slower this time. 0872 bit back a snarl.

    “In a fight” he lied.

    “One of the ones you mentioned earlier?” the man inquired, writing something down on his black notebook, and 0872 simply nodded in response. He tried reading the name tag pinned to the lapel of the man’s suit, but only made it so far as understanding the first few letters: ‘Vla’. With a frustrated sigh, 0872 let his body fall leaning on the backrest of his chair, ignoring how uncomfortable it was.

   The man, having tracked the direction of 0872’s eyes, gave him a small, cautious grin as he spoke:

    “Were you trying to read my name tag?”

    “Yes”.

    “It says Vladimir Kaplan, law directory” his voice was careful, paused and monotone as if he was talking to a goddamn unstable toddler “I assume they didn’t teach you how to read, then?”.

   0872 nearly answered him with all the sarcasm he could muster in his tired, bruised body – even though there wasn’t much left, but thought better of it. Instead, he just muttered a dull-sounding “yes”. 

    “Yes, what? They did yes teach you how to read or…” the man stopped mid-sentence at the annoyed, tad sullen look 0872 gave him. “Oh, well” he scribbled something in his notebook, the sound of the pen scraping on the paper filling the room. “Did they… teach you how to talk?”.

    “No” 0872 answered and when Kaplan shook the hand holding the pen in a forward motion, prompting him to continue, completed: “I taught myself”.

   He then told Kaplan about the guards in the courtyard and how they seemed to talk for nearly every hour of the day. Swallowing the bitter memories that rose to his mind unprompted, 0872 fought to maintain a straight, unbothered expression. Kaplan would only know what he wanted him to know, and that f*****g bunch of people in suits – the government, would have to deal with it as they saw fit. He simply couldn’t bring himself to trust them, no matter how many therapists and Kaplan’s, all suited up and smug, they sent his way, all in a poor attempt to draw some answers out of him.

    “But they did know you could talk, didn’t they?” Kaplan asked after 0872 had answered all his questions about the guards – what did they talk about? s*x and sports, mainly. Had 0872 ever learned any useful information from listening to them? No, they would never mention anything relevant. “It says so in your file”.

    “They did” 0872 replied, arms crossing in front of his chest unnoticed.

   Kaplan, seemingly aware 0872 was getting defensive yet again, quickly pulled out a stack of folded papers from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Placing them on the table in front of 0872, he removed his glasses and wiped the lenses with a piece of cloth before putting them back on again and unfolding the first paper. It was a single picture of 0872, taken a year before at most, lying on a gurney with his eyes closed and face battered with bruises, his chest filled with attached electrodes.

   The second page was older, yellow, its texture thick beneath his fingers. It had been typed rather than handwritten, that much 0872 could tell, and parts of it – some words here, full sentences there, had been concealed by broad black lines. He lifted his eyes to meet Kaplan’s, finding them fixed on him, a careful yet curious expression bathing every inch of his face. God, the man wore his emotions on his sleeves.

    “This is the basic information they got of you as an infant and adolescent” with the tip of his pen, Kaplan began pointing to the sections on the paper “This is your subject name, 0872PA, PA standing for Project Apex” he stopped, seemingly looking for any recognition on 0872’s face. Finding none, Kaplan proceeded: “Project Apex meaning your DNA was mixed with a predator animal, we believe in your particular case a wolf or dog of some sort. If it were PP instead of PA, it would stand for Project Prey”

    “The rest of it is pretty standard stuff: your gender; that is male, your race and day of birth; that being white and on the 12th of September, your blood type, O+. You also seem to be allergic to bees and mushrooms, the latter being the one you should be concerned about” tilting his head to the side, Kaplan struggled to read a few lines on the upside-down paper. 0872 considered helping, it wasn’t as if he could read the f*****g thing facing him after all, but ultimately decided not to. “You see, I’m not a doctor” Kaplan began again, “but from my limited understanding your numbers, like cholesterol, red and white blood cells, etc are good. Nothing to worry about.. Not that we won’t have you thoroughly checked, that is”.

    “How many of us… Project Apex, are there?” 0872 let himself ask, the first real question he raised since being taken from that bloody underground cell barely two weeks before. He noticed it, Kaplan noticed it, though didn’t seem all that surprised.

    “In the hotel or in general?”.

    “General”.

    “There are about 2500 of you that we know of, but it can be easily more. We haven’t retrieved files like this” Kaplan shook the piled-up papers lightly “from everyone”. When 0872 didn’t respond, he fidgeted awkwardly on his seat and continued: “as for in the hotel, there are three hundred of you, both Apex and Prey”.

   0872 felt the question rise up his throat, yet restrained himself from putting it into words. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t. Kaplan clearly noticed he was about to ask something but didn’t put any pressure – besides the over-eagerness in his expression that is. When the moment faded, giving way to the standard awkward silence that seemed to be the rule rather than the exception with both of them, 0872 saw Kaplan visibly exhale.

    “The other papers” the man started “are if perhaps a little more specific. They’re mostly notes, scribbles that are barely readable to me let alone yo…” he stopped dead in his tracks, swallowing dry, before continuing. 0872 almost laughed “I’m sorry. Anyway, what my team and I could understand of the scribbles was this: you were unresponsive to your animal genome for a while, at least half of your teenage years, but a series of convulsions, interpreted at the time as epileptic episodes, not only peaked up your predator instincts but also made them dominant over your human ones. Am I right? Do you recall any of it?”.

    “You’re right”.

    “The rest of the notes are even messier, but one of them mentions they learned about your talking and put you with the big guys, the other dangerous PA’s I mean, around the same time. Were these two things correlated?”

    “Yes.”

    “Will you tell me about it?”

    “No.”

    “Well” Kaplan let out a slow, tired breath “I won’t make you. Do it at your own time, if ever” the smile that left his lips was a poor attempt at being reassuring, but 0872 saw himself acknowledging it with a nod. “But I need you to understand we are here to help you. Only a few of you can talk, and even though we got a solid case against Hamelin, your testimony could be vital to putting them behind bars for good. Don’t you want that?”.

   0872 eyed him carefully, from the light brown hair combed back with way too much gel to the slightly pleading glint in his eyes, hidden behind those hideous glasses as they were. Could he trust Kaplan? No. The man might be harmless, his bones so thin 0872 could probably snap them like twigs, but he had learned the hard way the worst enemies weren’t the ones bulking with violence. Yet, if only for a moment, 0872 felt tired of fighting, of his paranoid mind and the way it read schemes onto everything. So what if Kaplan shouldn’t be trusted? What danger there was on him knowing 0872’s story? At least part of it, anyway.

   So he told him. About the underground high-security wing, where everything scented of blood and rot, where screams filled the air at night, piercing through the walls and heading straight into his nightmares. Told Kaplan about the fights, when the guards would suddenly show up with another man-beast for him to beat, sometimes 0872 being the one taken instead. As he detailed the few things he remembered, he saw Kaplan’s face grow paler with fright, the alarm in his eyes nearly disappointing 0872, but he bit it back. Not that it was surprising though: after all, as the last two years of 0872’s life had become nothing but violence, primal need for survival, so naturally violence had he become. He wasn’t proud of it, but there was no point in denying, was there?

   Kaplan fell silent for a good few minutes after 0872 finished his story, and the other man waited. And waited. Until Kaplan finally seemed to snap back to reality, a sad smile dancing on his lips.

    “I wish there were words to express how sorry I am that you had to go through this, but since there aren’t, and I suspect kind words aren’t what you want to hear,” Kaplan said and the corners of 0872’s lips perked up for the first time in ages, agreeing silently “So I’ll only promise you what I can: we’ll end them in court, make sure they get the harshest punishment possible, and your testament will be the key to that, milked dry if needed as it may”.

   Kaplan got up, smoothing his suit’s jacket on either side of his hips while at it, and 0872 did the same.

    “Is there anything you wish to ask me?”

    “Yes”.

No.

Don’t.

    “What happened to the doctor?”

    “Which one?”

    “Short, scared, kind of looks like a rat,”

    “Oh, Darlington. I’m afraid he was… caught in the crossfire when the Interpol first burst in” Kaplan responded, his eyes, nearly levelled with 0872’s as they were almost of the same height, openly searched 0872’s face for a reaction. A reaction he wouldn’t give.

    “And Tennison?”.

    “Dr. Tennison was part of the reason we learned about Hamelin’s… wrongdoings. He was doing other experiments on the side, and those were leaked on international news. He killed himself two years ago when they first came out if I recall correctly”.

   Oh? Oh.

    “One more thing” Kaplan interrupted 0872’s line of thought before he could even process what he had just heard. “You see, we are in the process of legitimizing all of you guys as citizens. You’ll all have the same last name, but we got a full list of firsts, all coming from mythologies and fables and such. Most of the subjects can’t choose their own, hell we can’t even approach them awake, but since you can you know, talk and all that… Why don’t you choose yours?”. 

    “You can do it,” 0872 shrugged, not caring in the least, his mind still caught up with Tennison’s fate. 

    “Oh well,” Kaplan smiled awkwardly as he pulled his phone from his pocket. After clicking a few buttons, a list showed up. He skimmed over it for a couple of seconds until his eyes shot back to 0872’s one more time: “What do you think of Orion?”.

   0872 – no, Orion’s face grew hotter and hotter as he hurried down the stairs, a nerve making the underside of his eye twitch; whether from anger or lack of sleep, he did not know. Perhaps a bit of both. Likely a bit of both. He didn’t remember the last time he had slept for more than a few minutes, all of them stolen here and there; between important meetings or on the rare moments they left him alone to lunch. There always seemed to be so much to do he had begun thinking of sleep as a waste of valuable time, a time he could just as well be using to end Hamelin for good.

    “Orion. Jesus, slow down for a bit” he heard Kaplan’s voice echo from behind him, at the top of the staircase, but chose to ignore it as he averted a woman making her way up. The same woman Kaplan ran into a second later, mumbling a clumsy apology, just as Orion reached the bottom of the stairs.

   Only to bump into a solid chest.

    “Atlas,” Orion said, the name leaving his lips like an annoyed snarl.

    “Orion,” the man answered, seemingly unaffected by the angry expression on the other’s face nor the rough edge to his voice. They just stared at one another for a few moments, Atlas’s exuding calm doing nothing but make Orion a tad more infuriated.

    “I tried, but I can’t convince him,” said Kaplan as he finally joined them on the bottom of the staircase, his words directed to the man in front of Orion.

    “You won’t, either” Orion interrupted, addressing the same man. Atlas barely moved a muscle in response, his jaw tight but otherwise nothing more to show for his mood. Orion bit the inside of his cheek in irritated restraint, wishing the other Apex would if only for once leave the levelheaded guy act behind and actually engage with the instincts that demanded they both fought – for leadership or territory, Orion didn’t care. He was aware that Atlas wasn’t quite like him, an ursine, whatever that meant, rather than a dog of sorts, yet he could sense the man’s instincts, the violent urges pent-up in his veins, just as well as he could sense his own.

   Then why didn’t he unleash them?

    “Orion, please. I know how you feel but…” Kaplan began.

    “You don’t. You don’t know how I feel” Orion cut him off sharply. He was growling now, arms crossed tightly against each other as to not give in to the urge to rip something apart. Kaplan flinched.

    “You’re right, I don’t,” the lawyer acquiesced, hands up in a tranquillizing motion “But I know how hard you’ve worked for this. Orion, everything we did here, all the things you helped us with… The whole point of it was to try and build a safe environment for your people”.

    “My testimony is given” Orion replied, eyes turning to Atlas as he continued: “We agreed we would be over after it”.

    “It’s not over and you know it” Kaplan was the one who answered.

    “It’ll never be” Orion barked back.

   All around them, people were having to circle the three men to try and reach the staircase, they all casting curious, wary glances their way. Orion wanted to scream, hating feeling like a cornered puppy again. The worst of it being he knew Atlas and Kaplan weren’t the ones at fault – hell, no one was at fault but himself. Yet the feeling of being trapped yet again, this time in a tacky mid-century hotel room rather than in a cage, having every little action of his dictated by someone, was making him crazy all over. It felt claustrophobic as if panic had housed itself inside his chest. And he simply couldn’t take it anymore.

    “Let him go” Atlas's words cut the uncomfortable silence.

    “What?” Kaplan’s head shot in his direction, pitch moving up a scale.

   Hands on hips and expression tired, Atlas continued: “If he wants to go, there’s nothing we can do to stop him”. Orion studied him, and Atlas met his gaze unwaveringly, challenging even. “Just give him some cash and a phone, he’ll settle himself”.

    “Are you out of your mind?” Kaplan started but stopped at the sharp look Atlas threw his way “We can’t. There’s so much to do, the hearing is in a month if the two of you haven’t forgotten. Plus the issues with the housing…”

    “I swear to God, for one last time” Orion sneered “You got all you wanted from me, all I could give. I don’t care about your dreams of uniting the f*****g helpless orphans together, I can’t and I won’t stay. There’s nothing for me here.”.

   And then he felt it. The scent. The scent Orion could all but place as a good memory, the only good memory he had ever had though a memory nevertheless. In that cold, dark cell at night, he would dream about her: a clear picture of her scent, her hand wrapped around his, her body writhing under him. For two years, he had turned her into an epiphany, a painful embodiment of hope, and as her scent hit him square in the face – for the first time in ages not as a distant, fantasized memory, Orion froze.

   1343.

   He turned around, the motion almost painful, only to wish he hadn’t.

   For the first time in his life, Orion wished she wasn’t real.

   But there she was, in flesh and bone. Older than he had last seen her, slightly taller, and f*****g gorgeous. Her jet black hair tied in a bun, face framed by a loose strand of it he all but wished to brush back behind her ear, Orion studied her face for what felt like ages. Everything he remembered about her was there: the large, inviting lips, the feline eyes glinting with her particular brand of intensity, even the f*****g heartbreak bathing her expression. In fact, she looked about to cry.

   She had heard him.

   Surprisingly, Orion did not regret it, even as the pain in her eyes became so unbearable he had no choice but to avert his gaze. It was better this way; better if she knew the honest, straightforward truth:

   There really was nothing for him there.

    “I’ll take the money and the phone” he addressed Atlas in a much calmer tone, barely sparing him a glance. “Meet me outside” completed, feeling numb.

   And just like that, he left, passing by her as he headed to the hotel’s exit. 1343 didn’t try to stop him; in fact, she merely stepped out of the way, not looking at him in the eye when their shoulders almost brushed as she did so.

   Orion thanked her, silently.