Looking back on it now, it almost tickles me. The things I believed, the things I didn’t, the lies I bought and the truths I dismissed. Up until recently, I would have taken any opportunity I could get my hands on to go back to the way things were. Anyone would, I think, though I have been blamed for being myopic. One piece of wisdom I’ve gained since then is having learned how quickly we toss our innocence aside. And how quickly we wish we had it back. The thing that people tend to forget about regrets, though, is how they can be undone. It can take effort, though. I’m still working on a few of mine.
Eighteen. It began, as I remember, the day I turned eighteen. The history books will not mark it as important, but there’s no way anyone could know everything about what happened to me and what I’ve done. I’d rather they didn’t, truth be told. We all have some skeletons in our closet. I had school that day. I was rather disappointed. The year before, my birthday had fallen on a weekend.
***
“Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of V-M Day.” Early March. Spring fever, senioritis and thoughts of a birthday dinner had all but taken over my mind. Had circumstances been different, I might have never heard a word being spoken by my history teacher that day, but I can’t help thinking, sometimes, that everything about my life happened for a reason. So, as it happens, history was the only class I was paying attention to that day. My teacher went on. “Too many men died that day, and while it is a subject so often ignored out of respect to their sacrifice, today is the day where we remind ourselves of what could have happened had the brave failed.” I was listening quite intently, just like half of my class. Those that joined me all had parents who remember V-M Day. Many of them even fought in it. A few, like my father, had made horrible sacrifices that day. “We are taught,” she said, “to put it out our minds. For some of us, it is difficult. We were there. All of you have it rather lucky, though. You never saw the skies darken as the Alter descended upon us. You never saw the destruction they wrought. For that, you are all blessed.”
I felt someone poking my arm. Turning, I saw my friend Jay with a rather annoyed expression on his face. The two of us had been friends since elementary school, and I knew his family quite well. His parents were rather young. They were children back then. I forgave him, then, for what I perceived to be his disrespect. He was bored and had no perspective. Reluctantly, I ignored the rest of my teacher’s speech and gave him an inquisitive look. He sighed impatiently.
“Lunch after class. And don’t tell me you have another class. It’s your birthday. I’m buying.” I considered this. Studious though I was, Jay and I hadn’t spent much time together in the past few weeks. He cited family issues, and I knew not to ask beyond that. I already knew about his sister, after all. It had to do with her, I was sure of it. On the verge of turning him down, I remembered how much spending money he got. There was no way he was going to take me to some cheap deli with its synthesized meat and riff-raff clientele. I rolled my eyes and nodded.
“Fine. Once. My GPA can’t afford more than one cut class. Got it?” Jay shrugged, knowing that this was a victory.
“Whatever,” he whispered back. “Maybe after school we can work on getting that stick out of your ass. Can’t be too comfortable.” I wasn’t going to let him know just how hard senioritis had hit me, but I did have a nice retort locked and loaded. I might have fired it off, too, if not for my teacher’s good hearing.
“Mr. Mead, I would think that you, of all people, would take today’s history a little more seriously, hmm?” I straightened out and gave her a well rehearsed smile.
“Of course, Ma’am. Not everyone has the privilege of being me, though,” I said. A few people laughed. Inwardly, I frowned. It wasn’t a joke. “Jay here isn’t as clued in to today’s history as I am, though. He just needed a few things clarified, is all. I’m sorry to have interrupted.” She considered this answer for a second.
“Very well, Calvin. As for you, Mr. Stone,” she said, looking at Jay, “if you were to pay attention, you may not need to ask anyone what was going on. I like to think that I’m a good enough teacher to explain all of that myself. Do focus.” He nodded politely and went back to doodling.
“Because I hate her, that’s why. Smug shrew thinks she’s a good teacher. I’m sure as hell not learning anything.” I looked up from my mussels to see Jay playing with his straw and eyeing a waitress.
“Yeah, imagine that. Fine. The Alters were born without consciences. Sociopaths. Half of them tried to kill us right off the bat. The other half dared trying to set up a protection racket. And then when we had decided that enough was enough, they decided to cut their losses and try to wipe us out.” I took a sip of cola and squinted. The lights in public places were always far too bright. You needed to go home if you ever wanted to actually see a shadow.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Hardly even a second’s hesitation. They knew we were onto them, though.” Now nursing a mild headache, I massaged my left temple with one hand and touched the rim of my glasses with the other. After a quiet clicking noise, the lenses darkened. Jay raised an eyebrow.
“Another one?”
“I don’t see how you or anyone else can stand the lights.” I went back to my cola for a moment and continued. “Guy who led them was named Mike Meresti. Put on blue body armor and a cape and called himself Marathon. And everyone thought North Korea was the homeland of crazy assholes. Good thing they’re all dead now too, come to think of it. The one defensible act any Alter ever committed, and do you know where the real humor is?”
“No clue, Cal.” I grinned.
“The guy who burned the place to the ground? His title was ‘Ragnarok’ and he used to make speeches on how we were inferior and needed to be destroyed. Didn’t even pretend he wasn’t a psycho like Marathon and his kind did. Who, by the way, offered his thanks for vaporizing that hellhole by dropping Ragnarok off a building. Only time he ever admitted to killing someone. Prick.”
Jay was rather intrigued, now, and rested his chin on his hand, now ignoring the waitress and the TV screens by the bar that showed off the security cam footage. He was always quite proud of his looks. “If this is all supposed to be so hush-hush, how do you know so much?” he asked. I gave him a look. You know the kind.
“Jay, as a society, we’re not going to forget about the Alters until the generation that saved us from them dies out. They may have burned all the footage of them, all the photos, but people still remember. It won’t be until you and I are old men that there will be people who are truly in the dark about what happened all those years ago. Present company excluded from that number.”
“Asshole. You check your tone,” he said, with a laugh, “I bought you lunch.”
“So you did.” There was a short silence as Jay thought of what to ask next. I humored him and went back to my mussels while he did.
“Hey, Cal?”
“Yeah?”
“How come no more of them ever cropped up?” I looked at him like he was insane.
“Because we killed them all. They can’t exactly reproduce now, can they?” He frowned at me, not satisfied with my answer.
“Yeah, but at some point, they had to have human parents. You heard Mrs. D’Angelo. They started coming out in droves in the thirties.”
“You were paying attention?”
“I can’t filter out everything. God knows, I try, but no one’s perfect.” I chuckled. This was a rare occasion. Jay celebrated by going back to looking at the waitress, and I considered what he had been asking me. It was the first question in awhile that I legitimately had no answer for. So, I decided to compromise.
“Tell you what. If you ever see an Alter, God forbid, report them. I don’t care if it’s your little sister or your best friend. Eventually, they’ll kill you for whatever reason they can make up. Deal?” He turned his attention back to me and nodded.”
“Ah, what the hell. Deal.” I raised my glass to him and finished off my cola.
I’ve never been a huge fan of people. Not in a disturbing, antisocial way. I can get along fine with a person. But people? Human beings have no collective likeability. In crowds, their intelligence leaves them, their mood shifts to whatever the crowd’s mood is, and they forget how civilized people are supposed to act and react. They’ll make dumb decisions, do horrible things, believe anything you tell them, and then that night, they will go home and have an intelligent discussion about literature over dinner with their families.
It was on trips too and from school that I often thought about these sorts of things. And, humorously enough, every time I thought about it, it always seemed like an epiphany. I looked out the window of the tram I rode. The city looked different today than usual; there was a sort of…decaying quality about it. Which was odd on a couple of fronts, the first being the fact that the time, effort and money the city put into its cleanliness was well known. Secondly, up to today, I had always thought of the city as looking like a doctor’s office spread over a couple hundred square miles: sterilized, cold…safe, I suppose, too, but almost in a foreboding way. I never liked going outside much, truth be told. There were few buildings under ten stories tall, and I was already self-conscious about my height. On top of that, the police patrols were always annoying and frequent. Any law-abiding citizen had nothing to worry about, but their presence always made walking the worst way to get anywhere. The trams were always crowded because of others who didn’t want to deal with the annoyance. You only had to pass through one security checkpoint to get on the tram and a second to get off. To travel the same distance on foot, you’d go through ten.
I moved towards the exit after the tram arrived at my station, and found it easier to get through the crowd than was typical of my commute. A few older women on the other side of the car gave me an odd look as I weaved through the crowd to get off. Paying them no mind, I exited the tram and headed towards the security checkpoint. It was about then that an odd thing happened: I was ignored. The police, in their woolen blue trench coats and multifunctional visors, paid me no mind as I gingerly stepped past them, testing my luck. I looked back: a man behind me was having his bags checked by one guard and being given a cavity search by another. Now thoroughly confused with the events of the last few minutes, I hurried off in the direction of my apartment building.
Though it was only a short distance, and I was in decent shape, I felt a dull pain suddenly begin to run laps around my body. At first, it was only slightly annoying. I wondered if it had something to do with the seafood I had for lunch. Then it intensified, and fast. Surprised and now significantly hindered, I stumbled to a bench to catch my breath and wait, hoping the pain would subside. It didn’t. Every time it pulsed through me it seemed to grow stronger. After a moment, it began to centralize itself in my chest. My vision dulled as my heart went at speeds I never knew were capable. I clamped my eyes shut in an effort to mentally remove myself from the pain.What gives you comfort, Cal? Go there. Go there. I kept repeating this to myself as I racked my brain. A few images appeared in my mind. The first was my bedroom at night. The pain didn’t subside. Next came my girlfriend, Stacy. For a moment, focusing on her image brought me some respite, but whatever was happening to me found a way around it and came back worse than before. Now it was spreading to my head. When it got there, though, something odd happened. Shapes started appearing in my mind. I couldn’t quite see what they were; they seemed to dissipate when I tried to focus on them. Pointless though they were, my efforts calmed the pain down to the point where I could once again stand. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.
For a brief moment, I was positive that I had seen…a face? A man? It was unclear. The glare coming at me from all sides briefly blinded me before my eyes finally readjusted. I blinked once or twice, wondering a couple things. The first was obvious: what in God’s name just happened? One moment, I thought I was about to die, and the next, I’m seeing things. The second question: what exactly was it that I had seen? I frowned. The day had just been getting stranger since lunch. The headache, the odd looks on the tram, the apathetic guards…and now this. Dizzy, I wandered to my apartment building and placed my hand on the palm-scanner. A moment passed and it all checked out; the door opened. My head was still pounding, but at least it was only just a headache and not…well, not whatever it was that just hit me. Not really looking but knowing my way, I ducked into an elevator.
“Thirtieth floor,” I grumbled. The computer that governed the elevator beeped in recognition and began its ascent. The elevator had a mirror on the wall opposite the door. I looked at myself. My school uniform’s jacket needed a wash, but otherwise, all my clothing was in order. I went over my hair. At some point, it had become disheveled. I should have noticed earlier: several black locks had fallen over my face. Licking my hand, I made a quick attempt at neatening myself by shoving it back. With my forehead now completely exposed, I frowned: the scar just below my hairline was now exposed. It usually took a comb to hide, and I had forgotten to bring one today.
Giving up, I departed from the elevator once it arrived and walked, almost purposelessly, towards the front door to my apartment. The hallway was stark white, as was most everything, these days. The walls and ceiling were made of a reflective plastic that I couldn’t quite see myself in. Though, as if the contractors had set out to mock me, whenever I looked at them for too long, I found myself affected by something not dissimilar to snow-blind. When I arrived at my door, it had occurred to me that my headache was returning. Foregoing the retina scan that would let me in on my own, I rang the doorbell. Voices could be heard inside, and after a moment, the door opened. Horrible though my mood may have been at that point, I couldn’t help but smile at the sight that greeted me.
Sitting at the table were my father, mother, Stacy, and my older cousin, Tyler. They beamed at me, all wishing me a happy birthday (slightly out of sync) and I walked in, throwing my bag on the floor. My father stood up from the table. He was a tall man who, I noted, looked like an older version of me. At one point, he had coal-black hair, but the years had faded it into a smoky gray color. His most noticeable feature was his two prosthetic legs; attached right below the knee.They had been there since V-M Day, when his legs were crushed by falling rubble. After thirty years, he was rather used to them, and one hardly noticed his handicap unless he wore shorts. He walked over and gave me a hug.
“Eighteen, Cal. This is a big day for you, isn’t it?” The question was rhetorical, but I felt almost obligated to give him a smartass answer.
“Yeah, I can steal porn off the internet and only get prosecuted for piracy, not…hmm…‘underage consumption.’” He rolled his eyes along with everyone else at the table. Tyler laughed, though, and joined my father in front of me.
“’Vin, you used to be such an innocent kid. I can’t help but feel at least partly responsible for that joke. But you’re a man, now, and I think your snarkiness has become your own.”
“I think it was you that taught me my first curse word, Tyler. Yes, I remember. It was one of the bad ones, too. Stace, we were practically in diapers together, you recall that day too, right?” She put a finger to her lip trying to remember as my father gave Tyler the sternest of glances. Finally, she did, and announced it with a snap.
“Yes! Tyler told you never to repeat it. So you instead went around the house the rest of the day speaking of…’country matters’ while your dad went into conniptions.” Now remembering himself, my father slammed his hand against his forehead.
“Thank you for reminding me, Stacy. Oh, and, that car I said I’d get you two if you ever got married? Not happening anymore.” I took this far more seriously than anyone else and was about to object to this car embargo, but a reassuring look from my mother calmed me down before I made an ass of myself. I gave both my father and Tyler a hug before heading over to the table for Stacy. She yelped in surprise as I plucked her from her chair and pulled her into an embrace, prompting an obnoxiously loud “aww” from Tyler. I closed my eyes and took a very deep breath.
“I know that V-M Day is supposed to be all solemn and everything, but will the four of you forgive me if I feel happy for myself?” Tyler, still convinced that he was the funniest man on the planet, was the first to reply.
“Just this once, ‘Vin. But don’t go spreading it around. You know how people get.” I broke away from Stacy to give him a friendly punch on the shoulder. Though he was six years my senior, Tyler was a little shorter than I. His parents were hopeless workaholics, and had been throughout his childhood. Because of this, I always found him in my company, from the day I knew his name to now. Though he now had a low-level government job and couldn’t always be around as often, the two of us were still quite close. The selfish part of me anticipated the best birthday present from him. In response to his frankly predictable joke, I made an exaggerated frown and crossed my arms.
Stacy struggled to suppress a giggle. She gave me a grin that faded only when I clutched at my temples as my headache returned. This time, it felt like its effects had compounded. Every fragment of every cell in every part of my body seethed as ten different kinds of pain rushed through it. I tried to scream but my lungs weren’t working properly.
“Not now, Jesus, not now…” I braced myself against the wall and closed my eyes, trying to block out the light. It did me little good. With my eyes closed, I just saw the vague shapes again, and they burned just as much as the light did. My mother and Tyler rushed over with Stacy, who was already at my side. She was the first to say anything.
“What’s wrong Cal? Are you al-“ she stopped very suddenly. When I opened my eyes the first thing I noticed was how pale she was. The second thing I noticed was the fact that she wasn’t alone in this. Four sets of eyes stared, unwavering, at me. Momentarily distracted from the pain, I raised an eyebrow.
Through clenched teeth, I asked, “Is something…wrong?” In hindsight, it was a poor question and none too specific. Stacy fled the room. I couldn’t tell exactly, but it seemed as though she was holding back tears. My father turned away. His expression was a mystery to me. To this day, it still is. At that moment though, it wasn’t important. It was when I looked down at myself that I discovered what was.
It was as if a distortion effect had been added to my body. The colors of my clothing blurred together and the edges of them and the rest of me seemed to have gained an ambiguity. The thumping of my heart reverberated throughout my chest, creating almost wavelike motions. I looked at my hand and found it blurry, like I was looking at it through a translucent piece of glass. Like I was melting. Indeed, my shadow had even somehow retracted into me, and was crawling up my legs, across me. The dark blue of my pants had turned inky black, and the rest of my suit followed, even the lighter parts like my shirt. My eyes widened as I saw that the three feet around me grew darker somehow, like I was holding an anti-lamp that sucked light from the area. At this point, I screamed. I expected it to be normal. I don’t know why. But I did. My expectations were quashed very quickly. The noise that escaped me was…muted, at first. As if it were coming from the other side of a thick, metal wall. After a moment like this, though, it seemed to focus in both tone and effect. The sound went from muted screaming to an unearthly wail, and I saw my mother grow faint and sink to the ground, just barely supporting herself on her hands and knees.
Worried, I quieted myself before stumbling across the room and onto the floor, too shocked to propel myself any further.Don’t want to look at myself. Get your eyes closed, Cal. Damn the cost. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Somehow, I got my body to obey me. The shapes returned, but they were starting to take on more definite forms. There were…three of them? No, four. Definitely four. I began searching for a name for their color. Red, maybe. No, it was useless. They weren’t a color. They were a feeling. Do feelings have colors? I didn’t care. I held onto the vision, whatever it was. When I focused, the pain seemed less intense, like it had to come from a great distance to affect me. I almost recognized the forms of what I was seeing before one of them looked as though it was growing, enveloping my field of “vision.” Then, a sharp burst of pain. I lost consciousness.
There had always been an ignorant ambiguity that blurred “sleep” and “unconsciousness” for me. For the longest time, I thought them to be one and the same. But there are no pleasant dreams after you have been thoroughly knocked out. There’s just a throbbing pain in your head that you can’t acknowledge. All you can do is suffer it for however long it takes you to wake up. When I did, I wished that I hadn’t. There was nothing about the unfamiliar ceiling I looked up at, the IV in my arm and the pounding in my skull that didn’t make me want to cry weak, infantile tears. I blinked twice. Nothing improved. I cursed. Still nothing. I cursed louder. A nurse walked by my room raising an eyebrow, but otherwise, there was still no discernable change in my condition. Giving up, I looked around.
It was clear that I had been out for at least a couple of days. My hair felt unbelievably greasy. There was a disgusting buildup of sweat on my lower back. The feeling in the inside of my mouth brought to mind images of beached whales, dead for days and beginning to attract the contents of an amateur outdoorsman’s guide to birds and other scavengers. The kind of book you’d get a six-year-old kid for his birthday after hearing him express an interest in birds of prey.
A few hours passed, and it became quite clear to me that I couldn’t move. Whatever painkiller they were giving me must have been one badass sedative, too, because I was not moving a goddamn muscle. A good thing, perhaps? I thought so for a few moments before experiencing the moment in my life at which every single problem with it originated before branching out like a horrible, horrible tree.
The door opened wide and I was treated to the sight of an older gentleman in a suit. He had a kindly face, the sort you imagine when you hear the word ‘grandpa.’ Not ‘grandfather.’ No, specifically ‘grandpa.’ A pair of round spectacles adorned his nose. The lenses were a bit too thick; they made his eyes look unnaturally large beneath them. His white hair was combed back in a manner I did not usually see amongst those of his age. Still though, for someone who looked to be at least sixty, he was in good shape: he walked unassisted and unhindered and stood both tall and confident. His suit was black with silver pinstripes, cut and stitched in a rather unorthodox way. His chin was dusted with white stubble. He gave me an unsettlingly warm smile before speaking.
“That was quite an incident you had back there, Calvin. It’s a good thing you were brought here when you were.” He took a sip of water from a glass that was sitting on my nightstand. “Before any real unpleasantness happened.” I wasn’t sure how to act; if I was supposed to have my guard up or not. I had, though, like it or not, been conditioned to trust men in suits and men in lab coats, just like everyone else in my generation and the last few before me. I put on an unsure smile before replying.
“You sound like you know what’s wrong with me.” His smile disappeared in favor of a stone-faced expression and a look in his eyes that I’m sure killed someone at some point.
“We’re both intelligent men, Calvin. I’ve seen your grades. Your smart enough to know what’s going on here. So don’t play dumb and don’t insult my intelligence. The word is on the tip of your tongue, isn’t it?” It was. I didn’t want to say it. I wanted anything other than to say it or to even know what it was or what it meant. My heart sank like a mob informant and a wave of nausea rushed over me. My lip, then the rest of my jaw, quivered. Time slowed down, and I almost felt feverish as he moved in closer.
“Say it,” he demanded, all gentleness gone from his voice. I babbled something under my breath for a few seconds before managing to choke out something slightly more intelligible.
“I…don’t want t-“ he cut me off.
“Say it!”
“Alter.”
“Alter!” he parroted, not even waiting for me to finish the word. His smile returned, but it was different. Like he had just won a bet. He let me stew in my blind terror for a few moments before going on.
“People don’t give enough credit to the spread of knowledge, you know that?” He took another sip of water. “Put a bit of shocking news out there and it’s like you just lit a match under a pile of dry twigs. Especially in this day and age. New tech has made it so much easier to get the message out there. My workload and that of my colleagues was basically cut in half a few years ago when people really took to the Internet.” I tried my luck.
“What exactly is it that you do?” My voice quivered. I had no idea if this man was about to kill me or not. The thought had certainly crossed my mind at that point.
“Fair question. I can forgive the interruption to answer. Agent Simon Zane. I’m with the IAD, the Inhuman Affairs Division; basically your standard issue G-Man with a few…hmm…additional jobs. For instance, it is my job right now to inform you that the tree outside the window right there,” he said, pointing, “is going to be the last you ever see of the outside world. It’s my job to find Alters like you and bring ‘em on in so they won’t be a danger to any of us people, and it’s my job to keep tabs on just about everyone who has more than the average amount of knowledge on your kind. Like I was getting at, it’s a hard thing, to repress a whole society’s memories. The media needs to be paid off, the idealists need to be silenced, and every wrong question any idiot could ask needs a right answer to feed them. We don’t want another V-M Day, after all.”
It took until about when he finished that last sentence for what he had said about me and my future to kick in. He kept going, but I wasn’t listening anymore. The first thing to go was my composure. I began to shake rather violently and a sound that wasn’t exactly crying and wasn’t exactly screaming crawled out of my lungs and filled the room. There were no tears; even if there were, they would have evaporated the second they came into contact with my face: I was burning up. I almost hoped for another meltdown. Anything that would get me as far away from here as possible. But after a few moments of struggling, it became apparent that nothing of the sort was to happen. Zane tented his index fingers and walked past me, waiting for me to calm down. I ran out of breath, finally, and he spoke.
“Besides the sedative that’s keeping you lying down, that IV is pumping a rather fascinating little chemical into your bloodstream. We cooked it up thirty years ago to suppress the abilities of the Alters we couldn’t kill.” My eyes widened.
“You’re…you’re going to kill me?” Zane frowned, looking disappointed. After a moment’s contemplation, though, he shrugged, and that damnable smile of his returned.
“The war is over, Calvin. We won. You lost. There’s no need to end any more lives. That chemical, we call it Formula-15, it’s quite addictive. Just two doses and the body of an Alter develops a dependency to it. Very convenient for us. Rather expensive to produce, though.” He paused and showed me a set of teeth far to perfect to belong to a man of his age. “But the benefits! Even if you were to escape, the withdrawal symptoms are too severe. You’d be comatose after missing even one dosage, likely to die unless brought to a hospital. We would of course be waiting for you there with open arms and,” he procured a bottle of pills from his jacket and put them in the breast pocket of my hospital gown, “a refill. Consider this a gift, Calvin. Ten years ago, those barbaric kill-on-sight policies would still be in place and you never would have woken up from that concussion your cousin so helpfully gave you. Shame about the decanter he broke over your head. It looked expensive.” Somewhere in the ocean of fear that had flooded my mind, there was a small eruption of undiluted rage. Tyler. You bastard, this is your fault.My head oddly clearer, now, more complicated questions started forming in my head.
“I-I don’t want to be an Alter. I don’t want this. Can’t you just give me the pills and let me go? I swear to God, I will never miss a single dose. I’ll pay for them, damn the expense. Please, I just want to go home and-“ Zane cut me off, extending his palm toward me.
“Formula-15 is not a perfect drug, Calvin. It keeps your abilities under wraps, yes, but there is no cure for the sociopathy that afflicts your ilk. You can’t be trusted. So you must be contained. Or you will be dealt with.”
“But…I’m not a sociopath. All Alters are sociopaths, and I can’t be an Alter because I’m not. I can still feel. Let me prove to you that I can feel.” He looked at me, contemptuously, from the corner of his eye.
“You are humanity’s shadow, Cal.” Somewhere far away, a man lost all the taste he had for his favorite wine. He will never know why. It will not really be that big a deal for him, truth be told. But there will come moments when he wonders.
“I see.” Something left me as I said that. “I would like you to kill me, please.” Zane did a double take and once it registered what I had said, he laughed.
“Sorry, Calvin, but that’s not how it works. See, you people are actually still quite useful to us alive. Perhaps you end up becoming more trouble than you’re worth, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.” I nodded.
“Oh. Well, would it be possible to see my family once more before you take me away?” My voice had grown cold and distant. I’m not sure whether I actually still cared. I really only asked because anyone would at this point. He gave me the answer I knew was coming.
“They don’t want to see you.” Again, I nodded. In doing so, I discovered that the sedative was beginning to wear off. Slowly, I sat up, moved my hands to my face and wept. To his credit, Zane was quite patient with me, and even offered me a small box of tissues as it became apparent that this was going to go on for a few minutes. Conditioned to be polite, I thanked him. When I was through, I made an attempt at recomposing myself before taking a deep breath.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve given this speech, is it?” He laughed mirthlessly.
“Smart lad. I’ll be back in an hour, and then we’ll leave. The facility you’ll be living at is about a six-hour drive from here. A nurse will be by shortly to refill the sedative.” He gave me the most generous looking fake smile I would ever see and took his leave.
He’s gone. The world suddenly seemed larger now that he was gone. I realized that my breathing had become almost impossibly shallow in his presence. Regaining my equilibrium, I tried to think of any way to put a positive spin on things. You’ll never have to get a job. Grades are no longer an issue. No one will ever depend on you to do anything ever again. A life in captivity is a safe life. You’ll probably never get fat. Maybe you’ll like it. Maybe your fellow Alters become your friends. I stopped there.
“I can’t have friends, though. Alters don’t make friends. They’re not capable of love or remorse or compassion.” I thought about this for a second. “That’s what they said was true.” The hint of a frown crept across my face, and my eyes grew very still. You people are actually still quite useful to us alive, Zane had said. I lowered my head as my face twisted into a bitter sneer. The sedatives were wearing off; I could feel it. My legs shifted.
“No.” I leapt out of the bed and pulled the IV from my arm. Wobbling a little, I managed to find my way to the cabinets across the room. I opened them and found exactly what I was looking for: a small case of unused syringes. I took two and did a couple stretches before getting back into bed. Hopefully I would be limber enough to pull off what I was planning on doing.
A minute or two later, the prophesized nurse walked in the room with a fresh IV bag full of sedative. She was ugly, old, and had horrible skin. You want me to be remorseless? Fine. I feigned sleep as she came up to my bed with the bag.
“Of course they make me touch the Alter. ‘She’s about to retire? Let’s give her all the shit jobs as punishment.’” She replaced the bags, but in her whining, she had failed to notice in time that the IV was no longer inserted in my arm. She let out a quick gasp before I jammed the first syringe into her neck.
“You make one fucking sound and this job gets even shittier for you.” I spun her around and put her in a half nelson with my right arm, keeping my left hand on the syringe. “Very quietly, you’re going to inform me of any emergency exits. Your politeness will determine whether or not you get an embolism.” She whimpered.
“The guards know your face. You’ll be dead in seconds.”
“So will you,” I hissed. “Emergency exits. Now.” She was silent for a few moments, racking her brain.
“There’s a fire escape at the end of the hall. Out the door and to the right. You can’t miss it.” I smiled.
“Thank you…” I looked at her nametag “…Carol. Now please hold still and hold out your left arm.” Wordlessly, she obeyed. I released her from the half nelson and picked up the IV needle, aiming carefully before pushing it into her vein and starting the drip. “Sweet dreams, Carol.” As she slipped into unconsciousness, I slid her onto the bed and pulled the syringe from her neck. One less loose end and one more weapon. Finding a notebook and pen on the nightstand, I wrote down a quick note and smiled for the first time since I woke up.
For the first time, I noticed how cold the floor was against my feet. I looked at hers. She was wearing mercifully unisex sneakers that looked to be of a similar size to mine. After stealing them, I peeked out the door to my room to see if the coast was clear. Aside from a doctor chatting it up on a cell phone to the left of me, there didn’t seem to be anything to worry about. Trying to look as nonchalant as possible, I walked out the door and headed down the hallway. Looking about, I frowned, disgusted. The same sterile whiteness was everywhere. As I approached the end of the hall, I heard a noise that made my heart skip a beat.
“Hey! Alter! What are you doing out of your room?” Turning, I saw the doctor with the cell phone walking toward me. I had to think fast or this was all going to be for nothing.
“Carol is bleeding out in there. You want to stop me or save her, Hippocrates?” He fell for the bluff and dashed into the room. By the time he realized that I had lied, the window at the end of the hall was open and I was already making my way down the fire escape.
The patter of water against my skin was the perfect clincher to this perfect day of mine. If I catch pneumonia and die, I will find a way to climb out of hell and take my revenge on every child who has ever splashed around in a puddle. My room, as it turned out, had only been on the third floor of ten, so getting down from the fire escape was not as time consuming as it could have been. I doubted I had much time until security came out after me, so the second my feet touched the ground, I bolted. The streets were more or less clear, so I crossed the avenue; the frequency of security checkpoints meant no one in their right mind would drive unless their destination was outside the city. Shit! Security Checkpoints! I ducked into an alley and surveyed my options. There were ways of avoiding the police via alleys and backstreets, but there was no guarantee I wasn’t going to run into members of society’s unwanted that way. Taxis didn’t have to submit to checkpoints; they could drive on through. I didn’t have any money, though, and even then, identification was required to take one.The sewers, perhaps?
Before I had time to really think through my next move, I heard voices: hospital security was on its way out to find me, and I heard sirens in the distance. Panicking, I threw myself into a dumpster and buried myself in trash. It smelled horrid, but there was still some air coming in and I was at the very least concealed. A minute passed, and I heard voices coming towards me.
“…Couldn’t have gotten far. You have any idea what’s in that sedative? Carol’s going to be out of it for two weeks. Alter or not, he can’t be in top form.”
“You weren’t listening to that Zane guy. He said that the kid is the most powerful Alter he’d seen since he started hunting ‘em.”
“Yeah? Well, he’s a smartass, too. Left a note in his room saying ‘Next time, invest in handcuffs.’ Give the kid some credit; I got a laugh from that. Zane looked annoyed, though.” I smirked.
“Congratulate him on his gift for comedy when we catch him. If we catch him. He’s supposed to be able to turn invisible or something.” My eyes widened.This is certainly news.
“Nah. He’s on the Formula-15. Not pulling any tricks with that in his system. God, I pity Thompkins. He was supposed to be guarding the kid. Happened to be grabbing a soda when the little shit escaped. His ass is so fired.” The voices faded off into the rain after that, and my first thought was that I was glad I managed to ruin at least one person’s career in my escape. I drew up a scoreboard in my head. They had captured me and suppressed…whatever it is I could do with that Formula-15. Two points. I, on the other hand, had escaped and gotten an unlucky guard fired. Two points. It’s a whole new ballgame from here on out.