Vivid (BoyxBoy) {Pipe Dream: Book I}

Chapter Thirty-Three: Not Quite Human

"But how long has the Queen been down there?" Siem's voice was blunt.

"That's...hard to determine." The hologram in the centre that was stats of suicide and murders in the area drops and is replaced with images of black sludge on the ground of the water catchment area that I just knew that was left of Zoe. My jaw tightens at the images but I couldn't look away. "The cellular reconstruction I've attempted so far cannot cope further than the first stage of mitosis...it's impossible without the original body intact and alive-" her voice drowns out at the memories flooding my mind...the pain...loneliness...despair and fear. She was alone right until the end. Alone and confused and scared. So scared. In that confined darkness begging for an end. Calling out over and over.

"...only indication is the rags of clothing found at the bottom of the main catchment tank." Hana's voice float back in.

"We cannot identify it with only that," Siem states.

I frown at the way they speak of her. Like a thing.

"...Zoe," the word barely escapes as a whisper, no one heard it. They continued their discussion. Why am I here?

Something inside me begins to crack, the fracturing was almost audible in my head.

"Shouldn't you be relieved that it's dead?' Rain's voice. Empty of empathy.

"How can we understand something if we continue to destroy it first?" Hanna defends.

"What are its origins? The shirt looks like it belongs to a student," Seth's voice joins in.

"What of its registration?" Siem shoots back at Hanna.

"Are you an idiot? Of course they'd remove any Registration from the Queen before using it. There is a possibility that it could have been a failed experiment."

"She wasn't," why isn't anyone listening? It's breaking.

"The Keystone strain isn't something I'm familiar with. It could be a new strain altogether."

"Just what we needed," Rain said sarcastically. "Another Keystone type."

"Quit with the negativity. Kae got it in its early stages." With her voice, the hologram turns into a perfect miniature ghost replication of the watch catchment.

I snap.

Shooting from my seat, my hands slam onto the table with a loud thud, "Her name is Zoe!"

My blood boiled over, fizzing in my veins as my lip curls, "Her name is Zoe,"

"Kae!' Hanna and Siem call out my name in surprise but I was over it already.

"She isn't from Bolin. She was dumped here two weeks ago. They broke her anckles before literally chucking her in there to rot. She was an orphan. Jumped on her way home from work."

"Kae, you need to calm down," Hanna's voice niggled in the back of my mind but all I feel is a white hot rage. I can't stop.

Dreamer stop! Even Lady's voice was too far away.

"She didn't choose to become a Queen. No one ever choose this. Not her. Not that boy in Bellasera and certainly not my brothers or my sister who are still out there. Are they doing this to them? How many more?" My voice is strained it almost bleeds. "What right do any of you have to make any judgment on us? What right do you have to look down on any of us and play with us then toss anyone aside until they don't even know their names? Zoe was losing herself inside it all. The boy in Bellasera. No one cares!" Someone stop me. "How much longer am I going to have to play this game-"

Something pricks me in the neck and I immideately look over to Hanna who steps away with an empty syringe in her hand and a keen expression on her face. I shake my head at the sudden drowsiness and my vision goes dark. It was the same sinking darkness rising up to me as I crash down without feeling the ground, my voice barely making it, "How is any of this fair? ...I just..." I just want to stop...want to stop changing...stop before I turn into a monster. I want my family back. I want it all back.

Intense silence followed with Kae's decent. Stunned, save for X who had grabbed him at the last second before his head clipped the table, the others looked around the room. The hologram was fracturing into splinters of a jagged scene caught on a freeze skip like an old movie, white noise strips cutting into the image, destroying it completely. The walls and glass had cracks climbing from the ceiling down, almost touching the ground but stopped when Hanna took him out, the glass on the verge of shattering. But it wasn't the effects he had on the room that had them weary.

He was changing with the emotional rampage. The black marking climbed into his eyes, changing them to black and yellow. But his teeth and arms were showing more developmental change. Long black taloned claws and elongated canine teeth...he was turning. How far would it go? What would the change show?

But when Hana intervened, the changed reverted back like a wilted flower, pulling into itself until Kae, exhausted and drained, was back.

With a sigh Seth opens his mouth, "You can't keep turning to the Tranqs to calm him, he'll develop a resistance at this rate," while grabbing another cigarette from a hidden pocket in his coat, and lightning it. With a deep breath he takes in the imprinted memory from this morning. Metal, concrete, ice and diamond twisted into contorted forms, converging onto two different places. One was a series of spikes on an iron wrought fence, jutting up at awkward angles for a makeshift wall. The other was pure intent; forced forward into untainted violence with a kind of warped beauty.

That kid had done it. His eyes flick to the slumped form now in X's arms. Seth had seen him after X radioed them into the area; his eyes reflected nothing but there was something burning away within that dark emptiness. Was this how he looked the first time they found him? And his mental instability wasn't a joke if he could all this. No wonder Rain's so riled up.

His eyes slid over to Siem, "What were you hoping for by bringing him in? He was already exhausted and mentally shattered. We had given our reports without his input."

Siem frowns back, his eyes slide over to Kae's form, "We're running out of time and you were not there." His gaze flicks back, "I also gave you clear instruction not to pursue it." With that, he pulls back and touches the touchpad to his office and walks through it muttering, "That wasn't Hexer."