Regnum: Children of War

Chapter One: Subject M

Chapter 1:
10 Years Later
10:55 PM
Claustrum Institutes
85 feet beneath the Regnum castle

The thin strands of artificial moonlight filtered through his barred window and lay flat against the concrete flooring of his cell. Subject strained from his somewhat pathetic moth-feast of a cot to see outside, too sore from the day's work to stand before it yet unwilling to give up his routine search. After all, if a guy didn't have hope—however frail and wavering—what did he have?

"Subject M?"

Michael jumped as the deep resonant voice spoke from behind. He winced and clutched at his torso. The doctor certainly hadn't been kind today and the unexpected flare of pain momentarily stole his breath but Mikey was no fool. After a decade in the Institute he knew better than to complain or yield to it.

Pushing the persistent ache that demanded his attention away, M pushed to his feet and turned to the concealed door. It wasn't immediately visible to the naked eye and, as it was, Mikey had spent many nights contemplating it when St. James had first taken him. Its color was as bland as the rest of the room, identical and inconspicuous against the wall. But if you looked hard and long enough, if you spent days, with nothing to occupy your mind but the thought of your own starvation, studying it you eventually came to find the so well protected outline. And after that the struggle and mystery ended. After that it was just like any other door. Un-magical and un-noteworthy.

"Yes, sir," Michael called back, words clear and carefully enunciated.

"May I come in?" the bodiless voice asked.

Subject relaxed. Barnaby was the only doctor who asked permission first. Sure, St. James wasn't necessarily nice or, say, humane—M entertained no ideas that St. James cared for him much at all—but he was less likely to receive undeserved punishment from him than any of the other doctors. That had to count for something . . . right?

"Yes, sir," M repeated.

The door slid open with a shrill hiss. In the beginning, the sound gave him nightmares. It signified a doctor's entrance and more times than not trouble came with them. But years of harsh and erratic behavior from his captors had hardened the fear into a chilly expectance and, he hoped, resilience.

Barnaby St. James in all his thinning-hair-line glory stood before him then, the door sliding closed behind with an air of finality. He wasn't as fit as Dr. McGee (but then again most boulders would crumble if he so much as laid a thumb over it) but he also lacked Dr. Bayliss' potbelly. Darkness hung around Barnaby's eyes as if his outer appearance couldn't quite escape the cruelty within but wrinkles traced his face in a way that suggested tiredness and apathetic resignation to the job.

His grey orbs—hard and unfeeling—dragged over Subject's scrawny frame condescendingly. M would forever be thankful to St. James for rescuing him from Lovell's orphanage but a part of Mikey would always wonder if it counted as rescuing if he was taken from one hell only to be thrown head first into another.

Subject dropped his gaze quickly when Dr. St. James scowled at him. First rule of Claustrum: don't make eye contact with the scientists. That was one of the first things he'd been told upon his blind folded arrival. Dr. McGee had once told him that it was because eye contact meant equality and Subject didn't have that here. He was exactly what his designated name would suggest—a science experiment. They were people; he was a lab rat. They were doctors; he was an ignorant child blind to the workings of the world. They were his masters; he was a dumb unwanted street dog.

To keep himself busy while he waited for Barnaby to say something (M was not to speak unless spoken to) he surveyed his surroundings. The cell he lived and slept in was a hollow cube of concrete, freezing to the touch and void of color with only a small window—much higher than he—to offer relief. It wasn't abundant in size but Mike's photographic memory kept him on his toes with gratitude—his room back at the orphanage had been much smaller. His cot was positioned opposite to the barred opening as he found it easiest to catch glimpses of the outside world and in the far left corner sat the only generous thing anyone had ever done for him—his thick paged book, old, worn and falling apart with duct tape as its last chance of survival, read and reread so many times he could recite it in full from memory, Michael's only relic from his life outside Claustrum. Dickens. Twain. Stowe.