19: Stray Child
At first, Ellis thought it was just a recording in the abandoned CEDA center but the sound was too crisp. He and Nick were there to kill off all remaining Legion experiments but he still heard the child's cry. After making sure that the gambler was far away enough, the mechanic followed through and entered an isolated room. It was a ward room that was just as white as the rooms in Meridian only there were sterile cribs instead of full beds. The bodies of Infected littered the ground but even the stench couldn't hide the wiggling device. “Hello? Anyone there?” he whispered, thankful thats almost all the cribs were empty...almost.
The cry became more audible and a peak inside revealed a cranky and just-startled one-year-old baby boy with a mess of brown hair. His white onesie had the Prosepine logo speckled with blood but the kid was unharmed. “Hi there,” the relief in Ellis' voice was unmissable as he reached down and carefully picked the babe. He was a precious little thing, angelic as he reached for El's hand. He was the direct opposite to Lilith, never in the uncanny valley. Wispy strands covered his blue eyes, lighter than the hick's...looking for some human comfort. The last recorded date in which the child had seen another person had been three days prior, kept sustained by a back-up bottle, CEDA formula.
“Ellis! Where the hell are you? There's a Witch running around and I'd like to-” The conman stopped dead in his tracks at the sight; it had been two years since he had seen a child that young. “The fuck? Where did you find that kid?” Nick managed to say, almost hesitant that he was indeed not hallucinating. “Jus' foun' 'im; we gotta go if we're gonna make th' train on time back t' Austin,” Ellis countered, wrapping the boy in his old soldier jacket and stuffing a bloody can of nearby formula for him. When he left, Nick could barely keep himself from stopping his lover and telling him to leave the child where he found it. He didn't have a black heart to do such a thing. As the Horsemen slahed and shot their way back into the Jaguar, Nick groaned and thought: “Why do these things keep happening to me...?” Better question: “How big a cunt has McKinley become?”
The backlash was expected the moment David picked up a new scent and presence in the room when his step-family barged in covered in Tennessee mud. Miss Cordy was simply laughing, “Boy, they sure don' teach y'all basic hygiene in army camp, huh Nikita?” “Laugh all you want, you old bat but your son has a surprise for you,” Nick growled, instantly distancing himself from the upcoming shitstorm and heading up the simple home's stairs to take a bath. It took 3.5 seconds for Ellis to show the baby and less than 4 milliseconds for the 68-year-old woman and young man to gasp. “ELLIS, KIDNAPPING IS STILL ILLEGAL!” David had to say it.
“It's not kidnapping if he was all alone,” the solemn tone in El's voice gave away far more than words would do. The Proserpine and CEDA logos on the child's clothing struck a deep cord within the sexagenarian, feeling a desperate emptiness in her heart and womb when her son passed the baby along. The inevitable bickering between Nick, Ellis, and David over the ethics of keeping a baby boy from CEDA were postponed for a good long while when Miss Cordy whispered, “Yew were som'one's baby too, weren'tchu?” All discussion ceased as the older woman made her way to her chair and toyed with her new ward's hands. “Jus' like they are...like Keith was.”
The mere mention of Keith within those four walls could end any discussion about the infant; every time either of them saw St. Gabriel, it was a stab to the back. David had never personally met him prior to the conversion but the stories Ellis told, the pictures Nick stored, and the videos Miss Cordy had salvaged showed a man full of life and joy, if dangerous habits...not the unfeeling human weapon who faked emotions simply for propaganda's sake. The animorph could only watch as his 'brother' tortured himself every day just to see Keith smile but it was never enough. Nick would be there to comfort El when he could, shoulders covered in red after the rare breakdowns when David would come back from work. For the mechanic and his mother, seeing this child alive was a little ray of hope in a quickly immoral world.
“I'll take care of 'im,” Miss Cordy murmured; that wasn't a suggestion. “You're sixty-eight, I doubt your-” “Nick, for the love of God, DON'T. GO. THERE,” the blond cut him off before they both got death-glared at. “Y'all make sure yew git me som' fresh clothes fer him.” There was only one person who had new baby clothes and that was Ro. But that was a sore subject to her since St. Uriel gave her a street C-section at the behest of Samael.
“An orphanage is still better equipped for this,” Nick tried to reason with his mother-in-law. “No fuckin' way, Nicolas,” Miss Cordy snapped, “This babe's survived hell an' he deserves som'one who loves 'im an' understands him. No orphanage's equipped t' handle fallen angels like y'all.” “...She has a point,” David croaked out, letting the child play with a half-transformed lion's paw. The kid wasn't super strong nor did he demonstrate any Legion powers...yet. It was best that someone who had commonplace experiences with them to take care of him. Both the conman and the shapeshifter had to concede to the old woman's wisdom and allowed themselves to play with the child
~0~
“A la claire fontaine, M'en allant promener, J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle,” Miss Cordy lulled Jack as she bathed him in the kitchen sink. Jack was an eager little boy, curious at the lively kitchen in contrast to the sterile rooms he was born into. That had been his home until a man came in during the night, sick and started making noises. Photographic memories at this age tended to be forgotten fast but the audio would remain with him. He laughed at the cold water splashing between his tiny fingers. By all means, El had just rescued a normal one-year-old from a CEDA camp. The barcode tattoo hidden under the messy hair was the only means of ever identifying him. “Yer gonna be a good youn' gentleman...I may not be there when it happens but yew can bet yer pretty li'l head, I'mma be there fer as long as I can.”
As soon as she dried him off, Miss Cordy carried Jack into her bedroom, where she kept only the most special pictures. “Tha's Coach an' his wife, Ma'am Florence, these righ' here are Zoey, Louis, an' Francis; this righ' here was my husband James Faulkner...my nephew Keith with his cousin, my kid; Rochelle, yew call her Chell. An' finally Ellis, my son, with his man Nick an' his brother David. That's yer family, angel an' one way or th' other, they'll love yew as much as I do.” As a mother who carried a not-so-bastard child, she knew that the world would be cruel to Jack; he'd either end up back in a CEDA lab, experimented until he died, or never give him quite the right attention to grow up right. She knew that this makeshift collection of strays and the unwanted would give
Nick was tuning the piano he bought for El when he felt two hands on his knees. He smiled and picked up the now two-year-old and put him on his knees. An eternal bachelor, the conman took a long time to get accustomed to a baby around his property whenever Miss Cordy and/or Keith visited. Tracking down Jack's serial number revealed that he was indeed an experiment like him and the rest of his Survivor group. Conceived by two parents driven insane by the Rhamnusia strain, Jack was the culmination of McKinley's research but it wasn't authorized by her. Once more, Samael did as he pleased and spared no expense in making sure the breakthrough was his and his alone. It made the gambler could relate and slowly began to warm up to the child. "Hello squirt." "Kita," Jack chirped back, Kita being the short version of Miss Cordy's favorite nickname for Nick, "Keith bed. El there. Mama there. Where Dave?" Telegraphic speak or not, Nick knew the kid was much smarter than his age peers so he and Ellis would try and get him color books and play music with him. The kid already understood 3 languages aside from English; most of the children's songs his guardians knew were in other languages.
It was a surprise to actually see the hick play a soft bass track for his family, even for David and Nick. The animorph had to acknowledge that his new family was much more musically inclined that he first thought. "Sing?" Jack pleaded to his guardian, hopping on the knee. "I'll sing and play, all right?" the gambler agreed and changed the piano tone. He managed to live off his talent for a while before meeting Selene and being made into the man he became until the Green Flu. His fingers danced upon the keys to the boy's amusement, "Stella stellina, la notte si avvicina, la fiamma traballa..."
David had decided one day, out of the blue, to settle down and study a career in biology. "Hell, I'll ace most of the classes!" The fact that he was able to morph into most of the examples was practically cheating and the conman knew it. "Why don't you try something you don't know squat about?" "Like mechanical engineerin'?" El suggested jokingly while he played pool with his man."I don't another grease monkey in my house," Miss Cordy kid around while Keith fed Jack and the newly changed Francheska their applesauce. "I already have two li'l assholes trackin' oil on my good floors." "Amen, suegra," Nick concluded before landing the colored 1 and 3. "Yew jus' do whatcha want, Butterbee; jus' do wha' you'd think's fun." He really should've paid attention to Nick; somehow, the prick knew that biology was much more than memorizing organs and animals. Hell, Organic was ramming David's brain and he even had Ellis help him study. "All right! You win! I quit!" The animorph shouted, throwing his hands and books in the air. "If I see one more amino acid, I'm going out to the country and-" the rant about killing Hunters was cut short when he spotted Jack peeking from under the bed. There was an awkward moment of silence between the two boys; maybe it wasn't such a good idea to study at Miss Cordy's house.
He knew Jack loved singing but David had just started guitar lessons with Ellis and could barely carry a tune on his own. Intuitively, before David could say anything, the infant pulled out a book from his hiding spot. "Story?" he requested in a chirp. It was a Grimm Brothers anthology, a gift from Keith when he returned from psychological therapy. It took months and intense care to get the man back from the black pit McKinley put him in. "Yeah sure, I'll read you a story, Jake-er-JACK," David fumbled and pulled out a beanbag that was covered in stitches and patches, missing half a pound of beads. It was the animorph's favorite seat through it all. Flipping through the bookmarks, David smiled; he knew his little brother enjoyed listening to adventure stories, where the hero always one. "Red Riding Hood? The Seven Ravens? The Wolf and the Seven Kids?" To all, Jack shook his mop of hair and hopped back to the floor, scurrying into David's backpack. "Hey! Get out of there, you little munchkin!" the young man raced until the child pulled out his textbook of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Okay, he's turning scary smart, David withdrew until Jack added, "El and Kita read me about Heaven, they don't finish yet." "OH! I get it!" the young man sighed, relieved that the Rhamnusia strain's effects were still latent in the boy. "Dave, please read me about Heaven?" The fact that Jack was asking about something so complex as that reminded David that, after all, there was a chance to reach that farplane. "Sure, Jack; I'll read you about Heaven." By the time the animorph got to the Third Sphere, Jack had fallen asleep in his arms. So this is what being a big brother feels like, David smiled to himself as he placed the boy into his crib-bed and resumed his studies, mind now much clearer and sound.
The cry became more audible and a peak inside revealed a cranky and just-startled one-year-old baby boy with a mess of brown hair. His white onesie had the Prosepine logo speckled with blood but the kid was unharmed. “Hi there,” the relief in Ellis' voice was unmissable as he reached down and carefully picked the babe. He was a precious little thing, angelic as he reached for El's hand. He was the direct opposite to Lilith, never in the uncanny valley. Wispy strands covered his blue eyes, lighter than the hick's...looking for some human comfort. The last recorded date in which the child had seen another person had been three days prior, kept sustained by a back-up bottle, CEDA formula.
“Ellis! Where the hell are you? There's a Witch running around and I'd like to-” The conman stopped dead in his tracks at the sight; it had been two years since he had seen a child that young. “The fuck? Where did you find that kid?” Nick managed to say, almost hesitant that he was indeed not hallucinating. “Jus' foun' 'im; we gotta go if we're gonna make th' train on time back t' Austin,” Ellis countered, wrapping the boy in his old soldier jacket and stuffing a bloody can of nearby formula for him. When he left, Nick could barely keep himself from stopping his lover and telling him to leave the child where he found it. He didn't have a black heart to do such a thing. As the Horsemen slahed and shot their way back into the Jaguar, Nick groaned and thought: “Why do these things keep happening to me...?” Better question: “How big a cunt has McKinley become?”
The backlash was expected the moment David picked up a new scent and presence in the room when his step-family barged in covered in Tennessee mud. Miss Cordy was simply laughing, “Boy, they sure don' teach y'all basic hygiene in army camp, huh Nikita?” “Laugh all you want, you old bat but your son has a surprise for you,” Nick growled, instantly distancing himself from the upcoming shitstorm and heading up the simple home's stairs to take a bath. It took 3.5 seconds for Ellis to show the baby and less than 4 milliseconds for the 68-year-old woman and young man to gasp. “ELLIS, KIDNAPPING IS STILL ILLEGAL!” David had to say it.
“It's not kidnapping if he was all alone,” the solemn tone in El's voice gave away far more than words would do. The Proserpine and CEDA logos on the child's clothing struck a deep cord within the sexagenarian, feeling a desperate emptiness in her heart and womb when her son passed the baby along. The inevitable bickering between Nick, Ellis, and David over the ethics of keeping a baby boy from CEDA were postponed for a good long while when Miss Cordy whispered, “Yew were som'one's baby too, weren'tchu?” All discussion ceased as the older woman made her way to her chair and toyed with her new ward's hands. “Jus' like they are...like Keith was.”
The mere mention of Keith within those four walls could end any discussion about the infant; every time either of them saw St. Gabriel, it was a stab to the back. David had never personally met him prior to the conversion but the stories Ellis told, the pictures Nick stored, and the videos Miss Cordy had salvaged showed a man full of life and joy, if dangerous habits...not the unfeeling human weapon who faked emotions simply for propaganda's sake. The animorph could only watch as his 'brother' tortured himself every day just to see Keith smile but it was never enough. Nick would be there to comfort El when he could, shoulders covered in red after the rare breakdowns when David would come back from work. For the mechanic and his mother, seeing this child alive was a little ray of hope in a quickly immoral world.
“I'll take care of 'im,” Miss Cordy murmured; that wasn't a suggestion. “You're sixty-eight, I doubt your-” “Nick, for the love of God, DON'T. GO. THERE,” the blond cut him off before they both got death-glared at. “Y'all make sure yew git me som' fresh clothes fer him.” There was only one person who had new baby clothes and that was Ro. But that was a sore subject to her since St. Uriel gave her a street C-section at the behest of Samael.
“An orphanage is still better equipped for this,” Nick tried to reason with his mother-in-law. “No fuckin' way, Nicolas,” Miss Cordy snapped, “This babe's survived hell an' he deserves som'one who loves 'im an' understands him. No orphanage's equipped t' handle fallen angels like y'all.” “...She has a point,” David croaked out, letting the child play with a half-transformed lion's paw. The kid wasn't super strong nor did he demonstrate any Legion powers...yet. It was best that someone who had commonplace experiences with them to take care of him. Both the conman and the shapeshifter had to concede to the old woman's wisdom and allowed themselves to play with the child
~0~
“A la claire fontaine, M'en allant promener, J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle,” Miss Cordy lulled Jack as she bathed him in the kitchen sink. Jack was an eager little boy, curious at the lively kitchen in contrast to the sterile rooms he was born into. That had been his home until a man came in during the night, sick and started making noises. Photographic memories at this age tended to be forgotten fast but the audio would remain with him. He laughed at the cold water splashing between his tiny fingers. By all means, El had just rescued a normal one-year-old from a CEDA camp. The barcode tattoo hidden under the messy hair was the only means of ever identifying him. “Yer gonna be a good youn' gentleman...I may not be there when it happens but yew can bet yer pretty li'l head, I'mma be there fer as long as I can.”
As soon as she dried him off, Miss Cordy carried Jack into her bedroom, where she kept only the most special pictures. “Tha's Coach an' his wife, Ma'am Florence, these righ' here are Zoey, Louis, an' Francis; this righ' here was my husband James Faulkner...my nephew Keith with his cousin, my kid; Rochelle, yew call her Chell. An' finally Ellis, my son, with his man Nick an' his brother David. That's yer family, angel an' one way or th' other, they'll love yew as much as I do.” As a mother who carried a not-so-bastard child, she knew that the world would be cruel to Jack; he'd either end up back in a CEDA lab, experimented until he died, or never give him quite the right attention to grow up right. She knew that this makeshift collection of strays and the unwanted would give
Nick was tuning the piano he bought for El when he felt two hands on his knees. He smiled and picked up the now two-year-old and put him on his knees. An eternal bachelor, the conman took a long time to get accustomed to a baby around his property whenever Miss Cordy and/or Keith visited. Tracking down Jack's serial number revealed that he was indeed an experiment like him and the rest of his Survivor group. Conceived by two parents driven insane by the Rhamnusia strain, Jack was the culmination of McKinley's research but it wasn't authorized by her. Once more, Samael did as he pleased and spared no expense in making sure the breakthrough was his and his alone. It made the gambler could relate and slowly began to warm up to the child. "Hello squirt." "Kita," Jack chirped back, Kita being the short version of Miss Cordy's favorite nickname for Nick, "Keith bed. El there. Mama there. Where Dave?" Telegraphic speak or not, Nick knew the kid was much smarter than his age peers so he and Ellis would try and get him color books and play music with him. The kid already understood 3 languages aside from English; most of the children's songs his guardians knew were in other languages.
It was a surprise to actually see the hick play a soft bass track for his family, even for David and Nick. The animorph had to acknowledge that his new family was much more musically inclined that he first thought. "Sing?" Jack pleaded to his guardian, hopping on the knee. "I'll sing and play, all right?" the gambler agreed and changed the piano tone. He managed to live off his talent for a while before meeting Selene and being made into the man he became until the Green Flu. His fingers danced upon the keys to the boy's amusement, "Stella stellina, la notte si avvicina, la fiamma traballa..."
David had decided one day, out of the blue, to settle down and study a career in biology. "Hell, I'll ace most of the classes!" The fact that he was able to morph into most of the examples was practically cheating and the conman knew it. "Why don't you try something you don't know squat about?" "Like mechanical engineerin'?" El suggested jokingly while he played pool with his man."I don't another grease monkey in my house," Miss Cordy kid around while Keith fed Jack and the newly changed Francheska their applesauce. "I already have two li'l assholes trackin' oil on my good floors." "Amen, suegra," Nick concluded before landing the colored 1 and 3. "Yew jus' do whatcha want, Butterbee; jus' do wha' you'd think's fun." He really should've paid attention to Nick; somehow, the prick knew that biology was much more than memorizing organs and animals. Hell, Organic was ramming David's brain and he even had Ellis help him study. "All right! You win! I quit!" The animorph shouted, throwing his hands and books in the air. "If I see one more amino acid, I'm going out to the country and-" the rant about killing Hunters was cut short when he spotted Jack peeking from under the bed. There was an awkward moment of silence between the two boys; maybe it wasn't such a good idea to study at Miss Cordy's house.
He knew Jack loved singing but David had just started guitar lessons with Ellis and could barely carry a tune on his own. Intuitively, before David could say anything, the infant pulled out a book from his hiding spot. "Story?" he requested in a chirp. It was a Grimm Brothers anthology, a gift from Keith when he returned from psychological therapy. It took months and intense care to get the man back from the black pit McKinley put him in. "Yeah sure, I'll read you a story, Jake-er-JACK," David fumbled and pulled out a beanbag that was covered in stitches and patches, missing half a pound of beads. It was the animorph's favorite seat through it all. Flipping through the bookmarks, David smiled; he knew his little brother enjoyed listening to adventure stories, where the hero always one. "Red Riding Hood? The Seven Ravens? The Wolf and the Seven Kids?" To all, Jack shook his mop of hair and hopped back to the floor, scurrying into David's backpack. "Hey! Get out of there, you little munchkin!" the young man raced until the child pulled out his textbook of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Okay, he's turning scary smart, David withdrew until Jack added, "El and Kita read me about Heaven, they don't finish yet." "OH! I get it!" the young man sighed, relieved that the Rhamnusia strain's effects were still latent in the boy. "Dave, please read me about Heaven?" The fact that Jack was asking about something so complex as that reminded David that, after all, there was a chance to reach that farplane. "Sure, Jack; I'll read you about Heaven." By the time the animorph got to the Third Sphere, Jack had fallen asleep in his arms. So this is what being a big brother feels like, David smiled to himself as he placed the boy into his crib-bed and resumed his studies, mind now much clearer and sound.