Chapter Twelve
In the morning, Harper woke up to a bustling space. Everyone had a task that they rushed to complete. The cooks and assistants descended on the kitchen, those on child care got their charges out of bed and made sure they were washed and dressed for the day. Teachers for the day reviewed lessons before heading up to their work for the morning and security guards had a short meeting to review the plant for the day.
In the middle of it all, the big metal door opened to reveal Alex and his scavenging crew back from their trip, arms heavy with cloth bags full of metal parts. The security crew and a few extra young people ran over to help them, unloading their finds and distributing them around the space. Alex noticed Harper and raised a hand to greet her. She could see Yusef filling him in on everything they had discussed. Alex listened and waved her over as he got all the details.
She walked up and gave him a hug though they could hardly manage over her stomach. She must have gotten even bigger in the night.
“Hi. Wow, look at you!” He took a moment to appreciate her very round stomach. “How are you feeling?”
“Pretty nervous. Ready to throw up. Oh, is there some way I could get some hot water to boil these herbs? It’s a medicine my friend gave me.”
Alex cocked his head at the sight of the herb bag. “Can I see that?”
“Sure.” She handed it over and waited while he inspected the little dried leaves and bark pieces, then smelled them. He frowned.
“I don’t think this is safe for you.” He handed it back. “I’m fairly certain that’s Angel Hair. You’ll be in the bathroom all day.”
“What?” She looked at the herbs again. Harper wasn’t as familiar with medicine as she should have been, but she was familiar with Angel Hair. It was given to people with extreme constipation or to make children who’d eaten poison throw up. It was very strong. “She must have made a mistake. Dahlia told me this was to keep me sharp.”
“Dahlia?” Alex got a strange expression on his face. “Sorry, do you mean Dahlia the panther? Marcus’ mother?”
“Yes, why?”
He held his hand out. “Give me those. I want to save them.”
She complied, though she was confused. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”
“Dahlia is what’s wrong. You should never have trusted her.”
Without further explanation, he called together the team headed out to follow the attack. “Harper, what’s the plan on Grey’s end?”
“I don’t know! We separated…” she felt a horrible chill as she finished the thought, saying, “at Dahlia’s recommendation. But, but, hang on. Okay, I know where the still is. I know where Dahlia lives. Maybe we can still salvage this.”
The group got grabbed some fruit from the table and walked out in a line flanked by security guards. Harper suddenly remembered Katy and tapped Alex on the shoulder. She whispered in his ear and he waved over a teenage girl with the child care lot. As he relayed the message, she looked around the room and nodded when she spotted Katy still asleep as she hadn’t been worked into the rotation with the other kids. The girl assured Alex that he had nothing to worry about and wandered over to the sleeping girl and gently sat down at the foot of her little bed.
“Okay, we should be good. Let’s head out.”
The crew got a lot of hugs from friends and fellow Alliance members. Each member of the party on the way out was handed a little coin, nothing special, just tiny, thin pieces with a little A engraved on them. When Alex caught Harper looking at them, he showed her his. “They’re for good luck. We give them back to our protector when we get home.”
Harper got a tap on the shoulder. She turned to see a young, bespectacled woman from the kitchen crew smiling at her. “Come home safe,” she directed and put a coin in Harper’s hand. Harper nodded at her.
“I will.”
The guards opened the door and the people staying behind stood and watched them go in silence. Each member of the Alliance on their way out made sure to give their coin a little kiss before tucking it away. Harper did the same.
They walked across the grass without speaking and Harper tapped Yusef, who was leading the guards, on one shoulder. “We’re headed just east of the forest, towards a little swamp. At the opposite edge of the wetland is the still.”
“I know that place,” he murmured. “I got lost out there when I first came out here. You just keep me pointed in the right direction.”
She agreed and then instantly had to stop. “Sorry, I have to pee.”
They waited for her, everyone looking away to give her some privacy, though she had to ask for help standing up. Alex went over and pulled her out of her squat.
“Are you sure you can do this?”
She nodded, swallowing down her exhaustion and desire to just lie down and sleep in the grass. “Grey’s in trouble but he doesn’t know it yet. I have to get to him.”
A doubtful look crossed Alex’s face, but he nodded and brushed off the back of her dress. They went on and Harper realized she would need a bathroom break in a few more minutes. She was sweating, almost fainting from the sunlight and already hungry.
“Get it together,,” she admonished herself. “Don’t let this pregnancy get in the way. The father of your child is at stake.”
She thought of Dahlia’s story about the day her husband went missing. She felt certain that part of their conversation had been genuine. So many shifters had lost family members under the old regime; there was no reason for her to make up something like that.
Right?
Above the swamp, a small hawk was circling. Grey had to be careful that the man he suspected was former President Bachmann didn’t see him - he would recognize him right away. Grey had worked in the old presidential palace as a messenger and often took bird form in front of his old boss. He would have to make one or two quick passes and then get right back.
He flew closer to the structure and felt a temperature shift. Big, invisible clouds were coming out of the top of the big metal building. It had the shape of a cylinder half buried in the ground, the sort of place that humans had once used to store big, clunky machines for working the earth. A smokestack on the top released the heat and the pressure building on the inside. This was the still.
Grey flew lower in hopes of looking into an entrance or window, but all he found was more metal walls. He rose up and circled over the top. Nothing. As he started to circle back for a second pass, a human stepped out the back with something in his hand. A shotgun. Terrified that he had been spotted, Grey flapped to a nearby tree and settled behind the leaves.
The human didn’t point the gun at him. Rather, he leaned it against the outside wall and then leaned himself next to it. Okay. Guns were inside. That was important. They would have to surprise their prey as much as possible. But how? The only trees were as small as the one that Grey currently perched in and they would hardly cover a panther or a fossa. Could Emily go in first?
He sat and waited to see if anyone else might come out, but everything was quiet. A sound came from the distance - a whistle. It was two more humans. One of them was the President Bachmann look alike.
Grey’s tiny bird heart went ten times faster at the sight of his old boss. He was older, had a beard and more lines on his face, but it was Bachmann.
Rhett Bachmann, former leader of The State and the last in a long line of Bachmann presidents, had ruled with fear and unpredictable behavior back when he was in office. He would punish the friends of known criminals as well as the offenders themselves. He made shifters pay a clothing tax, which required that they have swaths of cloth cut from their outfits as they wore them, so that they would be humiliated each time they went out in public or to school. Bachmann was the creator of the collars that monitored shifters’ movements throughout their day, making sure that everything they said and did was recorded and could be used against them.
And, most infamously, he encouraged violence. Sometimes he would drop suggestions about humans attacking a certain family or individual into a speech and then just stand back and let the bloodshed begin. He made people tear each other apart in competition for a decent living space, free food or a job in the palace. Bachmann never claimed to enjoy it when people or shifters turned on one another, but he was never more terrifying than when he stood back to observe the violence he had inspired, a small smile on his face.
When Grey had heard that Bachmann was dead, it was a like a huge weight had lifted from his shoulders. A lion shifter was rumored to have eaten him in the basement of an old house he was hiding out in after the shifters revolted. Grey had even heard from Emily that Harper was right outside during the attack. How had he gotten away?
As the hawk shifter watched, the humans talked and laughed together. Everyone seemed relaxed and happy to be there. No one looked nervous and only one appeared to have a weapon. Okay. They could do this. A shot gun could shoot from a distance, but only if the shooter knew where to aim. Or that a predator was on its way.
Grey left without having made his second pass. As fast as he could, he flew into the cover of bigger trees and then shifted back into human mode. The others were waiting for him in silence, anxious to hear what he’d found.
“Okay,” he whispered, “we’ve got three. One of them has a gun.”
“What kind?” Larissa interrupted.
“A shotgun. For hunting. But I didn’t see any other weapons. Also, the building has no windows. I say we wait until they’re all inside and then creep up from as many different angles as possible.” They all leaned in for more details, then broke off one by one to take their positions. Dahlia went dead center, relying on her jaguar speed. Grey would fly over and call out to each, then help out in the attack from above.
One by one, the battalion of shifters inched towards the cylindrical grey building as colorless clouds made the air sparkle with alcoholic steam.
Also approaching from the other side of the swamp was Harper and her new Alliance friends. Her face was pinched together with the pain from walking, not allowing herself to pee and from the pounding headache the heat had created in her skull. She internally shouted at her body to keep moving, not stop. It listened and the group progressed.
The security guards motioned for everyone to stop as they went ahead. Two by two, large wooden spears in hand, they advanced in stops and starts. Gradually, the group broke up as they approached a big, half-buried cylinder.
“It’s a silo,” Harper whispered to Alex.
“Yeah, I remember this one. A guy I sold a lot of gas to used it to store some big machines. They must have just used the old parts in there.”
She turned to him. “Did you ever get a look inside?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t, but these things are just a big shell and a space. Everyone inside will be exposed.”
Harper reached in her pocket and felt her little coin. She prayed he was right.
From all sides, enemies approached the silo. The jaguar on Grey’s side crawled low to the ground as she neared the silo. Then, without warning, she stood and walked normally. She moved over to the end and scratched at the door.
Grey gasped at the sight of his fellow fighter warning the enemy they were approaching.
“Dahlia, no!”
He was too late. Someone inside opened the door and the jaguar strolled inside.
The guards saw the same thing and stopped where they were. Something was wrong. One of them pointed up to the sky and Harper was thrilled to see that it was Grey. She started to wave to him but Alex stopped her.
“Careful. Something’s wrong.”
They watched as Grey quickly went back to his hiding place. The other shifters had stopped their progress, uncertain what to do. Some inched back, but none went forward.
The door opened again and Bachmann stepped outside with jaguar Dahlia right next to him. She walked slowly, making sure everyone could see the muscles rippling in her powerful legs.
“I demand to see Harper Bachmann,” he called out to the plain. “If she doesn’t show herself, I’ll let Dahlia here choose someone to kill. And I know for a fact there are plenty to choose from. I see you back there, boys. And all you shifters, don’t think you’re so sly. My brother taught me how to spot a shifter from a mile away. Especially you, fossa.”
Harper stepped forward but Alex caught her by the shoulder. She turned to look at him. “It’s okay. Really. I know what to do.”
He didn’t let go. She had to gently pry his hand away before she could continue. “I’m coming over,” she called out. “Just give me a moment.” She walked over to the tall grass and let out the water she had been carrying for the past hour. The feel of its release was so amazing that felt her back and head relax with her stomach. Bachmann waited while Dahlia sniffed the air.
The former president’s daughter stood, fixed her dress and smoothed down her mussed hair. She stepped out into plain sight and put her hands up. Just in front of her was a hungry jaguar and a smiling Bachmann. Her legs shook as she stepped towards them, but she didn’t stop. One more step. Now one more. She got closer and closer. As she did, the man’s face came into focus.
When she arrived, he gave her a little smirk. “Look at you. Harper Bachmann.” He reached out to touch her face and she flinched at the touch of her family member. “Oh, pardon me. We haven’t been properly introduced.” He put a hand to his chest.
“My name is Aaron. Aaron Bachmann. I am your uncle. And darling,” he continued, “I am here to put us back in power. Where we belong.”
One of his cronies opened up the door to the silo with a creak. Aaron offered his arm and Harper allowed herself to be led inside. Behind her, the door closed with a loud and metallic bang.