Elytra 2

 

4

Saturday 17 May 72AGF midnight

 

At the stroke of midnight, Steven opened his left eye and climbed carefully out of his bed in the long dormitory, placing his feet noiselessly on the floor. He repeated a journey he had now been making for three weeks, beginning with a perilous descent down the laundry chute into the basement of the home. Having negotiated this first obstacle, he began the slow process of crossing the basement and then the ground floor, pausing only to extract a small package from its hiding place behind the boiler, a hiding place reachable only by someone with the frame of an eight-year old. He unwrapped it, placing its contents, the minute hand from a large clock and a jagged-edged shard of glass, into his pockets, being careful not to cut himself. He held the clock's weight in his left hand.

It had taken three weeks. Three weeks of crawling down the laundry chute. Three weeks of spending four hours each night sweeping first the basement and then the ground floor locating every sensor, every camera and every blind spot. Three weeks of disconnecting a seemingly random selection of the home's surveillance equipment in such a way that the quantity of rat traps tripled. Three weeks to clear a path from the laundry room so that it only took him two hours to crawl, climb and squeeze his 8-year old frame to where he now stood. All with only the one eye.

He pressed his head and neck into the hollow in the wall usually occupied by a longcase clock which had been taken away for repair two days previously, and watched the sweep of the sensor as it traversed the corridor. After the beam passed him he stepped forward, opened the door and walked into the room, clutching the longcase's weight in one hand, its minute hand in the other.

The door clicked shut just before the sensor made its next sweep of the corridor. Had it been transmitting sound the sleeping Watcher on duty would have failed to hear a low growl followed by a dull thud and a whimper.

His primary task achieved, he prepared to take his freedom. First, however, he had a message to deliver. He fashioned a rudimentary paintbrush and, in dark red, daubed his message on the pristine white wall.

 

What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man

 

He stood back, admiring his handiwork for a few seconds. Eyes wide open, he smiled. Then he shuffled over to the back door, lifted his shoulders into the sensor, and squeezed through the dogflap and pushed his head out into the fresh air. He was free, and he took his first breath.

It was rank, acrid, wet with the almost continuous rain, but it was his, and his alone.

 

5.  

Tuesday 17 July 72AGF 5pm

 

The howl of anguish let out by the Doctor the following morning was still reverberating through the home's corridors when Steven was marched back into the office and stood in front of the desk behind which the Doctor sat, brooding darkly, a screen casting cold light on  his colder features.

'Leave us.' The Multiple guard did so happily, leaving the child, hair stiff and matted with blood, standing in an office that smelt of putrefying flesh. 'Three days, Steven. Three days I've been sitting here waiting for them to find you and bring you back to me.'

Steven simply stared impassively. The Doctor stood up suddenly and practically leapt over the desk. He grabbed the child by the neck and dragged him over to the corner of the room, where a shape lay covered with a stained sheet. He whipped off the sheet and, holding the child by his neck and chin, pushed his face towards the skinless corpse of the dog, the dog Steven had flayed so that he might wear its hide, making the sensors read him as what the Doctor had said he was: dog, not boy.

'You l-l-little piece of sh-sh-it.' The Doctor stammered as he shrieked at the child before throwing him to the floor at his feet. He picked up the dog's stiff and bloody hide in one hand, and the dog's front leg with the other. He gesticulated wildly with the leg, its paw thick with congealed blood, pointing it at the message on the wall. 'This?' he spat. 'You used this? You laugh at me with the words of a coward using Hector's paw as a brush, dipped in his own blood! You bastard scum!' He screamed in Steven's face.

The Doctor turned to the wall, howling in despair and then spun round suddenly, catching Steven full on the jaw with his improvised brush, the claws ripping through the flesh on his cheek as it followed through, knocking him over. As the child lay unconscious on the ground the Doctor continued to beat him until the leg snapped, when he hurled it at the wall and started to use his fists.

'Enough.' Said the voice of the Principal. It was ignored. The Principal didn't bother with repetition, merely signalled with his finger and the first of his two Multiple hench rushed forward. The Doctor's unconscious form fell to the floor, blood leaking from the split in his scalp caused by impact of the baton.

'Get that, that thing out of my sight.' The Multiples hesitated, then made for the skinless corpse of the dog. 'Not that, this!' He shouted, kicking the Doctor's feet. They dragged the unconscious form from the room, adding another smear of blood to accompany that of the dog and his executioner as they did so. The man, Singleton and wearing the casual uniform of the executive, knelt down beside the bloodied mess that had been one of his charges. 'Sorry, Steven. Even you deserved better than this.' He was about to stand, when a bubble of blood formed on the child's nostril. 'My god, the wretched bloody thing is alive.'

The Doctor, allowed one phone call before his imminent incarceration, punched in the digits of a number long ago committed to memory. It rang fives times before it was answered: 'Hello, brother. I'm in need of what you might term a rather large favour...'

 

 

6.  

December 72AGF 11am

 

Steven had to be helped into the transport as the leg that the Doctor had broken during his crazed assault six months previously had not yet fully healed. Steven was still waking at the dead of night. His own wounds, both internal and external, troubled him still while the visceral howl of pain he had heard simply would not leave him, though he refused all attempts at therapy.

The Doctor's dreams were, if anything, worse: all that greeted the closing of his eyes at night was the sight of Steven's hands, busy with their bloody work.

The door shut like a kiss and his rather unexpected transfer began. The transport was the most luxurious place Steven had ever seen, let alone experienced. He peered out of the window at the toxic and delinquent remains of the outer city as they flew through it at a speed he'd never thought possible.

After they'd been travelling for about ten minutes, a voice rang out from the front: 'Hello, Steven.' Steven's trousers darkened at the sound. 'Remember me?' The Doctor turned around to look at the passenger. The passenger remained silent.

'Just get on with it, will you? We have to get you back soon.' The second voice was familiar, but Steven couldn't place it.

'You see, Steven, your obsession with Hector, that and the aftermath of your, your crime, led to the utter travesty of justice that was my incarceration and, oh, you'll like this, Steven, oh yes, you'll appreciate this, exposure to a compulsory and highly concentrated course of therapy. Me … ME!' He shouted. The driver calmed him down.

'I wish I'd skinned you rather than your idiot dog.' Said Steven, impassively.

'His name is Hector.' The Doctor snarled and tried to climb over the seat but was pulled back by the driver. The transport stopped.

'Was.' Said Steven.

The driver turned to the Doctor and slapped him hard across the face. 'Enough!' He snapped, and Steven caught his first sight of him. He started to hyperventilate as he realised why the voice sounded so familiar. He controlled his breathing and felt much improved, though his wet trousers, at first oddly warm and comforting, were becoming cold and clammy. 'We do the thing and dump him. I'm not untouchable, you know. Just a bloody under-commissioner. This is my last rescue mission.'

'Thank you, brother. You always were holier than thou.' The Doctor rummaged in his bag. 'And as for you, you dog-murdering piece of shit, I would have skinned you back then but I've learnt a new way. You're going to wish they'd let me. I'm not going to take away the bit that looks like you, the outside layer, oh no. I have a treat in store for you.' He smiled. 'I'm going to take away your identity, your sense of self: everything. You will be less than a dog to the Clansmen. They will use you and toss you aside like so much offal.'

Arms came over the seat and grabbed him. A large ring was fitted round his throat. Everything went black. The transport drove another twenty kilometres and stopped. The area was wasteland apart from an imposing stone building.

This time, the Doctor turned his seat around. He grasped the groggy child's head between his hands, and looked him straight in the eye.

'There will be no miracle for you. No Francis to sweeten your saltwater tears. You have lost your soul but gained nothing. And I shall watch your torment as it unfolds, I shall have the joy of seeing your pain - a pain you shall endure for me, and me alone. For I, the Doctor, have the power to give life, the power to ...'

As his voice stretched out its syllables towards a crescendo, the transport lurched forward,  the driver slamming his foot down on accelerator and brake in quick succession. The transport's door, its catch released, was thrown open and a small child tumbled out onto the ground, its motion arrested by a lump of concrete. It lay motionless.

'We have to go, brother.'

The door shut like a boot to the stomach and the transport drove on.