Trial Run

By Inca

One

Sunnydale, California. 1982.

“Imagine a human who was perfectly honed. Imagine a human without the distractions of media, or science, or a family.”

The three men seated around the huge glossy table listened, eyeing the booklets in front of them with a carefully guarded interest.

“Imagine a human,” Travers said, “Who was shaped by you. Who would grow with the ideals you wanted from him, or her. Without free thought, because they never had need to develop it. Who held only the thought to obey you and only you.” He leaned forward, hands on the cold wood of the table; smiling with barely contained excitement. “A perfect soldier.”

Travers paused, breathing a little heavily, watching them from behind his glasses, waiting for their approval. The muscle in his thigh ticked a few times before settling down.

“Mr Travers,” one of the heads of the operative, Major General Martinez, said after a moment, “We already undergo mind control techniques…”

“Which are sloppy, and… and delicate!” He said smiling. “Those soldiers know, maybe only subconsciously, but they know in their very being, that there is something else in the world. I am talking about a human, who would not.” He breathed the emphasis. “They would not know any other than what you tell them.”

Colonel Jensen spoke up, pulling his thin glasses from his face and dropping them to the table. “I’m not sure what you mean… how are you planning to instil the military’s ideals in someone, or … deprive them of free thought?”

“Not deprive!” Travers said, a little alarmed, eyes flicking to the man’s fingers playing with the frames of his glasses. “No, not deprived, simply, not burdened.”

“Fine. How are you planning to ‘not burden’ someone with it? And…” he looked down at the prospectus. “And ‘not burden’ them with family, or anything along those lines.”

“It’s quite simple actually. Of course people need at least a few interactions with other humans. We are social creatures. But the aim of… is to limit this. To cut out the possibility of physical attachments, of …uh, well, adverse thoughts from other peers or even thoughts from books–”

“Yes, but how? Are you going to keep them locked up, never allowing them to ever go outside?” Major Martinez said with an arc of a patronising brow.

Travers smiled brilliantly. “Why would a perfect soldier need to?”

The three men all leant back in their chairs, watching him with a guarded eye.

“I’m not talking about abuse or deprivation gentlemen, in fact… there is nothing further from the truth in what I propose. If a boy never sees the sun, never hears of the sun, how would he know it was there? He certainly wouldn’t miss it.” He smiled at his metaphor, pausing for a moment to let that sink in, before he continued, taking out his handkerchief and mopping his brow. “I am just saying, remove the temptations and distractions from someone’s life. Drugs. Sex. Groceries, money, today’s ideals of vanity, the marketing machine. You would have… the simple foundation of a human. Malleable, ready to learn. Perfect.”

Major Martinez cocked his head a little, watching him with hard eyes. “You think you could keep a person like a mouse in a cage? Train them to run a specific wheel?”

“Yes. With no harm to the person of course. In fact, without knowledge of war or death, they would in theory be living a better life than the rest of us.”

The men all began leafing slowly through the booklets, eyeing the plans for a largish living area, in one of the Initiative’s underground wings. A bedroom, a bathroom, a tiny indoor garden, a small lap pool and gym for fitness.

“And you think,” The last man, Colonel Terry said after a moment, breaking his silence, “That a person wouldn’t begrudge anyone the fact he couldn’t go outside, existed solely under the thumb of someone else?”

Travers smiled weakly, but knowingly, like a tired parent. “You don’t seem to get the major point, Colonel Terry. The person would never know.”

---

Re-enforced steel and concrete walls. Passcode and DNA recognition for clearance. UV replication lighting. One hundred and twelve cameras. The base of Project O-1 took only eight months to prepare, in the B-14 area of the Sunnydale Initiative, one hundred feet below ground.

---

Sunnydale, California. Present Day.

The world is one hundred and thirty-three steps long. Angel knows. He has counted many times. From his bed to his shower it is fourteen steps, toe to heel. The shower sprays ten minutes from the moment the buzzing wakes him up. The buzzing starts at seven thirty and goes for five minutes. From when the shower stops, about fifteen minutes will pass until his breakfast arrived. He can dress in that time and wait by the silver door. The silver door will click and then he can open it, and the food will be on the tray in the tiny room in between two doors. The other door never opens for him. Only Father could open it.

Breakfast always came with fruits and cheeses, but was cereal for three days, pancakes for one, cereal again for another two days, then eggs and bacon for one. The back to cereal for three days.

At ten o’clock, which is two hours after breakfast appears, the door to the exercise area opens. The exercise area is twenty-five steps long, but another fifty wide. He would swim or use the three machines for hours on end. Exercise bike, weight machine and treadmill. They make him tired though. He showers afterwards.

He remembers Father telling him to leave the room by four, that it would close at that time. Angel had stayed behind a few times, once on purpose to see what would happen, the others he’d been caught up in the machines. He’d been locked in the room until ten the next morning. He is usually out of the room by three thirty.

The world has six parts. Where he sleeps and bathes. Where he swims. Where he eats and creates. Where the plants are. This is the four-part world. The tiny room between two doors is the fifth part. And where Father is, when he isn’t with Angel, is the sixth and last part of the world. Father has promised him, one day he will see it too. But he isn’t old enough.

It is where food comes from as well. Father makes it, like Angel makes pictures.

In the eating area, there are books. Books about his body, his bones, his organs. Pictures of what’s inside him. Father wrote them for him. There are mathematics books, and some English ones. He has made a book of his own pictures. He remembers when Father saw the first picture he’d ever created; he had drawn his fingers. Father was excited.
He draws better now. And Father always seems interested in that. He likes to draw the plants. They’re alive like him. But in a different way. They ate water. The place where the flowers are is a lighter colour, brighter lights, and they’re hot. There are tiles on the floor like in the bathroom or around the pool. It is wide, sixty steps across and twenty steps long.

The ceiling is high. If he stands on the table, he can scrape the top of the world with his fingertips. And sometimes, just…sometimes… he wonders if there’s anything else but this.

---

Angel broke away from his thoughts. They were cloying sometimes. Cloying was his new word; he got new words to use with his cereal once a week. He was sitting at the table, his lunch half-eaten in front of him. One day of tuna on bread and salad and cheese, one day of rice and vegetables, one of sliced meat and cheeses, one of hot thick soup, one day of crunchy chicken with potato and one day of stew.

It was tuna today.

He didn’t like tuna. It tasted horrible. He opened the bread and picked out the little tangy tomatoes from the fish and ate them, scraped the tuna off the bread into a little pile as he always did, and ate the bread. He only ate the tuna when he was really hungry, from exercising too long, or too hard. But he didn’t do that on tuna days, because he didn’t want to get hungry, because he didn’t want to eat the fish.

He ate the cheese with the bread to cover the fishy taste, and picked at the salad. Father hadn’t appeared in two and a half weeks, although the food always came on time, every day. He wondered what he was doing. He’d asked him of course, asked him many things, was always asking him questions, he knew everything. But Father was select what he told him. So he didn’t know what he did in the sixth part. It itched him a little, but he couldn’t get in there. He’d tried.
He’d figured that since the food appeared in the tiny room, and that Father made the food, it must in some way come from the sixth part. So he’d waited in the tiny room, to see where the trays went after he put them in there. But nothing had happened. He’d tried many times, for hours he’d waited. But the doors stayed closed. So he’d realised it only worked when he wasn’t there. Like his hair got shorter sometimes, or new clothes appeared in his closet when the food made him sleepy. Like the pool area was cleaned only when it was closed to him.

He often wondered what it would be like. The sixth part. Would it be a mirror image of the first four parts of the world? And therefore… would that mean there were actually nine parts to the world? His brain felt strange, water clogged, like his ears sometimes felt when water from the pool got stuck in them.

He finished off his lunch and wondered what he should do. Draw? Go back into the gym? Go to see the plants?

He stood, took his tray with the tuna smelling plate on it and opened the silver door, placing it on the little shelf inside the tiny room. He came back into the four-part world and heard the little click that meant the door couldn’t be opened again until dinner. He knew that as well as he knew he had five fingers. It was a fact. An unarguable fact.

He wandered out into the plant area, baring his teeth at the mirrors that bordered the world to make sure no seeds or anything were stuck in them. He had spiky face. His hair got confused and grew over his body. He remembered having tiny hairs on his legs and arms, but they got dark. Under his arms and between his legs and now it was even starting to grow a little on his chest too. Grew on his chin and cheeks quickly. But every two days it would disappear while he slept. He would wake up tomorrow and it would be gone. It was strange like that. He figured it went back into his face. The plants were still there, nothing is new. He checked everyday, because sometimes when he slept new things would appear on the table or next to his bed. Little puzzles. A new book. A new plant. He loved it when that happened.
A bit pouty from the realisation today wasn’t going to be exciting; he sat down on the ground in front of a rose, and watched it for a while. It was still. Like it too only moved when he was asleep. He’d kept track of the bloom, opening up a little more each day until it was fully spread and beautiful. He’d thought yesterday was as big as it was going to get, but today… it seemed to be bigger. He smiled.

“Are you going to keep growing?” He asked it. “I stopped growing years ago.” Flowers grew, bloomed, the blooms drooped and fell and then they slept for a while… and then bloomed again. It was fascinating.

The rose was quiet. Angel reached out and ran his thumb along the soft petal. It didn’t speak. He felt that chest hurting he felt sometimes. He felt strange, although not really strange because his eyes weren’t leaking. Just… strange. He got excess energy a lot, and a new puzzle or game or book would usually help with that, calm it down like the pool calmed down a while after he jumped into it, smoothing out his ripples. But the strangeness didn’t go away until Father came to see him. He wanted to talk to him. Or…

He bit his lip.

Or Will. He wondered where he had gone. The empty feeling intensified. It always seemed to when he thought about Will. Where did he go? Was he in the sixth part?

Will was … he wasn’t Father. He wasn’t sure what Will was. Like him, he supposed, which is probably why he wanted to know where he was.

He’d talked to him twenty three times. He had a tally on the side of the bookshelf. He hadn’t seen him since before his seventeenth year though.

Did he sit and wonder where Angel was? Did he like tuna? Angel had to know. Even though it was the question he’d asked Father most; he couldn’t stop asking for some reason.

He doesn’t understand what ‘gone from the world’ means; even when Father explains it to him. He must still be in the sixth part. His tuna on bread disappeared today, he ate it, but he knows it will be back in seven days. The tuna sandwich sleeps in the sixth part for seven days. Maybe like Will?

But Will didn’t come back at a set time. Tuna came back every seven days. He saw Will mostly when he was sixteen. Two times before his thirteenth year. But mostly around his sixteenth year.

So where was he? He must be in the sixth part sleeping with the sleeping tuna. He had only ever come through with Father. They both had blue eyes. He had brown. He wondered why that was. Was that why Father and Will were in the sixth part and he was in the four part world?

It almost hurt his brain to try and think about it.

---

Travers looked down at his laptop screen, squinting at his words for a moment before rubbing his eyes. He’d been here for a while, studying Angel’s reaction to his loneliness. He’d finally dragged himself out of bed and caught the last few moments of his morning shower, and had dressed in loose dark cotton pants and a loose white shirt that appeared to be his favourite outfit.

He was sitting in the garden now, watching the roses with that same zoned out expression everyone on Project O-1 had come to expect from him over the past few years. He seemed to take his solitude harder and harder as he had grown, which was interesting. Travers had thought, they all had thought, it would get easier.

He checked the temperature of the enclosure. 78.8

Perfect. Everything always had to be perfect for him.

Angel was fascinating. He cried sometimes, but didn’t understand why he was doing it, wandering around his world with tears on his face. Travers had purposefully never taught him about loneliness or being alone. He thought it was natural. Which was what made the crying so interesting. He didn’t do it very often.

He never taught him the word ‘yearn’. He hadn’t taught him the ideas of many things.

He’d signed on with the Initiative because they had the money. And you needed money for an experiment like this; it was as simple as that. This world changing experiment on human behaviour.

The speakers picked up Angel’s words clearly. “Can you eat tuna?”

Angel often tried to personify things around him to tamp out the isolated feeling. He talked to himself sometimes, to hear a voice, to hear something apart from the silence. He went through a stage in around year fourteen where he left the shower running for weeks on end. For the noise. He wanted sound. The enclosure didn’t allow for any, really, it was padded with concrete. Angel wasn’t allowed music. When Angel slept the silence was enveloping.

Angel didn’t exist. His name was a little joke. They’d paid for him, a mother who was going to abort her child had needed the money more. So he lived even though he should be, by all rights, dead. Of course there was a false record of the woman aborting her child, no one would be foolish enough to leave any trail.

Travers itched to speak to Angel again. He had scheduled his reappearance for later today, but could not wait. He smiled at Angel’s face on the large flat screen on the wall above his head, watching him as he sedately eyed the flowers, curled up on the warm electric-heated tiles next to them.

Twenty-three years, Travers mused as he sipped the last of his coffee and took his walking stick in hand, using it to aid his weak knee as he walked over to the containment doors. A life’s work. He picked up his test briefcase. Angel’s life. His entire life.

He slipped through the first containment door, cold and lit sharp blue. The door closed behind him and he keyed in the code for the next door. Sharp jab in his finger, a tiny pinprick of blood, and he saw his DNA rise and twist on the tiny screen above. The door opened, and he stood in the ‘tiny room’ as Angel called it. The fifth part. Travers smiled and undid the lock. He imagined Angel’s ears pricking up at the small sound he was so attuned to, hearing it easily through the quiet of his world. Imagined him running over, hopeful and sure enough, when Travers pushed open the heavy steel door, Angel was there, huge smile on his face.

“Father!” He cried, stepping forward and wrapping his long arms around his neck. His fingers slid into Travers’ hair, like he was savouring every feeling, every touch. He heard the small sniff of Angel trying to smell him, clinging to him and fingers tracking over him.

Travers loved that Angel acted so much like a baby monkey. It’s not like he was trying to act like them; of course, Angel didn’t know what monkeys were. It was a throwback gene, trampled out by society, so raw in the man before him.

“You’ve been gone for a long time.” He said.

“I have. How are you?”

“Well.” He paused. “Excess energy.” He admitted after a moment, looking down at him from his six-foot-one height with an almost apologetic look, still clinging loosely to his shirt.

He was bored. Rising problem in the past two years. Maybe he could arrange a new exercise machine for him. The last one kept him amused for at least six months. “I’ll try to find something to settle that. What else has happened?” He asked, placing his briefcase on the table.

He smiled and bounded along the enclosure towards the ‘outside’ area. He was kneeling before the roses by the time Travers got there, limping along with his cane.

“Look. It blooms.”

Travers knew the state of the rose very well, he watched the enclosure all day and some of the night, but he feigned surprise.

“Father? Why I don’t I eat water?”

“You do.”

His handsome face registered perplexity for a moment before he stood back up. “Why doesn’t the rose eat eggs? Or cereal?”

“The rose is smaller than you. It doesn’t need to move. It only needs water to live.” It wasn’t a correct answer, but it was simplistic.

Angel watched the flower by his bare feet. He touched the pot a little with his long toes, thinking. “If I didn’t move, would I live on water?”

“But you are always moving. You breathe. You blink.”

Understanding flooded his face. He nodded. “You always know so much.” He said, with a note of awe in his voice.

“I’m older than you. I’ve learnt.”

“I don’t learn anything it seems, unless I learn from you.” He looked a little pouty, as Travers liked to call the put out expression on Angel’s face. His eyebrows drew together and his lower lip jutted out a little. Had done so, ever since he was a little boy.

“You will.” Travers promised.

Angel stared up at the concrete ceiling for a moment. “Father?” His eyes tracked back down to watch him. “Why does your hair change colour and mine doesn’t?”

“I’m older.”

“My hair will turn white one day?”

“Yes. And you’ll wrinkle like me.”

“Wrinkle?” Repeating a word was Angel’s way of telling him he didn’t recognise it.

Travers ran his fingers over the crinkled skin near his eyes, circling it gently to show him. “Wrinkles.” He said happily.

Angel copied the motion on his own face and then reached out and repeated it on Travers. Baby monkey. Learned by copying. “Feels different.”

“I once had skin like you. No wrinkles.”

“Did you look like me?”

“No. But I was young once too.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You weren’t created yet.”

Angel nodded and played his finger around the edge of his eye again. He wandered over to a wall and looked at himself, stretching his pale skin. “You get more wrinkles.” He mused, looking at him in the reflection.

Travers laughed. “I do. And my hair turns whiter and falls out. It’s what we do.”

Angel smiled. “I remember you had brown hair like me.”

“I did. When you were very little.”

“Little.” He bounded over like a colt and started playing with Travers hair. He was quiet for a while. Travers felt fingers along the ever-increasing bald spot at the back of his head. “You used to be bigger than me.”

That was true. Angel had been a small boy but had grown into a lanky awkward pre-teen. His big hands and feet had given indication of what his size would be. He’d grown into them. At twenty-three he was still softening from his teenage growth into adult maturity. He was lean, due to his tendency to pick at his meals like a bird and then exercise for hours.

Angel rested his chin on Travers shoulder.

“You’re quiet today. I thought you’d be full of questions.”

“I am.” He stayed silent though and started to feel Travers belly and chest through his shirt.

Travers sighed. “You’ve been thinking about William again haven’t you?”

“I dreamt about him. Where did he go?”

“I’ve told you, you don’t listen.” He said, almost petulantly. Angel was so stubborn and obtuse when it came to his son. He should never have let Will in to see him. It looked like Angel refused to give up on the thought there could be someone else in the world.

“Why did he go? Why did he come, and how did he get here? Does he eat like me? Or is he like a flower, and just eats water?”

He’d once taken pity on Angel, when he was around five, had felt a tinge of sorrow for the lonely boy and let his son in to interact with him. Angel had clung to the then twelve-year-old boy like he was a life preserver, pestering the boy with question after question as he sniffed him and tried to wriggle over him. William had always seen Travers experiment as he grew up. He was seven when it started, and he’d sit with Travers in the control room and watch his experiment like it was his favourite television show. He’d grown older, and passed through school and then high school. Once, when Will was around eighteen he’d made a comment along the lines of the idea that keeping a human underground wasn’t humane, but Travers had dismissed it as some sort of teenage rebellion, playing Devil’s advocate just to distract him into an argument. He’d gone into college, majoring in some humanities and psychology degree.

Travers didn’t really know, or understand his son. He was always doing strange things, like dying his hair white, or getting into fights, or picketing or giving someone in the society more rights. William had turned out to be a bundle of irrepressible energy. Schools would ring him up while he was trying to concentrate on Angel and complain to him about his errant son.

His estranged wife usually dealt with things like that; Travers was not ashamed to say he didn’t care for what his son did. It just wasn’t important in the big scheme of things.

From about nineteen onwards, Will had asked him repeatedly to let him in to see Angel. He never told him anything about the outside world, maybe fearful of what would happen but that day, damn him! Travers scowled a little as Angel impatiently waited for an answer.

“William is gone. He is just gone.”

“But why?” He whined.

“Because I say he is. I promise you he is gone.” He should have never let him see someone else. He was stupid and weak for compromising his experiment like that. He didn’t want to teach Angel about death but couldn’t stop him from asking about the damn boy. A scientist had to be clinical and removed. That’s how you created an unbiased result. He would never, ever be so foolish again.

“Does he like tuna?” Angel whispered needily after a hesitated moment.

Travers breathed in, closing his eyes to resist the urge to show his frustration. “Have you been drawing recently?”

Angel blinked. “Yes.”

“What did you draw?”

He paused, and then stood up, walking towards his small bookshelf and taking out a sheaf of papers. It was his drawing book. His creations. Travers smiled a little. Angel wriggled back down beside him and showed him the pages. Mostly the flowers. One of the pool, one of the shower. He’d been drawing a lot. He was getting good at it, at replicating what he saw. No one had taught him to draw, or even doodle. He’d been given the pencils to do puzzles and he’d created art. It wasn’t something that was taught, it was something inside. Fascinating.

Travers smiled at them and slid his penlight from his pocket and performed the usual checks on Angel’s eyes. His pupils retracted against the light healthily.

“Checks.” Travers said, groaning as he got to his feet, his old bones groaning bitterly.

Angel stood up and helped him. “Now?” He asked, unhappily. “Let’s go to the pool. I broke my lap record, I could show you.”

“Checks.” He repeated, hobbling over to his suitcase on stiff knees.

Angel sulkily slid along behind him, reaching the table and hopping up onto it. He swung his feet as he watched Travers ready himself, nervously peeking into the briefcase. About a year ago, Project O-1 had drawn a tiny amount of bone marrow to examine and Angel was still nervous about it happening again. They needed an array of factual evidence to be presented every quarter. Angel was healthier than most men his age were, but that didn’t mean they should stop any tests. Of course, they wouldn’t need to draw bone marrow for a long time. But other things needed to be checked more regularly. Travers checked his blood pressure first, stethoscope pressed against the crook of his arm. He let the air out of the armband with a hiss, watching Angel clench his fingers a little.

“Feeling well?”

“Yes.” Angel said boredly, leaning forward with his chin up so Travers could examine the glands in his neck.

Travers pulled out a hypodermic needle and a small airtight jar. Angel reached into the suitcase and was wrapping the strap around his bicep, buckling and pulling it tight. He wriggled his hand around and tapped at his inner elbow as the blood trapped and his veins puffed a little.

As usual, he made a little unpleased noise as the needle slid in, and then silently watched the barrel fill with thick red. He rubbed at his eye with his free hand, as Travers finished drawing the blood and let out a small abrupt yelp when the steel slid roughly from his arm. Angel knew pain, but Travers had taught him that pain was alright. Travers had always thought pain was exacerbated by society’s views.

“Say ‘ah’.” He murmured, light poised to look down Angel’s throat.

Angel opened his mouth as far as he could, trying to curl his tongue out of the way so Travers wouldn’t use the tongue depressor.

He fitted the long thin head onto the light and looked into Angel ear canals, tipping his head from side to side.

Angel had never actually been exposed to natural sunlight. It’s true human’s didn’t need sunlight to create organic tissue, but the scientists had mocked up something close to the real thing in UV heated lamps, to see what would happen. Angel was pallid, he looked sickly a lot, even when he felt fine and was energetic. His skin was regularly needed for biopsy exams, but Travers decided not to take any today.

He pulled out a urine collection jar and handed it to him. He slid off the table and rubbed his arm a little as he wandered towards the toilet. Travers massaged his sore knee as he waited, stretching and moving towards the bookcase. He frowned at some loose leafs of paper and pulled them out to see. William’s twenty-two year old face smiled up at him. Travers rolled his eyes and ripped up the paper, pushing it into his briefcase as Angel wandered back with the jar. Travers held out a sanitary zip lock and Angel put it inside, face bored and downcast.

“Good boy.”

Angel beamed. He lit up when he smiled.

Travers tucked all his new specimens away and locked up the case. His knee was aching. He needed some painkillers. His thigh muscle twitched a little and he grunted lightly in discomfort. He turned towards the door.

“Already?” Angel asked from behind him, upset.

“Yes. I will be back soon.” He said with a smile.

Angel rubbed at his arm again, flexing it a little. “Alright.” He said unhappily.

Travers slipped out of room, locking the door behind him, clutching the briefcase tight. He entered the key code and slipped out to the third door, quickly unlocking that as well. He walked back around to his seat, giving the briefcase to Philip, one of the workers.

“Usual tests.” He groaned as he eased back into his soft leather office chair. “No skin sample.”

Philip ducked off and Travers pulled out some aspirin, swallowing them neatly with a tiny sip from his water.

Angel was moping. He was rubbing his arm and looking sorry for himself, and after a few more minutes of staring at the door, he wandered towards his bed and flopped down on it, curling up under the covers. Travers flicked to a camera view that showed his face, but he wasn’t crying, just mainly upset looking, his fingers tautly clamped around his inner arm.

Angel stayed in the comfort of his bed for a few hours. He got up after a while, to grab a book of human anatomy, only to return to his mattress. The shick of pages turning filled the microphones. It seemed as though Angel wasn’t going to be doing much for a while, so he left Philip in charge and wandered out into the compounds halls to stretch his legs, under the pretence of going to the lab across the lot to check on his samples.

His cane clicked against the cold floor as he walked, nodding to the various scientists hidden in the ground as he was. He turned at the elevators to the surface and rolled his shoulders. He walked into the lab and sniffed in displeasure.

His son was sprawled disgracefully across the counter, giggling with the lab clerk. He clicked past him, hearing their conversation silence satisfactorily. William had been employed, against Travers’ better recommendations, to head some sort of behavioural area for recruits undergoing mind implants. Why William even wanted to work with the Initiative after openly sneering at their operations was beyond Travers.

“Dad.” He said from behind him, with mock indignity. “Nice to see you too.”

He turned to look at his son, displeased at the smirk on his face. “Aren’t you meant to be working?” He asked airily.

“Lunch break. Gotta eat, yeah?” He said, cocking his eyebrow, unfazed. He held Travers’ stare.

Why William chose to speak in the lower class accent of his mother was also beyond Travers. The clerk quietly slipped from her desk and tottered away into a back room.

Travers blinked.

“What’s wrong? Angel causing trouble?”

Travers’ eyes fixed on Will’s knowingly and he had the good grace to look a little embarrassed. “How old are you, William?”

He sighed and closed his eyes slowly, lips tensing a little. “Thirty. Thirty this year.”

“Maybe it’s time you grew up.” He said, turning around and pushing through the door into the lab.

He heard the door slam open and William’s heavy boots clomp away. Travers rolled his eyes as he approached the man who usually dealt with extracting results from Angel’s tests. Thirty years old and acting like a spoilt brat.

He lost his thoughts of impertinent sons as he looked closely at a display of Angel’s skin samples. Professor Mawley made his way over with a smile, ready to discuss the new batch of tests.


Two

Will cursed. “Fuck him.” He hissed as he crossed his arms tightly, riding the elevator to the surface.

“Just fuck him. Fuck him sideways and fuck him backwards through a fucking wall.” He hissed at himself, slowly calming down.

He needed a fag. Couldn’t smoke in the compound, bastards had put smoke detectors everywhere. Even the broom cupboards. Will watched the small screen showing how far the elevator was to the surface, the little red dot rising steadily as his boot tapped on the ground. The doors dinged open and he strode out, pocketing his pass and heading out through the glassed in ultra-mod lobby of the above ground public area and into the sunlight. He immediately pulled a cigarette from the soft pack his pocket and shoved it between his lips, lighting up. Thick heavy smoke filled his lung and he closed his eyes, leaning back against the scratchy bricks as the sunlight warmed his face. He was tired. Maybe after his fag he’d go back down, lock the door and have a nap in his office. He wasn’t needed anywhere until about four, he had to check on Private Lloyd and put up with his screaming for about half an hour then he was free for more time.

Will hated his job. He hated his job and the initiative and the entire military in general. But he had to be able to have access to the underground areas. No pass, no entry, and he needed a job to have a pass. The place had tighter security than most Vegas Casinos, he’d been scoping the place out for years. He’d practically lived there when he was growing up, sleeping in the family bunkers. His mother was sick, she lived with full time nurse care and his father lived on site so he could be close to Angel.

Angel was his obsession. He was Travers’ grail.

Will had yet to figure out what it was exactly his father hoped to find from keeping a bloke in a cage. He acted like his experiment, his Project O-1, was going to cure cancer, was going to help explain parts of the mind. Will wouldn’t deny it gave great insight to ideas about effects of society on humans, but who bloody cared? The results weren’t worth the cost. Angel was a human. He was a man now. The Initiative wanted to see if they could control soldiers from birth without them going insane. That’s all they wanted and Will didn’t even think it proved that. There was no way Angel could assimilate into society, he didn’t even know there was one. He knew there were humans, but god, he thought there were only three. Will couldn’t even fathom Angel’s reality.

And Angel was only the trial run. Two more cases had been started, five years after Angel, Projects O-2, and O-3. Two more humans caged and experimented on. But they were a little different. They didn’t know there was a world above but they did know there was more than their enclosures. They knew there were humans but were basically told most humans were evil sociopaths and their existence seemed more focused on killing targets. Trained to be assassins in theory, without mercy or conscience, but it seemed to be making them crazy instead.

Will had seen the project outlines, had been in the observation rooms for both. They didn’t have names like Angel, they were simply called Two and Three. Two was a girl, and Three was a boy. He hadn’t seen them for a few years, but both had been skinny and had a look about them, like angry cats. More inhuman than Angel turned out. Where the others guarded themselves secretively, hissing and spitting at their carers and their tests, Angel seemed to have a more open, doe eyed way about him. Of course, Two and Three had interacted with each other; Angel didn’t know anything else.

He puffed on his cigarette, blowing smoke towards the sky. For a human Will had only had the slightest of interactions with, Angel sure did take up a bloody big chunk of his life. And it continued still.

He dropped the cigarette butt to the concrete and crushed it into dirt and ash with his toe. He breathed the fresh air deep, and turned back inside, making his way back to the elevator. He entered the code and scanned his pass and was travelling back down. He felt tired. He’d been up late last night, into the early morning and was running on empty. He blinked quickly and sharply snuffed some conditioned air trying to wake himself up. He slipped out of the elevator and was back in the B area of the Initiative, all cement and concrete and bustling. It was a big area. The elevators were in the middle of a field-sized base of concrete, a junction point. From there, many little snaking corridors wriggled off. He headed left towards his office, located in the B-7 area. He sneaked into his office and locked it behind him, turning off all the lights to make it look like he wasn’t there. It wasn’t a huge office, but it was carpeted and painted. A small desk and a chair up one end, an over-packed filing cabinet. There was a small basin and mirror, and his razor sat next to the taps for when he pulled an all nighter. His small couch sat behind the door, and a thin chest of drawers that held underwear and clothes and toothpaste were next to it. He slumped onto his still surprisingly comfortable couch and curled up, using a balled up tee shirt as a pillow. He tried to relax and get some rest but it wasn’t working.

He managed to slip into the fugue state between sleeping and waking for a while, wallowing in limbo for an hour, eyelids closed, but still registering the buzzing and talking from the corridor. He might’ve dreamt. He didn’t know. If he had, the dreams were feathery and meaningless, not even enough to stop his brain from ticking.

The alarm on his phone snapped him out of the fog, and he sat up, rumpled, rubbing at his eyes. The air seemed sweaty and stifling, and when he wiped his fingers over his face there was traces of sticky drool on the corner of his mouth. He must’ve slept.

He blinked and stood up, stretching, hearing his bones crack and pop soothingly. He yawned and rubbed at the crick in the back of his neck, trying to unbunch the tense muscles as he made his way to his four o’clock. The corridors were long and uncarpeted, but warm, due to the heating system. It was a particularly light concrete, not stifling, and corkboards and posters were hung sporadically outside areas, to give the tunnel a more human feel.

Private Lloyd stayed in the B-5 area, in a fairly modest room, with a bed and a table and a lot of space. Will was still rubbing the burning knot in his neck when he reached the outer bounds of B-5. The research rooms.

Will nodded at the emotionless guards of the B-5 area, scanning his pass and entering his code before walking through the heavy security doors. Past the security, as in all areas, the place became nicer, and carpeted, decorated by the groups of worker bees that ran each station.

The cement walls of B-5 had recently been painted a lemon yellow, and the area still stunk of paint even with the advanced ventilation systems. He wandered to the B-5 offices and went inside, hello-ing his way to the coffeepot.

He poured himself a cup, no milk or sugar and sipped the sour hot quickly, slapping himself awake with caffeine.

“Hey Professor Travers.” A younger doctor nicknamed Sim said.

“Name's Will." He said with a sigh. It wasn't terribly hard to remember, was it? These people were meant to be smart.

Sim nodded, smiling widely at his faux pas, his shortish black shiny hair bouncing a little. Nice conditioner, Will thought absently. Peroxide was no good for hair. He’d stop doing it, but he liked that his father found it undignified. Thirty years old and still trying to irritate him, maybe he was right, he should grow up.

“Here for Lloyd?”

Will nodded, sipping the heavy strong liquid in his styrofoam. “How’s he been?”

“Not any better, not any worse. Taking meds. Not causing trouble, can’t complain.” Sim smiled.

Will didn’t smile back. “I’ll go see him then.” He said.

Sim wandered along with him, peeking in at all the ex-soldiers on the way. It was a holding bay for them. Another doctor, an older grey haired man Will didn’t know, called Sim away from him and they parted company quickly. Will continued down the hall, head getting a little dizzy from the paint smell, counting the anonymous doors until he reached his destination. Will scanned his pass at the door and entered the unlit room quietly, turning the dimmer up so he could see.

Lloyd was crouched in the corner next to his bed, huddled uncomfortably.

“Hello Private Lloyd.” Will said, walking in after closing the door, and seating himself at the table. His eyes tracked over the mural of lilies on the wall. No actual paintings, no actual anything in this room. Not even carpet, just lino. “Anything good happening today?”

Lloyd looked over his shoulder, hunched over something he held tightly. His nerveless face and flaccid tongue never failed to unsettle Will a little. Lloyd made some sort of grunted howl and hunched back over his prize.

He was insane. Completely. Private Lloyd had undergone a generic, everyday mind alteration a few years ago, which had been horribly botched, frying his brain with faulty instruments, and left him with half a working body and a just-functioning mind. He couldn’t feed himself or talk or understand speech, he’d lost those abilities. He couldn’t see, and could barely walk. Will thought the only human thing to do would be euthanasia. Private Matthew Lloyd had been reported as dead anyway. And Will was pretty sure the young man he’d been would have never wanted to live on as this.

Will sipped his coffee.

“Lloyd?”

His bald cross-stitched head didn’t move. A new scar on his skull indicated fresh tests. Will sighed and sipped his coffee. He eventually strayed from his corner, scurrying along the wall dragging his dead leg along, stopping at halfway. He was holding his pillow scrunched up under his hunched body and his fingers were claws around it.

“Pillow.” Will commented. He’d seen Lloyd fourteen times now, and could not find a way to communicate with him without causing him distress. Sitting at the table seemed to be all Lloyd would tolerate.

He sipped his coffee, watching Lloyd pant and slobber over his treasure as he scrabbled around the room. He felt a strong fiery slice of pity for him, all the time, and tried to spend at least half an hour with him, even if he didn’t know if Lloyd knew he was there. He stayed, watching him, trying different avenues of speech, different tones and pitches, all without result.

He stayed until Lloyd’s bladder released, gag inducing strong liquid coating his bare feet as he gibbered in the corner. Will picked up his empty mug and left, telling the nurses on the way out and ignoring the various screeching bungled experiments on either side of him.

He walked back out into the cement corridor and then back to his office to have another go at sleeping.

---

Time didn’t exist underground. It was invisible. Day and night were one and the same, no windows, just concrete, and artificial track lighting as far as you could see. People buzzed the same at all hours. Nine in the morning looked the same as eleven at night.

Will sat on his couch after waking and he tried to feel what time it was. It was a game he’d played with himself since he was a little boy. He had returned from Lloyd at about four thirty and slept for a while. He didn’t know how long. Two hours? Maybe about half an hour to slide into sleep… he decided on around six. Give or take fifteen minutes.

He pulled out his cell phone and looked at the face. Just past nine.

Better luck next time. He stood, his shoulders achy from being scrunched up on the couch, and turned to the little basin to cup the cool water, slurping it into his sore throat. He looked in the mirror, and was amused by his cracked out looking appearance. His whitened hair was strewn about and curly. He had a halo of brown roots around his whiskery face. He tilted his head. He’d turned thirty only a few weeks ago. He still didn’t feel thirty. It seemed unreal to be thirty. He leaned close, the muted lighting around the edges of the office brightening his face as he did.

He had tiny wrinkles around his eyes. Black tired circles underneath made his eyes very blue somehow. He splashed water over his face and towelled it off, feeling a little rejuvenated. He decided to slowly wander down to the B-14 area. He had an appointment to keep.

Running his fingers over his scratchy stubble he cricked his neck and moved out. It didn’t take long to get there, so he dawdled, feeling the grey concrete oppressively cold around him as lab coats and military wandered past him with a purpose. He sighed out and turned into a small lounge to wait it out. He looked at the clock again and turned to the news channel playing on the small television. Flopping down into a chair, he watched the report with a few other initiative employees. He didn’t concentrate, he was still feeling a bit zoned out. He hadn’t been getting much sleep lately.

At about twenty five past, the weather report for tomorrow started playing and he left the lounge, heading onwards towards his father’s area. No guards on this area. Passcode recognition instead. He buzzed it through and slipped into the section quietly. B-14 was carpeted with a generic dark blue, and the walls remained harsh concrete. It was quiet here, in the halls. Not much movement. B-14 was constructed around observation zones, and everyone was tucked away, observing. Watching.

He headed down the halls to the Project Origin wing, buzzing his all clearance passkey once again and slipping into the staff room, a junction point for the three experiments. No one was in there. No one was ever there; the joined staff room was completely void of papers or coffee mugs. The scientists here were serious business. No time for relaxing with a newspaper in the staff room.

He checked his watch again.

Almost nine thirty. He slid down to the deck of Project O-1 and buzzed Philip’s cell phone. He got an answering buzz and slipped inside.

“Hey.” Philip said with a nod of his head, arranging cleaned food dishes on a tray. The observation room, ob-room, was a long circular chamber wrapped around Angel’s ‘enclosure’. They watched him like he was a creature in a zoo, through two way mirrors plated around the walls. Television screens lined the walls away from the glass, showing camera views of every thing possible. At the moment, a few of them were showing Angel’s cleaning rituals.

Four main professors maintained Project O-1. They oversaw everything from his diet to the clothes he was allowed to wear. His father, Professor Travers, ran the experiment.

“Hey.” Will answered. “Anything new?”

“Nah, not really.” He answered blandly, his eyes wide and silently signalling. Damn. That meant there was something very, very important that Philip didn’t want to say.

He looked into Angel’s rooms, walking around to get a better view of the floor beside the bed. He’d been tranquillised, the sleepers mixed through his dinner, and was lying passed out on a sheet of plastic on the floor as his father and two others fussed around him. One was shaving his face carefully, another was clipping his fingernails and checking sutures and scars, and his father was watching them, a tranquilliser gun aimed at Angel’s chest in case he started to stir. He wouldn’t. Those drugs put him out until the next morning.

Will turned to the screened wall behind him. One was filled with Angel’s pretty face, drugged out, serene against the plastic sheet they’d layed him on, bits of white shaving foam still clinging to his smooth skin.

One of the tenders towelled them away roughly, scraping the cloth around his face and chin to remove all the remnants.

The room was silent, artificially filled with sounds from the enclosure. Crackles as they shifted Angel on the plastic sheet, the clip-clip of the nail scissors. They sat him up and pulled his shirt off, rolling him onto his stomach, positioning his head so he could still breathe.

Will thought Angel was beautiful. He’d always thought he was a nice looking boy, but around sixteen, he just started looking… beautiful. He’d had the usual awkward grace that tall thin teenagers seemed to have, like a puppy with paws too big, and then suddenly, one day Will was watching him and he’d just seemed to grow into his body. The too sharp lines of his face just seemed to fit more as he grew into a man, thin rake of a chest had started to muscle, and he’d grown into his too big teeth. Human nature had just fitted everything together to create something Will found absolutely beautiful. Will couldn’t help but analyse him like that. He’d grown up watching him.

He hadn’t been like other boys in his school years, bravado making them seem older, baggy pants and jackets wrapping them up. Will guessed he’d also gone through the same clumsy looking phase that Angel had, he just hadn’t seen it happening to himself.

He watched the long smooth back on the clear display screens, mentally sighing a little at the multitude of pink shiny scars laced across him from different tests. Still beautiful. And even though Will was thirty, and he’d taken psychology course after course to try to understand himself and his father, he still felt like a nasty pervert for thinking that.

It had always been tattooed across his brain that Angel wasn’t a normal human; he was more animal than human. His father had told him that over and over. He’d had to try to deal with that mental block at the same time as getting tingly feelings about someone who was sixteen, seven years his junior, and who acted a lot younger.

He hadn’t gotten over either, apparently. He still felt greasy when he thought fuzzily about him. The fact that Angel was male, had ticked his brain over to the idea that he was probably gay, or bisexual, but he’d been trying to package away his feelings so fast, realising he liked men had barely even caused a blip on his radar. The screen behind him showed them snipping some tiny black stitches out from his back and sticking another patch over the wound. He looked away from their examination and started riffling through the papers on the desk.

Diet, still feeding him bloody tuna, even though he’d hated it since he was about ten. Approximate weight for the month, urine scans. Nothing new. Phil was fiddling with a needle sterilisation machine while he snooped. He sneaked a glance up at the two-way mirror before him and saw they were clipping his pubic hair, which meant they were almost finished. His lips tensed at the way his father always seemed to pick the most undignified position to put Angel in. Was it that hard to treat him with a little respect? Three seconds to give him a little dignity instead of hiking his legs open.

He bit his tongue as usual and turned back to Philip. “You gonna make the meeting?” He asked vaguely.

“Probably.” Philip answered just as vaguely, a little practised disinterest in his voice. “They gonna be there?”

“Uh, yeah think so.” Fred had made it back from setting up everything in Salem. That’s whom Philip was talking about.

“Great.”

He turned back to Angel and wished him a silent goodnight, before heading out. He nodded at Philip and he nodded back seriously. Damn. He was keeping some big news. He hoped it wasn’t bad. He left the rooms, aware of the cameras on him in the hall. He knew they were there, but for twenty-three years those cameras had filmed him wandering up and down this corridor. No one seemed to care about him, his father had never actually banned him from seeing Angel, and Will still visited his father to keep up appearances, so no one would really look twice if they saw him hanging around. Which is exactly what he wanted. Hiding right out in the open.

He slipped back along the halls and wandered the long walk back to the elevators. He caught the lift up with his head full of duelling thoughts and left the deserted dimly lit lobby, using his card to get out the doors and into the brisk dark night. He walked along the gardens surrounding the modern design of the above ground Initiative, and around to the car park. There were still quite a few cars on the above ground lot. There was another parking lot underground, and another below that, and those were probably filled still. But the general public didn’t know that.

He wandered over to his pre-loved Oldsmobile 442 and unlocked it, slipping in. He got a huge salary from the Initiative, and while most of his money went to other things… he did love cars. The engine purred when he flicked the ignition on, familiar and loving and warm.

He slipped through the empty streets, heading back into Sunnydale centre, driving back to his apartment building. He parked and slipped out of the car, standing for a moment to admire it, and buffing a few spots of dirt from the window with his black shirt. He patted the long hood as he jogged past and went to the front vestibule, unlocking the many locks and going inside. It was a small building, three floors, seven apartments and he owned it all. He headed to the second floor, which had been gutted and turned into one long room, support walls remaining to prop the place up. The space was buzzing. About twenty people were still there, and Fred was fielding questions, looking tired, her thin dark hair tied up in a ponytail. She was only about twenty-two, but she was smart. Smarter than Will.

Print outs of Angel, and Two and Three were pinned on every wall, blueprints of the underground Initiative tracked along one wall, over the blacked out windows. Gunn was looking at a new batch of firearms on a table, surrounded by Chinese containers and coffee mugs.

Fred saw him and scurried over, a flustered smile on her face. “The place is set. There are a few people up there fixing the escape tunnels, in case we ever need ‘em.”

He sighed with relief and grinned at her. “Great. You talked with your aunt?”

Fred’s extra large family populated a lot of the part in Salem, Oregon, which they were planning on using. Though Fred herself was Texan, accent and all, her mother had hailed from Salem and if her family was half as lovely as Fred, they wouldn’t have a problem hiding there.

Though they weren’t telling Fred’s family what it was they were going to be doing there, Fred had vouched for them, saying they wouldn’t spread word about them, and would keep everything hushed if she asked. Which she did.

She pointed at a new picture tacked up on the wall. A big old inviting house with wood shutters. “It’s near the water.” She said, smiling still.

He nodded. “It looks great.” He murmured, breathing in the destination.

“Fred?” A young girl of about Fred’s age piped in, stealing her away. Will remembered her, Mary. The daughter of a man who had been killed by the Initiative. Everyone who worked here had some grudge against the Initiative. Grudge and knowledge. No one in this room, no one who helped them was ever going to breathe a word about what they were doing.

It was basically suicide if they did. The Initiative would take out every single person. They all knew that.

“Will!” Gunn called cheerfully.

He turned and wandered over, pausing to let a man run past with folders of paper. “What’s up Charlie?”

He held up a glass vial of yellowish liquid in his long brown fingers.

“That the-”

“Tranquilliser. Yup.” He held up a fluffy ended dart. “We have these, you just poke them into any skin, preferably upper arms.” He put it down and held up a modified gun, He picked the dart and pushed it in with a click. “And we got this. Long range. Bit nastier, so don’t aim for any faces.”

Will picked up a dart and held it close. The red fluff on the end smelled dusty. If any of them gave them trouble on the way out, which, after a lifetime of captivity they were kinda expecting, they were going to give them a quick jab with a sedative to make them pliable enough to get them free. Will hoped they’d come easily, but he was expecting trouble from at least one.

They were going to be asking a lot from them all, to suddenly accept a different reality as they ran.

Will was fourteen when he’d first decided he was going to break Angel out from his prison. Angel was seven. Will had come to visit his father and had seen him inside the cage, cutting skin off Angel’s hand as the boy sat and tried not to cry.
One of his father’s experiments along the lines of pain could be overcome, and society ideas about pain made the feeling worse than it was.

He’d long since got over the idea that his father was the bad guy.

And maybe a little insane.

The kind of tests he called for. Endless wankery, unneeded antecedent tests. Endoscopies, cameras stuck into every orifice of Angel’s they wanted. Prodded and poked and anaesthetised. Biopsies. His father seemed to think Angel wouldn’t be able to identify a sickness in himself, and had decided to test him for every disease known to man just to make sure he didn’t have anything wrong with him. Some sort of sick reverse Munchausen by proxy.

And after years of thinking on the subject, he couldn’t help but think his father got some sort of sadistic thrill out of keeping Angel tested on and under thumb. His father had always thought he was above other men. And the way he ruled Angel with degree of fetishistic control only played into the theory. Sedating him with hidden drugs, the ‘checks’, the idea that Angel had to be creepily perfect in all aspects and how he tended to try to keep Angel puerile, let him grow and mature but refused to let him have a sexual awakening by keeping certain threads in his testosterone levels dulled with drugs. The aloof way he could decide not to go see Angel for two weeks even though the man was going mad from isolation, and mostly, the way he’d taught Angel to call him Father.

He went to creepy lengths he didn’t need to for a mere experiment.

Of course he could never tell his father any of his theories. He was his father after everything was said and done.

Will lived in fear that one day his father was going to order a test that would leave Angel in a research cell in B-5 crawling and gibbering like Lloyd. Or that the Initiative would no longer think Origin had any merit and put the test subjects down. It was a tight squirming fear in his chest, and it had eaten away at his life for too long.

He started putting together plans. He’d never mention Angel’s existence to anyone who might talk about it, letting the world know Angel existence was as good as giving him the last lethal injection himself. The Initiative would play cover up and Angel would be gone.

He had to be so careful with who he told. He started finding out about people, angry people who hated the inscrutable power the Initiative had, who would help him. He’d found Fred in one of his many protests, a girl who’d seen soldiers kill her Uncle for talking truth and her mother for being in the room they invaded. He’d found Gunn in a bar, drunk and crying over his sister who had joined the Initiative and had been killed during an experiment. Will hadn’t had the heart to tell him that he’d known what had happened to his sister. She was probably dead now.

Fred and Gunn had led him on to more people who wanted to help, who had been shocked to hear about Angel, who knew the Initiative was cold and cruel but never dreamed they were evil.

They were going to break the Origin subjects out. Most of the anonymous people who helped would stay behind, and work on destroying more of the system. Will was leaving. Fred and Gunn and Philip too. They couldn’t stay anyway.

During his plans, Will often wondered what would happen to his father if he succeeded. Would the Initiative kill him, or simply give him new toys to play with? He didn’t want his father to die, although he’d never see him again to know if he died. He didn’t really know what to think about that, he’d never understood his father, and, now, he guessed he'd never get the chance to figure him out. Will was a bit detached.

He preferred to think about Angel, instead of his father.

Fred was standing on a chair, trying to get everyone’s attention, so he tried to push his thoughts aside and listened to her, playing with the fluffy tranquilliser dart in his fingers.


Three

Will sat down on the cushions in the corner of his sleeping part and leant his head against the wall. His hair was all short, and when Angel ran his hand over it, it felt spiky like his toothbrush, but softer. The hair wasn’t dark like his, it was more red-brown, lighter and he looked at Angel strangely, big blue eyes wide.

“Your hair feels funny.”

Will watched him. He was tall. He looked different, not little like Angel, big like Father, but not the same like him either.

“Are you older, like Father?” Angel asked, trying to slip over Will’s thigh to get closer to his face. Will’s hands deflected his knees, pushing him back to the cushions as he watched him. He tried to get closer again and Will’s arm pushed him back a little. It became a game, and Will’s smile slipped onto his face.

“I’m seventeen.” Will said.

“What am I?” He asked.

Will watched him and then smiled wider, squeezing his ribs and making him laugh. “You’re ten. Don’t you know how old you are?”

Angel thought for a moment. “Not really.” He said after a moment. How old? Father was older, he knew that. It meant bigger. Older meant going into the other place, where Will had come from. From behind the silver door.

Will pushed him off his thigh again, and rolled him onto the ground as he laughed. He wriggled out from beneath him and launched himself onto Will, grabbing him around the neck and holding on.

“Fly, Angel.” Will said, his smiling teeth right before Angel’s eyes.

“What’s fly?” He asked, a second before Will threw him across the sleeping part, feeling wonderfully weightless for a moment before he tumbled onto his soft bed, covers rolling up around him as he laughed.

---

Angel’s eyes flicked open at the harsh buzzing that invaded his dreams. He blinked blearily at the grey roof and groaned, rolling over and curling up on his side. He tried to shrink further into the covers to get away from the loud noise but it wasn’t working. He wanted to stay in bed so he curled up in his blankets and waited for it to stop.

It did.

He sighed in relief and closed his eyes again, pulling one of his pillows down along side him so he could curl around it.

“M’tired.” He murmured. He scratched his cheek and realised his spiky cheek hair had gone back under his skin. He sleepily checked his fingernails. They too had shrunk back under his skin a little. The hair on his head seemed the same length; he’d have to check though. He slipped his hand into his pants and felt around. The hair there had gone back into his body, not curly anymore, just spiky. He wondered why it and his head hair didn’t go all the way in like his face hair. He slipped his hand back out of his pants and curled his arm around the comfy pillow. He felt good this morning. He smiled a little and pushed his face into the pillow. It smelled fresher. It did sometimes. Most of the time it smelled like … well him, he supposed.

He let another sigh out, a short fulfilling one, and tried to remember what breakfast would appear today. Cereal again. Hopefully he’d get a strip of bacon. He liked bacon.

He heard the shower hiss on across the room.

“Mmmm.” He mumbled. He didn’t want to get up. He wanted to stay.

He ignored the shower and fell back asleep with the hiss.

When he woke again, he looked at the clock and realised only about twenty minutes had passed. He sniffed and sat up, the covers pooling into his lap. He scratched his chest and lazily stood up, stretching his arms up over his head and twisting himself around, waking up. He’d missed his shower, but that was okay, he got another one at five o’clock. He walked slowly to his toothbrush, and brushed his teeth in big circles watching himself in the mirror.

He wanted eggs for breakfast. Really, really wanted eggs and bacon. Mmmm. Lots of bacon. His mouth was practically wet for eggs and bacon. But he’d only had eggs two breakfasts ago. He wouldn’t get them for a while.

He made a little unhappy noise and spat the last of the toothpaste into the sink. His mouth felt all clean again. He washed his toothbrush and put it back in place, and then turned, feeling a little throb from his back, near his left shoulder blade. He tried to look at it in the mirror, see what was wrong, but it had a white sticky on it. He couldn’t reach it. His new stitches must have gone during the night; it usually felt like this when the stitches left.

He wandered back into the sleeping part and pulled the covers into neatness. He stepped back from them, walking backwards to the table in the eating part, with his eyes fixed on the bed. He paused for a second, feeling all his muscles tighten to get ready, and then burst forward, jumping up and landing on the bed on his stomach, eyes squeezed tight and smiling hugely as he felt the slight roll in his stomach as he fly-ed.

He did it again and again, until he heard the click of the silver door, and hurried to it, panting and happy. His shoulder hurt a little but he ignored it. He opened the door and saw his breakfast tray filled with brown cereal in milk, and some cheeses, waters, grapes. He plucked a dried apricot from the plate and chewed on it as he settled at the table, setting everything out as he always did, bowl before him, little plate behind the bowl, spoon had to be straight next to the bowl. Cheese, fruits arranged in size order. He sat on the chair, foot on the seat so he could rest his chin on his knee. He had two cheeses today, the darker orangeish cheese and the light yellow one. He set them on top of each other and sat back to scrutinise the effect. Perfect. He spooned the non-tasty cereal into his mouth quickly, to get it out of the way, still feeling the twinge behind his left shoulderblade.

As he ate, he stared at the silver door. It seemed so big, all the time, too big to fit in the room, even though Angel knew it did. He contemplated what was behind it again, briefly. What if nothing was behind the tiny room? What if there was just… nothing?

What if he opened the door and it was just the four-part world again? What if there were a hundred four part worlds? He liked that idea more than the idea that there was only the four-part world and the sixth part wasn’t actually there.

But … it did have to be there, didn’t it? Otherwise… where did Father go? So there had to be something there. But what? A burning in his heart started, like when he couldn’t figure out a mathematics question, but much worse.

He wanted to go in there. Why could Will go in there and not him? What made them different? Where did Will go?

He realised he’d become so distracted by his thinking that he was simply sitting and staring with the cereal spoon in his mouth. He pulled it out and started playing with the cereal mush, swirling it around and making patterns.

Would Will ever come back, he wondered. He hadn’t been back so far.

He paused. But then… Father hadn’t been back since the last time he was in the four-part world. So … Will maybe could be back soon. He gave up on the cereal, not really hungry, and started breaking apart the cheese, eating it with the bread he had. He frowned at the silver door, trying to figure out its secrets.

He knew that was the only way to the six-part world. He wanted to go, he wanted to see it. He ate some grapes and stood up.

He was going to try today. He’d tried before and it hadn’t worked, but maybe… something was different now. Maybe he would see something he hadn’t seen before. He slipped some cheese into his mouth and opened the silver door, his heart beating rapidly in his chest. He stood in the fifth part and looked around. Still silver, still lit blue.

Cheese on his breath, he reached up slowly and put his hands on the wall in front of him. Cold and silver, like the door. He pushed.

Nothing happened.

He stood back, frowning at it. He looked around the fifth part, but there was nothing new. Three silver walls. He pushed at each. There was nothing else. A small tray was sticking out from the right wall, for him to put his food on. He tried moving that, but it was solid.

How did Father get through? How could Father figure this out and not him?

He looked at the ceiling. He jumped and tried to reach it but he couldn’t. He went back into the four-part world and grabbed his chair, hauling it into the tiny room. He stood on it, accidentally hurting his hip with the tray. He rubbed his sore hip, trying to take the sting away. Painful.

He reached up and put his hands on the roof and pushed. Nothing. There was a light in the centre of the ceiling and he pushed on that, but nothing happened.

He didn’t understand and it made him feel strange. Like the leaking from his eyes would start soon.

How did Father and Will get through? They weren’t here So they had to be past this tiny room. But how? There was nothing there!

He kicked the wall, hard, and grabbed the chair pulling it out of the room and back in front of his breakfast.

Father knew. Father always said he would take him to the sixth part. He just had to be patient. Patient. Patient.

Had to wait. Had to be good. Had he been bad? Was that why Will wasn’t back yet?

He pulled his foot up onto the chair and rested his chin on his knee again in thought. He carefully flicked through his memories, trying to find something he’d done that had been wrong. That last time Angel had seen Will, and Father had come in, his voice so loud, and looking so upset. He’d thrown the pointy thing at Angel, and he’d fallen asleep, and when he’d woken up, Will was gone, and Father had acted like he’d done something wrong. But he didn’t know what.

Will had been a little different the last few times. Not just his hair. He’d just seemed… like a different Will. He remembered the last time he’d seen him. He remembered it clearly.

He heard the click and looked up in surprise. It wasn’t lunch yet, so it meant Father was coming to see him. He smiled wide and stood up quickly, hurrying over to see him when he opened the door, his pencil still in his hand.

The silver door opened and it wasn’t Father. He practically fly-ed with happiness. It was Will. Angel fell onto him, wrapping his arms around him tightly. He realised Will’s hair had changed, from the red-brown colour to a bright yellowy white. His mouth fell open as he tried to look closer at it. Not white-white like the patches in Father’s hair… but still white.

Will laughed, moving him back so he could get into the four part world as Angel tugged on the new white hair. It smelled strong, a strange smell, like the pool water. It was like the white in his hair smelled weird.

“Your hair has changed. It smells weird.” He commented, running his fingers through it as Will smiled at him. He sat down at the table and started looking at the drawings Angel had been working on.

“Peroxide.” He said, smiling at a picture of himself. “Peroxide is like pencil colour for hair.”

Angel looked at the mirror, his hand around Will’s wrist holding him tightly, afraid he was going to go back to the sixth part too soon.

“Can you colour your hair pink?” He asked, pulling the other seat up close to him, so they were touching.

“Yes.” He paused. “But I’m not going to.”

“Why not?”

“Cause I don’t like pink.”

Angel leaned forward “I do.” He sniffed Will’s hair, breathing it in. It was a new Will smell and it had to be remembered. Hand across Will’s chest so he didn’t fall on him, he rubbed his cheek against his hair, trying to see how it felt on his face. It was a little stiff against his nose. When he sniffed down, he felt the heat coming off Will’s skin, and the smell was really nice, like his soap but better.

He sat back for a moment and Will was watching him, smile gone, and Angel wondered for a moment if he’d done something that was bad. He waited and then Will smiled a little, shakily, like his legs felt after using the gym machines for hours.

Will coughed a little. “Been drawing?” He asked.

It was a strange question, seeing as his drawings were across the table, but he nodded anyway.

“They’re good.” Will murmured.

Angel felt happy. Like he was glowing. Will’s hand was resting on the table. He let his fingers play along his knuckles. The skin was stuck to them tightly, like his own, not like Father’s skin, which was looser. A wriggly blue vein ran down from his knuckles to under his long shirt and he followed it softly with his fingertip until Will caught his hand and set it firmly on the table.

Angel looked up, a little worried, but Will was smiling at him so he smiled back and hooked his arm around Will’s neck.

“Look.” Angel murmured, flicking the drawing book open to a page of Will hands. “I like your hands.”

Will stared down at the page and blinked. Angel watched him closely. Will’s smile slipped onto his face and then off again. He looked… strange. Angel moved closer to him, resting his cheek on Will’s shoulder. He flipped the pages until he saw the Will eyes he’d been trying. The blue colour he had wasn’t right, it was … there was more than one blue in Will’s eyes, like there was more than one red in the rose.

Will was quiet. He didn’t want Will to be quiet, he wanted him to be laughing and playing with him. He poked his side and felt his body jerk away. He did it again; tickling up to under his arms, because it made Will giggle. He giggled and stood up, stepping back with his hands up.

“No tickling.”

“Wrestling?”

Will watched him, a little after smile on his face. “You’re too old for wrestling.”

He was sixteen. That was too old? He was sure Will was older when they’d wrestled before. He grinned and tackled Will against the wall. Will looked at him, eyes wide, and then smiled, pushing him back. Angel grabbed his arms easily, and twisted him down onto the ground. Will slipped away, grabbing for his arm, but Angel rolled and laughingly hid in the sleeping place. Seconds later, Will’s arms were around his waist. His other arm slipped under his legs and Will picked him up with a grunt, dropping him onto the bed. His foot pushed Will back and he tripped over some cushions and fell, and Angel crawled off the bed and knelt over him, sitting on his stomach, pushing his hands back against the wall.

He smiled.

Will cleared his throat. “Uh… you win.”

“What’s win?” he asked, not letting his wrists go in case Will wanted to push him off.

“It means you beat me. I lost.”

“Lost … like lost a pencil?”

“Kinda.” He swallowed, and his cheeks turned red. He looked very hot. “Okay, off now.”

Angel shook his head. Will tried to wriggle away but Angel had him caught. “I win.” He said lightly.

“Okay, you win. We’ll go have a look at some more drawings.”

“I want to wrestle.” He said, smiling wide. Wrestling was fun. He wanted to do it all the time.

Will suddenly sat up and Angel fell back jarring his head against the floor.

“Sorry!” Will said, kneeling over him, eyebrows all scrunched up. “Are you okay?” he laughed a little. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Angel blinked and shook his head. He grinned and clamped his thighs around Will’s hips and grabbed his throat, pushing him back against the wall. Will pushed his hand away and coughed a little. “Not by the throat.”

He pushed his shoulders against the wall and held them there. “Do I win?” He asked.

Will nodded, eyes down, eyelashes looking very long, longer than his or Fathers. He knelt up and blew on them, laughing as Will clenched his eyes shut tight. He had Will where he wanted him. He win-ned, so he got to hold Will in place and look at him. He brushed his nose against Will’s cheek and let his hand curl around his throat, but gently, because Will didn’t like being poked in the neck.

Will let out a strange sigh, and pushed at his hips. “Off, off me.”

Angel pushed closer and moved his fingers against the underside of Will’s chin to make him look up at him. He smiled when he did and wriggled into Will’s lap.

He paused and frowned. Something…

He wriggled his hips a bit, feeling something hard against his backside, something hard in Will’s lap. “What’s that?” he asked, reaching down.

“Bloody hell!” Will rolled him off and his shoulder smacked against the ground. Will’s face was bright rose red, and Angel laughed as he sat up.

“What?” He asked. “What’s hell?”

Angel remembered.

And Father had come in and pointed the black shiny thing at him, and it made a noise and a sharp pointy thing was in his chest, and then he fell asleep. And Will hadn’t been back since.

It was confusing. Now that he thought about it, it seemed like even Will had acted like he was bad. He didn’t stop wrestling with him when he said stop… but… that was part of it. When he kept doing it, Will would join in. So that wasn’t bad, was it?

So maybe will hadn’t left because he was bad.

Angel had long thought it had something to do with ‘Bloody Hell’. Whatever that was. Everything seemed to happen after Will said that. Father had come through the silver door.

“Bloody Hell.” He said out loud, clearly, his voice loud.

Nothing.

He’d tried before, but things were always worth trying over. Although Will’s voice was funny, he left the ‘h’ sound off words sometimes.

“Bloody Ell.” He said louder, watching the door.

He thought for a moment. Saying that had made Father come through the door and aim the shiny thing at him. And then he went to sleep. And where the pointy thing touched him, he’d hurt for a few days.

He didn’t really want that to happen, so maybe it was a good thing the words weren’t working.

He watched the door a moment longer, and then turned towards the garden. He counted his steps, making sure he was walking heel to toe.

The world seemed to have become smaller since he was younger. His feet were larger though. That probably had something to do with it. Although his feet had stopped growing now.

He knelt down in front of his rose. “Having a good morning?” He asked it.

He watched it, as it stayed silent and pretty. He suddenly wondered why it had pointy things on its stem. Other flowers didn’t have them. Big pointy things.

He grabbed some spare paper and a pen, and wrote a reminder note for him to ask Father the next time he saw him. He folded the note neatly and stuck it into the dirt around the base of the rose. He lazily ran his fingers along the small plant next to the rose. It was just leaves, not as pretty as flowers, but still nice looking, and its leaves were as smooth as mirrors. And the rose smelled wonderful. The other flowers smelled nice as well. Peonies. But they seemed to sleep a lot more than the roses. The rose wanted to stay with him.

---

Bloody hell.

Travers was not pleased. Angel remembered the curse from his idiot son. He practically glowered at Angel as he murmured to the flowers. He didn’t want such things in Angel’s head. Even if he didn’t know what it meant. It was like hearing a two-year-old swear.

He was looking into an off the books mind alteration. He was thinking about wiping the curse, and Will, from his memory. Nothing to put the experiment in danger… just a little tuck. Now would be the time to do a mind modification. Well, after the coming surgery of course.

He and Professor Weller had finally come to a decision. Weller was in charge of Projects O-2, and O-3 and the idea had been his. He’d mated his two projects a few times, and now every time they got near each other, they wanted to mate. They were losing interest in other things. He’d put them both back onto the drugs that dampened their more carnal instincts, but they still managed to get around the effects, now that they had the knowledge of what would happen. So he was planning to neuter O-3 and make a few incisions in his penile muscles to make him unable to mate even preliminarily.

Travers had never taught Angel about anything sexual. He had kept him on the drugs since the eleventh year of the experiment, and now that it looked like Angel would never need a sexual drive, he’d decided to follow Weller’s example and just abolish that factor from his experiment. The drugs weren’t good for Angel’s health anyway.

He looked down at the surgery plans, and procedures and then back up at Angel who appeared to be comparing scents of flowers.


Four

Will woke serenely, blinking calmly out of his nightmare. He sat up, realising he’d fallen asleep at his desk on the second floor of his apartment building, and that his back muscles were agonised and taut. He cricked his neck uncomfortably; noting Fred was curled up in a large armchair across the room, a medical book in her lap, her hand still limply around the pen she was taking notes with. Gunn had retired earlier to the upstairs bunkrooms. They were all burning the midnight hours recently. They were almost ready, but the news Philip had given them was past disturbing.

Anne, another girl who worked with them- one of Gunn’s friends, was asleep on the mattress in the corner, sheet pulled up to her chin. He cricked his back painfully and stood up, a mess of papers slithering to the ground. Fred jerked awake as he was trying to put them back onto the desk.

“Sorry.” He whispered, eyeing Anne and a few assorted others still asleep at the other end of the room.

Fred blinked and looked at her watch. She stretched her thin arms up over her head. “Didn’t even realise I’d fallen asleep.” She said in a groan.

She stood unsteadily, shoulders sagging. “You going upstairs?” She asked sleepily.

“Thought I might try sleeping in a bed, yeah.”

She chuckled and headed over to him, and they both slipped along to the staircase, trudging up in the dark, unable to see anything in the shadowed hall. Upstairs, they skipped the first apartment, that would be filled by now, and stumbled zombie-like into Will’s room further down the hall. A few people were sleeping on cots scattered around the barren apartment; Philip was on the sofa, feet poking out from under his blanket.

Will and Fred moved silently past. Will opened his bedroom door, thanking every god in memory when he saw the oasis of his empty bed. Too sleepy to think about anything else, Fred and Will both collapsed into the bed, pulling the covers up over their clothes and falling asleep to the tune of each others calm breathing.

---

“Come on, man.” Gunn’s voice. Gunn. Sleepy.

Will rolled away from the noise. Gunn shook his arm. “Come on, five o’clock dawg. Rise and shine.”

Gunn’s laugh nibbled at the back of his neck and he pulled the blankets up over his ears. They were ripped away.

“Gotta get to work.” Gunn said, amused more than he should be.

Will sat up, eyes closed and grabbed the blanket from the puddle at the end of the bed. “I’ll go later.” He whined.

“Get up. You’ve gotta get to work before Travers today, remember?”

Will suddenly remembered. He could’ve cried. His kingdom for some sleep. Bloody fucking hell, his left arm for some bloody toffing sleep. He opened his sore eyes. Fred wasn’t in the bed, although he had a vague memory of her stumbling upstairs with him. That could’ve been a dream…

Gunn threw a shirt over his head. “No time for a shower.”

“Breakfast?” He mewled pitifully as he pulled his old shirt off and replaced it with fresh black cotton.

Gunn pulled a unappetising foil packaged breakfast bar out of his jacket pocket. He held it up and smiled. “Mmm. Yummy!”

Will grabbed it, smiling just as sugar-faux as Gunn. “See you in hell.”

Gunn laughed and kicked his Doc’s over. He pulled his boots on grumpily, and opened the bar as he searched around for his pass. He slipped it on over his neck and bit into his cold dry breakfast.

“What the bloody hell is this?” He asked drearily, chewing the honey flavoured tasteless crunch.

“Muesli bar. Bowl of cereal without the milk.”

Will stared at him and tossed the bar into the bin.

“Don’t stop to get food on the way.” Gunn called after him as he left the room.

Philip was sipping coffee watching the tiny television.

“What time are you gonna be there?” Will asked, almost jealousy watching him watch cartoons.

Phil didn’t look at him, but smiled a little into his coffee mug. “Don’t have to be in ‘till after ten.”

Will felt his face fall as Gunn came out and threw a jacket at him. “Why are you still here?” He asked laughing. “Go!”

“I hate all of you.”

“Pancakes for breakfast, Gunn?” Phil asked innocently, sipping his coffee with aggravating serenity.

“You betcha.”

“All of you.” Will repeated venomously. “Wankers.”

Anne wandered through with eggs, heading for his stove. “We’ll make you a big dinner.” Anne laughed as she passed him.

His stomach growled as he jogged down the stairs, and clenched as he went past the first floor, which smelled like mouth watering peanut butter toast. He slipped outside and jogged across the empty road to his car.

“Will!”

He turned. Fred was at the door to the apartment building, frantically waving at him with something shiny in her hand. “Oh.” He murmured, smiling abashedly. He jogged back and took the CD from her and she sighed. She turned back and he headed towards his car again, unlocking and slipping inside, CD safely on the seat next to him.

He drove to the Initiative, just on the outer circles of the town centre, surrounded by gardens and lawns, the public buildings spaced out and architecturally disarming, all with big wide windows and warm bricks. The public didn’t see the concrete underground, there were rumours, but they never saw the underground. He drove towards the carpark, practically empty at this sinful hour of the morning. The dawn had coloured the sky grey, the sun close to rising as he parked.

He slipped out of the car, the CD in his pocket, and he jogged towards the entry of the main building, scanning his card to get in, feeling like he’d only just left. Into the special lift, scanning his card and entering a code, he heaved a big weary sigh as the vertigo rolled in his belly, the red dot on the screen descending.

He felt very old just now. And really fucking tired. And hungry.

He pouted a little, catching sight of his worse for wear face in the reflection of the buttons panel. He looked like he’d crawled out of a bus shelter, his jacket was half on, the collar folded and sticking up on one side. He tried to straighten it out, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. He sniffed as the doors dinged open.

The floor was empty, save one girl in sensible heels, hurrying down into the B-3 area, her arms holding a pad of papers tight, and her hair twisted up with a pen. She didn’t glance at him as he wandered out, and along the tunnels. He heard a few people in the assorted breaks of lounges along the sides. Heard the guards talking at the entry door to B-9, but he kept walking with purpose. He blinked a few times, trying to make his eyes focus.

He headed towards B-14. His father probably wouldn’t be in yet. If he was he’d have to regroup and try again later. He slipped through the passkey doors and down the blue carpeted hall towards Angel’s rooms.

He opened the door to the ob-room. It was dark and looked empty. “Hello?” He called.

No answer. The networked computers were all screensavering, bouncing colourful images on each. He slipped around, breathing loudly in the empty space, staying out of view of the security camera. With any luck he’d be in and out without a problem, or anyone knowing he was there. If the security personnel looked, if they looked, they’d see a record of the B-14 door opening with his passkey, but that was okay, they knew he was in the building, they’d known since he’d entered the lobby, and if anyone asked, he was simply picking up some papers he’d accidentally left when he’d come to visit his father yesterday.

That’s all. Completely harmless.

Security probably didn’t even know anyhow. The log they had of doors opening, which person was where, the log was so long and convoluted, that it was really only used as a way to find someone if you were looking. He wouldn’t pop up as out of place. Not unless he was meant to be somewhere else, and someone was trying to find him.

But he made sure that never happened. He only visited his father when he had spare time. And rarely even then.

He quickly sat down at a computer, across the long circular room, overlooking the pool and gym areas, which were black and closed. He pushed Fred’s disc into the machine and ran the bug program, connecting a little black transmitting box to the computer and tucking it behind the desk, out of sight amongst the cord creepers. The CD stopped loading and he pulled it out, sticking it back into his pocket and pulled the thin files out from the back of his jeans, holding them as he walked back. He walked slowly around the side; Angel’s bedroom coming into view, the dim sleeping lights on so observers could still see him while he slept. The bed ran alongside the two-way mirrors. He walked round, blinking a little in surprise as he realised Angel was awake, lying in bed, head on the pillow with his eyes open.

For a moment, Will let himself be fooled, thinking Angel was watching him calmly through the glass.

But he knew he wasn’t, he was watching himself in the mirror, like a bird. His bare arm was curled around his drawing book like it was a soft toy as he stared solemnly at himself.

Will smiled at him anyway. “Good morning.” He murmured. “Bit early for you to be up isn’t it?”

Angel blinked at himself.

Will yawned. “Bit early for anything to be up.”

Angel’s gaze wandered up to the ceiling for a moment, before he closed his eyes and wriggled down further under his blanket.

Will watched him a little longer, his profile, the dim low light on his skin making it look gold. He turned away and left the ob-room, files in hand.

He kept walking, heading towards his office. He stopped at one of the lounges scattered about in an attempt to seem friendly, and bought a snickers at a vending machine in the corner, eating it quickly and feeling the upset acid in his stomach bubble and gurgle from being fed chocolate so early in the morning. He made it back to his office and slumped onto the couch, grabbing a bottle of water and washing it all down. He’d go out and get something good for brunch, he thought sleepily.

He lay down on his couch. But he couldn’t go right now. Too tired right now. He rested his cheek on the side of his curled up arm and fell asleep quickly.

---

When he woke from dreams of fear and black and a horribly disfigured man attacking him, he looked around groggily, feeling sweaty and sticky and stale, and completely unrested.

He was officially running on empty. So tired he felt removed from everything, like it was all happening in a movie and not to him. He wasn’t really walking around his office, looking for more water, he wasn’t really scratching the itch on the back of his neck. He felt numb. He needed good sleep. But he couldn’t get it. Not right now. He knew that, even though his brain felt like it had been numbed with ice cold water.

He was too tense and too worried to sleep properly. It was all coming to a conclusion. Or a beginning. Both of those things for Angel. They’d stepped up their plans; they were going to do it in three days. That wasn’t very long. They were prepared of course, had been for weeks now… but still. Three days.

Faced with his father’s newest wave of insanity, they had all decided to get the Origin subjects out as soon as they could. No more planning, no more waiting. They were pulling them all out in three days.

Everything was in place, but it was still daunting. They knew the plan would work, but there were so many things that could go wrong, even with their meticulous planning. And they only got one chance. If it didn’t work, Will would have to go, or stay and be killed. If it did work, he’d still have to go into hiding for the rest of his life, as would Philip. They were giving up a lot, Philip more so probably. Philip had cousins in Sunnydale, he’d grown up in Sunnydale. Will had fled to England for a long time, to be with his mother when she had moved back to her old town. She was dying. He’d told her years ago what he wanted to do and she had smiled in that painful way she had and simply nodded.

Will had no idea how he had come to be. How his parents had ever been drawn together was a mystery Will had no way of figuring out. With his father as unreachable as the stars and his mother deliriously wasting away in a bed on the other side of the world, he knew he’d always wonder and never find an answer. It was irritating, but Will was slowly detaching himself from the niggling questions.

So Will didn’t really have much tying him… anywhere really. Philip had to give up family. Will only had to give up knowledge of good burger places, and a handful of old friends. He’d practically closed himself off to most of his friends, so it would be relatively painless.

And besides, Gunn, Philip and Fred were all coming with him.

They’d tried to plan after the escape, but they had no idea what to expect. From any of them, they didn’t even know if Angel, Two and Three would still want to be known as Angel, Two and Three or if they’d want real names. They were only educated up to around a fifteen-year-olds level, didn’t even know music or poetry. When he and Fred had tried to talk about what they would need after they were out…

They needed to catch up on a lifetime.

It would take years. He’d imagined himself talking to Angel many times, trying to explain what had happened, how he’d been lied to, treated like nothing. Trying to explain the sky and the clouds and trees and cats and shops and cars and television.

He still didn’t know how to say it.

He and Fred had been compiling books on every subject they could think of. Oz, a friend of Will’s had taken a truckload of things up to Salem. He was up there now; he’d got the call that they were coming early.

Hopefully.

He sunk back down onto the couch, lost in thought.

Angel always smelled like shampoo. Always. A creamy, frothy soapy smell.

“Do you sleep in the sixth part?” Angel asked him, resting his big hand against Will’s chest to feel his heartbeat.

Will watched the back of his head. He thought hard, trying to think of what he could say. “Yes.” He said, slowly, scanning the answer for anything that might be wrong.

“Do you have a bed?”

Another moment of furious thinking. “Yes.” He said, just as slowly.

“Does your bed look like mine?” he asked, wriggling around to try and sit in his lap.

Will smiled and pushed the lean sixteen-year-old off him. Angel laughed, and immediately thought it was a game, trying to push back against him. He locked his long legs around Will’s waist. Will immediately stopped the game, hoping Angel would untwine himself and sit back down next to him.

Horrified, Will sat completely still as Angel rested his wide shoulders against the ground and blinked up at him happily. “Thigh wrestle.” He purred, rocking a little in his lap.

Will shook his head. Jesus Christ. He swallowed with some effort, trying not to flush as he managed to push one thin thigh away from his waist. He stood; stepping over Angel who was watching him sprawled out on the floor, and sat on the bed. Angel rolled up and crawled next to him, oppressively close as always.

“Are you with Father all the time in the sixth part?” He asked, his breath on Will’s ear. He ran a finger softly down the bridge of Will’s nose. Will caught his hand before it tracked across his lips.

Will didn’t know what he’d do if his father wasn’t watching. Probably let his long curious fingers track all over him. He shivered a little, unsettled.

“I do that sometimes when I’m wet.” Angel said.

“Shiver?”

He shuddered his shoulders, closing his eyes in demonstration. “Is that shiver?”

“Yes.”

“I shiver.”