I couldn't tell you exactly what happened next.
A shot cracked out. I turned to track where it had come from. No luck.
"Alexsy?"
He sprawled, face-down at the bottom of the foxhole.
"Shin?"
I rolled him over, knowing already what I would find. Alexsy stared back at me, eyes wide. A thin line of blood ran down between them from the bullet that had caught him perfectly in the center of the forehead.
No. This wasn't Alexsy. This wasn't how he died. He died in Poland. This is Shin, sitting here beside me, and I didn't catch the sniper in time, and he died.
Shouts came from a few meters off. One of the men running toward our position stopped. He took a knee, drew something from his side, and almost lazily lobbed it in my direction.
The grenade exploded right outside of our foxhole. I stood half in-half out, leaning forward to aim and fire. The force of the explosion blasted me back. I caught the edge of the hole and rolled backward, peppered with shrapnel. My body clenched in a firestorm of pain.
I ended up flat on my back, spread-eagled in the snow.
In these situations, you're supposed to see your life flash before you, but all I remember is how beautiful the sky looked.
One of the North Korean soldiers approached, slowly, pistol out. I lay there. My body convulsed, still in the first stages of pain before it started trying to heal.
I turned my head to the side. The North Korean soldier should have shouted something to the others. I should have scrambled to my feet, unlimbered my own grenade, and tossed it at them where they had clumped up into an easy target.
But it wasn't the North Korean sergeant. Instead, Karen stood there, pale as ice. She wore her combat gear, looming over me. I couldn't move. What the hell?
She walked over to me, kneeling on one knee beside me.
Drawing her weapon, she placed the barrel against my forehead.
I couldn't move, not even to struggle against the inevitable.
Karen looked over her shoulder at someone I couldn't even see. "Now?"
No, not now, stop, what the hell are you doing? The words stuck in my throat.
"Yes."
Holy shit. I knew that voice.
Now Karen looked down at me, and I found myself caught in the intensity of her gaze. She nodded slowly and pulled the trigger.
∞ ∞ ∞
A fraction of a section before the bullet left the gun, I awoke to full consciousness. I immediately regretted it.
First came the pain. The next, a wave of rage. My vision blacked out, and I launched myself, reaching for the change.
And ended up snapped back, the chains at each of my wrists and ankles burning into my skin. Holy crap, that stings. They cut into furrows already burned deep by the silver manacles.
I rocked back, attempting to stand, but the chains were attached to the wall in such a way that the closest I could get was a pissed off crouch. Just in case I did manage to slip myself out, a wall of bars coated in silver blocked off a nice little cage area for their now-resident werewolf. Only in one place did I have a habit of waking up like this. At least this time, I wasn't completely naked.
"Welcome, Mr. Keller."
I knew I had recognized his voice. Reaching again for the change, denied again by the silver, I settled for throwing myself against the chains. Snarling tends to be less effective when I'm not furry, but I gave it all I got.
The man standing just out of reach–Dr. Gratusczak–had put me in chains once before, poking and prodding and infecting me until he had unleashed the forces of the Überwechsel.
"I thought you were dead." The words came out with a glob of spit that landed short of the tall, slender man in his white lab coat.
"Really, Mr. Keller." Gratusczak brushed at his lapel. "You know MONIKER makes best use of its resources, even those that come to it under … coercion."
His voice came out as flat and dry as I remembered. He left a curious scent void that I remembered as well–as if there were something missing in his physical existence. And yes, I did know what MONIKER did with its resources–they had long counted me amongst their number. If I didn't know better, they still were.
"Ah. Good. You are understanding." The doctor nodded, clasping his hands behind him. "My presence is required elsewhere for the moment, but I look forward to renewing our acquaintance."
Uh … what in the hell? No. This time I stepped backward, the cold concrete behind me giving me no place to retreat.
Gratusczak smiled, thin-lipped, without any real sense of amusement. He turned, and as he moved out of my field of vision, revealed two guards in MONIKER uniforms. They fell into step next to him as he exited the room. Clearly, the agency took no chances with this particular resource. And yet, I wondered if they truly understood who–what–he was.
Probably not. Because if they did, he would join me here in this cage.
"Rick."
I sat down on the floor, mind racing, trying to calm my body, which had started freaking out, unable to access the change. Clamping down hard, I tried to stop myself from rocking back and forth, breathing accelerating to almost hyperventilation. Going from the complete freedom of the North to returning to a MONIKER cage would drive me insane if I didn't get out of there. And fast.
"Rick."
Karen stepped forward to the bars. Something about her smelled off. The humming tension I had sensed when I met her earlier had been muted. It wasn't so much that it had worn off, or that she had gotten herself under control. The silver burned my sinuses, but I could still taste her rosemary-and-rain scent. But now, something else added to the mix. Something sluggish and chemical. I rubbed my nose in my shoulder. My friend was not the same person she had been when I had left her in New York.
Speaking of. "This isn't the New York office." And it wasn't. For one, the building appeared much, much newer, from the fresh paint to the pristine condition of its cells. For two, the dust on her boots was fresh and smelled of desert.
"We're still in Vegas," she answered. "Well, technically in the desert outside the city."
"Want to tell me what the fuck is going on?" Where was the woman who kicked ass, took names, and would never betray someone she'd fought side by side with?
"It's a long … story." She paused, dragging out her words. Was she stoned? She spoke like she might be stoned. "I needed help. Calix needed help."
"I don't understand." I rested my wrists on my knees, spread my hands, palms up, almost as if in a prayerful appeal. The damned silver rested directly on my wrists. The pain was so acute, I couldn't stop myself from sweating. "I would have helped. Once I got your call."
Karen took so long to reply, I worried she might have spaced out or lost track or just couldn't follow me. Or maybe she was really stoned.
"I tried calling." She thought some more and shrugged. "You didn't pick up the phone."
There wasn't much I could say in reply. My vacation had made me hard to get hold of. "Still. Your next play was to call MONIKER?"
Karen caught my eyes and returned my stare. She didn't blink. Unnerving. "I didn't have to call them. I work for them." A trace of black rimmed her irises. She gripped the cage bars, knuckles white against her skin. "I've been Dr. Gratusczak's minder since you left."
Well. That explains why she was strung out like a junkie. I didn't trust the doctor to give me a flu shot. I certainly didn't trust him not to play the agency for fools while he played the part of one of their ‘resources.'
"Doesn't explain why I'm here." Grunting, I tried to shift the handcuffs just a little more. I regretted not wearing long sleeves. "And what this is all about."
"I needed help from MONIKER." Karen's gaze slid away until she was almost looking at me, but slightly past me. It wasn't any less unnerving. "They promised their help."
"In exchange for what?" Just kidding. I already knew the answer.
"You," Karen confirmed. "They've been keeping tabs on your last known. But now it's time to r
eel you back in."
"And I thought John Tell was a son of a bitch." The change clawed and dug at me inside; the silver burned from the outside. "What's the difference between what he did and all this?"
Karen shrugged and stood up straight.
"MONIKER wants you, MONIKER has you." She took a step, staggering slightly. "Ramirez wants to meet with you. He's going to offer you a deal. Come back to work with us again and get out of that cage. Or stay there and become another one of Gratusczak's lab protocols." She turned and started to leave, stopping just as she reached the door. "It's really all the same to me."
∞ ∞ ∞
For a long time after she left, I couldn't move. I simply sat, accepting the pain, unable to accept what she had said.
MONIKER had brought me back in after a long time away, and I'd thought at the time we were heading back to an age of working clandestinely to try to save the world. Or at least fix small parts of it. Instead, it had been a ploy by Agent John Tell, who'd used the agency's resources–and Karen–to track me down, bring me back, and then, finally, sell me to the highest bidder. Who'd turned out to be Dr. Gratusczak.
Tell's betrayal had taken me back to my old stomping grounds in eastern Europe, and then my home turf of southern Germany. Something in the soil had reconnected after so long away. That something kept clawing at me, and once we'd finished the mission, I had found it too hard to settle down in one place.
I'd packed up, headed north. Drifted from town to town. I'd met Randall over drinks one night, and we'd knocked back enough shots to beat the shit out of each other and wake up best friends. He'd offered me a job, working outdoors. It had been enough for a couple weeks until one night the full moon had yanked the Überwechsel out of me. When I woke up, far out in the north country, stark naked in the snow, I had gone furry. And decided to stay furry for a few days. Then a few weeks. Then I had gone back into town, prepped for a long time away, and slipped back into the wilderness with no intention of coming back until MONIKER had completely given up trying to find me. With one exception–a quick trip to New York City to help a friend–I'd become a complete ghost.
Fuck.
Shifting position, I tried to find some way to keep the wrist manacles from touching skin. By now, deep welts had formed, blistering and popping. Every time the silver touched raw skin, it felt so painful I wanted to throw up.
When I'd met Tell, I had thought he was a son of a bitch. I'd gone against my instincts and trusted him, and it turned out my initial assessment had been correct. I didn't really think too much about what they'd offered him, and at the time, I hadn't cared.
But Karen–if she could be turned, if she had a price, then I had to ask myself, did I trust myself to fend off the agency? In the end, what would it take to get to me?
"You are an interesting man."
Raising my head, I spotted Calix standing across the room. She leaned against the wall, arms crossed. Seeing she had my attention, she pushed herself up and walked over to the cage.
Calix leaned her forearm against the cage and rested her forehead against her arm, looking down on me. I've been looked down on by better quality human beings.
"Go fuck yourself."
She stretched, then folded her arms, leaning her shoulder against the cage bars.
"Karen tells me you've worked for MONIKER before." She gazed at me intently.
I swallowed a mouthful of bile. Not only did the silver bite at my wrists and ankles, but the miasma emanating from the silver that laced the bars coated my lungs with every breath. If I didn't get out of here in a timely fashion, I was going to rot from the inside out.
"It's quite fascinating," Calix continued. "I mean, Karen told me about this phenomenon, but I have to say, I didn't believe it until I saw you do … the change, I believe she called it?"
"What the hell do you want?" My speech slurred. I couldn't move. My vision had started to fuzz around the edges. "I promise, I won't poach your girlfriend."
Calix didn't react. She just gazed at me steadily.
"Karen told me, you are friends."
"Were." Pretty sure I should use the past tense.
"She needs friends."
What? "She's got you."
Another shrug. The woman was positively full of them. "I'm new."
I coughed, and felt something in my lungs detach. Sprayed red across my hands.
"This is killing you, isn't it?"
"People have tried in the past," I informed her. "I'm not dead yet." Trying for humor. "I think I'll go for a walk."
"You're not fooling anyone, you know," she answered.
"Didn't know middle-aged badass ninja turtles watched Monty Python."
"Middle-aged? Meee-ow."
"I'm about to bleed to death internally, I have no shame." Shame and dignity get in the way of a good time. So does bleeding to death internally.
"Take their deal." Her voice didn't waver, her gaze didn't flinch. "Take the deal. Get your ass back in the fold. Help me get Karen out of here."
CHAPTER SEVEN
I could have held out a little longer, but everybody involved pretty much had my number, so I caved. Yup. I called "uncle" as loud as I could, and they came, took the silver off my wrists, let me crash in a different cage.
The men who came to take me there were nameless, uniformed, and not very chatty. They approached me with cattle prods, nervous. There was nothing for them to worry about. By the time they showed up, I could barely think straight, let alone move.
One of them put the end of the prod right up against my neck, while the other unsnapped the silver cuffs, and replaced them with a pair that still contained enough silver to discourage me from any futile escape attempts and muffle the change. These ones, though, were thankfully coated by a thick enough layer of steel, and they barely burned at all.
When they motioned for me to get up, my legs wouldn't cooperate. Hell, by this point, the silver they'd encased me in had infected my entire body, and I don't know what they expected. Making a mad dash for freedom wasn't an option. Neither was standing under my own power.
One of them grabbed me under the elbow on my right side, the other took up on the left, and they simply frog-marched me down the hall, dragged me down a flight of dingy stairs, and threw me in a free-standing cage in the middle of a concrete basement.
Then they'd locked me in, headed upstairs, and turned out the light before they locked that door behind them as well.
No matter. MONIKER had a habit of throwing me in dark places. Their playbook varied little, if at all.
Somewhere, a water heater kicked on, thrumming for a few minutes before it turned off again. The smell of damp and musty concrete almost masked the scent of old blood.
The last time the agency had snatched me out of retirement and dragged me to New York, I'd woken up in a basement almost identical to this one. The building had been older, more corporate. From what I'd managed to see of this place, it was not only newer and brighter, but also much more specifically designed with someone like me in mind.
This worried me. This worried me a lot.
John Tell had sold me to Gratusczak and whoever bankrolled the creepy doctor's research. They had wanted to replicate the change, take it over, and turn it into a weapon. I'd thought our work had disrupted that train of thought, but now my head started to clear, it became obvious MONIKER had just brought Dr. G on the payroll and decided to make his research their research.
This facility was going to be a pain in the ass to break out of, if not impossible. Not just for me, but for anyone else they planned on subjecting to their pet mad scientist's experiments.
Holy shit, I hoped to hell and all the Gods my mother never found out about this. You may laugh, but you never met my mother. If you did, you'd shit your pants and then die, because she would eat you. I know I make a lot of wiseass cracks, but this is not actually a joke.
The change stirred again. Four more weeks until the next full moon. I had no idea if the Überwechsel w
ould triumph over the layers of silver they'd surrounded me with. Maybe? Probably? Likely, it would. And man, I did not want them to know about that.
I've been alive for a long time. Time slows for me every month. The moon works her way through every cell in my body as the change takes me. If you started to look closely though, I'd begun to age. I'd even begun to see it in my face, feel it in my body. Perhaps manipulating the change had robbed me of the regeneration. Until the Überwechsel caught me up in its grasp. And now I'm back, caught in the throes of inescapable Change, but I'm also certain I'm recovering the time I thought I lost.
And I had one hundred percent abso-fucking-lutely no intention of spending one moment of the time I had left in the service of this organization.
Sitting in the dark, wondering if they were going to feed me soon, or give me a chance to take a piss, I made a decision.
Recent events had proven it wasn't enough to just get out of MONIKER. If I wanted to stay out, I had to get Karen to leave as well. Also, probably I needed to take Calix along, otherwise Karen would just go back and that would be the end of that carefully laid plan.
Okay, I had a plan. I had a goal. I just needed someone to come and LET ME OUT. So I could get started.
Also, note to self, stay out of Gratuszcak's lab. Dude was creepy, and no matter what controls MONIKER thought they had on him, I was pretty sure they weren't working.
∞ ∞ ∞
After a few days, they got around to remembering about me. This time they flipped on the light when they came downstairs. Normally, they just shoved an MRE and a bottle of water through bars, swept up any garbage left from the previous meal, and left without saying a word.
This time, though, they'd unlocked the door to the cage and motioned me out. The handcuffs allowed my wrists to heal somewhat, although they still sported a circle of raw, swollen flesh where my skin reacted to the muted silver.
When I stood up, one of them pointed at me with the cattle prod, and the other snapped a pair of leg irons on. Same deal. Silver coated with steel. Great. Not only was I not going to change anytime soon, but now I got to do the convict shuffle wherever the hell they were taking me.
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