by Dawn Steele
“Is there anything you can do?”
Aaron smiled sadly. “Depends on which angle you look at. If you’re asking that if I have the power to free him, that answer is ‘no’.”
“Do you have the power to at least ensure he’s not maltreated?”
He gazed at her for a long while.
“I can pull a few strings,” he said.
“Thank you. That goes for his Mom and Dad.” She rubbed her belly. “I desperately want to see him, but I’m afraid they’d take me in and throw away the key.”
“You don’t know what might happen next. It’s anyone’s guess.”
“What about you guys? Isn’t there a council or something?”
“You mean the shifter council? It exists. It’s called . . . creatively . . . the Council. They’re based in London.”
There was a glimmer of deadpan in his tone.
“What are they doing about this? Aren’t they shitting their pants?”
“You mean about what Rust and Moira and Connor can possibly spill on them?”
“Well, yeah. They are lab rats in waiting. What’s happening to Rust can happen to them.”
To be honest, Kate wasn’t that concerned about what would happen to the rest of the selfish shifters in the world who were content to lie low while the O’Briens suffered for their cause. All it took was for one of them to break.
“I’m sure they are meeting even as we speak,” Aaron assured her. “Everyone in the shifter world is quite concerned about what is happening.”
“So . . . can you get back to me on what you will do to help Rust?”
Aaron laid a kind hand on her shoulder.
He said, “Leave it up to me.”
4
Aaron watched the limo pull out of his drive.
Poor girl. She had no idea what she was in for. Nor did Rust and Moira and Connor, it would appear.
He had been talking to the Council Prime before Kate showed up. As one of the richer council members, he was consulted on all things American. And this was a very, very major issue.
The whole shifter world was going to tumble down like a deck of cards, and their fates rested on three shifters.
Three fucking shifters.
It wasn’t that Aaron and the Council did not trust these people. The O’Briens would do whatever it took to hold out as long as possible. The three of them were tough, well-bred and well-trained shifters. They may have wavered on the point of discovery by people like Kate Penney, but who among the shifters hasn’t?
No. Aaron trusted the O’Briens not to spill the shifter secrets all right. As much as they could hold out. On their own.
But there were three of them to be used to play against one another.
And the FBI had other methods.
Methods the Council was not willing to risk.
5
Alyssa Foley perused her log on Rust O’Brien.
REACTION TO DIFFERENT STIMULI
PAIN (electrocution at 10 mAmp)
No change.
COLD (0 degrees Celsius)
No change.
HEAT (50 degrees Celsius)
No change.
She had not expected Rust to transform under benign circumstances, and he did not.
Now it was on to the next level, like a Playstation game.
*
Rust was strapped to a chair. His wrists and ankles were cuffed to the arms and legs of the chair. He was clothed in a hospital shift, but he still looked marvelous. He would look marvelous in an orange prison jumpsuit, she figured.
Under his shift, electrodes were connected to his chest and a blood pressure cuff was placed around his arm. A metal cap was placed upon his skull and a sensor on his right index finger. They were monitoring his vital signs and neurological activity.
The chair was in a glass chamber with a digital display on the top. The outer room was more populous today, with several scientists and behavioral psychologists in attendance. Once again, four guards trained their tranquilizer guns at the chamber.
Rust glanced at his surroundings with nonchalance.
“Why don’t you get on with it?” he said in a bored air.
Alyssa was no stranger to torture, and yet she found this part particularly discomfiting. Here was a man who had done nothing wrong against America except to exist in his state of being. He had committed no crime. He had killed no one. He had not defaulted on paying his taxes. And yet here he was, about to be tortured.
“We will,” she said to him.
To the enforcer at the dials, she muttered, “Don’t kill him, Stan.”
“I would lose my job if I did.”
She cleared her throat and spoke into the microphone. “Rust, we are going to turn up the temperature.”
“Go right ahead,” he said. “See if I care.”
His green eyes raked her face, and she felt a shiver.
Stan said, “Going up to fifty-five degrees. We stopped at fifty last time.”
He turned up a dial. The ceiling of the glass chamber glowed red.
The display on the glass chamber crept up slowly from twenty-two to thirty. Then thirty-five. Forty. Fifty.
Fifty-five.
Beads of sweat dotted on Rust’s forehead although he did not physically flinch.
“It’s a sauna in there,” Stan said.
“Turn it up,” she said.
The display went up to sixty. Then sixty-five.
It was about to become an oven.
“Don’t cook him,” she added.
Rust’s vital signs were accelerating. His pulse rate and respiration rose. His neural activity was muted.
Seventy.
His pulse rate rose to a hundred beats per minute.
“Shall I go higher?” the enforcer said.
After deliberation, she said. “Yes.”
Seventy-five.
Rust’s skin was very flushed. His face was awash with sweat.
“OK. That’s it,” she said. “No more.”
“No transformation.”
“Wait a few minutes more.”
She was on pins and needles. Angst even. It was hot in there. Really hot.
Rust’s eyes were shut. He was withstanding it. Hating her for doing it to him, probably.
Now why did that make her feel regret?
She said, “Heat doesn’t do it then. Turn down the dial.”
Stan turned the dial the other way. The temperature gauge crept lower. Seventy. Then sixty.
Fifty.
Rust clenched his fists, visibly relieved. His sweat pooled and dripped off his chin.
Forty.
Thirty.
“He’s dehydrated,” Stan said. “Shall we get him out?”
“No. Not yet. Turn the temperature down.”
Twenty.
“Lower.”
Rust relaxed.
The display crept to ten.
Five.
Then zero.
Rust was turning pale now. Conserving heat. His shivering mechanism had not kicked in yet. But his hairs on his forearms all stood on end.
“His heart rate is slowing down,” the enforcer said. “Shall I go below zero?”
The stress on his body must be tremendous, Alyssa thought.
“Yes,” she said.
Minus five.
Rust began to shiver in earnest. The glass began to mist from the inside.
“Lower.”
Minus ten.
“He’s having bradycardia. His heart rate has dropped to less than sixty beats per minute.”
She hesitated.
How much could he take? She could kill him. She could give him frostbite and permanent damage.
“His neural activity has gone down again. I don’t think he’s going to shift,” said one of the professors.
She made a decision.
“Turn the temperature up.”
Slowly, the glass chamber began to heat up. Up, up and up went the gauge.
When it w
ent up to twenty, Rust snapped, “You done torturing me already? Or do you have to check ‘extreme pain’ off your list?”
His voice broke a little, and she acknowledged that his body had gone under extreme duress.
“We’ll let you rest today,” she said.
“No.” He clenched his fists. “I’m right here. So let’s do it. Let’s get it over with.”
She wondered what was going through his mind. Did he want to get through with this as quickly as possible to spare his parents the gorier aspects of being a lab rat? Or in this case, a lab shifter?
“It’s your call,” Stan said to her.
She gazed into Rust’s potent green eyes. He stared back at her. Belligerently. Watchfully. She wondered how he would react beyond this if she pushed the button, so to speak.
“We did 10 miliAmperes the other day. What do you want to do now?” Stan said.
“Push it up to 20,” she said.
She knew that would cause extreme pain.
“20 it is.”
“And give him a mouth guard.”
A guard opened the door to the glass chamber and inserted a mouth guard in Rust’s mouth so that he would not bite his tongue.
“Are you ready?” she asked Rust once the chamber was sealed again.
He nodded once, although his eyes spat hate.
The enforcer pushed another dial forward, and the electrical current flowed from Rust’s armbands to his flesh, jolting him.
Rust gritted his teeth.
“Arrrrr!” he let loose.
“His pulse rate is a hundred and twenty.”
“Push it to 30.”
Up went the dial. This time, Rust’s body jerked forward and backward in obvious electrocution shock.
“He’s still not transforming,” Stan observed.
Could he survive this? The doctors were standing by for respiratory arrest. She was the one who made the hard decisions in the room.
“Push it up to 40.”
Her chest tightened.
Rust’s body spasmed violently in the throes of electric shock. Blood ran out of the side of his mouth despite the mouth guard.
Stan turned the dial down, and Rust’s body collapsed on the chair.
“Should we send the doctor in?” the enforcer asked.
“Wait.”
Alyssa checked Rust’s vital signs on the monitor. His EKG was all over the place, but once the current had abated, the rhythm was settling into a normal pattern.
“No, he’s OK.”
He was tough. Very tough. He raised his head once again and regarded her out of those impossibly green, glittering eyes.
Hate-filled eyes.
“Do 50,” she said.
Rust’s body shuddered and twitched like a livewire. And then it happened. The transformation. It was swift and brutal and violent.
In a matter of seconds, Rust’s body became the tiger’s. The tiger sprang out of the hospital shift and his bonds, breaking the wires and cables and straps which held him. The guards aimed their guns.
“Oh shit,” Stan said.
The tiger crashed his body against the glass chamber. The glass was fortified, but it still cracked with the impact. Jagged streaks ran through the surface.
The guards’ guns were all trained on the tiger.
There was a palpable buzz in the control room.
“Should we be alarmed?” said one of the scientists.
“No,” Alyssa said, more confidently than she felt. “The snipers will take him down.”
Please hold, she prayed to the gods of chamber glass.
The tiger crashed against the glass again, snarling and growling. The hatred in his green eyes was ferociously intensified. He had turned more beast than man now, and the beast was wounded, tortured and mad.
The glass cracked a little further.
It was amazing, Alyssa marveled. The glass was strong enough to withstand bullets.
The tiger rammed himself again and again at the glass, until it finally broke.
The first tranquilizer dart fired and struck the tiger in the forechest. However, this did not seem to stop the tiger as he bounded through the break. Amid showers of glass onto the floor, he sprang at Alyssa.
It was a magnificent leap, and it was done under a hail of further darts – all which pockmarked the tiger’s magnificent coat. But Alyssa and the scientists were further protected behind another wall of even more fortified glass for incidences like these.
The tiger struck this second layer of glass, and slid backward. He roared his rage and futility. He lifted his paw, and wavered on his balance. The drugs were taking effect. Alyssa and the scientists watched, hearts in their mouths, as the tiger swayed on his feet and finally – reluctantly – crashed onto his side on the floor.
Alyssa was heartsick. The tiger was such a proud, magnificent beast.
She watched as the doctors opened the door to the glass wall and rushed to the tiger, who was changing back to Rust’s human body. When the quick metamorphosis was complete, Rust lay there – eyes closed, naked and broken. Seven tranquilizer darts were embedded in his torso. Even more lay on the floor.
“Oh wow,” said Stan, leaning back into his chair. “What happens now?”
He hates me.
“We’ll let him mend,” Alyssa said. “I would imagine I’m not his favorite person right now.”
“No, I mean about the experimentation. What are you going to do next?”
Alyssa wrote down:
EXTREME PAIN (electrocution at 50 mAmp)
Transformation.
(Component of rage?)
She said, “I wonder how he would react to intense pleasure?”
6
Kate waited, as she always did, for her visitor at Finnegan’s.
When Rita Cunningham appeared, she was a totally different person. At least, she looked different. Her normally curly hair was now done up in waves. Instead of being a redhead, she was now blonde. Her clothes and shoes were different too, and she now wore makeup.
Rita Cunningham, the most famous investigative journalist in the world, had turned into a total sophisticate.
“Hi, Kate.”
“Hi, Rita.”
Kate almost expected Rita to air kiss her cheeks, but luckily, Rita settled for her usual handshake.
“You look good,” Rita said. And then she did a double take when she saw Kate’s swollen belly. “Woah.”
“Woah is right. Sit down, please. God knows I need to.”
“Yes, you’d better.” Rita sat down on the high stool cautiously. “Obviously, this happened . . . lessee . . . at least four months ago?”
“Yes. I’ve tried to keep it under wraps. But I don’t think I can anymore. That’s why I need your help.”
“You’re dispensing with the small talk. I admire that. A woman after my own heart.” Rita’s eyes sparkled with the thought of an exclusive scoop.
“And you’re still the most persistent reporter in the universe.” Kate remembered how Rita resorted to blackmail, and her cheery smile faltered. “You’re very famous these days.”
“I know. Have you seen my Pulitzer? Oh wait, I didn’t bring it. It’s enshrined on my mantelpiece. Can you believe I actually acquired a new 19th century mantelpiece from England and had it transported brick by brick to my new townhouse?”
“Life is treating you well.”
“I went out and grabbed the bulls by the horns.”
“I know you do. Which is why I need your help.”
“If there’s something in there for me, you can always count on me.” Rita lowered her eyes to Kate’s tummy. “Are you going to give me first dibs on that?”
“Better. You’re going to get first dibs on everything. But you’re going to have to do a lot of legwork.” Kate leaned forward. “And I mean really a lot.”
“OK. Shoot.”
“They are going to take me in soon for multiple reasons. And this is what I would like you to do.”
7
Alyssa watched Rust through the hidden cameras in his bedroom. He was sleeping on his large bed. He had been sleeping a lot in the past five days.
She was worried about him.
Although he checked out OK medically after the electroshock stimulation, there was still something ‘off’ about him. Maybe she should send in a shrink to talk to him.
A shrink to talk to a shrink.
She had checked with the other handlers as to the progress of Rust’s parents. They were just as stubborn as he was with what they chose to reveal. His father, in particular, offered to go under the knife for them to get tissue samples from all his major organs for analysis – just so that his wife and son wouldn’t have to go through with it.
She felt really bad for being part of the organization which was tearing his family’s lives apart, but it had to be done in the name of discovery and mankind.
Still –
She composed herself, walked down the corridor to his (locked) apartment within the complex and rang his buzzer as was the custom to allow him to get decent, if he wasn’t already decent.
She waited for a moment, and then she swiped a card, scanned her retina with the camera mounted on the panel beside his door, and let herself in.
Rust was sitting up in bed when she entered.
“Hello, Rust.”
He did not acknowledge her.
“I know you’re angry with me,” she went on.
“Why should I be angry with you?” His expression was neutral.
“Because I tortured you to get a reaction out of you.”
It was best to have it out in the open. She hated cat and mouse. And ‘reaction’ was an understatement.
“You were doing your job,” he said.
She was aware that he was playing mind games again. Placating her. Trying to catch her off guard. What was he playing at? Didn’t he know there was no way out of this?
“Sometimes, I hate my job,” she said.
“Sometimes. But other times, you absolutely soak in the power you have over other people.”
“Are you trying to tell me that I have power over you?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“Do you resent it?”