Silence. Then, quieter: “Fuck.”
The child.
Small. Dark hair. Bare feet. Chin up. Hands in fists.
I remember the corridor narrowing to the space between us. My claws out. My weight shifting forward. The wolf choosing a target before the man understood what he was seeing.
A child.
I almost—
Did I?
My hands curl under the straps. The synthetic bites into the old grooves, and I let it. For one second, I want the pain. I need something sharp enough to hold the thought still.
Did I hurt him?
Did I kill him?
The handlers keep talking, but the words blur.
Dr. Fell said I was a weapon. Not like an insult. Like a classification. A knife is sharp. A gun is loaded. Subject 3-0-6-7-0 is dangerous.
She made that true one session at a time.
Pain in. Obedience out.
Fear in. Teeth out.
Tone in. Force out.
Until the man became the part they could use.
Is that all I am now?
Something that looks human until a door opens wrong. Until a woman screams. Until a child stands too close.
Maybe the straps are right.
Maybe the sealed air is right.
Maybe this is where I belong: locked down, drugged quiet, delivered to the next table before I can prove Dr. Fell right again. I’m not safe around people.
My wolf snarls. Low. Angry. Not at the handlers or the straps or the hum. At me. At the thought.
Then—underneath the antiseptic and the diesel and the metal—her scent. Faint. Soap and herbs and that warm undertone I know from bandages and blankets and her hands on my skin.
She’s here. Somewhere in this box.
My wolf goes still. His ears prick forward. The pacing stops.
She’s here, and she came with me. She didn’t have to. I’m sure of that. She has a world back there, people, a life. But she chose this metal box and these handlers and whatever facility waits at the other end.
“You’re safe,”she’d said in the hallway before the dark came.
I don’t understand it. The weapon that Dr. Fell built doesn’t get chosen. Doesn’t get someone who says “You’re safe”and means it.
Unless I’m not just a weapon. Unless Fell didn’t take everything.
