Taffer Notes: We'll be staying in 2017 with this one and do a short recap on some of the notable encounters Kyle had in his time in Harran. If you've read Latchkey Hero, you'll be familiar with them. If not, I hope I've managed to not confuse you too much.

Originally, I was going to continue with Aiden pushing on ahead past the GRE checkpoint, but the chapter would have gotten too long that way. So, uh: I hope you like mopey Kyle. I had a good time writing this.

In which we sit with Kyle Crane as he comes to the conclusion that his life is a raging dumpster fire.

Chapter 7

The Worst Fucking Timeline ever, seriously.

2017

Kyle's immediate world had shrunk to a box of no more than 10 by 10 feet large. The box was slightly curved, with its solid back wider than the fat glass wall at its front, and came equipped with the bare minimum of creature comforts.

There was a bunk with paper-thin sheets and about the worst pillow Kyle had ever had the displeasure of screaming into.

A curtained-off corner with a toilet and shower.

A bookshelf.

An aluminium desk plus chair.

And a dresser for all his identical grey-on-grey T-shirts and slacks, because who needed variety, right?

The floor was depressingly barren. Like his soul, presently. So were the walls, save for the fluorescent light bars worked into it, which liked to glare at him with their bleached, white light. Spaced out between the bars were fat UV bulbs. They'd been off for a while now.

And, yeah, then there was the glass. The thick, bulletproof, smash-resistant, glass.

Kyle had always prided himself in being a man who rolled with the punches. Whether that punch had been thrown by a man, or by a, you know, parachute getting snagged on the way down. He dealt with it. He adapted.

But this?

On his better days, Kyle elected to think of himself as a caged beast. Maybe a wolf. Yeah, a wolf. A cunning, handsome thing that could rip your throat out.

. . .

Kyle grimaced.

On his suboptimal days— so about nine out of ten —all thoughts of wolves and beasts were quickly forgotten and Kyle felt more kinship with a mouse. Or a rat. Something small and mangy and miserable.

Today was one of those nine days.

Sat with his back to the wall and his right shoulder pressed to the glass, he idled his way through the day. No, this wasn't his first time locked up. He'd done stints in jail cells before; it just kinda came with the territory, you see? Be him. Do stupid shit. Or, be him and get locked up by Rais in a rusty cage with Jasmine the Volatile Lady. Or, be him and get snatched up by the GRE and thrown into a godforsaken bioweapons lab.

Or, you know… be with him and have the same shit done to you.

Kyle was aware of the second box behind him. It, too, was slightly curved. 10 by 10 feet large. Had a glass wall. Creature comforts. Etc. And even though he couldn't see it, the awareness of its existence was enough to give him a small resemblance of peace.

It didn't have a wolf in it. Nor a rat or mouse. In it, sat a Paper Tiger.

Not that Kyle thought Fi belonged in a box. Fuck no. But as long as she was there, she was alive. Which was all manners of fucked up, but… yeah.

Kyle folded his right arm up. The back of his hand thumped against the glass. His fingers drummed against the pane.

God. He wanted to look at her so badly. Just. Look. But, alas, all he got was the same old shit view he got every damn day: the equivalent of a straight-to-VHS mad-scientist movie set.

Lab tables occupied the area on the right, complete with all the shit you needed to do Evil Science. Two fridges (not for food) flanked them, along with a bunch of cabinets of general doom. And— as a kind of macabre centre piece —the lab had one of those examination chairs/beds with straps that really liked cutting into your wrists and ankles.

Kyle drummed a bit harder.

He was intimately familiar with those straps.

A pair of GRE douchebags loitered on the left, where they guarded a sealed metal door leading out of the lab. Or, more precisely, they kept an eye on what was in it, with their personal brand of PPE adjusted accordingly. No hazmat suits. No masks. Just some solid body armor and MP5s tucked to their chests. Plus those shitty shock batons Kyle had gotten into heated arguments with during his first few days in his GRE-assigned box.

He'd rolled with those punches, too.

Anyway.

Their names were Dennis and Jakob.

Kyle hated them.

Genuinely. Sincerely.

He exhaled slowly and briefly stopped drumming. Used to be he was the kinda guy who got along with almost everyone. Oh, how the times had changed.

Two more boxes lined the opposite wall from where he and Fi had been, ah, contained. (Kyle shuddered.)

The one facing Fi had a still relatively fresh Viral in it. The thing had banged its head bloody against the glass, desperate to get out not because it wanted freedom, but because it'd wanted to make a move on Dennis and Jakob.

Predictably, Kyle had cheered for it. Which, in hindsight, made him feel like a grade-A jerk. This thing that had smeared its blood all over the glass and near knocked itself senseless had been a perfectly ordinary and perfectly sane man not too long ago.

Now it was a statistic. A— quotes up, unfortunate, quotes down —failure to yield the desired results, because the man had not been compatible.

And Kyle had gotten to witness the entire thing. Front row seats.

The second box was empty. They'd kept a Volatile in there at first. Mhm. A Volatile, and Kyle hadn't been particularly jazzed about getting a good look at it. He'd preferred catching glimpses of them (from a distance), rather than having one stare at him from across the room with its creepy, yellow eyes.

It'd been bulky and— as was the Volatile way —fully naked, with all its leathery grey skin on display as it stretched over cables for muscle. Its chest had been in ruin, with its ribs bent outwards to form a grotesque cradle made of bone. As it'd breathed in deep, the spread ribs had opened and closed - and opened and closed - and so on and so forth, like some weird-ass invitation to come on over so you could get yourself a creepy chest-hug.

Ugh.

Unlike the Viral, the Volatile hadn't slammed itself stupid against the glass. It'd tried breaking it at first, yeah, sure. But then some primitive switch in its head had flipped, told it This ain't giving out, and so the Volatile had reconsidered. It'd ducked it's ugly, bald head, parted its long, split-in-half jaw with one last frustrated yowl, and then it'd gone mostly inert. For the longest time, the thing had just stood there. Watching. Making creepy, throaty chittering noises. Huffing.

At least until the GRE eggheads had begun testing countermeasures on it. That's what they called it, anyway. Shit like UV light exposure. Chemical compounds. Wishful-thinking-cures.

And, Oh God, the screaming.

Kyle had felt sorry for it by the end. And relieved when it had finally died a few days ago.

How many days exactly? Kyle had no fucking idea. No one kept him informed whether it was Monday or Tuesday.

. . .

Monday, probably.

An endless loop of shitty Mondays.

Kyle ground his teeth together and continued drumming.

Unlike his and Fi's box, the other two were really just that. Boxes. They had no amenities. Not even a singular bucket. And, yeah. Turned out zombies did have to shit, who'd have thunk it?

It was another nugget (Seriously, dude?) he could have lived without knowing.

"Hey, Fi," Kyle said, his voice raspy. Too raspy, he decided, and squirmed on the spot, his eyes wandering up to his arm laid out against the glass. Ugly, dark veins sat under his skin.

If they didn't turn his UV lights on soon, he'd be a) in deep shit and b) light up the place like an oversized firefly. Already he felt like his heart was getting too large for his chest and his joints had begun to catch fire.

"I've been thinking," he rasped on. An intercom system carried his words into her box — and out of his into the lab, where Dennis and Jakob stopped trading gossip to throw him a look. "I think that once I get out, I'll put Dennis through a wall. See how far in he goes."

Kyle didn't expect an answer. Fi— already quiet on her default setting —barely talked these days. That's fine. I can pick up the slack. I got this. Totally.

"Or I'll dig his heart out." Kyle gestured to a bland, white coffee cup sitting among the lab equipment, forgotten by a GRE scientist about ten eternities ago. "Remember that thing in Riddick? Death by teacup? Yeah, just like that. Bet I can pull it off."

Dennis— who, all things considered, was the more mild-mannered of the two assholes —shifted uneasily on his feet. His hand had drifted closer to the MP5, but save of glaring at Kyle, there really wasn't much Dennis could do.

Something about not antagonising the Windfall subjects.

The lab rats.

Fi and him.

Kyle's tormented pump for a heart fired all its gunked-up pistons at once. A growl rummaged around in his chest, wanting out, and for just one stupid, agonising beat, Kyle wanted to let it.

He wanted to scream.

Roar.

Tear shit up.

He wanted to dig his way through the wall with nothing but his bare hands.

Instead, he plastered on a wild smile and kicked his voice into cheerful shape. "And Jakob. Oh, Jakob. I'll shove my foot so far up your ass, you'll be able to clip my toenails with your teeth."

Being the less reserved of the two, Jakob flipped him off.

Kyle, his heart still hammering, returned the favor with his middle finger tapping the glass.

That finger stayed up until the lab door gave a sudden beep. A beep that Kyle had come to associate with Bad Times. And dinner. Sometimes both at once. The winger flipped down and his spine stiffened.

The door swung open and an asshole in a white lab coat came through first. The head-asshole of this entire OP: Dr. Stuart Fraser, weasel extraordinaire. The same piece of garbage that'd signed up with Rais back in Harran. And who— after Rais had taken a machete to the chest, courtesy of one fierce little Paper Tiger —had gone crawling back to the GRE like the slimy turd on legs he was.

. . .

Yeah. Kyle didn't like him, either. Who coulda fucking guessed?

Two more shiny coats followed Fraser. Gregorie-something and a Barbara, and, yes, Kyle knew them all by name. There was apparently a shortage of fresh faces willing to conduct experiments on living, breathing, people. But, anyway. They were pushing a— cage? Kyle's brow furrowed and he sat up straight.

His mind's filter (the thing meant to sort the unimportant from the mission-critical) snapped into action. His fist knocked against the glass. "Fi," he said. "Fi, look."

Kyle estimated the cage to measure slightly below five feet in height, forcing the creature inside to hunch in on itself, its back badly bent.

The labcoats stopped wheeling the cage. Fraser resealed the door. And Kyle near squished his face to the glass trying to get a better look.

The creature was thin. Scrawny, really. Leathery skin the colour of dirty ash stretched over corded muscle and malformed, knobby bone. Along its sharp shoulders, the skin had torn open, baring short, dark spikes that protruded out from gnarly scar tissue.

Volatile, had been Kyle's initial thought. And, you know, it made sense. But his filter tripped over one irregularity after the other, disagreeing. There was more to this.

Yes, it had the whole grey skin thing going on.

Yes, it had an elongated, bald head, with the skin over its brows and cheekbones looking like it'd been patched up with paper mache, and, yes, its jaw had been cleft down the middle.

But those jaws weren't hanging open wide. They were pulled together, nearly sealed, with only a slit visible as both halves oscillated in a quick, even rhythm. A, I am hyperventilating kind of pace that matched the jerky rise and fall of the creature's shoulders.

Its eyes weren't exactly yellow, either. They were a sickly, tainted algae green and they were real damn busy cutting frantically around the lab.

Then there were the clothes; a too large t shirt so holy it'd pass right through the pearly gates, and a tattered pair of shorts. Bringing the outfit together was a collar. Of the shock variety.

And then it all kind of just clicked. Kyle recognised it. There was absolutely no way in hell he'd ever shake that thing from his memory; it or the bunker from last year, which had tried its hardest to turn itself into his and Fi's tomb.

Ornery as ever, Kyle had disagreed. They'd lived. Others hadn't.

Focus.

There'd been two of these clever assholes at the bunker with them. The first one— an almost regular Volatile-sized one —had eaten the last of Kyle's bullets back then. And its shortcake friend? Kyle hadn't thought of it much after. Had been too busy staying ahead of Harran trying to kill him to reminiscent about said shortcake.

Until now, anyway.

Small world, huh? How have you been holding up? Eaten any children lately?

"Move it into the cell," said Fraser.

The labcoats, along with the D and J combo, buzzed into action. Inside its tight cage, the small Volatile (Minitile. Jesus Christ, dude. You're losing your mind.) wove frantically on the spot, all the while chittering in a pitiful, low tone. Like a bird getting shaken up in a tin can.

"Fi," Kyle repeated, his throat tight with a budding nervous breakdown.

He felt so fucking untethered. Like someone had chucked him into a vat of misery, where he treaded water day in and out. For a moment, Kyle strained against his rising panic. Was Fi listening at all? Was she even awake? Was he about to relive some of the worst days of his life isolated in his glass box, with no one to—

"I see it," she said, her voice a cracked and timid thing — and yet about the most solid thing in Kyle's entire 10 by 10 feet wide world.

He latched on to it. Fiercely. Her acknowledgement— her being there, being alive —tempered his hammering heart. Though even as the panic ebbed away, grief moved in. The there's a wall between us kind of grief, driven by her sitting down with a soft thud. Back to back. As it ought to be. And yet he couldn't feel her. Couldn't lean into her warmth. Couldn't turn around and wrap his arms around her. Dig his nose into her hair. Breathe her in.

All he could do was close his eyes for a moment and imagine, while the wall at his back pretended to be even taller than Harran's.

His life was a raging dumpster fire, wasn't it?

When Kyle opened his eyes again, one of the labcoats had opened the containment cell's access door. They were pushing the cage into it. It fit perfectly.

"Tell me I'm not losing it. That's one of the freaks from the bunker, isn't it?"

A pause.

"I suppose it could be."

Since they weren't allowed private conversations (the spoiled cherry added on top of the inhumane illegal medical experiment shitcake if anyone ever bothered asking Kyle's opinion about that), their quiet chatter attracted attention.

"Not a freak," Fraser said as he left his lackeys to introduce the creature to its new foreverhome. "A miracle, Crane. Much like you."

The like you came with a gesture between Kyle and Fi.

"Oh, yeah? How about I miracle my ass out of this box and bite your face off?"

. . .

You need new material, bud.

Fraser frowned. A genuine, apologetic frown. On the outside, anyway.

At an average height and with the most unremarkable of faces, Fraser was the type of man who hid his rotten core well. Too well. Kyle had no trouble picturing the weasel throw his arms up in distress, shocked by the accusation that he was, in fact, the bad guy. Bonus points for the disbelief coming on while he was performing a vivisection on his grandma.

"There is no need for more violence." Wrongfully thinking he'd been invited for a chat, Fraser pulled a stool on wiggly wheels out from under a lab table and rolled it up to Kyle's 'window'. Once he'd sat and taken time to adjust his lab coat with its fancy Dr. Fraser, GRE Virology plaque pinned to his chest, he leaned forward, his fingers stapled in front of him. Closer to the glass. Closer to Kyle.

Kyle sneered.

Give him a break. He couldn't help it, okay?

"But let's rewind a little. This—" He gestured across the lab, where the chitters from before had turned to desperate hissing. "—freak. You've met?"

Kyle almost laughed. Almost. "Yeah, we're both really into grouponing. It's a bonding experience."

Fraser's eyes drifted to Zofia.

And Kyle— the shitty groupouning joke forgotten —near threw himself at the glass, with a Don't even fucking look at her, lodged in his throat. It took a lot out of him not to follow through.

If Fraser noticed, he didn't let it show. "This may well be the link I've been missing. That final, elusive detail that would explain your compatibility with Windfall that we can't otherwise replicate. How close was your contact with it? Say, for example, has it bitten you? Or have you been indirectly exposed for a length of time? Saliva, maybe? The latter remains unlikely, but if a high enough viral load remained viable, then, maybe?"

Kyle kept his mouth shut.

Fraser, undeterred by his audience hating his guts in the most visceral way possible, continued spewing bullshit. "Alright. I can see you're not in a sharing mood today, Crane. That's just as well, but I certainly am. Since you're hostile to it, can I assume you didn't know how two of your friends kept the subject hidden away in the— what did you call it? Tower?"

Excuse me? Kyle's brain rattled as something got shook loose in there. Knowing his luck, probably something he sorely needed.

"Hm. That is a no, I presume. You see, an evac team found it when they attempted to extract Downey and the remainder of Taylor's squad. I'm a little light on the details, but Downey's, ah—" Fraser's head wove left and right as he turned the words over his in his mouth. Kyle, for his part, felt his stomach fold into a complex pattern. They'd come for Meghan, Damien, and Russel. And all Kyle could do was hope that Meg and hers had put up a real a good fight. "—reluctance? Yes, her reluctance, led the team to the lower level's of your Tower's unpopulated floors. And there they found two of your friends helping her. Along with what you called a freak. One of my original Windfall subjects."

Kyle's hands balled into fists. Is he for real?

"Don't worry. Your friends—" Fraser smiled. "—got away. Which I am of two minds about, I admit. On one side, their prolonged exposure may mean they've picked up the same compatibility as you. But on the other, Downey and Taylor's men were going to be court marshalled upon extraction, and, I…" He sighed. "Look. Meghan has done a spectacular job looking after my research team when we got started. And if it wasn't for her, I'd be dead."

"Shame," Kyle muttered.

Irritation flashed across Fraser's every-day face. "Show a little sense. Had I been killed and Rais hadn't given me the opportunity to continue my work on Windfall, then neither of you—" He pointed at Fi, then Kyle. "—would have been cured. You'd still be relying on Antizin like most everyone else, and we'd be nowhere near as close to a working vaccine as we are now."

"Yeah, yeah. Bla, fucking, bla. There is no justifying this." Kyle allowed himself a moment of unbridled anger. He snapped his fist against the glass. Hard enough to send a whump vibrating along the entire pane. Fraser flinched. "You're a maniac. Just like Rais was and your asswipe friends who sent me into Harran to fetch your weapons blueprint for the virus. You and your family of shit-stained weasels can all go die in a fire.

"And give me a break, do you actually expect me to believe the Tower kept that thing? How? These things eat people."

Fraser regained his composure. The comment about Kyle wishing him to leap into the nearest open flame he readily ignored. "Ah. Of course. You didn't return to your friends after you assaulted Rais's stronghold."

"No shit." He'd been too busy getting airlifted out of the exclusion zone by a bunch of friendly GRE doctors. You're save now, they'd promised.

Ha. Ha.

Assholes.

"Remarkably, this subject continued to progress far beyond our initial tests." Fraser twisted on the stool to check in on his labcoats. They'd resealed the containment cell.

"Farther still than the Windfall variant Camden helped me develop for Rais," Fraser continued. "And all it took was time. Time enough for the virus to achieve what I couldn't: full neurological recovery without a reliance on UV light."

Kyle caught a glance of the creature sitting in its containment cell. It had withdrawn to a corner at the back, where it'd turned into a small, malformed knot of mottled grey.

"This thing and its buddy tried to kill us," he said, all the while crucially aware that his brain had begun to crack in half. "And they had a fucking blast doing that, okay? Is that sinking it? When we showed up in Old Town they were terrorising Old Town, smashing UV lights at night and wiping out entire safe zones, because why the fuck not. For crying out loud, they locked a pair of bitten toddlers into a room. With their mom tied to a radiator so they could eat her from the ankles up." An unbidden shiver darted down his spine. Hello, trauma number 383. "Neurological recovery my ass."

"Did you know it can speak?"

"What does it fucking matter?" Kyle snapped. And, yeah. He remembered. There wasn't a blackout hard enough to let him forget that.

"The physiological changes it has undergone are a challenge, but it is perfectly capable of following a conversation. It's even introduced itself!"

Kyle grunted and knocked his head back into the wall. He was done. He was so fucking done. Done enough to return to his usual programming, with his arm laid out on the glass and his finger extended, pointed squarely at Fraser.

Across the room, the thing chirred. It was a drawn-out, mournful noise. And at the end of it, with its voice desperately clumsy, it coughed up a word.

"Theo."