“Are you sure your friends are here, Mom?” Alexandra asked, scratching her head curiously. The ten-year-old had been glancing around the nearly deserted corner of the mixed class shopping center for the better part of five minutes, her hands folded behind her back as they trembled. Her mother’s insistence that she accompany her on one of her various nighttime ventures for the first time ever had filled her with glee, and she was doing her very best to not embarrass herself by appearing too eager, but it was difficult, to say the least.
“Oh, I’m sure, dear. Positive,” Alma Warren answered with a smirk as she gingerly placed a fingertip over her daughter’s lips. “Now let’s just make sure we keep our voices nice and quiet.”
“Why can’t we see them?”
“They just like playing hide and seek, Alexandra. Keep your eyes open, or we’ll lose the game,” the woman insisted as she peered cautiously around the corner of a brick wall, keeping her eyes level with the shadow-ensconced Beta walkway.
“The game?” the young girl whispered excitedly, enraptured at the notion of such a thing involving her normally no-nonsense mother. “We’re playing a game?”
“You bet we are,” Alma replied as she took her daughter’s hand and slowly led her around the corner and into the darkness. “And I think we’re about to win.”
It had occurred to Alexandra to feel confused when the evening had first begun and Alma informed her daughter of their goal: to have a rendezvous in the shopping center with two friends of hers who happened to be Betas. It was like something out of a bizarre dream; after all, the older Alpha had spent the entire decade of her child’s life casually dropping stinging epithets with regards to the smallest class, and making her general distaste for them clear whenever the opportunity arose.
Alexandra had always ignored these statements as best as she could, having never met a Beta and therefore having no cause to feel this way toward them, and had gelled under the assumption that Alma had a reason for feeling the way she did. This particular case was not something easily ignored. Nevertheless, the thrill of spending any kind of meaningful time with her mother far outweighed this oddity, and Alexandra was quick to put it out of her mind.
“Really? Then where are the-” the girl began, before pausing, her mouth agape as she squinted into the dank alleyway they had entered. It took a second for her eyes to adjust, but once they had, she was able to make out a solitary tiny figure stalking carefully in their direction along the raised Beta path. “Is that your friend, Mom?”
“It sure is, dear. Stay right here,” Alma commanded, her attention hardly on her daughter now as she held stock-still against the wall. Then, taking a shallow breath, she moved over the distance in the alley with four long strides, and a heartbeat later she was upon the Beta, her arm darting out from her side as though she were drawing a weapon from a holster.
Alexandra heard what reminded her of the soft squeak of a baby animal before it was silenced again, and her mother was moving swiftly again, but further down the alley this time near the back entrance of a convenience store.
“Mom?” the young Alpha peeped. “Did… did we win the game?”
“Almost, dear,” Alma answered as casually as she could, though her voice was far less fluid now and hardened with intent as her gaze swept back and forth along the Beta path.
“Do we go home now?”
“We just have to find one more friend, and then we can go,” the woman said as she placed her hand lithely atop the path and began moving it back and forth as if inspecting for imperfections in the surface. “Why don’t you help me look?”
“Okay,” Alexandra squealed earnestly at the request, still keeping her voice to a dull murmur at her mother’s request, and tiptoed deeper into the darkness of the alley. Far off in the distance, she could hear the dying hustle and bustle of the various shops that lined the street, though they had grown fainter after how far into the outskirts of the mixed class area Alma had led the pair so covertly.
“Just don’t move too quickly and keep your voice down, dear,” Alma suggested sweetly as she continued her mechanically focused search.
Alexandra nodded and began peering more closely along the path, which was lined with a few benches and dumpsters used by the Beta back exit for the store, all of which seemed to be in a slight state of disrepair and in need of replacement. Her curiosity was at all-time high as she engaged in this activity with her mother such that she was blinded to the explicable bizarreness of it, and felt closer to the woman than she had in years. More so than this peculiarity of seeming growth in their relationship as mother and daughter, though, the girl was excited to have the chance to interact with Betas.
All her life, she’d been shepherded away from opportunities to interact with them on any level, just as it was with Omegas. She’d hardly seen any Betas, and even then just from a distance, let alone having the chance to hold one, which was a prospect she desired so dearly. They all looked so adorable from afar, so earnest in their designs to work and make lives for themselves, despite the disadvantages presented by their small stature, and it was something the young girl admired the class immensely for. Of her schoolmates, she had gathered she was the only one not to have the chance to touch or even speak to one, and it stung, but those were her mother’s wishes, and she intended to follow them as far as was necessary.
Now, she could see her strict adherence to Alma’s parenting laws had paid off in full. She was finally getting the chance to sate her curiosity about Betas, and perhaps best of all, she was out doing something with her mother. She could hardly stand still from joy.
“Wait,” Alexandra breathed, leaning in closer to a thin gray pipe that rounded on the path and made its way below, offering an even darker shadow under its small curve. The structure was only a few inches wide, but underneath the bend, her eyes had caught something. Her senses were a steel trap, alerted to any movements. A tiny flash of light had appeared, only visible for a moment, but her eyes were keen and more than anything, she was anxious to please her mother.
Another second passed and there was a tiny hiss from under the pipe.
“What?” Alma whispered, creeping closer to where her daughter stood and lowering herself down to observe the path more carefully.
“I think I see… under the pipe,” the young Alpha drawled, moving her hand forward with her fingers extended toward the low-hanging line. Gently, without any fear with her mother standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her, Alexandra dipped her soft fingertips into the darkness and instantly met with a tiny shuffling form as it scrambled backward in the blackness.
“Grab her, dear,” Alma commanded with gentle firmness, and so attuned was Alexandra to the moment, she didn’t hesitate to question her mother’s potentially rude request, and unfurled her fingers, easily snatching up the tiny thrashing Beta and scooping it into her palm.
A warm rush ran down Alexandra’s spine, and her hair stood on end as she slowly withdrew her gingerly balled fist from the path under the pipe, with the female Beta pinned awkwardly under her thumb.
“Well done,” the elder Alpha whispered, planting a kiss on her daughter’s cheek in the warmest token of affection the woman had offered since Alexandra had learned to walk.
“Where should I put her?” Alexandra gasped with wonderment, drawing the woman closer to her face. In the back of her mind, it occurred to try and say something to the little living thing contained in the confines of her hand, but she was too embarrassed to come up with anything.
What if the woman was irritated to have lost the game to a ten-year-old?
“Just put her in your pocket,” Alma said.
“What?”
“Now,” her mother insisted more harshly, the word all but impossible to resist as she wrapped her hand around her daughter’s thin wrist. Taking the cue from swelling nervousness and bewilderment, Alexandra ignored her pre-conceived notions of manners. She lowered her hand toward her pants and tucked the Beta woman into her pocket, keeping her fingers protectively caged around her without moving as Alma took her by the shoulder and led her briskly out of the alley.
In the darkness, ten-year-old Nathaniel Tyler was curled up in the deepest corner he could reach against the wall where his mother had shoved him for protection, his eyes puffy with tears and a scream unable to escape his petrified lips.
“Can I let her out now, Mom?” The girl’s hand was still buried in her pocket, her fingers gingerly curled around the Beta for protection. She was too afraid to wrap her palm around her for fear of appearing rude to someone she’d never met, but safety came first. At first, the tiny body pressed up against the skin of her hand had been squirming about, but had shortly settled into a vibrating quiver. The Alpha supposed this just meant the woman was becoming more comfortable with her surroundings, and this made her very happy.
“Take a seat, Alexandra,” Alma instructed coolly, ignoring the question and scooting out a chair at the kitchen table with a hard scrape on the linoleum for her daughter before sliding easily into one on the opposite side.
“Okay,” Alexandra answered obediently, hopping into the chair, but careful not to jostle her pocket too hard. She cupped her palm under the woman in her pocket to ensure nothing happened to her in the shift, and kept it there defensively while maintaining respectful and nearly unblinking eye contact with her mother. Even if she hadn’t been trying to make a positive impression on Alma, it was a reaction that most had upon meeting the thirty-four-year-old’s gaze.
Alma Warren was infrequently without a mysterious curve in her lips like a Mona Lisa smile and a glint in her dark irises that sat eerily on the border between bemused and ravenous. Her hair, holding the slightest suggestion of rouge in its auburn waves, would fall over the right side of her face when she dipped her chin low enough, concealing one of her eyes. Stock still and stone-jawed whenever she wasn’t speaking, like a jungle cat on the prowl, the woman would appear to be eyeing her surroundings with deceptive disinterest but was never unaware of what went on around her.
“Good girl,” the elder Alpha said at last with a muted sigh as she dipped her hand back into her pocket. “You made me proud tonight, Alexandra. I want you to know that.”
“I… I did?”
“Absolutely,” she answered with a curt nod. “You followed my instructions perfectly. You stayed quiet and kept your eyes moving, and you helped us win the game.”
“Really?” Alexandra squealed as quietly as she could. “Does this mean I get to come play more games with you?”
Alma studied her daughter for a moment, her lips pursed tightly and her eyes narrowed, before she nodded again. “Yes, I think it does. You’re growing up, and it’s time I started including you in my work. It’s time I started being more honest with you. Would you like that, Alexandra?”
“Yes!” the girl cried with a relieved laugh. She threw a hand over her lips as soon as she’d said it, blushing with embarrassment. “I mean, yes.”
“Good,” Alma said with the closest thing she could muster in the way of a chuckle, obviously pleased in her own way with her daughter’s enthusiasm for the night’s activity. “I realize it may have confused you at times. The way I’ve raised you. The way I’ve kept you from going near the Omegas or Betas, or from making very many friends because of how often we move. And I apologize for that.”
Alexandra froze up, having to keep her mouth from hanging open. She’d never heard her mother speak this frankly, and it simultaneously filled her with excitement and anxiety.
“But you must understand,” Alma swallowed hard, bowing her head lower. “It was all to prepare you. Everything I have done was to make sure you were ready.”
“Ready for what?” Alexandra asked with anticipation, her throat dry, goose bumps running along her skin.
“For your birthright, my dearest,” Alma whispered lovingly, finally drawing her occupied hand back above the table and rested her arm on its surface.
Alexandra flinched at the sight of the tiny man squirming between her mother’s precise fingertips. This was the clearest view she’d ever had of a Beta, given how dark the alley was where she’d scooped up the woman, and it was a joyously novel sight to see the persistent little life in person, though somewhat soured by the visage of the man laying rather uncomfortably in Alma’s fist.
She wondered why her mother hadn’t put him down yet.
“My what?” Alexandra whispered with a suspicious frown, at last forcing herself to confront the curiosity of this whole night. If these two truly were friends as Alma claimed, it seemed evident that they were not best friends. Friends couldn’t possibly treat friends this rudely. “Are you going to put the man down?”
“Alexandra, I need you to forget about this, and the one you have in your pocket for a minute, and listen to me,” Alma snapped quietly as her eyes indicated toward the figure in her fist, instantly refocusing her daughter, who now had the chill of mysterious fear gnawing at her insides. “You want to work with me, don’t you? You want to play more games?”
“Y-Yes.”
“Then you must understand something first, and understand it well,” Alma continued, clearing her throat and bringing her fist up closer to her face and leaning her chin against her knuckles while the three-inch man’s arms and legs continued wriggling in the spaces between her firm digits. “The reason why I’ve never brought you with me before is to keep you safe.”
“Safe.”
“Yes. I never wanted you to have to be afraid of it, but the time has come for you to know about it, so that you can begin to do your part. Alexandra… we are at war.”
“War.” At this point, the young girl could only manage to repeat back individual words that seemed to expand in her throat like hot metal. Her soft fingers curled firmly around the woman in her pocket, though whether it was for the woman’s protection or her own, Alexandra couldn’t possibly have said.
“Yes, war. A war that’s been going on for the better part of seventy years, back when our world was first wrenched from us and we were made into the slaves of society that we are now.”
“S-Slaves?” Alexandra choked out confusedly.
“Yes. The Omegas have squeezed us and made us into puppets of their fantasy universe until nothing of our way of life remained. Make no mistake, Alexandra. They are the enemy. And we are among the last still fighting for the old world. But now, we have our chance to make things right, one Beta at a time,” Alma declared authoritatively, and with a shift of her wrist, her fingers unfurled around the tiny man, whose face Alexandra now realized had been pressed into the heel of her mother’s hand to silence him. As he sprawled in her palm and pulled himself awkwardly to his knees, his eyes darted back and forth across the cavernous room like a severely traumatized mouse.
“Where am I?” he asked, his voice on the verge of quavering but his volume confident. “Why have you brought me here?”
“To fulfill your purpose,” Alma deadpanned.
Alexandra’s lips hung open and she frowned, her eyes unable to unlock. There was something in his face, subtle due to his size, but unmistakable nonetheless.
Horror. Like nothing she’d ever seen, compressed into those tiny eyes that screamed with darkness and shifting light. As though he’d been hollowed from the inside out, his dead shell of skin and hair ready to flap in the breeze.
“We can settle this peacefully. We want no trouble with you,” the man stated as diplomatically as possible, but his voice was already shaking, and on the final word, there was something in his tone that suggested he knew exactly who was holding him.
“Don’t even try your filth on me,” Alma barked. “You’ll have to think up a new trick.”
“Where is my wife? What have you done with her?”
“Oh, she’ll be here directly,” she answered simply, raising her other hand toward her opened palm with her pointer finger extended until it was pressed against the man’s right arm. As the tip of it neared the man, he cringed and scooted back on his haunches across the fleshy expanse, but paused when his little feet dangled over the edge, craning his neck to gaze fearfully down at the drop to the tabletop.
That was when Alma’s thumb came into contact with his arm as well and compressed in, powdering the man’s bones with a motion no stronger than would be needed to break a crunchy leaf into confetti.
Alexandra’s scream melded with the man’s in a gruesome, cloying din, and the girl threw herself back against her chair, scooting several steps back with the same hard scrape on the floor and grasping the seat to ensure she didn’t fall out. Her throat was on fire and eyes felt like they were being pulled from their sockets. Her body crawled with the sensation of thousands of insects creeping over her, but her skin felt as though it had become separated from the rest of her as she stared with abject terror at the sight of the man’s bloodied limb dangling limply from his shoulder.
A damp crimson sheen glistened on the pads of Alma’s thumb and forefinger, and she drew them both to her demonically curled lips and inserted them, sucking the moisture off. She giggled in a low rumble that seemed to rattle the legs of the table as well as Alexandra’s bones.
“Keep your voice down, Alexandra. It’s not becoming a young woman of our class,” Alma stated calmly. “I know, it can be a little obscene at first, but what you have to realize is that this is no different than what farmers do. It’s a necessary bit of dirty work in order to make a statement.”
“W-What?” coughed Alexandra, nausea flooding rapidly up from her intestines and making her feel light-headed enough to float out of her chair if her paralyzed limbs would’ve allowed her to break her death grip on the seat of the chair.
“Don’t be afraid anymore, Alexandra. It’s time for you to truly join the family. Take it out of your pocket,” Alma instructed, casually rolling the flailing, pain-wracked body of the Beta man around between her fingers as he continued crying feverishly in extreme intervals.
The young Alpha’s lower lip quivered. She could no longer manage to find the words to form coherent sentences, let alone the monumental amount of fortitude it would’ve taken to actually speak them. The color entirely flushed from her face as though the blood had been robbed from her body by a swarm of carnivorous insects, the girl’s hand only trembled as it hovered over her pocket, feeling so cold that it practically burned to touch the fabric.
She couldn’t possibly mean…
“Listen to me, dear,” Alma droned more loudly, at this point with her wide eyes looking like they belonged on a hunting owl as she leaned further across the table toward her daughter, who sunk lower into the chair. “Take it out of your pocket now.”
Barely able to connect her actions with commands from her brain now, Alexandra’s fingers managed to slide into the pocket despite how hard they were thrashing, and curled around the woman once again, drawing her out.
The screaming in the room doubled almost as soon as the woman managed to fight her way toward the front of the young girl’s enormous palm and witness her husband’s suffering across the expanse of the table. She wrapped her arms around Alexandra’s thumb for protection, knowing the drop would cripple her, but all the same leaned out as far as she could, at last making eye contact with Alma. All the young Alpha could do was lock watering eyes onto the quaking life form miraculously sprawled in her hand.
So small. So helpless. So… fearful. Even at three inches tall, the expression was clear. The woman’s eyes were bloodshot, her skin soaked with sweat and white as snow, and as she gripped the soft flesh of the girl’s hand for support while simultaneously shaking with revulsion at the prison she found herself in, there was something else the girl noticed in her wretchedly petrified body.
Hopelessness. An absolute, all-encompassing emptiness, born out of recognition. A shell, just like her husband. She barely resembled a complete person, and the longer Alexandra stared at the pitiful creature in her hand, the deeper she felt the terror icing over her every internal organ.
At ten years old, there was a great deal that Alexandra still had to understand about the world, but one thing was for absolutely certain: human faces were not supposed to look like that.
There should not exist a thing in the world that could extract a reaction like that from a living thing.
“Good, Alexandra, good,” Alma said warmly, her whisper somehow cutting through the cacophony of terrified Beta voices from the shredded throats of their two captives. “There’s no more reason to be afraid. All you have to do is do is follow my lead now, and everything will be all right.”
“All right,” Alexandra repeated with the energy of a coma patient, now just as hollowed and grayed as the woman in her hand, utterly unable to even begin processing the event she was trapped in. Existence was all she could muster at this point.
“On the count of three,” Alma continued. “Put it in your mouth, chew it, and swallow it.”
Another stone-cold silence. Alexandra flinched but still couldn’t blink, her eyes once again imprisoned in her mother’s deadly glare.
She shook her head to the left and then to the right, stopping there due to being almost positive that she would vomit right onto the table if she had to move any more than that.
“Please let him go,” the tiny woman in Alexandra’s hand wept, and then she turned her attention to the child who held her entire life in the palm of her hand, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Please, sweetie. Please don’t. Please don’t hurt us.”
The young Alpha’s arm stiffened, and her fingers curled upward protectively around the tiny passenger, who shrieked despite the good intentions and curled up in a ball in the girl’s palm. The cries of the man across the table continued to echo more weakly as the blood loss sapped him of strength in the stained claw of Alma’s fist.
“Alexandra,” the elder Alpha sighed. “These things that we hold in our hands. Do you know what they’ve done? They’ve spent their paltry lives on toy podiums, shouting at everyone about a bunch of nonsense that’s distorting our world even further than the Omegas have twisted it. Speaking as if they have rights, floundering around like they have the strength necessary to survive, and calling us the monsters. By doing this now, we can put a stop to the real monsters. We can start to make the world like it was again.”
Swallowing a lump in her throat that was threatening to choke her at any second, Alexandra clenched her eyelids shut and shook her head once more in the negative. She drew her hand closer toward her chest, cupping the woman safely into her palm.
Alma clucked with disappointment. She twiddled the man between her fingers, laying him across her palm, and then in a flash was swooping her hand toward her mouth and her opened lips, her teeth glistening in the dim light of the kitchen as she passed him over the pink threshold and crunched down just as his front half made it inside.
“No. No. No,” mumbled the woman in numbed disbelief as she clambered over Alexandra’s thumb, clearly unable to convince herself of what she’d just seen. She tried to leap from the enormous hand, but the girl managed to keep her from making the treacherous leap down to the table with a flick of her index finger. “NO!”
Alexandra was locked in time then, her body having forgotten how to regularly inhale and exhale, as she watched a tiny dribble of dark blood roll over the slope of her mother’s lower lip and cascade down her chin, leaving a little trail of liquid carnage in its wake.
Its splash onto the surface of the table made a deafening crash in Alexandra’s ears, and reactivated all of her senses at once.
She threw herself backward in the chair to stand up in one swift motion, but the girl’s mother had apparently been anticipating the attempt at escape, because she made her move across the table a heartbeat ahead of Alexandra, and before the young Alpha could rise from her chair with the woman cupped defensively against her chest, Alma’s hand was locked like an iron stock around her daughter’s wrist.
“No, no, no,” Alma scolded musically, her voice lowered to a frightfully whimsical snarl as she tried to wrench the girl back closer to the table. “Mommy can’t let you leave. Not until you’ve become part of the family. You want to do that, don’t you? You want to be a part of the family?”
Alexandra’s throat was iced over, and she knew she couldn’t possibly have spoken up to answer even if she knew what she wanted to say to this monster that currently had its talons clenched around her arm, but she locked eyes a final time with her mother, and in that instant, both understood fully what was meant.
“Did you hear me, dear?” Alma spat. “You will eat the thing in your hand, or you will never come with me again.”
“She’s n-not a t-t-thing,” Alexandra sputtered at last.
“What did you just say?”
“She’s a s-she,” the girl insisted, furrowing her brow and pursing her lips. The ten-year-old had never been so scared in her life, and was operating on pure instinct at this point. “And you c-can’t h-hurt her.”
“Dear, dear, dear,” Alma bemoaned with another shake of her head. “After all this time, I’d have thought you’d have more faith in me than that, Alexandra.”
With a flourish of her fingers, Alma plucked the Beta woman from her daughter’s immobilized hand, dangled her rapidly thrashing form over her mouth, and dropped her into the dark hovel for the slaughter. A quick scream was heard, followed by the same wet snapping, and then silence.
Shriveling up inside herself, Alexandra brought her other hand up from her lap and smacked her mother across the face. Weaker at this moment than she’d ever felt before, it hardly made a sound, but the gesture from her demure daughter was enough to shock Alma into releasing her grip for just a moment, and that was when the young Alpha rolled out of the chair and scrambled to her feet, darting for the door.
“Alexandra, STOP!” screeched the enraged Alma as she threw the chair to the side hard enough that one of the legs snapped out of place when it hit the wall and leapt after her child just as the door leading out to the porch slammed closed.
The screen nearly was knocked off its hinges as the woman threw it back open and pursued Alexandra across the grass and onto the sidewalk. Once again, no words had to be spoken, and both Alphas knew the intentions of the other without having to make eye contact again.
“You will STOP right now or you will never be welcome in my house again!” roared Alma as she steadily gained ground, despite her daughter’s determination to stay in a full sprint. “Do you hear me? NEVER!”
Frigid tears were rushing down Alexandra’s steaming cheeks, and she was practically choking on them as she gasped for air, but she tightened her hands into fists and ignored the soreness in her calves as she crossed to the end of the street and neared a shopping center stopover, leaping over a large puddle but not breaking her speed in the slightest.
“You can’t turn on us, Alexandra. You can’t turn on your own kind. You were born one of us. You deserve what we’re fighting for too!” Alma shouted, having moved on to bargaining in her desperation as she started to slow up just a bit. “Are you going to throw all of that away for a couple of insects that you never even knew the names of? Are you? I TAUGHT YOU BETTER THAN THAT!”
By now in full sobs that blurred her vision and made her knees tremble as she sprinted, Alexandra ducked into a dark alley behind a dumpster and doubled back as her mother passed her, instead making her way down the main street toward the subway once the coast was clear again. The few passerby that remained in the shopping area glanced her way as they heard her cries, but shrugged it off and returned to their business as she ran past them without pause.
Alexandra’s brain was running at precisely the same pace as her pattering feet, and she couldn’t have been asked to comment on any point in the future more than two seconds ahead, but as the scrolling letters “AEGIS” caught her attention on the digital information board in bright neon letters atop the train station as the next destination, a tightening in her gut told her to act.
Finally allowing herself to catch her breath, Alexandra took the steps two at a time on the subway platform and slipped inside just as the doors were opening to allow in new passengers. She pressed herself to the wall to conceal herself from view and buried her face in her hands to stifle her whimpering as baffled passengers leaned down to ask her what the matter was.
“YOU WILL NEVER COME HOME AGAIN, ALEXANDRA. DO YOU HEAR ME?” Alma howled into the night with cataclysmic magnitude infused into every word, her arms raised over her head, murder in her eyes. “YOU ARE NOT MY DAUGHTER. YOU ARE ONE OF THEM. AND I WILL NOT LET THE MONSTERS WIN.”
Crying uncontrollably and inhaling more awkwardly than a sickly newborn, her heart railing stingingly against her ribcage as she heard her mother sprinting up the steps to the subway, Alexandra watched with more relief than she’d ever felt in her life as the doors slammed shut and the train took off for the city’s Omega headquarters, announced with a soft and reassuring ding.