Her brother sat wide awake before her, still alight from the hunt. His recent wounds were mere shadows, echoes of pain, and he twitched slightly now and then to shrug off another memory. He had healed quicker than all of them, as he was the youngest. In humans a child will heal faster than an adult, and so it was with them.
They were contained. Though the doors to the cells were unlocked and the light was on, the truck's rear door was bolted and deadlocked from outside. There was an electronic lock as well; Natasha could see the empty housing where its internal control had been removed. Mister Wolf had taken pleasure in telling them that the truck was heavily reinforced for their own safety. It was fully wired up and could be injected with a massive electrical charge. For their protection. Finally, there was a container of nerve gas fitted into a delivery container between the ceiling layers. Again, for their protection. He had smiled whilst telling them this, though there was no comfort behind the expression. Fuck up, it said, and I'll gas you myself. Make one move to get out, and I'll light you up like Christmas. Her father had nodded at Mister Wolf, walked around the truck, tapped at walls and kicked tires, and then smiled at the soldier as if he had already discovered a flaw in the vehicle's security.
Natasha was tired but could not close her eyes. She had been cooped up like this with her family many times before, and every time they had remained awake. It was not the fear of confinement, nor the obvious fact that they were prisoners that prevented them from sleeping. It was the knowledge that, one day, they would become expendable. Only one of the humans had ever shown any sign of truly understanding what they were and what they could do, and Mister Wolf made no secret of his desire to be rid of them. His mistake was assuming that the berserkers were unnatural, a slur on creation. If he could only see into their past. …
Peter's eyes flickered left and right, scanning the corners of their cells, ever-vigilant for a hope of escape. He would not find it, Natasha knew, not here and not now. And she guessed that he knew that, too. Her father, eyes almost closed and yet fully awake, waited for a more obvious chance at flight. And her mother felt every vibration of the road through her skull, each twist and turn of the truck. A couple of hours after setting out from the naval port she opened her eyes and announced that they would soon be home.
Home. Natasha could not remember the real home—the place her parents spoke of often, but only silently in her mind—because she had been a babe in arms when they were caught. Their enclosure at Porton Down was all she knew, other than the places they were sent to on occasion to feed and destroy. Her brother had been born in captivity. Perhaps that explained why he, more than any of them, was constantly on edge and ready to fall over. The slightest upset would set him raging; the smallest scolding drove him berserk. No problem for his family, but for the humans it made for a challenging time. It was a wonder they had not already tried to destroy him, but they knew the strength in a family.
The truck slowed, the road flattened and became smoother, and they all sensed that the vehicle was now in an enclosed space. It took a few minutes after it had stopped for the doors to be opened, and Mister Wolf glared in at the berserkers.
"Home sweet home," he said. "You know the drill. One at a time, the boy first, then the girl." He wore a heavy pistol on his belt, and Natasha could smell the silver bullets from where she sat. The huge garage had several observation posts built into its thick walls, and there would be a sniper in each one, high velocity rifles loaded with silver trained on the berserkers as soon as they left the truck.
"It's in the truck we could take our chance," her father had whispered to her mother one day. Neither of them knew that Natasha had been listening; they thought she was asleep, mouth bloody, stomach full. "In there, it's only that bastard Cole who has us covered. We'd only have seconds, but it could work. Freedom."
"And the nerve gas?" her mother had said. "And the shock? Could we survive that?"
"Perhaps not all of us—"
"I'll do nothing to risk our children. They're all we have. If keeping them alive means we have to stay here, then that's what we do."
"You think they'll ever let us go? You think they'll ever decide we have rights as well? We're animals to them! Assets!"
"I don't care," her mother had said, and as she turned away she had seen Natasha watching and listening from where she lay. She smiled, and Natasha smiled back, but inside Natasha had hated the look of defeat and acceptance in her mother's eyes.
Natasha remembered, and Tom saw. He knew this was only memory and yet it was pure experience as well: smell and taste, touch and sound. He could see everything that Natasha had seen, feel what she had felt.
He was a dark figure in the car, head tilted back and to the side, dribbling from one corner of his mouth. In his lap sat the blanket-covered body of an undead girl. At his chest her dried lips worked around the small wound, drawing blood. On his back the blood had dried and the wound had scabbed, flesh already knitting where only a couple of hours before a silver bullet had blasted its way through.
His blood held a taint, but only a taint. And tainted blood was better than none at all.
Natasha drank, flexing her fingers, muscles contracting and flesh filling out.
Tom slept and saw the past.
Anyone who glanced into the car and saw something strange immediately went on their way, and within two steps they were left with only a feeling of disquiet. Two paces further and they were concerned only with what they were going to have for lunch.
"What are we having for lunch?" Peter said.
"You're not still hungry!" Natasha said, aghast. He really was an eating machine. She'd heard the saying that a puppy will eat until it's sick; he was the same. His stomach was still swollen with the berserk feast they had enjoyed the day before, and now he was craving again.
"There's plenty there," Mister Wolf said. He was accompanying them along the corridor to their quarters as usual, one hand resting on the butt of his pistol. Natasha knew that he knew it would be useless; if they went for him, he'd be dead before he saw them move. But it seemed to give him a sense of comfort, and perhaps power as well. They were the animals and he was holding the gun. He was in charge.
"We've done your dirty work for you again," her father said. "Now we'd like to eat."
"I thought you'd eaten enough to last you a week," Mister Wolf said, glaring at Natasha's father with a stare that said, I'm so scared of you I don't know where to turn.
Her father knew this, but rarely played on it. If you got the better of someone like Cole, he would make it his mission to find a way to pay you back. Exposing his weaknesses only made him need to feel stronger. There was nothing he could really do to them, not without reason—he had his orders from way above—but he could make their lives uncomfortable if he so desired. And if his superiors ever questioned his actions, he would put it down to "training." He used that word a lot. Training. As if they were dogs.
"I'll have food brought to you," Mister Wolf said. "All of you." Everything he said had an undercurrent of threat. He hated them. He was a small, weak, insecure man, and Natasha feared him more than anyone or anything she knew.
There came a blank spot in Natasha's memory—a forgotten period, or something she did not want Tom to see—and then there they were, the berserkers, all together in the place at Porton Down where they had been kept for years, together like patients in an asylum or animals in a zoo. They were gathered in their courtyard, a large landscaped area with a pool and fountain, shrub planting, seating areas, a patio and barbeque, and a heavy steel grille spanning from wall to wall, supported on thick stone columns. The whole grid hummed gently. The sun shone through, but its power and beauty was lessened by the mesh, tainted by incarceration. The place smelled of lavender and the potential for death.