#mr ari

She doesn’t even get visits from Jeb anymore, because he’d gone with them. He’d broken them out and left her in the medium-sized dog kennel. At least Ari comes to see her sometimes. Well, when he can get away from his Wranglers. (That’s what they call the interns that have to keep track of him because he’s Jeb’s son and they can’t do what they really want to do which is strangle him.)

Max looks forward to Ari’s visits. He’s the same age that Gaz would be, and it makes her feel weirdly warm inside. It’s not that she’s using Ari to replace Gaz, but it’s still nice. He told her, once, that she’s his sister. Max hasn’t decided whether she believes him or not, but… The proof is there. They have the same hazel eyes and the same dark hair. Their jawlines are the same as well, but Max’s skin is darker than Ari’s.

In the summer, when he’s been playing outside, they could pass as siblings easily. In the winter, when he’s pale and stuck inside, Max can’t see the resemblance as well. That’s when she’s not sure if she can trust him, or if he’s old enough to be under Jeb’s thumb like the rest of the scientists are. In the winter, she stays at the back of her cage, grooming her wings from the strangely-timed molt. (Turns out, when you have lethally low vitamin-d levels and your wings never know what time of year it is because you’re stuck in a temperature-controlled room, your molts happen whenever they want.) It’s in the summer and spring that she ventures toward the bars and watches Ari do whatever he’s brought to do. Sometimes he teaches her about what he’s learning, but most of it goes over her head.

She’s never gone to school before, so she doesn’t know a lot of what he explains. But Ari is smart and the way his eyes light up when he’s explaining fractions or the water cycle is enough for Max to keep her trap shut and let him talk. He’s so passionate and Max isn’t going to be the one to strip that from him. She’s sure that Jeb does a well enough job of that, anyways. She wants Ari to grow up and be healthy, because of all of the kids she’s had the pleasure of knowing he has the best chance.

The longer she’s stuck in the cage with Jeb off somewhere with her Flock, the more she wonders if that’s not true, though. If the Flock is out there somewhere, somehow in school on the down-low with Jeb as their father. If they’re eating right, learning to fly, sleeping in beds. It doesn’t matter, really, because Max knows she’s never going to see them again. It’ll be her and Ari against the world. (Especially when the Wranglers build him a nest of pillows and blankets in the crate next to her and he starts sleeping there. When he wakes up screaming, Max uses the lullabies she created for Angel - the baby that had been in her care for only a few weeks before the escape. Max had named her, and maybe that was why it hurt so much to lose the infant.)

Neither is sure why he’s there, or why he stops learning, but it’s not so bad. Max has forgotten what it’s like to have another sentient being in the room with her. The Whitecoats aren’t really good at creating anything besides bird kids and Erasers that have any sort of longevity and comprehension ability, so Ari is a blessing.

It helps that when year three comes and goes, they bond as brother and sister. Max tells him stupid jokes that she used to share with the Flock. Ari tells him about video games he used to be able to play - before he was stuck in the cage next to her. They talk about Jeb, and what it means to have a father. Sometimes when they do that they have to lay down and not talk for a second because they’re only… Well, they’re kids. Ari is eight by that time and Max is fifteen. (They think. It’s been a long time since either of them has seen a calendar. Time passes differently in the lab without windows.)

Sometimes Ari gets the courage to ask about the Flock. It makes Max stop and bite her lip because he’s not being malicious about it. She looks at his wide, hazel eyes and his skinny fingers sticking through the plastic holes on the side of his cage and her heart hurts. He is so trusting, so young, so naive to the way that being on this side of the lab works.

So she tells him about the Flock. Even when they take him away and bring him back and he’s different, seems darker, she tells him about them. Fang. Iggy. Nudge. Gazzy. Angel. Their names burn her throat to say, but she says them. Even when Ari begins growing too fast, outgrowing cage after cage, he asks about them. The first time Ari doesn’t ask after them is after his surgery. Max watches him get wheeled into the lab and stuffed into a cage. He is bigger than a full-grown man and his hair has grown shaggy and wild. When he snores at night, she can see fangs and extra teeth growing from his gums.

They both know it, but neither speaks it into the air. The Wranglers have made Ari an Eraser. Max wonders if it’s because Jeb is gone that Ari has become a target. She knows that the Erasers could be more potent and dangerous if they could be created after birth - there would be no expiration dates. (She hopes, late at night when the lights go down, tears cresting in her eyes. Max doesn’t believe in God, but she can’t believe that anything would be so cruel to give her a brother to replace the children she lost and then to take him away.)

Two more years come and go. Ari gets stronger. More sullen. He gets more scars and bigger cages. He stops teaching Max things, and she stops telling him old jokes. They both lose track of how many years it’s been since he was able to sit outside of her door and do homework - everything Before Cage is blurry and hidden by everything After Cage.

Ari says yes. Dad doesn’t explain more to him, just pats him on the head and smiles and says I love you and that’s all that matters. Ari puffs under the praise and goes back to his homeschool work. The people who work with his Dad are stressed because the Flock is doing well in the E-shaped house without Dad. They’re doing too well. Ari doesn’t understand a lot, but he supposes they were supposed to crash and burn without Dad there.

He doesn’t care. Ari had been alone for two years, left under the cold care of scientists and his tutor. He needs his Dad, not Max. She doesn’t even know that he’s her Dad. It’s ridiculous to think that some girl needs him more than Ari does.

He sets his homework aside and stretches as he stands from his desk. He’s smart, so he can pass without doing homework easily. So Ari doesn’t do his homework. He goes in search of his Dad again, wanting to play something. He’s too old to play baby games, but since Dad has been back he’s gotten several video games that are nice. They’re fun. One of them is called a Game Boy and so far Ari’s favorite game is Pokemon Yellow, but it’s only a single-player game so when he finds Dad they’ll probably have to play on the Playstation.

In searching for his Dad he passes the nursery. That’s where the other kids go when their parents are working, but he’s never had to go there. His Dad is pretty high up in the ranks, and it makes Ari smirk. He wants to feel proud, but also? The kids in the nursery have friends. He wants friends. Some of them have siblings, too, but Ari has one of those. He doesn’t care too much for her, but she’s so much cooler than he is. He stops outside of the room that Dad usually works in and tries to brush away one of the more annoying, intrusive thoughts that he’d had since Dad first left for the E-shaped house.

If I had wings, maybe Dad would love me like he loves Max. Ari had brought that up to his tutor, a nice woman with light eyes and a name he can’t pronounce, and she had tried to squish it out of his head. Your Dad loves you, she had said, but he has to do his job. Right now Max is his job.

From then on, he kept his thoughts to himself. Nobody needs to know about that. He pushes the door open after he’s flashed his keycard for the scanner and finds his Dad talking with another scientist near a table filled with papers and manilla folders. Before Ari can bring attention to his arrival, he catches what they’re saying.

“Are you sure, Jebidiah?” The scientist asks, “He’s your son.”

“And Max is my daughter. What’s the difference here?” Ari watches his Dad knock his knuckles against a set of papers, frowning at the scientist.

“That was an experiment. This is a human child. He’s nearly eight years old, we don’t know-”

“This is an experiment, too, Carter.” His Dad cuts the man off, “He’s my son. It’s my decision. We have gone over these plans time and time again. Whether or not it works is not what I’m concerned about. If it doesn’t work, we know how to go about it in the future. If it does work, this is the future for the Eraser Program.”

“Sir,”

“Enough,” Ari jumpers when his Dad’s voice drops and he presses back against the door he entered through. “He’s already agreed. The program has been green-lit. It’ll happen this Saturday.”

The scientist sighs. “Yes, sir.”

Ari turns around and leaves before either of them knows he’s there. He runs back to the apartment in the School where he stays. By the time he’s back in his bed, he’s struggling to breathe. He has to hope that his Dad wouldn’t do that to him - wouldn’t make him an Eraser. They’re monsters and not the cool kind.

And Ari doesn’t want to be a monster.