Chapter Thirty-Three: Not Quite Human

While heavily leaning on Lady, I managed to drag myself into the forsaken office.

X was quietly looking out the window, fixated on something probably far away from the reality he faced. Seth stood by the door, staring at the smoke leaving his lit cigarette. Rain had taken a position close to Siem, who was in his usual position leaning over his desk with his face drowned in blue of the screen on his desk. Mike was next to the door, glaring at me but retreated a little when Lady walks by. Mist was here for a few seconds but then Hana came up behind me and motioned for her to come over. Next thing I notice is her flitting down the hallway to the elevator.

Leaving us all in a thick, heavy silence.

As I stand here waiting, I can feel my body sway like I'm drunk.

"Get the boardroom open." Siem looks directly at Hanna as she finally walks in and the door shutting behind her.

She snorts, going over to a door on the right that I never noticed before. She presses a hand to the touchpad and it opens onto a brightly lit room with a table shaped like a ring and chairs lining the outside.

Without much resistance, I make my way towards the room like everyone else and plop down into the nearest chair. The room has three black walls and the wall of windows; similar to Siem's office. There was another door that probably lead outside into the hallway and the touchpad was blue.

Both Seth and X refused to sit down, leaning on the walls. X had taken a position near me looking out the window, his eyes were still focused on something distant. But when he feels my gaze on him, his gaze switches over to mine and I quickly look away. I could still feel the intensity on my face and try to distract myself by looking out the window.

The air was alive with flying cars, the traffic somehow managing to determine roads in the sky between the building and open space and each other. I would be amazed, watching it for hours but now I was more sloth than anything else. It was already a battle keeping my eyes open without my vision going blurry every five seconds.

Siem was the last to enter into the room with a round table with the giant hole in the middle. Once he did, the door shut and the touchpad turned blue. I suddenly felt extra claustrophobic but noticed that Mike didn't follow. Small miracles when you can count them.

Siem saw the confusion on my face, "All monitors have been switched off. There won't be any record of this conversation."

Well that's cleared everything up. And also just made me a little disturbed at how much is being 'monitored' and 'recorded' normally without the blue light. Especially in my 'room' when I'm asleep.

"I do not want any of the information to be over heard or leaked out to any of the higher ups of the city. Keeping your extended existence beyond being an Outsider is a priority."

For now, you mean. I kept that dangerous line of thought to myself.

"They do not know much beyond you being from the Outside and their interest is sated with that for now and I would prefer to keep it that way. For your sake as well as ours. You are the only one of your kind so far and we do not have the manpower or resources to utilise you to the extent they would want. Or worse, to look for more like you."

I stare at him as he makes his way around to the other side, directly opposite from me. "We need to get moving as fast as possible. If a Queen could have been planted so easily, I am beginning to question this city's future. Hanna, report."

Hanna steps forward and a holographic screen appears in front of her face and she simply flicks it out until it becomes a large 3d hologram that took up the empty space in the middle of the table. "Ok. From what has been recovered of the Queen and from reports prior to its termination," when Hanna stated this, I almost wince. "We can gather that the Queen's influence has only started within the last week."

"But how long has the Queen been down there?" Siem's voice was blunt.

"That's...hard to determine." The hologram in the centre that was stats of suicide and murders in the area drops and is replaced with images of black sludge on the ground of the water catchment area that I just knew that was left of Zoe. My jaw tightens at the images but I couldn't look away. "The cellular reconstruction I've attempted so far cannot cope further than the first stage of mitosis...it's impossible without the original body intact and alive-" her voice drowns out at the memories flooding my mind...the pain...loneliness...despair and fear. She was alone right until the end. Alone and confused and scared. So scared. In that confined darkness begging for an end. Calling out over and over.

"...only indication is the rags of clothing found at the bottom of the main catchment tank." Hana's voice float back in.

"We cannot identify it with only that," Siem states.

I frown at the way they speak of her. Like a thing.

"...Zoe," the word barely escapes as a whisper, no one heard it. They continued their discussion. Why am I here?

Something inside me begins to crack, the fracturing was almost audible in my head.

"Shouldn't you be relieved that it's dead?' Rain's voice. Empty of empathy.

"How can we understand something if we continue to destroy it first?" Hanna defends.

"What are its origins? The shirt looks like it belongs to a student," Seth's voice joins in.

"What of its registration?" Siem shoots back at Hanna.

"Are you an idiot? Of course they'd remove any Registration from the Queen before using it. There is a possibility that it could have been a failed experiment."

"She wasn't," why isn't anyone listening? It's breaking.

"The Keystone strain isn't something I'm familiar with. It could be a new strain altogether."

"Just what we needed," Rain said sarcastically. "Another Keystone type."

"Quit with the negativity. Kae got it in its early stages." With her voice, the hologram turns into a perfect miniature ghost replication of the watch catchment.

I snap.

Shooting from my seat, my hands slam onto the table with a loud thud, "Her name is Zoe!"

My blood boiled over, fizzing in my veins as my lip curls, "Her name is Zoe,"

"Kae!' Hanna and Siem call out my name in surprise but I was over it already.

"She isn't from Bolin. She was dumped here two weeks ago. They broke her anckles before literally chucking her in there to rot. She was an orphan. Jumped on her way home from work."

"Kae, you need to calm down," Hanna's voice niggled in the back of my mind but all I feel is a white hot rage. I can't stop.

Dreamer stop! Even Lady's voice was too far away.

"She didn't choose to become a Queen. No one ever choose this. Not her. Not that boy in Bellasera and certainly not my brothers or my sister who are still out there. Are they doing this to them? How many more?" My voice is strained it almost bleeds. "What right do any of you have to make any judgment on us? What right do you have to look down on any of us and play with us then toss anyone aside until they don't even know their names? Zoe was losing herself inside it all. The boy in Bellasera. No one cares!" Someone stop me. "How much longer am I going to have to play this game-"

Something pricks me in the neck and I immideately look over to Hanna who steps away with an empty syringe in her hand and a keen expression on her face. I shake my head at the sudden drowsiness and my vision goes dark. It was the same sinking darkness rising up to me as I crash down without feeling the ground, my voice barely making it, "How is any of this fair? ...I just..." I just want to stop...want to stop changing...stop before I turn into a monster. I want my family back. I want it all back.



Intense silence followed with Kae's decent. Stunned, save for X who had grabbed him at the last second before his head clipped the table, the others looked around the room. The hologram was fracturing into splinters of a jagged scene caught on a freeze skip like an old movie, white noise strips cutting into the image, destroying it completely. The walls and glass had cracks climbing from the ceiling down, almost touching the ground but stopped when Hanna took him out, the glass on the verge of shattering. But it wasn't the effects he had on the room that had them weary.

He was changing with the emotional rampage. The black marking climbed into his eyes, changing them to black and yellow. But his teeth and arms were showing more developmental change. Long black taloned claws and elongated canine teeth...he was turning. How far would it go? What would the change show?

But when Hana intervened, the changed reverted back like a wilted flower, pulling into itself until Kae, exhausted and drained, was back.

With a sigh Seth opens his mouth, "You can't keep turning to the Tranqs to calm him, he'll develop a resistance at this rate," while grabbing another cigarette from a hidden pocket in his coat, and lightning it. With a deep breath he takes in the imprinted memory from this morning. Metal, concrete, ice and diamond twisted into contorted forms, converging onto two different places. One was a series of spikes on an iron wrought fence, jutting up at awkward angles for a makeshift wall. The other was pure intent; forced forward into untainted violence with a kind of warped beauty.

That kid had done it. His eyes flick to the slumped form now in X's arms. Seth had seen him after X radioed them into the area; his eyes reflected nothing but there was something burning away within that dark emptiness. Was this how he looked the first time they found him? And his mental instability wasn't a joke if he could all this. No wonder Rain's so riled up.

His eyes slid over to Siem, "What were you hoping for by bringing him in? He was already exhausted and mentally shattered. We had given our reports without his input."

Siem frowns back, his eyes slide over to Kae's form, "We're running out of time and you were not there." His gaze flicks back, "I also gave you clear instruction not to pursue it." With that, he pulls back and touches the touchpad to his office and walks through it muttering, "That wasn't Hexer."