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Part Four
By Soshika
So...Explain again, what exactly happened?"
"..I...I don't know...I just got so angry...Afraid.." Grey shook his head repetitively, hugging his sides tightly as he rocked back and forth in the tiny chair. He'd never been to this place before. They hadn't drugged him or attacked him to take him here, this had been where he'd awakened. It smelled clean and fresh and like the flashes of images he got from some people. The place he was in was green, not blue, pulsing with a mild but alive cool. The shape in front of him was yellow, a calmed shape. He could see himself through its eyes, his hand bandaged and held in place by several peices of ...something. His hair was disheveled, the streaks of silver and black breaking apart randomly. He could also see from the shape's eyes a needle in his arm which lead a wire to a computer somewhere to the side. Every now and again, the shape would glance from the corner of its eye at the screen Grey could not see without using another's thoughts.
The lines danced there again. There were still three, but the third was small and fuzzy and unmoving...
"Why were you so afraid?" The shape's voice was calm and careful. It wasn't like the others had been.
"They...They were going..." Flashes of the repeated image of himself being cut apart on a table flashed into his mind. Grey shuddered and felt some strange feeling inside him, like his stomach had turned inside out. It didn't hurt, simply confused him. He forced the words out, which felt awkward on his tongue, like new. "They were going to cut me apart."
"What made you think that?"
"I saw it...I saw it." Grey answered the question twice, learning words as he went. He could feel her scratching in the back of his mind, but he ignored her. "They also said it. Disection."
The shape was silent a moment. "Do you know how long ago that was?"
A pause. "No."
"Twelve days." There was a pause from the shape. "Do days mean anything to you?"
Grey shook his head softly. "No." He refused to look at the shape now.
"Do you know how old you are?"
Grey grew tired of speaking. He shook his head.
"You are ten. You are ten human years old. That is seventy dog years, billions of insect years, fourty cat years..."
Grey intook the new information without caring. The shape sent an image of the screen flashing slightly. The two lines still bucked while the other stayed silent.
"You have more than one personality."
Grey shrugged. He didn't care.
"As near as we can tell, you've surpressed one. Before it was active, but now it's barely alive."
Another shrug.
"Can you see the screen? Do you know what I'm talking about?"
Grey looked away. He didn't want to answer. He didn't want to think about this anymore.
"What you did back in the lab, we're going to do more tests. We need to find out what that was."
Grey pretended not to hear him. In reality, he knew it all. He knew the tests they were going to preform, he could hear the shape thinking them. He could hear the shape thinking how this was a waste of time, how he was talking to an animal...well maybe he was. Grey didn't care. The Human had caused him nothing but pain.
"Can you remember what you did that day?"
I am the Darkness...I am Grey...
"Do you even hear me? Hello?"
Darkness, all encompasing, forever holding...
"...Do you even have a name?"
Idoly, staring towards the side at the soft green floor, Grey spoke quietly. Strange images flashed into his mind, images of whole and broken people, of red lights and flying orange specks. The screams were still there...he was learning to ignore them. They were a part of him. He could hear past them, he would have to...
"My name," He sighed softly. The Animal was only learning to imitate the Human just now. "I am a Demon."
There was an incident with another somewhat like him, years ago. But he isn't nearly as powerful as that one. We lost a valulable weapon when we lost her...we won't loose it again.
Grey sat up at nights now, listening to the Voices in the air for miles around. He knew where they had put him. They had put him in the ward of the complex where those they had created went when they started slipping. When they snapped the thin line between humanity and animality and began to become something altogether different. He didn't like the creatures here...The might have thought they looked more human, but their thoughts were wrong. Fractured and incomplete thoughts, simple pictures. Food, man, walk, sleep...nothing more complex. But for some reason, they were being kept.
They tried to speak to him now, but he simply walked away. He didn't need to speak, he knew what they were thinking before they did. Most of them only wanted to pretend at their humanity.
We are Demons, part of him was gradually realizing. We have no soul, we have no home, we aren't human. We're only here to destroy, and we can only pretend to understand them.
The thoughts of those inside were boring him by now too. They were all the same now. He was learning to understand that the images were one thing, melded into his mind with the screams, only less painful. He would slip through the complex now, finding corners to sit in, spine in the groove there, safe from all sides but the front, which he could easily watch. More tests were coming now. Tests to make him angry and destroy things- he could feel them thinking of them. He didn't know how to stop it from happening either, just that he couldn't let more people die so suddenly again. He couldn't take the screams again...
Outside, though...Outside. There were so many new things out there. He saw how things really were. Families, Humans...he couldn't understand what they said, but he understood the pictures and the feelings they sent him. He would sit in dark corners, withdrawing into his mind, eyes closed, exploring the world through the lives of the others within five miles. Sometimes he would wonder if they felt him there, if they knew he was peeking in on their most intimate thoughts...and what they were doing to him.
I have no family...
I have no purpose...
And my name is only what she gave me...
Sometimes he started talking aloud, talking back to the thoughts and voices in his head. They couldn't hear him, and it felt strange to know he was so cut off. He could look, but never be a part. No one else knew about it...he spoke so softly, it was hard to tell.
The tears had stopped. They would never come again.
"Demon."
The voice, wherever it was, was not inside Grey but outside. He lifted his head off his knees and looked about for the glowing shape. It stood directly before him, impassive and large, glowing orange. Blinking once, Grey stared at the head, where he knew the eyes to be. He got a flash back of himself, huddled in the corner, but what he was was something to be studied, not someone in need of comfort. Grey said nothing to the shape, and set his head down again.
"Come along, don't be difficult. We know you're willing to move if need be," The shape looped an arm under Grey's and pulled, but he refused to move. Grumbling something, the shape leaned down and picked him up under the arms. Grey did not care, even as he was carried off to an unknown place.
This world is a mirror, Grey thought to himself as they moved him along. It is a mirror, and we are merely a reflection in it. Not the actual thing standing before it- just a glassy imitation.
