by Chris Fox
The only thing she had to stare at was the black serial number etched into the thick manacles binding her wrists. 2746891. The silver sat atop some sort of rubber compression bands, noticeably stronger than the originals. If she stretched or flexed, they moved with her, ostensibly to prevent her from tearing them off if she shifted.
Mohn Corp. had performed extensive tests of her abilities after Steve had disappeared, and she’d been warned that the manacles were tough enough to withstand her incredible strength. She didn’t care to test the theory. Where would she go even if she could somehow break free? The place was, no doubt, ringed with soldiers, and even if she got past them, there was nowhere left for her.
Blair might live if he’d risen in the same way she had, but she had no way to find him. What would he say if she did? Steve hadn’t returned after the horrible day where they’d removed him, though in a way that had been a relief. He’d ignored her, refusing to speak no matter how many times she approached him.
Could she blame him? Not really. She’d grown attached to Blair again after his arrival. All the old attraction had come flooding back, and even in Steve’s deranged state, he must have been aware of it. Steve had been dead to her. He’d wasted away, a shell of his former self. A man who’d fawned over her for years was suddenly cold, angry, and even violent. Yet that changed nothing. She’d been horrible, both to him and to Blair.
It was funny, really. Here she was, in the midst of the worst personal crisis of her life. She’d become a mythological monster and was locked away from the world, probably never to be released. Yet what really haunted her was her treatment of the only two men she’d ever really loved. If she had to do it over again, what would she do differently? Nothing. That was the truly agonizing part. She was trapped in a web of emotions, one of her own making. She loved them both.
Bridget froze, head cocked toward the door. Footsteps echoed in the hall outside. Two pairs were approaching, a soldier to escort and one real visitor. But who were they allowing to see her? Or was it time for her execution? More tests, maybe? The possibilities danced before her as she squatted down into the least threatening position possible.
The seal around the door hissed as it popped open to reveal one of the black-clad soldiers, a bearded man with dark skin. His eyes were glued to her chest through the embarrassingly flimsy gown they’d given her. She’d grown used to that reaction, but that they couldn’t be more professional still irritated her. Were there really that few women in camp?
The soldier held the door open, eyes still fixed on her breasts as Sheila stepped into the room. She looked so odd in her black fatigues and white tank top. Were they mandating uniforms even for the research team now? And why had she come?
“Make this fast,” the soldier said, finally prying his gaze from Bridget’s chest as he stared disapprovingly at Sheila. “I’ll be right outside. If you’re not out in three minutes, I’m dragging you out.”
“I understand,” Sheila answered, patting his arm. “Thank you so much for this. I’ll be quick.”
The soldier slipped from the room, shooting Bridget one more leer before the door snapped shut with another hiss. Sheila met her gaze, nodding to the camera. Then she stepped forward, gathering Bridget’s much smaller frame into a hug.
“They can’t know you have this,” her former friend whispered, pressing a small bundle into her hands. Bridget slipped it inside her gown, dropping into a crouch to further hide it. It was small but thick. A book, maybe?
“So you’re probably wondering why I came to see you,” Sheila said, much louder for the camera’s benefit. She leaned against the wall next to the door. She ran the back of her hand across her forehead, cheeks still flushed from the cold. Bridget had almost forgotten how wintery it was outside.
“I’ll admit I’m surprised,” Bridget replied, pressing her back against the wall and cradling the book under her gown. “I know we worked together for a while when you came to see Steve and I, but all that stopped. I thought you were done with me. You said you hated me.”
“I did. For a long time, I did,” Sheila said, her back sliding down the wall as she settled opposite Bridget. “You know why. Not just what you did to Blair, but also what you did to Steve.”
“So why come, then? Nothing’s changed there. I can’t erase the sins of the past.”
“Perspective, that’s what changed,” she said, scrubbing a hand through dark-brown hair that had recently reached her shoulders. It looked much better long. “I started thinking. What would I have done in your shoes? If Steve had wanted me, I’d have taken him. But what if Blair had wanted me too? What if I’d been the pretty one? The one all the men fawn over.
“I can’t honestly say I’d have done anything differently than you. Maybe I’d have been you if our roles were reversed,” she continued, seemingly unable to make eye contact. “When you died, I really questioned my actions. Should I have cut you off, or tried to understand you? Then you came back. I had a second chance. I watched you closely while we were working together, the way you were around Steve now. You genuinely feel guilty, don’t you? I can see it weighing on you.”
“Yes,” Bridget replied without hesitation. “It eats at me. I was weak. I’ll admit it. I liked the attention, from both of them. And I love both of them. How fucked up is that? I can’t pick. I want them both. Now I have neither.”
“I’m sorry for that,” Sheila said, finally meeting her gaze.
“You mean that, don’t you?” Bridget asked, utterly shocked by the statement.
“You made a real mess of things, but we were friends for over a decade. You’re not a horrible person, Bridget. Maybe a little self-centered, but no one deserves what you’ve been through.”
“I—Sheila, I don’t know what to say. What changed your mind?”
“My health is deteriorating,” Sheila said, as if talking about the weather. “This was probably going to be my last dig, no matter what.”
“Cancer?”
“No, HIV. I’ve had it almost three years,” she admitted, using the wall to help her back to her feet. “I’m not going to die or anything, but the disease has really made me question my own mortality. My symptoms were mild until about six months ago, but since then they’ve been getting steadily worse. I can barely get out of bed a lot of days.”
“Sheila, HIV is treatable. You can get help,” Bridget said, eyes tearing up. She’d just regained her friend and felt like she was already losing her. “Can’t you talk to Mohn? There must be something they can do.”
“I’ve been to all sorts of doctors, tried all the latest medications. It does provide a lot of relief, but I’m tired all the time,” Sheila said, pausing. She cocked her head and gave a warm smile. “I’m not going to be able to do field work forever. I want to spend what time I have left doing the things I love. Learning and discovering, just like we always have. So that’s what I’m going to do. I just needed someone to know, and despite everything that’s happened, you’re still my best friend.”
“That means more to me than you’ll ever know,” Bridget said, overcome with emotion.
The door hissed a third time, popping open to reveal the soldier again. “Come on. I could get in serious trouble for this. You’re done here.”
Sheila turned to the man with a nod, one teardrop sliding down her cheek as she exited. She didn’t look back as the door closed, leaving Bridget in silence.
Bridget glanced up at the ever-present camera, shifting against the wall until she faced away from it. She carefully removed the bundle from under her gown, making very sure to interpose her body between it and the camera.
It was a pocket sized leather-bound book, the sort of journal Sheila loved to use. A small letter was tucked inside. Bridget carefully removed the yellow paper, quickly scanning the contents.
Bridget,
I came to make peace today and hope I was able to do that. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find the words, so hopefully I did. That wasn’t the only reason I
came to see you. I’ve learned some truly frightening things since we last spoke.
Using Blair’s notes and our work with Steve I have a pretty good understanding of the inner chamber now. I believe I’ve puzzled out why this exists. Something horrible is coming. I believe it’s tied to the Galactic Procession. Every 13,000 years something strange happens with our sun. I don’t know what or how, but this ancient culture warned that it could end all life on the planet.
They believe that werewolves were our only chance of survival. They refer to them as champions and that they’re our only defense against whatever catastrophe is coming. That’s why I had to see you. You’re one of them now, and if the ancients are right we’re going to need your help.
I’m doing my best to get you out. I’ve grown close with Jordan and am hoping to persuade him to aid in your escape. Until then sit tight, but be ready to move. In the meantime I’ve included all my research notes in case they’re useful. If nothing else hopefully it will alleviate the boredom you must be feeling.
I’m sorry for everything that’s happened between us. I hope we get a chance to start over after all of this is done.
Your Friend,
Sheila
Hot tears rained on the page. Knowing that Sheila had forgiven her felt wonderful. Maybe she would have a chance to start over, assuming she survived whatever impending apocalypse was coming.
Chapter 46- Moonlight
“You still take sugar, right? It’s in the cupboard above the coffee maker,” Trevor asked her, leaning against the island in the center of the kitchen. Liz nodded absently in Trevor’s direction, admiring the dark wood as she opened the cabinet.
“These are new,” she said, fishing out the small bag of white sugar and dumping a liberal portion into the heavenly black liquid filling her mug. “Did you install them yourself?”
“Yeah, I got tired of looking at the old ones. Pour me a cup too?” he asked, withdrawing his wallet and keys and dropping them on the counter. “I’ll fire up the grill. Coffee and venison isn’t exactly conventional, but given what you’ve told me, I’m guessing we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
Blair entered the kitchen from the broad hallway leading to the front door. Liz could smell the soap from the bathroom on his hands, mingled with the pungent scent of sweat.
“Trevor, do you have a computer I can use?” he asked, oblivious to the conversation he’d interrupted. “I’d like to do some research on the glyphs in the pyramid.”
“Sure, my office is through that door on the right. Computer’s on the desk,” Trevor replied, accepting the mug that Liz handed him. He paused long enough for Blair to enter the office before turning back to her. “So, give it to me straight. What exactly do you think happened to you guys? Virus? Disease of some form?”
“We’ll have to get some blood work done to know for certain, but my gut says virus,” Liz said, leaning heavily on the counter behind her. Her vision swam, just for a moment. The feeling faded, sending a shiver down her spine as her skin itched the way it had in Peru, under the moon. She ignored it.
Trevor considered her words for several moments, sipping at his coffee. The soft hiss of an air conditioner came on behind him, quietly battling the warmth that had accumulated in the home over the last few hours. “Whatever it is seems to have altered your DNA at a fundamental level; it would have to in order to make the things you describe even possible. I’m guessing if we sequenced your genome, we’d find that it’s rewritten entire segments. But I have no idea how it inserted a wholly separate consciousness into your heads. That’s way beyond anything modern science has achieved. Into that woo-woo stuff you and Mom love.”
“Yeah ok, Agent Scully. You used to love it too,” Liz chided, sipping her own coffee. “Besides, doesn’t look so much like woo woo anymore, does it? Blair can read minds. If that isn’t woo woo, I don’t know what it is.”
“Ok, ok, you have a point,” Trevor said, delivering one of those boyish grins. “You and Mom owe me a big ‘I told you so.’ Listen, I have a friend that runs a small startup in San Francisco. They make microscopes that attach to your smartphone, and Erik owes me a favor. I can probably get him to send me one so we can do a blood test without the risk of brining you guys out into public.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “That would be a huge help.”
“I’m hungry. How about you?” Trevor asked, setting down his coffee and replacing it with the platter of steaks. “Shall we take this outside while I grill?”
Liz had a moment of worry when she looked at the generous slabs of meat. Every horror movie she’d ever seen said that she should crave raw meat. She rose to follow him, leaving her coffee on the counter. The instant she stepped outside, something hot and angry flared in her belly, like cramps only far, far worse.
The porch light came on, illuminating the back deck. The wooden planks had been stained the same color as the cabinets, and was now ringed by a newly installed fence. It stood nearly seven feet tall, enough to screen them from neighboring houses, had there been any. They were surrounded by shrub-covered hillside extending beyond the house. Her brother had the most precious commodity in Southern California—privacy.
Trevor opened a chrome grill large enough for an entire cow, setting the plate with the steaks on the platform built into the grill’s right side. He grabbed a tightly bristled brush and began scraping it along the grill.
“So you think it’s some sort of virus that was engineered by a prehistoric culture somehow advanced enough to understand genetics,” he said, glancing at her as he used a pair of tongs to move steaks onto the grill. “If that’s true, their choice of animals seems odd. Why wolves? Why not bears or tigers or something? Wolves are predators, but they’re hardly the most successful hunters in the animal kingdom.”
Liz’s freshman biology class supplied the answer. “At a guess? Canines have the most malleable DNA of any mammal. Almost every breed of dog was created in the last two centuries. You can radically alter a dog in just a couple generations,” she explained, pulling one of Trevor’s folding chairs toward the grill. She collapsed heavily into it. A tingling itch spread across the back of her neck. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. The moon’s fat crescent hung low over the eastern horizon, nearly touching a mountain in the distance.
“That’s plausible,” Trevor said, clicking the igniter. The grill lit with a soft whoosh. He was studying her the way one might an animal at the zoo. “So you mentioned that you could feel something in the moonlight. Do you feel it now?”
“Yes. It’s almost painful, like standing in the sun long enough to burn,” she said, glancing up at the offending ivory crescent. Was she experiencing the same sort of overload Blair had faced back at the border crossing? It would make sense.
Yes, Ka-Ken. You must feed, and soon. The voice startled and chilled her in equal measure.
“Now that’s definitely interesting,” Trevor said, pulling a Star Wars apron their sister Jessie had given him for Christmas around his neck and tying it behind his back. “All light is just a certain bandwidth of radiation. Plants use it for photosynthesis. We use it for solar power. There’s no reason whatever this virus is couldn’t use it as a power source. I suspect Erik might find chlorophyll or something very similar when we do your blood work. That still leaves the question of why moonlight instead of sunlight. Have you felt anything odd during the day?”
“Not so far. Neither has Blair. It always happens with the moon,” she replied, fidgeting in her chair. She just couldn’t get comfortable, and she was starting to feel nauseated. The symptoms were alarmingly close to what Blair had described. “That seems odd. Sunlight is a lot more plentiful than moonlight. If I were going to design a virus, sunlight would make more sense.”
“Every ray of light has a certain wavelength. Light reflected off the moon would have a different signature than that of the sun,” Trevor mused, deftly flipping the steaks. “You’re right that sunlight is a lot more constant than moonlight,
but I think I might understand why moonlight would work better. If you absorbed sunlight, it would risk overload if you stood in the sun all day. Have you ever seen what happens to a battery you let charge too long?”
“Yeah, it melts,” Liz said, almost certain she was about to share the same fate as the hypothetical battery. She wobbled to her feet, right hand using the lawn chair for support. “I think I’m going to wait inside, out of the moonlight. I’m not feeling too well.”
“All right,” Trevor said, giving her a worried look as she stepped inside. She felt immediate relief, though she was still sick to her stomach. Her brother followed her to the doorway, tongs still clutched in one hand. “Here’s the thing. The light we see reflected from the moon is only one bandwidth. There are others we can’t see. Those can still reach you even indoors. So that will help, but it isn’t going to protect you entirely. If we need to, we can get you into the panic room. That should shield you from the bandwidths we can’t see.”
“I think that might be a good idea,” she said, doubling over in sudden agony as fire spread through her gut.
You MUST feed, Ka-Ken. Slay this one. If he is strong, he will rise to join you. If not, you spare him a fate worse than death.
I won’t. she thought back, leaning heavily against the wall just inside the sliding glass door.
You must. The male can bleed his energy with shaping. You cannot. If you do not feed, you will relinquish control to me whether I will it or no. You brim with power, and it must find release.
“Trevor,” she began, voice quavering. She was shaking uncontrollably now. Sweat poured from every pore, drenching her shirt in seconds. “Trevor, you need to get into your gun safe and lock the door, now.”