Falling Skies

Five

"You kept him?"

Ryder's voice croaks out, a betrayal hidden deep within each syllable that struggles to stay cloaked behind some false mask of security. It's an emotion that runs the course of their shared blood and yet it poisons only December, his words an inadequate response to the question asked.

December knew this moment was coming, it was an inevitable fact really. Yet the question still sucks the air from his lungs, leaving him motionless all except for a spinning head and plummeting sense of self respect.

It was all but naive to think he could have Terry run through the hallways with a huge cage two hours after deliveries and not expect people to start chatting about it. Yet he did it anyways. Even when knowing the consequences. And now he has to live with them.

"We need him, Ryder, I trust that you know that as much as I do. Plus," December bargains, wet tongue running over the cracked terrain of his lips. "he isn't even human so whatever it is that you're scared of you don't need to be. I don't know how many times we can have this conversation. Everything is going to work out in the end and Subject A1 will help us reach that end."

His authoritative tone seeps through each locution as he subconsciously tries to get the boy to submit to his will. To admit that he's wrong and acknowledge that December has everyone's best interest at heart.

It's the tone he uses on almost all the workers at Haven when they start to get antsy and rebel. Or worse yet, when they see no end in sight, no reason or purpose, and ultimately quit their duties all together. Yet even with his years of practice, December holds back his next move as he thinks. A pang of something he can't yet detect digging its nails into his side.

"And so because you're doing 'the right thing' it's okay? We're going to excuse murder because it's the 'right thing'" Ryder seethes, fingers trembling as they hold the table in a whitened tenure.

He takes a seat at the glass desk in December's office as his breaths falter, fists flying to his hair as he lets out a scream of frustration. "God be damned have you even heard what you're saying?"

His temper lowers to a simmering boil, the heat that had rushed into his cheeks now dissolving along with the rest of the acid that pulsates through his sickened veins. Ryder turns to his cousin sat silently on the white couch in the far corner of the room, his eyes glued to the door expecting someone to surge in due to the constant outbursts.

Ryder can't keep his newfound demeanor for long. The line of his jaw tightens as round two begins, but is abruptly cut off by a shortage of his own anger. "Do you even care, December? Or are you just truly okay with cutting open a being like this?"

He murmurs his speech into open palms devoid of any feeling. All sensation gone from his being as his eyes shut against the assault of the bright lights. The slightest of tears begin to form in the corners of his eyes, a subtle maneuver of the wrist destroying all evidence of the sensation.

It's a sensation that happens so often now that Ryder barely hides his reddened cheeks, the tears a constant in his life nowadays. But he can't tell if it's from the bright lights of the small office square or the steady stream of disappointment in his cousin that always invites them back.

Disappointment. The word leaves him on pause, its syllables rolling through his head once more as he lifts himself from his now wet palms, eyeing December with a newly discovered point of view.

He's never been disappointed in December. Through all the years, all the captures, all the cutting and chaining and death and gore that fills the halls of Haven he has never once been disappointed. Angry? Yes. Scared? For sure. But never disappointed.