When Alexander awoke his mind struggled to register all that was around him. The pain that twisted throughout his form confirmed that he was still alive but he had no idea how that could be possible. He remembered his enraged state, the claws digging into his back, and then almost nothing.

Alexander had never been one to believe much in religion, and true to form when he had fought inches from death his mind had never bothered to ask what would come afterwards. Alexander hadn’t been planning for an afterwards. He had been fully prepared for the blaze of glory he had attempted to enact to leave him without anything left. The boy simply thought he would die and that would be it. So when his eyes opened to the dirty medical room surrounding him, the thought of it being the afterlife never crossed his mind.

Still even as his groggy eyes panned about he couldn’t recognize anything. The world was blurry, out of focus and nothing really lined up correctly. Alexander could see the various medical tools lying about, some still splattered with rapidly congealing blood, but as he attempted to reach out towards them his arms seemed to stop short.

It took him another few minutes to gather his wits enough to discover why. One was quiet obvious, the metal shackle that tied his arm to the bedside glittered even in the pale light. But it took him quite a while to evaluate what had happened to his other arm. His still addled mind struggled to process what he was seeing. His confusion made itself quite apparent on his face as the emotion ripped through the fog gripping him.

Kicking out his legs in horror he struggled to right himself, the flailing limbs pushing Alexander up in his bed only for the shackle on his arm to keep him from rolling away. Pain shot through him as the ankle he had been limping on flared up again, the sturdy cast supporting it now wrapped up in sheets.

Where Alexander’s arm once stood lay a bandaged stump. Just below his shoulder sat a wrapping of gauze, the white fabric tightly wrapped around the severed limb. The gauze was damp with both his sweat and blood from the wound that surely lay underneath and his panicked eyes absorbed every detail.

The boy’s eyes never left the location of his now amputated limb, his breathing now picking up in speed. Whatever drugs had been administered were burned away as a wave of adrenaline hit his system. His eyes lit up with a singular focus as he flexed his remaining arm, straining against the bond that held him. He was acting like a frantic animal, trapped and scared as the walls of the room began to close in on him. His already panicked breathing took on a new pace as his body bucked and strained at his bonds. His mind was going haywire, trying to piece together what the hell had happened to him.

Why was he chained to the bed? How had he possibly survived? And most importantly, what had happened to his fucking arm? Each question built the panic in the boy’s body, making his situation seem worse to him with every waking moment. If he had been completely sober, without the cocktail of pain meds and sleeping agents running through his system, he would still have been scared. All the drugs seemed to do in this moment was heighten that fear, make his mind unable to react and reign him in.

When the door to the medical room opened, the first glimpse he saw of his savior was a horrific one. The beast’s face was uncovered, the lab coat it wore doing nothing to obscure its inhuman features. Letting out a startled cry the boy flinched away. He had seen a face like that before. The flattened flared nose was too close to the one he had seen in the tunnels to be a coincidence. The pointed ears that dwarfed the rest of the face bobbed obscenely as the creature moved.

Curling his torso Alexander attempted to shy away, yanking harshly with his remaining arm and causing the bed underneath him to once again lurch. This time the wheels below it creaked into motion, sliding the bed an inch away from the door only for it to bump up against the wall behind it.

Alexander could feel the pain in his arm faintly, the strain he was putting on it certainly not helping as he fought with renewed vigor to free himself. He swore repeatedly, only to freeze as a clicking noise echoed about the small room.

His deep blue pools would immediately turn to the creature, his eyes focusing sharply as he regarded it. It was laughing at him. The cruel noise lacked all empathy as it addressed the panicked boy. His attempt to free himself just amused the beast, and for some reason, pissed Alexander off. Anger burned through the panic in his mind, replacing the crazed animal with another, his eyes narrowing as the strain on his arm slackened in almost an instant.

“Oh, don’t stop! Sorry if I disturbed you, I’m sure if you keep going you’ll get rid of the other one too,” the beast cackled, gesturing with one pale sickly looking hand. Its voice was a crackling strained tone, as though it was unused to speaking. Still, Alexander understood it, which only angered him further.

“How-?” Alexander asked a moment later, his voice cracking dryly as he struggled to speak. He hissed sharply as the rest of his bodies’ sensations caught up to him suddenly. Now that the panic had faded, the pain had come back in force. Every joint and inch of his form throbbed like he had been torn apart. His back was by far the worst as every attempt to turn or twist his form was met with an agony he hadn’t experienced before.

He was also incredibly thirsty, the dry state of his lips and mouth marking how long it had been since he had been given a drink.

The creature smiled, its razor filled maw twinkling in the low light as it spoke, “How what? How’d you get here? How you survived? How you lost your arm?” The creatures speech made it quite hard to tell, but Alexander was sure it was mocking him as it continued, “How a boy like you, wandering about in the night, managed to even last a minute? How he found himself in the tunnels, how he got himself so chewed up? Simple answer pretty much for those ones, you’re an idiot.”

Alexander tensed, opening his mouth to rebuke the creature only for it to wave its hand. Squeaking out in a tone barely within the range of Alexander’s hearing it gestured towards him. A moment later another human entered the room carrying a small bowl and a glass. The tray was placed beside him, a set of hands reaching out to unlock the shackle chaining him down a moment later.

“Eat and I’ll fill you in,” the beast ordered, once again gesturing only for it to swear. The scruffy looking human that had been tending to Alexander had reached out towards the food, only for the boot of the creature to catch it in its rear. “Not you! Out!” it shrieked dishing out another violent kick as the human scurried back towards the door.

Alexander watched the other human with wary eyes. Something about him had made the boy unnerved. His eyes had been almost empty, as though they regarded the world through a clouded lens. There had been no smile on their face, no emotion at all as they had laid eyes on the boy. Some long forgotten instinct told the boy that whatever that man was he was an abomination. A freak, a husk of a former human.

He turned wary eyes to the creature once again, the anger in them simmering down for a moment as he regarded the creature in a new light.

The creature seemed to ignore the change in the boy’s demeanor and motioned towards the food again, the movement impatient as it began to speak, “Eat it or I’ll just feed it to someone else.”

Alexander wasn’t one to forgo food, even when it came from a suspicious source, and began to dig in with only minimal amounts of encouraging. The soup was basically a thin barely flavoured broth, only degrees away from water, but it reinvigorated him. Soon he was slurping spoonful after spoonful of it into his mouth, swallowing almost immediately as he warily watched the other in the room with him.

The beast had a disgusted look on its face as it slowly drew out a chair, wheeling it over beside his bed muttering under its breath as it did so. It pulled itself onto the seat just as it began speaking again, “To put this simply, you owe us a debt. Well, more specifically you owe me a debt, but my coven and I can figure all the nitpicky stuff out later. I saved you. I tallied it up and you cost me thirty three thralls. Thirty three humans lives that I threw away just to pick up your grimy body. So that’s thirty three lives you owe me.”

Alexander regarded the creature with a wary look, half swallowed spoonful of soup still in his mouth. His mind spun with questions, none of them answered as the creature spoke. More and more were added to the pile as information as revealed to him and he just wanted to ask them all. Swallowing slowly, his voice finally rose in volume to do so.

It took an hour of discussion, a back and forth mediated by the meal he managed to slowly force into himself between questions, but the situation was explained to him.

His father had saved him. The boy had expected his father to run home, to hole up and wait for him, but the grown man hadn’t done that. The boy found himself questioning what he knew of his father’s history as more and more was revealed to him. The creature before him didn’t know the specific details, but his father had reached out to its coven the moment he had gotten home. How he had done so, how he had even known how to do so both beings in the room did not know.

But his father had done so, and had done so to save his child. The price had been set, had been extracted, and Alexander had been saved. An agent had been sent out to save the child, and that agent sat before him.

Alexander had sat calmly throughout the explanation, only asking for confirmation when he grew confused. His face was stony as he learned of his father’s choice, it flinched only as the process to save him was explained. His arm had been ruined. The bone had splintered and had been shattered in more places than could be remedied. The flesh had been torn and shredded, and a choice had to be made. The creature that had saved him only had a certain number of resources available to it, and seemingly fitting donor blood was one of the rarest. The wounds on his arm were too ragged to stitch up in any speed, and though the deep jagged ones in his back were much worse, it had to prioritise. It was lose time fixing the arm while the boy bled out, or lose the arm and focus on his back. It had made the logical choice.

The only change in Alexander was the spoon in his fingers, the rusted instrument shaking now as he lowered it in between slurps. The creature eyed him with cold eyes, its claws tapping a rhythm into the chair it sat upon as it waited for a response. It was surprised by the boy, though it attributed his demeanor more to the chemicals in his veins than to anything else.

Alexander kept his face still, but his mind was in complete turmoil. His father’s made no sense to the boy, it didn’t match up to what the boy knew of the man. He thought he had convinced him to wait for him, that he would be okay, but now he knew otherwise.

In reality the decision that his father had made peering into the tunnel that held his son hadn’t been a hard one. As the night grew closer, and the danger to his offspring grew, the weak man knew he didn’t have another choice. He couldn’t lose another child, and though the price was steep he had been willing to pay it. If he had been stronger, better, he would have done it himself. But he couldn’t. He had to rely on others to do it for him. The doctor had hidden many things about the world from his son. Certain facts about the wasteland, about society, about anything of import he left out. He taught his son what he could about survival, but he purposefully tried to keep Alexander naïve.

The existence of the Others was one of the biggest secrets kept from the child. The world was in such turmoil already, and the boy had to face endless terrors every moment he lived. The man didn’t want the hope that he had tried to foster in his children squished before it could grow. And if there was anything that the Others excelled at, it was crushing hope.