Chapter Two
It had been three hours since he had been thrown into the tiny solitary-confinement room like a rag doll, and the boy had since gotten the handcuffs off, thanks to a belt he had found in a dumpster on his second day of freedom. He had managed to undo his belt and take the tiny prong from the buckle and use it to pick the lock. Should have known I'd know how to get out of these by now, Mistress, the boy thought sourly. Thirteen escape attempts means that I am perfectly knowledgeable about most of your tricks...I only wish that I'd dared escape sooner...
His wrists were sore and he massaged them gently, biting his lip as he carefully checked the chafed skin for injuries or blood. Finding none, he tucked the handcuffs into the pocket of his gray hoodie and retracted his arms back into his sleeves, closing his eyes and leaning against the wall to think. Solitary confinement was one of the best places to be when living at the Transformation Orphan Institute. Why? It was solitary. No screeching, annoying children clamoring over each other and begging for food. No Mistress squawking orders and demands. No guards to smack him around or shake him back and forth like a dog with a brand new chew-toy. It was quiet, and silence was the boy's one true love.
He went through his former escape plans and executions, tallying up what had worked several times over and what hadn't. Invariably his capture always came down to his age; the police were always suspicious of a teenager living on the streets, or wandering around when other youths were in school. The boy had tried to sneak into schools as well or disappear from eight to three in the afternoon, but every time he had always been caught...Perhaps it was because he had tried to escape so often. The police knew him too well.
A rattle sounded from the other side of the room and the boy looked over to see a hand push a small plastic bowl through the little cat-flap at the bottom of the door. He waited until he heard footsteps retreat down the hall and clump up the stairs before shifting over to the bowl and looking down into it. Turbid, nearly-opaque water dotted with soap bubbles in the ironic shape of a smiley face stared back up at him. Filled with a sudden rage, the boy grabbed the bowl and hurled it at the wall with a violent burst of swearing, sending the dirty dishwater slopping over the grimy off-white paint. How dare people treat him like this! He was not some animal to be kept in minimal condition until the time was right for slaughter! He stood up in rage and punched the door once, twice, three times, ignoring the pain that stabbed up through his knuckles, wrist, and forearm with each ferocious strike. He was angry at everything and everyone in the world; he had been for a long, long time. He hated the Mistress and her guards more than anything—they were at the top of his People I Wish Were Dead list. Next came Weasel (real name long forgotten) and his stupid, simpering face, and the way he trotted after the Mistress like a dog. Following Weasel were the boy's hardhearted, uncaring parents. Their icy hearts would hopefully be warmed by the depth of hell they were sent to when they died! How could they possibly think that dropping their son off on the front steps of the Transformation Orphan Institute was a good idea? Leaving a toddler standing in front of the blood-red double-doors to knock all by himself and stammer out that his parents were gone? The boy punched the wall again, baring his teeth in fury. Gradually his blows became weaker and weaker as anger mingled with deep loneliness, a dark swirling cocktail of miserable wistfulness as he let his forehead rest against the cold wall, now streaked with his own blood.
All he wanted was a friend. His strongest desire was someone to talk to, who would care if he lived or died.
The boy sighed and sat down again, wrapping his knuckles in the too-long sleeves of his gray hoodie, the hems of which were already stained with blood and grime. People wouldn't adopt him and rescue him because he was too angry, but the more he was denied salvation, the angrier he became. It was a vicious cycle, one that he didn't see any possibility of breaking.
He had to break it himself.
The boy bent forward until he was able to flip himself upside down, his legs leaning against the wall, balancing on his hands. He had to become stronger. Stronger, until he could fight off the guards who tried to hurt him, beat away the police who always threw him from the frying pan into the fire. He had to train the weakness away. Nobody was going to save him...nobody except himself.
Two days had passed since the boy had been put into solitary confinement, and by the end of that time, he was so sore that he could hardly walk. He had been using the wall to lean up against as he stood on his hands until his muscles gave out beneath him, trying to make his arms as strong as his legs. Now, however, he hurt so badly that he doubted he could lift a dry sponge.
He heard the heavy footsteps of a guard walking down the hallway and pulled the handcuffs from his pocket, clicking them back into place around his wrists just in time. The door swung open and the boy blinked in surprise; this guard was a woman. He had no idea that the Mistress had accepted anyone other than seven foot tall titanium-boned Neanderthals to do her bidding...
"There's a man here to see you," she said shortly, her voice low and husky. The boy blinked in surprise, at a total loss for words. A man? Here? For him? "Get up."
Slowly, he got to his feet and allowed her to take him by the upper arm (wincing in pain as she did so) and pull him from the room. He had since learned that it was a bad idea to even act like he knew where he was going; some guards viewed that as insubordination, as stupid as it was. "Who is this man?" He asked, too stunned to include a snarky comment.
"Didn't ask," the woman replied, not looking at him. "But oddly enough, he asked for you specifically."
"Wh-what?"
"Don't do anything to tarnish the Mistress's reputation," the woman grunted, "or you'll be sorry." She led him into a room that he recognized with a half-hopeful, half-terrified jolt as where the adoption interviews took place. Maybe the man was from the government, and was coming to take him to some juvenile detention center? Maybe even prison? Wherever it is, it's got to be better than here, the boy thought darkly.
A man in a business suit stood up from behind the plain wooden table as the boy entered, adjusting his rectangular glasses. Behind the frames, his ice-blue eyes flashed with excitement and something else the boy couldn't identify...but he wasn't sure that he liked it. "Hello, young man," the man said smoothly, extending a hand. "It's wonderful to finally meet you."
"Hi," the boy said guardedly. He half-raised his shackled hands and the man lowered his arm back to his side. "Who are you?"
"My name is Leng," the man said, gesturing to the straight-backed wooden chair. The boy perched nervously on the edge, his racing mind not even so much as registering his aching muscles—this was all too foreign, too confusing, and he had to think harder and faster than this strange man. Leng could prove to be a very dangerous threat...or something else entirely.
"And why do you want to see me?" The boy asked.
"It's obvious," came the world's most unwelcome voice, like the edge of a knife screeching along a glass bottle. The Mistress walked in without so much a glance at the boy as she eyed Leng. "So. At last, someone has answered my request to get this boy away from me and my facility. Where will you be taking him? Prison? Some work camp?"
"No, not exactly," Leng said with an uncomfortable little smile. If he was spooked by the Mistress, he didn't show it. "My employer has taken an interest in the boy, and he—"
"I can't imagine why," the Mistress snorted. "This child is a delinquent, a criminal. Maximum behavioral correction is what's needed. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if he spent the rest of his life in jail, serving as someone's dog."
The boy's face burned and he stood up, a red-hot and barbed retort ready on his tongue, but Leng held up a hand. "That's quite enough," he said, voice cold enough to chill flame. "If you'd leave us, please." It wasn't a request. The Mistress looked outraged, and the boy suspected that Leng was the only person who had ever tried to tell her what to do in her own business, but after a moment of the most intense staredown the boy had ever witnessed, she turned and stalked out the door, slamming it behind her.
"You...you made her leave," the boy said, impressed.
"I have practice in dealing with people," Leng said, gesturing for him to sit again.
The boy obeyed. "So...if you're not going to take me to some prison...what do you want with me?" His defenses were raised to the maximum and his mind was working so fast that his head was starting to hurt. Leng didn't look the sort to want to adopt, and he didn't have any of the required paperwork with him...
"My employer wanted me to speak to you," Leng told him. "He's noticed you and has taken a special interest; you should be flattered."
"Flattery would be easier to feel if I knew who your employer was," the boy responded warily. "If you're working for some hotshot CEO looking for a successor to take over his company, I...think you've got the wrong kid."
"On the contrary," Leng said with a smile. "Are you hungry?" He asked unexpectedly.
The boy opened his mouth, then closed it again. His stomach growled loudly, answering for him. Leng smiled and lifted a plain brown briefcase from the floor, clicking the catches open and pulling out a thick white paper bag. "Here," he said, pushing it across the table. "I suspected you might not be getting enough to eat around here. Looks like I was right."
The boy unrolled the top and peered inside to see two burgers wrapped in wax paper. "You've poisoned them."
Leng laughed heartily. "Always on guard, I see! I'd thought as much. No, they're not poisoned. Go on."
Slowly, the boy reached in and picked up one of the sandwiches, turning it over and over in his hands and searching for any sort of puncture wounds that might prove that Leng was lying to him. Not seeing any, he unwrapped the paper, the crisp rustling making him even hungrier. "You promise it's not poisoned?"
"Answer me this, young man," Leng said, folding his hands on top of the table. "What would I gain out of poisoning you? Satisfaction, you think? I don't know you. We've never met, and I have nothing to hold against you, no reason to wish you ill. A personal desire to gain power? My employer doesn't have the most forgiving nature, and things would turn out the worse for me if I brought you to harm." He ticked off the reasons on his long fingers. "You have no possessions that I covet—I doubt you own more than the clothes on your back." He smiled.
"Maybe you're just a psychopath who enjoys killing people. You forgot that one."
"Be sensible, young man. If the Mistress came in and found your body slumped over this table, the police would be hunting me down faster than a hound would an injured deer." Leng's smile faded. "So, think of it the food as a trade. I give you food, you listen to me. Does that sound fair?"
The boy nodded slowly, deciding that Leng's reasoning did make sense. He sunk his teeth into the burger and gave an involuntary moan of pleasure; grease dripped out the other end and even though the boy was pretty sure that none of the ingredients were real, it was still the best thing he had ever tasted.
"Now, the first thing that I want you to understand is that this is an offer," Leng said, watching the boy closely. "You are free to take it or leave it. You were right in thinking that my employer is looking for someone to follow in his footsteps, but not quite in the way you suspected." He allowed himself a small chuckle. "He's not a CEO. He's sort of...his own boss, in layman's terms."
"And what exactly does he do?" The boy asked around a mouthful of food.
"He'll answer you that if you decide to take him up on his offer," Leng said mysteriously.
The boy swallowed before tearing into the burger again. "Why me?"
"He thinks that you have the sort of endurance and...disregard...for rules that he's looking for," Leng replied calmly.
"You're being very vague." The boy gulped down the last of the first burger and ripped into the second.
"I'm afraid I can't fix that," Leng said ruefully, spreading his hands in an apology. "My employer is very particular about what he wants people to know about him."
"Like his name?"
Leng nodded. "You catch on quickly."
"So, let me get this straight." The boy gave the handcuffs a soft, absentminded jerk, the short chain rattling. "You want me to sign myself over as some form of...apprentice...to a man that I've never met, whose plans you can't tell me, and whose name I don't even know."
Leng gave him a sheepish smile and adjusted his glasses. "It's up to you."
"Of course it is," the boy said. "I'm through letting the Mistress decide my fate for me." He turned to the guard, who had stood silently in the corner all this time. "I'd like to go back to solitary, please." He looked back at Leng. "Is there some way that I can contact you with my decision?" He lowered his voice to a theatrical whisper. "I don't want you to have to come back to this hellhole more than you have to."
Leng chuckled and reached into the pocket of his beige jacket. "Here," he said, handing the boy a small card with a phone number already written on it with a sloping hand. The boy read the number as many times as he could in the time it took the guard to cross the room, put a hand on his shoulder and grip it tightly, memorizing it. "Is there a time frame I have to make my decision in?" He looked up at Leng, who shook his head.
"The sooner the better, young man, but no, I wasn't informed about any sort of time limit." He gave the boy a short bow. "It was very nice to meet you."
"Yeah. Thanks for the food."
Leng smiled again and nodded to the guard before walking out of the room and down the hall. The boy listened to the sound of his shoes on the floor, thinking that maybe, just maybe, the powers that be had taken pity on him and had indeed offered him a shot at salvation.
