Interval 7 – Caveat emptor
"I'm so lonely…"
He pulled the thin blanket to him with his clammy fingers, tucked it firmly under his chin and shivered. High above, the dying light played with the flicking branches of the old willow tree, tossing fiery shadows across the ceiling. It almost looked as though flames were licking at the blue walls of his room, lapping at the bare, meshed light bulb that, within two minutes of the departure of light from the unattainable windows, would glow a steady, cold white. A sentinel against the night and its monsters.
He turned on his side, dragging his blanket and his body backwards until he felt the wall's biting cold seep through the blanket. He blinked his green eyes, gaze unwaveringly set on the closed door, a gaze that longed for company, for someone to watch over him as he lay there so he could close his eyes and sleep.
"Please… listen…"
He shut his eyes, clenched them tightly shut in a silent reply: no. He had been told not to listen to her voice. Mr. Patterson had sat down with him one afternoon, after supper, and told him none of it was real. He remembered Mr. Patterson's face, taught with fatigue, smiling a tired smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"It isn't real," Mr. Patterson had said, he remembered quite clearly. "She's not real."
Mr. Patterson wanted so much to believe his words had cured his young ward's fears that the boy almost pitied him. That was when the unsmiling man had approached, and Mr. Patterson had followed him to the door. As the boy sat with his feet dangling over the edge of his bed, he had heard them confer in a near-silence, eyeing him.
Then, he had had the impression. He saw hair, long and dark, the slender curve of a pale face, and eyes, the eyes that seemed wells of impenetrable darkness.
"So cold… so cold…"
Yes indeed, it was cold. A thin, seeping wind crawled through the gap left between the locked door and the threshold. He set his eyes on the grid-covered window, watching the shadows that played behind the glass.
-
She shivered. The corridor, already cold and desolate, clothed in shimmering blue scales, offered no resistance to the wind that whistled through a gaping window. It blew through her matted black hair, causing her to cross her arms across her abdomen, almost unconscious of her gesture. The technician tried to cover her with a blue blanket, but she shrugged away.
Standing next to her, the doctor's lips tightened and became a thin, discolored line.
"Remember, you are not to physically touch him in any way. You can talk to him, but keep it short. You've got five minutes. Have I made myself clear?"
Watching the distress emanating from Wade, she wanted to laugh in his face. How protective he was, of the same child that he wouldn't ever hold, except to deliver him to an inhumane life, the same life he had subjected her to. He had never cared about another living thing. He was obsessed with science; he had been destined to a life of advancing humanity's technological prowess. She contented herself with a wolfish grin, and a slow nod. Wade didn't press the matter.
He cleared his throat. "Open the door."
The technician bent over the keypad. He punched in a series of numbers that she was unable to commit to memory and a calm beep issued from the lock. The red diode went out, the small green diode came on, and the door was pulled open.
In that moment, nothing existed. Before her was her son, and that was all.
The next thing she knew, she was in front of him, holding the boy tenderly to her cold breast, laying dry, scaly fingers on his skin. He was beautiful, he was perfect… and he was freezing. Insensitive to her own discomfort, Alma tucked him away from the biting wind, protecting him from everything ugly and evil in the world.
"Baby… baby…" she murmured, tears of joy sliding down her gray face. "I'll never let you go. They can't take you away from me. You'll be alright, mommy's here. No one can hurt you."
"Guards!" She had barely heard Harlan's cry when two men bore down upon her.
The hand that lay itself on her arm was like the application of a red hot poker on her skin. Alma's mouth distended in a shriek, hardly enough to dissuade the men who quickly hauled her away from the bed. Wade and the technician emerged through the doorway and rushed to the boy to lead him outside.
Alma's eyes widened. "No! No! Not my baby! Give me back my baby! You bastards, let me go!"
When her cries fell on deaf ears, she thrashed about, twisting her spine unnaturally to sink her teeth into one of the guards' neck. The man cried out, letting go, and her left arm came loose. Her hand instantly snaked down to the guard's belt, where she loosed the gun from its holster. Cocking back the hammer before anyone could react, she fired point-blank three consecutive times at the other man, who fell back dead without having been able to muster a scream.
The wounded guard, lying on the floor, tried to use his radio to call for help. Alma caught sight of his movement and unloaded the magazine into his head.
"Hurry, let's go!"
Alma's hair whipped her face. As she turned, she caught sight of her son, being towed away down the corridor. With a cry, she skidded on the slick blood out into the hallway and aimed the pistol at the receding forms of the kidnappers, over the head of the boy, with both hands. Wade caught her eye and flinched. Alma's fingers tightened over the trigger. The hammer struck blindly like a snake in darkness and halted in its movement, producing a dry, clicking sound.
The young woman stood still and let her hand go limp, dropping the gun with a clatter. Her eyes clouded over and the wind, suddenly strong, whistled through the corridor. She concentrated her will on Wade, but it was the technician who tripped up and fell heavily to the floor. Without a moment of hesitation, Wade charged through the open doorway, dragging the boy behind him, and pushed the door shut with a hiss. The lock's diode shone red.
Her fists pounded the door; the lights flickered overhead; her throat shrieked his name over and over again. Wade glanced at her frostily through the meshed window, no longer holding the boy's hand. His eyes searched the room, his young charge's playroom, if it could be considered a playroom – it contained nothing more than a table and a few chairs. The only other exit, besides the elevator, was a door that led back into the main building. He couldn't risk getting stuck in the relatively unreliable elevator. Wade ran toward the door, while he called for reinforcements from security downstairs.
Alma looked down at the technician, who stared back at her with wide, frightened eyes.
"Alma… please, I'm sorry." He recoiled, expecting the worst.
Alma was confused for a moment; her eyes narrowed as she understood.
"How could you?" she shrieked. "How could you let him do this?" She was angry but she couldn't let this get in the way, so she roughly hauled him upright and shoved him toward the keypad.
"Open it!"
Alma burst into the room, but not before the elevator bell dinged. She hadn't seen the display's number changing from her vantage point in the hallway. She twisted, eyeing Wade with fury in her dark eyes. She tried to run, to reach her son, to eradicate Wade.
The doors opened and she wasn't ready for what happened next.
Instantly, three guards leapt forward and restrained her and a fourth man, clad in a white lab coat, seized her arm and drove a needle into her vein. Feeling the liquid being injected into her bloodstream, Alma responded by biting him while he bent over his hypodermic needle.
Alma spat out the blood and flesh, panting. The man staggered back, screaming, holding a hand to his bloodied face, but the deed was done. She struggled against the effects of the syringe, a thin trickle of bloody saliva dribbling down her chin into her clothes, an incoherent cry of impotent rage shaking her thin frame. The guards clung to her as drowning men to fragile stalks of grass on a riverbank, frozen between duty and apprehensive inaction.
As her eyes began to close, she was aware of her son's gaze on her. Then, she blacked out.
When Alma was taken out, unconscious, and the scientist led to a hospital, on the pretext of an animal bite, Harlan Wade risked a sigh. He watched Patterson get up from where he was cowering in a corner.
"That was hell," Wade remarked. "Remind me never to risk that again. Besides, I'm sure they were just empty threats. She would never hurt her own child." He paused, pensive. "Do you think the drug will affect the fetus?"
Patterson stared at him for a moment. Then, he shrugged, shaken, and walked away. Wade looked around him for a second, one eyebrow raised, then followed Patterson out of the room, saying, "Come on, I'll buy you coffee, how about that?"
During all this time, the boy sat in a nearby chair, a light spattering of blood on his face, watching the blood-stained floor with a detached, unblinking curiosity. Eventually, a smiling, young woman entered, administered an injection and wiped the blood off his cheek. She carried him to his room and laid him gently on his bed. The boy fell into a sound, dreamless sleep. Only then was the blood was cleaned away and the bodies removed from the building.
-
Author's note: support and suggestions would be very much appreciated. If you didn't understand why Alma's mad against Patterson, I'll clear it up for you very soon.