Eva once again stands in the room on the other side of the one sided glass window, she watches a recording on a monitor within the room that had been taken earlier that day, the same black wolf being asked the same tiring question that he had been asked every day of his life since being taken into the project over three hundred years ago.
“Did you have any strange dreams?”
The black wolf nods his head,“I saw a woman, a white wolf with the mark of a black bird on her chest.”
The scientist’s ears perk as he lifts his head, looking to having just been jolted from a dream. “You actually saw-!? What? Explain!”
The black wolf with white eyes begins to explain further. “There was more than just her… there were a lot of people… a lot of men that all wore the same thing and bore the same brand.” He looks to the patch of the government military that is on his clothes. “The same brand that’s on my clothing.”
He looks back to the scientist in front of him. “They stood across from a group of other people… strange looking ones decorated with paint and feathers their faces hidden behind masks that look like bird skulls, all of them with the mark of the black bird on their chest. At the center of all the people two figures talked… one was a large jackal in an important uniform with many emblems on it, the other wears a large headdress that looks like the skull of a bird on his head… you can’t see his face or what he is… but I think he’s a wolf, because everyone else on his side are.”
“A decision is made between the two men, and two people from either side step forward to be exchanged. The men in uniform send a younger boy over… he can’t be very old at all… maybe twelve…he’s from mountain lion descent it looks like. In return the wolves send over the woman… the white wolf with the mark of the bird on her chest.”
“One of the men standing in the crowds on the uniformed side raises a weapon he is holding and points it towards the young boy, there is a loud noise and the boy falls down. Everyone begins to panic, the men in uniform blame the wolves for the boy’s death even though it was one of their men that had raised their weapon. They attack the wolves, and the wolves fight back.”
“The man that wears the skull of the large bird is strong… very strong, he destroys everything in his path… the weapons and the large machines the uniformed men had brought with them do little to stop him, and they run away because he is too strong, and they take the white wolf with the marking upon her chest with them.” He lowers his head. “And… that was it… I woke up after that…”
The black wolf looks back to the man he was speaking to. “I don’t understand… I’ve never had a dream like this before… it was like nothing I had ever seen… it came out of nowhere…”
The recording is paused, Eve looks over to her boss. “What… was all that about…? I mean… even if he did see something different… that… doesn’t sound like the end of the world by any means. In fact it doesn’t even sound very possible, one of the things that he described was one person being able to destroy military machines and cause an army to retreat! Just how plausible do you think that is? Maybe for once he just happened to have a dream.”
A deep and gruff voice interrupts them. “Where is the subject that had this dream?”
The three scientists that were gathered around the monitor turn back towards the doorway, a large uniformed man of jackal descent standing there with a freshly printed file in his hands.
Eve stares at him, he reminds her of the person that the black wolf had depicted from his dream. “A large jackal in uniform…”
Her boss approaches the jackal. “General Mort. So you got the report then. It must be significant if you’ve come here about it so soon. I must have finished entering that no more than fifteen minutes ago.” He becomes nervous when he sees the cold glare on the jackal’s face. “Yes, you must be referring to subject #1502. Mr. Conner’s returned him to his room already.”
Mort points to the room the one sided window peered into. “Have him prepared for questioning immediately.” He looks over to Eve. “Are you Prof. Cadrey?”
Eve nods her head. “Yes.”
Mort points down to the files he held. “It says here that of the three they’ve got talking to him you’re the one he responds the most favourably to.”
Eve seems a little perplexed. “I… don’t believe that he responds to me any differently than Mr. Philip or Keith… I mean he always says the same thing to any of us… and it wasn’t me that he told this dream to.”
Her boss looks over to her, explaining to her why he had written that in the report. “When you were first introduced to him he took to you immediately and answered the questions you presented him. Usually when we bring a new scientist in he’s cautious and won’t say anything to them for weeks until he finally starts answering the question.”
Mort walks over to her handing her a folder despite Eve’s ramblings. “Ask him the questions I’ve written down. They’re not ones he’ll be used to hearing, but are questions that we need immediate answers for. So having the person he responds the most favourably to is a priority.”
Eve stares down at the folder in her hands. “Yes… I suppose that I can do that…” She walks past him leaving the room and entering the small white room that the single sided glass looks into, she glances over at the glass for a moment, well aware of just how many eyes were watching her, turning away from it and taking her usual seat at the table. “He responds the most favourably to me… even if that is true why are they so afraid that he’s not going to answer the questions if someone else asks him?”
She thinks back trying to remember how he could have possibly acted more favourably to her, she had been doing this job for five years now and every day seemed exactly the same. Every third day she would ask him the same question she had the day before, and he would always answer her in the same way. Even if he did speak to her without trouble when they were first introduced like her boss had said the conversation was always exactly the same as it was with anyone else.
After a few minutes the door to the small white room opens and the grey wolf that worked for the military leads the black wolf with the white eyes inside, the subject stopping as he stares over at Eve for a moment a little surprised to see her, this not part of the usual schedule at all. “I’m not supposed to see you until tomorrow.”
The grey wolf grins at the black wolf. “Well you said some pretty extraordinary things this morning didn’t you Yula? So this is to be expected.”
Eve nods her head as she watches the perplexed wolf take his seat. “Yes, Mr. Conner is correct, some important matters have come up in regards to that so called vision of yours. You had that dream last night didn’t you? The one you told to Keith this morning?”
The wolf stares at her. “Did you want to hear about it too?”
Eve shakes her head no. “No, I’ve already heard about it. I just have some questions concerning it that’s all.” She opens the folder in front of her, reading the first question that had been written down on it. “In your dream you said that one of the uniformed men acted out of line, raised his weapon and killed the boy that was being exchanged from their side. Do you know the name of this man?” She narrows her eyes at the wording, the idea of an exchange being made and the question itself being strange.
The black wolf shakes his head no. “No… how would I know his name?” Eve is about to continue on with the next question but is stopped when the black wolf continues. “None of them had names on their uniforms, they only have numbers. I can’t remember exactly what his was… but it had the number thirteen in it three times, I also know what he looked like, he was a skunk.”
Eve stares at him for a moment. “How… could you have possibly remembered a detail as small as a number on a uniform from your dream?”
The black wolf holds his ears against his head as if he’d done something wrong. “I don’t know… I mean… I just… it felt like it was important… so I made myself try to memorize it… I didn’t end up remembering the whole number though like I had tried…”
Eve continues to stare at him. “I see…” She looks back down at her paper of questions. “When you talk about your dream, you focus a lot on someone you describe was ‘the white wolf with the mark of a black bird on her chest.’ Why out of the many people you described to have seen was she so important?”
The black wolf seems confused on how he should go about explaining that answer. “Well… I don’t know how to explain it… this dream and everything that happened in it… it was all about her. Like… the purpose of the dream was to focus on her because she was important… or something… I don’t know if I can explain it any better than that.”
Eve looks back to her list, there not many questions on it at all. “Don’t worry about it, you explained it in the best way that you could.” She pauses when reads the second last question. “Do you recognize this man?” What did a question like that have to do with a dream?
The black wolf looks confused. “What man? There’s no one else here…” He looks back to the door of the room. “Do you mean Teddy? If that’s who you mean then yeah… he’s been my guard for seven years now.”
Eve shakes her head no. “No… not him.” She lifts the sheet of paper that she had been reading off of, revealing a picture that had been placed in the folder with her questions. She picks it up looking it over for a moment. There were several people in the photo and it had been taken from someone that had been far away, no faces could be seen as everyone was turned away, possibly completely unaware that a photo of them had been taken. The quality was terrible and it looked to be very old considering the blurred details and quality that even the normal priced cameras of today could easy pick up, not to mention both the location and the clothing of those in it looked very old. She places the picture upon the table passing it to the black wolf, unable to see the significance in it. “Umm… I guess… the man in this picture…?”
The wolf’s white eyes quickly glance over the image, there being so many people in it. “Which one-” His eyes widen as he quickly places his hand upon the picture pointing one of the figures out. “That’s him! That’s the powerful guy that destroyed everything!”
Eve looks to the figure that the wolf is pointing it, the person looking exactly as the figure he had described in his dream, his face masked by the skull of a large bird. “This is the man you saw in your dream?”
The black wolf pauses for a moment staring at the figure he was pointing out. “Or… no… wait… I guess it isn’t… This guy looks a lot bigger than the guy in my dream, and this guy has light grey fur while the one in my dream hate a coat as white as snow.” He looks back to Eve. “But he was definitely wearing the same thing as this guy.”
Eve looks back to her paper, reading the note above the last question ‘only ask if he shows recognition towards the photo’ She looks back to him, he had indeed shown recognition, not complete recognition of course but there were some things that he did recognize. “Alright then, last question.” She pauses for a moment to give her co-workers a chance to contact her through her ear piece just in case the recognition he had towards the photo was not enough, no one giving her the signal to stop. She looks back to the black wolf asking him the last question that to her, sounded very odd. “In which direction did the wolf in the skull mask run? Do you know where he went?”
The black wolf looks more confused than ever. “Where he went…? I don’t know…” He thinks back trying to recall. “The men in uniform were the ones that left first… but now that you mention it the wolves didn’t give chase… something must have stopped them… but I really don’t remember them leaving, The dream was over before I could see anything like that.” His black ears again lower against his head. “I’m sorry I couldn’t answer your questions any better than that…”
Eve smiles back at him. “Don’t look so upset you did a good job, they’re not questions that you’re normally asked so I was afraid that you might panic.” She looks over towards the door. “The two of us are finished for the day, so Mr. Conner will escort you back to your room now.”
The black wolf nods his head in understanding as he gets up from his chair and leaves the room, joining the grey wolf that proceeds to see him back to his quarters.
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