5. Quin
I’m lost and floating in a drug-induced stupor, my senses all dulled and slow in the haze. My tiger is quiet inside me, long having given up on fighting our way out of this place. If we struggle or rebel in any way, we’re not the only ones to bear the brunt of the guards’ fury, and I’m unwilling to burden anyone else with that outcome. As it is now, I only get brief reprieves from the more potent cocktails of drugs, and even then, I’m still doped up, just on a lower dosage. It keeps both my tiger and me quiet and compliant.
It’s been an age since I have been outside of my room for anything other than to use the showers or undergo a “procedure.” I used to be allowed outside, once upon a time, and was even granted extended periods of time away from the facility, thanks to my parents.
However, since I was forced to come back, things have changed. My outside privileges have been revoked completely, and I have fewer and fewer freedoms. Essentially, I’ve become like my ward-mates Nick, Luc, and Aodhán—a prisoner.
I haven’t set eyes on my friends in so long, and it makes me wonder if that is a deliberate ploy by my parents to separate and isolate me from them even further. Nick, Luc, and Aodhán all knew I was different from them somehow, because I’d disappear for weeks or months on end, whereas they were stuck inside almost permanently. But now I’m being punished for daring to hope and dream of more, for having the audacity to strike out on my own and live my own life. I’m constantly watched, privacy a long-forgotten concept, and I suspect that even my secrets are no longer my own.
I hope I’m simply paranoid and imagining things, and that Izzy is safe. Fuck, if my parents had any idea of just how important she is to me, her life would be over. I’m pretty sure I covered my tracks with her, but there’s a lingering ache inside where our bond lies hidden, and I hurt for the betrayal she must be feeling.
One thing I am certain of is that the cocktails that the guards constantly dose me with are wearing off faster and faster lately.I don’t know if it’s due to my body developing a resistance to the sedatives, or if O’Hare has some new, nefarious plot that involves me.
My tiger stirs within me, something alerting him from outside our room. This is new. I relax on the bed, pretending to be asleep. It’s the best defense, even though it leaves me relatively vulnerable to the shifters working here. If we don’t fight, if we don’t give them an excuse to “correct” our behavior, then the powers that be don’t allow them to “discipline” us too often or too harshly. Add in that I’m usually doped up into oblivion, they really have no reason to interact with me.
Except the drugs aren’t working like they should.
A quick rattling on the other side of the door—the only warning I normally have if my tiger isn’t already awake—signals the approaching guards, and I relax even further onto my bunk, allowing a thin line of drool to spill from the corner of my mouth.
Yep, I know I’m pathetic, but it’s also the safest thing for me to do in the circumstances, especially seeing as it’s Kim.
Kim, to put it simply, is a cunt. He’s a Mundane shifter like me, but unlike me he’s a guard, not a test subject. No, he’s just a lemming. Both figuratively and literally. He doesn’t seem to have many thoughts of his own that haven’t already come out of the mouths of the upper management of Vieux Sang, and those thoughts that do come from his own brain are small, petty, and vindictive. Bundle all of that into a tiny, furry body of a rodent most people equate with mindlessly leaping off cliffs to their death on a large scale, add a massive chip on his shoulder due to said misconceptions and small shifter syndrome, and you have Kim Johnson, the North American brown lemming.
I watch Kim kick open the door from beneath my lashes, glad that my hair is hanging over my face and shielding me from discovery.
“Looks like Tony the Tiger is still out of it. Fucking moron only has hisself to blame for being a strung-out junkie, he fucked around and found out. He’s what you’ll end up like if you don’t pull yer head in and do as yer fucking told. King of the jungle? More like king of the shithouse. Here you go, yer majesty. If yer lodgings aren’t up to snuff, then keep it to yerself, I don’t give a fuck.”
Kim and another guard, a human named Booth, drag in a bloodied mess and dump him on the empty mattress on the other side of the room. He doesn’t make a sound, not even when Kim kicks him in the kidneys before turning away and exiting. The only reason I know the guy isn’t dead is because I can see his ribs expanding slightly with each breath he takes.
I remain still, waiting for a few extra minutes before moving, just to make sure that Kim truly has fucked off back to his little hole. My tiger edges forward warily, more alert and interested than he has been in weeks. My nose twitches and I know that Kim and Booth are both long gone, and that it’s now safe for me to move.
I roll over to the edge of my mattress and crawl over to the shifter. There’s nothing in this room except for two thin foam mattresses sitting on the polished concrete floors. There’re no bed frames, no bedding, nothing. Just a bare mattress on a bare floor, our only protection against the cold being the worn hospital scrubs they use to clothe us.
I reach my new cell mate and bile rises in my throat at the state of him. His body is a mass of open wounds, although the worst ones appear to have been stitched together to prevent him from bleeding out. How considerate of them. He’s only wearing a pair of pants which tells me that he’ll be collected at some future point either for more “procedures” or to clean up.
I inhale, tasting the air. My tiger helps, heightening my senses of smell and taste, and I filter through the copper scent of blood and chemical stench of the tranquilizers to the dense musk of his animal. Sun-baked earth and dust mixed with feline musk, but with a scorched after-note. My new roommate is an Altered shifter… an Altered lion?
The dude is seriously ripped. His arms bulge with muscles even at rest, and his skin is covered with some interesting artwork. Four lions with half-human features decorate his right arm, and an eclectic group of other shifters are on his right. I assume they’re all shifters, as each and every face is half animal, half human. The left side of his chest is strangely intact, and I can see the elaborate ink work of a feral lion underneath all the blood. Strange that they left his tattoos untouched, although I can see the lines where they sliced around the tattoo on his chest to lift the intact skin to get to the muscles and organs beneath.
I don’t have anything other than my own scrubs to clean him with, but the sacrifice is worth it. If I can help stanch his bleeding, it’ll speed his healing and recovery that much more. Besides, I know I’d hate to be left in a room covered in blood if I was in his place—and seeing how my life has suddenly gone down the toilet, it’s highly likely that I have the same torture coming for me in my future.
I strip off my tattered shirt and tear it into strips. Some of the larger ones I use as pads on the larger wounds, using thinner strips to bind them in place. Once I’ve got the worst of them covered, I use the rest of the scraps to wipe away the blood and gore from the shifter’s face, beard, and hair. I can’t really do much to clean him without soap and water, but at least now he looks less like a horror movie victim, and instead resembles a car accident victim.
I have no clue how much time has passed by the time I’m done. Fatigue slams into me, and I leave him on what constitutes his bed as I crawl back to my own mattress, slumping over once more onto the unforgiving latex-covered foam.
I doze on and off, my tiger staying reasonably alert for any changes in the shifter or guards approaching the room. As I drift in and out of consciousness, one thought keeps churning through my mind:
Who is he?