Departure

CW: mention of serious injury and implied torture

“Process Complete. Please disengage the patient at once.”

A calm and steady voice rang clearly across the laboratory, and those who heard it complied without hesitation. Stepping swiftly past rows of sleek machines and monitors toward their charge, a figure in a worn yet tidy lab coat towered over their colleagues as they assessed their latest experiment. One of the many grievously wounded warriors that had barely straggled home from the latest invasion efforts lay suspended in a transparent capsule, freshly drained of its liquid contents. Yet the being that had nearly been torn apart mere days ago appeared whole, with only the barest signs of physical trauma.

“Breathing normal, heart rate stable…you’ve truly done it again, Director! He’s practically good as new thanks to your new gene therapy treatment!” one of the smaller creatures cheered.

“I appreciate your kind words as always, dear Assistant,” the Director replied, “but we must continue to monitor progress before we are certain this is suitable for further distribution. Nevertheless, good work today, everyone. You may take your leave while I see to this patient and close up the lab. I am certain you will need your rest for tomorrow.”

After the celebrating Assistants had departed, the Director allowed their own weariness to set in. The patient had recovered, that much was true. But as the Director sent his capsule on its way back to the medical ward with a few nimble keystrokes, they couldn’t help but wonder if he would even be allowed to recover, or if his fate has been sealed when he had been weak enough to fail his superiors.

So hard-working, those dear Assistants. They still believed, didn’t they? There was still hope in their eyes, still a mistaken idea that their work was for the greater good. The Director’s emerald eyes had lost most of their passion some years ago. Director. They scoffed at the title—it was hardly an honor to be awarded a fancy position when they remained stripped of a name beyond their function, just like everyone else in the facility. If they’d ever had a name before, it was lost to time and memories that were no longer theirs to possess.

Time after painstaking time the miracles they wrought were perverted beyond recognition by the Peacekeepers who ruled over all. Advances in horticulture, twisted to bioengineering invasive species that overran entire planets. Nutritional supplements that relieved extreme fatigue, employed to force-march soldiers and prisoners alike for days. The latest success in regenerative medicine would most likely weaponized to prolong torture or some similarly ghastly purpose. The Peacekeepers clearly wished to spite them as thoroughly as possible, taunting them, daring them to raise an objection, just itching to punish them for insubordination. Probably with some of the very means fashioned by the Director’s own hand.

The Director swallowed bitterly as they took inventory and tidied up their workspace. There was no doubt in their mind—their continued existence depended solely on how useful they remained, and if the rumors were true, another sector of the facility was hard at work manufacturing algorithms in the hopes of automating biological affronts to decency, designed to replace them and their life’s work. Planned obsolescence—not just for machines any more, the Director sighed ruefully.

One final sweep of the lab to ensure a spotless inspection come morning, and the Director gathered their belongings, with nothing but the quiet clack of their talons and the swish of the automatic doors to mark their departure. A few stark, overly-lit corridors guided them to the shuttle that would transport them back to their work-provided quarters. Spacious enough, compared to what most had, but just as devoid of spirit as the rest of the accursed facility.

In some distant corner of the galaxy, as yet untouched by these horrors, tomorrow would be another day, with new possibilities. But not for any within the vast reaches of the Peacekeepers. Not so long as the Director remained in their thrall.

As they had for years every evening before sleep, the Director went over the plan in their head carefully—no recording device could be trusted, and everything had to be perfect for it to work. So much still remained uncertain, save that this next project, regardless of outcome, would be their last.

---

Seattle

The hyena walked slowly and purposefully, confident in his memorization of the map he studied on the bus ride. The behemoth hissed behind him and rumbled away in a puff of bluish smoke from its exhaust. The scent of diesel still clung to his clothes.

The large overlapping blocks of a hundred skyscrapers obscured the thin view of the Space Needle towering in the dusk. To his left, evening traffic crawled past through a three-way y-shaped intersection at a snail’s pace, dozens of agonizingly slow vehicles penned in by scarred concrete barriers and bright orange bollards flashing reflective spots in the early evening headlights. To his left lay miles of the Elliott bay. He barely looked up, his gaze resting on the sidewalk, rising up and down with his steps like the shallow waves below him. His suitcase wheels clacked over the sidewalk gaps behind him.

He had wasted so much of his life in that dim place. The long hotel hallways of yellow light and dark gray carpet almost began to seem like all he had ever known. In truth, it had hardly been over two years, and yet the experience shaped him, making it now feel as if he had lived a lifetime or more stocked away in a small bedroom that only ever served to evoke a prison cell. Even then, he found it hard to believe he had left, feeling deep down as if he was only dreaming, cursed to awake warm but hollow in the fake hotel room with the buzz of a lone vending machine down the hall.

The hyena stood in front of a white metal gate spanning the distance between two apartment halves. He placed a finger between the metal bars and ran it down the rust-accented mesh behind. He gave his map a final glance, cracking his stiff knuckles. He already knew exactly where he was supposed to be, if he had gotten the directions correct in the first place, but felt a need to give the city map a final once-over, nodding in response to the quick cursive scribble under a slashed ‘X' over the outline of the apartment block before him. He tested the gate, furrowing his brow, feeling a sort of near-gratefulness af it squeaked open, unlocked.

He folded the glossy paper neatly in one paw and slid it into his jacket. He ascended the stairwell, one echoing step at a time. He arrived upon the third floor landing, adorned with a vacant yellow mop cart. He ran his paw slowly along the blue railing. The light peach linoleum clacked beneath his boots. He had decided, for a reason he found even himself only on the cusp of understanding, to remain in his combat boots for the duration of his journey. His street shoes were packed away in his rolling suitcase.

He arrived at the dark blue door marked with a silver 280 set into a sort of metal sleeve. The lights and air conditioning above carried the faintest of white noise, which permeated the entire building. The hyena stared unblinking at the imperfection of a light scratch on the taupe wall, long and dragging, and at the right height if made by a tenant’s furniture or a cleaning cart.

While he was momentarily distracted, and before he could even build up the courage to knock, the door swung open quietly with a rush of cool air, that carried a scent of something close to vanilla. The coyote had scruffed, windswept fur on the top of his head and wore a thin white dress shirt, short-sleeved with randomly patterned shorts so bright in their palette that they passed as swim trunks at a first glance. In a seeming act of indecision, he held a bottle of tequila firmly while his sharp teeth held a foamy toothbrush at a crooked angle in the side of his mouth. His rare blue eyes seemed at once sharp and dazed, and the hyena was fully prepared for a stereotypical toothbrush drop.

“Uh, mhh,” the coyote awkwardly began, withdrawing the brush from his mouth. “Wow, hey, it’s… uhh, really- come on in.”

The hyena entered the apartment right as the coyote switched off the main overhead light, allowing the outdoors to cast an immediate dull blue shade over every shape of furniture and clutter, which mainly consisted of clothing scatter. “Sit down. I… can’t fucking believe it’s you here. I mean, first off, what made you come out?”

After two long years, in which the average day was spent mostly contained within a single sprawling brick of a facility, the hyena had been paid his leave. Two years of laborious attempts to get clean had earned him a 200 dollar check for whatever affects he may need and a sort of pardon of his past self. There was no fanfare or grand celebration of friends and loved ones as he made his final disbelieving walk to the hazy red exit sign, and he was content with it all that way. No use dragging his suitcase through confetti.

“They let me out,” he said after deliberation, “and I came to the first guy whose name came to mind.”

“Me,” the coyote pondered. “Why?”

“You never ditched.” The coyote seemed to find shame in these words, lowering his head and pulling back guilty ears. “Hey- don’t give me that,” the hyena argued with much sincerity, “you didn’t.”

“I should’ve visited you, though,” he paced in front of the bed. “Must’ve been lonely up there.”

“Nah, I got out plenty. It’s not a penitentiary. Look, I came here, because I tracked you down all the way here, and I got nobody back home left willing or, really able to take me in somewhere.”

The coyote laughed drily. “You want a god damn babysitter.”

“Not in the slightest. I want company that… that isn’t company because I’m forced to share the space with them.”

“So, does that make me forced to share the space with you?” He knocked back a shot of tequila, then grabbed a snack bag from the small kitchen counter and threw it forcefully into the trash can with a rustle of plastic.

“Door’s open, you can kick me out any time you like.”

The coyote sighed, narrowed his eyes and creased his muzzle. He took a deep breath as he looked to the door, then to the hyena, then back to the door. “Gimme a bit to think about it. And you, you must be tired. Why don’t you rest, and I’ll tell you when I know. Don’t worry, I’ll sleep on the couch. Do anyways.”

…

The hyena opened his eyes to see the coyote hunched over by the foot of the bed, tugging the zipper of a suitcase filled with haphazard clothing bundles and small plastic bags of various essential items. He looked up at the hyena and nodded. “You ready?”

“We’re… where are we going?”

“Dude, anywhere. I can’t have you staying here, because the lease won’t allow it, but I wanna… I wanna be with you again. I need to feel that one more time.”

“So it’s… temporary,” the hyena replied, slowly coming to his senses.

“Not necessarily. We’ll just have to see where this goes.” He lifted the rolling suitcase of his own and extended the handle, cocking his head at the hyena dragging himself out of the unkempt bed. “You with me?”

“Maybe… where are you… thinking though?” He repeated his former question.

“We’ll start with a bus out of Seattle. Then?” The coyote paused, and yawned, revealing a wide open mouth of sharp teeth. “Fuck if I know.”