-Kate Andersen-
After hearing who I was, Griffin's attitude had changed drastically. What had been warm and friendly, turned cold and rigid. His shoulders had arched, anger rolling off of him in heavy waves and hitting into me across the room like a wrecking ball to old, crumbling brick. Even his sandalwood scent had become polluted by a stronger, less appealing note that made my nose curl. He stormed out of the room, his hands fists at his sides, his jaw visibly locked.
I stared after him, my mouth opening to say something. No words came.
There was a sinking feeling in my stomach. Like a weight being thrown into an abyssal ocean. There was no end to the descent. The sugar in my bloodstream was dropping, but I could still feel the adrenalin spike of fear. Like being high on gas and air at the hospital: body heavy, head floating.
"Why's he so angry?" I shivered, trying to refocus my view on Rin's face, but everything was a little blurry.
"Maybe because he just found out that on top of being the reason for ReGenisis. You are also the catalyst for all the suffering that surrounds it." Nicodemus was the one to answer, his voice gruff, emotionless all but a sharpness that stabbed.
I turned to look at him, unable to breathe, my lungs felt constricted. Nicodemus Garner shot me a look, neither pity nor anger resided in it, instead the dead in between. The kind of look that meant I wasn't worth either. Then he turned for the door and shuffled out after Griffin.
"W-what does he mean?" I stuttered.
Rin's features were unmoving like fine porcelain as she took a step back and towards the door. "Come with me," she invited with a glance back over her shoulder.
Reluctantly I followed her, my arms wrapping around myself. How could I be the cause of suffering? I hadn't done anything. Nothing but exist. I hadn't even been given a choice in whether I wanted to or not, or what I'd like to do with the existence I'd had.
As if anticipating the need to give me some small comfort, Rin placed her hand on my shoulder for a brief moment, but her expression remained the same.
We stepped out into a long white hallway. The same neon glow as was in the room I'd woken in. There were about twenty doors that lined the corridor, ten on each side plus one that sat squarely between the narrow walls. From the hum I could detect from it, I guessed it was the elevator.
Rin lead me silently towards one of the doors at the farthest back of the corridor where the light level decreased still.
"The sanctuary exists not simply for King, Garner and myself, we could disappear if we so choose. But there are others who cannot." She explained, her eyes to a panel next to the doors. Her fingers tapped a code into it so quickly even my new eyes couldn't catch it as they blurred with the speed of her actions.
The doors parted, two groans and a loud, unholy shriek curdled the air in the hall and made me jerk back from the opening.
"It's alright," Rin's voice softened, not addressing me. Her eyes were searching the inhabitants within.
My heart was a deranged monkey in a tiny cage, clamouring to get out at this point. I couldn't move any further forward on my feet to see what was inside the room. But, she held her arm forward for me to join her and sheepishly my feet shuffled along the floor until I was stood before the pitch black room.
Inside there were four hospital beds and four resident's. Two seemed confined to their beds, squirming and shrilling away from the minimal light let in from the hallway. One of them, a man, looked as if his body had been covered in acid. The skin melted and wrinkled and still red in places. He was writhing, holding his scarred up arms over his eyes and moaning.
The other laid up in a bed was a woman, I'd glimpsed her hairless head for just a moment, her cat's-eyes glowing in the darkness before she pulled the covers up over herself to hide away.
Another man was shielding his eyes from the light, but seemed little else effected. He had been sat in a chair with a book, still open in his lap.
The last was another woman. She was curled up in an empty corner, rocking back and forth. She was muttering to herself, poems it sounded like. Her arms were half wrapped around herself, but she was picking at them with her fingers, scratching away at the skin. Little red spots all over her clothes where her nails had broken the surface. Her eyes darting about the room, beady, watchful, but oblivious to the company.
I felt the floor moving beneath my feet and my stomach being pushed up within me. I held it down, held myself down.
The woman looked up at me and narrowed her eyes. "Angels, Devils and all in between, all hail she, the headless Queen. Her life not her own, twice dead she has been."
I stumbled back, feeling winded again.
Rin entered the room, approaching the woman. She rested her hands down on the scabby, scarred, bleeding arms of the madwoman.
"Shh, shh, Danielle" She breathed as the woman calmed. Then looked up at the man shielding his eyes where he sat in his chair. "Why aren't her hands wrapped?" Her voice quiet, tone hard.
"The light..." He whined, "I can't think with the light."
Rin sighed then nodded, "Kate, come in and let the door close."
I swallowed back a knot in my throat and stepped past the threshold. The door automatically shut behind me with a low beep that told me it had locked. I caught myself against it. Shut in the pitch black that I could see perfectly through. The room was sterile, but some of the scents of its inhabitants were unusual and very chemical laden which made my head a little lighter.
My eyes were fixed on the woman who was bobbing her head, cradling her arms. Confused and muttering to herself still, repeating the words of her little poem, staring at me with wild eyes that glowed like green amber with a torch shone through it. But there was no light to catch it.
Rin helped the woman up gently. Taking her to sit in, presumably, her bed. "There are swabs and bandages over in that cabinet next to Geoff," she nodded her head in the direction of the relatively normal looking reader.
I took it as my cue and walked over towards the cabinet. Geoff looked up at me, his eyes didn't glow as brightly, they had no colour to them. They were all pupil and I could tell they were scanning me over as I pulled out the swabs and bandages.
"Antiseptic?" I asked, trying to ignore the eyes that had been judging and then content to trace my body line from toe to curves. It made me stiffen anxiously.
"No need." Geoff told me with a gruff voice and a clear surrey accent. "But I'm sure, they'd appreciate you to put some water in the little container next to the sink." He lifted a hand from where it had been stroking the page of his book and pointed towards the sink near the door.
I turned to look at the blonde man, unshaven and wearing a grey suit. His lip curled up in one corner, instead of eye contact I received more surveying. I clenched my teeth together in my mouth, narrowing my eyes at him before marching away and leaving the swabs and bandage on the bed next to Danielle.
"Water?" I asked to confirm.
I got a nod and went to the little sink. Finding a bowl on one of the shelves in the closed up cabinet underneath it I filled it quickly. Once it was filled I placed it carefully on the bed, too.
I hadn't thought of Rin as the tender sort. But she was very careful and kind towards this seemingly deranged woman.
Rin cleaned out the cuts quietly, watched that they healed a little with the serum obviously within the woman's bloodstream and wrapped her hands so that she couldn't pick at herself again. I wondered how she'd become the way she was, what had happened to the hairless woman still resisting coming out from under her sheets. The man who looked burned up who had slipped into sleep in his bed.
"How does that feel, Danielle?" Rin inquired, waiting for the woman to bring her eyes up to her face.
"Better, thank you." The woman trembled a little. "I got them wet, they fell off," Danielle lifted her wrapped hands. "The clawless sloth wouldn't replaced them." Her voice was even and low. Apart from the sloth remark she sounded almost... sane.
I frowned, about to look away when her eyes fell on me again, muttering her poem of the headless queen once more. I shuddered back.
"Geoff, you are supposed to take care of Danielle. If I find her in this state again, you'll be put you in a room with a window in its door to let some light in." She threatened darkly as she stood up straight.
There was a chortle from under one of the covers. The hairless woman. "You, too. In the darkness you're capable enough." Rin's eyes turned towards the sound, the whole room fell silent.
I'd just stood there, twiddling my fingers together nervously and trying to ignore being stared at from two angles. Neither one of them comfortable.
After a moment, Rin turned back to me with a look that directed me towards the door. We both walked out into the hall, with a code to get out and a code to lock the door once we were on the other side. When the doors closed I was still left with the image of Danielle's eyes glowing and the sound of her muttered words.
"Who are they? W-what are they?" I had an arm wrapped around my stomach, trying to convince myself not to throw up. I guess I knew part of it, but I didn't know why or how and my mind was so scrambled I wasn't quite sure which question to ask.
"Rejects, fails, unwanted ones." Rin began, humourlessly. "Partial Nocturnals, or Scavengers who were supposed to be mass culled."
This flippant answer stole all the colour from my skin and what strength I had in my legs to stand. My knees buckled and I was about to topple to the floor. But Rin's claw like hand took hold of my arm and steadied me back up onto my feet.
"C-culled?" I held my free hand over my mouth now, feeling her grasp tighten.
"Yes. I was ordered to get rid of them myself." Rin's voice was emotionless still, cold. "There was no use for them anymore. They were simply liabilities taking up space that could be better used."
I wondered for a moment whether that would have been better for them. The poor, pitiful creatures. But as I caught that thought race through my mind, I felt sick with guilt. My eyes widened, trying to picture the wrecks inside as humans, like they'd been before. Like they were still supposed to be. What had been done to them to make them so...
"My father c-couldn't... wouldn't..." I swallowed back the bile rising in my throat.
"Your father is capable of a lot of evil, miss Andersen, the sooner you realise that, the better." Rin snapped, her voice keeping an even low that ran through my veins like ice. "Still, I never said he was the one to give the order. He's not the only man with power running the ReGenisis project."
"H-he's not?" I was trying to process what exactly that meant. It gave me a little hope that maybe my father had no idea about this. That if he did, it was because he couldn't say anything, that he didn't have the power to change things. I mean, this kind of thing is illegal, right? The things that were done to those people to cause this.
Rin shook her head. But said nothing more on it as she started directing me back up the hall towards another door.
The world around me was still spinning, whilst I seemed still in place. Rin knocked on the door and waited for a response. I stared at the side of her face, a frown forming on my own trying to figure out why she was torturing me.
"There's one more person you should meet whilst you're down here." She breathed.
The door opened and there in a little blue and white flowery dress stood a teenage girl. Barely fourteen, I think. One side of her body was pinkish and rippled in a ghastly fashion. The other side was pale while with some odd scarring. She only had one eye, as on the pinkish side of her skin her brow looked like melted down wax, drooping towards her cheek and covering over a good section of the socket beneath.
On her head, small tufts of frizzy hair poked out here and there from an otherwise bald scalp. She reached up with a wig in hand and covered it with routine like precision. The wig was pale red and curly, which contrasted well with her one blue eye and the long fringe dipped down as a partial covering for the non-eye.
She smiled at me, one side of her mouth gnarled. "Who's this? New recruit come to join you Takeichi?"
Rin's expression had softened towards the girl, becoming warm. "This is Miss Andersen." She presented me.
Molly looked at me, her pink skin almost turning pale. It was as if I were a ghost. She stumbled back from me, blinking her eye.
"Oh," she breathed.
"...She knows me?" I quaked. My whole body was shuddering as if I were cold and couldn't warm up. All I wanted was to shut my eyes and when I opened them not be here. To be anywhere else, to see anything else.
"Oh yes," Molly replied, "I was the test. Once they'd got the serum right it was tested on two people. A man with cancer like yours used to be and a dead little girl who'd been caught in a house fire..." she pointed her thumb in at herself.
That was it. I bent forward and coloured the floor with the contents of my stomach.
* * *
Sat up at a cold hard, white chair in the kitchen of the gateway. I held myself slumped forward into my hands over a steaming cup of coffee. I could feel the tears slipping down my cheeks as I sniffled them back. Young Molly's arm was wrapped around my shoulders, her cheek rested against the top of my arm.
"Who were they before?" I croaked.
"Originally convicts who got lost on transport. Later, the terminally ill. A couple, reanimated corpses like Molly." Rin answered from where she stood, leant up against the door frame.
I still felt sick, but it wasn't so bad. All the adrenalin had fought my headache back somehow, or at least helped distract me from it.
"The people in charge ignored human rights. It was felt that tests taken out on the dead, those suffering with similar conditions and living convicts would help with how quickly the Scientists got it right. Incentive. Some of those in charge thought that it was justice, considering what some of those convicts had done to get themselves sentences." Molly had a sweet, girly voice, but she spoke beyond her years. Unfortunately it wasn't helping my queasiness. "That and pretty soon after the serum was started on, side effects started to show... so there became a double agenda to continuing work with..." Molly trailed off. "Sorry, I babble sometimes. Quite a bit of it in my head and then I finish out loud and confuse everyone." She cringed a smile up at me , her cheeks reddening.
"No, it's ok." I glanced down at her bright blue eye. Practically normal, a little dilated in the darkness, but I could tell she couldn't see like the rest of us in the room.
"So... you guys made this place to... take care of the rejects?" I checked that it had gone in right.
"The function of the Sanctuary itself is for the benefit of those we managed to save, yes. But there are other reasons we are here besides them." Rin nodded, the glaze in her eyes turning a shade icier. A visible storm brewing within them, like flurries of snow against a grey sky.
"I get the feeling there's still a lot I don't know." I swallowed, biting my lip.
"In the equation of knowledge, a person cannot reach one percent of all there is to know in their life time." She answered gently.
"She means yes. But don't worry about it just yet." Molly smiled up at me sheepishly. She was cheery for someone... I stopped myself from thinking it.
"Daughter of the devil," Nicodemus muttered a long string under his breath, apparently trying not to catch my hearing. I tried to ignore him, shutting out what I could of his words as I shuddered at the table.
I wondered if that's how Rin thought of me, if that's what Griffin was thinking. Daughter of a devil. I sighed, staring down at my hands on the table top. "With all this...I can see why Griffin hates my guts..."
"Of course, that's what you'd get from all this." Nicodemus snipped from over at the counter where he stirred a cup of cinnamon apple tea.
I scowled over my shoulder at him, my whole body tensing up, my hands balling into fists. "I just found out my continuing existence has been the plague of others lives. I really don't need you and your grumpy ass attitude making me feel much more like a little girl..." I snapped back, hiccupping a sniffle down, anger making my cheeks feel hot. "I didn't ask for any of this to be done in my name!"
He rolled his grey eyes and took a sip of his steaming drink. "As if I'm the only one who recognises your weak, childish nature. I can spot a spoilt, sheltered brat a mile off. I'd need ten miles to miss you."
"Excuse me," I pushed my chair back, shuddering at the sound of the legs screeching against the floor tile. Molly had to relinquish her hold around my shoulders as I turned to look at Nicodemus properly. "Weren't you one of the so called 'trinity of scientists' who created the ReGenisis Serum? Do you really think you have a right to judge me, when you had such an active hand in its making?"
Nicodemus looked horrified. His eyes wide, his hands shaking, the rest of him completely still. He turned his head aside.
"Or is this just your way of shirking off the sore conscience, finding someone else to point the finger at and blame?" I swallowed back a lump in my throat, guilt worming through me again. I realised I shouldn't have said it, but it just slipped out.
"Kate," Rin's voice was low and sharp, "that's enough."
"S-sorry." I hid my face in my hands.
Molly got up from her seat next to me, I could hear her footsteps leading away, getting closer to Nicodemus. When I looked up, she'd hugged him.
"It's ok..." She said, patting his shoulder.
Nicodemus took a second, putting an arm around the teen who he dwarfed in size, and rested his cheek against her wig.
"I forgive you," she breathed.
A stab at my heart as I realised how monstrous I probably sounded. How little I knew about what was going on. How right Nicodemus was about me. Maybe that's why I'd found the sharpest words and tried to stab back at him with them? All in spite. Words are often worse than physical weapons, the wounds never really heal. I knew that well enough.
Rin sighed heavily and shifted from the door, pushing off of its frame. Bored with the scene, or just unwilling to witness it.
I got up from my seat and followed her out into the dark hallway. She stopped halfway towards her room. As if she sensed I wanted to say something she turned back to me slightly, her arms hugged around herself.
I looked down at my feet confronted with the storm in her snowy eyes. Thoughts of being the daughter of a man who would endorse, or at least allow, torture...the daughter of a devil. "Do you... think my father is a monster?" That I'm a monster, I finished in my head.
Rin sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. "My opinion would be biased, as much as yours." They opened again, instead of pearly like the moon, ebony from centre to edge. "Time and objective evidence is what will tell for you. I will not tell you what to think, or influence your opinion simply by mine."
I nodded, "thank you." I meant it, too. She was the first not to impound me with an opinion I 'should' agree with.
"About King," she began after some silence, "he doesn't hate you. He's not really angry at you either, just himself."
"W-why?"
"Had he known who you were, he'd have left you dead and stayed away from your murder scene." She paused, looking back towards his door. "Revived, not only are you dying again, but your being here puts those we care for at risk and he knows it's his fault."
"It's not his fault, he couldn't have known, right?" I shivered.
"He shouldn't have revived you in the first place." Rin's eyes snapped back up at my face, icy pearls again, "You should never have been given a restart. Regardless who you are or are not."
I clamped my eyes shut, feeling the words cut. "Yeah, I'm beginning to get that picture... but, why did he?"