Annihilation - Book Three

Chapter 26

"Lovely." Verando winces at the daylight peering at us through the trees, taking sympathy for him; we pause so he can get his wits about him. I can see by the look on his face that he's hurting; the lapses of control seem to give him headaches, but I keep that to myself as I don't want to incriminate him any further.

 He's at war with the wolf and I try not to come out with an 'I told you so.' It was foolish to think the creature would go quietly. I had always wondered how they felt about the fact the lycans were trying to erase them, and I suppose now we know, Alpha would not go without a fight and it would seem he felt he had a claim on me. Alpha had wanted to protect me from Haryek, which I had found odd as Verando often found amusement in my spurts of political rage. 

Perhaps it was my involvement that spurred the beast to crawl back from the depths. 

"So are you not on speaking terms? What's going on?" I cross my arms over my chest, I don't like the thought of 'Alpha' controlling the human side of our warlord. The lack of empathy and the high number of fatal incidents make him an unstable entity who can not be reasoned with. 

"The virus might have severed the connection," Adriam mumbles as he checks Verando's eyes and takes his pulse. "Back to normal rates, so at the moment, you're showing all signs of being totally human. When I saw you this morning, you were gray. Do you remember waking up?"

"No." Verando flinches and wraps his free arm around himself, paling as though he might be sick. "Good lord.. what did I eat?"

"A horse." Marcus chuckles. 

"Oh good... and you just let this happen? Of all the bloody things..." 

"Mmm, you were very convincing and I don't particularly care for arguing with you when you're hungry." Marcus shrugs, "We were all hungry... it was too good of an offer to pass us."

"Your human body is rejecting the wolf side, I would assume; when you're in between phases, you're fine, but this body is, by all accounts, human until the wolf decides to make it not so. I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't feeling great after consuming raw meat and blood. You were pretty ravenous." Adriam taps his chin as he ponders this. "How odd a situation. I wonder how Tonic is fairing."

"I'm glad I amuse you. Perhaps in the future, don't let me ingest some capitol nag, yeah?"

"Consequences, Randy. This was a stupid idea. I warned you not to screw with the infected, and this is what it's gotten you. Triggering the wolf will continue to make this happen and we don't know what could come of it. Could you lose yourself to your alter ego forever? Who knows!"

I step in, triggered by the threat of permanence. "What do you mean?" I demand. 

Adriam waves his hand as he thinks it over. "'Alpha', as you call him, is able to break the connection and come to the human side but Verando can't go to the wolf side. In theory, the wolf could overtake the human side for good if he decided to. The wolf is capable of making the human side of us go dormant, we've seen it a lot in lycans who stay in their animal form for too long, they lose all sense of who they are and they go feral. 

This is a power struggle. You've been making some pretty one-sided decisions, and now you want to get rid of him, you've pissed yourself off. Congratulations. You get to deal with what the rest of us deal with." This seems to amuse the Frenchman, but it makes me want to dive into my book and find a way to fix this.

We don't have time to wait around, but Verando assures us he will be fine, and we carry on. I can tell by the tension in his shoulders that he's hurting, but he doesn't say another word about it, so I keep my mouth shut as the group begins to relax again.