Present day, year 2120
He had vivid dreams quite often, vivid dreams that must have happened before, augmented by the severity of his trembling as soon as he woke up. He was glad no one slept beside him. Who would, when he could turn into something else -- something not quite human -- at will?
Ryker no longer asked who he truly was. He was once adopted and loved, until the government had shot his parents in front of him with armor-piercing bullets, for fear they were like him, too. He took a deep breath as he surveyed the expanse of the city covered in heavy snow. The cosmopolitan landscape looked picturesque, hiding everything sinister about it. He was content in his derelict and nearly empty building (due for demolition in four months), with his hard-earned and few possessions. He didn’t need much. Soon, he would be on the move again, anyway.
How many years had it been since they were reviled, even if they could still look human? It had been a hundred, give or take a few years. Everything had changed so quickly, and everyone feared him for who he truly was, an animal. An animal that needed to register himself yearly, just to keep his instincts in check, just to make sure that the discrimination was put in its right place.
There had been talks of a mandatory registration for all those like him, all those who transformed into animals, one way or another. He had escaped the massacre of his small town, escaped with his life and with bullets in his back, bullets that had made him bleed for days on end, but he had survived.
It had been the end of his childhood, right then and there, at the age of eight. Life was never going to be easy for “his” kind. He had to take note that there weren’t many of his kind, the ones that turned into bears. It was a painful process, mentally and physically taxing, and he barely turned unless needed. It was part of surviving in the harsh, modern landscape.
“The United States of America has just formed a new alliance with the South-east Asian Union, a move seen by many as spiteful to its former major trading partner, the Soviet Republic-” the man on the small screen droned on with more of the ‘breaking news,’ another obvious effort to make good of the government.
Ryker shook his head twice, disliking anything related to the government, but he knew he had to listen. The games were coming up, and he wanted no part in it. They were being hunted down, those who opposed registration, and in the event he would be caught, he already had an alias that he had curated for a couple of years now.
There were turncoats among them, of course. The others wanted to be safe, even if they were going to be used for god knows what. He had heard horror stories from their minority, those who had barely survived the government experiments. How many were left that were completely free but still in hiding? How many werewolves, how many werefoxes, weretigers, and werebears -- his kind, yes -- how many were still on the run like him?
He felt his stomach grumble, and he sighed. There was no end to his appetite. Might as well have completely turned into a bear to keep feeding himself than maintain his human form. He could smell that delicious shawarma cooking a block away…
It was time to get to work, he told himself. It was an easy job. He was the muscle for the current employer. Whoever didn’t pay up had to be threatened. It paid decently, and seeing that it fed him and kept him off the streets, he continued.
He wasn’t particularly proud of it. Philip and Raven wouldn’t have been thrilled about him earning this way, either. He had no mementos of that childhood, only memories. Heck, he didn’t even have photos of them to carry around. Happy memories had been quickly replaced by bloody ones.
He could still remember the smell of blood so vividly, still remember how those men had left his parents’ bodies on the porch, riddled with gaping holes. He remembered standing over their bodies, unable to move or speak. He had seen Elan, one of the few teenagers who had actually befriended him. It was overkill, someone had murmured. Ryker had attended their traditional funeral, but he had been watching from far away, wanting desperately to hold them one last time. He had crept back to their graves at midnight, days later, to make sure no one was there. There was a manhunt for him, and in the ensuing weeks, others were killed just to find him, even children.
He had no home in that town any longer. He had been unwelcome, public enemy number one in Oregon at the age of eight. No one else had taken him in after that. He had lived off the streets, lived in the forests if need be. He had eaten what bears usually ate if he couldn’t find proper human food. He had met other werebeings, and they had shunned him, knowing he was no werewolf, werefox, or weretiger. He was a werebear, something different, even if they were already different. There were children like him, the runaways and the unaccepted, and when the Military Initiative for Defense and Advancement of States had started, the runaways and abandoned werebeings enlisted, no matter their age. The benefits were far from pampered, but it kept them clothed and fed, and experimented on whenever the government pleased.
M.I.D.A.S. was regularly shown on television and on public billboard screens, recruiting those one-of-a-kind werebeings for military defense programs. “The United States needs you!” it would say again and again, and secretly, Ryker would shudder in revulsion.
There was no way to tell that one was a shifter, unless he or she had studied them, or was one themselves, so Ryker was relatively safe until he shifted in front of normal people. There were a few telltale signs, though -- the iridescent scars on his body and the way his irises had this tinge of yellow before he shifted. It was something he had learned to control over the many years of being alone. He was socially awkward but was still pleasant, and he knew it was his parents’ discipline that was still deeply instilled in him.
It was an irony to be some mafia boss’s muscle while he still respected humans as much as he could. Sometimes, he was sent to discipline those errant thugs and debtors, and he beat them up as best he could, without killing them. He became known as “The Kid,” Mr. Toretti’s high school and baby-faced employee, who could pack a punch and break a rib or two without batting an eyelash.
Ryker never transformed, but he used what his human side had grown into, and at six feet three inches tall, he was imposing as a kid. His blue eyes were a saving grace. It was known that most werebeings had darker eyes, and he retained his blue ones even as a werebear.
He walked down the streets filled with neon lights and prostitutes, the majority of which were under his boss’s employ.
“Hey there, Ryker,” one heavily made-up prostitute greeted him.
He nodded.
“Off to work again?”
Ryker nodded once more and continued walking with his hands in his pockets. The four women standing by the building looked at him as he walked away.
“It’s too bad he’s off limits,” one said.
“Who said so?”
“He did. But he doesn’t strike me as queer, though,” Yumi said. “I guess you could say he’s dating his job.”
Ryker heard it, but he chose to ignore it. Some made advances, but he didn’t really want to engage in relationships with anyone, romantic or sexual. Work was a good way to release the tensions. If he couldn’t beat anyone up, he feared he would be unable to control his shifting. Control was something that teetered on the edge sometimes, but in all his years of working under Mr. Toretti, he had never once shifted.
He had injuries that healed quicker than most people’s, but he didn’t show these to Mr. Toretti or to his other associates. Sometimes, he feigned prolonged pain from injuries, just to avoid suspicion. Wounds and broken bones were agonizing, but they healed within hours, something that was innate in all werebeings.
The train ride was uneventful, and he was sitting quietly, reading a book by Machiavelli, except he removed the cover and replaced it with something that didn’t scream possible revolt material. Books had been carefully circulated, and what was taught in schools was government approved. Books that imparted even the slightest appeal of out of the box thinking was quickly banned. Even books were contraband now.
His mother had instilled in him a love for reading, and even if he had no teacher, he did his best to learn. Math was out of the question, but what was important was that he was literate. He looked like any normal, if not slightly impoverished, college kid inside the high-speed train, packed with fashionable people. The capital had once been in Washington, but it had been moved to New York after a civil war that had happened a hundred years ago. With the Caledon family taking power, democracy had become a thing of the past, although the privileged ones still liked to say it was a new form of democracy/federalism. Whatever it was, Ryker knew it was a dictatorship embellished with splendor.
President Magnus Caledon’s face wasn’t plastered everywhere, unlike his father’s. His entire family wasn’t as showy, as well, but they made up for their “advertising humility” with their show of force and military prowess. The number of countries across the globe had lessened due to military and economic alliances, and even some of the United States’ territories had seceded to other countries. It didn’t matter much to Ryker. All he wanted was to survive.
Other countries had werebeings as well, but they weren’t vocal about their own oppression. To each his own suffering and victory, like here in America… He saw the screens signaling that this was his stop. Quietly, he got off among the throng of well-dressed men and women. The inner parts of the city were as breathtaking as any other modern metropolis, with its gleaming skyscrapers, levitating railway systems, and amenities that made every other place look undeveloped.
He lived thirty minutes away from the city, in an older town with old and graying buildings, away from the pomp and grandeur, and he preferred that. He could stay almost anonymous, and he was nearer to a patch of forest, one of the few small ones still available. Central Park was a thing of the past and had been replaced with the sprawling White House, a larger replica after it had been decimated during the Great Civil War.
From a few blocks away, he could see the White House loom, a classic design among the sleeker and nearly sterile looking buildings.
Mr. Toretti’s ‘office’ was underneath an old butcher shop; it was a rather large basement with a few detention cells for his pleasure. While the régime was adamant about setting rules and regulations to avoid another uprising, the illegal market still thrived, although it was quite rare. Mr. Toretti was one of those few bold enough to continue contraband.
The butcher’s shop was empty at this hour, and he saw one of Mr. Toretti’s henchmen, a heavyset former wrestler named Grayson, wearing an apron with a bit of blood splattered on it. Ryker nodded at him, and Grayson opened the door that led to the basement. Ryker passed through two flights in a dingy stairwell. At the bottom of the steps was another door. He knocked twice, and then another man, one almost as big as Grayson, opened the door and let him in.
The exposed wooden beams on the ceilings had a few cobwebs, and the smell of pickled meat permeated inside large vats. He knew a few bodies were inside the vats, which was why he avoided food given to him by Toretti’s men, unless it was vegetables and fruits. He walked further down the room, surrounded by ropes of sausages and prime cuts of pork. There was another door, the last one. There was no need to knock, as another henchman quickly opened it as if he had nothing better to do.
Ryker nodded at the henchman again.
“Watcha readin’ there, kid?” Giovanni asked him as he held onto the door knob.
“Something.”
“Contraband, I’m guessing.”
“I live for illegal activity,” Ryker said dryly.
Giovanni guffawed and slapped his shoulder, and Ryker immediately disliked it. He hated physical contact unless it was for business purposes. He forced himself to give a half-hearted grin. Everyone knew him as the awkward, yet scary, kid anyway.
“Get in, boss has been waiting for you for a couple o’ minutes now,” Giovanni said, jerking his thumb forward.
Well, he had only gotten the text an hour ago. Toretti was as demanding as the government, if that was even considered a fair comparison. There were a few rooms inside the basement office, and Toretti’s office was separated behind a bullet-proof, one-way glass partition. He walked inside, looking quite out of place in a mobster’s lair.
“Ah, Ryker. I need you to do something for me,” Mr. Toretti said.
It was always his form of introducing a new assignment. I need you to do something for me seemed polite enough, and Ryker knew Toretti had a few thousand dollars tucked neatly inside an envelope to give to him once he had completed his task.
Toretti explained the assignment with quick hand gestures, to show how displeased he was. Another loan shark hadn’t paid his dues to him, and he wanted what was owed. Ryker nodded. This was going to be easy, as he knew where this loan shark hung out.
“And kid,” Mr. Toretti called out to him before he left, “quiet with the punches, alright?”
“Yes, sir,” Ryker told him.
He was going to be quick about it, and only then could he continue with his book.