11
When they returned to the hotel, it was already dinnertime, but neither of them felt particularly hungry. They knew it was because, for better or worse, whatever joy they had experienced during the day was just a preamble. It was a way of distracting themselves from what they knew they would have to do next.
Sarah unfolded all the information they had on Dr. Ernest Golding and Apollo Inc., and tried to brush through it one more time, hoping to make sense of something she might have missed. Connor changed his shirt and took another look at the map.
“You ready?” he asked. He had on his leather jacket again, and she had slipped on a black jacket. Together they looked like an odd-matched pair from a bike gang, but it was a smart outfit for both of them. Flexible enough to run in if they needed to, but conspicuous enough to fit in with London’s trendy styles.
“Ready for what exactly?” she replied, “This feels a bit too much like a 007 movie. We don’t know the first thing about infiltrating a base.”
“For now, let’s just do some reconnaissance,” he said, “Oh, and this is London, so please put on some shoes.”
She looked down and realized she was barefoot again. It had become such a habit back on the Estate that she had forgotten to put her boots back on. After so many months out in the wild, her feet had developed heavy calluses. She blushed and scrambled under the bed for her boots.
“Have you tried that number on the paper?”
“I did, it’s got enough digits for a phone number, but when I dial it, there’s no reply. Deactivated number,” Connor shrugged.
She reluctantly agreed and they made their way downstairs. The receptionist behind the desk gave them a surreptitious wink, one that Sarah found lecherous and a bit creepy, but kept it to herself. They took a taxi toward Brentwood and the driver tried to make small talk in an accent that both Connor and Sarah had a hard time understanding, like a mix between a Cockney slang and Irish.
Sarah pulled the paper map from her bag and gave the taxi driver instructions. Unlike North American cities that had a certain north-south orientation and square blocks, it seemed that the European idea of city-planning was haphazard. In no time, she had lost track of where they were.
It was all a blur of city lights, buildings, and streets, and half a dozen times, she worried that they had circled back on themselves, but the taxi driver confidently burrowed forth, navigating old roads like they were the back of his hand. In the back seat, Sarah found Connor’s hand in the dark and squeezed it.
Finally, they arrived at the coordinates on the map and Connor had the driver let them off a block away. It was an industrial part of the city. Big warehouses and empty lots littered the landscape. There was something almost apocalyptic about the place, and Sarah had to hold her mouth, as they got out, to keep from recoiling at the smell of so much detritus. Rust seemed to eat its way into her mouth, and she coughed.
“Careful, we’re supposed to be stealthy, remember?” Connor warned.
It took them a few minutes to reach the perimeter of a bigger fenced-off area with a number of cubicle portables behind razor wire. If Dr. Golding was involved in some sort of illegal genetic experimentation using the Bear genome, then it stood to reason they were looking for the most secure place in the vicinity. Bingo, she thought to herself as Connor kneeled down and pulled a pair of small wire-cutters from his backpack.
“Really going full-out with the spy stuff, huh?” she said bemusedly.
“If Marcus was here, he’d scold us both. Keep a look out.”
Although she had never done anything like this, Sarah was proud of how transferable her skills were for breaking into places. During her childhood, she had been trained by master martial artists and survivalists, the goal being to turn her into a worthy enough heiress to the Greyback Estate. Granted, most of her training had taken place outdoors. She’d have preferred the cover of trees and forest to the concrete right-angle wilderness of a metropolitan city, but it was all the same.
Stealth was the art of moving unseen in plain sight. Even now as she tested the air, she had to admire how both her and Connor’s bodies acted on a kind of memory-impulse. Reflexively blending into the shadows, limiting unnecessary movement. She shivered again as a cold gust of wind levied off the ocean miles to the east.
Ever since seeing the picture of the wolf-like creature on the holographic display back at the assembly room in the Estate, Sarah had been secretly worrying over their first encounter with one. She’d done some preliminary research, but it looked like for the most part the creatures had been confined to research facilities. However, there were two unverifiable reports the day before they’d arrived of something roaming in the north-eastern parts of London, on the outskirts, and another report on the other side of the city about the slaughter of several live-stock.
The police reports were sealed and confidential, but a few pictures had made the headlines. It looked like something big had torn the animals apart, and even through the grainy pictures, she could make out claw marks. They were too big to account for any kind of terrestrial mammal in the London area. Through easy deduction, that meant that either Dr. Golding had lost track of some of his specimens, or he was giving them a beta-test in the field.
Either way, it was only a matter of time before a person got in the way, and she already knew how that would end.
“Done?” She hissed to him, scanning left and right. There was no sign of any guards or security. Not even a camera or CCTV, which seemed quite out of sorts for London.
“Almost,” Connor replied, and there was a definitive snip as he cleared the last piece of wire and removed a small semi-circular chunk of the fence.
As they sneaked in, the scent suddenly changed and they both looked at each other. It wasn’t a man-made smell; it was organic. Something that seemed to catch at both their memories like a burr that wouldn’t let go, and yet they couldn’t put their fingers on it. Whatever it was, it was alive.
“That portable,” Sarah said, crouching low and indicating a giant metal shack with a light on inside. All the machinery had gone quiet for the night, and all they could hear was their own breathing and the small scramble of rocks and pebbles misfiring underfoot.
Carefully, Connor boosted her up and she peeked through the window. There was one person inside, bald and with a slight paunch and gold-rimmed glasses. He was bent over a computer screen and it looked like he was frustrated. He kept stabbing at the keyboard in front of him. One of Golding’s friends, no doubt, she thought and indicated for Connor to let her down.
“Let’s try the other one,” she said.
“What are we even looking for?”
She had been formulating a plan in her head for a while. Assuming the badges that had been mysteriously dropped off were from someone trying to help them, it stood to reason that it might give them access to the facility. On the other hand, if it was a trap, it was a good idea, like Connor had said, to do some reconnaissance.
“Anything that can verify our suspicions,” she hissed back, “tomorrow we’ll give those badges a try and see if we can get inside this place legitimately. In the meantime…”
“You know if they catch us, it’s just going to be more difficult to get in tomorrow,” he sighed.
“Hush! You’ll jinx us,” she said and excitedly ran to the next portable.
She was enjoying this too much, and he was worried. Even though she was wiser than him in many ways, there was still something childish in her behavior. If he didn’t keep it in order, it could get both of them in serious trouble.
The next portable was unlocked and they both slunk in. She turned on a small flashlight and booted up the laptop. A slew of files immediately popped up and Connor turned back to the door.
“Shit,” he murmured.
“What is it?” Sarah said over her shoulder. She was hard at work transferring every file she could find onto a small USB stick around her neck.
“I can’t tell, wrong angle. But it looks like our cover was blown. There’s some movement near the fence. They might have found our little sabotage. Do you have what you need?”
“Almost,” she said, and with a final click powered down the laptop and stuffed the USB back under her leather jacket between her breasts, and zipped it up to her collar.
“Good, I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here.”
As they exited the portable, there was a cry from the far side of the facility, and they saw a wavering flashlight stumbling through the darkness. Shit, she repeated. She had expected to have more time, but they’d managed to find the fence and the hole. Their route of escape was cut off.
“Well, what now, dear?”
“We can’t let them see our faces,” she said, and plastered herself against the portable. In the shadows they were practically invisible, but she could already make out a muted voice chatting something nervously into a walkie-talkie.
“That’s the call for backup,” Connor repeated. He seemed more nervous than usual, and was sweating. “Make a run for it?”
“Too risky,” she said and bit her lip. “I have an idea but you’re not going to like it.”
From somewhere inside the facility there was a loud, creaking sound. The guard on duty heard a voice reply over his walkie-talkie and nodded. Behind her, Connor pulled down his coat and slipped out of his clothes until he was standing nude. He looked almost comical, shivering and pale, and he had a very disgruntled look on his face.
“This part of the mission we leave out of the report,” he said and bent over forward.
Just as he began his transformation, Sarah detected the scent again – it was coming from deeper inside the facility, and she couldn’t localize it. It had a musk to it, like the kind that inhabited the coat of an old pelt, or a shaggy shock of hair. It was animal; rough, wild, and rugged. She swallowed and looked back at Connor.
His face extended, lengthening at the nose and sprouting thick brown fur. His long snout moved up and down as if he were stretching his jaw, and his shoulders grew. A large hump sprouted until his head was nearly a foot and a half below it, testament to his form as a Bear. He had always been lean when in Form, but over the years he’d spent at the Greyback Estate with Sarah, his form had changed somewhat. He was no longer the lanky creature full of athleticism. In many ways, he had grown larger, as if filling out, and even now, she held back a gasp at his size.
He was larger than she could ever be. Yet, his eyes were still Connor, and he took a step forward, his huge paw softening on the gravel, and nudged her hip with his wet black nose. His ears twitched when he caught the scent too.
“I know,” she murmured, “it’s one of them.”
She stuffed Connor’s shed clothes into her own backpack and he raised himself up a bit, as she wriggled under him, gripping her legs around his huge girth and sinking her fingers into his fur. It wasn’t a particularly graceful plan, but it might work. He had the strength to plow through the fence, and the stamina of a Bear would get them far enough away before they could lay in pursuit. In theory.
As long as she was able to hold on.
She closed her eyes, and Connor seemed to sense his fur and tried to raise himself up further. She sunk into his fur, and let the warm smell of him cover her. She could hear Connor shifting his giant skull left and right, waiting for the right opportunity to burst into action. She held her breath.
When he took off, she almost slipped and struggled harder to hold on. The muscles in her arms felt like they were going to snap, but she grit her teeth and tried her best to remain under him. Occasionally her feet would slip, bouncing off the gravel, and she’d try to grapple for purchase again.
Then she saw one of them through a gap in Connor’s legs.
The guard had called for backup, and the backup just happened to be what Dr. Golding kept in his basement, like some warped and twisted Frankenstein’s monster. It was canine in form, and only slightly smaller than Connor. But there was something inhumanely vicious about it, and she could only think one word. Werewolf.
Its long snout was bared and glistening fangs protruded hungrily. Two of them were bent low, sniffing the ground, and their necks snapped alert when they saw the Bear making for a getaway. A pause, hardly a heartbeat, and they broke into a Doberman stride, their long sleek legs pumping harder. Their eyes were another matter.
She had seen the sort of bloodlust that could overtake a Bear, if they let themselves become too much of one or the other. But she had never seen a creature so entirely possessed by rage as these two. Their eyes were bloodshot and bulged, as if they were trying to force them out of their own skulls, and a loud hoarse growling chatter issued between both of them.
They’re communicating, she realized. If they had been human once, they were so far separated from their origins that nothing could save them.
“Run,” she almost gasped into Connor’s collar.
He was almost at the gate when one of the wolves leaped toward him, and she could see it all as if it were in slow motion. The monster’s jaws opened and came down hard on Connor, who barked loudly in pain but refused to slow down. Claws like surgical tools raked into his shoulder, trying to paralyze his movement, but still Connor fought through the pain and the weight of his body carried him toward the small hole in the fence.
Sarah closed her eyes and heard the wire grate widening as they both plowed through it, and Connor’s paws skidded on the tarmac outside. Behind them, she could see the first wolf had been thrown off, hitting the wire hard and bouncing back almost twenty feet.
With a huff, Connor stood back up, though he was shaking. She could feel something wet and warm dripping down his fur where the wolf had mangled his shoulder, and her eyes watered in concern.
“Connor,” she whispered, still holding onto his mane, and saw the second wolf make for the hole in the fence.
It was all over, she thought.
A shrill whistle blasted the air, enough to make her hair rise on end and irritate her eardrum. She opened her mouth in a voiceless scream and fell off Connor. The whistle was coming from a klaxon inside the facility, a loud meowing sound that could have been the grief-stricken howl of a wolf that had lost its cubs.
Connor growled and nudged her again, but she kept holding her head. The siren was piercing, almost blinding. Finally, she felt him stab his snout under her waist and lever her up onto his back. She reached out weakly and tried to grip the fur on his back as he continued to hobble down the street – when in Bear form he was the most stubborn warrior she had ever known. Even bleeding from several wounds, he had one task in mind. Get her to safety.
She looked behind her uselessly, and saw the wolves weren’t following, quite the opposite. The wolf perched at the brink of the fence line growled in an almost hateful whine at them, and slowly turned back to where his companion was already trudging, tired and shamefully, back among the portables of the facility.
That sound, she thought to herself. It was like a cue. A trigger for them. They really had become nothing more than trained dogs.
She suspected that she knew who was training them. The moan of the siren finally exhausted itself just as they rounded another corner. Still, Connor kept marching forward until she leaned over his head and touched his snout. He jerked back, as if alarmed, and his eyes slowly settled like sediment on the bottom of a river as he recognized his wife.
In moments, he was back to human form, but the wounds were deep. They’d leave scars, for sure. Even the Clawgrove healing capacity endemic to his tribe would have a hard time dealing with the incisions in his back and shoulder, and he winced painfully as she propped him up against the wall of a shuttered warehouse.
“Are they gone?”
“You did so well, my love,” she said, choking back tears and trying to remember her training as she reached into the backpack and unzipped a small Med-Kit. “God, I’m so sorry.”
“Your plan worked,” he smiled, his eyes sleepy.
“Not at this cost!” she almost yelled at him.
She wasn’t really angry with him. She herself had offered to turn into a Bear, but Connor had insisted – he knew that the best way to protect her was to take on the role himself, and she had let him. It didn’t make it sting any less. She felt a heavy pang of regret.
“Stay with me,” she said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he reached up, “You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
She was about to scold him again when a pair of bright headlights drowned them both in a thousand Watt universe of whiteness.
*
Sarah tentatively sipped at the cup of coffee that had been slid across the plain white plastic table. The room was sparse, almost ascetic, and smelled like cut wood and drywall. She suspected it was an abandoned tenement, probably in the projects of lower-east London.
Finally, the clicking heels of another female infiltrated the room and Sarah looked up at a young woman who was probably in her mid-30’s, but looked as if she could handle a room full of men twice that age and win. She had on a black pantsuit that curved at her hips, emphasizing her small waist and full bosom, which showed just enough cleavage through a loose button on her blouse to raise an eyebrow. Her face was small, round, and a precise bowl cut surrounded her head like a helmet, and bounced as she walked. There was something distinctly Asian about her appearance, her high cheekbones.
“I’m glad we found you before they did,” the woman said.
“Me too,” Sarah took a sip and gave an obvious glance at the two other men standing at the only entrance to the room. They both had on military fatigues and the air of soldiers.
The Asian woman pouted her lips. “Don’t be alarmed, Mrs Greyback,” she said, and smiled when Sarah flinched at the title, “We know who you are, and your husband, of course. We also know why you’re here.”
Sarah tried to recollect the last few hours. As soon as the headlights had blinded them, she had feared the worst. But instead, this tall woman had approached and with a business-like fastidiousness ushered them into two waiting cars and introduced herself as Laura Wu.
“How is Connor?” she asked quickly.
Laura nodded. “The cuts were deep, but they were clean. We’ve sewed him up. We’ll have to let his own healing factors do the rest, but he should make a full recovery. Although I doubt he’ll be playing baseball anytime soon.”
“I think it’s time you told me who you were,” Sarah put the coffee down. She had a cold stare, which was only more mesmerizing with her long black hair that fell over the back of the steel folding chair she was perched in. She crossed her legs, then her arms.
Laura seemed amused and sat back, mimicking her. “That’s fair,” she said in a sultry voice, “We belong to an organization whose aim is to protect the theriomorphic from discrimination. But also from becoming too obvious to urbane populations.”
“Theriomorphic. You mean Bears,” Sarah said.
“I mean all theriomorphs. Individuals with a genetic strain that allows them to change form.”
Sarah leaned forward, suddenly curious. She only ever heard of Bears, and while there were some isolated clans that lived in Europe and Asia, the majority of them were in North America, split between Canada and the United States. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you’re the matron of your tribe in Washington,” Laura said, showing off her intel, “and I’m the matron of my tribe here in London.”
“You don’t smell like a Bear,” she said.
“That’s because I’m not. While it’s true, the Bear gene tends to take precedence, and has become the most common type of transformative strain, there are others. Less powerful, less developed, and for all intents and purposes, recessive… but they exist.”
“You’re telling me there’s other kinds of animals?”
“Yes,” Laura said, “I, myself, am a Coyote. There are a few Foxes, and you’ve met some of our Wolves.”
“Your Wolves?”
Laura’s face changed. “More to the point, they used to be our Wolves. But you’ve no doubt heard about Dr. Ernest Golding’s experiments? And your husband met one first hand.”
Sarah sat back. It was too much to take in.
“We thought that Dr. Golding had gotten a hold of one of our Bears, from our tribe, that he was using the genetic markers to create… those things.”
“Half-right,” Laura corrected, pushing some pictures across the table, “Golding is experimenting with our kind. But he didn’t get the DNA from a Bear. Rather, those two creatures you met tonight used to be theriomorphs like you and me. He has been working for years to try and capture and domesticate it. For military purposes, of course.
“We’ve tried to dissuade him. Even the scientific community has lambasted his ‘crazy theories’, and we’ve done our best to keep the secret. But he’s found a way to turn us, bend us to his will.”
“I see,” Sarah said, “so that envelope. It was from you.”
Laura nodded. “We hoped that you would be able to get into their facility, where we had failed. He has dossiers on almost all of us; he’s been busy. Which means that none of us can even get close to his operation. However, you two are completely off his radar. Or were, until tonight. We’d hoped that you would use the badges… we didn’t anticipate on you and your husband trying to sneak in like vigilantes.”
“We’ve learned to be careful over the years,” Sarah said, pushing the photos back, “of people who were trying to help us, only to have their own motives.”
“Understandable,” Laura nodded. “How about now?”
Sarah’s mind was still on Connor, and she desperately wanted to see him, to verify for herself that he was okay. She couldn’t escape the feeling of guilt. It should have been me, she said. Even though she knew that if she’d tried, he’d probably have knocked her out, slung her on his back, and things would have turned out the same way. Or worse.
You stupid unselfish bastard, she thought to herself and tightened her hands into fists to keep from crying in front of the Coyote woman across the table. They had taken a gamble, and it had failed. Now they were alone again, with no backup. Carefully she unzipped her leather jacket and slid the USB drive across the table. Laura’s eyes grew visibly wider and she reluctantly reached out and took it.
“What is this?”
“It’s most of one of their servers,” Sarah said very softly, putting her hands in her lap, “we managed to download it, before….”
Laura nodded. “You’re still our best hope of figuring out what’s going on with Golding and bringing him down. Will you help us?”
Sarah looked back at Laura and saw the young woman’s face grow stern with an honesty and gravity that reminded her of Connor. She knew that the eyes could always judge a person’s character, even though she suspected hers were probably filled with more terrible things. As she looked at Laura and Laura looked back, there was a kind of mutual respect, born out of necessity.
No doubt, Laura and her group had been fighting Dr. Golding for a long time. It showed in the creases of her face, even though her eyes were set and alert, like daggers, ready to thrust. She reached out and clasped the hand that was waiting for her over the table.
“It seems,” Sarah replied, “that I have a score to settle. For now, we’re on the same side.”