by V M Black
The corridor operated like an airlock, either the end that led to the rest of the base or the one that led to the labs open but never both at once. Chay had asked what would happen if they were both open at the same time, and the elf had looked thoughtful for a very long moment before simply saying, “Something bad.”
The door to the labs slid open as Chay reached it, and he stepped through.
“Greetings, Beane,” Dr. Torrhanin said as Chay stepped inside, always more formal in his own domain. He had traded his human street clothes for a loose white robe with long sleeves that hung over a kind of knee-length tunic in a pale blue that glittered with embroidery.
Staying in the lab always gave Chay a headache, and he was never afterward fully able to explain what the place was like. White and glittering in the intensity of the light, with peculiar undulations and pockets, the room—or rooms—somehow gave the impression of being both a wide-open space and a kind of honeycomb of individual alcoves. He and Torrhanin were most definitely alone, and yet Chay also was convinced that they were in a still spot in the middle of a great swirl of activity.
Chay had given up understanding it all long before, but he was still disturbed by the fact that hardly any time seemed to pass outside the lab when he was within it. Others in the installation had noticed, too, which had earned it its nickname of Narnia.
Torrhanin had once explained that the elves’ apparent mind-powers and magic were nothing of the sort, that they merely had a type of pseudo-neurons attuned to the various dimensions and levels of reality that they were able to manipulate. That had been one of the many things that the elven leader said that sounded plausible for a moment before Chay realized that they really didn’t make much sense.
“Greetings,” Chay returned stiffly. He still often wondered if he was betraying not only shifters but the Earth itself by giving Torrhanin this place and protecting him from those who would take it away. Chay exacted his payment in the help he received for his people—in the form of individual cures and also treatments for conditions that were peculiar to shifters. And sometimes, Torrhanin even surprised him with a gift, which made Chay all the warier because the elves had a reputation for their gifts always having a fatal catch.
Torrhanin gestured, and Chay noticed that there was a chair an arm’s length away—whether there had been one a moment before or not, he wouldn’t hazard to guess. It was those kinds of thoughts that led to his headaches, and so it was far easier just to sit rather than to question as the doctor took the matching chair opposite him.
“I have had the opportunity to examine the blood,” Torrhanin said, folding his hands into the opposite sleeves of his robe. “Tara Morland was indeed exposed to a shifter factor. There is no question.”
“Can you tell from where?” Chay asked.
Torrhanin hesitated. “That is where it becomes peculiar. I would have assumed that it was the most recent version of the panther factor used by the Navy. And yet it’s a much older version, one that was discontinued more than eighteen years ago.”
“So you think that someone stole it from storage?” Chay asked, relaxing slightly. The U.S. government, like any organization, was merely the sum of the individuals involved. Given that it involved literally millions of people, there was almost nothing that it wasn’t capable of, assuming that the cooperation of only a couple of people was required. But Chay hadn’t liked to think of an entire department of the government being responsible for inoculating Tara and however many other college students with panther factor.
“That is one possibility, yes,” Torrhanin granted him. “But shifter factor doesn’t store very well. Not over decades. I would expect that it’s more likely that she was dosed with a recent batch—a recent batch of the old strain.”
“Why would anyone do that?” Chay demanded. “Whoever they are, wouldn’t it be easier to get a hold of a new batch rather than manufacture an out-of-date variety?”
“Not having a knowledge of their particular circumstances, I couldn’t say,” Torrhanin said. “But I am confident in the accuracy of my findings. She is a medically induced shifter, and she was given an old version of the panther factor drug.”
“What does that mean for her?” Chay asked.
Torrhanin shrugged. “Very little has changed. She is a twenty-four-year-old female who has undergone her first shift. Her prognosis is poor. And that is all I have for you.”
That was as clear a dismissal as anything.
“Thanks for the info,” Chay said, standing. “I’ll let you know if I have more questions.”
“And if I have answers, I will provide them,” Torrhanin said, gracefully rising from his own chair.
“Right,” Chay repeated, and with a curt nod, he left with more questions than he’d entered with.
Chapter Eleven
Some time later, the lever on the door turned again. Tara had been staring at it—for how long, she didn’t even dare to speculate—but it still took her by such surprise that she started and jumped to her feet.
But it wasn’t Chay on the other side of the door this time. Instead, two huge, burly men entered the room carrying a clear, acrylic-looking box between them. It seemed heavy; they puffed with the effort of maneuvering it, and the plastic looked to be at least an inch thick with an odd kind of baffled entrance at one end.
Tara backed away nervously into a corner, not so much scared of them as scared of hurting them. The panther in her head didn’t like their being there, didn’t like the scent of them. It was anxious to be out, and she battled silently against it. The men nodded at her but said nothing, setting the box in the corner opposite from her with the baffled entrance facing out.
“That’ll do, dears,” said a voice then, one that was roughened with age but still perfectly steady.
The men left, and the owner of the voice stepped into the room. She was a small woman with wild, bright-red dyed curls and a chain smoker’s face to match her smoker’s voice, the slightest hint of East Asian ancestry around her eyes. She was carrying a plastic cafeteria tray loaded with food.
At the scent, Tara’s stomach grumbled loudly, and she realized she was starving. How long had it been since she’d eaten? Days, probably. She started toward the woman before she realized what she was doing and recoiled at the thought of getting that close to another human being.
“I’m Mrs. Olsen,” the older woman said warmly. “And you must be Tara. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Does Chay know you’re here?” Tara asked.
“Chay sent me,” Mrs. Olsen said, one eyebrow shooting up so high that it disappeared under her fringe of carrot-colored hair.
“So you’re...” Tara trailed off, feeling ridiculous asking the question aloud.
“A fox shifter. Also called a fox spirit or a kitsune,” she added helpfully.
“Fox,” Tara repeated. “But I’m—”
“A panther,” Mrs. Olsen interrupted, setting the tray down on the small table at the head of the bed. She stepped out into the corridor for a moment and returned with a broom, dust pan, and bag and set to work in the far end of the room, sweeping—or rather, herding, because most of the feathers skittered away before her broom came into contact with them—the clouds of down toward the opposite wall.
“I don’t think it’s safe for you to be here,” Tara said. “Being a fox. A panther is a lot bigger than a fox.”
The older woman just shook her head. “Don’t worry, my dear. I’ll be across the room and in the panic box before you’re halfway shifted.”
Tara looked at the box again, and this time, she imagined how the slender body of the fox could navigate the baffles—and a panther’s paw couldn’t follow.
“Oh,” she said.
Mrs. Olsen smiled. “Yes. Oh. Now eat your food, or you’ll waste away, and we can’t be having that.”
Tara got up the nerve to retrieve the chair from the middle of the room where Chay had left it and bring it over to the tray of food, edging carefully aro
und the fox shifter. On the tray was standard cafeteria fare—a sort of mix that was probably called something like “Asian Chicken and Vegetable Medley” but had little resemblance to food that was actually eaten in any Asian country. A perfect dome of rice sat in another of the divided sections, but then the Asian theme fell through, because the rest of the compartments held a can of Coke, fruit cocktail, and a big square brownie.
“You sure this isn’t a prison, after all?” Tara asked, trying not to wrinkle her nose.
Mrs. Olsen chuckled. “I always tell Chay that his food’s terrible, but he got a bargain price for a lot of that stuff, and he won’t change until he’s used it all up. Plus, he won’t allow deliveries up here, so that nice boy Liam always has to go down the mountain with a team of bears to load up the delivery from the greengrocer and the butcher. All that means that unfortunately, they tend to lean toward options that come in a can.”
“Ugh,” Tara said, but she was far too hungry to be picky. She picked up the fork and dug in, and to her surprise, the food didn’t taste half as bad as it looked or smelled.
Or maybe she was just too hungry to care.
“I could get that,” she said guiltily around a mouthful of Asian medley and rice as the older woman swept the floor. “You don’t have to clean up after me.”
“Oh, pish-posh,” Mrs. Olsen said cheerfully. “You’ve been through enough today. It’s the least I can do.”
“And what is today?” Tara asked. “I don’t even know.”
“Monday,” the woman said, still sweeping.
Monday. It had been Wednesday when she’d gone to that fateful class. She’d lost at least half a week. Maybe a week and a half, come to think of it—
The panther stirred abruptly, and Tara’s fingers shortened around the fork she held.
No, she told it firmly, pushing it back. After another moment in which it pushed against the edges of the mental wall she put around it, it subsided again.
Mrs. Olsen was watching her out of the corner of her eye, she realized. As Tara regained control, the older woman leaned the broom against the edge of the bedframe and fished into the pocket of the loose, button-fronted dress that she wore. She pulled out something flat and disk-shaped on a long chain and held it out to Tara.
Tara took the disk tentatively, turning it over in her hands. One side was solid black, and on the other, it was divided into halves, one red, the other green.
“It’s a panic button,” Mrs. Olsen explained. “Chay asked me to bring one to you. Kind of like those old commercials—‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.’”
At Tara’s perfectly blank look, she sighed.
“Kids,” she muttered softly. She raised her voice to a normal volume again. “Wear the necklace. If you think you’re going to shift, hit the red button, and someone will come.”
“What good will that do?” Tara asked bitterly, but she put the necklace around her neck anyway.
“You can’t think of anyone who could help you keep from changing?” Mrs. Olsen asked, picking up the broom again. “No one at all?”
Tara was about to deny it, but then she remembered what had happened when Chay’s panther had nuzzled hers.
“Chay,” she said. “Maybe. But he didn’t help when I first woke up. I changed even though he was here.”
Mrs. Olsen shrugged, her broom moving busily. “He can’t stop it for you. No one can. But he may be able to help.”
Tara nodded and took another bite. “Why are you here? Same thing as me?”
“Oh, dearie, no,” she said, smiling. “My son David knew Chay when they were in the Indigo Squadron together.”
“There were fox shifters in the Indigo Squadron?” That didn’t sound so intimidating. Not like bear or panther or wolf shifters.
“No. He was a cull,” Mrs. Olsen said, looking wistful. “The shifting genes skipped him. And he always felt like he’d been left out somehow, especially when he was around his cousins. Enlisting was his chance to become a shifter, too. He chose the panther platoon. And one mission, he just didn’t come back. Not alive, at any rate.” The corners of the woman’s mouth drooped for a moment before she pasted on another grin. “Well, that was a long time ago, but Chay was a good boy, and he promised to take care of me. I don’t need taking care of, but a lot of people here do, you know, and I like taking care of other people more that I like being taken care of.”
“That seems very nice of you,” Tara said almost automatically, trying to process all that. It was a window into a world she hadn’t imagined existed just a few days before. She took a gulp of her Coke before chasing down the last couple of grains of rice with her fork.
“It is what it is.” Mrs. Olsen shrugged cryptically, then dropped the dustpan. After a moment of fruitlessly trying to corral the feathers into it with the broom, she discarded her tools and started grabbing big fistfuls of down and shoving them into the trash bag.
Tara turned her attention to the fruit cocktail, eating it slightly slower as the edge of her hunger was dulled.
“I can bring you another tray, if you’d like,” the older woman said as she shook the last of the down into the bottom of the bag. “Shifting whets an appetite like nothing else.”
“I think I’ll be okay,” Tara said, a little embarrassed to ask for more from someone who’d shown her kindness in this strange place. Then, more practically, she realized she had no idea how long it would be until the next meal. “But if I do want something later ....”
Mrs. Olsen nodded to the necklace that Tara now wore. “Green button.”
“Oh,” Tara said, feeling a little stupid.
The older woman picked up the shredded remains of Tara’s clothes, the sheets, the blankets, and the pillows and shoved them into the trash bag as Tara looked on guiltily.
“Be back in a moment,” Mrs. Olsen said, and then she stepped out of the room again.
Tara had just long enough to wonder if she was really going to return when she came back in with a pillow covered with the same black fabric as the mattress that had resisted the panther’s claws, along with a stack of folded linens.
“Do try not to tear these up, too,” Mrs. Olsen admonished, setting them on the center of the bed.
“Yes, ma’am,” Tara said meekly.
The woman shook her head, surveying the room. “You’ll be chasing down feathers for the next week as it is,” she added.
A week. Because Tara was going to be here for at least a week, trapped in this room, fighting the panther—
It rose up inside her again at that thought, and Tara clapped both hands to her face as she felt it try to change.
“Thank you,” she managed, forcing the animal down. “I really appreciate it. I have to go to the bathroom now, so if you could excuse me ....”
The woman’s dark eyes glittered with compassion. “Of course, dearie,” she said.
As silently as a whisper, she left, closing the door behind her.
The sound of the dogs sliding home in the doorframe propelled Tara to her feet, and she bolted into the bathroom, where she splashed water on her face, breathing hard. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, willing it to be familiar, to stay familiar.
But even as she watched, her reflection started to morph, to stretch sickeningly as if the mirror had turned into something from a fun house.
“No,” she told it, but her body wasn’t listening. The panther was coming, and this time it was coming faster, strong, pushing her back out of her own brain with more expert skill.
It was winning, and when it won completely, Tara would be gone.
Fumbling at her neck, Tara yanked the disk’s chain. She pawed at it half-blindly, hitting the buttons. Instantly, a voice crackled from the speakers in the ceiling, and Tara jumped.
“Hang on, bae girl. I’m coming.”
Chapter Twelve
Hang on, Tara thought half-hysterically, leaning over the sink. Hang onto to what?
“I’m coming right now,” Chay
’s voice continued, still coming from the ceiling. It was slightly breathless, like he was running. “I’m coming straight to you. Can you talk to me, bae girl? I need you to talk to me now.”
“Yeah,” Tara managed. Oh, God, her face and her shoulders and her hands...oh, God, her hands—
She screwed her eyes shut. “I can talk to you,” she said. She tried to think about other things, about her parents and her sister and Sylvie—suddenly, her heart froze in her chest. Sylvie. What had happened to Sylvie when the panther had come out? Had Tara hurt her?
“Tell me that I’m not losing you, bae girl.”
The words cut through Tara’s panic, and she took a shuddering breath. “You’re not losing me,” she said. “You’re not.”
“I’m almost there. Hold on, now.”
“I am, I am, I am, I am,” Tara said, repeating the words over and over again as if they could keep her vocal cords from changing, as if they could keep her human. “I am, I am.”
Suddenly, there was a noise from the direction of the bedroom—the lever being thrown back.
“Tara?” Chay’s voice no longer crackled through the speakers. Instead, it came from the bedroom, reverberating against the hard walls and ceiling with the force of his alarm.
“I’m in here,” she managed, unable to push upright from the sink that she was clinging to.
In an instant, he was in the doorway, wearing cargo pants and a muscle shirt now, his brow furrowed and his eyes burning with intensity. The smell of him hit her like a physical force—not that of the panther but his own personal scent, something not fully human that was every bit as masculine and compelling as his feline musk. Suddenly she felt that she would know him anywhere from that scent alone, and she realized that she was lost.
“Don’t let it win, Tara,” he warned.
She gulped and nodded. It wasn’t helping, his being here. It wasn’t stopping the change. She felt herself slipping away more and more with every second that passed.