His little ears perked up. Those were bullets, a sound he would never forget for as long as he lived. His first instinct was to run back. He knew the guns that went off came from inside their home. His feet stayed put, as he strained to hear more. He could smell them, their different scents, the sweat from the men, the blood spilled… he could hear a man’s gasp. It sounded like his father. It was his father.
He didn’t notice tears falling from his eyes as he stared at the darkness across him; there were the tiniest twinkling lights that came from his home. He could smell them get closer, moving out of the house; he could hear them move. They were out to find him; they knew he was one of those anomalies. His heart pounded.
This was a stressor, a stressor that could make him shift out of control and into their nets. He could feel bile rise up his throat, and he clenched his hands, determined to stop the shifting from happening. Not here – papa said not anywhere where they can see…
There was a persistent pain at the base of his skull, and he knew he was going to change, no matter his efforts. He had to get as far, far away as possible, into the mountains, into that cave where he had fallen asleep one time… no one would find him there… it felt like his brain had begun to split apart. He had no other clothes… what would his mother think? He felt his jaw unhinge, and the saliva in his mouth thickened… his knuckles began to feel bruised, feeling his bones increase in size…
He ran, he ran without knowing where he was going. All he knew was that he had to survive. Then he stopped, realizing that he had grown up, he had become a young man, and with him was a young woman. It was Alexia.
“Alexia,” he gasped, hearing screams and bodies exploding all around them. She was looking at him with sad, gray eyes that suddenly darkened as she collapsed in his arms.
“Ryker…” she whispered. “Don’t let go of me, don’t let go…”
Her cold hand held onto his cheek as she struggled for breath. She was dying in his arms, and he couldn’t do anything about it…
“He’s coming to,” someone whispered. The voice sounded far away, almost like a dream. He could still hear Alexia’s voice, and his fingers were grasped onto something, what seemed like bedsheets. His eyes flew open, and he was staring at a dark ceiling with muted lights in the corners. There was no snow; there were no military forces surrounding him. He tried to move but found he couldn’t.
“It’ll take a while before you can move on your own,” a calm voice said. He looked sideways with difficulty and saw a young woman sitting on a chair, her pale face partially covered by unruly reddish hair. Beside her was a tall and gangly man with a shock of white hair and steely blue eyes. They both wore thick black thermals.
“Who-” Ryker began, then he closed his eyes, feeling his body spasm with pain. It was real, he was alive, and Alexia was nowhere to be found.
“Perhaps, we should discuss this when you’re feeling better. I don’t recommend you shift, though. The room is pretty small,” the man told him.
Ryker didn’t care; he found himself drifting off to sleep again. The young woman stared at him for a while, until the man beside her cleared his throat.
“It’s best we let him be for a while, Sarah,” the man told the much younger woman. “He went through quite a lot earlier.”
Sarah’s gaze lingered on the young man’s face before she stood up. Then she and Leopold exited the 9 square feet by 9 square foot room. They both walked down gray hallways, the cold from above seeping through just a little bit. Sarah thought the heaters needed some fixing and told herself she would check on those later.
They were a small community, a community of less than four thousand, all hiding from Caledon’s presence and might under a labyrinth of well-made complexes underground. She had grown up here and had rarely gone above Alaska in her eighteen years of living. It was the price she had to pay for having werebeing genes and for being able to shift.
Everyone in the community had it under control; shifting without reason was subject to execution or mandatory seclusion for years. This was the first time she had seen an outsider enter their compound. Sarah was a werefox, and while their community harbored werebeings, there were normal humans among them – some doctors, working tirelessly to aid them in their quest for some normalcy.
Sarah knew they could never be normal, and some in the community opted for the chance at a miracle potion, to drive their mutation away, to dissolve it. She didn’t want that. She was proud of her genetics. Her mother, a human, had died giving birth to her, while her father, a werefox, was currently part of their small military network.
They had amassed some data, along with much needed equipment, only two years ago from sources the higher-ups didn’t want to mention. Her father had let slip that they would soon exit for another place, a place she didn’t know. So, she dreamed of it while she read and sometimes surfaced above for some much-needed fresh air, no matter how cold.
The stranger was fresh air, she thought as she excused herself for her family’s quarters. She needed to calm herself down, knowing she was suddenly excited at the thought of meeting someone like him – the boy with no name yet. He was a werebeing through and through; she could smell it off him. Shaking her head from the distraction, she thought of relaxing first, before attending to dinner.
They all ate communal meals, in one large mess hall, with their meager greens artificially produced in greenhouses with fake sunlight and their meats mostly from caribou or moose, which was conveniently frozen to keep it longer. Fish was a treat, and rarely did they do ice fishing for fear of random military check-ups. A lake had frozen over just a few miles away from their compound, and the estuary led to the open and rough seas when it melted.
She knew the military contingent (of two hundred), had amassed materials for a few submarines and planes, large enough to fit their entire population, but she dreaded ever getting into submarines. It would be too enclosed, too dangerous; one false move or one attack could mean everyone’s deaths.
Still, it was something the Alaska Tribe was willing to risk, all for freedom. She knew about the tribe’s history by heart, as it was the only world she had ever known.
A green signal lit up by the door of their twenty-five-square meter room, and she knew it was time to eat. She thought about the stranger once more, hating the fact that she was absorbed with an unconscious man’s presence. He was just a boy, not quite a man, even.
Why was she so excited? She found herself admiring his face. She had cared for him intermittently, at first not wanting to, but the moment she had seen his bruised-up face and near mangled body, she was engrossed.
That had been a mere seven days ago. Seven days was awfully long, and the doctors had said he would wake up soon. If he needed to shift, he had to be taken above, just for extra precaution. Seeing him speak, albeit a single word, had made her heart leap.
She was being juvenile, she knew. But what were the odds of meeting someone like him? Their community was so small, marriages were sometimes arranged, just to keep the community thriving. They had done so for the past seventy years – since the first evil Caledon president had hunted their kind down. Sarah had seen him murmur someone’s name in his sleep, as if he was in a bad dream. He had done so earlier, but she still couldn’t catch who it was. Perhaps it was his family; perhaps it was his love. She frowned, thinking that someone out there was waiting for him.
She had taken care of the stranger for a week and had some strange sense of loyalty and affinity to him. Why was she jealous of a figment of her imagination? She wasn’t even sure if he loved someone romantically, apart from his parents. Sarah bit her lower lip, intent on seeing him again later.