Borealis Twenty Three - Fretting Fullers, Lies & Lions

     "You are inside Borealis, Howl," a man said through an invisible loud speaker. "Killer." He chuckled.
     It was just another white room that lacked all depth and definition after the sudden flurry of images had dissipated. Silent tears trickled down Howl's cheeks. His brain was in pieces, and his heart had beat itself into submission. The boy tried to speak again but could only produce squeaks.
     Another chuckle through the loud speaker. "I'm surprised you don't recognize my voice," the man said. His voice was smug. "No matter, though. You're a smart boy. You'll figure it out before too long."
     Howl blinked, severing a stream of tear drops from their source.
     "You're physical condition is astounding. So much vitality for a boy your age. Do you know how many bone fractures you've suffered in the past three years? Twenty-nine. They've all healed rather well. So... you are lucky in that regard." The man paused. "However, the index of your muscle mass and the rate of its growth, or fluctuation, indicate that you may experience some amount of height irregularity, i.e. you're growth will be stunted. So, get used to your current stature."
     The boy held his breath. He was trying very hard to locate the source of the man's voice. It was difficult, given the acoustics of the room, however large it was.
     "Not that it will be a problem. Your height is perfect for the conditions you've been forced to live in." Howl could almost hear a smile curving the meaning of the man's words. "You know, I was the one who selected you to become a Riser Dog, both you and your father."
     Had Howl not already been holding his breath, he would have stopped breathing just then. The information he was being fed made little sense to him. What did the man mean? Everyone in Howl's pack could say that they had been present at Howl's birth, that Howl's father had been the alpha of their pack for nearly twenty years.
     "I can see the look on your face. Incredulous. Now, don't go believing everything you remember. The human brain is very insufficient in terms of recording witnessed history. There are so many inaccuracies over time. Your mind reconstructs or removes people from your memories whenever it wants. You have no control. Their clothes change. Their actions. Their motivations. People say one thing. You thought they meant another. What's true is the present. It cannot lie. It's fresh the second you experience it. The second after, unfortunately, is of little to no use. It's become past. Yet we cling to it... For, what else do we have?" The man was talking in circles to confuse the boy. "So, listen to me. I am not here to lie to you. I am here to enlighten you, Howl... Killer." More chuckles.
     The room went dark again in order to subject Howl to more crazy images, but Howl had located the source of the man's voice while the man had been talking. And, when the lights had gone out, Howl had seen, for a split second before the images had blocked his field of vision, a man standing behind a high-up window, inside of a small room, leaning over a microphone, his back arched and his arms braced against whatever it was that was supporting the microphone.
     Images of men and women in long, white coats creating balls and blocks of oranges, reds, and yellows contorted around Howl's body as he thought about what he had just seen. The boy raised a hand to see if he could touch one of the images circling around him. His fingers cut right through, and he felt nothing. The images, however, flushed red and changed over to flashes of violence and death the instant his fingers made contact. It was disturbing, but Howl had seen worse.
     Unsure of what else to do, the boy took a deep breath and shrugged. "They don't call me 'Killer' for nothing," he said to himself.
     The next thing he knew, he was running, the images were behind him, and before long, he could make out the features on the man's face.
     The man laughed. "Good. Very good," he said.

Borealis Twenty Two - Crumpled Heat

     Red light. Blood walls. The color. Howl was scared. The screeching, the flashing. Pulsating, highly audible and visible pain. It wouldn't stop. Everything had been white. Then. The hatch closed behind him. Above him. He had come from the ceiling. The desert. Pain. No sky. Pain. No wind. Stale air. Ears hurting. Howl clutched his ears. He never wanted to let them go. His head began to pound. He closed his eyes tighter and tighter and began to grimace. What was happening?
     Though full of flashing red light, the room lacked definition, save the ladder leading back up to the closed hatch. To the desert. To serenity. Nature. And concrete. Howl wanted out. He started running, tears leaking from his eyes at pain. He couldn't even hear his own feet frantically slapping against the ground. Why was there no sky? Keep running. Trip. Why was there no dust? The boy lay flat on the ground. Thought. I have to get up. Action. Crawling. Walking. Running. Defeating.
     Howl was angry. Rage was building. The more he felt, the less pain hurt. Sound was drowning out from the beat of his own heart. The flashing blurring into violent pink. Escape was becoming clearer as he lost control of his emotions. His brain overriding his senses. He no longer thought. He acted.
     He didn't see the wall. He didn't know there was a door. He wasn't expecting change. First his shoulder, then his torso and head. The door flung open into a dark hallway. Howl kept running. He didn't hear the siren becoming faint as he fled the pain room. Blue lasers shot from the wall and scanned his body as he ran down the hall. They beeped, one by one, as he passed. Ahead, green lights in a grid above an archway lit up. One by one. Howl's rage was about to break. Sweat poured from his glands and mixed into the sand all over his body. The touch of nature. He could feel it. Cooling down his body. He could comprehend parts of reality again. The pain had almost completely gone away. Only ringing remained. A headache would soon follow.
     The rage broke as soon as the boy cleared the archway. All eight lights green inside the grid. A door slid shut with a wisp and a click. Pitch black. But. Howl could see himself perfectly. Tears welled up inside his eyelids, waiting to spill. So much confusion. So much for a boy his age. Even for a boy who was said to have killed. Killer. He wasn't one in that moment. He wasn't even a Riser Dog. Just a child. A child who wanted the love of his mother. The protection of his father. The boy had neither. He had to be Howl. Killer had to be him. He needed bravery. He summoned it. But still a boy. It only did so much.
     The new room filled with images. People sleeping in beds. Mechanical arms monitoring glowing boxes lined with buttons and switches. Children being stuffed into bags. Adults dancing, looking half dead. Humans operating machinery. No one, a smile. All glazed. All working for nothing. More dancing. Men and women in handsome clothing, clean cut and smug. Handshakes. Green paper. Grounder Birds. Riser Dogs. Sun Cats. Roof Rats. Children plugged into walls. Lights turning red. Bulbs flashing green. Pens checking paper.
     Howl. "Where am I?"

Borealis Nineteen - Bad Dog, No Biscuit

     A small burst of sand popped into view behind a nearby sand dune, raining and mixing granules of yellow and beige over and beyond the summit of the guilty desert bulge that covered the explosion's origin. Howl darted behind an empty platform of concrete that sheltered itself beneath a semi-transparent red tarp. He peeked over. Saw nothing. But heard the sound of shifting sand and scooping hands. Five minutes passed, and the sound stopped. Footsteps, boots digging into sand, climbing, replaced the previous sound. Howl waited. The footsteps stopped. Still no sight of the noise maker, the sand blower. Howl crept backward into an alleyway that stretched out behind him, using the shadows it cast as cover. A few seconds passed.
     Suddenly, a black figure, pitch in the desert sun, its shape bulbous and clothes dilapidated, mounted the crest of the dune and dusted itself off. It was a man, and he wore a mask. He would have been spectacular in sight for no one had Howl not been there to see him.
     "Garnet," Howl whispered, sliding deeper into the shadows. "I knew it was you, you filthy Bird."
     Garnet rubbed the lenses of his goggles for a while and then continued his march across the large dune. Toward the bottom, he finally settled down into a trot and began to make his way toward the city's first buildings. Howl glared at the masked man. What was he up to? The boy's mouth began to twitch as he glared. The Grounder Bird slowed his pace even more. Howl bit his lip. Garnet stopped. The Bird was only a few yards away from the young Dog, but the Bird was looking at a different alleyway.
     Silent and slow, a small pocket of air left the world and disappeared into Howl's lungs. It stayed there for a while. Everything was still. Garnet turned and looked right at the boy.
     "Oh! Hello, Killer," the Bird said happily. "The goggles in my mask brighten up dark places for me, you know."
     The boy exhaled violently. He wasn't used to being spotted.
     Garnet tilted his head slightly. "Goodbye for now." A roar of thunder crackled from the Bird. The space around him went black. And he, with the black, vanished.
     Half an hour passed before Howl moved again. During that time he listened for the Bird, sure that the man would reappear somewhere in the city... But he never did. No snap. No thunder. No pop. Garnet was gone. Howl cursed and made a dash for the sand dune, conscious that at any moment Garnet could reappear and thus prevent him from reaching whatever secret rest at the foot of the desert.
     Clouds drew closer as Howl ran up the face of the dune, and the desert threatened to swallow the boy whole as he slid down the other side. Sand went everywhere, strewn about in Howl's haste, erasing most of the tracks and traces Garnet had left behind. Howl didn't care. He just started digging as soon as he stopped sliding. And, after many furious scoops and much more cursing, the boy found something.
     Garnet stepped out from beneath the shadows that had hidden Howl earlier. "Silly boy," he chuckled to himself. "And you thought you weren't supposed to find that."

Borealis Eighteen - Lefts of Passage

     Howl frowned at the dunes sprawling out in front of him. There seemed no end to them, but he knew that there probably was an end, an end that he would never get to see. He had tried his best to see the end of the desert once, but even the tip of the tallest skyscraper in Borealis had not been high enough to look beyond the horizon. It frustrated him. He knew that if his eyes were unable to make the journey, then surely the rest of his body would fair far worse, and his body was already capable of so much at such a young age. Howl could leap, duck, zig and zag with the best of the Unfortunate Ones of the city, rough up anyone he came across, and track even the faintest of trails so long as the sun shone and the wind was kind. Nothing really intimidated or challenged the boy's presence in the least, save his father, but here stood the desert, mocking the boy's very existence. It more than frustrated him. It made him angry.
     Howl spat at the ground. He had intended for his saliva to serve as his direct challenge to the desert's vastness, an assertion of his superiority over the sand and the heat. But, the childishness of his gesture did little more than to exacerbate Howl's feelings of futility and insignificance in the midst of such grainy eternity.
     "I hate you," Howl said to no one.
     The wind blew up from behind him as if to hug and comfort him as though a mother might do, but he shrugged it off as though he were a son embarrassed at his mother's ignorance of her child's approaching maturity. Another breeze soon came by, this time indifferent to the boy's woes. A single strand of it caught itself upon Howl's clothes, curving all along the air pockets of his posture as it made its way up his body. The strand carried with it a note of burnt air and the smell of cooking. The boy's nose pricked and tickled at the scent, reminding him that he had more to do than lament his preadolescent humanity.
     "Eggs," Howl muttered to himself as he walked over to the building from which the scent seemed to originate. "Only you, Garnet."

Borealis Sixteen - Mongrel Curs

     "Filthy fucking Grounder Birds!" Master Sheer Wolf had screamed at the four morning patrol Dogs. "They think they're so damned clever! Think they run this fucking city! Well, they don't run this city! We do!"
     No patrol had ever dared return to the master empty handed before, particularly when their hands had needed to have held something so great. That was the first misstep.
     "What?! Balderdash Alley is EMPTY?!" the master had said when the next day's patrol had returned with their report. "Did you search any other streets?!"
     The leader of the morning patrol spoke up, "Yes. We searched, and all other streets surrounding Balderdash Alley were vacant as well."
     Master Sheer Wolf had said nothing in return and had only glared at the Dog.
     "Also, other patrols have reported similar findings in their territories."
     The master had been quiet at that too, pacing around the inner den, first scratching his beard, then his bald scalp as he went. Cracks of sky had shown through the old, fallen and shambled concrete walls that formed their main territory's inner and outer dens, illuminating the faces of the master's most important Dogs, the ones privileged enough to stand on either side of the master's seat in the middle of the den. On the right hand side was Ring Shepherd, overseer of all that happened within the Riser Dog's numerous dens, and Fox Digs, coordinator of the patrolmen and mastermind of the wrangle. On the left was Star Coyote, the only female permitted within the inner den of the main territory and lead caretaker of the women and children, and to her left was Howl "Killer" Wolf, the master's son.
     Awkward in the silence, the leader of the morning patrol had felt it necessary to speak again, though he had not been addressed, "What shall we do, Master? Every patrol has returned to their respective den. They, we, await further instruct--"
     The master had picked up a piece of rubble and thrown it at the impertinent Dog's face before the Dog could finish what he was saying. The rubble had connected with his forehead, sounding a painful thwak. The master had then turned to the Dogs who stood to his immediate left and right. "Can you stomach this? We stand here now, all of us, talking and watching, safe within our dens." That was the second mistake. "God knows what the Birds are up to right now. And you can bet that all those fucking Rats and those pissing, miserable Cats are trying their damnedest to secure the city's streets for their own while we wait here and leave them free to do as they please! Fuck the Birds! We need to get out there and claim what's ours!"
     No more than a minute had passed once the master had finished speaking, and the inner den was empty, save the master and his son. Ring Shepherd, Fox Digs, and even Star Coyote had all formed hunting packs to suppress any and all Sun Cat or Roof Rat uprisings in Balderdash Alley and its surrounding areas.
     "Son," the master had said. "Why haven't you joined the hunt?"
     The boy, short, even for a child at the age of eight, had looked up at his father, peering through the red, bushy hair that hung in his childish, freckled face, and said, "There was some noise this morning before daybreak. The idiots failed to mention it. I was out before any of them. I wanted to see what it was."
     "What did you find?"
     "I saw a Bird teleport with someone. I'm sure it was the girl. I've seen her interact with one of the Birds before." Howl often ventured off separate from the rest of the Riser Dogs to explore the city whenever he saw fit. At his age, it was easy for him to blend in with the other factions, particularly the Roof Rats.
     "I suppose you want to go find her, then?"
     "Yes, Father. May I?"
     The master had chuckled at his son's request. "We don't call you 'Killer' for nothing."
     Howl was now halfway across the city, hot on the trail of his prey.