by PJ Schnyder
He was all alone and she was done remembering.
She surged up, slamming into his chest with her knees and bearing him backward and down to the ground. He opened his mouth to cry out and she darted in with an uppercut, ripping his gurgling scream away as his entire lower jaw disappeared in a rushing spray of blood.
Never again. She would never be as helpless as she’d been back then.
She crouched over the corpse, panting. His features appeared in sharp relief, the blood vivid and every detail of the gory damage standing out against his pale, dead flesh. Her hand hadn’t been the only thing to shift. She’d lost control of her eyes too.
* * *
“Kaitlyn.” Rygard struggled to keep his voice steady, reaching for a gentle tone at odds with the situation. Wherever she was, it wasn’t completely in the present.
Turning her head, she stared at him with eyes too wide, her mouth dropped open as she continued a shallow pant. The rest of his men hung back, their tension too close to fear. She wouldn’t react well to it.
Fearful men did dangerously stupid things.
He gave them the hand signal to stand by. All was well.
They relaxed a fraction, not much, but it was enough.
Her eyes changed from slitted to human, still that striking blue. She turned back to the dead man under her. A quick search turned up the swipe card for the locks on the cages. In moments, she had the doors open and returned to her kill, looting the body.
The dead man had a stun rod, not standard Terran issue, and a hand gun, not much else. She took the weapons anyway and handed them off to Rygard without looking at him. He took them and gave her space, standing within arm’s reach but not coming any closer.
Close would’ve been a bad thing right about then.
“Where are yours?” Rygard asked her.
She kept her face turned away. “The primates disarmed us when we were discovered.”
Us.
The soldier brought in with her was struggling to get out of the cage, trying to shove aside Rygard’s own men. Zec, according to his uniform’s identity patch. “We need to get out of here. Leave her in one of the cages. The bitch is a beast.” Zec looked around at them all with his mouth open as he breathed hard, spittle around his lips. Man was unhinged. “Did you see that? What was that? What did she do to...”
He needed to shut the fuck up.
Rygard made another hand signal, sharp and decisive. The tirade was silenced by Rygard’s men. They still regarded her with trepidation, but she’d freed them. They were smart enough to weigh the benefit over the freak show. And they still followed his orders.
“If we can make the perimeter, the primates won’t follow. Sun’s set. They’re afraid of the dark.” Kaitlyn seemed to be steadier. She stood slowly, her back straight and shoulders squared. “We need to move out now. I’ll cover you. Meat Head over there knows the way back to the ship.”
Rygard frowned but didn’t argue. Without sufficient weapons, she was their best chance of making it out. It meant she would be shifting.
He’d seen her change to panther form to save him once and he’d watched her in a brief fight, one on one, with a man intent on killing her. More than enough to have faith now.
“On my lead. Keurriger, take him with you.” Rygard lifted his chin toward Meat Head and then headed for the door. His men followed, falling into a tight standard formation for their team. Meat Head fell in with the rest. He had some sense after all.
They made it down the hallway and out of the building before the chittering rose up. The mutants came tumbling out of another building.
“Run. Now!” Kaitlyn charged toward the oncoming simians.
Rygard ran a short way forward and dropped to a knee, motioning for Keurriger to take the men to the nearest gap in the underbrush and out into the jungle. He didn’t know the range of the small hand gun Kaitlyn had tossed him, so he didn’t go for kills, instead directing his shots to provide her the best cover possible. If he could make some of them duck, slow down, or throw off their aim, she had a better chance.
Kaitlyn met the lead primates in her human form, shocking the first with a direct front kick to the chest and continuing her momentum forward to meet the other with a solid right punch before it could react. Both dropped immediately. The next fell to her right slant kick as she brought it down on the attacker’s upper thigh hard enough to snap the femur.
Impossibly fast, she lashed out with low kicks, sweeping their feet out from under them or blowing out their knees, then high kicks to their torsos and heads. All those in complex combinations with heavy punches broke ribs, sent her attackers staggering to one side or the other, or dropped them in their tracks. None of her opponents had been trained to fight and their numbers weren’t a good enough advantage. His girl struck with greater force than any normal human being, man or woman. If he hadn’t seen her in combat before, he might have been tempted to stop and stare. She had a deadly grace to her fighting style he’d never seen before.
Rygard picked off any primate headed for a position behind her. Not that she couldn’t defend her own six, they were just in a hurry, no time for her to take them all out. She’d bought them all a window to escape but he was not leaving her behind.
His men hit the edge of the clearing, calling back for him. Kaitlyn shifted then, sliding low across the ground to knock the feet out from under several attackers as she changed. A girl would have been in the worst position possible flat on her back in the midst of attackers, but not a panther.
Four sets of claws slashed, catching the nearest across tendons and causing them to topple to the dirt howling in anguish. One final simian jumped on top of her and she closed her jaws over its face, suffocating it as she held it with her forelegs and racked its abdomen with her hind claws.
Between one moment and the next she stood solid on all four paws, surrounded by her fallen foes and covered in gore. Ink black, the panther that was Kaitlyn stared at him and then her lips lifted to display an impressive set of teeth as she snarled.
No words needed. He turned as he stood and headed for the jungle and the rest of his men. She bounded next to him and they hit the tree line together. He lost sight of her then, all of them must have. Their eyes darted from shadows to darker recesses in the night, unable to see the big cat among them.
Then she roared, directly next to them, still unseen.
Rygard backed up her command. “Move, run!”
Chapter Ten
“You deliberately disobeyed orders. You jeopardized my entire team and directly threatened the life of one of my soldiers. I should have you court-martialed!” Captain Percival Harold Petrico-Calin IV waved his hands in the midst of his tirade.
“Court-martials are for military.” Back in human form, Kaitlyn had no issues with pointing out the obvious.
Considering the pointed look Dev gave her, he might have preferred her still in panther form and unable to egg the other man on any further. Plus, he more than likely had choice words to say to her too.
“Court-martials are for humans.” Petrico-Calin sneered. “I don’t know what abomination you are, but the scientists will find out.”
Fear should have lanced through her. It didn’t. The bloodletting and subsequent run through the jungle, driving the men toward the safety of the ship, had been close enough to the hunt to fulfill the need inside her. The satisfaction left her calmer, better able to handle the commanding officer’s abrasive tone and body language. In fact, the vein popping out on his forehead during his temper tantrum amused her far more than his words could cause worry. They were a long way from Terran space. He didn’t have enough manpower to take her in against her will.
Bharguest did...something. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t shifted his weight, but suddenly the attention of every being in the room was on him.
Kaitlyn’s amusement vanished. Everything inside her went hunter-still. Waiting.
“You’re useless. The information you gave us got one of my men captured. I sent one of my most loyal in to ensure success of the mission.” Petrico-Calin continued his pacing, oblivious to the danger. “I wanted someone I could trust out there, my eyes and ears. You almost got him killed.”
Meat Head, loyal? Laughable. More importantly, what intel had Petrico-Calin had from Bharguest?
“Your man wasn’t enough for the threat down there. Not my call to send him in without reinforcement.” Bharguest leaned back against the wall behind him, relaxed even in his chains. “Besides, he’s back, alive thanks to the lady.”
He inclined his head toward Kaitlyn.
Wary, Kaitlyn returned the nod and wondered whether his guards had checked his manacles recently.
“More importantly, I’m wondering where the rest of the men are.”
That was the question hanging in the air, the reason Rygard stood at attention ready to burst, waiting for permission to speak. The commanding officer had gone directly into his tirade instead of the debrief. Rygard had requested permission to speak, twice, and been denied as the captain burned off words.
Rygard and his men stood waiting, in obvious need of medical care. The fact they were on their feet at all spoke to the sheer quality of each and every one of them. The only reason Kaitlyn had bothered to remain in the room had been for them.
She’d retrieved them. They were hers.
Petrico-Calin turned on Rygard, finally. “Where are the rest of your men, Lieutenant?”
“Gone.” Rygard gave his report as quickly as possible, every word punctuated with urgency. “They were shipped out yesterday after being prepped with some sort of injection. The rest of us were slated to ship out tomorrow. Permission requested to go after my men, sir.”
Injection? Kaitlyn studied Rygard’s face. Did he know what it could be?
“With what ship?” Petrico-Calin waved off Rygard’s response. “This ship has orders to return my team and you survivors for immediate debrief and medical evaluation. If others had obeyed my orders, things would not be this out of control.”
Tracer and Max had followed orders. They’d still be out in the night if Dev hadn’t recalled them. Petrico-Calin had sent them on a completely different trajectory after they’d reported finding Rygard’s base camp, far off and away from the outpost. The same might have happened to her if she had been reporting in to Petrico-Calin instead of Dev.
“With all due respect, based on the orders given, your team would have been too late to rescue us.” Rygard put the truth out there.
If the military captain had an aneurysm, would Rygard be next in command as the next highest ranking military officer? Kaitlyn debated whether she should offer the man a sedative before her theoretical became an actual.
“What do you know about the orders issued, Lieutenant?”
“Standard procedure to review the communications recordings after a mission, sir.”
Rygard had done his homework with the men on board in the very short time between the moment they’d lifted off planet to when they’d escaped the planet’s gravity. Neither he nor any of his men had washed up prior to the briefing, making it obvious what they’d been through. In fact, Kaitlyn was pretty sure he hadn’t taken any time to rest at all.
“My first priority is my men, sir.” Rygard continued, his tone carefully neutral. Kaitlyn could smell the anger and frustration in the air from all of the men in the room. “Orders could be interpreted to work with Captain Rishkillian’s team to retrieve my entire team.”
“I will interpret the spirit of the orders, Lieutenant.” Petrico-Calin ground out the words. “I was the one who found all of you in the first place.”
Well, Kaitlyn had to give him a little bit of credit. Meat Head wouldn’t have been captured if he hadn’t been close to the base where they’d been held. It was entirely possible Petrico-Calin had extrapolated the location of the base and sent the brute there. No need to point out she’d found it at the same time, scouting.
At the moment, it seemed prudent for the commanding officer to forget about her.
“Whether we return to base to get you and your men under much needed medical examination or embark on a wild goose chase is my call, Lieutenant. We have more solid results here, with what’s left of your team and the finding of another shapeshifter to turn in to the authorities.” Wow, but Petrico-Calin was stirring the tempers up throughout the room with his choice of words. Besides, there were two shapeshifters on board and neither of them could be forced to go anywhere without some serious reinforcements. “The rest of your team is likely dead and I will not put any of my team at further risk going after their corpses.”
“Some of them are likely dead, not all.” Bharguest tossed his opinion out there as if it were a matter-of-fact. “If they were injected, some of them might not have survived the change. And these men, these haven’t been infected. They could all be ready for action with some sleep and a couple of bandages.”
She was liking Bharguest more and more, if only because he was willing to say what she really shouldn’t, not with the commanding officer thinking of her as a specimen to be collected. None of the men displayed signs of fever, convulsions or change in body odor—the first stages of the Triton Experiment virus. No one could miss the later stages.
Hard to pin down exactly how long she’d writhed and screamed. Closest she could figure, it had been several days.
“Excuse me?” Petrico-Calin turned toward Bharguest, proving he really wasn’t the wisest man in the universe as he gave Rygard his back. Not with Rygard so close to the end of his control.
Tension and unrest hung thick in the air. A tiny tic indicated how hard Rygard was grinding his jaw and larger muscle groups jumped under his shirt at the shoulders.
“Injection, Captain.” Bharguest made a man’s rank sound like an insult, or maybe it was just the man in question. Kaitlyn figured Bharguest had a problem with authority in general, unless he was the one in charge. “Sounds pretty obvious to everyone in this room, so why pretend? You worry that every one of these men has been infected.”
Silence.
“You want them confined until a Terran military medical team can clear them. Because the only medical personnel aboard this ship qualified to conduct the tests is infected.” Bharguest shook his head. “It can’t be transferred from individual to individual once it has run its course. You should have read the briefing on it. In fact, if you had, you’d note in the references that most of those findings were determined by the only subject known to have survived long enough to conduct the studies.”
There went the idea of staying under the radar in this conversation, ejected right out an airlock. Every eye turned to her even without Bharguest lifting his chin in her direction. She debated tossing the ball back at him. He was obviously a survivor.
“I’ve seen a lot of victims, gentlemen, changed into some form of lycanthropy or another by the virus.” Bharguest’s voice took on a hypnotic quality. “It first appeared to your people in Terran space on Triton Moon Base a few years ago, brought by an occupying force. Forgotten colonists, exposed to the virus by the very organization you’ve all stumbled upon, and smart enough to take the science and run with it.”
Evil deeds. They’d taken the science and branded her with it, tortured her friends. Memories of the dead rose up in her mind. Every soldier on base had been killed in the initial attack, their bodies left to litter the spaceport and nearby corridors. She and a few volunteer cadets had provided cover, made it possible for the majority of the students to escape and hide. But she and her team had been captured.
Bharguest
continued, “Those colonists, where did they go? Oh they didn’t set a straight course for the well-defended Mother Earth. No, they made a stop at Triton Moon Base first to set up a preliminary base from which to launch their attack. Sound strategy. And they ran experiments on original Terran stock, the Triton Experiments. They took young, healthy teenagers in good physical condition, well fed and soft from easy living, and injected them.”
Branded them, tattooed. Every brand had been a different stylization, a different combination of the virus and a chosen animal species. Her captor, the leader, had wanted a pet cat leashed to his command chair. She had the black panther tattooed on her left thigh to remind her.
“Every one of them died an agonizing death...except the perfect survivor.” Bharguest finished telling everyone the story she still couldn’t articulate outside of an official debrief.
Silence again. Kaitlyn wouldn’t fill it.
Petrico-Calin stared at her. He had read the briefing. She was sure of it. Just as sure as she was that he didn’t feel a drop of empathy for what she’d been through.
“If anyone on this ship would recognize a person exposed to the Triton Experiment virus, it’d be the one human who survived it.” Bharguest seemed to have the entire room under thrall.
Kaitlyn looked him straight in the eye and raised an eyebrow. One? Really?
Bharguest chuckled. “Ah well, I suppose we could say two. Sometimes it’s an effort for me to care that I started out human. But the girl there, she still cares. You should thank your stars she does or your men would be dead.”
His words broke the strange spell over the assembled men. Dev’s crew made small changes in position, moving to stand around her. A division formed between crew and military, but Petrico-Calin stood virtually alone with only Meat Head at his shoulder. Whatever the divide, it wasn’t crew against military, yet.
“Whether she thinks she’s human or no, I have my orders.” Petrico-Calin reached for firm ground again, holding to the only clear source of authority he had. “We return to Terran space to ensure these men are medically examined by an unbiased medical professional and she is turned in for testing.”