Endangered

The air is sucked out of my lungs and it doesn’t feel enough to simply breathe anymore. “No.” I whisper in a half daze. “No this….this isn’t…I’m sorry, you have me confused with someone else.” His face falls and I have never seen someone’s eyes reflect the hardness of diamond quite the way his are currently showing now. It’s oddly mesmerizing and I can’t help but gaze into them.

“Sure, I have the wrong shape-bending woman with our marriage symbol tattooed into her palm.” He deadpans. He pauses for a moment and my heart races. He seems to be remembering something distantly for a moment. Then his hand loudly connects with the bars of my cage causing me to flinch. “Quit with the games! You are trapped, there’s no escape this time Aravia!” He shouts, his voice rings in my ears and my head still hurts from the drugs.

I groan in discomfort, “my name is not Aravia,” I pause. I shouldn’t give him my name, even if I’m not the one he is truly looking for. The pause would make him think that I’m making a name up so I quickly say one that comes to mind. “It’s Rin.” He yells out and once again slams his hands against my cage and whips around, standing once more.

He walks back towards the window hissing out his breath. The train rattles harshly and my muscles and head throb. I lift my head slightly, despite the wave of agony it sends, and I look at the hunter. He starts biting his nails, a nervous habit. “Sheltie is dead.” He turns to look at me with his cold eyes. They seem to be be scanning my own for any sort of reaction.

“Am I supposed to know this person?” I sigh out quietly. “She is dead because of you. Our daughter is dead, because of you.” I stare at him and lay my head back down because I no longer have the strength to hold it. “For the last time,” I reply with a exasperated tone, “I am not. your. wife.” I say as loud as my lungs will allow. “She still died a hero.” He continues, I can hear the emotion in the back of his throat.

“Not in the way we anticipated that she eventually would, but in a way that would’ve made you proud…the you that once cared of course.” I can hear the tears hit the floor and a odd feeling of pity twists my gut. “They didn’t kill her right away, no….they wanted her to suffer. To make US suffer.” He trails off at the last word and sucks in a shuddering breath. “I had gone back for her and ended up getting captured myself.” He walks up to my cage to where he is in my eyesight.

He pushes his back against the wall and slides down to where he is now sitting in front of me. His knees bent in front of him. His gaze, which was once hard and cold, is now distant and haunted. “They…made me watch.” He pauses and my heart feels like ice. I don’t want him to continue with this story. “They,” he begins weakly then coughs, “they started by chaining her up to a wall. They nailed her wings open. They…they told me that this was for our sins. Then they took out a scythe and they…” he starts to sob but still manages to prattle through.

“They took her wings.” He takes a moment to sob for a good few seconds. Burying his head in his knees. My heart aches for him for once. No one should have to witness their child’s death, especially in this way. “They didn’t stop there.” He groans into his knees. “They cut her up and then they proceeded with the other limbs, laughing at her screeching like it was some….SICK….game.” He spits out the word sick with venom.

I don’t blame him for it. This story makes me sick to my stomach and it feels like I have a 200 pound stone lying on my chest. I can feel hot tears falling from my own eyes. Why should I care this much? She wasn’t my daughter, I am not his wife. Maybe I am just saddened with sympathy for him. Yes, that is it, he does still have me captured after all.

“Our sweet sheltie, my daughter, died after the second limb.” He concluded and continued to sob. He calmed down from his sobbing after some few excruciating minutes and I finally speak out. “I’m so sorry for your loss, she sounds so brave and so strong. No one should ever have to suffer like that, and no one should have to witness that.” I look at him, not realizing that I had closed my eyes at some point.

He lifts his head and glares at me. “It’s your fault she’s dead!” He growls lowly, “you told them where she was hiding, you TOLD them her weaknesses!” He stands up and kicks my cage hard and dents it in a bit. “You KILLED her!” He shrieks. He then calms down and his brown eyes turn from angry to cold once more. “Now, my dear, you will suffer and you eventually… will die.”

He reaches in his coat and pulls out a retractable spear. The end looks as if it is used to taze things or beings. He jams it through the bars and into my neck and I do feel something this time. Two needles burry themselves into my neck. The world spins briefly and the world fuzzily goes dark once more.

I wake up to harsh light glaring into my sensitive eyes. They sting and I have to close them for a bit before I fight the light again. When I do get my eyes adjusted I notice that I am still on the train. In the cage, still lying on the floor.

The only differences are the fact that I am now alone, and the train is no longer prattling on. We are now stopped at our destination, It was a place that was once called Chicago. Now they call it Lambegus. The name means “land that promises a bright future” it was supposed to, now it’s a shell of itself.

Everyone is living in an air of depression it seems in this city, they live in poverty for the most part, minus the inner city. They call themselves the celestials after their own wealth. Feeding off the taxes of those who live the enslaved life. Anywho who dares to speak out is almost instantly silenced. Anyone who dares to try to enter the inner city is shot on site.

I hear the train whistle, we must have just stopped. I know I don’t have much time left. Despite the fire my muscles produce when I move I still get up and sit on my knees. A wave of nausea and vertigo hits me and I sit still until it ebbs away. The bars are open enough for me to morph into something small enough to slip through them.

“Foolish hunter.” I whisper, my mouth feels like sandpaper and my throat stings. I feel the energy for another morph in me. I try to shift but realize, with a struggle, that I can’t. I am confused and my heart starts racing. Why can’t I morph?! The door to the car slides open and the hunter walks in. “Can’t shift?” He asks, smoothly like he’s mentioning the weather.

I glare at him but say nothing. The silence must have prompted him for an explanation because he continues. “The serum I injected you with was not only a sedative, it was also a sort of confirmation for me. You see, that serum, was made off of my wife’s blood. The lab that made her created it to control her. It only works on her blood and hers alone.”

He walks up to the cage and rests his arms on top of it and hangs his head between them to peer in through the side of the cage. I turn my head to glare at him, panic floods my veins. “For example,” he pauses and smiles a wicked smile that makes me tremble a bit. “Shift into a wolf.” I screech in agony as my body does exactly what he says. My vision goes white and then blares red.

Morphing does typically hurt a bit, like growing pains but this…this is another level of pain. Maybe it’s because my muscles are sore but it’s my blood that really burns. I didn’t even know that one could feel their veins as much as I do now. My skin prickles as the heavy fur grows out. My leg bones shrink and my feet lengthen. My toes and the underside of the tops of my feet grow pads.

My hands lengthen too and my thumb shrinks to the side of my arm. My nails become long and hardy, my forearms lengthen as well. My spine extends into a tail that I tuck under me. My face cracks as the bones shift and grow into a wolfs face. My teeth sharpen and space out. I whimper in pain, pain that causes me to wretch and vomit.

Finally it’s over, my muscles relax. They are still as sore as they were before but now it comes as a welcome relief. “Good girl.” The hunter mocks. I growl low and threatening, baring my new teeth. The hunter only tuts and gets off of my cage. He walks out of the car and returns a few minutes later with a few gentleman. They are dressed in the standard train worker uniforms. Black tank tops and soot covered dark blue denim overalls.

They look dirty and exhausted and their pheromones smell upset. It makes my nose twitch in disgust. They come near the cage and I fold my ears back and snarl. The men don’t seem to care, as if they have done this before. “This is my prize catch.” States the hunter. “Take good care of her. We need her in fit condition for the exhibit!” He then turns and leaves the car.

The workers proceed to approach the cage. I snarl and snap at them as they get closer. The men hesitate a bit trying to find a way to get my cage moving without getting bit. One worker appears in the doorway of the car with a tarp. The workers pull the tarp swiftly over my cage. The tarp is loud and crinkly and I hear them vocalizing to each other but I can’t make out what they say over the loudness of the tarp.

Their scents are all around me and I growl, snap, and whimper at every movement made around me. The crate moves and I feel my stomach do the same again. The previous mess is still there and it is not helping in the slightest. I wretch again but nothing comes. I am stumbling with each movement of the cage. I decide with a resigned growl to just lay down. I cover my snout with my paws and close my eyes. I will get out of this…I will.

After 25 minutes or more the crate stops moving. At some point earlier on they had loaded the crate into a car. They set my crate down on something soft. I sniff the air, grass and mold. The tarp is removed and the men leave, closing a heavy looking door behind them. The door has no handles inside. I look around, I am in some sort of enclosure.

Im in a zoo enclosure only, I don’t smell or hear any other animals. I am not surprised, there hasn’t been a zoo here since the war. The enclosure I’m in has tall fences, ones that look like they belong at a football field. They curve inward towards the exhibit at the top. The grass that litters the floor of the exhibit is dead.

The place where the water used to reside has a small puddle of brown colored water and has molding leaves and dead bugs stuck to the side. A light that I hadn’t noticed before blinks on my cage and the door clicks open. Using my muzzle I nudge the door open and I gingerly step out. A loud ring of feedback sounds over the speakers that haven’t worked for the past 23 years sounds.

My ears fold back and I whine. “Now presenting! The traitorous wolf!” Booms the hunters voice over the intercom. I growl and I start running around the perimeter, examining any possible weak point. So far, there is little to none. “My dearest love.” His voice is drenched in sarcasm. “Are you ready…to pay for your sins?” The ground lurches beneath me and my limbs feel heavy with dread. How am I going to get out of this mess?

End (for now)