Ryker was in solitary confinement. It looked like a padded cell due to its white walls, and it seemed as if it was ready to take on the brunt of his shifting. Had no one else been inside? The place looked too pristine, and eerily similar to his previous quarters. Were there gassing devices inside here as well?
He had been calculating his means of escape since he had woken up. It was obviously underground -- how far, he didn’t know. That was a problem. Security was also tight, and every corner had a closed circuit camera. He had seen the insignia of the government, and he knew that was going to be an even bigger problem. The WereGames were not in his interest, but interest or not, he had no say in the matter. Someone had outed him, and no one in this city even knew him.
He had been thinking of the young woman he had seen earlier, and despite not knowing her, he wondered how she was and if she was safe. She had suffered more than he had in a failed attempt to make him shift. Ryker hadn’t shifted in two years. He certainly didn’t want to snap in front of people he didn’t know. New York should have been a safe haven of anonymity, and for a single act of kindness, he had been poached, examined, and pushed to the edge, all for a slot in the WereGames.
There was no honor to be had in it. It was a slaughter show. Even if he had hurt and, in rare moments, killed people who had crossed his former boss, he had found justification in that. There was no justification for killing someone one did not know, someone who did not have fault with anyone. The ones he maimed or killed were loan sharks, pedophiles and those who abused women. He heard something hiss. Gas quickly filled the room, and he closed his eyes, knowing there was no way out of it.
*
He woke up, already familiar with the bleeping and hissing of machines coupled with the soft murmurs of the medical staff present. It was a different room this time, and no one else was inside it. He was no longer strapped down; he was placed on the ground. He started to move when he noticed that there were wires connected to his body. Whether suctioned or injected, he didn’t care; all he wanted was to get rid of them. He was wearing hospital pajamas. He slowly looked around and saw someone else in the room, in the far corner. It was the girl from earlier, and she had her back against the wall, her arms hugging her knees.
Alexia looked up to see him awake. She wanted to say something, but she was afraid that he would be another casualty. How lonely it would be if the last thing he heard was her voice.
“Who are you?” he finally croaked.
Alexia felt her heart pound. A stranger was talking to her, another test subject. They almost never did, and when they spoke, it was usually filled with screams of pain or regret. She could count a few test subjects who had acknowledged her presence… she said nothing.
“Where are we?” he asked her, in a louder voice.
He slowly stood up, and he felt the wires move around him as well. He looked around, seeing it was an enclosed room with one-way glass, just like Mr. Toretti’s office in the basement. The room was as large as his cell, around thirty-by-thirty feet, and equally as white. He saw cameras on all corners of the ceiling. The young woman also had wires and probes attached to her head, her back, and her arms. Can’t she talk? he wondered.
“Ryker, I’m going to have to ask you to shift for us,” a voice echoed inside the room.
Ryker stared back at the glass panel in front of him. He didn’t care where they were exactly, but he uttered a few expletives. They weren’t bullying him into this. He didn’t look back at her; she was going to be used, and he didn’t want to see it.
“Who accused me of being a werebeing?” he asked to no one in particular.
Alexia didn’t need to ask. She knew already. There was something in her body that made her recognize who was a werebeing, and the facility was out to exploit everything possible from her, so she said nothing about this, not even to Dr. Delaney.
“We don’t need to accuse you, Ryker. It was all out in the open. From hoodlum to savior of younger werebeings?”
It was clearly Dr. Wallace’s voice taunting him, Alexia knew.
“I saved her because she was being beaten by adults,” Ryker said through gritted teeth. He didn’t want to admit that Alyssa had most probably squealed on him, for whatever minuscule amount of proof she had…
“Alyssa. Alyssa Blake. Her parents were sad to learn of her passing yesterday,” Dr. Wallace said casually.
Ryker’s eyes narrowed. This was another ploy, another method to have him shift. Toying with werebeing emotions was the ticket to shifting.
“Oh, Ryker, why would I lie to you? My reasons to see you shift are sincere.”
A screen appeared on the glass, and Ryker stared at it. It crackled for a moment, and then the video started. It showed soldiers beating her to death, even if she had already shifted into a small werefox.
No, no, no… Ryker thought. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real. In the video, there were screams in the background, and then bullets prevailed. The next footage showed Alyssa, bloodied up and in human form, her eyes glassy and wide open. The video stopped.
Ryker’s eyes widened. He felt his heart pound; his blood raced everywhere. He clenched his fists. He took a breath, swallowed saliva, and he found his jaw tightening. He had saved her for nothing; he had saved her for nothing more than to be reduced as a corpse.
“Of course, her parents had to go as well,” Dr. Wallace finished. “We wanted to interrogate them, but they resisted. Turns out, they’re part of these young and disillusioned citizens out to target the administration.”
Ryker’s body began to shake involuntarily, and he dropped, his palms clenching the floor. His eyes began to change color, no matter how he willed them not to. Don’t change, don’t change. He desperately tried to remember his mother’s face and her voice; he desperately tried to remember his father. To shift would mean defeat, to shift would mean that the United States would see another Werebear, and his kind hadn’t been seen in so long.
Dr. Wallace smiled from behind the screen, seeing Ryker about to shift. It was a wondrous thing to see, no matter how excruciating their screams sounded. Every morsel of alteration was art, every bit of deviation was a scientific marvel, no matter how many times they had seen it. No two were alike, despite their classifications.
Ryker began to salivate, and it dripped to the floor. Alexia was frozen in place, staring in horror. It was another werebeing, not the ones she had seen in her lifetime.
“Don’t,” she thought. “Don’t shift…”
Ryker looked back at her, anguish in his eyes as his breathing came in rasps. Don’t shift, her voice magnified in his head. Was she talking to him? Talking to him without actually speaking in person? He stopped shaking altogether, crumbling to the floor.
Dr. Wallace looked at the rest of the medical staff. “What the hell happened? Find out what happened!”
Was the young man’s willpower stronger than they had thought it would be? Dr. Wallace shook his head. He disliked using A129, but knew he had to, seeing X014’s reaction earlier.
“Bartholomew, send a few shocks to A129.”
“You already did that earlier,” Edith said through clenched teeth. “Don’t put her through this again!”
“We’ll triple the antidote dosage. How’s that sound, Dr. Delaney?”
“This won’t sit well with her vitals-” She was cut off by the sound of Alexia screaming and writhing on the floor. She gripped the pen in her lab coat pocket; it was all she could do at the moment.
Inside, Ryker watched in confusion, and then empathy, and then rage.
“Stop it!” he shouted again. “Stop hurting her!”
“Shift, Ryker,” Dr. Wallace intoned. “Shift!”
Ryker closed his eyes, feeling nausea course through him, and then that head-splitting pain came next. His hands shook, and his whole body trembled violently. Stop hurting her, he thought again and again, feeling his teeth about to come off. He was hunched over, his back seemed to grow. Unbearable heat rose in his body’s core, and he felt like he was about to suffocate. He had forgotten how it had felt, and now his body was remembering it -- why he avoided shifting, among other reasons. Ryker groaned, and then he roared, a voice that sounded animal, yet like a human in distress at the same time. Tearing his hospital pajamas apart, Ryker stood, trying to tear his own flesh from his body.
In a split second, it was as if there was never any human inside the room, and standing there instead was a werebear.