Of Monsters and Humanity: The Genesis

Chapter 58 - Terra

Six days before....

Of course, of all days, Agent Byligan was in.

When I saw his suited back faced towards me as he sat at the control board in the Observation Room, my heart raced in my chest. I had a couple different "tests" set up for Xander to help us communicate. One of them involved a drawing of Damian that I sketched that morning, and the other was an inkblot test that I came up with myself. I doused half the paper in acrylic paint and folded it over. The actual patterns meant nothing, but I came up with diagnoses and conclusions based on his interpretations of it. I would come up with an excuse to anyone present in the room as to why I used inkblots, and why they were of that pattern. I took time out to use the colors painted in the sky the day he was released--the brilliant pinks, oranges, and yellows. Some blues and whites. I wanted him to remember his freedom, to taste it and to feel it and to realize that he can have it once again (truly, this time) by helping Damian and I.

I looked up at the ceiling and briefly sighed. I hoped that Damian was having some luck up there. I new that he was scared to talk to his uncle, but I was scared being on tape and recording, now associated with the planned escape of "Experiment X."

"Hello," I greeted Agent Byligan as I slid into a seat next to him on the control board. I wanted to sit a few seats away to guarantee that he wouldn't see the message that I painted into the inkblot, but sitting in a different place or too far away from him would probably look suspicious.

Xander was sitting on the ground in the Pit, looking at the floor. When he heard me speak, his head snapped up to stare at me.

"Hello, Terra. It's nice to finally see you," he answered back, looking up at me as I sat next to him.

Honestly, I liked Agent Byligan. Even though he was working for Project X, I got a feeling that he wished that he wasn't. He looked like a man of actual feelings and morals. I knew that Xander didn't hate him. He's stood around him many times without being restrained or sedated and he didn't do anything to him. Sure, there were a few slightly threatening jokes, but nothing other than that.

"It's nice to see you, too." I gave him a genuine smile. Even though I was anxious that someone else was present in the room, I felt a little better knowing that it was Agent Byligan. Of all people working for Project X, he was my favorite. He seemed to always have Xander's best intention in mind. When we were heading to the field to let Xander see the outside for the first time, he spoke to him like a regular person. Like a human being, or whatever he was.

After I started to pull some of my work out, I started to think more about Xander's identity. Out of all of the things that storybooks gave us warning about, nothing like Xander was contained in those books. Of all of the vampires, werewolves, and witches we were given heed to fear, Xander did not fit into those categories of monsters. He did drink the blood from the people he tore apart while putting people under his will, yet he was not anything I was told to watch out for. Maybe the exact monsters we were told stories about in our childhoods were inspired by real life monsters--the ones like Xander. They could have been around for decades, maybe centuries. He couldn't possibly be the only one of his kind, even though he might have tried to convince all of Project X otherwise.

They asked, and he knew that they knew that he didn't just come from thin air, but he never talked about them.

I gazed upon Xander and his messy black hair, his deep brown eyes, and the black markings covering every inch of his skin. I was able to make out unspecified writings and images of eyes, tallies, x's, flowers, dragons, fire, hands, outlines of figures with antlers, faces, and trees. Designs of different shapes and textures. They all kept the same theme, the same detailed black and grey art. People would pay millions of dollars to get tattoos like the ones on Xander's body.