by Mandy Rosko
Which was another reason to hesitate in telling Albert and Beverly.
They were sitting in the safe house, helpless. Maybe this would let them feel as though they were getting somewhere.
That things weren’t quite so hopeless.
Or maybe Alyce was a sucker and she wanted to help her friends.
She checked the time on her phone. It was still early, but she had wasted enough time. The task force was being put together now. They would be leaving in a few minutes.
Alyce wasn’t a fighter. She wouldn’t be on the front lines of the attack, but she was the director and would stand beside the operation leaders.
She could be there for when Beverly and Albert arrived.
Fuck, she couldn’t believe she was actually doing this.
She pressed the green call button on the screen and pulled the phone to her ear.
It sounded like she’d awoken them when Albert answered.
“Yeah?”
“Hey, look, something just came in. You’re never going to believe this.”
Albert suddenly sounded a little more alert. Alyce heard Beverly’s voice in the background, but Albert sounded as strong and alert as though he hadn't had a bullet removed from him a few hours ago.
“What is it?”
“This could be nothing.” Albert hung up the phone with Alyce and joined Beverly in frantically getting dressed.
“I know you don’t want me pointing out that you shouldn’t be running around right now because you got shot—” She didn’t know why she said the words. She knew it didn’t make a difference to him.
“And you’ve also been through the wringer recently.”
“Then maybe we should stay here. This could easily be a trap or just some kid playing a prank for attention.” She wasn’t sure why anyone anywhere would want to do something like that, but her gut was telling her that something was off.
She already knew there were all kinds of people out there, and some of them really fucking sucked.
This could be a trap or a cruel trick or Alyce could have been mistaken, but it was still possible the tip could pan out.
So they were flying out the door and to their car, which had been dropped off that morning.
Albert took the keys from their FUC guard, and she jumped into the passenger seat, even though she felt a foreboding. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want Albert to go.
As the miles passed, Beverly realized that the hum of the engine was the only sound. Neither of them had said a word since they started on the road. “This feels like we’re having a fight.”
“We’re not fighting. We’re disagreeing. There’s a difference.” The way his hands gripped the steering wheel seemed to contradict his statement.
“Yeah, but it still feels like you’re pissed off at me right now.”
“Not at you. At...fuck, the world, I guess. At my chest and stomach for hurting so much, and at Alyce if this turns out to be nothing.”
Tall trees whooshed by them as they drove along the highway into the hills, getting farther and farther away from the FUCN Academy, from the town, from everything, including the rapport they’d managed to build up between them in the hotel safe house.
This was going to follow them around for a long time. Beverly could tell that much right now.
“What if we never find out what happened and why?”
Albert frowned just a little. He turned to face her for a brief second before putting his eyes back on the road.
“We will.”
“But what if we don’t? Not all cases get solved. Not everything has a reason. Sometimes people do terrible things just for the sake of doing them.”
“And a lot of the times, someone out there has enough of an ego that we can find out exactly what they’ve been up to and why they did what they did, and we can use that to lead us directly to them.”
Albert’s fingers clenched around the steering wheel. His lips thinned, and he stared at the road ahead as though he really did expect to find his redemption there.
But then his face, and his voice, softened. “If you’re worried that we’re going to give up—”
“No.” She cut him off. “No, I’m not worried about that.”
He looked at her again before facing the road once more. “Then...what is it? Don’t you want to go? To see?”
She thought about that. Really thought about it. It could be the closure they needed to move past this. “I do, but not if it’s going to be a waste of time. And not if it will take you, your thoughts and mind, away from me for a while.”
Albert pressed his lips together briefly before speaking. “I wouldn’t ever lose you in this. I’m...really fucking furious, to be honest, about what happened to you that I couldn’t stop it. It’s not even about me, but I’m fucking angry. You should remember our lives together, but you don’t. You have your instincts, and that’s great, but I want to find the people who did this to you and make them suffer. If you could see the shit that goes through my head, thinking about what I would do… but if I put screws beneath their fingernails, I don’t think you’d look at me the same.”
Beverly leaned back in her seat. He said this hadn’t happened to him, but it had. He was part of her, so her memory loss and her kidnapping affected him, too. Maybe he was just too proud to want to say it, or he thought it would be selfish to act it out. She didn’t want him bottling that stuff up.
But she didn’t want it destroying him either.
Beverly reached for his right hand, taking it off the steering wheel and threading their fingers together. She felt him tense under the touch, but that was all right.
“I’m your wife. What happens to you affects me, and what happens to me affects you. I don’t mind if you’re mad.”
“It’s not the same thing,” he said, confirming what she already knew was going through his head.
“It’s close enough. That’s why I don’t want this eating at you. Just promise me that, no matter what, even if nothing comes from this, even if we’re looking for years, you don’t get so caught up in finding who did this to me that you lose sight of us.”
He looked at her again, holding her gaze for a little longer this time before looking back at the road.
“I just found out that I have you for my husband. I don’t want to lose you already.”
His hand squeezed hers, and despite everything, despite knowing he should be resting in bed, that this was probably going to lead to nowhere, Beverly was relieved.
“We’re almost there,” Albert said, the dense forest parting just enough to reveal a few cabins in the distance.
And for every one Beverly saw, she was convinced there were going to be more she didn’t.
“What is this place supposed to be?”
“Old camping spot for the tourists,” Albert said. “It was shut down after a forest fire. Too many people not being responsible enough, and it seemed most people wanted to be closer to Vancouver anyway.”
Beverly frowned. “It doesn’t look like there was ever a fire around here.”
Albert grinned. “There was a small one, but that was just the story. FUC may have had something to do with getting the humans away from here, buying up the land for conservation when someone shot one too many moose that turned out to be a shifter.”
Beverly, as a shifter that had turned into a prey animal, felt herself tensing up with sympathy and pain. “So, this is all FUC’s land?”
“They bought it all out, but really it’s just empty forest. Sometimes humans will wander in here, hiking, taking pictures of themselves hugging the trees or whatever, but there’s no hunting or camping here anymore, and that was supposed to be the point.”
Albert turned onto a dirt road.
“Though,” he added, “if it’s true that someone came all the way out here just to start up a new lab, if this is where you were, all the way out here, then FUC will need to do something about it. Can’t just leave it empty with all these old cabins out her
e if someone’s going to turn them into a site for holding shifters.”
“What did the Mastermind’s hideouts look like?”
“High-tech stuff. Hidden away, partially underground, for years. Always fully staffed. That lunatic had the funds for their project.”
That got Beverly’s mind going. She could envision that right now, see it almost as clearly as though it were right in front of her.
Had she been kept in something so horrifying and clinical?
It didn’t seem sensible, but Beverly found herself eager to see the place where she had been held hostage and experimented on. Like it might be the missing piece to helping her put her memory back together. If she got this piece, maybe the rest would come back and fit back into place.
Around the bend, when the trees parted, her high hopes came crashing down. Vehicles were parked in front of a simple log cabin, and FUC agents milled around.
Beverly could see that the roof was caved in before Albert pulled in any closer, and he cursed before slamming his hand down on the wheel.
This was clearly not the industrial lab they had thought it would be.
It was a shack.
Beverly fell back in her seat, staring up at the ceiling of the car. “Goddammit.”
She and Albert were silent in their disappointment and anger. “You were right. We shouldn’t have bothered.”
“No.” Beverly put her hand onto Albert’s knee, leaning closer to him. “We needed to see this, and now we did. It was a good thing we came.”
He looked at her as though he didn’t entirely believe what she was saying, and ten minutes ago, Beverly wouldn’t have either.
But right in that moment, she did believe it.
“I mean it. I’m glad I saw this.”
“Does anything here look familiar at all?”
Good question. Even if this place was a run-down shack, it might still have some connection to what had happened. Maybe even just as a waypoint to where she had been taken.
She stared good and hard.
It was difficult to tell with so many FUC agents wandering around, taking pictures and searching.
“I don’t know. I don’t...think so. I mean it’s hard to tell.”
“Yeah, don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll get a write-up from Alyce later.”
Speaking of whom, Alyce looked up from the papers she had been examining, raised her hand up, and waved before rushing to their vehicle.
“Shit,” Albert cursed. “Was hoping she wasn’t here right now.”
“Try to be nice. She was doing us a favor.”
Albert grumbled something under his breath at that, but he rolled down the window when Alyce came to stand by the driver’s side door.
“I’m glad you both made it.”
“You are?” Beverly sat a little straighter. “Did you find something?”
Alyce nodded. “A few somethings. We have to wait a little while. The agents are still inside.”
“Inside?” Albert asked, looking at the rundown shack. “How many do you need to search the place?”
“More than you might think. Look at this.” She pushed forward a clipboard, showing them a scrawled drawing of some kind. “I just did this, but you should get the basic idea. We thought it might be nothing, too, and when we got here, well, you can see what we found, but the interesting bit was the locks. The locks on the doors were brand-new, as though they hadn’t been sitting there, rusting for years. The roof is caving in, yes, but the door and the walls, still good. The windows locked. Everything looking as though it’s meant to keep vagrants out. Then there were the other security measures.”
Beverly didn’t see much on the paper other than really badly drawn little houses with lines leading to and from them, but Alyce’s excitement was starting to pull her in. “What other security measures?”
She gestured wildly. “We took them down, but they were up in the trees. Motion sensors, as though someone was watching this place. Other FUC agents have already been sent to one of the nearest cabins, and they confirmed the same thing. They broke the locks, entered, and found a hatch leading down.”
“What?” Albert deadpanned.
“Yes, a hatch, leading down. Nothing special, or too deep, mind you, but it looks like someone came here a few years ago and dug tunnels between the cabins. Already the FUC agents are finding rooms down there, and if you look around, you can see evidence of heavy machinery in the terrain, and even where they scraped against the trees.”
Beverly got out of the car that instant.
Albert called out to her, but his voice sounded far away.
She had to see this for herself.
Fifteen
She would make this up to Albert later. She could still hear him calling out her name.
For a half a second, it looked as though some clueless agents were about to get in her way, and she was getting herself ready to charge right through them.
Maybe she had channeled her inner saber-toothed beaver, because they moved away really fast.
Even if she wasn’t a saber-toothed beaver anymore, beavers still had an awesome bite, and it was nice to see that these assholes knew to get out of her way before she showed them the damage she could do.
She ran into that cabin and just followed the path set out for her without thinking. It was there, so why not follow it?
Which was easy enough considering the floor had been opened up to a set of steep metal stairs, which she practically flew down.
Lights along the walls were lit, but they were so small and yellow and useless in their dimness that someone from FUC had decided to leave out brighter lamps along the edges of the stairs.
Thank God, because she was moving at the speed of light.
Everyone she passed by took one look at her and stepped out of her way. She barely had to snap her teeth at anyone for the trouble.
She couldn’t stop. The deeper she went into that hole, the more something pulled her.
Like an invisible string was connected to the back of her belly button and yanking her along.
Something important was down here. Something she needed.
Something that was a part of her.
Answers. That was it. Her answers were down here.
And...
A baby’s cry?
It was enough to give her pause. She stopped.
All she could hear was that sound, and it shot straight to her heart, gripping her like an ice-cold hand.
For a hair of a second, she couldn’t move. She could only listen.
Beverly regained control over her legs slowly. The feeling wasn’t quite back in her lower half yet, but she was still able to move.
And suddenly, the men and women of FUC who she walked by in the long cement hall seemed to hear that noise with her, and the harder they looked at her, the more Beverly began to suspect that it wasn’t just the fear of her teeth that was motivating them to let her pass.
There were doors down here. Many doors. All were open, likely after having been checked and cleared by the FUC agent. She didn’t see inside the rooms. Didn’t peek in to see if they held beds or tables or any little details from her time there that might spark memories that would horrify her if she gave them a chance.
The cry of the baby was getting louder.
Because it was hungry.
And that was the most important thing. The child was hungry, and that needed to be taken care of.
The hallway seemed to go on forever, but the cry of the child seemed to be coming from one open door in particular. Where the light was the brightest.
She stepped around the corner.
The room seemed to be someone’s attempt at being clean and clinical, but the damp air of the space underground, the metal bunks on the side of the wall, and the dirt in the space, even the orange rust forming where moisture collected on literally everything metallic, definitely showed her this was not where a baby should be.
There was nothing soft or warm about this space.
Just some old, thin blankets that had been made up into some sort of nest for a small bundle.
A couple of FUC agents stood there, backs turned to her as they looked down at the bundle.
The baby continued to cry.
“You’re not feeding him right.”
“It’s a bottle. Why wouldn’t he take it?”
Because the wrong person was trying to feed him.
“Can I try?”
Both agents turned back and looked at her, as though they were shocked she was there at all.
The teacher in her wanted to reprimand them for letting someone sneak up in them at all, but the instant they turned and the child was within sight, her vision tunneled.
She had to hold, had to touch.
Hers. Hers. Hers.
Beverly held her hands out, stepping forward, not waiting for anyone to tell her that she couldn’t do this. That she couldn’t touch.
The FUC agent seemed to fall into a trance similar to Beverly’s.
The important part was they put the child into her arms, because, if they hadn’t, there would have been hell to pay.
The crying immediately ceased.
Brown eyes. Not her brown eyes, they were deeper, like Albert’s.
“You didn’t even take the bottle. He stopped crying already.”
Her throat closed. “A he?”
She didn’t hear the response.
She could only look.
He was beautiful. His cheeks chubby enough for clearly what was a newborn. Maybe a few weeks old. If that.
The healing process of shifters often meant that preemies had a bit more of a head start than any human who left the womb. Shifter babies brought into the world too soon faced fewer challenges than human babies, because their tiny bodies were able to use their advanced healing properties to help them develop and grow more quickly.
The child blinked up at her. He opened his mouth in a gummy smile, and with a sledgehammer to her heart, everything came back to her.
Everything about her life with Albert. About their marriage. Their excitement to bring their child into the world.
Her life was back.
Beverly held her son close to her chest, careful to be gentle with his tiny, fragile body even when she trembled and sobbed.