One saw metal poles flash by as she fell, but they were just too far to for her to reach. Wasn't that the story of her life: help and comfort and love dangled before her, close enough to brush past sometimes but never to grasp? And the people just stood watching her fall. No one bothered to catch her. Nobody.
Darkness swooped in on her then, and she spent a moment shakily breathing, pressed against a chest of black leather. She could hear the man's heartbeat, frantic yet slowing, as though some terrifying thing had come but was gone now. She looked up—down, actually, because they were hanging upside-down—at Two. "I thought you weren't going to catch me," she whispered.
"That makes both of us," he replied and swung them up to the pole he had been hanging from by his knees. He glanced up at the plank One had fallen from. Eight was there, staring back. Then the brute turned away and began creeping down the narrow walkway. For a man of his size, it was more of a tightrope. It would have been faster for him to keep climbing through the tangle of petal poles. And he would have, if One hadn't been winning.
Two studied the path that would lead him to the finish. Eight was going slow, and the rest were still far behind. He would win. If it was just him alone. He sighed, knowing he would regret his next words. "One, get on my back."
She looked at him oddly. "When you said you had a soft spot for short femmes…"
"Why are you arguing with the man who's getting you across that finish line?"
She clamped her mouth shut and clambered on. He leapt to a different pole and discovered she had quite the chokehold—and that piggyback drivers were worse than their backseat compatriots.
"I think you should go left—go left—goddamn it, Two, I said to go left!"
"Lady, if you want to take another swan dive into the bottomless pit, keep talking!
Above them, Eight muttered, "They're like a frickin' married couple."
XXX
Eventually, they came to the cliff that the winner's platform topped. There was a vertical pole that led straight up to it. Two groaned. From a distance he had misjudged just how high he would have to climb. He wondered if it was too late to shrug off One and go it alone. "Well, get going," she chirped.
XXX
"This is taking too long!" One cried halfway into it, exasperated.
Two grunted, "Lady, do you watch old movies?"
She slumped down. "Yes."
"…The Princess Bride?"
"I've seen it."
"The part where the poor giant climbs up the cliff with an...nnghh…incredibly annoying midget on his back?"
She looked off into space for a minute. "I'm not annoying," she said at last.
"Oh, really?" The best sarcasm was the type that sounded almost sincere. With great relief, he saw they were only a few feet below the winner's platform. He couldn't wait to get Miss Monkey off his back.
"A frickin' married couple," a third voice muttered.
Two froze a second before dashing up the remaining length of the pole. On the platform, leaning against the far wall was Eight.
"Shit! Now what?" One spat as Two clambered onto the platform and dumped her to the ground like a troublesome backpack.
He shrugged and rolled out his shoulders. "Wait to see how many people they take. And throw you off the side if you say another word."
"If they only take two of us, I'm arguing that we tied for second," she warned, then scrambled away from the edge of the platform like her life depended on it. His mood was black enough that it did.
Two spent a moment strangling some imaginary midget's neck before he turned to see how the remaining racers were faring. The three in front were dead even, each desperate to break ahead and claim fourth. Behind them, another four were tackling their obstacles slowly. They were finishing the race just to finish it. Back at the starting platform, two people waited, having given up on the race entirely. The man had turned back when it became apparent he wouldn't win. As for the sexless wraith—Two believed it was Three—that one hadn't left the platform at all. Perhaps the poor thing was terrified of heights.
He frowned and started arranging his fingers. Three plus three was six. Add another four, and it was ten. Then there were the two at the starting platform, so there were twelve people. But they had numbered thirteen. With trepidation, he approached the platform's edge and peered over the side and the terrible drop. Then he started laughing hysterically.
"What's so funny?" One asked. She approached the edge cautiously, and then looked down. Suspended in the air below the monkey bars from Hell was a dazed woman in white silk. "A safety net," she groan and slapped a hand over her face.
Between laughs, Two managed to blurt, "I knew I should have let you fall!" whereupon she kicked him and huffed away.
And then she called back, "Thanks for catching me anyway."
Eight muttered his frickin' married couple line again. They were both ready to strangle him for that.
XXX
Those that were coming eventually showed up, and they stood around anxiously waiting for their host's verdict. Only Eight managed some measure of calm. Unless the point of the race was to check for sportsmanlike conduct, he would win his Haven.
The door slid open. Another elevator. The cultured voice reverberated through the cavern once more. "If Mr. Eight would enter."
He stood, victorious, and strolled into the elevator. One's shoulders slumped.
A woman's voice cut in on the speaker. "Miss One and Mr. Two are also welcome."
One broke into a happy dance. Two stared at her a while before dragging her off to the elevator. …Where she continued to happy dance—straight up thirty-two floors, if the elevator number panel was to be trusted.
She was still shimmying like a deranged, ninja mask Snoopy when the elevator door slid open and Two and Eight's eyes went wide. She danced on. Finally, she turned around in the course of her dance, and stopped dead. Standing before her was a seven-foot, feral, fanged, ferocious (another F-word was repeating itself in her head) White Siberian Tiger.
"Welcome," he said in their host's same sophisticated voice.
He talked, stood on two feet, and—One noticed—wasn't wearing pants.
'God. I'm fucked.' That was her thought. Whether she said it aloud she didn't know, because she fainted before she could ask.
XXX
Two sighed and threw up his hands before kneeling to take One in his arms. He seemed to be carrying her an awful lot tonight. Straightening, he studied their host. He was a Splice, and Two suspected that, under all that white fur, he was a black man. Maybe it was his voice. It had a deep, commanding quality that reminded him of Darth Vader without the emphysema. The tiger man's one word greeting had sent chills down Two's spine, though the claws and teeth certainly did that too.
"If you would follow me, Gentleman," the cat commanded in a way that sounded like a request. The spine chills thing happened again, and Two followed without a word.
XXX
The hallway was similar to the one he had shadowed One through earlier that night, only this time the way was cheerily lit and the…person he followed ambled purposefully towards a certain door. The inside of that door turned out to be another short hall, and then they came to a large room, one that was surprisingly well furnished.
Two deposited One on a plush couch before catching up with Eight and their host, who stood before an odd, circular table. Strapped to it in a ring around the edge, needles out, were dozens of syringes. As always, Two was reminded of orange soda as he looked at the Splice serum. That marmalade color filled every other syringe. He had no cola comparison for the sparkling blue green liquid within the others, though.
Their host was about to speak, he realized, and turned to him to pay better attention. "I am known as Kahn," the tiger began. "I represent a society that, for a variety of reasons, chooses to live beyond the reach of…normal society. And now, you are part of this society, often called the Pride."
Translated, he had said that he was the head of an illegal Splicing cult, and if they wanted to live, they had better behave. On the plus side, if they were good, he'd keep the feds off their backs.
Two shrugged. Fair enough.
Eight gestured to the array upon the table. "This is a right of passage then?"
"A means of protecting your identities," Kahn assured them. "We use a variation of Spicing technology. One to One, my fellows have taken to calling it. Whereas the Splices that good Dr. Curvier originally created were designed so a universal anti-Splice could undo any modification, with these…" he laid his clawed hand upon two syringes bunched together—one orange, one blue green "…a Splice may only be reversed by administering its antigen counterpart. Now our Upside identities are even protected from DNA tests."
A familiar wail rose from the street then, and Two rushed to the window where flashing blue and red lights filtered in. "Feds," he said.
Kahn held up a staying hand. "Tonight the police are only trash collectors. Watch and you'll see."
Sirens blaring, the cops surrounded the area before the front door. A minute later, a stream of people came out that door, hands raised. Then a second wave, this time police followed them out, weapons raised. Their captives were quickly cuffed, sorted by gender, and stuffed into paddy wagons, which made off with all haste. In a minute, the street lay abandoned.
"So it was a bust," Two murmured.
On the opposite side of the room, Eight stood looking out of another window. Perhaps he had meant to climb out of it, but now he only watched the scene below. "The other ten are leaving now," he commented. "Without masks. And those are quite the expensive cars parked across the street. So it seems this race was all for the entertainment of the painfully rich." He turned around and leaned against the wall, eying Kahn. "But the police arrested the rest, and we're still up here. Just how many layers are there in this game of yours?"
The tiger smiled. "Enough. The police are suitably distracted, and the race money provides us with enough funds that we don't need to steal. That would put us on police radar, and I assume you wouldn't want that.
"No, I don't." They all turned to look at One, who sat in the couch staring back. She thought aloud, "So you run these races and let the rich gamble away their money to you. Because the feds would get suspicious, you arrange busts and let them round up the idiots who are stupid enough to go through the front door. And your cult will put up with us three because we're your cash crop. Everybody's happy." She stood and walked to the table. "So how does this work? Genetic roulette?" She grasped the table and twisted. It did, if fact, spin about madly before slowly coming to a stop.
Kahn broke into a lazy smile. "That is one way to put it. In some ways, the Pride is its own city, and all of its citizens abide by certain rules. One is that everyone Splices. Another is that your Splice, like your original genetics, is unique and completely out of your own control."
She shrugged and undid the leather strap for a Splice, anti-Splice pair. "This one," she said. "Now what?"
A clawed hand gestured to a mirror set in the corner. "Try it on for size. The orange one."
It was hard to tell because of the ninja mask, but she seemed to blanch when she looked at the tiny, glinting needle. Someone suggested places where she could jab it, she didn't know who. In the end, it didn't matter, because her bones crunching and fur sprouting from every inch of her skin hurt a Hell of lot more than any needle. Then it was over, and she was left panting as the pain faded. With trepidation, she reached for her mask. There were now two conspicuous points on top of her head. They itched, and she was itching to know if they were what she thought they were. She lifted the mask, but she never made it to the two points on top. She only made it to her eyes, golden orbs with dark staring moons within them that shrank into vertical slits as she gasped with shock. Her mouth popped open, and the glint of milky white fangs winked at her in the light. Her skin was now a gray, silky carpet, which she found herself touching in wonder.
"It suits you," Kahn said from behind her, and she turned to stare, pivoting on the balls of her feet. It felt more natural that way.
"I'm a cat too," she finally managed.
"Oh, did I forget to mention?" he smiled. "We all are felines in the Pride. I hope none of you is a dog person." From him, that sounded like the most vulgar of slurs.
If anyone was, they didn't mention it. Two came forward and unstrapped a Splice set at random, commenting, "Guess I'm next." A minute later, he fingered his new ears while One laughed her cute ass off. They were very long and thin with curious looking tufts on the end. Lynx DNA, Kahn told him. It made him look absolutely ridiculous, like he was wearing pigtails. "Don't tell me I'm stuck with these!" he complained.
"Just be grateful you didn't pick out Persian DNA," Kahn pointed out. "Foot-long fur everywhere on your body is no picnic. It's two feet in some places, I've been told."
"I suppose I can tie them back," Two sighed, trying out the look using his hand for a hair tie. It was a definite improvement over the Pippi Longstockings look.
XXX
"Interesting," was what Kahn said of Eight's new look when he removed his helmet after shooting up. One word, but there was some small tremor in his voice that hinted at surprise, even jealousy. Resting upon an elongated neck was a dark face of elegant planes and piercing eyes. "If not for that nose ring…" the tiger's nose wrinkled in response to the golden piece of jewelry, and he left the rest of the sentence unsaid. He changed the topic. "How would Bast, Lynx, and Pantharis do for names?" he not quite asked One, Two, and Eight respectively.
"Pantharis," Eight tried out the word, and nodded to himself. So Pantharis he became.
XXX
They were given further given further instructions to arrive back at the building the next night after sundown so they could be formally introduced to the Pride. One, now Bast, pleaded to be allowed to stay in the building until then and Pantharis said he needed to spend a few days out of town tying up loose ends first. Kahn, sighing, said yes to both of them.
Guessing their welcome was well worn out, Lynx and Pantharis donned their headgear and spent a minute grunting with pain as the anti-Splice returned them to normal before hurriedly leaving. Bast/One/Erin/whoever the hell she was, did the same and retreated to the second floor of the building, falling happily asleep in one of the one room apartments, burrowing into the bed's lumpy mattress with relish. It was the start of a new life for her, one free of constant fear. That was something that made for easy sleep.
As for Kahn, he took the elevator back down into the depths of the underground. She was waiting for him when he strolled into the room. She was pouting horrendously. If there was one thing that cats were never meant to do, it was to pout.
"I hate letting people like them into the Pride," she said, crossing her arms.
He took a seat besides her at the control panel and asked, "Then why did you let those other two in?"
Her sharpened claws drummed across her upper arms, threatening to draw blood. "Because they were the only decent people in the bunch, and I had to balance that number Eight out somehow!"
"Unfortunately, my Dear," Kahn sighed, "decent folk tend to be cops." He hit a button on the panel and spoke into the static. "Have Mr. Two followed. Unmercifully. I want the life stories of every stranger he bumps into on the street. Have Miss One searched, but delicately. I have the feeling she may be a very light sleeper. Mr. Eight will be arriving sometime in the next few days. Inform me when." He told the person listening on the other line to have three batches of Splice serum made up, identifying them by number, and then cut the connection.
She was glaring at him, he noticed. "You're not having Eight tracked?" she demanded.
He laughed, "My dear, if there hadn't been a safety net, he very well could have killed Miss One. That is not the sort of man we need to be worrying about."
XXX
Eight—or rather Pantharis now—strolled down the alley street, confident that no one was following him. That no one was even trying brought a smile to his lips, but it wavered as he thought of what had happened earlier that night. After debating for a while, he pulled out a cell and dialed a familiar number. A few rings, and there was that familiar voice on the line, though it was pretty groggy.
"…Wha'?"
"Hey, it's me," he replied warmly. "Need to ask you something."
"Shoot. Then go shoot yourself and save me the trouble. Do you know what time it is?"
"Not really. Okay, say you're trying to do this thing for the good of a lot of people, but to do it you have hurt this innocent—well, kinda innocent—person. I'm not saying kill her; just kick her in the ribs real hard. And she falls off this walkway, but you knew there was a safety net down below. What'dya think? Is it okay?"
"No. You're going to Hell, Terry McGinnis. Don't forget to shoot yourself."
"Love you too, Max," he replied, smiling as she slammed the phone down into the cradle. He pocked the cell and walked away into the night, whistling.
…Horribly off key.
Okay, that was fun...except for the frickin' technical difficulties!
...breathe...breathe...okay, I'm good.
Well, that was longer than I expected. My apologies. Not too boring/confusing I hope. Hiya. I'm Bone White Butterfly, and if you've read my bio, then you know I lead a rich fantasy life. Back to the fiction, it's more about Max in the "Present." It just keeps flashing back to Terry's story with the cat-man cult. I have my own twisted reasons, promise. Also, I named this story after the William Blake poem because my favorite Batman the Animated Series episode did the same. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry. YOU WILL.
Hmmm…I can't say I don't love reviews. I'm an addict, really. Please don't empower me.
…you know I was just kidding, right?
Oh, and, just so we're clear:
The Present normal, "dialogue," "telephone, etc. voices," and 'thoughts.'
The Past normal, "dialogue," "telephone, etc. voices," and 'thoughts.'
Okay, bah-bye.