The Quiet Morning and the Chip's Little Heat
The first light of morning was a sad purple
color, sneaking through my window blinds
like bad news.
My head hurt a little, a leftover from
being a wolf so roughly last night. I was all
tangled in my sheets, and I could still smell
the wolf on me, mixed with a weird, sharp
smell I didn't know.
Pieces of what happened last night flashed
in my head like broken lights – the angry
growling, the tearing things up, trying to hurt
Luna. Feeling bad and cold went through me,
even though the wolf feeling was still a bit
there. What did I do? The question stayed in
the quiet room, and I didn't know the answer,
which was scary.
I sat up, my arms and legs heavy and sore.
Every muscle hurts, reminding me how out
of control I was last night.
I looked at myself in
the dusty mirror – my eyes were still a bit big,
with a little yellow around the edges, like the
wolf was still there. I looked away, feeling
yuck.
When I moved, I felt a little warmth coming
from my left ankle. Almost like the sun on a
cool morning, you could barely feel it. I
looked down. There, just above the
bone,was the chip.
Small, silver, and looking like nothing
much. The thing the government made all
werewolves wear to watch us. The leash
they said kept us "safe" and "good."
I touched it gently. It felt a little warmer than
my skin. Just the cold going away, I told
myself, trying to ignore the bad feeling that
went down my back. Last night was a bad
dream, a mistake. It had to be. The other
idea… the other idea was too scary to think
about.
I went to the small kitchen, the floor cold
under my feet. The smell of old coffee from
yesterday didn't make me feel any better.
While I waited for new coffee to make, I kept
looking at my ankle. The warmth was still
there, a quiet, steady feeling against my skin.
Later, at the small bookstore where I worked,
the bright lights made my headache worse.
The smell of old books, which I usually liked,
felt heavy. I tried to put new books on the
shelves, but I kept seeing the mean wolf I
was last night.
"You okay, Elara? You seem a bit… not
yourself today," Mrs. Gable, my nice boss
who notices everything, asked with a worried face.
I made a fake smile. "Just a bad night, Mrs.
Gable. The full moon always messes with
me." It was partly true, a lie we all had to tell
in this world where people were scared and
didn't trust us.
She nodded like she understood, but her
eyes had a little bit of worry in them – the
kind I saw in most humans. They let us live
here, but just barely, as long as we were
quiet and did what they expected.
Last night… last night
was not quiet or expected.
All day, the warmth on my ankle stayed.
It was small,
and I could forget about it if I wasn't
paying attention, but it was always there, a
quiet little feeling. And with it, I felt more and
more worried, like something was really
wrong.
That night, back in my small apartment, I
couldn't get rid of the feeling. The memory of
being so angry, the weird growl, Luna's
scared eyes – they stayed in my head. I sat
at my computer, the light from the screen
usually making me feel calm, but now it felt
cold.
My fingers were above the keyboard. I knew
I should just try to forget last night, say it was
just a weird thing that happened. But the
warm feeling on my ankle, the small feeling
that something else was going on… it
wouldn't let me.
I took a deep breath and looked at the
information from my own chip. It was risky,
going against the rules we had with the
government. Messing with the chip was a
big no-no. But being scared about what
happened last night was stronger than being
scared of the government.
The information was a mess of secret words
and code I couldn't read. It was made so
normal werewolves couldn't understand it.
But I wasn't normal. My human love for
computers had become a secret way to
understand the digital chains we were in.
Hours went by, with weak coffee and a
growing bad feeling. I went through the
firewalls, got past the security things I'd
learned how to break a long time ago. The
deeper I went, the more strange things I
found. Information being sent at weird times,
strange energy, and secret files that were
much bigger and more complicated than just
needing to know where we were.
What are they hiding? The question felt
heavy in the air, full of worry.
Then, I found it. A hidden place in the chip's
information, with a name that looked like just
random letters. It was really secret, much
harder to get into than anything else. My
fingers flew on the keyboard, lines of code
moving on the screen as I tried every way I
knew to read it.
I got more and more annoyed. The secret
code was strong, made to keep people out.
But every time I couldn't read it, I just wanted
to even more. I had to know what was in that
file. The bad feeling in my stomach, the
memory of being so angry, the warm feeling
on my ankle – they all told me the answer
was hidden in those lines of code.
Finally, after a long time, something
happened. A small part of the file flickered,
and the secret words turned into bits of text I
could read. Technical words, numbers for
sound, how people act… the words looked
weird and cold.
One set of words, repeated a lot, made me
feel really cold: "Make Them Angry Now."
I held my breath. Angry? Was that what
happened to me last night? Did the chip…
make me mean?
I looked further down, my heart beating fast.
Another bit of text I could read: "Make Them
Obey – Make Them Weak Now."
Obey. Weak. The words showed a scary
future, where we weren't just watched, but
made to do things. Our own feelings, our
own choices, controlled by the little things
stuck in our skin.
The warmth on my ankle got stronger, a
sudden, sharp feeling that made me gasp.
On the screen, the part of the file I could
read flickered again, a new line of code
showing for a second before the secret
writing came back.
But I had seen enough.
the short line of code Elara saw before it
went back to secret writing was a time – and
it was counting down to the next full moon.