Levitan woke up warm. They rubbed their eyes with their fingers and groaned, stretching their shoulders.
There was a small, sleepy sigh from next to them and they looked down. Akio was still nestled up to them, tucked protectively under their arm. He had one hand resting on their stomach under the covers, and his hair was messy and stuck up on one side.
Levitan chuckled and relaxed back into the blankets. They had no idea what time it was, but they decided that for just a few minutes, they didn’t care.
Akio yawned and shuffled. He opened his eyes and looked up at them. “G’morning.”
“Morning,” they said. “How’d you manage to hang on like that?”
“Like what?”
They yawned a little and scratched an itch on their collar. “Like an octopus. I toss n’ turn all night, usually.”
“I think I woke up once,” he said, shifting so he was next to them proper
Akio’s knees were shaking. He gripped the baseball bat in two sweaty hands as he followed behind Levitan. The four of them walked in silence through the dark alleyway. They were getting close to Monsoon.He kept his mouth shut because he was afraid that if he opened it, he would throw up. He was so close to Levitan, his face was inches from their back. This meant that he bumped right into them when they stopped abruptly.“Y’all ready?” they asked, looking back at the three of them over their shoulder.James and Hawke both nodded, and Akio made a slight whimper.Levitan turned away and the four of them stepped out of the alley and onto the sidewalk. The white letters of Monsoon glowed in the darkness. Underneath, in smaller letters, it read “For the Good of Mankind”.Akio’s heart pounded in his chest as they walked up to the building. A million things could go wrong. They weren’t w
“Mayday, mayday! They’re coming!”Ryan’s voice echoed around the facility, booming and staticky. Voices boomed and shouted through the offices, and people bustled from place to place in other parts of the basement.They’d been found out.“Shit!” Levitan grabbed Akio’s wrist and bolted.Akio’s felt like he was going to be sick with fear. It was all he could do to listen to Levitan’s orders.There were four more doors left in the hall labelled “Mutations”. The other hallways seemed to branch off into laboratories and more offices. Akio swept the card through the first door’s reader and Levitan tore it open.The woman sitting on the bed leapt to her feet. Fluids dripped from her, running down her cheeks from her eyes, nose, and mouth. They stained her
Levitan was rooted in place. They couldn’t move. They couldn’t process what they were seeing. Akio was being shoved into the white and blue van. Cold sweat poured down their back.“Forget about me! Run!” he yelled. His voice was distant, and the door slammed down on his words, cutting them short.That snapped them out of it. Levitan’s pulse was racing. “GET AWAY FROM HIM!” they roared.Hands grabbed at their arms and shoulders, trying to drag them back.“Levitan, it’s too late!” said James, clutching the back of their jacket. “We have to run!”“AKIO, I’M COMING FOR YOU!” they screamed, dragging the people clinging to them forward with each step, even though the
It was quiet in the lab. Akio Sato sat at his desk, filling out numbers on sheets and calculating chemical ratios regarding plant hormones. It was getting on pretty late, past nine o’clock, so the lab was mostly empty. The only light was his desk lamp.Mitch came up to his desk and tapped on it. “Alright there, buddy?”“Yeah, yeah,” said Akio hastily, straightening his spine. He subtly reached under his goggles and glasses to scratch an itch under his eye. “Why?”“You stay late all the damn time,” said Mitch, his hands in his pockets. “You ever go out or something?”Well, he usually went out to the bar after he left work at ten o’clock and got completely hammered, but he’d learned during his time in America that most people here thought that was unhealthy. “Uh, sometimes.”“Alright, pal, just… take it easy, hey?”“Yeah, sure. Th
White light is harsh, ugly, and cruel. The dried blood stained the floor light brown, and it was a welcome relief to Levitan’s tired eyes.The room was almost completely bare. Originally, they’d had a small side table, a couple books, notepads, writing utensils, and a private shower. Over the course of their stay here, the room had been completely stripped except for the mattress, the sink, and the toilet. Even the mirror had been removed after last week’sincident.Whatever. Not like they needed a mirror to know they looked like shit.Lev stood by the window to the cell and watched the people in labcoats walk by. They took notes on their clipboards, and they glanced fearfully at Levitan as they moved past their little porthole.“Yeah, those fuckersbetterbe afraid of me.”They probably regretted fucking around with them.Good.Honestly, Levitan’s sense of ti
Ryan Reeves was too young to drive, but he wasn’t the type to believe in limitations like that.“What can I get you?” asked the voice through the tinny drive-through speaker.He grabbed the lever and cranked the window off the car down the rest of the way before leaning out towards the speaker. “I’d like two Big Macs, two boxes of twenty-piece Chicken McNuggets, two large fries, and two large cokes.”“Alright, will that be cash, debit, or credit?”“Cash.”“Super, please pay at the next window.”“Sure thing.” He put his foot onto the gas and rolled forward in line. He was lucky that he was tall for his age, and he prayed that nobody would question why somebody so young was behind the wheel with no adult present. He even de
Ryan pumped his fist. “Gotcha! Take that, you weak-ass security system, haha!”He flicked through the security cameras to ensure that nobody was going to interrupt Levitan during their escape. There was that guy who was just outside the cell, but Ryan was sure that he wouldn’t be a problem. He was barely above an intern, and he was tiny… well, compared to Levitan, everybody was tiny.There was a knock on the window of the car.Uh-oh. Police officer.Ryan cranked down the window and grinned haplessly, leaning out the window to obscure the view of his equipment. “What seems to be the trouble, officer?” he asked in his sweetest Texan accent.“You can’t park here,” he said.Ryan’s heart was thudding. He resisted the urge to look at the screens, but with one hand he turned down his police scanner.Th
Pain shot up Akio’s forearm with every step like a rusty nail jabbing into his flesh. Subject Seventeen’s hand was as good as an iron shackle around his wrist. Every time he tried to twist away, a spike of agony went straight through his bones when their grip tightened.“Keep walking, pint-sized,” they growled.Akio had never been so terrified in his whole life. His heart pounded in his throat. Every iota of his being was screaming that he was going todie. He was going to suffer a tragic death at the hands of this lunatic, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nobody would even miss him.He could picture the funeral, attended by two coworkers and a hobo with nothing better to do. His tombstone would read, “Here Lies Akio Sato - He Died as He Lived; Lame and Alone”.“Stopwriggling,