Silence – Chapter 4

By MyNameIsCAL

You may find this chapter slightly boring as it is packed with a lot of what happened to Fang. I'm hoping in the future of this story, it will be important, but you know, I always make things up and they become irrelevant later. Haha, alright, enough rambling from me.


---Fang's POV---

I asked them to let Max sit in on my questioning. The agent was hesitant, but Teddy convinced him. And by the way, I didn't have a problem with Teddy. If Max trusted him, then I would too.

"I'm Special Agent Benson," the agent stuck out his hand.

I shook it.

"He doesn't talk," Teddy interrupted.

"He doesn't?" Benson raised an eyebrow. "Alright, then you can write your responses here."

The agent placed a notebook in front of me along with a pen.

"I need you to write your name."

I tried my best to make it look neat. Fang.

"Don't you got a last name? Actually, is that even your real name?"

This was going to end up being harder than I thought.

"A normal name, like John or Joe," he pressed on. The way he talked to me was like I didn't understand or something.

"Agent Benson," Teddy cleared his throat. "Fang here is fully competent and his last name doesn't matter."

Benson was being stubborn though, insisting he needed one for file, ignoring Teddy's protests.

"Alright, then we'll just make up one," Max cut in. She turned to me. "Make up one, whatever your heart desires. A movie star or some person from a far away country."

I stared at the paper for a moment and then wrote, Ride.

Max blushed, looking away with a growing smile.

"Ok, Mr. Ride, let's start with the beginning," Benson began. "How did you get separated from Max?"

We were out to dinner one night, walking the streets of Los Angeles, trying to get back to our hotel when a van pulled up, attacked us, I wrote. We got separated, pulled into the van. Max got away somehow.

"And what happened after that?"

They took us to the "hospital".

"What did they do to you there?"

They ran tests on us. Made us run in mazes, on treadmills, swim through ice cold water. We were like lab rats. And then they started to torture us.

"How?"

I closed my eyes and shook my head.

Benson frowned, but moved on. "And then you and the others you were with, you got split up, right? How did that happen?"

Angel, she can read minds. They wanted to take her away, but her brother, Gazzy, knew that if we let them take her away, we would never see her again. Gazzy fought them and they just took both of them away, just like that. I tried to fight them too and they dragged me off.

"Where did they take you?"

Into some room. It was dark. They beat me up, yelling at me that my entire life before had been a lie, or a hallucination. They told me until I could understand that, until I stopped fighting them, they would keep hurting me. They told me it was the only way. And when I refused to give into that, they tried to make me tell them where Max was and I wasn't going to tell them. I didn't know either.

"Did they do that to the others?"

No. Iggy gave in easily. We fought a lot. I tried to convince him they were tricking us, and I got beaten up for that too. I tried to protect Nudge, and she pretended to go along with what they were telling us. They weren't interested in getting to Nudge either. Most of the time, they left her alone. I protected them by distracting the so called doctors there. After a while, Iggy realized what was going on. He went through these phases of trusting us and untrusting us. Those doctors messed with his head. They never tortured him like they did to me, but they injected him with stuff. He'd have these hallucinations and would go into rages, hurting Nudge and me. I think it's what drove him to set the fire that burned down the hospital.

"Do you think he's okay now?"

He's struggling. Iggy trusts Nudge and she's the best at convincing him to trust things. It's like he's two different people. Right now, he's Iggy, and in a couple of days, he's some mad, angry, raging psycho.

Benson took a moment to think. "And they never injected you or Nudge?"

I told you, I was tortured and Nudge pretended.

"Tell me what they did to you."

I shook my head.

"How is that going to help?" Max interjected.

"Because there are cases where patients get beaten up in mental institutions. Maybe they got more people like Fang hidden in them," Benson replied.

He wanted to know what they did to me? Well I wasn't going to tell him. I was going to show him.

"Fang, what are you doing?" Max looked shocked.

I began to pull off my shirt, revealing scars. Max had missed them. Actually, I had purposely made sure she never saw them. Benson flinched away. If I weren't some mutant-human bird freak, I would have been dead a long time ago. It was either luck or a curse that our bodies could heal us up nicely. The more injuries I suffered, the slower the healing process got.

"I'm sorry," Benson said, taking his notebook back. "I have no more questions. But if you can think of anything else you think that might help our investigation, please tell Teddy."

He hurried out of the room, Teddy at his heels.

I looked away from Max, pulling my shirt back on.

"Fang," she said softly, her hand on my arm.

I was crying now.

She pulled me into a hug. "I didn't think it had been that bad. I'm sorry, Fang."

I shook against her, burying my face into her shoulder.


Thanks for reading.