Revamp of old fic, is about how the Erasers got screwed over and is trying to fix that, AU from Book 2 (probably).
Slash & Het.
Disclaimer: Not mine; James Patterson's. And if he'd occasionally remember the wolf-part of the Erasers? We'd be all good, man.
Eraser Arc:
Prologue:
Ari's walking down the hall, headed to the cafeteria, when Jason Buchanan taps his shoulder. He turns, half-snarling; white-coats are not civilized company, no matter what Jeb tries to tell him. Jason, who is not...bad, for a white-coat, raises his hands in the universal sign for "no weapons here". Ari relaxes. "Hello, Jason," he says tiredly. "I'm getting lunch. What about you?"
Jason blinks grey eyes. "Sorry, Ari. We have something to show you."
Ari sighs, doesn't say anything, but he's annoyed. The last time he had this meeting, it was "we're giving you guys wings". He rubs a thumb over his wrist, a small gesture that works wonders to calm him down. It's a trick one of the martial-arts teachers taught him (David Carlyle; he'd thought of Ari as a protege); and people generally don't notice it.
Jason winces. "I'm sorry, man. Boss' orders."
Ari nods. "You can't tell me, then?"
"Sorry," Jason says. He's young, and he hasn't been here long; soon he'll realize it's not worth it to be nice to the experiments. Until then, Ari rather likes him.
"Lab C21," Jason is saying, and Ari blinks.
"All right," he says. "Are you coming, or?"
Jason shakes his head. "I'm not high-level enough," he says, smiling wryly. "I don't even know what's going on."
Ari pulls a face, and heads to the lab, Jason pattering along behind him. He knocks on the sparse steel door once, and enters. Jason waves, and stands outside, back to the wall like a guard.
Jeb is standing there, hands buried in the pockets of his lab-coat; Ari bites the inside of his cheek, hard. He has daddy-issues.
Jeb says, "Ari, I'd like you to meet Theta 6943; she's a clone of Maximum Ride who we think may be able to give us a great advantage."
Ari flicks his eyes over to the girl sitting on the gurney who looks, oh god like Max and he doesn't scream, or panic or even bite his lip but he does grip his wrist with enough force to shatter normal bone.
She looks at him with dead eyes—like most of Ari's kin, but oh, Max.
He says, "Hello," in a soft, gentle voice, forcing emotion down. You have to be careful with unsocialized experiments, because they're generally insane, and a clone of Max? Oh yeah.
The girl blinks, twice, short blonde hair glimmering in the artificial light. The wings on her back rustle; she's nervous. Ari doesn't mind; he knows he doesn't look like a pup, and he's happy with that (how else could he protect his Pack?).
Her primaries are cut. He thinks it, and then it hits him—her primaries are cut. She can't fly. His stomach roils, just a little.
She says, blankly, "Hullo."
Jeb says, "Try not to fuck her, Ari. I'll leave you two to bond." And he sweeps out of the room.
Ari's fists are clenched, and he has to physically calm down to get the claws to retract. The girl just stares, blank and empty.
He says, "I'm sorry about that. D'you have a name?" He doesn't really expect an answer; mostly he doesn't get them. The white-coats are far too good at breaking children; it makes him wonder what their pysch profiles say. Not that he wants to know.
So he's surprised, at least a little, when the girl gets down off the gurney, hands at her sides, and says, "No. Do you?"
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