Michael was left in a small crib with only the blanket he’d been swaddled in before he’d been taken on his first night. He couldn’t see anything in the room, having only the vaguest idea of the shapes that surrounded him, or when something was light or dark. He couldn’t turn his head, nor could move his limbs beyond weak flailing that pushed lamely against the blanket that covered him. He screamed and cried until he eventually fell asleep from overwhelming exhaustion.
He awoke to the feeling of warmth from a small sliver of sunlight falling across his cheek. He thought for some time that he was back in his hospital bed, but his inability to see and the lack of his family’s voices quickly dissuaded him of that. He had died, gone to something between life and death, and been reborn somehow. He could see that now that he’d calmed down. He had been taken from the people that he guessed were the parents of the body he was in. He heard their cries again. He managed to keep himself from screaming as he remembered everything that had happened, but his instincts were telling him that was what he needed to be doing, and his resistance eventually crumbled.
Shortly after he began crying, a door nearby opened and he heard the sound of footsteps approaching, but he couldn’t properly move his neck to look in their direction, nor could he see much beyond the edge of the crib. A light was turned on, or perhaps lit? It seemed slower than a light switch. The outlines of two people reached the edge of the crib, and he could hear some quiet conversation. The voices weren’t muffled this time and now he was certain that they were speaking in a language he didn’t recognize. He’d lived in a lot of places in the US, and had heard plenty of Spanish, Mandarin, Creole, Farsi, and even some Japanese from the shows his kids had watched, but it didn’t sound like any of those.
One of the outlines leaned close enough that he could make out some of their features. It was a man in his mid-thirties or perhaps early forties, with a serious expression on his face. He held a finger to his lips and made a soft shushing sound.
Michael tried to stop crying, and eventually forced himself into a quiet sob instead, though it was difficult.
The man gestured to the shape next to him, and that person placed a cross shaped object on Michael’s skin. It was cold, metallic, he’d guess. The shape placed a finger on the cross and said a phrase and the cross seemed to become a touch colder.
The middle-aged man leaned forward again.
“You should now be able to understand me. Blink twice if that is the case.”
Michael felt immense relief at hearing something he could understand and struggled to make himself blink twice, barely managing it.
“Good. Your control is higher than the last one. Though it’s been quite a few years. Do not attempt to communicate back to me. You will find it far too much of a struggle and it will be a waste of both of our time.”
Michael remained silent aside from his muffled sobs.
The man nodded. “My name is Vance. You are likely confused as to what has happened. I will explain everything to you once. When I am done, the translation focus on your chest will be removed and it will not be used again.”
Michael didn’t like the sound of that, but didn’t really have any way to respond to it.
“You have been found out. A diviner has recognized you as a Lifetaker. A man from a foreign world that has taken a life that was due to one of the citizens of Stent. This makes you a murderer.”
Michael barely held himself together at that, hearing the wailing of his body's parents build up in his ears again.
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“What you have done is not uncommon in this world. We know that you may have had no intention to do what you have done, and because of this we shall not hang you as is normally done to those who murder children. Instead, you are to be drafted into our military. You will serve a ten year contract with the term starting after the end of your training.”
Michael managed to tear himself away from the vortex of guilt he was feeling long enough to attempt to raise an eyebrow and find himself incapable of doing so.
“You will not be training as an infant. You will be fed an alchemical mixture that will age your body rapidly. Your training will begin in around a month when you are able to begin walking and talking on your own. In roughly a year, you will physically be around sixteen years of age and ready to serve. If you attempt to desert, or escape, you will be hanged.”
The man coughed a bit and stepped away to drink some water before returning.
“You’re lucky, the diviner who examined you noted that you had high potential and the family of the person whose life you took are veterans. You will be sent to the Stent Military Academy rather than simple infantry training like the common criminals. You’ll still be an irregular, but you’ll be an irregular with better training.”
The man mumbling the spell yawned for a moment and shook his head to wake himself up.
“There’s a transport heading away from here at the end of the month, carrying some other recruits and some supplies. I’ll be having an alchemist provide you with your first few infusions later today, and your eyes and ears should be strong enough by tomorrow to begin language training.”
The muttering man reached for the translation focus, but the other man stopped him. Holding up a finger.
“Because you made an effort to be quiet, I’m going to warn you of something. You will be hated for what you are here in Stent, but you should consider yourself fortunate. Other places would have simply left you to the elements or bashed your head upon a rock. Do not take our grace for granted.”
He nodded at the other man and the focus was removed again. He heard them speak briefly to one another, no longer in English, as they walked away.
He was alone, with fuzzy vision and an inability to keep himself from crying any longer. He’d taken a life. Taken all the potential of a child in a world he had no claim to. He didn’t know, hadn’t been aware of what he was doing, but that didn’t change the result. He was no better than the drunk driver that had killed his son.
Shortly after he’d cried himself out, a woman came into the room holding a flask with a leather nipple. She smelled of herbs and blood and said a few things in a language he didn’t understand before shoving the nipping into his mouth. He figured that she must’ve been the alchemist he’d been warned of, and drank. He expected it to taste foul, but it tasted strange rather than bad, kind of like thick warm Gatorade with a grassy undertaste. He realized that there was milk mixed into it as well, likely to keep him sustained. After he finished it, the alchemist picked him up roughly and patted his back from bottom to top until he belched. She then left and another woman entered. He was then changed, cleaned, and left alone again. This was repeated every few hours until night had fallen and he was left alone. He wasn’t a real infant to be coddled through sleepless nights, no one would be sacrificing their own rest for him.
In between the alchemist and nurse’s visits Michael considered his options. Stent’s system seemed relatively fair in a lot of ways. Making ‘lifetakers’ as they’d called him, serve their time doing labor for a decade seemed reasonable. He didn’t like the idea of being a soldier though. He’d been a desk jockey his whole life back on Earth. He’d never even been in a fight. The closest thing he’d done was wrestling with his kids. He could run, or kill himself, but the idea of wasting the life he’d stolen seemed worse to him than stealing it in the first place. No, he would serve. If he did, he may be able to help some people. He would live the life he’d taken to its fullest, because doing anything else was disgusting to him.
In the middle of the night while he was dozing, his body started to feel tremendous pain. It was like there were little fires spreading in limbs. He screamed as it flared up, but very slowly the pain abated to an ache rather than a sharp pain. It was an ache he recognized from a long time ago. The summer he’d turned fourteen and shot up seven inches he’d had very similar pains, though much less intense. He should’ve guessed there would be a high cost for the kind of rapid growth he was expected to go through.
It was painful, but he’d been through worse during his cancer treatment. He’d felt what it was like for your blood to be on fire, to have his skin tear like paper. Still, his body was driven more by instinct than his own will at this point, and it reacted the way it had since he’d arrived in this new world. He cried.