Shadow Touch

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Artur did not want to leave it, but Elena shook her head. Now was not the time. She wondered, though, if there were any other prisoners they could help. It did not seem right to leave anyone down here.

  “There are only four, including yourselves,” Rictor said, still apparently unconcerned by his rampant mental invasions. “The doctor dispatched his low-level subjects a week ago in preparation for your arrivals. He did not want any more people here than were necessary. He doesn’t believe in diverting resources.”

  “Dispatched them?” she echoed. “You mean he killed them?”

  “Put them down like dogs,” he agreed. “Their lives were worthless compared to yours. Why study the stars on paper when you can hold one in your hand?”

  “Because then you get burned,” Artur said. Rictor smiled, grim. They ran down an adjoining corridor. At the end of it was an elevator. Rictor put his hand on a wide plastic panel and the doors slid open. As Elena ran on, she thought of Charles Darling, the doctor, the mysterious l’araignée, and incredulity swept through her.

  I think we are escaping. Maybe, with a little luck. With a miracle.

  The doors closed. Elena’s stomach lurched.

  “Down to level one?” Artur asked. Rictor nodded. He stared at Elena. His eyes glowed.

  “Why are you here?” she asked him, unable to look away from that unnatural, inhuman gaze. What are you, Rictor? Why the hell are you looking at me like that?

  “Stupidity,” he said, which was impossibly vague. “I said yes to something when I should have said no.”

  “The worm?” Artur asked.

  Rictor shook his head. “Worse. Something that binds me to this place. At least for a while longer. My time is running out. A man like me can take chains for only so long.”

  “A man like you?” Elena said, and then, “Wait. You’re coming with us, aren’t you? Aren’t you helping us escape so you can leave, too?”

  “I would have left a long time ago if I could,” he said, and looked away at the digital panel above the elevator doors.

  “You can’t stay here,” she argued. Rictor might confuse the hell out of her—had proven to be an asshole of gargantuan proportions—but he did not deserve to die or spend his last days in this facility. No one deserved that.

  “Elena,” he began, but then stopped, giving Artur such a sharp look, she was afraid they would come to blows.

  “You know,” he said, and in his voice was surprise, horror.

  “Just a glimpse. I was inside her head.”

  Rictor’s jaw tightened. “Then you also know it’s hopeless. I have no way of entering that room, and even if I could, I’m not allowed to break the circle.”

  “One of us could do that,” Artur said quietly. The elevator lurched to a stop. The doors opened. There was no one in the hall, but Rictor did not move. He stared at Artur, still and unblinking. Elena caught the doors as they began to close again.

  “Guys,” she said. “Are we coming or going?”

  “I do not trust you. I do not even like you. But I do owe you the same effort you are showing us,” Artur said.

  “No,” Rictor said. “You don’t know what I am. She caught me because of my stupidity, but she found me because of my nature.”

  “Right now, I concern myself only with debts,” Artur said, and Elena knew she had never been in the presence of two men more suited for a game of poker. Their faces gave nothing away. Which might be fun to watch, another time, but not now.

  “Hey!” she snapped. “We’re trying to escape here, right? I don’t see your asses moving.”

  Silence. Rictor said, somewhat mildly: “Are you sure you really want to keep her? Her temper is only going to get worse. She nearly killed a man today.”

  “My kind of woman,” Artur said. “I like them dangerous.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Elena stopped holding the elevator doors and stepped out into the corridor. She felt Artur and Rictor follow her.

  “The shape-shifters first,” Rictor said. Elena had no idea what he meant by that term. “One of them is hurt. If you have time, then me.”

  They ran. This time they passed people in the hall, but Rictor did not seem to care if they were seen. The people down here looked pale and anemic. Scientists, Elena thought. The men and women gave them a wide berth as they came pounding down the hall; Elena wondered if they were expected. She also wondered if Rictor trotted around with all his prisoners.

  She heard the screaming before they reached the room—human screams, the screams of an animal. Rictor slowed, turning to look at Artur and Elena.

  “If there’s trouble, I won’t be able to help you. I am forbidden to strike anyone in this facility, unless it is for the purpose of protecting Elena. Those were my commands. I can’t disobey.”

  “I have heard of something similar,” Artur said.

  “Think some more,” Rictor said. “The similarities run deeper than you can imagine.”

  Elena did not wait for them to finish their conversation; people sounded like they were dying. She pulled her hand away from Artur and ran past Rictor—slipped through his fingertips as he reached for her—and headed through the open doorway just ahead on her left. Stopped in her tracks.

  It was like looking at the lab of some freakish animal-fetished Dr. Frankenstein. The first thing she saw was the remains of a shattered tank—huge, at least eight feet long, glass and wires and thick black straps scattered in a bowel-like tangle across the floor. A dolphin lay unmoving in the midst of that mess. A true, honest-to-God dolphin. It was covered in blood. On the other side of the room was a cage on a wheeled platform. A cheetah screamed from within, battering itself against the bars. Several men surrounded the platform, trying to keep it from turning over. The room was filled with men and women in lab coats, all of whom were in various states of injury, complete meltdown, and utter helpless indecision.

  “Shit,” Elena said. “Oh, shit. Where do I start?”

  Rictor stood beside her in the doorway. “The dolphin. Heal the dolphin.”

  “What the fuck do you mean, heal the dolphin?”

  “The dolphin is one of the prisoners,” Rictor said.

  “You’re insane.”

  Artur edged close, pushing Rictor aside. He placed his bare bound hands on one shoulder and leaned down to look into her eyes. His was an old-souled gaze, dark and strong.

  “Elena,” he said quietly. “Do you trust me?”

  She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

  “Then heal the dolphin. Rictor is right. It is not just an animal.”

  “Oh, God. You’re both on crack.”

  “Elena,” both men said.

  “Fine, yes. Get out of my way.”

  Socks were not the best footwear for this room; she had to tiptoe around broken glass, and the thick cotton was quickly soaked through with water. She squelched her way to the dolphin, which was surrounded by a loose circle of men and women in lab coats. Some of them held buckets, but none moved to pour water. They stared at the thick piece of glass jutting from the animal’s side.

  When they noticed Elena, who was so obviously not one of them, they snapped back into themselves.

  “Is this the healer?” asked a blond woman. She had blood smeared all over her white pants. When Rictor nodded, she gave Elena a sharp look and said, “You need to make him shift. It doesn’t matter if you heal his wounds; his body is too heavy to stay out of the water. We don’t have anything to put him in.”

  “Shift?” Elena crouched close to the dolphin. “I have no clue what—”

  Rictor yanked hard on Elena’s shoulder just as the animal lunged at her. She fell hard on her ass, scrabbling backward as the dolphin snapped its long jaws at her feet. She got a good look at its eyes: shocking burnished gold, like precious metal made of soft tissue.

  “He won’t let us get close anymore,” said one man. Elena wished someone had told her that beforehand.

  “Anything else?” she asked, not sure she wanted to hear
the answer.

  “He wants to die,” said the blond woman with complete seriousness. “That’s the only way I can explain his resistance.”

  A suicidal dolphin. That was a new one.

  Artur got down on the ground beside Elena. He slid sideways toward the dolphin in an impossibly graceful movement that looked more like a dance than a shuffle. “Look at me,” he whispered, as though there were no one else in the room but the two of them, and all that mattered was words, a voice. “Look at me.”

  Rictor began pushing the scientists back, even the injured, herding them toward the door. He gestured at the men holding the cheetah’s cage. “Out,” he said, over their protests. “You want him to live, don’t you? Get out. We need some quiet in here.”

  “The girl is not trained—,” said the woman, but Rictor shoved her out the door and slammed it shut. Turned the lock. Elena heard fists pound against the heavy metal.

  “We don’t have much time,” he said. “Do what you have to, but make it quick.”

  “Artur,” Elena said, concerned for his safety. He ignored her, still sliding close to the prone dolphin. The creature lay very still, but its eyes were bright, uncanny with intelligence. Elena felt uneasy looking into those eyes.

  Artur held up his bound hands. “Do you see this? I am also a prisoner here. All of us, prisoners. But we do not have to stay that way. We have an opportunity to escape, but we must do it now. Please. I cannot leave you here.” He looked over his shoulder at the cheetah, which had stopped howling the moment Artur began speaking. Its eyes were also golden, bright, and Elena had the very uncomfortable feeling it understood every word Artur said.

  “Rictor,” Artur said. “Open his cage.”

  “He doesn’t trust us.”

  “I know,” he whispered, staring at the cheetah. “But I also know he can save his brother’s life. That is worth a little risk, yes?”

  Rictor said, “I am forbidden, Artur. Opening the cage is the same as allowing him to escape.”

  “And yet we are here.”

  “Loopholes,” Rictor said. “I am here because Elena can be here.”

  “I’ll do it,” she said, and before they could argue she was beside the cage, gazing at a wild furred face with eyes that seemed to see straight into her soul. Her heart pounded. From the corner of her eye she saw Artur stand. Rictor moved close.

  “Don’t bite me,” she said to the cat, and removed the triple layer of pins holding the door in place. She swung it open. The cheetah jumped out. Elena held her breath. This was craziness—she was crazy, listening to these men who talked to wild animals like they were people, like they could make bargains not to kill, and why, why, why was she so stupid …

  The cheetah’s eyes began to glow. Light spilled forth. Golden eyes, golden fire—a golden body embraced by the halo of the sun. Elena forgot how to breathe. She staggered backward into Rictor’s arms.

  And then the cheetah rose up on its back legs—stretching, growing—and Elena blinked just once, and in that moment fur smoothed to skin, claw to nail and finger, and Elena found herself looking at a man. A golden-eyed man with black skin and fine chiseled features. He held himself tall and straight, like nobility: a prince.

  “Greetings,” he said, and his voice was rich, rolling with a buttery accent.

  “Hi,” she breathed, and looked at Artur. She let out a silent scream of awe.

  “No,” he said. “You are not imagining it.”

  “But even if you are, you don’t have time to indulge the fantasy.” Rictor tapped Elena’s shoulder. “Come on.”

  Dazed, in shock, Elena stumbled back to the dolphin, whose gaze rested solely on the former cheetah moving gracefully across the floor to stand beside Elena. His close-cropped hair contained a wiry patchwork of blond to black. He was naked, whip-thin, with a sinewy strength that reminded her of a cat.

  “Brother,” said the man urgently. “Brother, you must change.”

  The dolphin closed its eyes; opened them again, slow.

  “He’s been done over so much he isn’t sure he wants to live,” Rictor said.

  “No,” soothed the man, crouching. He reached out with one long arm and touched the dolphin’s head. “No, you still have some fight left in you. You fought when you saw me, did you not? You answered the call of our kind? Come now. Just one shift. I will do the rest.”

  “We all will,” Artur said.

  The man gave him a hard look, appraising and cold. “I do not know you.”

  Artur glanced at Elena. “Strangers in paradise, then.”

  She would have smiled, but there was a man beside her who had just changed his shape, another whose eyes glowed green, and a dolphin who was dying in glass, bleeding and miserable. It was all too much. She wanted out of there. She wanted to run. She wanted to get the hell away from all this craziness.

  So be crazy, she told herself, and sidled close to peer down into a golden eye. The dolphin gazed back at her with something akin to suspicion.

  “All right,” Elena said. “I guess I can take a leap of faith and assume you’re not just an animal. That’s good. It means you understand me. So you listen up. These men, apparently, are not going to leave without you. I will not leave without them. So unless you are one heartless, selfish son of a bitch, you will do exactly what these fine gentlemen ask of you, or else die knowing you brought four other people to the grave. You got that?”

  The dolphin gave Elena no indication he was willing to help, but she took a deep breath and rested her hands upon his body. He did not attack her. She looked at the others. “Get that glass shard out of him now.”

  “Hurry,” Rictor said. “More than scientists are coming.”

  The other shape-shifter did not wait; he reached out and pulled the glass from the dolphin’s side. The creature let out a high-pitched squeal; blood gushed from the wound and Rictor pulled off his shirt to wad against it.

  Elena worked fast. She had no time to be gentle. The dolphin cried out again but did not move. Elena compelled his body’s cooperation—platelets swarmed the wound, clotting—but it was too slow, the cut too large. She needed results now.

  “Artur,” she said. He did not hesitate; he placed his bound hands against her neck. Elena felt the link between them come instantly alive, a white-hot thread, clean and pure.

  What do you need?

  More power. I’ve slowed the bleeding, but the wound is too big. I need to force his body to knit most of it shut.

  Take what you need, he said, and she felt him wrap his spirit tight around her own—so natural, so easy—his strength adding to her own, and she was a giant in her own body, like a superhero full of cosmic abilities, and she used that power to slam the dolphin’s sluggish tissues into overdrive, shoving energy down the reproducing cells, electrifying them into hyperactivity.

  It’s working, Artur said, and his voice was full of wonder. His wound is closing. I can see it.

  The only thing Elena could see was energy; the only thing she could feel, Artur. She pulled her spirit out of the dolphin, Artur flowing with her … and then he was gone, back into his own body. Elena swayed, clutching her head. What a rush. She did not feel diminished by his absence; in fact, she still sensed some presence, a lingering afterglow. She looked at the wound, and it was raw, pink—but healed enough for him to begin moving. Though how they were going to haul ass with a dolphin in tow …

  “I’ve done my part,” Elena said to the dolphin, abandoning sanity for the fantasy of the inexplicable. “What’s your excuse?”

  The dolphin’s eyes glowed—its entire body burning golden—flippers stretching, the long, flat tail splitting … and Elena found it beautiful and eerie and utterly terrifying. Seconds, stretching to a lifetime, and she did not blink. She watched a dolphin flow into a man, and when the light died all she could see was a strong young face framed by coarse hair streaked with the colors of the sea and clouds: variations of blue, green, thunderstorm gray. Golden, tired eyes.

  �
��Satisfied?” he asked. His voice was hoarse, as if it had not been used in a very long time.

  “Very,” Rictor answered for her. “Can you stand?”

  “I recognize your face. You’re one of them.”

  “Technicalities. Now stand the fuck up so we can get out of here.”

  Elena turned around. Artur stood at a long counter, rummaging through drawers. He pulled out a scalpel and turned it around in his hands. He began slicing awkwardly through the plastic binding his wrists. She went to him and wordlessly took the scalpel. Within seconds she freed him.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I did not think to ask for help.”

  “Tough guy,” she said, holding on to the scalpel. She gazed around the room for another weapon. Artur glanced past her at the naked man who had been a dolphin. He stood now, but just barely. “What is your name?”

  The man swayed. Rictor reached out a hand to steady him, but he jerked away from the touch.

  “Rik,” he said. He gazed at his palms and then rubbed his face, slow and careful. The other shape-shifter drew close. He rested his hand on Rik’s shoulder, and Elena sensed the world slide away from the two men as they gazed at each other.

  “I am Amiri,” said the dark man. “You know what I run as.”

  “Yes,” Rik whispered.

  “Greetings later,” Rictor snapped. He stared at the lab door. Metal pounded, accompanied by shouts. “Time’s up.”

  Amiri’s body glowed, golden fire rippling across his skin. He bent down; a moment later a cheetah shook free of light and stalked to the door.

  “The scientists are there,” Rictor said, eyes distant. “Some of the men from upstairs. They don’t know what we’re planning, but they are concerned our ineptitude is hurting their experiment.”

  “Weapons?” Artur asked, unscrewing a long metal bar from an odd structure built into the broken tank. He tossed the bar to Rik, and then set about removing another.

  “No-kill. Pepper spray and retractable batons, but they’re not planning on using them. I’m in here, so they think everything must be under control.”

  “Of course,” Artur said dryly. “Since you are so very biddable to your mistress’s wishes.”