There was something about roses that made Tisper feel grounded. The way they smelled, the way they poised themselves above the other plants like royalty. Her mother loved roses, and so Tisper hated them. But roses were the queen of flowers, weren’t they?
That’s right. Even if she hated them, she wanted to be a rose.
She pulled the trigger and a sheen of silver cut the air. It was too dark to see much more than what the porch light allowed, but Tisper caught the unsteady teeter of her arrow as it sailed onward, and disappointment drown her in its chilly depths. Another miss.
She dug through her back pocket for her phone and the light of the screen stung her eyes. Or maybe it was neglected sleep, nagging her for rest. The clock shown 1:23 AM, a time when she’d usually be long passed out in her pink duvets. But tonight, all she wanted was to steady herself. To breath in all the plentiful roses in the Sigvard’s garden, and to get a feel for her new weapon and all the power in it. She wanted the confidence to devour all the fear in her. She wanted to go to sleep tonight knowing that this object she’d been given would be the one to bring Jaylin home.
Quentin had set up a shooting station for her before he set off to his room. It was nothing complicated—just an old, unmarked canvas where she could keep track of all the holes she’d pierced in the paper. So far the number was zero.
To liven things up, she’d nailed a rose to the middle of the canvas. It was supposed to stand as her bullseye—the very heartbeat of her pseudo-target. But if she couldn’t even hit the glaring white canvas ten feet in front of her, there was no chance she’d make the rose in the middle.
In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d even find the training arrow in the dark, barely-moon-lit shrubberies. Devi had only given her one—one little training arrow, far different than the others. It was designed to carry the same weight, shoot the same distance, but this arrow didn’t hold any of the paralyzing liquid in it. It was designed of a hollow aluminum alloy, and weighted with water in the middle to account for the ever-shifting weight. It would never break, Devi had promised her. But at this point, it might never have the chance.
She turned the light of her phone to the garden floor and bent in search of the silver arrow. It couldn’t have gone too far, I can’t shoot five feet in front of me. But all she could see was the bark of the mulch and the walking stones beneath her feet.
“Here,” she heard a voice say. He hadn’t sounded like himself at first, so when Tisper turned, she was disappointed to see Felix’s tall figure, standing a black mass in the porch light.
She pushed herself up to her feet, tongue clicking against her teeth. “Was hoping you were Alex,” she said and walked to greet his dark, looming outline, reaching for the arrow in his hand. “At least he’s cute.”
Felix lifted the object out of reach—which, for Tisper was really quite a strange experience. She’d never been the monkey in the middle. Always the beanstalk on either side.
She grabbed for it again and he lifted it higher.
“I’m not playing this game with you. I’ve got shit to do, you Irish jackass.”
“Irish,” Felix grumbled. “Ain’t fuckin’ Irish.”
“I’m not sure I like you enough to care.”
“I’m not sure I care enough to care,” Felix retorted. “But if Quentin or Alex get hurt because you can’t shoot a simple arrow, I will make it my life’s mission to pop the silly little heads off every pet ya ever loved.”
“Never had any pets. I’m allergic to cats,” Tisper said, jabbing him in the chest with the nock of her bow, “and I’m starting to really hate dogs.”
“Wolves, dogs. Scottish, Irish. You’ve got your shit about as straight as your aim.” He gripped her by the elbow and Tisper considered jabbing him again, maybe with something sharper this time, but Felix was more gentle than she’d ever anticipated him to be. He guided her into alignment with the rose, then Tisper watched as he took the crossbow and aimed it to the ground, seated the arrow into place and cocked the strings back with a click.
“I could have done that,” she protested.
“Shut up. Here.” He turned her by her shoulder to face the canvas, lifted the crossbow to her eye-level. His arms burned like heaters around her, and she could feel the weight of his chest against her back as he lowered himself, craned down to look just over her shoulder. His breath burned through the cotton of her shirt, and with the frigid air of an early fall, she couldn’t say she hated the warmth it brought her.
She swallowed. “Don’t get me sick.”
“It’s not contagious,” he said. She could hear how his voice had rawed from coughing, or maybe he’d been smoking. No—Jaylin mentioned they couldn’t smoke. Maybe his voice always sounded like this. She’d never really listened and she’d certainly never heard it this closely.
But as Felix adjusted her hands, brought them closer to the trigger, farther under the foregrip, his breath stopped completely and the cold found her flesh again. He was quiet and still. Calculating the projection.
“Have you used one more?” he asked and for a split second, she was warm again.
“With a recurved bow. This is completely different.”
“They all pierce the same. You have a low aim. Tilt it up—just a bit.”
Tisper lifted the distant hand that held the heavy weapon, felt the warmth of Felix’s fingers slide up her knuckles, adjusting each of her digits to his liking. Then his index finger curled into the trigger, pressed its weight gently down on her own. And just over her shoulder, he whispered, “fire.”
Tisper squeezed the trigger, and the silver split through the darkness. She hadn’t seen it waver this time. She hadn’t heard it fall to the ground. When she blinked open, it was there; protruding from the paper, piercing the upper corner of the canvas, not far from the rose.
“I did it,” she deflated joyously of all the breath she’d been holding.
Felix’s warmth left her and by the time she’d turned to face him, he was making his way back to the door.
“How did you know what to do?” she called after.
“Don’t bother coming back in until you’ve made a shot on your own,” was all Felix said. Then he shut the hummingbird door behind him.
–
In what little light he could, Jaylin found his way to the den, where the curtains were sheer enough that moonlight still penetrated the room—lit all the shadows, bled blue into everything that touched its milky glow.
He could still hear Anna’s voice in his head, whispering little warnings in his ear. I’m leaving, he wanted to tell her. But I have no idea where to go. This Ziya woman didn’t seem the favor electricity—the house was dark, the candlelight gone.
He skirted his way around a sleeping wolf, and to the large front windows. But as he shoved the curtain from view, Jaylin felt a lump surge in his throat. That’s right. The electric gate.
He needed the pass card, but there was no way he could take it from Ziya without waking her. He knew which room she was sleeping in; it wasn’t hard to spot with all the wolves gathered at her bedroom door.
He tiptoed over the furry bodies, some of them waking and grunting or growling at him for disturbing their sleep. Then Jaylin crept past the kitchen and down the hall, and it felt as if every floorboard underfoot cried out at his endeavors.
He reached the door, wedging nervous steps between the bundle of wolves at his feet. For some reason, being bitten wasn’t a thought in his mind; he’d met Pomeranians more vicious than these things. They’d somehow been domesticated by Ziya. A dozen wolves, turned to lapdogs in her hands.
The knob twisted almost silently in his fingers and the wolves around him rose, conditioned to excitement at the sound of the hinges creaking open. Jaylin glared into the dark of the room, and after his eyes had built immunity to the night, they found her bed to be empty; the silken sheets spooled at the foot like she’d been there just a moment ago.
Then Jaylin saw it—the lanyard, hanging from an old wooden coat rack in the corner of her room. He gave the door a push and halted at the sound of a low, throaty growl.
In the dark, he could only see her eyes, shimmers of white in the reflection of what little moonlight leaked through parted curtains. She was gray in color—beautifully gray, and she slept beside a number of her own. She looked no different and somehow Jaylin knew this was the alpha Ziya spoke about. Mayla, she’d called her.
He turned calmly from Mayla, as calmly as he could turn his back to a snarling wolf. Creeping step-for-step to the coat rack, Jaylin took the passcard from the metal clip of the lanyard and about-faced again. Mayla was still groaning, her defenses up, but her head low to the floor in submission.
Jaylin crossed her path slowly, rocking from heel to toe. And once he was out of Mayla’s range, he ran for the card and ripped it from its lanyard. Then he bounded through the hall and out the front door.
Crossing the pasture felt like running miles, but Jaylin was thankful for the test. It had been too long since he was able to use his legs like this; he missed the freedom, the hard aching heartbeat in his chest. The pain as he planted his feet down on rough stone and rubble.
And as he saw the white-suits pass outside the electric gate, Jaylin dropped into the grass, trusting that with the help of the blades and the dark of the overcast sky, he’d be well out of sight.
And just as he hoped, the white-suits passed him by and Jaylin bounded to his feet again. The cold air stung at his cheeks and his ankles ached each time his feet stamped down against the cold ground, but Jaylin raced to the electric gate without falter and gave his card a fast tap at the reader. The doors churned as they slid inward and Jaylin was fast on bare feet, slipping through them and into the warm yellow light of the facility’s sleepless grounds.
This place was built like a village. There were buildings on either side, each a carbon copy of the next; each planted into a campus of freshly paved cement. A courtyard sat in the center where white suits crossed from one research building to another, and at the far end was another security gate—a much bigger one for vehicles to pass through. Jaylin couldn’t understand why a research facility would need vehicles passing through their gates. Maybe to deliver supplies, but why the high security? And why had Ziya taken him to the field, instead of driving right in through the gate?
Nothing about this place was right.
There were too many people here for so late at night, too many in the white suits with the emblem of the sun on their lapels. Ziya had said they were all chemists and pharmaceutical scientists, studying the workings of the lichund. Looking for a cure. They were here to help him.
But as Jaylin heard that voice again in his ear, hissing his name, he felt the inexplicable urge to hide. He paced behind the nearest building and felt his way along the painted bricks, clinging like a spider to the darkness.
A strange feeling tingled in his fingertips. A sixth sense, telling him to stay in the shadows, stay out of sight. So he waited until he saw the headlights of a truck pull up to the gate, the engine rattling loud enough to distract most of the suits and bright enough to blind the others. And in those few sparse seconds, Jaylin slipped around the corner of the building and into the front door.
Everything was too bright—too white. It blinded him, made him feel like he was skipping death and wandering straight into a morgue instead. He smelled that chemical smell so much stronger here and Jaylin felt increasingly ill for each breath he took. It was almost a sweet scent. Disgusting, sickeningly sweet.
Voices met his ears and Jaylin tuned himself into the chatter a small distance away, their colloquy echoing off of the too-square, too-white walls. He dipped beneath the staircase and watched above as the footsteps slunk down, one step after another.
“It’s a real shame. She’s a beauty.” The words came from above. Jaylin could see the face of a man pass between the gaps overhead.
“She’s pretty now,” the woman beside him replied. “Should have seen her when she first came in. Never seen one like it, James. The horns—ugh, gives me chills just to think about it.”
“She had horns?”
“Haven’t you seen one before?”
“Photographs, but never in person.”
“Well, they all have horns. But hers were so strange. Horrifying, really. We should go back and pay her a visit sometime after she’s made the change.”
“What were they like?” the man asked, his voice gaining distance as they met the last step.
“They spiraled,” the woman said. “Kind of like corkscrews.”
Like corkscrews, Jaylin thought. Like Olivia.
“Hit the lights,” the woman added. “We won’t be running tests again until morning.”
The man hit the switch and the lights snapped off—all but a few dim bulbs left glowing, just bright enough that Jaylin could see the doors shutting behind the two. Leaving him alone to the shadows and the silence and that stench that made his stomach turn.
Jaylin pushed off from the wall and rounded the bend of the stairs they’d come down. It felt like a journey to the top, and his legs were aching from weeks of neglect. But as he reached the second floor, Jaylin found himself drawn to the first room on the left—a door with fog-stained glass and a sign that read “Proper Authorization Only” in bold black letters.
He tapped the key card to the reader and the door sounded with a beep. Jaylin gave one brief look around before he turned the handle.
The room inside was dark and Jaylin made sure to shut the door before he snapped on the lights. When the bulbs lit the room in front of him, Jaylin felt like sinking to his knees.
In front of him was a glass cell, entirely transparent, spare for a small wall that he assumed gave privacy to a toilet, sink and not much more. Besides that, the little glass room held only a bed and a nightstand.
And then it held Olivia.
She sat on the edge of the bed, her waist-length hair, blanketing down her ridged back. In her little white gown, she gaped at him.
“Jaylin?” she asked, rising, “Jaylin, no. Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” he asked in a harsh whisper. “I thought you ran off—I thought you were—”
“I’m sorry.” She rushed to the glass, planted her hands flush against it. Her fingertips were covered in little latex bandages and the inners of her elbows bespattered with brown-black bruises. “Jaylin I’m so sorry.” She said it so quickly, like she didn’t have the air to both speak and breath. “I didn’t want to hurt you—I didn’t mean to. Did I? Did I hurt you?”
“No, Olivia. I’m fine. But you… you don’t look fine. What’s going on here? What is this place?”
“If you’re here, you know what it’s for.” Olivia looked as if she was to cry at any moment. Her lips quivered, her eyes went red and sheened with tears. “Jaylin I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I dragged you into this, I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I was.”
“No—Olivia, what are you talking about?” Jaylin asked. “You didn’t drag me into anything.”
“I killed Tyler.” She quivered, tears sliding down her face. “I killed my husband.”
“It wasn’t you, Olivia.”
“I thought I was okay.” Olivia pressed her forehead against the glass and the tears ran down her cheeks so freely, it clenched at Jaylin’s heart. She’d never been a bad person, Olivia. She just never knew how to do better. How to be better.
“It happened once before,” she said, sobbing her words now. “It was so long ago. I turned black from head to toe. And then one night, I just…I didn’t think it would happen again. I thought I imagined it. All the pain, I thought I’d made it up. And then two weeks ago, it was the same horrible thing all over again. I blacked out and woke up next to Tyler’s dead body. Covered in blood. There was so much blood, Jaylin.”
“I know.” He wanted to sooth her. He wanted to beg her to stop crying, promise her it’d be okay. But instead, all he said was, “It wasn’t you.”
Olivia shook her head again and again, pursed her lips to hold the tears. “She said she wanted to help. She wanted to find the cure. You know what this whole place is called?” She looked up from the threads of hair covering her face, something living behind her eyes. Something both frightening and, all at once, terribly afraid. “This place and everything in it; they call it Project: CURE.”
“So it is a research facility,” Jaylin said.
“It is. But if you’re here, that means you’re like me. And if that’s true, you need to get out now. Because they’re not trying to cure our sickness, Jay. They’re trying to cure the world of it.”
Her words echoed against the glass, and Jaylin felt all the muscles in him go to ice. “What are you saying Olivia?”
“They’re not looking for a way to fix us, Jaylin. They’re looking for a way to eradicate us.”
Then the door blew open. Before Jaylin could even turn to look, something hard bashed against his face, slamming him back against the glass. The hit shook his skull and chattered his teeth and the burning of tears smothered his sight before he could make sense of what had happened.
“What’s the difference, really?” he heard Ziya’s voice, but he was turned too suddenly to see her, forehead knocked against the glass. Then something hard locked his wrists behind his back. Again, whatever was on him burned against his flesh, he thrashed his shoulders, his own cries echoing in his eardrums.
“Sometimes,” he heard Ziya say, her voice still as sweet as the very first time it had lured him away, “eradication is the only real cure.”
Then he felt a shock like he’d never felt before. One that seized his entire body, drilled into every tooth and bone and muscle that made him. And as the pain finally took its leave, he thought for a moment that he’d felt the soul pulled right from his skin.
A black fell over Jaylin, and this time, there were no fir trees.
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