District 42, a chartered territory south of the Nordak, has a human to anomaly ratio of one to one thousand – at least, that was the recorded census a decade ago. Now, no functioning satellites are there to observe any sliver of human life outside the city walls.
Thousands of miles away from civilization, in a small bomb shelter, the First Unit is making full use of their long-awaited break. The time is half past three, a dead hour, and even the nocturnal soldiers are asleep in their respective bunkers, catching up on every bit of rest they can. On a normal day, they’d be out shooting and pillaging, cleaning out as many zones as possible and crating up anomalies.
Tonight is quiet.
Noah turns the showerhead off. The last droplets patter onto the slate tiles. Without a proper vent, the sound seems to echo through the walls. The young man steps out of the stall, wipes himself down and gingerly blots around his chafed skin. He’d gotten more scars on his body – three, four, and five more if the cut by his ribs refuses to heal.
Noah is no stranger to wounds. In fact, his body almost features them. Marking his translucent skin are cuts and scrapes that number in the tens, most of them old and browned out, reminiscent of childhood. Milky translucent skin, yet a roughed-up body – he certainly doesn’t look the part of a mercenary but he’d definitely gone through more battles than an ordinary person.
He wonders what Yang Rong must’ve thought when scrutinizing his figure so closely. Noah thinks the view is unsightly even to himself. With a small sigh, he throws on a black shirt and a matching pair of pants before heading out.
Military showers like these, the accommodations aren’t perfect at all. Lack of proper ventilation, no mirrors, unheated. There isn’t even a door for privacy.
His footsteps are silent when he makes way to the lounge. He hadn’t memorized the layout of the base yet, but there should be a cabinet… right there, by the steel table. Old and a little rusty, as expected of a decades-old furniture. Noah has to use some force to pull it – the knob of it almost comes off completely with a single yank.
The medicine cabinet is, unexpectedly, filled to the brim. The contents clatter onto the floor when he finally wrenches it open, some of them stubbing right on his toe. He groans and crouches to inspect them. Aspirin bottles, anti-inflammatory meds, packets of ammonia inhalants – useful, but not what he’s looking for. He stands back up again, almost gets whacked by the cabinet door in the process, and rummages through the other items.
Sulfadiazine, surgical jelly, aluminum hydroxide – for such a small shelter, it is pleasantly stacked with sanitation kits and the like. Noah frowns after a while. Syringes not found. His next target is epinephrine, not the drug, but the device that holds it. He might have to disassemble it if he can’t find proper autoinjectors.
Or, he might have to improvise with an eye dropper and a pen.
“…Inconvenient,” he mutters to himself, lost in thought.
It would work, hypothetically, if he does a little tweaking. He’d heard of attaching a plastic tube on top of a pen, some unconventional way of making binkies when desperate, but these methods are really only favored among grave drug addicts or strange experimentalists.
Creativity always prevails in times of crisis, so sue him if he’s caught, five minutes later, tying a dropper to a ballpoint pen, the inside of it emptied and replaced by a small paperclip. He’d replaced the contents of the dropper, so in lieu of eye lubricant is another type of clear liquid, the damned thing he’d risked his life to get in the gene bank.
Noah sits next to the table with his brows furrowed and lips pursed in concentration.
His black backpack – the colonel’s, to be frank – is unzipped and pushed to the side. He’d taken one vial out of it. The bottle is unlabeled, but if his memory doesn’t fail him (it often doesn’t), it should be a high-potency sedative made specifically for mammal-like anomalies. It’s not as strong as an opioid tranquilizer and for good reason – Noah, after all, isn’t looking for a drug that’s strong enough to knock out an elephant. He’d heard from a friend that XA-027, a working name for the prototype, is only developed in the Nordak bank.
As for how well it works for him specifically, he can only test. He knows it’s a horrible idea without anyone telling him, but he has no better options to quell his canine bloodthirst.
Finished. He holds up the modified syringe. It’s as shabby as it can get. The paperclip is already falling apart, the tip of it not attached well to the pen.
“—You have to melt the plastic enough for it to stay,” a soft voice tells him.
Half shocked and other half surprised, Noah almost drops the device he’d spent five minutes assembling. He catches it swiftly before it hits the floor. He looks up.
“…Ming Tang.”
“Should I help you?” the boy offers. He looks to have just awoken. There’s a pillow mark on his left cheek and his black hair is sticking up. It’s the first time Noah’s seen him since the… incident and he doesn’t know how to react. Ming Tang chooses the seat closest to him, takes the syringe away, and begins to tweak it.
While Noah is still in a state of repose, Ming Tang, the twelve-year-old, had begun to instruct him on how to make a proper budget syringe.
“I used to know a few uncles who’d managed to get their hands on some drugs,” the boy says without being asked. “Heroine, cocaine, meth and the like. Dealers used to be a little more accessible out here, but now the distribution is so limited that you can only purchase them underground.”
Ming Tang takes the lighter on the table and flicks the wheel. He carefully spins the pen around the flame, watching as the plastic tip melts with perfectly controlled expertise. The boy continues, “So I’ve learned how to do these things. It was common for us to make needles out of anything we had lying around. You need to disinfect it well or you’re looking at a staph infection.”
“I’m not doing drugs.” Noah feels the need to clarify. “Not… those kinds.”
“I haven’t seen you doing this before,” Ming Tang comments. He finishes the assembly and places the hypodermic on the table. “Is this something that will help your… mutation?”
Noah chuckles softly. “You’ve always known about it.”
“Maybe since…” he pauses a little, “the day I saw you drinking blood. I thought of several possibilities.”
“And your conclusion?”
“You are a hybrid who can feed on humans, though you choose to drink from blood bags and vials. In a more hypothetical scope, you share similar carnivorous desires as anomalies. From my observations, you are able to digest some cooked foods as well,” Ming Tang says. “But you do not consume other creatures – why is that?”
“I may be able to,” Noah replies with a small frown on his face. “But it is disgusting.”
He thinks of eating mice. There was a very specific kind he’d seen that is still etched into his memory – a trypophobia-inducing mouse that had five sets of whiskers and leopard prints on its pudgy body. He thinks of eating birds – the ones that have an unnecessary number of feathers, the ones that have eaten other mice and bugs.
Noah noticeably pales.
“Oh,” Ming Tang responds simply.
The boy doesn’t ask very many questions. Even in the face of Noah, an oddity, a potentially dangerous hybrid who’d admitted to feeding on human blood. Such a thought would be blasphemous to anyone else. Noah would have been sent to a lab to be dissected and studied.
“Ming Tang,” he says suddenly. “I’m sorry.”
Ming Tang looks at him. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Noah says. His brows are furrowed in complication and he’s boring a hole onto the table, staring numbly at the contents laid out on it. It’s mere distraction so he won’t have to look the young boy in the eye. A candle flickers in front of him, dancing orange hues on his skin. “Inexplicably, I… feel the need to apologize.”
“For Yu Ying?”
“…Mn.”
“You were the one who shot her.”
A flash of hurt can be seen in his eyes and then Noah puts his face down, covering it with his arms to hide whatever expression he’s making. “Mn. Yeah, I did.”
No one talks for a whole minute. Noah hears the boy fiddling with the hypodermic again, tapping it lightly against the table. It clinks every time it makes contact, a slow beat set on replay. It might be that his vision’s blurred from tiredness, but he feels a numbing heat spreading from his eyes to his cheeks, then his ears. With his face still buried in his arms, he says, “I did not hesitate when I shot Yu Ying and if I had to do it again, I think I would.”
“Noah, you tell me, what are the chances of someone surviving the mutation?”
“Infinitely close to zero,” he says quietly. “There is no proven correlation between DNA and the radioactive rate of decay. To put it bluntly, it is all probability. From what I know, even the ones who have ‘survived’ are rife with health conditions and living with extremely adverse restrictions, not knowing when the mutation might worsen and rip them apart.”
Ming Tang tells him, “If you hadn’t shot her, I would have.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” Noah whispers.
“Neither should you,” Ming Tang replies, his voice just as low. “Noah, I have learned to handle death, but you... unexpectedly, you are too soft-hearted.”
Noah chuckles again. “You said the same thing he did.”
“Who?”
“Colonel Yang.”
“That guy?” Ming Tang makes a rare noise of discontentment. “Stuck-up alpha? All brawns and little brain – that’s what the books describe their kind as. I hadn’t met one, but I instinctively know what type of people they are.”
He laughs. “I think the books I brought over were too biased for your reading. Hm... well, that colonel does match the description of your stereotypical alpha. He’s stuck-up for sure, has a lower IQ than you do, has very little redeeming qualities, though he’s not… as horrendous, I’d say, as the more aggressive alphas you might find elsewhere.”
“Do you trust him?”
“No, I don’t,” he says. “But you should go with them.”
“I am going to the city no matter what,” Ming Tang stresses. “But where will you go?”
“Maybe it is time for me to leave,” he says. “I might have overstayed.”
“That guy and all the other people here know you are a hybrid,” the boy says. “Yet they haven’t done a thing to you. So far, I think it is okay for you to follow them too.”
Noah finally lifts his head. Under red-rimmed eyes is an expression full of complexity and waver. He parts his lips and thinks long about what to say, one million unknown thoughts skittering in his mind. He lets out a resigned sigh.
“I don’t know.” He finally smiles, bearing a hint of sadness. “I don’t really want to stay in the city, Ming Tang.”
“Noah, I’ve always thought this, but living in the slums really doesn’t suit you.”
“It doesn’t suit me?”
“No,” the boy says, reaching over to his shirt. Noah, albeit a tad confused, allows the contact. He hadn’t noticed previously, but there’s an ugly scar blemishing the top of his pectoralis, visible through his damp, white shirt. Ming Tang buttons it up to the second hole. “You understand how much of a disaster zone it is for the people here. Criminals and degenerates are a dime in a dozen. People would stoop to as low as they can to survive. Robberies, murder, any other selfless acts – I’ve already been used to long ago, so imagine my surprise when you came in not to rob us but to help us. Noah, where did you come from?”
“From the city.” Noah rests his head on one hand. “There are many things that deter me from going back. I… don’t know if I can even—"
He pauses suddenly and diverts his attention to the corner of the room. There’s a tall silhouette reflected off the candlelight, a figure unnoticeable otherwise if not tinted dim copper and brown. Yang Rong leans against the wall, both arms crossed, a pensive expression on his face. Upon realizing he’d been noticed – finally – the man’s lips curve into a smirk.
Noah sighs. “…Eavesdropping?”
“Intel gathering,” the man smoothly replies, making strides toward their direction, “and not intentionally.”
“What is with you and your lack of presence?”
“Is that an insult?” Yang Rong clicks his tongue. “And I’ve been here for a whole minute. You might want to make an appointment to check your eyes.”
Noah frowns and looks to Ming Tang for confirmation. The boy nods. “It’s true. He came in the middle of your criticizing his IQ and his lack of redeeming qualities.”
“Hm…” Noah rubs his eyes. “Didn’t notice.”
Yang Rong snorts. “If you’d noticed, would you have insulted me that readily?”
“Absolutely.”
