Chapter 4
What Khan sees before him is bewildering. She was dead; he knows she was—he was there for crying out loud! He saw that blast hit her square in the chest and the raging flood that swept her away. Even if she had managed to survive the blast, the water would have suffocated her for sure!
This was impossible.
And yet, there she was: laughing, smiling, and cooking something (fish?) over hot rocks. She was very much alive—soaking wet, but alive just the same. Two young boys were with her and the three of them ate hungrily once their meager meal of fish and berries were completed.
"When do you think things will get better again?" One of the boys— pale white skin, freckles, piercing blue eyes, pointed ears, and sharply slanted eyebrows—asks.
"I don't know." The girl says with a simple yet sad shrug of her shoulder and her sad blue-green eyes stare blankly into the dancing flames.
Khan knew that look—the look of loss and complete hopelessness. He saw it every time he looked in the mirror or when he thought of his beloved family, his frozen and slumbering crew…and he can almost hear the thought racing through her brain: maybe it never will.
He shoulders his pack and narrows his eyes at the cave as he tries to decide whether or not to risk going over there to ask if he could share their campsite. In all fairness, not even he wanted to slaughter a group of children, let alone kids who were clearly as hated and unwanted as he was: orphans outcast by society.
On one hand, he'd have a warm meal and a somewhat safe place to lay his head…one the other, it may be better to just lie low. Every person he met was a potential enemy and would turn him to Sector 31 in a heartbeat, especially if their loved one's lives were threatened.
But still.
They may have information that he could use.
…
I yawn and sit back, my ears catching the slight rustle of leaves. What is that? I sit up and look around. Are they here?
"Eli! Zero! Back of the cave, now!" I grip my knives tightly and tense as I wait for an attack from the Cataclysms.
Instead, a man walks calmly out of the underbrush, his hands raised to his shoulders in a sign of surrender but it seems false somehow. Whoever this man was, he was dangerous and would kill us without a second's hesitation…and something told me that my knife would not be very effective against him.
"Hello." I say and he smiles slightly in amusement. His smile looks more like a predatory gleam than a true smile but I shrug it off mentally. "Are you lost?" I try again and I can feel fear starting to slip in.
"No." He says carefully. "I was wondering if you would be so kind as to allow me share in your campsite." It's more of an order than a question and a silent threat lies just beneath the surface of his words. Allow him to stay for a temporary amount of time, or face his wrath…but just what is he going to do while he is here? Is he here to kill us?
Did the White Coats send him?
Are they lurking just out of sight, ready to race in and kill all of us? Is he acting as a decoy?
I swallow again, my throat suddenly dry.
"Will you harm anyone who also resides in this location or steal any of our supplies?" I ask as I try to buy time.
"No." He tilts his head slightly to side at a calculated angle as he studies me. He was the man from earlier—the one that killed all those men. "I have no reason to harm you or your companions nor am I in need of what meager supplies you do have."
He's three feet away now, his hands no longer up.
"What is your name?" I ask.
"Khan and yours?"
…
She seems afraid and she had every right to be. Fools looked at him and assumed automatically that he was harmless. His smile would disarm them and they would immediately let their guard down—easy prey. But this child…she wasn't even twelve years old and she saw through his mask.
Strange.
Very strange.
…
"Well?"
He is not even two feet away now. If I wanted to, I could reach out and touch him.
"Sure, you can stay." I say and I turn my back to him and walk calmly away. "It's okay guys, come on out! We have a visitor!" His eyebrows had scrunched together slightly when I changed the topic, allowing my name to remain a mystery, but really, I had offered that he share our cave: I said nothing about personal information.
Two hours pass and we are all still alive.
Khan ate the remaining fish and berries. Part of me boils inside to think of this new comer devouring our feast. I haven't eaten in days and worked about an hour to scrounge up this meal, and he just waltzes in and crams his mouth full—the jerk. I hope he chokes on it and gets indigestion.
But I'd rather him eat our food than snap our necks so…yeah.
It's win-win...I guess.
…
"Do you have Cataclysms where you are from?" The girl asks him suddenly. By now the two boys are fast asleep in their sleeping bags.
"Yes. On Earth we have many cataclysms: tornadoes, hurricanes, floods…"
"No, I mean the monsters."
"Monsters?" He tilts his head slightly to side and smiles coldly, "Like the 'boogeyman'? Or the beast that lurks in a child's closet the moment the lights flicker off?" A contemptuous laugh escapes his throat. "No. We do not."
"What about the ones that rip entire villages apart and slaughter everything? The ones with huge claws and even bigger fangs?" She slowly pulls her knife out of its sheath and Khan tenses slightly in preparation. And here comes the part where she attacks him and he kills her. But she never lunges. Instead, she raises the blade slightly so that it glints in the firelight.
"See? It's a tooth. One of their fangs." It was about six inches long, gleaming white, and sharpened expertly…but yes. It was definitely an animal tooth.
"No. We do not have those." Khan answer evenly and he watches her as she returns her knife back to its sheathe.
"They're why nobody goes into the forest anymore. During the night, the trees are their domain. The White Coats designed them to kill. They were trying to create the perfect murder weapon and this is what they dreamed up; huge feline creatures with advanced stamina, strength, intelligence, and healing abilities. Some people claim that they were created as a direct consequence of the Eugenic Wars—crazy, right?"
He gives a single nod. "But why create them?"
"To hunt Augments; what else? But, like the Augment Project, they also failed. The Augments were created to bring peace and they brought war and destruction. The Cataclysms were made to protect the villagers from the Augments and whoever else would attack us…and no one ever dreamt that they would turn on us."
"But they did."
"Yes." She looks away from him and stares back into the fire. "Yes they did."