by JJ Jones
“What was that?”
Shit. He was going to have to act a whole lot more subdued and out of sorts if his plan was going to work. The last thing he needed was for this guard to realize that he wasn’t all doped up the way he was supposed to be. He made an effort to slump down, make his posture look as if he was grappling with severe bouts of dizziness that might very well knock him out for good. He made his face slack, his eyes as dead as he could manage, and repeated like a mantra the need for his voice to sound drunk, uninterested.
“He’s awake when we’re asleep. Funny, that’s all.”
“Right,” the guard laughed, seemingly satisfied that his charge was sufficiently out of commission, “he’s awake while you’re asleep. I like that, like the way that sounds. In fact, I think I’ll use that in the future, if you don’t mind.”
Chase smiled a dumb smile, even going as far as to let a little bit of drool fall out of the side of his mouth. If he was going to play the drugged up inmate, he was going to play it as well as he possibly could. He was going to sell it and then he was going to get the fuck out of here.
There were parts of the plan he was formulating that still didn’t really sit all that well with him, but desperate times called for desperate measures. It was a saying he had heard many times and never really understood until now. Now he knew it to be true. When a man’s back was up against a wall, when he had been provided with no recourse or real way out, he would do just about anything to take care of himself.
He would do things he never would have dreamed of doing back when he was safe. Because when that survival instinct kicked in, it drowned just about everything else right out. Even being in the military hadn’t made Chase realize that the way he did now. This little adventure of his was causing him to remember all sorts of things about himself, some of which he felt he may have been better off not knowing at all.
“He’s awake,” Chase repeated once for good measure, hoping the stupid guard would do more than just offer his congratulations on a well-received turn of phrase. He hadn’t just been talking to hear himself talk. He really did want to know what the deal was with that.
“He’s awake and you’re asleep. Ain’t that just the truth? All of you asleep and too doped up to know it. He’s awake, my man, because his sentence has been passed. He’s not going anywhere and he knows it. That’s one part. He’s also our first success story. He’s not dangerous now that we found a way to block the gene that allows him to shift.
“We neutered him, took the animal right out of him, we did. The only thing he has that’s of any danger to us now is knowledge and there ain’t no way he’s ever getting out of here except for in a body bag. So that’s why he’s awake. Could be you some day, who knows? That’s what we’re headed to see. We’ve got to hear your verdict before we know which area you’re gonna be heading to.”
Oh sweet Christ. Out of all of the things Chase had imagined happening in this place, it had never even occurred to him that they would be looking for a way to “neuter” them. He didn’t even know how to fathom that. What would he be if he wasn’t a shifter? What kind of life would he lead knowing that the blood coursing through his veins was only half of what it had once been?
It made him sick with rage just thinking about it. These people had no right. What they were doing was sick, depraved. They had no right and whether he succeeded or not, he was going to make them wish they had never taken him in.
“All right, put your best foot forward and all of that. It'll be over soon, and, chances are, you won’t remember a thing about it, anyway.”
Without any further explanation or preparation, Chase was shoved into a big courtroom that smelled of fresh mahogany and had blinding lights beating down on him. He could feel his body trying to cave, responding to those lights in the way he was intended to, but he fought it with everything he had. Even if it made him feel like death, he wasn’t going to let this get the better of him. Just a little bit longer and he would be out.
All he needed was for his body to stay strong, to keep struggling to adapt (if that was what it was doing) for a little while longer. He tugged his wrists lightly against his cuffs, checking to make sure that he could still get the better of them.
“Mr. Bends.”
“Hello there.”
It was the oddest feeling. Beside the desk he was directed to stand behind was a woman he couldn’t remember ever having met. At the same time, however, he knew in his bones that he had met her, that he had interacted with her quite a bit, actually. Even in this admittedly terrifying situation, this witch trial, this farce of justice, something about her made him feel calm.
Even though he knew she was associated with his enemies, when Chase looked into her eyes he saw compassion, something he hadn’t seen from anyone since being taken. It wasn’t a lot to hold onto but it was something, which was more than he had only seconds ago.
He gave her a small, strange smile, and she looked at him with uncomprehending eyes. Maybe she could see more life in him than he was supposed to have. Hell, maybe the compassion he thought he saw had only been wishful thinking and any minute now she would alert the guards that something was wrong. He didn’t care. Something about those eyes made it feel like it would be OK.
“Guilty.”
Chase’s head snapped to attention, swivelled around to look for the source of the loud, booming voice.
“Guilty!”
It boomed again, delivering his sentence without him having any awareness at all of the proceedings of the trial. How many other shifters had this already happened to? How many other people? People who were guilty of nothing other than being something this governing body didn’t like. He could see the gleeful reactions of the few people allowed inside the courtroom and knew that there would be no objection on their parts.
He could already see the guards patting each other on the back, grinning and fingering little syringes strapped to their Kevlar vests. They were going to shoot him up again, drug him and carry him off to wake up with more giant gaps in his memory. And where would they haul him off to? Would they experiment on him, use his insides for their personal gain?
Would they block what was special about him, too? Neuter him like a dog? Or maybe they would just put him down, put him out of his misery. Out of those options, the last one seemed to be the best. You knew you were in a bad situation when death was the best option you had.
But there wasn’t time for this now! There wasn’t time for him to contemplate the nature of his confinement if he ever hoped to make his escape. If he kept thinking it over this way, they would take him down and everything would be done for. He turned back to the girl, searching for those kind eyes once again, and saw they were filled with horror.
It was a shame, really, that he was going to have to bring her any further into this than he had to. It would have been better if he had been able to use someone who didn’t look quite so sympathetic, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“I want to let you know that I’m sorry, miss. Really, I am.”
“For what?” she asked with a frightened, confused voice.
He thought that she would start to back away from him then but she didn’t, she stood her ground. Good. That was going to make things easier.
“For this.”
Chase opened his mouth, practically unhinging it in the process, and let out a low, menacing sound. It was a sound that began somewhere in the pit of his stomach, sounding like a drum of warning being hit from far away. It was a sound that grew, that built momentum like the smallest spark transforming into a roaring flame until he was roaring with a ferocity that made the judge and guards cower in fear.
He could smell that at least one of them had lost control of his bowels. That was the kind of fear he was inspiring and he had only just begun. His arms, still bound behind his back with the cuffs he knew this tribunal believed to be unbreakable, began to stretch, to unfold in their constraints.
It took such a laughably small amount
of force for him to break those cuffs now that he had managed to remove himself from the influence of their lights, their drugs. He could see by the masks of fear these big men wore on their faces now, that he had been right about their arrogance being their downfall.
They had never entertained even for a moment the possibility that any of their charges would break free. They believed they were too smart, that their plans were too fool-proof for any kind of breakout to occur. They thought they had made an inescapable prison and they had been wrong.
That was a hell of a thing to be wrong about when your prisoners had the kind of abilities these shifters had. All it took was one, one escaped shifter to put a wrench in all of their genius plans. All it took was one shifter who found a way to change and then they were all done for.
“Jesus! Someone shoot the bastard! Gun him down, gun him down!”
“We can’t just shoot him in open court!”
“Do it, god damnit! Do it right now or we’re all gonna burn.”
Chase’s roar morphed slowly into a sinister, menacing laugh. It was too late for that now. They could shoot him all they wanted and it wouldn’t make any difference at all. Not unless they had developed bullets that could penetrate a dragon’s skin. If they had, then so be it. He was banking on his assumption that they hadn’t yet made it that far down their road to tyranny and success.
Men were surrounding him now, all of them taking aim, but even as they did so, his body began to grow, up, up, up, unfolding itself with a strange kind of grace. His skin took on an opaque quality, then grew into scales, scales that plated his body like armor. He let out another scream, this one a sound of mingled ecstasy and pain, as his shoulder blades separated and gave way to the wings sprouting out of his back.
Nobody ever said shifting was entirely without pain, and this was his. But the further those wings unfolded the better it felt until he was almost entirely beast, snarling at criminals surrounding him and taking their bullets as if they were no more than a shower of water.
His eyes narrowed and his face lengthened, all of his senses heightened now. He could see everything these men were going to do, one beat before they acted, could smell the stench of fear hanging over them all like a veil.
They could not stop him and they knew it. Their only hope was that this hastily made up courtroom could hold him, but if they believed that there was a chance of that happening, then they did not know nearly as much about shifters as they thought they did.
And clearly they believed they knew a lot because even now, after having witnessed a man shift into a full blown dragon, they were still shooting at him. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t hurt him, he had proven that. He had rendered their weapons null and void and now he was ready to take flight. It had all been so much easier than he had expected it to be. He was going to be free. He could almost smell the fresh air.
“Stop it! Just stop it, can’t you? You’re scaring him! Lower your weapons, this isn’t helping. This isn’t the way to do this!”
It was the pretty little strawberry blonde, the one he had locked eyes with, whom he was so sure there had been some kind of a connection with. In all of the commotion and his burning desire to be free, he had almost forgotten her.
He would not be able to forget her now, however. He was pretty sure he would not forget her for as long as he lived because as human as she was, as clearly associated with the people responsible for doing these terrible things to Chase in the first place, she was currently standing in front of him with her arms stretched out, using her body as a shield between him and his enemies. He was a dragon. She was just a young woman, skilled in her field, perhaps, but still only a human, and she was attempting to protect him. It was oddly touching, although unnecessary, to see a person do a thing like that. It was exactly what he needed, too, to restore any sense of good feeling he had towards the human race as a whole. It crossed his mind that he would like to thank her someday, that he wished he knew her name, and then he began to flap his massive wings towards the ceiling.
“No! Please!”
Pop, pop, pop! A quick succession of fire, none of which would hurt him. Too bad the girl didn’t know that. There was no need for her to try and stop the frightened guards. No matter how hard they tried, they weren’t going to be able to hurt him. But they could hurt the girl. They could, and they had. He smelled the blood before he saw it.
There was a copper metallic scent so pungent he could almost taste it and a sickly sweet undertone that signified a life leaking out of a body one drop at a time. Just another senseless casualty of another senseless war. What a fucking shame. She had been brave, this girl, he could see that in just the minimal amount of interaction the two of them had had. If he had to guess, he would say she had honor, too.
Apparently her great weakness was that she saw shifters as people and not monsters and it was enough to wound her over. Kill her, actually, from the looks of it. What a waste. Maybe they could fix her. But no, they couldn’t. He could see that. And even if they could have, they would never see her the same way now, not after what she had done. She would be branded a traitor.
They would never trust her the way they had before she had intervened on his behalf and there was a good chance her life would quickly unravel, eventually becoming unlivable. He could see that future for her in his mind’s eye, could see her being cast aside if, and only if, she survived the surgeries she would need to undergo to stay alive.
He could just leave her there to that fate. He could, but he wouldn’t, not when he knew how easily he could make her well.
“You shouldn’t,” the voice that sounded like his sister whispered in warning inside of his head, “it’s too risky. Just leave her. It’s collateral damage. It’s part of war, and this is war. Just leave her here.”
He couldn’t do it. Even as that same voice told him what a fool he was being, he scooped her up as gently as he could manage in his great talons and finally took flight, moving faster and faster towards the ceiling above him, the only thing containing him at this point.
He had to believe that he would get enough speed before he reached it to plow through, or else he would be no better off than those birds that got trapped inside a supermarket and flew around in a panic until they wore themselves out and stopped, giving up and waiting to be captured.
That thought alone must have been enough to quicken his pace, though, and when he reached the barrier he plowed through it like it was no tougher than a piece of drawing paper. He sped ever upwards, faster and faster until he was sure that if his cargo hadn’t already passed out from lack of blood she would drop into a dead faint. He closed his talons just a little bit tighter, dreading the awful idea that he might accidentally drop her. He flew; he had no idea where he was going but still he flew.
He would have to stop soon and he knew it. The girl he had brought along with him wouldn’t last much longer without his help. He would just have to hope that he had gone far enough for a stop not to get them both picked right back up again. It would be a gamble but, then again, pretty much everything he had done since being abducted from his home had been a gamble. Why stop now? It had gotten him this far.
“Come on, you can do it. I know it hurts but you’ve got to open your eyes, OK? Please, open those pretty eyes. Don’t tell me I was too late, after all.”
Chase had pushed it for as long and as far as he could before finally finding a secluded bluff that he could land on. He had no idea how far he had flown but he had to trust that it would be enough. Even tearing through the air, he could smell a change in the girl he carried with him.
The scent of her blood was changing. He knew that smell. It mean that she would not have much longer. It meant that she was in as perilous a condition as he could allow without just throwing her life away entirely. Now that they were stationary and he was laboring over her, he feared that he had misjudged the situation and that his doing so would have deadly consequences.
“Come on, work, god damnit! C
ome on!”
The thing about dragons shifters, the thing that he suspected the good people who had stolen him did not yet know, was that dragon blood was the most special blood of all. Dragon blood was imbued with the ability to heal.
That was why he had brought her with him against all of the better judgement screaming inside his head to just leave her, to let her suffer the consequences of having taken up with men that believed it was OK to do a thing like imprison so many innocent people for no reason aside from being different.
But he couldn’t do that and live with himself so he had taken her, flown her to this safe (or hopefully safe enough) spot and cut his own flesh so that he could give her some of the blood that would make her well. Except that it wasn’t working. Had they done something to him?
Had they discovered what his blood could do after all, taken that ability away from him the same way they had robbed that man in prison of his entire shifting abilities? But no, he could still feel that special vitality coursing through his veins. It was still within him to save this girl.
Maybe he had just waited too long. Maybe his fear for himself had clouded his judgement and now she would die because he hadn't stopped to give her aid quickly enough. If that was it, he wasn’t sure he would be able to live with himself. All he had ever wanted to do was help people. He couldn’t stand the idea that he would be the reason for this beautiful girl’s death.