The room was green.
There was a small buffet, though, which was nice. I didn't feel hungry, but grabbed a bagel anyway. It smelled good. So did the coffee, but I didn't drink it. The scent was always better than the taste.
I could also smell people nearby. The air was filled with traces of bodies, sweat, anticipation. Murmurs, shuffling, all around the room, behind the two doors, one to my left, another to my right. There was a couch, which I eyed but didn't sit on. My scales were too sharp, my tail awkward. Faint speech came from the television screen mounted next to one of the doors, adorned with a red light and a stenciled 'Entrance 3' sign.
That was a familiar voice. The Daily Show? Nice.
The opposite door opened with a creak. A harried-looking young woman with a headset and a clipboard stuck her head through, flashed me a tired smile. "Mister Apex? You're on in sixty. Right through that door when you hear your cue."
I stared at her for a long moment. She met my gaze, although I wasn't seeing her through my eyes, anymore. I saw her from different angles, a composite, my view shifting slightly with the movement of my scales. I watched her as she coughed into her fist, glancing at the screen behind me.
"I can stay and give you your cue, if you'd like," she offered. When I tilted my head at her she stepped inside, glanced at her watch, at the clipboard. She didn't even look at the food, or the couch. Very businesslike.
"You'll do fine," she reassured me, giving me another tired grin, although I wasn't sure why. "If you get nervous, just read from the prompter. It's all softball questions anyway, pre-approved with your manager."
I couldn't quite follow what she was talking about, but I found a bagel speared on one of my claws. Popped it in my mouth, swallowed it whole. Whiplike tongues pulled it deeper into my throat when it threatened to get stuck. It didn't make me feel any more or less hungry.
She shuffled closer, then edged around me to the opposite door. Not because she seemed frightened of me; more like she was respecting my personal space. Polite of her. One of her hands rested on the door handle. The talking on the screen, through the walls, grew a little louder. An announcement of some sort, perhaps. She watched the screen, and when the applause started she pulled open the door, gesturing for me to go on with one last encouraging smile.
I squeezed through, past her, ducking to fit. It was dark at first, but the sound of the crowd cheering was a cacophony that drew me forward, towards the lights, along the arrows made of reflective tape on the ground. And then…
I froze.
Holy shit, that's Jon Stewart. Young, but with flecks of gray in his five o'clock shadow, at his temples. A soft smile, walking towards me across the stage. The studio stage. There was the desk, and the backdrop, and the audience on risers, with electronic equipment full of sharp ozone and winding rivers of cables and gaffer tape. I saw myself on vanity monitors, eight feet of stunned, awkward monster.
Jon approached, reaching out a hand, half handshake, half welcoming gesture, leaving me the option. His smile was warm, friendly, undeniably familiar in a way that made my heart ache. Grey suit, white shirt, grey tie, and the faint smell of deodorant and hairspray.
I shook his hand carefully, dwarfing it within my long-clawed grasp, and his grin widened, the crowd's roar—fading slightly at my pause—redoubled as he gave it a firm shake and led me back to the desk.
There wasn't a chair for me there. It had been replaced with a large, overstuffed bean-bag. Thick, tear-resistant cloth. Also familiar, but from a very different place. Must have come with me. I curled up on it, letting my upper body sit somewhat upright, propped up on my knuckles to match Jon, who sat behind that long, polished-wooden surface, extra screens half-hidden within that only we could see.
"Nice to see you! Thank you for being here," he began.
"Thank you," I rumbled out. I could smell a sudden, faint tang of fear from the crowd at my voice, but nothing from Jon. There was a flicker of movement that caught my eye—caught my vision, and I focused on it, seeing words appear, white on black. It's a pleasure to be here, Jon, it said.
"I love your show," I said, nearly getting through the words without mangling the 'v' sound. Ventriloquism, when you were your own dummy. I felt a small buzz on a low-slung pouch I'd forgotten about; my tablet. A reminder that I could use its voice instead of my own. I didn't want to. "I used to watch it every night. Big fan." Those words were harder, but he just leaned back a little, modest, pleased.
"Quite possibly my biggest fan," he joked, gesturing at the height difference between us. "But no, that's pretty incredible coming from someone who packs concerts with tens of thousands." He made a quip about attending my latest show, how I might have seen him; how he was the one with the horns, in the back. Several loud shouts stood among the laughter from the crowd, a few folks bearing their own horned hats, plastic headbands. Fans.
I took in the scene, reveling in the new perspective. Sitting next to that desk, facing the cameras, seeing all of the little details of the studio, the lights, the smells, the bustle of activity normally just out of sight. Muffled voices echoed through multiple headsets, coordinating all of the cogs and gears of the production. Keeping the show moving.
He returned to the scripted questions. I read the prepared responses from the teleprompter once or twice, when I was too awestruck to come up with something on my own.
"Your look is always changing. The eyes, they're new?"
I tasted copper. Heard screams, increasingly desperate demands turning to wordless screams of pain. Flashes of a woman, flickering static, hallucinations that were and weren't at the same time. Only memories, both faded and vivid, more impressions than scenes. There were words, white on black, paused while I hesitated.
"I can't see through them, anymore." I tapped one large claw on a red pit where my left eye had been, touching thick skin, hearing squeamish sounds from the audience. Words bubbled up from within, opposed by the deflections transcribed for me to read. "The Fallen. In... Texas."
Jon leaned in, curious. He had to know we had gone off script, but it seemed he wanted to know, to share this with the world. "The Endbringer cult."
I nodded. "One of them could control me, with eye contact. Another would make me see things. Other powers. All dangerous. So I see through my skin." I paused. Blood and darkness. "They're dead now."
He didn't ask if I killed them. Maybe it was the cameras. I wondered if this would be cut.
I decided I didn't care.
The crowd was eating it up. Jon seemed engaged, interested—but then again, that was just the kind of man he was. I tried not to let it go to my head, but I said things as they came to mind. Let the editors earn their keep. We talked about my body a little bit longer, more about the difficulties in adjusting than the particulars—he compared it to the sounds his knees made when he first got up in the morning, aches that weren't there in his twenties and thirties. So relatable. Made me feel less like a monster. More like a person. I needed it. Saw the teleprompter flicker and shuffle words around, trying to keep my words professional, rehearsed. I defied it.
"You know what it is too I think that, the fans, their insatiability, once people get a hold of it… they don't realize the process, like—it takes a long time, and a lot of energy to write your music, those complex operatic pieces, very vivid, very explicit, and I imagine that's difficult," Jon said, gesturing with a pen in his hand, nearly bumping the dark blue mug on his desk. A small grin. "Or do you just have a team of little mini-Apexes that are just in the back room"—he mimed bending over a keyboard, typing furiously, little growling sounds—"just pounding away?"
I chuckled, the sound like rocks tumbling in my gut. "Doesn't everybody?"
"Well," he said, glancing sidelong at the camera, deadpan. "We call them indentured servants." The audience laughed.
"They're called interns, I think." More laughter.
"That's right, they're called—but your lyrics, your songs, they're very evocative, full of imagery and—where do you come up with all that? Gold Mourning. Where does it all come from?"
The prompter was blank. Not a prepared question.
I looked down, at myself. Claws as long as a normal human's hands, carefully folded so as not to scratch the floor, weight pressed on the knuckles to keep my torso upright. A chest of thick cords of muscle, thick, twisted like snakes beneath shifting scales. A tail, less controlled, spikes scraping furrows into the dark tile as it curled back and forth slowly. No answers there, in this monstrous shell. Just a hunger, sated but not extinguished, and a need; wordless, directionless, but always there in the back of my mind.
Then white text on a black screen. I still dream, Jon.
I spoke the words, tasting them as I did the sweat and excitement in the air, felt my tongues twist around the sounds. The next sentence I said in unison with the prompter.
"Despite everything else I've lost of my humanity, I still dream."
The interview wrapped up shortly after that, passing by in a blur. We had gone long over time, but Jon assured me that there would be an edited version for showtime, and an extended release of the whole thing for the fans.
The crew was displeased with me. One man had his arms crossed, one polished shoe lightly tapping the tile floor… Kurt. Someone else, a woman furiously typing into a phone, not making eye contact but radiating irritation. Only one person didn't seem to mind. Large, bald, his bulk overflowing the edges of the custom electric wheelchair. His arms were stubs, newly grown, unfinished. He looked up at me with faint concern.
"You are remembering, Apex."
I nodded, my throat tight. "Yes."
"Do you want—""Yes."