Chapter 3

“Oh my god, Sir, did you see that?! That was so incredibly amazing!! What in the world was that?! How could that even happen?” The young man investigated Forrest pondering what he had just seen.  “Sir?” The young man turned toward his bodyguard with a look so fierce in his eyes that would stop anyone in their tracks. The bodyguard took a step back and bowed his head, “I’m sorry, Sir!” “Shut Up!!! Go! Help with the fire and gather up all the research papers!!!”

The bodyguard stood there speechless.  “Are you disobeying me?”

The bodyguard turned and ran back toward the still-burning building before his boss could say or do anymore.  The young man shrugged and turned back to the forest.  ‘I couldn’t even hear myself think with that bumbling fool raging on like an idiot.  For as long as he has been with us you would think he would be used to things like that.’ He smiled evilly to himself, remembering what he had just seen.  ‘It seems our test subject has found a friend; this could get interesting!’ With that, he turned back toward the building and started to make his way back.

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A small fire gave off a dim, flickering light.  It was better that way, won’t draw too much attention to the wolf and the boy.  ‘It’s nice and quiet, maybe I should get some sleep.’ The wolf-turned-human shifted back to his original form; curled around the boy and drifted off to sleep.

SWOOSH, SWOOSH, SWOOSH, CRACK

The wolf opened his eyes and shot up with fright to find some of the fire flying in the air.  “I didn’t mean to wake you.” The wolf turned his head to look at the boy who was sitting by the fire beside him, ‘It’s okay, but what are you doing?’ The boy waved his hand quickly back and forth making the fire disappear while standing up.  “Nothing much really, just playing around with the fire a little.  Anyway, where are we?” said the boy while looking at the Forrest around them.

‘I’m not really sure, myself. When you collapsed, I changed into my human form, grabbed you, and took off running in the other direction.  I can tell you that we are a good six or seven-day hike from that dark old place.’

The boy turned and stared greatly at the dancing campfire.  “Are you going to ask what happened to me?  Or why I was in so much pain?”

The wolf cocked his head, ‘No, but I am curious about it though.  I don’t wish to pry; it’s not my place.  If you wanted to talk about it then I would listen, if you felt it too personal or didn’t want to talk then I would forget about it.’

The boy smiled, “Thanks.”

The wolf nodded his head, ‘You’re welcome.’

“That place.... was where I was born, I guess.” The wolf looked at him curiously.  “I was human once but not anymore.  Not after what they did.  They told me it was for my country.  That I could save millions of innocent lives; that would become threatened in the near distant future.  That the world needed me; and I would become someone important.  At the time, for me, it was a chance to belong somewhere.  You see I was orphaned at a young age.  I don’t really remember what happened to my birth parents at all.  So that place was a chance to be loved for a change, and it was like a dream come true.

I was an extremely unwanted child once I was orphaned, so it felt like heaven when they told me that.  When I first got there everything was normal; everyone was nice to me.  I had plenty of food and water.  I had a nice bed to sleep in at night.  I even had my own space to call my own. Something that was especially for me.  Then something happened, I’m not sure what, but during one of the experiments I blacked out.

When I woke up, I was in a small room lying on a cold wooden table.  It was weird at first because the way the world looked was so different.  For a few minutes, I had all kinds of different colors dance around my vision along with different shapes and sizes before everything went back to normal.  Besides, the dancing colors seemed to be tied to the extremely painful headache I was having at the time.

The world through my eyes was far more beautiful than I had ever seen.  I made my way out of the dark and gloomy room I was in and headed toward the room I was assigned to.  I was about there when some kind of weird alarm suddenly went off loudly through the entire building. Before I knew what was happening, I was surrounded by the guards, with their guns pointed at me.  I had no idea what was really going on in there at that time.  I had no idea what I was even in for after that.

I was taken to a cold, dark, damp room.  No sunlight ever caught a glimpse in this room; there was another wooden table and a big bright ball hovered above it that gave off enough light to light up just the right amount of the room.

That’s when my treatment went downhill.  I hated them, I hated me, and I hated my own existence.  I tried so hard to end my life, but somehow, I always woke up.  I tried about twenty times before they put me in lockdown.  There I was put under twenty-four-hour surveillance.” The boy stopped for a moment and brought his hand down his face.

The wolf was then able to notice that the boy had bandages around his entire body.  He guessed that his chest area and the lower body were the same way, though his clothes covered that area.  The wolf was also sensing that strange presence coming from the boy again.  He was also able to smell something from him.  After a few minutes, he was able to figure out that the boy smelled of fear.  He could smell fear coming from the boy as he was speaking about the place he had come from.  What the wolf was getting from the presence of the boy though seemed to lean more toward unbridled rage.

“I was able to try four more times after that.  After a while, they started to take my blood and do strange tests on it.  I’ve seen them inject it into some animals just to see what would happen.  After the doctors were done with them, they would then try and kill them.  It took them some time to find a way to kill those poor creatures though.  It was so hard on me when they did it because I felt all their pain.  That’s when I lost it.  I shut myself out of their world and into my own.  I don’t really remember anything after that.  The next thing I remember is seeing the whole place on fire; I was walking through the halls toward the exit.  I left there and headed for the edge of the Forrest.  Just before I went in, I turned around and looked at the burning building, smiled, then left.  Then I found you in that hole.” ‘That’s quite a story,’ said the wolf settling into a spot on the ground.  ‘I’ll protect you, so you don’t have to worry about going back to that place ever again.’ The wolf got up, began to glow, and changed into his human form.

“First, we have to find out exactly where we are, and the best way to do that is to find a human village.” The wolf now turned man looked at the boy for a moment, “First before that, what’s your name?”

“Test subject, subject, it, or thing is what everyone called me.  I never really had one or if I did, I don’t remember.” It probably should have freaked the boy out with how the wolf turned into a human, but after what he had seen in the Lab, nothing could really surprise him anymore.

“You need a new name…... I’ve got it, Angel!”

Angel smiled at him, “Angel…. I love it!! What about you?”

“Me?  Oh yeah, I still haven’t introduced myself yet have I?  My name is Drake.  Thanks for saving my life, Angel.”