***
DUDE DUDE DUDE if i moved to an island by myself in the middle of the pacific ocean would i have 2 follow american laws or would i like b considered my own sovereign nation w my own set of laws As I type a very important question to Silas, I fall into a daydream about the delights of island life: no gross-ass Republicans for miles, the ability to drink liquor out of a coconut with nobody judging me, shirtless hot guys. The list is endless.
He takes a very long time to reply, and by that, I mean longer than thirty seconds. Cain reads the first text. What did you do? is the second. Of course Silas's initial reaction to that message would be that I snapped and killed someone.
I slowly slide onto the tiled floor, my back pressed against the back of a booth. A neon red sign reading Pasta Lavista flickers on the wall opposite from me, and chatter filters up from the main dining area downstairs. Nobody ever eats up here, so Rachel and I are allowed to sit here while our dad works. Atlas sometimes joins us, but he doesn't like having anything to do with the Villa, not even the legit pizza place. Rachel sits in one of the booths, absorbed in her studying like the nerd she is.
Rachel's this tall and lanky Chinese girl, and she's got thick and curly black hair and pale skin dotted in a heavy dusting of freckles, dark waves curling against an icy shore. Her eyes are the same hazel as our dad's, if a little softer around the edges. She's got one of those gentle, glowing, healthy faces that always seem to radiate light and warmth.
nothing. i just want to make my own country where literally everything's illegal and punishable by death. breathe and u get shot. ya feel?
...I don't feel Silas replies. Are you all right?
im fine im just bored I type back. entertain me
Me too. And I'm worried about Meredith.
still? The message sounds a bit harsh, but it's too late: I already sent it. In a panic, I send something else to soften it. did something else happen? have u heard from her at all?
No, it's just... She hasn't responded to any of my texts. And I tried to go to her house to check on her after breakfast, but nobody was home.
maybe she lost her phone. also, hate to be the one to break the news, but i think you might be a stalker.
What about nobody being at her house?
they probably took a spontaneous vacation.
They left their door unlocked.
u checked?
Yeah.
stalllllker. but maybe it was a spontaneous vacation so spontaneous they didn't even know about it until they were there.
What if something happened?
obviously something happened.
Cain, please. I mean something bad.
I pause, glancing up from my phone and out the window at the cloudy fall day, biting my thumb.
im sure that nothing bad would have happened to her. maybe she just had like a family emergency and forget her phone at home or something
Yeah, but what if?
dude don't worry so much
Do you think I should file a missing persons report?
maybe idk. wait another day or so tho. if she's not at school tmw and u still havent heard from her, do it
Okay. I think I'll see if the school heard anything from her first, though.
good plan good plan
So, anyways. Have you had anymore supernatural encounters?
unless u count cerberus viciously attacking me bc i sat on one of his toys last night as a supernatural encounter, no
Oh, Cerberus. Are you okay?
traumitized? yes. harmed? only emotionally.
That's good. So what do you think it was?
i think voldemort might have been reincarnated into the body of a two-pound dog
No, you idiot. I meant the supernatural encounter.
would that make me harry potter
Cain.
i need to find myself a malfoy yanno bc like yum
Focus.
oh right sorry. i honestly have no idea. i think we came to the conclusion that atlas and i were both heavily under the influence and are gonna leave it at that.
Really?
I reply with the shrugging emoticon.
Haha. That's not an answer.
i don't have one. i kind of want to go back to the woods to try to find it again
You should go. But not by yourself.
who should i go with tho? meredith is MIA. ur busy always. atlas would kill me if i tried to drag him back out there. should i go w rachel? or perhaps cerberus, my fearless guard dog? he's literally a pedigree RAT i dont get y ppl think yorkies r cute he's a DEMON
Wait until tomorrow, I can go with you after school.
Yeah, I think. Not happening.
ok im gonna go walk the demon i'll talk to ya later
I turn my phone off and slide it into my pocket as I stand up. "Rach, I'm gonna take a walk, all right?"
Rachel looks up from her homework for long enough to salute me. "Aye aye, captain."
I respond with a nod and a salute before turning on my heels and bounding down the stairs.
***
GROWING UP, my dad was sure to engrain an appreciation of the outdoors into me and Rachel. Even now, I'm still a little bit amazed by it. The earth is a story: constantly changing, constantly evolving, constantly becoming. Everyday, there's something a little bit different. A leaf facing a new direction, a new bird's nest, the color of the sky being a slightly different shade of blue. You could walk the same path everyday until you die and never see the same sights twice. Every piece of land on this planet has that in common. Every piece of land on this planet has a history and depth — a future and a potential — that I can only begin to imagine.
It's just really fucking cool, all right? Sue me.
On this particular day, the sun gleams overhead, casting a shadow of warmth into the chilly air. Bugs — the few remaining survivors of the autumn chill — buzz around me, a constant orchestra of of white noise. The leaves blur together as they float to the forest floor, a smear of reds and golds and browns. The air is cold and crisp, albeit warmer than a typical October day, and smells of wet earth and rotting wildflowers.
I go back to texting Silas as I walk, speaking to him in the true language of friendship: memes. I purposely zone out, as Atlas and I hadn't been paying attention to where we were headed when he found the moth; maybe that was why we found it in the first place.
After a while of aimlessly walking, once Silas's memes start to get a tad stale, a fly dances across my vision, landing on my nose. I blink and wave it away, cursing at it. It flaps around in front of my face for long enough for me to realize what exactly it is, then zips off deeper into the woods.
A blue-winged moth.
Oh, holy motherfucking shitheck.
I make a strangled noise in the back of my throat in excitement and shove my phone in my pocket before I even manage to send my latest meme Silas's way. Once I'm fully prepped, I take off running after the moth, tripping and cursing and griping Oh, woe is me because Jesus fucking Christ, who thought that exercise was a good idea?
I know better than to run off the trail, especially when I'm by myself, but I don't care. I shove through the brambles. I duck underneath branches that could potentially decapitate me. I dart around trees and jump over roots and try not to die in the process. I do everything possible not to lose sigh of the moth.
The trees suddenly swim like the world's made of jello as my vision jolts sideways. My heart stops, and I gasp, frantically grasping my chest, trying to catch my breath, trying to will my heart to beat. Pain swirls through my head so intensely it knocks me to my knees.
I glance up, only to see the moth hovering right in front of me, staring me down. I try to reach towards it, but I'm rooted in place.
A bloodcurdling scream pierces through the air. The moth suddenly grows to fifty times its size. Another fiery pang racks through me, and I whimper, doubling over. I curl into a ball on the forest floor, feeling as if I'm burning to death, my hands digging into my ears, trying to block out the scream. Make it stop make it stop make it —
The woods quiet, and it's more startling and unsettling than the scream: a low, mechanical buzzing noise replaces it, one that seems to come from deep inside of me. I shake like a leaf, my body feeling as if it had just went through a meat-grinder. I know that I'm dangling on the edge of conciousness.
But I have to fight it.
Using all of the energy I have left in me, I push myself to my feet.
The moth, I notice, is gone. In its place are a group of maybe five or six people in hazmat suits, encircling me, stirring an uneasy, defensive feeling in my gut, as if I've been wrongly accused of a crime. Two of the hazmats have guns. What the fuck?
"Shit," I mumble, raising my hands in a goalpost, palms facing outwards, just in case they're feeling particularly shooty today.
"Come with us," one of them says in a deep, breathy voice — it's impossible for me to tell which one spoke through their suits. The two armed ones grab me under my arms, thrusting their guns against the sides of my head, and begin to drag me through the dirt.
"Hey, hey, hey, careful!" I protest, struggling to adjust myself into a more comfortable position, so that I'm walking instead of being dragged, so that my ankles aren't actively being broken, so that my arms aren't actively being pulled out of their sockets. Although I don't try to escape from them, — I'm not dumb enough to risk something like that — neither of them seem to like my movements, and I hear them both click the safety off their guns, almost in unison.
Oh, fuck me.
Nobody responds to my pleas. The group leads me through the woods for maybe a hundred feet before we come upon a van — a white plumber-style van that reads The Mendoza Institute in three different fonts that make me want to melon-ball my eyes out. Seriously, did anyone who designed that van have stop for even a second to think about what the consequences of their actions might be?
But the Mendoza Institute — I'd heard that name before. It's a hospital downtown, isn't it? One that specifies in cancer research, specifically the option of radiation as a treatment. Yeah — it's the one in the news a lot because of its borderline illegal experimentation and ethically questionable practices. Rumor has it that the woman in charge of creating the entire institution — isn't her name Bianca Mendoza? — had given birth to a child only to expose herself to immense amounts of radiation during her pregnancy solely for the purpose of being able to study the effects of it as the child grew. There'd also been a similar experiment done — a little girl, an orphaned survivor of the Chernobyl Disaster that'd been an infant at the time of it, hardly a month old, that they'd brought in in the mid-nineties.
The Chernobyl girl's death had been in the news five or six years back, but I can't remember ever hearing more about Mendoza's daughter, other than speculations about her possible existence. The government, the press, and Mendoza herself refused to admit the existence of the girl — who was rumored to be a little older than me, around seventeen or eighteen, now, and named Pasithea — but I like conspiracy theories and questioning those in authority.
The Chernobyl girl — who's identity still remains unknown, but is often referred to as Cherry — had been proved to be real. Pasithea, however, is all just a rumor — there's no proof that she actually existed.
Thinking about all of the rumors, however, causes my heart to skip a beat — if these people are from the Mendoza Institute, and they're all in hazmats, and they're taking me there and refusing to tell me what's going on, could that mean — could that mean that I was exposed to a dangerous amount of radiation? Oh, fuck.
I don't have time to question it, as one of the hazmats opens the back door and ushers me inside; three others follow after me, including the two armed ones, while the other two get in the front seats. Besides the front two seats, the van doesn't have any seats, nor any seatbelts. Which, to me, seems like a bit of a safety hazard.
"Where are you taking me?" I demand. "You know, this is kidnapping, by all definitions of the word. Boy, wait 'til the press hear about this."
"What were you doing out there?" one asks, ignoring my question.
"I was just going for a walk," I reply.
"You were trespassing on private property."
"Oh, was I, now?" I struggle to make myself look as innocent as possible. "I didn't know. I swear, I didn't see anything. If you just let me go, we can forget that this whole thing happened. That sound good?"
My mind reels, trying to get a grip on what's going on. I like having leverage; I like having the upper hand; I like being in control. I like being the man with the gun, the man with the plan. And, you know, usually a shotgun to the throat'll make anyone listen to you.
But this? I'm completely out of my element, and it scares me. I try to ignore my fear, all fear does is cloud my thoughts over. I'm not particularly strong or brave; I have to rely on my wits to survive. Fear is useless. All it does is get in the way of that. But the more I focus on snuffing my fear out, the more it blossoms into something I can't control.
In other words, I can't see a way to weasel my way out of this situation. I'm completely at the mercy of these strangers, and all I can do is hope that they aren't satanic axe murderers.
Hope — it's a very funny thing.
"I'm sorry, but we can't let that happen."
The only way to be sure someone doesn't escape? I know firsthand what it is.
"Don't shoot me, don't shoot me," I yelp, squeezing my eyes shut, knowing that they're going to shoot me, they've just got to. This is it; this is how I'm going to die. I try to hum smooth jazz to calm myself, but even that doesn't help.
"Kid, calm down," one of them instructs. "We aren't going to kill you. You're more valuable to us alive than you are dead."
I perk up. Hello, leverage, my old friend. I'm valuable to them. They aren't going to kill me. Chances are, they won't even try to hurt me. My eyes flicker open, and I feel myself take a deep breath of relief. "What do you mean? What's going on?"
They fall silent, so I do, too. I know how annoying talkative captives can be. I'd hate to be a burden to them.
I lose track of time as we drive, but, eventually, the van slows to a stop. The hazmats climb out, dragging me between them, and I manage to get a good look at my surroundings — the two-story windowless red-bricked building I know as the Mendoza Institute looms ominously in the background. On one side of us is a barbed-wire fence reading helpful things like KEEP OUT and NO TRESPASSING and DANGER: BIOHAZARD ZONE; a large gate hangs in the center of a gravel road. We're inside of the fence. Once I'm situated on the ground, my captors let go of me, allowing me to freely walk by myself. That confirms my suspicions that there's no way out, not even through the gate, but that doesn't stop me from trying.
I make a split-second decision: I turn and try to make a run for the gate. Frantically, as I sprint with every ounce of strength my weak-ass noodle body can muster, I yell things at the gate, trying to get it to open. "Abracadabra," I plead. "Open seasame. Oh, fuck, please open."
The bang of a gunshot flies past my ear. I wince, automatically ducking, and my hands fly up to protect my most important feature — not my brain, you idiots, but my face. However, the damage is done: the bullet's embedded itself in the gate, a good foot away from where my head was a second earlier. They either weren't aiming for me, or have worse aim than me when I'm drunk.
"Don't get left behind," one of the hazmats warns me in an almost taunting voice.
I pout for a second, kicking at the gravel, my arms crossed over my chest. Then, my fear and curiosity win out, and I hurry to catch up with them. I don't want to tempt them into sending another warning shot my way.
Despite my attempted escape, they allow me to freely walk until we reach the entrance of the institute. I'm quickly ushered inside, unfortunately back to being manhandled, but hey, I'm kinda into that, so it's not a total loss. This time, however, there's a bit of an improvement, as I only have one gun pressed against my head.
I've never been inside the Mendoza Institute, as I've never had reason to, but I've watched documentaries about all the conspiracies around it. It looks just like it did on Netflix: The waiting room just as we walk inside seems like your average hospital, if a little outdated, which irks me, as I watch a lot of HGTV. Couches, chairs, and magazine-covered coffee tables litter the center floor; a receptionist's desk is pushed against the back wall; the space splits into two wings and a stairwell, and I can see a third hallway stretching out from behind the desk.
I'm dragged down one of the wings before I get a chance to yell for the receptionist's help, and she doesn't even flinch at our entrance.
The hallway I'm pulled down is lined in numbered closed doors that I try to make sense of, but, of fucking course, they're written in roman numerals. Frankly, roman numerals scare and confuse me. Our little parade stops in front of a door, and I'm ushered into the room, along with a single hazmat that pulls the door shut behind us. The room is plain white walls and a white floor tinged with the stinging scent of ammonia. The lights buzz so brightly, it burns my eyes.
The hazmat hands me a hideous pair of white cotton pajamas. "Your clothes could be contaminated. Change into these."
I refuse to take the clothes and allow my look to speak for itself. "Don't you have anything a little more... I don't know, fashion-forwards?"
"This is protocol." I can hear something painfully adolescent in their voice; it's now obvious that they're hardly any older than I am. "Don't make it into something weird, dude. I won't look. You can keep your underwear."
Suddenly, my mind reels. I remember the stories, the rumors — the radiation, Pasithea, Cherry... Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck. "Contaminated? What do you mean?"
"I'm not cleared to answer that. I'm sorry," they turn around, allowing me a brief moment of privacy. "Just please get changed, all right?"
I huff, and take my time stripping down to my underwear and pulling the revolting — yet quite breathable —pajamas. They're actually really comfortable, and also rather warm, which only fuels to spite me. The linoleum tile is cold underneath my bare feet. For a fleeting moment, I consider asking for a pair of socks made out of the same material, but I decide not to stoop that low. I'm not that desperate. Not yet.
As the hazmat's back is still turned, I have a brief debate with myself over whether or not to send an SOS text to Silas, telling him that I'm actively being held hostage, and I might have been exposed to a deadly amount of radiation, but not to worry; I'll see him at lunch on Monday. However, I eventually decide not to do it — it would be best not to worry him. I disappear a lot, hopefully, he won't think anything of it.
"I'm decent," I announce.
The hazmat turns back to me, and I grudgingly hand them my clothes. Farewell, beautiful fashion. They assure me that my clothes will be cleaned and returned to me and thank me for my cooperation before leading me out of the room and down the hall. The others have dispersed, leaving just the two of us.
We eventually come to a door labelled XIV, and they shove me towards it, gesturing for me to open it. I press my hand against the doorknob, testing it for a second to make sure it isn't a trap before I push on it and spin it, shoving the door open. As I take a tentative step into the room, the door slams shut behind me, and I hear a click as it locks.
I whip around, frantically twisting the doorknob and shoving my entire body weight against the door, as if that would be any help. The lock is an electronic one, meaning that I won't be able to pick it. A bit of panic bites its way into my chest, and I slam my fists against the door. "Hey! Let me out! Dude! I stripped for you, and this is how you repay me? Not cool! I thought what we had was special!"
But I know that I'm just wasting energy, so I take several deep breaths to calm my nerves, closing my eyes and counting to ten. "Come on, Cain. In and out, in and out. You didn't take all of those yoga lessons and meditation classes to lose your shit over a fucking door."
Once I no longer feel as if I'm about to burst from anger, I force myself to take a step away from the door. I need to escape on my own, and it's obvious that the door's not an option. Sighing, panicking slightly, but biting the fear down, I scan for any other possible exits. The place looks like any normal doctor's office: a counter with various suspicious-looking instruments on it, a single gray spinny chair pushed up beside it, an exam table covered in a sheet of thin, translucent paper, posters hanging on the wall advertising important things such as the dangers of unsafe sex and what could possibly happen to you if you forget to use sunscreen a single time. There isn't a window; the only way out seems to be the door.
"Oh, fuck."
I rummage through the counter, looking for any source of food. There's nothing besides a bottle of fruit-flavored multivitamins, which probably won't do all that much for me when I starve to death in here. But I do have a water source, if I get desperate: the sink. I'm hesitant to use it yet, but if I'm stuck in here for good, gross-ass medical sink water and Flintstones multivitamins might be my only options. Although, I think I'd rather die than allow Fred Flintstone entrance into the sacred temple of my body.
I sigh, pressing my back against the door as I slide to the floor, imagining myself withering away in this poorly-decorated room. One day, I'll become a graying old man with a dazzling Dumbledore-esque beard and a walking cane, telling those kids to get outta my hospital as I munch on good ol' Fred Flintstone.
It's truly a terrifying thought.
"Yoo-hoo," somebody says as they knock on the door, unlocking it. I hear the knob spin, and I jump to my feet just as the door is pushed open by a middle-aged woman in a white lab coat, thick-framed glasses, and a light pink hijab; she carries a translucent blue clipboard and a black ball-point pen.
I take advantage of her arrival, as she's left the door wide open beside her. Taking a deep breath, I make an attempt to rush past her to freedom, but she's quicker than I am, and manages to close the door and lock it before I even reach it. This new development causes me to barrel straight into the door so hard I'm knocked onto my back, my head spinning, as I can't stop myself fast enough.
The woman helps me to my feet. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," I say, rubbing my forehead. "I'm fine, thank you, but Jesus, I think that door has something against me."
"Please, then, take a seat," she smiles at my lame joke, nodding towards the exam table as she sits on the single chair, crossing her legs. "I'm Dr. El-Hashem, and I have a few questions for you, if you don't mind."
I push myself up onto the exam table, struggling a bit, and try to sound more confident than I feel. "All right. What's up?"
Dr. El-Hashem clicks her pen and gets straight to business. "What's your name, young man?"
I briefly consider lying to her, but I trust Dr. El-Hashem. She doesn't seem like she actively wants me dead, and that's a step-up from most people. "Cain."
"How do you spell that?" as I talk, she scribbles away on her clipboard. "Also, would you mind giving me your last name? And spelling it, too, please."
"C-A-I-N. My last name's Terranova. T-E-R-R-A-N-O-V-A."
"That's a pretty name — Italian, right?" Dr. El-Hashem glances up at me, as if my name's familiar to her. I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
"Thank you, and right, sort of. My first name isn't, but my last name is."
"That's... Nice. How old are you? And what's your date of birth?"
"I'm sixteen, and I was born on August sixteenth, 2000. Unless my birth certificate was a forgery. I think it might have been, because — "
"Great, great. What were you doing out in those woods?"
"I was taking a walk. I swear to God and Kardashian reruns, I didn't see anything."
"That's not what we're worried about, Cain," she mutters, running her pen down her sheet of paper and pursing her lips. "I think I've covered everything I need to know for now."
A rare spark of hope flickers in my chest. "So I'm free to go?"
"Oh, no, no, no." Dr. El-Hashem shakes her head, looking at me as if she pities me. "I need to check something first."
I'm confused as to what this has to do with me, but something about her words scare me. "What do you need to check?"
She looks at me, and hesitation flickers in her dark eyes. "You went into a highly contaminated area. I need to make sure that you're clean. If you are, you'll be free to go. We'll have you sign a contract that forbids you to speak of any of your experiences, and you can be on your way."
The idea of lying about the existence of a highly contaminated area and a secret scientific organization doesn't sit well with me, but I don't tell her that. If I tell her that I'm gonna be so much of a snitch the second she lets me leave that even Harry Potter'll be after my ass, she'll definitely lock me up for good. So I don't say anything about that. Instead, I focus on her first sentence. "A highly contaminated area? What the fuck does that mean? Am I gonna get radiation poisoning or grow a third leg or whatever the fuck happens? I've watched a lot of YouTube videos about nuclear disasters, you know, and — "
"Radiation?" Dr. El-Hashem looks almost amused. "Oh, you must have heard the rumors — but how you perceive the truth isn't always how the truth actually is. That's not what we deal with here, you don't have to worry about that. Also, don't swear. You're in a hospital, even if it's not a conventional one. Show some respect."
I don't even hear her last request; it seems as if my head's filled with cotton. "What the fuck was I exposed to, then?"
"Don't swear," she calmly repeats. "I'm not permitted to tell you that, not yet."
"Why aren't you permitted to tell me?"
"I can't answer any of your questions right now, I'm sorry. Why don't we move onto your test?" Dr. El-Hashem doesn't wait for my response: she gets to her feet and roots through the mess of instruments on the counter until she finds the one she was looking for. Triumphantly, she holds up what looks like a white microscope slide with a screen made of glass, but it's about the size of a pill bottle, and rounded like one, and is covered in dozens of complicated buttons and dials.
"What does it do?" I ask.
"Nothing painful," she promises, walking towards me. "You just need to hold your eye open until it beeps. Easy peasy."
"That's reassuring," I mumble.
Dr. El-Hashem doesn't respond to my sarcasm. "Ready?"
I nod. "Bring it."
She adjusts the dials and buttons and then presses the instrument against my eye. Through the clear screen, I can't see anything but a blinding white so bright it seems to buzz with electricity. The instrument's cold against my skin, and it sends a burning sensation into my eye, painful enough that I can feel myself start to tear up, but I refuse to blink.
After maybe fifteen or twenty seconds, the instrument starts up a high-pitched mechanical beeping. Dr. El-Hashem carefully pulls it away from my eye and holds it up to the light, squinting.
"I'll be right back," she assures me. "I need to go examine the results."
With that, she leaves me alone in the room.
***
i got 2 macaroons today & im happy & also i gave up trying 2 find songs ok i'm lazy fight me
also im interested in hearing ur guys's predictions!! what do u think cain was exposed to do u think he rlly was contaminated w it do y'all think he should trust dr el-hashem & the mendoza institute what do u think is gonna happen nEXT
peace out