Soul Bound

- A TOWER IN THE VOID, SIX YEARS AG-

VHW-1627 looked at her hands and wondered why the tips of her fingers were not stained purple. They should have been.

The conviction itself was hazy, but it stood prevalent in the mists of her mind that her fingers should be stained purple. Just as her nails should have been much shorter, and the knuckles of her fingers and the mounds of her palms should have had calluses.

In the deepest reaches of her mind, VHW-1627 felt the smallest stinging pang of disappointment as she observed her clean hands, and she rubbed her thumb against the pads of her stainless fingers contemplatively.

The forefront of her mind reminded her that purple stained fingers and dreams of brown wolves dusted in the reds of autumn and rust walked hand-in-hand with nightmares, and she knew for a fact that those were not a reality that she wanted to embody.

“The good news is that it’s just the standard set of questions today.” The man who sat on the wheeled stool in front of her held a tablet, and his voice was warm and sweet. It matched the coffee and cream of his complexion and was softened further by the dark, if slightly unruly ringlet curls that tumbled around his ears. His eyes were warm, too, an almost amber brown that regarded her with enthusiastic kindness.

“Hello to you too, Researcher Colin.” She didn’t really mind that he didn’t say hello. It was hard to tell when it was night or day in this place, and something told her that Colin rarely stopped in his work. She wouldn’t be surprised if the man just assumed that he was having one continuous conversation with every patient and research subject on their floor on repeat.

Still, he had the courtesy to look chastised. “Yes, sorry. That was rude of me, wasn’t it? Hello VHW-one-six-two-seven. It’s just the standard set of questions today, if that’s okay with you.”

Was it actually more polite? Somehow it didn’t feel like it, but she decided it was the thought that counted.

“It’s almost always just the standard set of questions,” she said, her gaze dropping to the tablet and stylus he held. She couldn’t see what was on the screen.

It had one of those weird protectors on it that kept the contents private unless you were looking at the screen from a very specific angle. But she knew that the document he had pulled up would contain nothing interesting. Just her stats: height, weight, eye and hair colour, age. It would have her name on it, too, in a smaller, less obvious font than that of her subject number.

VHW-one-six-two-seven. She remembered her name, of course. She had only been here for the last three years (or was it four now?). But her subject number was more relevant than her name these days.

“Sorry.” This time, he almost sounded sincere in his apology. “I know they’re not very exciting. But it’s really important that we have a solid baseline for how your body is reacting to all the changes we’re making.”

The man smiled at her, flashing long and elegant fangs in her direction. Fangs that he shouldn’t have, because the man sitting in front of her stank of the craft, not of vampirism.

VHW-1627 sighed and tucked her long dark hair behind her ear. “All right. The standard questions? How are you? Bored. Exhausted. Unless I’m not. Unless I’m so amped up on air that I want to crawl out of my skin and run for miles without stopping. In the first instance, yes, I’m sleeping. All the time. Not that it helps. I never wake up feeling rested. In the second instance, I run on the treadmills, until I can’t run. I run as a wolf and as a woman. Sometimes as both at the same time. Usually as both at the same time.”

“Still hard to keep to one form over the other in a heightened state of activity, then?”

VHW-1627 shrugged. “I guess. Being both feels more... natural, I guess.”

Researcher Colin jotted down a few notes. “Let’s go back to the times when you’re tired. You said you sleep, but you don’t feel rested. Why do you think that is?” The question was asked kindly, and those warm eyes and that gentle smile brought VHW-1627 up short in her reenactment of their usual exchange.

“I guess…” she looked down at her hands, which were not stained purple. “I don’t know. I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately.”

“Good dreams? Bad dreams?”

He was so careful to keep the questions casual, but she could smell his interest. Another side-effect of becoming a wolf. Emotions, hormones, the biology of a person created an ever-fluctuating miasma that made it hard for her to think clearly when she was around people. At least Researcher Colin was better at controlling his emotions than most.

“Anything that you remember?” he prompted again.

She rubbed her fingers.

The purple stain was licked away by the tongue of a wolf with fur the colour of autumn. By a man with a smile that looked wild and canid, and warmed her from the outside in. A man who laughed as she growled, who held her when she cried. A man who held her down until she cried, and his blue-grey eyes bore into her and ripped her apart from the inside out. A boy with long, rangy legs and a smile as wild as the man’s and a promise to return soon. And kisses, and hugs, and waving goodbye with hands that were not stained purple. Hands that were gentle and sweet as they tangled in her hair and accompanied laughter that was warm. Hands that closed over her throat, her mouth, stifled her screams, that held a gun to her jaw to keep her still. Hands covered in purple stains that grew and dripped red, and the wolf and the boy turned away and left her covered in those stains, and her broken heart continued to beat while each of those beats made the red stains grow. Deeper. Wider. Hotter. Until she was cold. So very cold.

Oisin.

“Honestly, anything at all would be helpful for your notes.”

VHW-1627 shook her head. “Nothing. I don’t remember anything.”