Wilds Born

Secrets and musings, Evera is very odd and yet very. Sidhe. It's highly unusual for those of this world to be violent. They don't fight amongst themselves and those who have a 'violent' bone in their bodies become law enforcement or border guard or ... well... criminals who fight with the law enfrocement officers. Finding someone in a genetic company, out in the public like that who is willing to be all. Dangerous, is unsual.

But I like her attitude.

The four coins and Nu's insistance that someone explain to him what's going one made me laugh.

Read, Review and Enjoy.




El’s mother led Nu by the hand to a room with many machines and a little table with brightly coloured seats and paper. She closed the door very firmly on a startled El and leaned against the door for good measure. Nu blinked at her and took in her eye colour and hair colour. He frowned and ventured a guess.

“You are related to Evera.” he murmured.

“No, I’m not,” she said, flicking something beside the door, which then beeped. El’s mother stepped away from the door and approached Nu, “I am Evera. I thought you might know me and have avoided you since you awoke for just that reason.”

“Great-elder said that you saved his life,” Nu said quietly, “is it a problem that I know this? Will this cause a disturbance in your life here in the civilization?”

“El doesn’t know the role I played.”

“He does not know that you helped bring down the Meita, you handed over the information to great-elder because you discovered that the Meita had hunted down and slaughtered members of a tribe in the wilds? Why ever not? He seems like an upstanding sort of person.”

Evera sighed and ran her fingers up and down her temple, “because the Meita didn’t just slaughter the tribe, they took several… hostages. They raped the men and women and stole their genetic material, creating embryos. One of the women was already pregnant when she was taken. El is that child.”

“Very young looking for his age,” Nu grumbled, “Did not realise he was so old. Ninety… ninety-six?”

“Technically, yes, but not really, he sat on ice for over seventy years. He doesn’t know that I fought for his existence because of my part in those events that transpired. I am not yet ready for him to know this. I am certainly not ready to lose him. Thus, I ask that you not mention it to him.”

“Very well, but father has always told mother that one day her children could leave the tree or die because of many different things and that she must come to accept this fact. It is a good thing for mothers to know. Children have minds of their own and desires of their own.”

“I don’t expect him to remain forever, just a few more years,” Evera murmured before she went back to the door and flicked the thing beside the door again. She paused before she opened the door and revealed an exasperated looking El, “I’ve had a chat with him about how you aren’t allowed to just have your way with him.”

“Mother, he was a perfectly willing participant,” El said, leaning against the opening, “you know that I don’t like non-consensual stuff, gives me the creeps. Besides,” he pushed off the door, “if he didn’t like it, he could beat the crap out of me.”

“I highly doubt that,” Evera growled, “you’re twice his size and likely over twice his weight. And he’s recovering.”

“Nu, come show my mother how you move.”

Nu rose to the balls of his feet and slipped through the space between himself and El, with a step he was behind the big male and he grabbed a handful of El’s dishevelled hair -that was oh so soft- and yanked backward. As El let out a startled sound, Nu grabbed hold of the bigger male’s throat and applied just enough pressure to show El who was in control. As he did this Evera’s mouth dropped open, her eyes went so wide that he could see white all around the coloured part.

“Nu,” El gurgled out, “could you let me go, please?”

“Who’s dominant?” Nu growled.

“You are,” El squeaked.

Nu grinned and let El up, patting the bigger male on the head to show that there were no hard feelings and that the little show of force didn’t mean anything at all. He wondered if El even understood what that meant. Perhaps El didn’t understand the body language that Nu was used to translating. After all, El used verbal language to get his point across.

He frowned and said, “that means nothing came of it.”

“What?” El asked, looking thoroughly confused.

“That,” Nu patted El on the head once more, “means nothing came of it. That bit, that thing that we did means nothing. It was only a show for your mother, I am not actually more dominant than you are.”

“Oh. Wait. What?”

“They,” Evera said quickly, motioning into the room with one hand. The two males followed her motion as she continued on, “apparently speak mainly in body language. Not entirely unusual, given the fact that the genetics do just that. Or. Did. At the maturity of Shin they realised that they couldn’t continue down that path so they basically reversed their body language. The few odds and ends that commoners all speak now were words that genetics could mime before they could speak. Every motion of my body, your body, says something about our mood or intention. Every motion of his body tells an entire story. Nu, why don’t you sit and colour a bit?”

“Colour? I cannot change my colours,” Nu grumbled, “not like cousin who can meld into background.”

“No,” El said, frowning, “come sit,” the big male sat at one of the chairs and looked absolutely ridiculous. The chair was too small for his large frame.

Nu approached the table and eyed the chairs. He finally settled on a bright green one and scooted it close to the table. It was too small for him and his legs stuck up under his chin when he sat ‘properly’ so he splayed his legs under the table and to the sides.

As he did so, El opened an object, a book, a little big word, with images in them. El slid the book towards Nu and motioned to the odd creature sipping tea. The creature was blob shaped with many dots on it, each dot had a little number in it.

“It’s the elemental table on a blob,” Nu said, very unimpressed with how civilization had dumbed down something as simple as the elemental table, “I am un-amused by your offering.”

El snorted, “it’s meant for young children. They use these,” El produced many sticks of different colours, “to put colour to the image. Why don’t you give it a try?”

Nu frowned and took one of the sticks. He sniffed the end and found that it smelled somewhat like rancid fat. Grimacing, he put the stick to the paper and drew it downward. He knew the basic principals of making marks, nearly every child of the tribe had, at one time, grabbed hold of ash from the communal fire and drawn stick figures and letters on the floor.

The mark that he made on the paper was the same colour as the stick. He thought he understood, so he selected another stick and coloured away, tracing inside the lines and being very careful. It wasn’t very fun, but he made all the right colours until the page was filled and he sat back. El was looking at the page, frowning.

“Did Nu do something wrong?” he asked the bright eyed male.

“Why did you use those colours?”

“Those are the colours of the elements.”

“You were taught that there are colours to the elements?”

“No… I’ve seen the colours of the-” Nu and El both wince at the same time as something high-pitched rang through the room, “elements,” he finished as he turned towards the sound and glared at Evera. The woman held a little box in her hands and tried to look innocent as she pushed a button and walked off.

“You can see the colours of the elements,” As El said it, Nu realised his mistake.

His face flushed with embarrassment, he looked down and pushed the book away from himself, “never mind, I made a mistake. They are pretty colours.”

“Nu.”

“They are very pretty colours, I will colour another page,” Nu reached for the book only to have El snatch it away from him.

“Nu, what do you mean that you see the colours of the elements, you can’t even see these elements. They’re. No one can see them. Who taught you what colours to call them?”

“No one did. Elder Mei taught me to translate what I saw to something that he might understand, but the colours were those that I have seen,” Nu kept his eyes lowered.

“Who taught you about the elemental table?”

“Mother did and Mother Mally and elder Mally,” Nu murmured quietly, “these elements are the basic composition of all life in the world, either in the wilds or in the civilization. Mother says that even power is on the elemental table, but no one has yet found a way to explain it.”

“Do they know about your sight?”

“No…” Nu frowned, then shook his head to reinforce the word, “only Mei. The others tease me. Mei says that I have a learning disorder and that I cannot focus like everyone else. I take myself out of society because I was born into a world of my own and do not know how to step from that world, into the world of everyone else. But no one else will step into my world, so what do I care?”

“So your mother taught you the colours that apply to the elements.”

“What? No. Why would she do that, mother cannot see the colours of the elements, she says that the elements are all but invisible unless there is a lot of it in one spot. Like. Uhm. Like. Sodium, salt all together makes this white stuff she says, but the colour of sodium is like that,” Nu pointed to the spot on the blob that represented sodium, “but brighter.”

El’s jaw clenched. This caused Nu to lower his head again. He had done something stupid and foolish and now El thought he was a freak like everyone in the tribe did. El wouldn’t want to kiss him any more and that had kind of been nice.

“Nu, there are actual colours assigned to the elements, and you are right on all counts. That is why I am upset, I don’t understand how you could know what the elements are when you’ve never been taught that green stands for helium or navy blue stands for hydrogen.”

“Feelings have colours too,” Nu grumbled, “those Mei taught me, as a way to,” he spun a finger by his head to indicate that he wasn’t certain about what he was saying, “translate for others. Greyed passion arises in the air when someone has committed a … crime of passion. But in here nothing has colour at all.”

“It’s the air filters we have in place,” Evera said, approaching the table, “Nu,” she placed a flat screen onto the table, “this is your brain.”

“How did you steal my brain?” Nu asked, trying to look as surprised as he could. Evera struggled for an answer and he giggled, “Nu is joking! Scanning technology that can see through bodies, yes, is something broken?”

“Not. Broken. No. These centers of the brain,” Evera motioned, “are active, whereas in others, they aren’t. It’s preliminary so I will need to do in depth testing but. You don’t have a learning disability.”

“Reading is hard,” Nu muttered, “words jumble about.”

“That’s because you don’t see the world the way everyone else does. Literally don’t, this active center here means that you don’t have normal vision. Words likely jump around because you can’t see the words themselves. Do you have power, Nu?”

“Yessss… so what?”

“Tell me. What’s in El’s pocket?”

“Four coins and a key,” Nu muttered, shrugging as El made a choking sound, “what? Everyone knows what is in everyone else’s pockets, no?”

“No,” Evera shifted her weight towards El, “four. Coins? We don’t have coins, Nu, those are likely condoms. You were planning on having him even before you went to that room.”

“What is a condom?” Nu asked, confused.

“I had no plan, none, whatsoever! I always carry some with me just in case. Better safe than sorry, you always say!” El protested.

“What is condom?”

“Besides, I want to know how he did that,” El said quickly, looking at Nu, “no one can do that, power isn’t used for viewing, never has, never could be.”

“Nu, can I scan your eyes with a different machine?” Evera asked.

“Only if’n tell Nu what a condom is.” Nu growled, frustrated with how they both had been ignoring them.

***

El left his mother to explain to Nu what a condom was as he went to the next room and retrieved the VCD machine. It would check Nu’s vision, give them a basic layout of what he could and could not see and tell them what colours of the spectrum would appear as invisible to him. On his way back into the observation room he passed through the viewing room, the place where all the machines fed their information to and where someone could watch the observation room. Several different machines were running in the room itself, scanning bone density, tissue and even taking information on Nu’s fluids and digestive tract.

One of the lights was flashing, just a little one. A warning beep that told El that the subject who had just been scanned had a terminal sickness. El frowned at the button, tapped it and then shut it off. There was nothing wrong with Nu, he had been given a clean bill of health. Besides the yellowing bruises down his chest, he was perfectly healthy.

El stepped up to the brain activity scanner and read the summary report. Nu’s brainwaves were twice as active as the current Mally’s. Like he was on overdrive and things were revving up. Revving up for what, El didn’t know, but he went into the room and made a head motion to the viewing room. His mother nodded and took the VCD from El.

“Now, just look in here,” she motioned to the little view screen. Nu leaned in and looked through it, as instructed, “good, just keep looking, I’m just going to press this button and…”

Nu whined and pulled away from the VCD quickly, squeezing his eyes shut. The little male rubbed at his eyes and finally dropped his head on the table. Nu groaned, then whined and finally made a sobbing sort of sound.

Mother flicked through her information as El moved around the table and knelt by Nu, “hey, Nu, what’s wrong?”

“He saw the flash,” mother muttered, “that was unexpected, it’s on the purple wavelength. Most can’t see it, colour blind see a white light but it doesn’t really hurt them. Apparently if purple is about Nu can detect it but it causes him quite a bit of aggravation. Grab the sedative from the viewing room. Put the poor guy under and by the time he wakes up, the irritation should be gone from his eyes.”

El rushed to the viewing room, snatched up the spray sedative and ran back to Nu’s side. Getting the little male to inhale the sedative was about as difficult as getting a lab animal to take its medicine in pill form. Nu kept turning his head and groaning. Even though the little male couldn’t see, he didn’t seem to have any trouble knowing where El was about to bring the nozzle of the spray sedative. It took the entire canister for Nu to get a good lungful of it.

Mother at least waited until Nu’s head hit the table before she said, “well that was an expensive fix.”

“I’m sorry.” El grumbled, “it’s hard to get him to-”

“Why not use the needles? You might think them archaic, but they’re better than the canister method. Canisters hurt like hell but needles hardly hurt at all. They are also quiet a bit cheaper than the sprays.”

“We’re the only ones with access to the sprays,” El said quickly, “the needles, anyone can play with.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, his mother was up and headed to the viewing room and medics were coming into the observation room. The medics carefully lifted Nu up and off as El followed his mother into the viewing room.

There, she was squinting at the bottles of liquid sedatives. She turned the bottles over and over in her hands, then handed it over to El, “see anything odd about this?” she asked him.

El held the bottle up to the light and then shook it. The liquid seemed to capture bubble inside itself, “since when do liquid sedatives allow air to become trapped inside them? That could kill someone. Seal must be broken, I guess, for that to happen.”

“No, the sedative is an airless gel, it doesn’t allow bubbles to form,” mother growled, slapping her hand down on the desk, “someone has stolen our sedatives, that was a brand new form.”

“I will lock down-”

“No,” she snapped, then sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, “no, just tell me who took it.”

“Some unknown, faceless worker, I don’t know, mother. I’m not psychic, I haven’t got power.”

Mother leaned back against the table, folded her arms and gave him her tired, exasperated look. It seemed that he saw that look more and more as the years passed. As if she no longer had the energy to deal with him.

“The ring.”

“The. Ring? I’m not wearing it,” El said as he realised what she meant, “I thought it was said to affect its wearer. I’m not its wearer.”

“But had you given the ring bearer this,” mother snatched up the sedative and threw it against the wall, shattering the glass container and coating the wall in the liquid that was inside, “he very likely would have died.” mother turned and very casually pressed a button on the wall. The one that would tell security to lock down the building, “I’ve set up a meeting with the head of the Ishteshtin household. We will need his permission to go back and take Nu to his family. We also need to inform him of our discovering Nu. Now that we know he’s awake and well, we cannot leave it off any longer.”

“What about the VCD?”

“Oh,” she held it up, “he’s all but blind. See if he’s got bat genes and if so, which species of bat. Two species were found to have power, after their genetic material was added to genetics. Instead of seeing with echo location-”

“They see with power,” El finished, “what would have happened if he had been born without power? Would he be blind or would he simply not. Not see the world the way he sees it?”

“I don’t know, but perhaps his siblings will shed some light on it,” mother murmured as her flat screen buzzed loudly. She picked it up, “yes. Theft of several vials of sedatives. You found. What. On. Him? Break his fucking knees and make him crawl back to his master. And just in case the fucker doesn’t get the idea, brand it into his little minion’s back.”

El waited, surprised and quiet, as his mother hung up the phone. She tucked it away, back into her pocket, and then tugged at her hair for several minutes before she met his eyes, “what?”

“You. Just ordered the guards to break a man’s knees?” El squeaked out. This was a side of his mother that he had heard about, but had never seen personally.

Gomesh Genetics had a reputation. One of strict honour and violent repercussions for those who insulted that honour or broke the trust. The name of the company, Gomesh, referred to the personal guard of the Emperor’s master, back when the Emperor had been a slave. The family had taken on their company name as their surname over the generations and had often been compared to the cold hearted men who had slaughtered innocence for their lord thousands of years previous.

“A government agent stole our sedative as well as Nu’s genetic material. He’s lucky,” mother stood way from the table, “I don’t want to have to clean blood from my lobby, or I would take his head and his balls and send them both back to his master via courier.”

“Nu’s… but the only copy of that was in my desk.” El protested. His office was locked physically, locked electronically and protected by various alarms. No to mention the fact that such precious genetic material was locked away and coded to self destruct unless very specific codes were entered before hand and only he had the codes.

“Oh,” mother said, moving towards the door, “I hope you weren’t too attached to your secretary.”

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