“I’ve decided I’ll work with you,” Ryker said in a clear, authoritative voice.
Leopold’s head slowly lifted up from his table. It hadn’t taken long. He had decided within a single night, and it seemed the boy lacked sleep. He had thought about it indeed. Whoever that girl was, she mattered to him. A lot. There was something Ryker had to tell him, however, and he had to know about the girl.
“Please, sit down,” Leopold paused reading through files. “Anything you want to tell me?”
“Just that I don’t know where she is.”
“Pertinent data, Mr. Auberon,” Leopold reminded him.
“She was a friend, Alexia, but they called her A129,” Ryker began, closing his eyes for a moment. “I met her in the lab after poachers saw me help a little girl escape from them. I didn’t speak much to her, even through all the torture, and they would routinely drain her of blood and electrocute her if I didn’t shift. Or they would hurt her in ways no one else could have survived. Then, then someone asked me to escape, but only if I took her with me.”
“Who was that?” Leopold’s head moved sideways.
“A doctor. Dr. Delaney was the doctor who took care of a lot of us after tests. I saw her name plate; it read genetics, but she was far more than that. She told me to try and go to Alaska, some rumored place, a last standing paradise for our kind. She was one of the few kind people in that hell-hole. I think she died after I set the place on fire. I- I killed a lot of them…”
“You didn’t mean to kill them. They were just part of the collateral damage,” Leopold told him calmly.
Ryker’s eyes narrowed, but then he took a deep breath. “I guess not.”
“How did you escape?”
“She gave me something I’d never seen before. Told me it would scramble the security systems, and it did for a while. Then, I had to improvise. I found out the place was built into a part of a dam, or somewhere by the mountains. We fell into the water, but we survived, surprisingly, with Alexia half-conscious. Then we started that month-long trek across the country to get to Oregon. Dr. Delaney sent us to Dr. Barrett, who used to work at Sector 11.”
“And what was the purpose of this journey?”
Looking back, Ryker wasn’t sure. Yes, what was the whole point of that? When he and Alexia had been subjected to more trauma, the trauma of losing kind people. There was nothing he could do to allay their deaths, except for the thought that they could have avoided it, if they hadn’t stayed too long.
“To find out about our condition,” Ryker finally said.
“My boy, we’re not sick. We’re just different,” Leopold said to him. “We’re not molded to be like normal humans.”
“It was just to see why they wanted her so badly. But in the end, they just threw her away because she didn’t produce the results they wanted.”
“Was she a werebeing?”
Ryker shook his head. “She was a human, but Dr. Barrett said she had highly recessive genes that could manipulate our kind. I don’t know what he meant by that-”
“How is he?”
“Dead.”
“How unfortunate. He would have been very welcome here.”
“Just staying there with him for a few hours killed him,” Ryker said, looking at the ceiling for a moment. “I think it’s what I do-”
“Nonsense,” Leopold insisted. “This isn’t the time to bring yourself down. What else do I need to know about you and this young lady?”
“Well, you already know I’m a werebear.”
“You spoke of manipulation,” Leopold said, the fingers from his left hand curling on his jaw. “What does that mean?”
“Something about her blood. That was why they had kept her in the lab for so long. Sometimes, it acted as a steroid for the weresoldiers they kept, and sometimes, it killed other werebeings.”
“That sounds very curious indeed. They could have killed her, yet they took her back. Perhaps they found out something about her?”
Ryker remembered the day the Jamesons had been killed. It suddenly seemed so long ago, and how they’d been killed in execution fashion seemed even more inhuman now that he recalled it. He remembered her touch. Yes, it was her touch.
Ryker was on the ground, disoriented from Caliban’s blow. Alexia quickly stood up and ran for Caliban, just as the other werebeings ran to attack her.
Stop!” she cried out, touching Caliban’s arm.
Caliban looked at her and raised his paw at her, his red eyes ablaze with murder. All of a sudden, Caliban shook, and he shook violently. Two werebeings had gotten ahold of her, ready to slit her throat, when they stopped to see what was happening to their superior.
“What did you do to me?” Caliban gurgled, his fur shedding away quicker than a heartbeat. He was trembling -- no, he was convulsing against something he had no control of. He was nearly naked, his military uniform in tatters as he lay on the ground, disoriented and weak…
“Maybe they figured the other kids they had wouldn’t make it, so they took someone back, someone who was a veteran,” Ryker said in a soft voice.
“Perhaps they plan to clone her?” Leopold asked, wondering if government-controlled werebeings posed an even bigger problem.
“They can’t. For some reason, they can’t. They tried to replicate her blood’s properties, but it ended with the soldiers going close to insane or completely insane after a shot of her blood. I heard them talk about this and how they wanted to make an even better one soon.”
“We haven’t scouted the capital in a while, Ryker. We need your help with this.”
“I know every back alley and sewage pass there is,” Ryker told him. “But what makes you so sure you’ll find her? The capital is home to a million people alone, and almost everyone thinks Caledon is some sort of god, while the rest that don’t, say nothing of it.”
“My boy, we didn’t plan this for so many years, only to pretend we know what we’re doing. We have contact with dissidents, be it few. And the information we get isn’t constant either. We wait days, weeks- we wait years for valuable information.”
Ryker had steered the conversation to this, and he wanted to know who their contacts were. He said nothing, though, wanting Leopold to open up to this himself. It was a sign of trust in him, no matter how shaky things were.
Leopold suddenly looked tired. “Sometimes, I wish your grandfather were still here. It is not easy to lead this community, not while we’re hiding underground, but this life here, this is the kind of order you don’t get from up above. It’s not the kind Caledon would have wanted, either. He’s heard rumors about us; that’s why he’s been sending sporadic soldiers to man a few posts. This is just to quell his paranoia.”
“Is that how he is? Paranoid?”
“He’s a man of many things, and paranoid is always one of these things if you killed a President before you became one. He did it to your great-grandfather, and it means it could happen to the Caledons, too. He has everything to lose should he let his guard down.”
Ryker was silent. This was why he’d steered clear of politics, even as a free man. Well, even as a pseudo-free man. He was in no position to give his opinion, anyway, but something about the whole situation made him uncomfortable. Still, he soldiered on. “I just want to get my friend back and keep her away from President Caledon for good.”
“She must mean a lot to you.”
“More than most people I’ve met,” Ryker said. “She’s the only one who can really get into my mind…” He almost choked on what he had said.
Leopold smiled. “Ah, loyalty and love. Such wonderful emotions. It’s what kept your parents going, until they were killed and you were cruelly separated from our caravan.”
Loyalty and love. It was what had made Leopold survive all these harsh and hidden years, that loyalty for the Auberon government, and that love for freedom and for dead family members. What had kept Alexia alive all those years? When she’d had no one, nothing but Dr. Delaney’s careful visits, her meager books, and her mind. It was all she’d had. And she couldn’t even draw on happy memories because she had never had any genuinely happy ones.
Ryker suddenly wished Dr. Barrett were still alive so that he could make some anti-amnesia medication, if that was even possible. He took a deep breath and looked at Leopold’s eyes. “What do I have to do for you?”
Leopold smiled. “What makes you think I need something in exchange?”
“Isn’t that how the world works?”
“You’d be surprised to know that not everyone requires something in exchange,” Leopold replied.
“Isn’t that the reason why you’ve lasted so long?” Ryker pressed on. “You know what you need, and you get what you want. It’s nothing more than mere negotiation to you. So, what do I have to do for you?”
Leopold sighed. “Politics clearly doesn’t agree with you.”
“I think it’s why I was taken away from my parents, if they really were my parents.”
“Well, for starters, I want you to give me a single strand of hair for DNA testing. It’s time to put a rest to all these notions you have of me lying about your past.”
“I wasn’t attacking you personally.”
“You didn’t. But this is to help you come to terms with your true past, that you aren’t just this Philip and Raven Locklear’s son -- that you didn’t just pop out of thin air, rummaging through garbage.”
Ryker nodded. “I’ll do it, but I know it isn’t what you really want from me.”
Leopold couldn’t hide his pleasure. “You’re almost like your grandfather.” He leaned forward. “I want you to be the face of this uprising when the perfect time comes.”
“Perfect time?” Ryker repeated. “You’ve waited a hundred years. What makes you think I’ll still be alive by then?”
“What makes you think you won’t? It isn’t a difficult task, Ryker. Although it is something new to all of us.”
“You plan to start another civil war? A third civil war?”
“Of course not, my boy. I just want the Caledons toppled down, after what they did to all of us, to Alexia- after what he did to you.”
Ryker felt the urgency in his voice. Didn’t they need a show of force for this? To induce paranoia into the Caledon regime? He couldn’t quite grasp the scope of the community’s plans, but it was something far bigger than he had assumed.
“What do I have to do if I become that?” Ryker asked.
“Encourage the citizens to sway to our cause, slowly, little by little,” Leopold told him. “You don’t even have to fight-”
“I have to. I was made to fight.”
“You were made to be a child; you were made because your parents wanted to see you become an upstanding citizen. You weren’t made for the WereGames, and you certainly weren’t made to become Caledon’s military pawn. That’s what’s wrong with his rule. The oppressed became his poker chips --” he paused, seeing Ryker frown. “It’s part of gambling-”
“I know,” Ryker said, remembering Mr. Toretti, “and you’re the liberator who can put a stop to this? To the mandatory registrations, and the frequent poaching, and the torture of werebeings?”
“Not I. We. But in most uprisings, people will need to draw inspiration. Even werebeings need that, Ryker.”
Ryker hated the idea of being the role model for their cause. He hated being the center of attention, disliked being surrounded in an enclosed space with hundreds of people. He had always been a lone being, and the thought of sentiment had sent him running for the hills -- until he’d met Alexia.
“I need to know your plans first. Every step of the way, I need to know.”
“Done,” Leopold said. “Nothing shall be hidden from you.”
“And one last thing. What’s my real name?”
“Caleb. Caleb Auberon. Don’t you find it wonderful how your name fits you perfectly?”
“I don’t even know what it means,” Ryker responded.
“Caleb means ‘great leader.’ Auberon means ‘bear.’ It’s like saying you’re the ‘Great Bear Leader,’” Leopold told him with a twinkle in his eyes. “The stars have begun to align for us, Caleb. The sky and the earth will be in our grasp once more.”