Skinwalker

Rolling onto my back I feel a sheet adjust over the top of me and a pillow flattens under my head. The ceiling is lined with florescent lights; they’re harsh and unforgiving, and I can only look at them for a moment before needing to close my eyes again. Laying here, I listen to the hum of electricity. After a while the air conditioner kicks on and the sound of moving air is familiar.

I sit up so fast that my brain feels like water in a glass, sloshing back and forth. I close my eyes and put my head between my legs so the feeling can pass. As the world begins to settle, I recall that Logan hadn’t been restrained.

The bracelets were unable to keep him from hearing everyone’s thoughts. His attack on me was brought about by a thought I had of Cassandra. The fact that he couldn’t search my brain for the information he wanted, pushed him over the edge. He couldn’t pillage my mind which means he hadn’t the opportunity to learn I was there in his best interest.

Regardless, it was all a set up. They were counting on him exposing me, which is why they didn’t restrain him. I can’t even be certain he was actually given antianxiety meds to sedate him. His disassociation and exhaustion could have simply been a side effect from an uncontrolled ability. Either way, Annamarie was counting on him exposing me for who I am.

Everything seems so bright when I open my eyes again. The floor is sealed cement, two of the walls are a thick blue glass while the other two are whitewashed cinderblock. My feet touch the cold floor and I pull them away instantly. The clothes I was wearing earlier have been replaced with white scrubs that are two sizes too big and I have no shoes. Copper hair falls over my shoulder and into view.

Brittany is gone, and Piper is in a cell.

Standing, I glance at the ceiling and find a black dome in the corner. There is a camera in there, watching me. I look to the number on my cell, 001. I can see into the two cells across from me and the one next to me, and it appears I’m alone.

“Hello?” I shout, hoping for an answer from someone I can’t see.

No answer comes.

“Please! If someone is there, just say something.”

The security door at the end of the hallway opens, drawing my attention in that direction. A man in black scrubs walks through the door and takes a seat at the nurse’s station. He peers at me from there but doesn’t say anything at all. I must be in medical. If I am, then where is Logan? Where is Neut? They wouldn’t remove him from a monitored health bay while they’re trying to cure him. The conclusion I draw is there must be two medical areas.

A little while later two guards, whom I’ve never seen before, both male, enter through the same door and approach my cell. One presses a few buttons on the keypad, and I watch closely. It isn’t the code algorithm I memorized, but it doesn’t unlock the door, either. Instead, a window in the middle of the glass door opens.

“Step toward the glass,” he instructs.

I remain where I am.

I’m not an idiot, I know they want to take me to the lab and begin testing my genetics. I also know that’s exactly where I’ll end up eventually, but in the meantime, I have no interest in going there voluntarily.

“Put your hands in front of you, and step toward the glass.”

“No.”

The one who has been speaking to me angrily waves for the other to unlock the door. The companion puts the code in, the algorithm I memorized, and the door releases. The guard with the cuffs makes his way into the cell, filling the space I hardly occupied. As he approaches, I take a step back.

“Put your hands out, or I’ll make you put them out.”

I press up against the cinderblock wall realizing I hadn’t thought this through. There’s no space to go around him and he’s at least the size of three of me. His large, grubby hand rests on a taser attached to his belt. It’s clear in his expression that he would really like to be given a reason to use that thing. Doing anything other than cooperating would be a waste of my energy.

I extend my arms toward him and the smile on his face falls. Begrudgingly, he puts a pair of cuffs on my wrists, grabs the chain, and yanks me forward. I’m shoved in front of him and forced to walk between the two guards through the hallways.

As we walk, I familiarize myself with the location of my cell. Through the doors is a security station for cell block E. There are only a handful of cells in here and I get the impression they belong to the volunteers because of the number of personal things inside of them. Through another set of doors and we’re in the main hallway. If I were to turn right, that leads to the station monitoring Cassandra and Tala. We turn at the next left, passing the breakroom, going through another security station. The guards lead me through the doorway to the right and I’m in a lab that is much smaller than the one I’m familiar with.

Behind the desk is a female geneticist whose brown hair is pulled into a sock bun with a small red bow clipped into it. The stranger readjusts her glasses and looks at me. Behind her frames are green eyes and a broken generic silver aura. This is the mute Leona told me was here. We lock eyes but after a few seconds she breaks the gaze.

“She’s in room three,” the mute tells them.

The guard shoves me forward. I stumble, catch myself, and walk in the direction of room three. Once inside, I’m forced into the chair and the guards strap me down and connect me to a chain on the floor. I’m not strong enough to be this much of a threat. When they leave, I’m completely alone.

This room looks exactly like the ones I’ve been working out of. I could wager the cabinets and drawers are set up the same, too. When the door opens again a man walks in accompanied by Kayla.

“The night we took the mage, we were out looking for you. He just happened to be a nice consolation prize after losing a mage a few days before,” she explains. “I’m curious, we’re you the little spitfire that put up such a fight the night we abducted him?”

Keeping my eyes on her, I say nothing.

“They should have wrangled your ass and brought you in with him. I knew you’d eventually follow him; I just hadn’t expected it to be so soon. Or so cleverly.”

The man who came with her is going through the drawers, collecting the things he needs to do a lab draw. Of course, they would have a man work with me.

“Where’s Brittany?”

I stay silent. I’m not interested in cooperating. It won’t make my life any easier to tell them what I know. Truth be told, despite all of Brittany’s crimes against our kind, she’s probably being treated far better than any of the subhumans in the company of Genetics Incorporated’s. Why should I let anyone here know that Brittany’s safe and relatively comfortable when I can leave their imagination to run with worry?

A tray of things is pushed to the chairside and the man sits on a stool, wheeling toward me. He begins prepping the tray. As he does his job, he never looks in my direction.

“We gave Isaac… No, that’s not right. It’s Alexander, isn’t it?” She pauses for some dramatic flair. “I gave him an extremely comfortable cell in medical this morning.”

Feeling defeated and annoyed, I close my eyes. My brother, who was so willing to give our genetics to these people to find a cure for us, has been given one. It may not work. I can prey it didn’t. But I won’t know for sure until someone here gloats with succuss.

An alcohol wipe is pressed against my skin and the space is rubbed vigorously before the arm strap is tightened and used as a tourniquet. Without an ounce of delicacy, the needle is jammed into my vein. The lab tech fills a series of sixteen tubes. Typically, new patients fill eight tubes on their first draw. Why are they taking twice that?

When we’re finished, Kayla opens the door to instruct the guards to take me back to my cell. The two unstrap me and when I stand my legs turn into jelly. It’s as if every ounce of strength I had in me was stolen and it’s all sitting in those tubes of blood. My feet won’t function correctly, and much like Catherine was drug on the day I first saw her, the guards drag me down the hall to a new cell near the lab and the worst part is, I let them.

I’ve never had a blood draw before. I’ve never had a reason. Subhumans don’t get sick the way humans do. Is this what it feels like for them?

They have the person that I love, the one person I never questioned risking my life for, and now they have me. Not only do they have my genetic code, but they also have my brothers, too. Soon they’ll be comparing ours, finding out what’s different between the two genders of skinwalkers and then they’ll tear it all apart to find out how they can copy and cure us.

Someday in the future, there will never be another girl born with my ability, or another boy born with Alexander’s. Who knows why they want to clone our DNA but the only skinwalkers that will be alive in the future, could be created in a lab like this?

The day is coming when mages, mutes, and everyone I love will all be turned human. In my lifetime, if I’m lucky to survive this place, subhumans could be completely extinct. Does the queen have a backup plan? Surely, she wouldn’t leave her sister here to rot, would she?

As they drag me through the halls, I pay attention to my surround. I’m taken to a different cell block than the one I left. I don’t see any guards at the desk. Maybe these two will sit there once I’m caged. Unlike the cell I was residing in previously, these are all triple pained glass with a single wall made of cinderblock. The station is also medical but has the appearance of one that is used frequently, whereas the other was just overflow. In this section medications are stored in a container behind the desk and supplies are in a room behind the station that has a window.

This is where the subhumans go who have been inoculated and are now being monitored. I find my strength and begin protesting the men who are taking me to a cell.

“This isn’t right,” I say.

They took my blood. That’s all. They didn’t inject me with anything. They don’t have a trial vaccine to use against my mutation yet. How could they?

“Stop struggling,” the guard to my left says.

“No!” I shout. “This isn’t my cell.”

“Hold onto her, I need to open the door,” the other guard says.

My arms are collected behind my back and when the guard moves my heart falls to the ground and the world stops moving.

“Levi?”

Lying on the cement floor, next to a puddle of vomit, is Levi in the fetal position. All at once, every ounce of energy I thought I’d lost hits me. Struggling against the guard I free both of my arms, knocking him to the floor, and make a move toward Levi’s cell.

The other guard’s arms are suddenly around my waist, and I throw my body weight against his, and we go crashing to the floor. The guards grip leaves me and I’m crawling to my feet. My fingers fly over the keypad to Levi’s cell and the moment the keypad turns green, I shove the door open. Before I have the chance to blockade myself someone’s arm snags my wrist and I’m pulled back toward the hallway.

It’s a woman and I use my ability against her. At least a portion of it. Somehow, I find inside of her head a memory on how to change the code to the door. Instinctively, I grab the glass door and slam it shut on her arm causing her to scream out in pain and let go of the door. My fingers fly over the keypad, typing in everything I need to change the code so they can’t easily break in.

At the desk, a guard presses the panic button, and an alarm sounds loud, and echoes through the facility. Backup will come and if I don’t get myself in this cell quickly, they’ll use the medication in those cabinets behind the desk to knock me out.

Pressing my back against the door, I use leverage from the cot that’s built into the wall by bracing my legs against it. Straightening my knees, I gain the upper ground. The door clicks into place and the keypad beeps, informing everyone it is now locked. A zap of electricity hits my spine, sending a hot jolt through my body and dropping me to the ground. I roll onto my stomach and drag myself toward Levi.

All at once I’m overcome with emotion and fear.

He’s dirty; his hair is slick with sweat and grease; his skin is pale and clammy, and his round cheeks are now sunken in. Eventually I sit next to him and pull his upper body onto my lap. Levi doesn’t move much; his breathing is shallow, and his heartbeat is slow.

My fingers play with his hair, and I whisper words I can’t even hear to him. Words that I think are comforting even though I don’t know if he can understand them. I’m scared for him. The last mage died. Did they simply pick up with Levi where they left off with the other one or did they just transfuse him with mute blood to see what it would do? Do they even know what killed the other mage?

He moans and moves to curl into the fetal position on the cold cement floor.

What does it feel like to have that in your system? Is it similar to the illness that happens when you become a subhuman? He’s sweating so much that his scrub top is sticking to his skin and showing moisture collections. Is he in pain? How much is he aware of? Does he know that I’m right here with him?

Aside from me, no one here cares about him; they don’t care that he has family in Arizona that is probably sick with worry. It doesn’t matter that he has an older sister or that he was pulled from his home in the middle of the night. The only thing they care about is what he’s helping them accomplish.

“Levi,” I whisper. “Can you hear me?”

He groans but doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even look like he’s trying.

I lay on the cement facing him, my fingers brush hair from his face.

The sound of metal scraping against the floor is what wakes me up. I push up from the ground to see a stranger sliding a packed food tray into the cell from the opening at the bottom of the glass door. The opening closes and they leave.

Instead of going to the food, I lay back down and look at Levi. I’m not sure how long I’ve been asleep next to him, but he doesn’t look better. Thankfully, he also doesn’t look any worse. I’m surprised they haven’t attempted the door since I got in there. I assume there are other ways to override the keypad, yet it remains locked with the code I inputted. They’re just leaving us alone in here. What’s their angle?

I resume combing Levi’s hair and close my eyes once more.