Monster Like You

Chapter 14

The lock clicked behind him, and the door opened almost noiselessly. Nathaniel didn't move, as if he hadn't heard. He continued to sit on a small sofa facing the aquarium with tiny fish and read.

"Good evening," Gervase greeted as he entered. The door closed behind him just as noiselessly, the lock clicked again.

"Do you have a schedule there?" Nathaniel asked without turning around or looking up from his book. "You come strictly in turn."

"Yes," Gervase did not deny, passing and sitting down on a chair at a tiny dining table without an invitation. "We have a schedule."

"I hope you've come to tell me something nice," Nathaniel suggested, still putting down the book.

"I hardly came to tell you what you expect, but perhaps the news will still seem good to you."

Nathaniel tried to keep a straight face. After Vet's visit, he changed his behavior, began to cooperate, hoping that this would help him gain freedom. For two weeks he dutifully passed psychological tests, interviews, discussed various ethical problems, listening to the human half and trying to please those who watched him. He was sick of this behavior himself, but he really wanted to get out of the cell in the underground storage.

But no one seemed in a hurry to let him go. Gervase was still looking the way one looks through a microscope at a bizarre single-celled organism.

"Why do you come at all?" Nathaniel blurted out, his tone sounding rather caustic. "What do you want from me?"

"You have the right to communicate with other living people. Complete isolation from the world can drive you crazy."

"How touching," said Nathaniel, unable to restrain himself again. "What else am I supposed to do? Maybe you can send me a prostitute for good behavior? I've been a good boy for the last two weeks. If Treasure volunteers for this role, I won't mind either. Or are her fantasies about me limited to having breakfast together?"

"You're trying to piss me off for nothing," Gervase said calmly. "The decision on you has not been made yet. You can still go to a much less pleasant place."

"What's the difference? A prison is a prison. Experiments are experiments. Penn, of course, had less pleasant studies, but this does not change the essence."

"It changes. We're trying to help you."

"Help? How exactly? Keeping me isolated?"

"We are looking for a way to suppress the chameleon in you, to return your humanity."

Nathaniel narrowed his eyes, feeling the anger grow inside, but still trying to contain it. If he breaks down, two weeks of pretending will go down the drain.

"In other words, you're looking for a way to destroy me. Part of me, anyway. Do you want to return the person who owns this face?" he pointed at himself with his index finger. "The other one. Who I was once?"

"We want to make sure we don't let the monster out of here. And I don't care what your inhuman half thinks about it. If in her understanding this is destruction, let it be so. But I prefer to call it help. You tried to do the same thing with Alyss with a ritual."

"Not the same," Nathaniel said automatically. "The ritual would have stabilized her in the state she was created in. I wasn't trying to destroy the chameleon in her. I tried to stop his domination so that she would remain herself."

"And you were willing to sacrifice Vet for that? What were you counting on anyway? If Alyss hadn't stopped you, both of you would have been killed as soon as the door of the ritual hall opened."