“Wait, wait. Am I hearing this shit right?” Frank asked, looking around the group. “You splitting up the agency, boss man?”
I raised a hand, trying to calm their voices, which were already clamoring together. “Not saying that,” I said loudly. “Not yet, at least. But it may be a possibility.”
“But, Frost Security is like our fucking home,” Matthew said, his voice gaining in volume. “What the hell?”
Richard shot me a pissed off look, and I just shrugged. I knew it wasn’t the best idea for me to drop this bomb on him, but it was something I’d been considering for a while now. I just couldn’t rest until Jaeger-Tech, or the people they worked for, weren’t around anymore, but I couldn’t run Frost Security at the same time I was waging a war from the shadows.
Still, though, my partner had my back. He turned to the rest of the pack. “That’s not what he’s saying. What he’s saying is we’re striking back after tonight. Whether the agency stays around, that’s up for debate. Worst case scenario, I’ll stick around. Okay?”
“Best case,” I said. “I will, too. But I can’t make any promises.”
Silence fell over the men of my pack. Even Mary, still seated on the extended tailgate, had stopped swinging her legs as everyone weighed what we’d all just discussed.
Jake was the first one to step up. “Hey, Cap,” he said. “You know, if it were just up to me, I’d be with you all the way. You know that, right?”
I nodded. “I understand. That’s why I’m not giving you guys an ultimatum. None of this is an order and none of it has been. This about us being brothers, not you just being soldiers.”
“I get that,” he said, pausing to look around. “Something I also get, though, is that right now we’ve all got a mission. And that comes first. And I think that’s something we can all agree on.”
A small smile spread on my face, and I nodded. “Good. Now, if we’re all done with our bitching and moaning, I’d like to get back to the mission.”
At the barest mention of the word “mission” all four men seemed to fall in line, like their entire demeanor and personality changed. Gone were the concerns of the civilian world, of what was going to happen when we all returned from this run up into the mountains. Gone were the petty concerns about rent, car payments, or what was for dinner that night.
Instead came the hard-nosed certainty that, by the end of the evening, our mission would be over one way or another. Either we’d succeed and complete it or we’d fail and all our planning and our determination to defeat the enemy would be for naught.
This was the way it had been back in the service. You might hate the guy next to you, or, hell, you might love him. You might agree with the mission or you might think your higher ups were just trying to get you killed, but at the end of the day, the only thing that mattered was completing the mission. The guy next to you was depending on you. People in other units were depending on you. And finally, you were depending on all of them to be focused and intent on being part of the team.
This was the kind of thing you missed when you joined civilian life. The kind of thing that made vets rejoin. Out here in the non-service world, there was no big goal, no ultimate critical moment you were all striving for. Instead, it was just emptiness. Everyone pulling a million different ways.
But as I looked around at the faces of my pack, it was like I was transported back to that time. The time before Frost Security.
“Alright,” I said, clapping my hands together. “Let’s do this.”
And with that, Matt was the first to strip down and begin his shift. Mary went around to the front of the truck, giving him a little privacy. Minutes later, after he’d finished his transformation into his reddish wolf, I brought Mary over and we detailed the way that the bag needed to be strapped to him.
“Reach around the chest, lock these clasps here,” I said, pointing to the appropriate clasps and straps.
“I know, Peter,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You made me practice this, like, ten times today already.”
“Just want to make sure you’re not going to have any issues when it comes time to load the rest of us up, that’s all.”
All in all, it took us about fifteen more minutes before I was ready to shift. As I sat there, though, my body undergoing the change, my thoughts wandered to Vanessa.
I still hadn’t heard from her. Still hadn’t felt her. God, I hoped she was okay.
The rest of the pack was spread out in the tree line, away from view of the main road, waiting for my order to head out. Their packs were loaded, every piece of gear imaginable strapped into place or in their modified backpack.
“Ready?” Mary asked as she went to lift the pack off the pickup’s tailgate.
I whined low, nodded, and wagged my tail.
She settled the pack onto my shoulders, centering the weight so my lower back and hips didn’t carry much. We weren’t horses or pack mules, and we still needed mobility as we headed up into the mountains.
“I’m worried about you,” she said as she strapped me in, reaching below my chest with her small, thin hands. “You know that, right?”
I whined low again. This wasn’t a conversation I particularly wanted to have right now, even if none of the guys were around to hear it.
“If you leave after this, what am I going to do?” she asked. “Stay with Gen and Lacy?”
I whimpered a little. I hadn’t really considered where she’d end up in all this.
“You made me a promise over a year ago, though,” she continued, “that you’d get these bastards. But I’ve been thinking about what the price of revenge is, Pete. Is it worth it? To give up your family, your loved ones, just so you can go after these guys?”
She had a point, to a degree.
“Maybe…maybe, I don’t know, they’ll leave us alone after this? After we stand up to them and make them realize they can’t take us in without a real fight? And all those other packs out there, Pete…why is it your responsibility to protect them?”
Leaving a mess up to somebody else or looking at a problem and naming it a Not-My-Problem was something I couldn’t do. It just wasn’t in me. I hadn’t joined the military so I could worry about just myself. I’d joined it so I could fight for my country, so I could protect people. I growled low, not liking where this was going.
Mary knew exactly what I was saying with that growl, too. She sighed, but didn’t back off from strapping my gear on. “Fine,” she said after a minute. “But I just wanted you to know that you’re not the sole protector of all the shifters out there. Some of them can take care of themselves, too, you know?”
She wasn’t much taller than me when I was standing, and I glanced up at her, chuffed a little. I could see the tears at the corners of her eyes, and instantly felt bad for the pain I was putting her through. No one should have to face losing two families during their childhood, but here I was, putting my life in danger despite her misgivings.
And then she threw her arms around my neck, pulling herself close to me. “I love you, Pete,” she whispered in my ear.
I closed my eyes, whimpered a little, and hugged her back as best I could in this form. When she finally broke the embrace, I licked her cheek.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling through her tears as she put a hand to her cheek. “You be safe, too.”
Not being good with goodbyes, I just turned and darted up to join my squad on the mountainside. Behind me, Mary slammed the tailgate on Matthew’s truck, went around to the front, and climbed up into the cab. We’d decided Jake’s could be picked up later after all of this was said and done.
Ready? Richard asked, his tail wagging, the gear on his pack piled high in the modified duffel bag.
Ready as I’ll ever be.
And then we were off, up into the mountains, streaking through the spruce, elm, and pine of the Colorado Rockies like homing missiles to our destination: Burton’s Folly.
Chapter Thirty-six – Vanessa
“Now, jus
t sit tight and this’ll be over in a jiffy,” said one of the technicians as they strapped me down onto the examination table with leather cuffs. First, they tightened the ones at my ankles. Next, they tightened the ones at my wrists as I flexed my muscles, trying to hold myself back.
Or, at least, look like I was holding myself back.
I knew I couldn’t try anything. Not with Jessica still in the holding cell up above me in the tower. But it didn’t change the fact that I desperately wanted to.
What could I do, though? There I was, surrounded by the medical equipment and staff, like a tiny little piece of a hospital’s ICU had been transplanted right inside the castle up in the mountains. The two guards who had brought me down from the cell took up their stations at the door, hands behind their backs, eyes forward. Disciplined, trained. In my best condition, I’d have a hard time taking them on as a human. Without my wolf form and them both having those electrified batons? I might as well be fighting a dozen men.
Mr. Finney stood watching it all like a dutiful manager, his eyes following the staff as they carefully began attaching wires to me. A little heart rate monitor on my finger. Electrodes to my head. A monitor just visible out of the corner of my eye tracking all my vitals with a steady beep beep beep.
“What’s that?” I asked as one of the technicians came toward me, a long needle attached to some surgical tubing in his hand.
“Nothing for you to worry about,” Mr. Finney said, stepping further into the room, the overhead fluorescent lights casting his face with a sickly pallor. “We’re just going to be exchanging some of your blood for a bit from the bank, that’s all. Think of it like going from Euros to Dollars.”
They were exchanging my blood? “The fuck you are,” I said, attempting in vain to yank my hand away from the tech’s grip. The leather bindings over my wrists prevented me from getting very far, though.
“Now, now,” Finney said, taking another step closer. He loomed over me, that rictus grin of his plastered on his face. “Keep struggling and we’ll see what kind of painful fun we can get up to with Mrs. Murdoch. You remember her, don’t you? The sweet, pretty member of your pack upstairs?”
I glared up at Mr. Finney, and shoved my arm out at the waiting tech and the needle he held. “What do you want with it? My blood, I mean.”
“Oh, what don’t we want with it, Ms. Springer? Shifter blood is quite versatile, you know. A good, consistent stream of it will keep any man or woman healthy, young, and wise. In fact, it’s better than being early to bed, or early to rise.” He glanced over to the technician and nodded for him to continue.
Our blood made humans immortal? Was I hearing that right?
That would explain the story Gen told back at Peter’s house. And I could easily see why a group of rich and powerful men were so hell-bent on hunting down shifters.
I winced a little at the stab of the needle entering a vein in my arm. I had to give the tech credit—he did it in one go.
“You can’t be serious,” I said as crimson liquid began to run out the plastic tube and to an empty blood bag.
“Very,” Mr. Finney said. “Why would I lie?”
He had me there. His lying wouldn’t make any sense, especially in this situation. “If shifter blood makes humans immortal, why doesn’t it do the same thing for us? Why do we still die of old age?”
“Actually,” said one of the technicians as he stepped up, pushing his wire-framed glasses further up his nose, “we have no idea why your species’ blood interacts in such a unique manner with the blood of Homo sapiens.” He was a small, wiry man in his middling years. He looked almost like he should be serving out his tenure at a university, not holed up in some mad scientist’s laboratory, poking me with needles.
“That’s part of why we’re so eager to get you in the door, Ms. Springer,” the man continued. “You’re one of our first live study subjects. Think of the possibilities of progress that we can make here for mankind, and your people too of course, by just moving forward with our research. We could change the face of biomedical technology almost overnight. Why, our first earliest experiments were able to–”
“Dr. Schneider,” Mr. Finney interrupted, an edge of annoyance to his voice, “I think that’s enough. Back to work. We still have plenty to do before we start packing everything up for transport.”
“Oh,” the doctor said, taking a step back. “Yes. My apologies, Mr. Finney. You’re correct, as always.”
“But my blood,” I said slowly as I began to feel my fingers growing cool, “what you’re taking isn’t worth it anymore. Whatever you did to me, I can’t change anymore.”
“Don’t you worry, Ms. Springer,” the Brit said, a smile on his lips that was so icy I was mildly surprised it wasn’t snowing, “we’ve got that taken care of. We’ve been hunting your kind for a very, very long time, and we know how to maintain the integrity of our samples. Leave it to us. We’re the experts here.”
As he spoke, it was like the chill from his smile somehow radiated out into my body. Already, the tips of my toes were growing colder and colder, the temperature of my extremities dropping from the blood loss. I was getting lightheaded, my vision swimming. My heart hammered in my chest like I’d just sprinted uphill for a hundred yards.
“What’s happening to me?” I asked, my voice faint and airy. I glanced down at the crimson tube, at the already filled blood bag.
“Just symptoms of rapid blood loss,” Dr. Schneider said, stepping up to my side. “We’ll begin transfusing more into you in just a little while. Your body will accept it just fine, we hope, and you’ll feel good as new.”
I lay my head to the side, the effort of even doing something so minor as keeping my eyes on the ceiling more effort than I could handle. One of the technicians came up, adjusted what looked like a flow valve in my arm, and they began to change out the bags.
A door opened and closed somewhere, and the quiet sounds of footfalls joined the electronic beeping of the medical equipment. “Mr. Finney, sir?” asked a woman outside my view. “Do you have a moment?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Speak.” Murmured words, so quiet I could barely hear them pass her lips, followed.
“Oh-ho,” Finney said, a grin clearly in his voice. “That is good news. Always nice to have more collateral. Take them to the carriage house, I’ll be down in a moment.”
Slowly, I rolled my head over on the pillow until I was facing the door, and just that simple movement seemed to take everything I could muster. A petite, compact woman in the same black uniform as the rest of the soldiers I’d seen exited into the hallway.
Mr. Finney came up to me and put his hands on the rail of the examination bed. “I hate to leave you in such a state, Ms. Springer, but something’s come up, and I fear I must excuse myself. Don’t worry, though, I’m leaving you in the quite competent hands of Dr. Schneider.”
“Fuck you, Finney,” I breathed, my head still swimming from the blood loss, the cold creeping up my thighs and biceps, moving inevitably towards my torso. “Fuck you.”
“That’s the fighting spirit I like to see.” And then he was gone, slipping out through the same door the woman had just exited.
I rolled my head to the right and stared up the ceiling, at the too-bright neon lights as they glared down at me.
Was this my life now?
Was this what I had to look forward to? An existence as nothing more than a lab rat, a blood bank for these Jaeger-Tech bastards, that they could poke and prod?
If this was what it came down to, I’d just end it myself. Why bother living such a shallow, pointless life?
But then what would happen to Jessica?
No, I couldn’t just kill myself. Not with her life depending on mine.
Besides, Peter was still out there somewhere, wasn’t he? Still on his way? And, deep down, I knew that he’d never stop searching for me. Especially not after having lost me once. There was no way he’d just give up the chase, even if they did manage to get me out
of town or even out of the country. Peter Frost was too determined. Not even international borders would be able to stop his hunt.
I lay there, staring up at the lights overhead, at the halos surrounding them, my vision darkening around the edges as more and more of my blood drained through the port in my vein. And, as I lay there, the seconds stretching into minutes, a dreadful thought occurred to me.
What if help didn’t come for us in time? Would they keep Jessica alive once they got me to a secure facility or would they just deem her useless and dispose of her like some superfluous wrapping? After all, they could just keep me locked down and unable to injure myself. What need would they have for her when they’d finally given up hope of attracting the other shifters?
No, waiting for Peter wasn’t an option.
I had to do something. The only question was when I would get an opportunity to make my move.
Chapter Thirty-seven – Peter
The compound that had been semi-affectionately referred to as Burton’s Folly for the last half decade or so spread out below us like a scale model map of a Rhineland Castle. Stone walls averaging about nine feet surrounded the back of the structure, and the only real entry point was the front gate.
Out of the back of the compound rose an antenna of steel and wire, red and green lights blinking on its surface like a perverse Christmas tree. It looked out of place back there, and was clearly the source of the jamming transmission that was shutting down the cellphones, radio, and television broadcasts in the Rock.
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