Vegas Run

by Rachel A Brune

  "I doubt it was," Karen replied. "A coincidence, that is."

  I thought of Tell, and Gratusczak, and MONIKER, and Germany, and how everywhere I went, I seemed to be caught in a sticky web of my own making. "When do we leave?"

  "Leave?" Karen's eyes deadened again, blank and absent.

  "To pursue the lead," I prompted.

  "We're not pursuing." Her voice was as flat as her eyes. "There's a team in Germany that will take over."

  Calix and I exchanged glances. First, this was our mission, as reluctant as I had been to take it on. But now, I felt a sense of ownership. And claustrophobia. If we weren't going to Germany, I didn't foresee many options for getting the hell out of the facility.

  I tamped down on my natural reflex, to call for the change. Once again, a strange movement stirred, as if the Überwechsel reached out for me, instead of the other way around. I needed to find someplace with some privacy, and see if I could answer back, call it to me outside of the full moon.

  "Rick?" Calix kicked me in the shin under the table. "You still with us?"

  I scraped the last bits of curry out of the container, put the fork down, and licked the inside. With a satisfying belch, I nodded. "Does Dmitri know he's getting sidelined?"

  Karen didn't answer. Calix looked at her, trying to catch her eye. She ignored both of us and stood, pushing her seat away from the table. The old Karen always pushed her chair in and never left a dirty dish on the table for someone else to clean up, but the old Karen wasn't completely here anymore.

  "Come on." She turned, expecting me to follow.

  Calix and I stood. I asked the question. "Where are we going?"

  "Dr. Gratusczak has requested your presence." There wasn't even a flicker of remorse or reaction in her eyes. "Do you want to walk there, or should we explore another option."

  "Yes, I'd like the option where I get a beer, and a steak sandwich, and a nap." My outer wiseass concealed an inner tremor at the thought of returning to the lab. Calix gave me a look to let me know I concealed nothing.

  "Rick, come with me and get it over with, or I'll have you dragged down there."

  "I'll take him." Calix laid her hand on my forearm. The sudden touch startled me, but immediately after, a sense of calm washed through me. Even the change settled down a bit.

  "Fine." Karen was halfway out the door. "I have to get back to…" She trailed off as she walked away.

  Even under Calix's weird touch, I trembled.

  "Rick."

  "Calix."

  "The full moon is in what, five days? Six?"

  "Four."

  "Bide your time." The glow in her eyes deepened, intensified, then vanished. "Bide your time."

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Pain has a way of warping time. The moments in between the pain play with your mind. At once both an eternity and an eye blink, they suspend any sense of normality.

  When the pain begins again, the long moments stretch out even longer, until all you feel for eternity is the scream your throat is too raw to release.

  Years ago, after I'd defected and come to MONIKER, I'd at least been part of my own pain. The experiments I'd actually volunteered for. Their scientists had kept me in the loop. This chemical compound destabilized, then restabilized, the change. This disrupts your healing; this one controls the change; this one makes you taller, this one makes you fall, and this one was a placebo, doesn't do anything at all.

  Just kidding. Nothing made me taller.

  Even after I'd come out of retirement, albeit unwillingly, Karen had still told me everything they were putting into me and why. Some of it had been the lies Tell fed her. But they had still afforded me the dignity of some amount of agency in my own demise.

  This time, they didn't give a shit. Gratusczak had free rein, and I was pretty sure he would come close to killing me. Maybe that was the point all along.

  No lab table for me this time. Instead, I swung from two manacles attached to the ceiling by chains. Très sadism chic. I half expected some trashy billionaire to present me with a contract and a ball gag.

  A final wave of pain passed over me. I waited, and my head cleared enough to get my feet back under me. There was just enough play in the chains for me to stand on my own. Once I finished twitching.

  "Is there a point to this?" My throat was sore, and I don't know if all the words quite made it out.

  Gratusczak shrugged. He busied himself at his table, recording the last few notes on his pad. A series of vials stood lined up before him like obedient little soldiers. Each one held a different carnival of pain. At this point, he had made his way about halfway down the line, treating me to the agony that lived inside each one.

  "You're not a very efficient weapon, Herr Keller." The good doctor chose the next vial and drew a fair portion of the liquid into a new syringe. At least I wasn't sharing needles with myself. I shivered. Not from the cold.

  I flinched away from him as he reached for my arm. No use. He grasped my arm firmly, the skin of his hand cold under the latex glove. Even in my wrecked state, I could still detect the curious lack of presence burning my sinuses.

  "You are not the fastest, not the strongest," he continued as he jammed the syringe into my arm and depressed the plunger.

  I waited. Nothing happened.

  He shrugged and capped the syringe. "You're just another loose nuke rattling around some forgotten Cold War arsenal."

  Unlike the other vials, whatever this one contained didn't immediately send me spiraling into myself. In fact, nothing much at all happened. At first.

  "So, we're taking you apart, see how you work." He dropped the syringe into a biohazard waste box fastened to the edge of his work table. "See if there are any parts worth pulling out and saving for something else."

  Okay, now it was happening, less of a physical reaction to the pain than I'd undergone with the previous compounds. Instead, all the shadows in the room were brightening, taking on a glow, like the screen of an ancient television when you first turned it on.

  Nausea rolled in my belly, threatening to spill over my gums. The light show intensified, the glow increasing, and then decreasing, until everything in the room settled into a sort of stasis, outlined with the light.

  Except Gratusczak. Him, the glow obscured, shifting and obscuring his body with an effect that reminded me of temperature gradients on a weather map. Huh. Maybe I was seeing temperatures? In black and white?

  My brain couldn't focus. I felt light-headed, dizzy, still nauseous. The chemical worked its way through my bloodstream, and I broke out in a cold sweat.

  The manacles around my wrists dug into my skin, more so as I sagged against them, unable to support my own weight. The panic at being left alone with Gratusczak had faded into a dull resentment at both Karen and Calix for dragging me back and leaving me here. Even trying to summon up enough energy for actual hatred turned out to be too far beyond me.

  My eyelids drooped as my senses drifted. Once again, the Change–the big Change–pawed at the wolf inside of me, who seemed to have curled up and gone to sleep. Twice shy, I recoiled from it. Patiently, it reached out again, wafting like smoke toward my center. Hesitantly, I uncurled the wolf, making a half-movement toward the Überwechsel that teased at me. Unlike before, no shock or pain swatted me away.

  I wasn't sure what was happening. Hell, I couldn't even figure out what was real, what was not, if an actual wolf stood before me, or the moon was affecting me, or it was all a figment of this really strange trip, courtesy of MONIKER pharmaceuticals.

  On my periphery, another glow came around the corner, neither imaginary wolf, nor Dr. Gratuszcak. The light took a human shape, but without the gradients; instead, it shone white-hot, with a sharp, thick dark line around the outline.

  "Doctor." The figure was a glowstick, but the voice was Dmitri. I wasn't sure if this made me happy to see him or not. "Herr Keller."

  Okay, he acknowledged me. Awesome. So was this drug. So shiny. And glow-y.

 
; "How may I be of assistance?" Gratuscak's glow momentarily darkened and sparked, then returned to normal.

  "I require Herr Keller's presence," Dmitri's voice explained mildly. His glow intensified. "You can release him. Now."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MONIKER had been content to let me spend the rest of my days rotting away in Dr. G's lab, but Dmitri had other ideas. And Dmitri's ideas usually translated into reality, which was why instead of hanging by my wrists, I sat strapped into the seat of yet another cargo plane, trundling our slow and steady way over the dark waters of the Atlantic.

  The vibrations of the plane jarred my still-healing senses; the last of the drugs Gratuszcak pumped into me were still very much in my bloodstream. I massaged the skin around the cuff. By now, it should have been healing. The red marks remained, however, and showed no sign of decreasing. Annoying.

  Annoying and dangerous. Ramirez had somehow learned I'd been allowed to change in our mission up north, and he'd made a big deal about the fact Karen no longer had any sort of key to release me from its imprisonment. Fucker.

  We were heading to a suspected Black Mountain facility in the western Czech Republic, just over the border from eastern Bavaria. The trail Karen and the other analysts followed looked sketchy and there were questions about the source credibility, but enough stars had aligned to warrant sending in a team. After Dmitri had extricated me from Gratuszcak's experiment, a couple of MONIKER strongmen had dumped me at the table in the conference room. I'd tried to pay attention, but everything had still been glowing, and I'd seen a bunch of things that probably weren't there. Maybe.

  The part of the conversation I'd been able to follow had been a discussion between Ramirez and Karen and some of the other analysts debating whether they had enough intelligence to go in.

  The final straw hinged on a picture they'd found, fuzzy, grainy, and shot at a very long distance, but that showed some superficial resemblance to Dmitri's daughter.

  In the end, Dmitri had spoken up in his always reasonable, always even-tempered tone, and somehow everyone around the table had agreed of course, they should dispatch a team to infiltrate and surveil, with the follow-on mission of extraction if possible. And of course, said team should consist of Karen, Calix and myself, with Dmitri observing. It all just made sense.

  Creeped me out. But I wasn't going to argue.

  The plane droned on.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  We landed on some shrouded, anonymous airstrip shortly after midnight. The plane touched down just long enough for us to download all our gear, and then the pilot made a U-Turn, headed back down the runway, and took off again, leaving us standing there as the navigation lights faded into the dark sky.

  The moon shone down, just a few more slivers away from being totally full. The light had me twitching out of my skin, relieved only when the clouds drifted back over the sky. I smelled rain on the way. Cold and wet. Just how I like it.

  "Grab your shit, I've got a car waiting for us." Karen hoisted her own two bags and picked up the handle to a giant hard-plastic case on wheels. At least two of the three containers were packed to the brim with an assortment of weapons. You never know what the situation will call for.

  Calix grabbed her own bag, a smaller backpack, and followed Karen. She held the sword she favored in her hand, scabbarded. I shook my head. Dmitri had a small rolling suitcase in brown houndstooth print. I wondered if he was making a joke at my expense.

  Another wave of vertigo swayed me. To be of any use to the team, I needed to get this stuff out of my system.

  "Herr Keller?" Dmitri regarded me with curiosity but offered no help. "Are you joining us?"

  "Sure." Nodding was out of the question. I wasn't sure I could move my head without another bout of dizziness. "Wouldn't miss it."

  Walking stiffly to avoid courting another round of glowing and blacking out, I started after the two women. Alone of the four of us, I carried no bag. I didn't have any stuff. Not even a change of underwear. Just the St. Jude medal around my neck and a positive attitude. Dmitri fell into step next to me.

  "You are anxious, yes? For the…" Instead of completing his sentence, he glanced skyward where the almost-full moon waited behind the clouds. I don't know why he didn't just come out and say it.

  "Full moon?" I prompted.

  "Not that." Once again, he gazed at me steadily, like I was a student he was waiting to see would quit joking around and give him the answer he sought.

  "I am always waiting for that, Dmitri Pietrovitch," I answered, knowing full well he meant the Überwechsel.

  "It is curious, is it not, that you can so easily call the smaller wolf to you? And yet, for him, you wait."

  I held up my arm with the cuff. "I'm not calling any change right now."

  Dmitri shrugged. Somewhere in the back of my memory, I heard the ghost of Aleksy's mocking laugh.

  Karen and Calix waited for us next to a black Land Rover, parked at the curb just outside the fence. As we walked up, Karen seated herself behind the wheel. Calix grabbed Dmitri's suitcase and tossed it–gently–in the back, then closed the hatch. Nobody argued with him when he took shotgun, even though it was, technically, my turn.

  "Everyone got their seatbelts on?" Karen glanced back. Dmitri had already put his on. "Hold tight."

  She didn't peel away from the curb, screeching to alert everyone in earshot. Instead, she calmly pulled away, accelerating steadily until we were speeding along through the eastern European night, on our way to rescue a girl.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  "That doesn't look like some super-secret R&D compound." Calix and I had settled in for some morning surveillance halfway up the mountains that bordered the Black Mountain facility. "It looks more like some expensive spa. I think that blotchy guy is getting his toenails clipped. Gross."

  She offered me the binoculars, which I waved away. There are sights I'd like to never see, and some naked dude getting his toes did is one of them.

  "Makes sense. Their facility up north looked like an upscale adventure tour bullshit place." I shifted, trying to get comfortable. We were both lying prone on our bellies, and there were rocks. This was stupid. The thought made sense, so I said it aloud. "This is the dumbest idea ever."

  "Any particular part of it?"

  "All of it." Especially the part where I sat in the snow, getting cold and wet. As a rule, I rarely hate on one form or the other. All of the different forms of the change are me, so what's the point? But if they wanted to find some sucker to sit here in the snow and freeze his balls off, they didn't need me to do that.

  Besides, I knew these woods. Maybe not this particular stretch of forest, but we were back on my hunting ground. My pack had run the paths of the tall pines and mottled, rocky earth chasing the Green Man for centuries.

  It didn't feel right to be here like this–not on two legs. If all were right with the world, I would be just one more wolf, slinking down from the north, unnoticed and unremarkable.

  "We've got some kind of movement." Calix had gone back to the binos.

  "Let me guess. Now some slick Russian is getting his balls shaved?"

  "Close." She didn't bother to look up at my crude jest. "Take a look."

  This time, she practically shoved the glasses over my eyeballs. Fine. Still grumpy about the fact that I wasn't furry, and generally pissed at everyone and life, I looked through the glasses.

  "What luck." By luck, I mean a woman had just walked into the large, glass-enclosed sun room in which several patrons reclined, basking in the rays while protected from the harsh weather outside. She stood as tall as the man who glowered over the room, hands clasped in front of him, bulge of a weapon under his suit jacket–a guard on the inside of the door? Was he keeping people out or preventing them from leaving? Were super-rich people that paranoid?

  The woman tugged the hem of her dark-colored dress; it didn't come down much more than halfway past mid-thigh, and she wore a pair of flat, knee-high boots. Her features were
sharply defined, symmetrical, her hair cut short and her lips darker than any natural coloring. Maria looked exactly like her picture.

  Something stirred inside, and it wasn't hunger–although you've probably guessed that I was starving. Full moon. Hunger. It's a thing.

  Rather, this woman struck something inside me. A note of familiarity–a memory that rested just outside of remembering. The more I chased it, the faster it slipped away.

  Maria walked over to another man within the room–not a patron. Rather, he sat ramrod straight, dressed in an expensive suit, perched on a stool at a low bar that looked like it ran the length of the back of the room, although the roof overhang obscured most of it from our view. As she bent to his ear, his face darkened.

  Again, I wished in vain to be in a form that heightened my senses instead of crouched in the snow relying on my eyes to tell me the story. The binoculars went out of focus. I'd been gripping them with a death grip and quickly loosened my grasp to bring the picture back.

  I had missed something. Maria was in the process of standing back up, the man's hand raised. Had he hit her? Did he mark her?

  "Rick." Calix tapped my shoulder, then offered me her hand, palm up, to return the binoculars. "You're growling."

  With effort, I swallowed my impulse to head down there and tear the man in the suit to pieces and then eat them. Only two more days. Crap. Ow. Fuck. Forgot for a moment not to call the change.

  "I almost felt that one." Calix grinned.

  "If you want, I can ask them to make one of these for you when we get back."

  She laughed, and even cold and wet, the sound chilled me further. "Just a few more days."

  Were vampires–excuse me, the Family–telepathic?

  "You're just very easy to read."

  I extended my middle finger casually. Yes, my poker face needed work. But now she was just fucking with me.

  The click and static of the radio crackled. "Base to team, you got anything for us?"