Shocked down to my core, all I could do was stare at him. Alec stood and opened his shirt, revealing healing wounds from previous incisions and a recent wound that had puss oozing out of it.
“Please make them stop,” Alec said, the tears free flowing down his cheeks. “It’s time now.”
“Did they do this to you?” I whispered, pointing at the wounds. He nodded. “Do you know why they do this?” I glanced over my shoulder at the door, but it was only us.
River and Zenon wore matching facial expressions that oozed anger. I didn’t blame them. Seeing the pain in Alec’s face was enough for me to blast Isaac’s soul out of his body without the guilt.
“They want my animal, but they don’t believe me. It’s already gone.” Recognition registered in his eyes as he thought about something.
“Are you a shifter?” I asked gently, not wanting to scare him. I slowly stepped closer.
“I was,” he said, smiling kindly, his eyes sparkling at the memory.
“Can you remember which shifter?”
“A saber-tooth tiger,” he said, nodding. “We were majestic creatures back in the day.” His smile reached his eyes and his cheeks blossomed red. “My brother and I used to hunt in Greenland, Antarctica, and the lands beneath. You should see the old lands one day.” Alec smiled, then fell silent.
“Why did your brother leave you here?” I asked.
“It took my saber away, and then Alex grabbed the mask and he, too, changed. But his mind stayed the same. I saw too much from that mask. Too much hurt. Too much pain. Too many souls changed.” He shook his head continuously, then finally settled down.
After a moment of staring at Alec, he blinked as if realizing he was speaking with us and continued, “The world within is so much better than this one. It’s filled with enormous creatures and tiny insects, but all is beautiful. All is wonderful. And everybody lives peacefully. There’s so much happiness there. No hurt. No pain. But we had to leave. There were explorers trying to find our home, so my brother and I thought of leaving before they hurt us, too.”
He fell quiet for a moment, then added, “But we are so few now,” Alec said as more tears welled in his eyes and blood drained from his face once more. His eyes glazed over as if the medication they forced down his throat had taken hold of him, and he started rocking again.
I glanced out of the window and saw three outside rooms; the fence surrounding the building and garden, and beyond that, a forest. The view was stunning. But the building that stood on this land gave me the creeps.
“What the hell is he going on about?” Zenon said, standing closer to us.
I shushed him and waved him away. “Why don’t you just leave?” I said, touching Alec so he knew I was asking him a question.
He shook his head. “It wasn’t the right time.” He glanced nervously at the open door and whispered. His eyes finding mine. “I can’t leave, and nobody can take me to the right time.” He rocked. “It hasn’t been time here for a while. Until now…”
A lump formed in the back of my throat, and I flinched when Alec grabbed my forearms, his fingernails digging into my skin.
“It’s time,” he said through dirty gritted teeth. “We must go now. Bad shifters. Bad, bad, bad.”
I glanced up at Zenon and River. “Do you think we can get him out of here?”
“And take him where?” River asked, staring nervously down the hallway. “I don’t like this.”
“Me neither,” I grumbled, and carefully removed Alec’s fingernails from my forearms with Zenon’s help.
“Let’s try teleporting,” Zenon said, grabbing Alec’s shoulder and reached for my hand. When River grabbed hold of my hand and Zenon, we closed our eyes, but nothing happened.
“What’s going on?” I asked, confused. “Why aren’t we going anywhere?”
Zenon dropped his arms and stared at Alec from head to toe. He glanced around the room; at the old bed frame and faded blue duvet set. “Do you remember when we entered the institute it only mentions Isaac from 1946. Why aren’t there others who managed the institute until our present day in 2023?”
I remembered thinking the same thing when we arrived. I glanced at Alec again. “Alec, do you know what year it is?”
“It’s 1964,” he said, his eyes boring a hole inside my head. “Alex thought it was a safe time. But it’s not. Bad time.”
An icy feeling washed over me that my suspicion was correct. “How did we get to this time, and how did you get here?” I pointed at Zenon, “When did our world change to the past?”
“It must be the tomb,” Zenon said. “And then when we came to the institute based on the picture in the locket, something shifted.” He shrugged.
“You mean time shifted?” I asked, frowning. “As in time traveling?”
“The real question we should ask is, how do we get back?” River asked, rubbing his face.
“If I knew that, we wouldn’t be arguing about it,” Zenon growled. His irritation with River was clear.
I stepped between the two and pushed them farther apart. “Let’s first get out of here safely before you two fight each other. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want these people probing me.” I glanced at Alec, who now stared out of the window and continued rocking in his chair.
“Agreed,” River said, then stared at Zenon. “Let’s get out of here, then you can go back to hating me.”
Zenon grunted his approval and opened the window. “Let’s climb—”
The mere mention of climbing set Alec off, and he began shaking and sweating. At least we knew he still listened, even though it didn’t look like it. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he started convulsing violently. His head smacked against the chairback, and his hands hit the armrest. River grabbed him before he crashed to the floor.
“What’s wrong with him?” River asked as he carefully placed Alec on his bed.
“I don’t know, but he obviously doesn’t enjoy climbing.”
“Let’s carry him down,” Zenon said, crossing the room toward the door. “I don’t enjoy sitting here. What if they come after us?”
“I don’t like this either,” I said, standing beside him. “And if they see us carrying him down, they might attack.” I glanced over my shoulder and Alec was in the fetal position on his bed, sucking his thumb. “And I don’t think he’s in any position to go anywhere.”
I opened my mouth to say we should take our chances and carry him down the stairs, bolt out of the front door and steal a car when Isaac came around the corner with an orderly and two large male nurses. They marched in unison toward us with purpose; their expressions were scary.
“It’s time for Alec to receive his daily treatment,” Isaac yelled down the hallway, getting closer.
Alec whimpered and wet the bed.
“I think it’s time you left,” Isaac grumbled, pushing River out of the way. “If you weren’t able to get any information out of him by now, I highly doubt you will. He needs to go downstairs for his treatment.” Isaac pointed to where the nurses and orderly were to grab him. They picked him up and carried him down the corridor and disappeared down the stairs.
Isaac turned on his heel and followed them, his welcoming demeanor long gone and in its place was contempt.
We gawked at the way they handled poor Alec and shoulder bumped Zenon, jerking my chin in their direction. “We have to help him,” I whispered. Those reptiles had better hearing than Zenon and I didn’t want them hearing me.
“No, we don’t,” he said through gritted teeth. “What we’re doing is putting our lives in danger.”
“You mean a big scary vampire-were-leopard is afraid of danger.”
Zenon growled, revealing his sharp teeth.
I poked him in the side, and he flinched.
“Stop being a baby and let’s do something. You’re apparently the big brother,” when I said big brother I used air quotes, “so act like it. We’re good people and don’t you forget it or I’m telling Mommy.”
“I hate it when you do that,” he said, his tone deep and throaty. All the hairs on my arms and at the back of my neck stood up, making me shiver.
“See, all we needed was to bring those monsters of yours out to come play.” I grinned and turned to River. “Are you going to join me or complain like a princess over there?”
River laughed and said, “Well, you won’t catch me backing out of a fight.” His flames flashed before our eyes, bathing us in heat, and then it quickly receded.
Zenon snapped his teeth and growled.
“Okay, okay, enough,” I slapped Zenon on his rock-hard abdomen. He didn’t flinch, but he stood straighter, “see, that wasn’t so hard. Now let’s go get him.”
By the time we reached the bottom of the stairs, the hallway was deadly quiet. The nurse who first greeted us was no longer at the front desk, and the other rooms downstairs seemed locked or empty.
The only place left that we thought they could’ve gone to were the outside rooms we noticed from the upstairs window. We traversed down the porch stairs, crossed the large, neatly cut lawn out back, and approached the rooms carefully.
There were about three or four rooms next to each other, reminding me of old stables they had converted into rooms. The wooden doors were closed, but we tried the first one when we were sure there was nobody inside. The last thing we wanted to do was to surprise the reptiles while they were busy; they were a grumpy, hungry bunch.
Zenon opened it with a shove of his shoulder against the wood, almost breaking it. We entered the ammonia smelling room; one side of the room had shelves filled with various surgical instruments that would give me nightmares. Against the far wall was a shiny silver surgical table with clean clamps, forceps, scalpels, a speculum, and even a bone cutter on a tray.
“What are they doing to these children?” I asked, speaking more to myself than the men.
“Whatever it is, it’s not pretty,” River said beside me. His tone filled with a quiet rage. “No idea what they’d use this for?” He touched a large cylinder-type-gas-bottle with glass in front to show the level; the bottle was empty.
Screams sounded in the room next door, and we froze in our respective spots. Then Zenon moved so fast I barely saw him until his spot was empty and was already outside, peering through tiny slits above their door.
We joined him outside and listened to the screaming. Alec cried out, begging them to stop. A whistle sounded and something clanked against the floors as they moved something away and brought something else closer. The screaming continued, forcing me to block my ears.
Alec’s high-pitched screams added to my anxiety, and I shook my head in quiet anger. I couldn’t handle the pain he was experiencing along with his screams, and I wanted to blast through the door and kill the men hurting him. He screamed again, and I choked on a sob. They were hurting him and his cries for help struck my core.
‘We have to help,’ I mouthed. While River stared at me with angry flames in his eyes. We could take them. We could kill Isaac and his men. I knew deep in my heart we could rescue Alec from these terrible lizard shifters.
Zenon stepped away from the slits above the door, his face now pale. He was a tanned were-leopard, he never paled. Even his yellow/golden eyes had darkened.
I shrugged and mouthed, ‘What is it?’
Zenon shook his head.
The screams abruptly ended. A cylinder clanked against the floor and rolled. They spoke inside as metal struck metal and there was movement.
We were too late… even if we had broken down the door, Alec may not have lived for much longer and we would’ve risked our lives. Although I didn’t know Alec, I’d just met the man, but I felt bad for what he’d gone through.
River shoved me out of the way and into Zenon, and we entered the next vacant room; the door had stood wide open. As I closed the wooden door, it creaked, forcing me to let go of the door not to alert them of our presence.
Isaac exited the room the moment I let go of the creaking door; he walked upright in his crocodile-like-lizard-body, holding up two large vials of blood. “Don’t forget to send the cleaners there,” he said nonchalantly, thumbing behind him.
“Yes, boss,” said the two nurses and orderly at the same time. They walked beside him as their natural lizard selves. Their tails swished left and right as they laughed and joked about what they had done to Alec. Their large bodies stomped across the backyard, and they disappeared inside the institute.
“What the actual f—”
“No swearing,” River said, interrupting my bout of swear words. “Let’s see what they did.”
“No,” I said, “we don’t want to see his demise.”
“Suit yourself.”
Not wanting to be left behind, I joined the two men and entered the next room with them but could go no farther than the doorjamb. The coppery smell of Alec’s blood assaulted my senses as my eyes bounced around the room; blood splattered against the walls and ceiling, with blood dripping onto the floor. I dared not look at the bed Alec was on. And in the far-right corner stood three full cylinders.
“What do you think they were doing with his blood and the cylinders?” I asked, wanting to go near them and open one to see, but my feet couldn’t move.
“Are you sure you want to find out?” Zenon said, brushing against my shoulder as he entered the room. “You know you’ll only have nightmares.”
“I know,” I said sadly, recalling the time when after I returned home following my stint working with Victor and River. The things I’d witnessed that night would leave me scarred for life; the brutality and waste of it all. I shut my eyes tight as the memory surfaced.
“I need to know what they were doing to him,” my eyes finally darted to Alec’s torn, bloody body, and I swallowed hard, “why they had to hurt him so badly is beyond me. He’s at peace now.” I choked on the last words and wiped my eyes.
Zenon and River approached the full cylinders, and they each grabbed one, turning the valves at the same time. Screams pierced our ears, and they quickly closed them. We stood staring at each other like our world had just shattered. I didn’t want us hanging around here any longer. The lizards might return, and they would do the same to us.
“What are they doing capturing someone’s scream?” I asked nervously, glancing back at the large institute, but didn’t see any movement near any of the windows.
“Maybe they feed off of them,” River said, his face paler than usual. “Maybe they enjoy the demise of others.”
“We have to get out of here,” I said. “I really don’t want to be tortured and sound like that.” I pointed at the cylinders and stepped farther back.
“Agreed, but can we teleport, or must we walk home?” Zenon said, approaching the bed Alec’s body was on. He inspected the wounds inflicted on his abdomen, chest and neck, careful not to touch his blood. He sniffed near the corpse. “His blood smells different,” Zenon said, wrinkling his nose. “It’s sweeter in some areas and fowl smelling in others. Strange.”
“That’s fascinating, but please can we get out of here before they return,” I said, peering out of the door again, but nobody was coming to us.
“Let’s go,” River said, grabbing my shoulder and touching Zenon’s arm.