Chapter Text
Besides the ears and the tail and the big furry paw-hands, Sorrow understands that he's different right from the beginning, but it isn't anything he has to be a genius, or even particularly gifted in the powers of observation, to figure out.
Well, he is gifted in one power of observation. Really, it's a chicken-and-the-egg thing--he talks to the ghost people (and when it's them he can really talk to them, just like regular-person talking) and the ghost people just come right out and tell him that yeah, he's the only one who does that, so it's not like he had to put two and two together when they were already being so helpful.
One of the ghost people here is 73's mom. 73 isn't not really her son, if you look at it like that--they made him out of lots of different parts, animals and people, in a dish and in some tubes, and then they put him inside of her to grow--but she felt him the whole time and it felt like he was hers, so Sorrow agrees; she should get to decide, after all of that.
She got to hold 73 and touch his soft little claws and feed him for a few days, but then there was something that went bad with how they cut him out of her and it made her sick and she died. Now she wants to tell 73 that she loves him, that someone loves him, and also that his name isn't just 73 but she was going to tell him that also it's Oleg like her father, and that's the first time Sorrow really wishes he could talk, for more reasons than just not disappointing the scientists.
Sorrow tries hard not to disappoint the scientists; he would have known that's a good idea even without all the ghosts weighing in, and he does like it when they're happy. Sorrow already wishes he could write better, that he had clever just-like-a-real-human hands like 66 and 85 who get taken out of Class for special teaching and come back with treats. He doesn't think that he cares one way or another about shooting the guns, but 66 came back once with a big oily piece of salmon, smoked, and it smelled wonderful.
Even if Sorrow could use his paws to write neat and quick and small, in perfect little lines marching across the paper, it would take him too many of those lines to explain to 73 about his mother and being Oleg. He'd have to start out with explaining that he sees the ghost people in the first place, and by the time he got through all of that, one of the scientists would surely have noticed that the two of them were off in the corner, Sorrow's tail twitching and 73-Oleg's tongue curling out of his snout and both of them obviously up to No Good.
Sorrow doesn't think that he wants the scientists to know the ghosts are talking to him, and so far, all of the ghosts agree. They almost never agree, so that must mean it's important. Sorrow also knows he doesn't want the scientists to call him Bad, or tell each other he has Behavioral Issues, but he figured that one out all by himself. They only call him 51, and that's fine, but it's not like there are even fifty other kids here. Subjects. Sometimes things happen, but later, after they already got a number, so that's why Sorrow isn't 49 but nobody else is, either. Not any more, anyway.
Nobody actually calls 51 "Sorrow" except some of the ghost people. (Some of them think it's silly, and some of them are too busy with their own problems to listen to him, once they find out he's listening to them.) "Sorrow" is a word from one of the stories they read in Class, him and the other subjects; it isn't a human name like Oleg's mother wants Oleg to know he has, but that's part of why Sorrow likes it. It's only his, and nobody alive calls him or calls anybody else that. In his experience, alive people saying your name, or your number, or what they decided is your name, has never been the beginning of a good thing.
~(=^‥^)
62 was made out of human and animal parts in a dish, just like everybody else, but her spotted cat ears and rosetted tail are from a jaguar, where Sorrow's are more stripey, because they're from an ocelot. Sorrow knows this because 62 was very upset when two of the other girls said that she was the same as him, and they should get married. A jaguar is much bigger and stronger than an ocelot, which might as well just be a big spotted house cat that hides like Sorrow tried to hide, tried to settle the sudden disagreement by averting his eyes and showing her his big dumb paws, nothing like her nimble fingers. Nothing to worry about. He chirped in a friendly way but that made her more upset, except she was upset with him, this time.
Ocelots are not endangered. In the wild, they live as far north as Texas, which Sorrow knows is where cowboys come from, too. Jaguars are big and strong, one of the largest land carnivores, and they can roar just like lions and tigers. Jaguars never purr. Ocelots purr, and meow and yowl, at best. In South America, people made their gods look like jaguars. In South America, ocelot was the word for jaguar, but the ocelots kept it because people got confused, and nobody cares too much about an ocelot to give them their own name.
Sorrow messed himself a little when she bit him (and kept biting him) but he didn't mean it in the Behavioral Issues way, like he already knows for sure he's not supposed to. Some of the ghosts wanted him to fight back, but the ones who give good advice, and some of the ones who used to be animal people like him, reminded him that he should make it very easy for the scientists to see who is Being Good. By then 71 was fighting with 66, like they always did if there weren't Activities, 73 was rolled into his own scaly ball and 48 was hanging from the light fixture, using her own perfect human voice to tell them to stop it, stop it.
Sorrow just held onto himself and was Good, so Good, and when they came in soon after with the rope-sticks, they could tell it wasn't his fault, not the pee or the blood. 62's perfect human hands have claws, too, which is the kind of thing they call the Best of Both Worlds, while Sorrow is a mute, clumsy boy-and-cat, but he didn't hurt anyone, or fight, or pee in the corners of the little room with the smell that they put him in after. He paced and stalked and left little bloody smears on the wall, not that he wanted to, but he couldn't help leaning on the wall if he didn't want to fall over. Sorrow knew the ocelot parts of him would feel better, feel safer if he could mark the little room as his territory, but he also knew that he Knows Better; they told him and they showed him that a long time ago, and he knew he didn't want them to have to remind him.
When they came for him, they didn't smell afraid, which was good because that meant they knew he was going to Be Good. Sorrow was a little afraid, but the ghost who used to be 33, a sad-eyed boy made out of parts of a sea lion, walked with him, and told him that they were all walking away from the room with the grate in the floor, so that at least was good. 33 had told Sorrow about that room before, and he was the one to know.
The scientist who shaved little patches of Sorrow's hair and fur and sewed him up was as gentle as Sorrow could expect. Sorrow can't speak, can barely write, doesn't have the clever fingers to fire a gun or pick apart wiring, and he doesn't have the Killer Instinct, he's heard them talking and planning about him and he knows all of this.
That's a tough one to understand, even with all the ghost people helping him: he needs to Be Good, definitely, but somehow just how good Sorrow is at Being Good is disappointing to the scientists too. The next time he sees 62 walk past the classroom she sticks her little pink tongue out at him. She's got the big collar on and all of the subjects know what that means, that you're almost Wild enough not to be brought to Class and taught human things, but at the same time, she's walking with 66 and 85, and 33 drifts in and tells him that he knows they're heading to the firing range.
Nobody gives Sorrow a chance to earn any smoked salmon, but he never has to wear the collar either. All you can do in this life is to try to keep on living, Oleg's mother tells him, and Sorrow can feel her ghost-hand gentle behind his ears.