Chapter Text
The first thing the boy knew was the cold.
It was suffocating, pressing down on his lungs and stinging against his skin. When he opened his eyes, he was met with a vast expanse of white. Pure, untouched snow, stretching on for miles and miles before him.
To Viktor, it was strangely terrifying. The winters in Yellowstone had been harsh, especially the one he’d had to navigate without Mama, but he’d had the silent companionship of the trees. Here, there was nothing. No trees, no life. Just the blinding white and—
A figure moving toward him, too distant for him to make out the features of. He opened his mouth to call out, but no sound came out. Instead, he choked on the air around him, throat closing up. It felt like he’d swallowed a snowball, the cold choking him until dizziness settled in. This was it—this was how he died, alone in the snow with no Mama to save him, and—
Viktor woke up somewhere he’d never been before. He blinked a few times, chest still tight. As he peered around, he knew immediately that he wasn’t in the safety of the cabin. This was somewhere new, somewhere he hadn’t seen or smelled or been to before. It was musty, similar to the way the lining on Mama’s winter coat smelled whenever the snow melt soaked through and made it wet. He hated it immediately.
It was dark. His stomach twisted, and he shifted. He pushed himself up with his palms, the hard wooden flooring grainy against his skin. There were bars encircling him, and he realized that he was in some kind of cage. He moved uneasily to sit, slipping slightly as he did. The floor was slightly uneven, and he looked down.
Thin, pale stripes marked the floor unevenly. It took a moment for him to realize they were claw marks.
His breath sped up, and he stumbled backward until his back rested against the wood paneling of the wall. Someone had been here before him. Someone—possibly even a kid like him—had been right where he was. He tried to look around, but not even the special way his eyes worked in the dark made the situation less confusing.
The floor rocked rhythmically, jostling him a bit. Crates filled the rest of the space of the room, save for a walkway intentionally left in the center to navigate through. They creaked as the movement throughout the room continued, straining against the straps securing them in place. He stared up at the door to the cage, whimpering slightly as he noted the chain wrapped twice around the place where it opened and secured with a padlock. He was stuck. He wouldn’t know it until they reached their destination, but he was crammed into the heart of a train—the very same kind Mama had mentioned in her stories of the Before—and headed straight for a new kind of danger he couldn’t have prepared for.
On instinct, he let his hand slip to the pocket at the hip of his overalls for his knife. He felt a chill go up his spine as he felt around in the denim and found nothing. He looked down, tugging back the silvery blue wool of Mama’s old cardigan to look at his belt. It was gone, and so were the things he’d attached to it. No axe, no syrup, and worst of all, no Laika. His knees moved up to his chest as he wrapped his arms around his legs, whimpering quietly. The bad men had taken everything that was important, and they’d taken him somewhere he didn’t know.
As the boy sat in the silence of the train car, his mind wandered. His story was only beginning, and some part of him knew that the road ahead was long.
But it wasn’t the boy’s story alone. There were others, others just as special as the boy.
Reginald Hargreeves was a man of mystery to the general public. Before the Crumble and the collapse of the world as they’d known it, he’d been plenty of things. A billionaire, an Olympic gold medalist, an inventor. He was best described as eccentric, but more often than not called strange, off-putting, or outright rude.
But this story isn’t about him. It’s about what he found, and later what he’d made, in the wake of the Crumble, when the Before was becoming a fairy tale.
The academy was one of the few buildings seemingly untouched by the riots that had taken place in the city after the sick descended upon it. It was in no small part thanks to the security Hargreeves had been able to afford before the Crumble, the paychecks convincing enough to buy loyalty. When those became meaningless, rations and healthcare were offered out instead.
Those who wandered into the ruins of the city were sure to find it, surrounded at all points by a barbed wire fence and patrolled by the men who had sold their souls to the D.S. Umbrella Manufacturing Company. Hargreeves had a silver tongue, it seemed. More and more were clamoring to find a place in his personal guard, mystified by the sweet promise of a new normal. He was hope in the face of the Crumble, a provider. Those who were lucky enough to pass his scrutiny got to work at the academy’s grounds. Those who weren’t were either sent elsewhere or left to starve.
Rumors flew about what the academy really was—was the name a euphemism, or was it some kind of military training camp? Was it really just Hargreeves’s personal stash of rations and gear? Did it have some darker purpose?
In the early days, nobody knew. It was one of the questions burning in the minds of those who were like Hargreeves, who had managed to step up and take power in the ashes. But as time went on, they came to understand.
On October first, 18 hybrid children were born at Saint Raphael General Hospital. Hargreeves acquired six of them.
“Give it!”
“No! It’s mine!”
Five glared as he watched One and Two fight. They were being too loud, especially for reading hours. If they kept it up, they’d all get lectured. The two boys shuffled back and forth between the desks in the room as they tugged on the book between them, locked into what Five thought was the most moronic tug-of-war he’d ever seen. They didn’t look dissimilar to the dogs he’d seen patrolling the wall outside fighting over a scrap of meat. Eventually, One wrenched the book free from Two’s hands, turning and holding it protectively to his chest.
“No fair!” Two pouted. His tail lashed wildly back and forth and his ears twitched angrily as he kicked at the floor. His hands curled into fists at his sides. “I called dibs on it first.”
“Well, I’m One so I get it first,” One smugly replied. Two picked up a stray marker and threw it at him, smacking him directly in the forehead. One made a startled sort of noise before turning and curling his lip back. From where Five was sitting, he could see the ivory of one of his fangs glinting in the light.
Before he could say anything, Six huffed, “You’re both gonna get us in trouble if you don’t shut it. Hargreeves is already mad.”
That got the rest of the children’s attention. Three looked up from her book nervously and Four stopped jamming the pencil he’d been holding into his desk.
One raised an eyebrow. “How do you know?”
“Because I heard him yelling this morning,” Six answered, not looking up from the pages. “When I went to the infirmary. He was really mad about something.”
Hushed whispers and nervous glances were exchanged. Five rolled his eyes. Gossiping wouldn’t do them any good. He didn’t see any point in theorizing why Hargreeves had been particularly angry that day, especially not when the man got upset on a whim. It was better to just go along with the schedule and avoid his attention altogether. He rarely visited them anyway. They saw more of the doctors than the man who adopted them, and Five was quickly losing whatever semblance of quiet admiration his siblings seemingly still carried about Hargreeves.
“He’s always mad,” Four said. “Like, all the time. I think he’d explode if he smiled.”
“That’s stupid, Four,” Two responded.
“Is not!”
“Is too!”
Five shut his book and set it aside, glaring down at his siblings from where he’d been perched on the windowsill. His tail lashed similarly to Two’s, his ears swiveled backward.
“You’re both stupid.”
Two turned and glared. “Nobody asked you, Five.”
Five opened his mouth to retort, but the door to the classroom slid open before any words could leave his throat. One of the guards stepped in—big and taller than any of them, umbrella insignia proudly displayed on his uniform—and glanced around before gesturing at Four to follow him. The boy sighed and got up, following after him. The rest of the children watched in silence as he disappeared and the door shut again, its lock sliding into place with a metallic click.
It wasn’t uncommon for one of them to be taken during a lesson, even less so for it to be Four. Most of the time, it happened early in the morning, but it wasn’t completely unheard of for a guard to come later in the afternoon. It didn’t make it any less unsettling, even if they knew Four would be back in time for supper… or so they hoped.
Three fidgeted nervously, something uncommon for her. She tended to be one of the more easygoing of the children, able to charm the guards and doctors almost effortlessly. Five watched as she scratched anxiously at one of the small patches of blue-green feathers on her arm. One seemed to take notice, too, moving to sit beside her.
“They’re all angry today. Didn’t you see the way Ralph was looking at us during breakfast?” she mumbled as she continued to scratch.
Five huffed, his ears shifting back forward from where they’d been pressed against his hair. “Not everybody has the guards on a first name basis, Three. He doesn’t care about us, either way.”
She huffed and glared at him, One looking between the two of them for a moment before mirroring her expression. Two sat down at his desk with a thump, tail curling around one of its legs. Six didn’t look up from his book, seemingly unbothered by his siblings. It wasn’t uncommon for these uncomfortable silences to fall between them when one disappeared with a doctor or a guard, but the unspoken worry rippled through all of them. The guards tended to say things that they assumed—or didn’t care—the children could hear, remarks about hybrid children being hunted like real animals, or just general disdain towards them.
Five was the best at hearing out of all of them, which meant he caught the worst of the remarks. As much as Two claimed to be the best, he’d never sat awake at night contemplating if it really was their fault the sick had happened and wondering what he’d do if he could fix it. He did, however, hear the rookie guard who had said Hargreeves was an avid believer of “adopt, don’t shop” when it came to pets. He hadn’t gotten supper that night for the string of expletives that had left his mouth. While the others had been impressed, Hargreeves insisted that his behavior was unbecoming, and he’d become intimately familiar with the basement if he kept it up. Two had been eerily silent for a few days after the ordeal, very obviously shaken by the threat. If the children knew one thing, it was that they didn’t ever want to end up in the basement. One of the guards had said that there was a freezer that they put dead kids in down there, and that he’d be more than happy to put them in, one by one.
Of course, none of the guards acted on their words. They weren’t willing to risk the lucrative benefits being employed under Hargreeves offered, even if it meant having to be anywhere near the children. They believed, after all, that the hybrids had brought about the sick. Five often wondered if they were right.
The clock on the wall ticked by. One and Three had resigned themselves to reading out of the same book, shoulder to shoulder. Six continued to be unbothered. Two was glaring daggers at his desk and scratching something into its surface with his claws, ears twitching. Five turned back to his own book, focusing on the print rather than the rest of them.
Their allotted hour of silent reading finally ended, and a guard came for them, unceremoniously shuffling them off to the dining room for supper. Four was already in his seat, tapping the bottom of his fork up and down against the table. Once they were all seated, a bowl of soup was placed in front of each sibling. They all dug in immediately, hungry from the long day they’d had. The guards at either side of the large door leading to the academy’s atrium watched in disgust as lips curled back to reveal fangs and tiny claws reached for the basket of rolls at the center. Quiet giggles surrounded the table as Four’s wings fluttered happily.
They were only drawn out of their focus on food when the familiar click of heels echoed through the hallway. They all turned to face the doors in rapt attention—One leaning over the back of his almost enough to tip it and Two pushing himself up slightly using his palms against the smooth wood—as Grace came in. Instantly, the room brightened.
Grace was something special to the children. She was gentler than all the other researchers, kind to them and much more patient than all of the other adults had been. If the children were planets, Grace was the sun they were caught in orbit around. Even Five had a soft spot for her.
“Grace!” Two shouted immediately, bolting up from his seat and running to her. He nearly slipped on the tiling but managed to avoid falling flat by clinging to her side. She winced momentarily as his claws dug in, but quickly changed her expression to a smile.
“Hello to you, too,” she spoke softly to Two before turning to the others, “Did you all have a good day?”
“I finished my model during free time!” One shouted.
“I finished another book during reading time,” Six mumbled.
“A buncha doctors stole my blood!” Four excitedly squealed.
Grace nodded along as the children chirped different parts of their days at her, gently guiding Two back to his chair. She sat in one of the vacant places, watching over them as they finished the bowls in front of them.
“How come you’re visiting us?” Three asked, cocking her head slightly.
“Well,” Grace answered, “I didn’t have any more work to do this evening, and I figured you would all want someone to tuck you in.”
Quiet gasps went around the table as the siblings looked back and forth between each other. It was rare for them to ever be tucked in, let alone have anyone say goodnight to them. They had only regularly gotten such treatment when they had all been little enough to have nannies minding them, and even they were hesitant to touch the children directly. Grace was often the one left to comfort them when they had their daily visit to her office, and being tucked in by her was an especially coveted treat.
As Grace led them off to their bedroom—out of order, since Two had to be at the front, holding her hand—they were filled with a sense of joy that had been severely lacking over the past few days. Even if the guards in the hallway glared at them as they passed, Grace’s presence made them all feel nigh unbreakable. They didn’t notice her nervous glances out of the corner of her eyes as she led the way, her grip on little number Two’s hand tightening ever so slightly when a man came too close.
Grace made sure they were each in their pajamas and in the right beds before tucking each of them in securely and pressing a soft kiss to their foreheads. Five grumbled at it as she smoothed his hair down softly.
She stopped to say goodnight to Two last, sitting at his bedside as she gently tucked the covers in at his sides. “Goodnight, Two.”
He looked up at her, brown eyes wide and ears drooping downwards as she pressed a kiss onto his forehead. As she tried to stand and turn away, his hand came out to grab at her skirt.
“G-Gr-Grace,” his voice was small as he held on, knuckles whitening slightly as if he were afraid she’d turn away or vanish entirely from his grip.
Grace paused, eyebrows creasing. She sat at his bedside, voice gentle as she spoke, “Yes, darling?”
“Do-Don’t go,” he pleaded. He knew it was a fruitless effort. Grace always went away, even if they begged her to stay with them. She likely wasn’t even supposed to leave her office to come see them. Still, the children (especially Two) tried to convince her to linger for just a few moments longer whenever she left the infirmary.
Grace sighed as she held his hand for a moment longer. She reached out to smooth his hair down, paying special attention to keep from catching at his ears.
“You know I’d love to, but I can’t. You’d stay up all night,” she leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, “and then you’d be tired to come visit tomorrow. How am I supposed to hand out sweets for good behavior if my favorite patients are too sleepy to stop by?”
It elicited a small giggle from the boy, slightly raspy from the quiet edge of a purr, and he settled beneath the covers a little easier. Grace leaned down to press another kiss to his temple, whispering a goodnight. Once he’d shut his eyes, she stood up and cast one more glance over the children before navigating the halls back to the infirmary.
She was one of the last researchers awake, and definitely the only one to be roaming the academy’s halls this late. The guards passed her by with either a curt nod or no acknowledgement at all, more focused on whatever assignments they might have. Their worlds didn’t collide often, something done very much by design. Hargreeves was very fond of keeping his employees as efficient as possible, and as such separated. She was one of—if not the only—researcher who dared to cross over into the rest of academy. She was certainly the only one to tend to the children’s emotional state.
Part of her couldn’t be entirely upset with the other adults. Hybrid children weren’t a common sight in places like the city—any metropolitan area, really. The ones that did wander around in the rubble were feral little things, some more animal than human. She’d heard a rookie telling a story about one he’d encountered while still living outside of the academy, once—a little boy who was part jackal. It was obvious he fell on the more animal side of the spectrum, covered in a dusty coat and sporting a muzzle rather than a face. The rookie had said something about potential rabies and the boy eating what was left of their chickens. Grace seriously doubted the credibility of it and tuned out whatever else was said.
She knew the Hargreeves children were difficult to accept, even among the most desensitized researchers. Some still harbored the belief that they were somehow harbingers of the sick or asymptomatic carriers. Others seemed to believe they were the exception and not the rule on intelligence, their ability to speak articulately proof. Nobody wanted to acknowledge the simple truth; the Hargreeves children were provided for, and the hybrid children wandering in the wild were not. It would be difficult to learn right from wrong or even how to speak if nobody were around to teach you. She didn’t like to linger on the thought too long, quickly caught up in ideas about the feral kids wandering around with nobody to keep them safe.
At the end of the day, Grace knew what the others saw. One, with his too-big hands and teeth. Two, claws for fingernails and a set of teeth to match. Three, feathers growing in patches where there ought to be skin. Four, worse off than Three and constantly molting. Five, smallest of them all but with the sharpest teeth and eyes. Lastly, Six, nose oddly-shaped and covered in a light peach fuzz all over. To her, they were children. To everyone else, they were monsters only vaguely resembling what a child was meant to be.
Grace wasn’t one to pray often, but on nights like these she allowed herself what she had begun to see as a vice. She didn’t dare let herself hold onto the heartache as she settled into a predictably fitful sleep.
Far off, somewhere, Viktor tried to do the same. The rocking of the train car didn’t help, jostling him from whatever rest he found and reminding him of exactly where he was. He stayed awake through the night, holding onto his knees and hoping this was all a very, very bad dream he’d wake up from soon.
The boy didn’t know what prayer was, but years later, he’d come to call the silent pleas to the stars he’d had that night by the same name.