Vegas Run

by Rachel A Brune

  "It took me some time to fully decipher your friend's text." Gratusczak returned to my side, notebook in hand. "He was very clever, Dmitri Pietrovitch."

  Did my complete lack of giving a shit show in my face? Obviously not.

  "Every word of this notebook is in plain Russian," the man continued. "His handwriting is … perfection." He smiled, self-deprecating. "I read this from cover to cover, admiring the gall he had to write without concealment or cryptography."

  I coughed, and something in my lungs burbled. If I were going to die strapped to this table, I wish they would just go ahead and put a bullet in my brain now.

  Without further ado, Gratusczak turned back to his worktable, taking a few steps to close the distance. His gait had lengthened. A half-hitch marred his left mid-step.

  At the work station, he flicked on one of the several Bunsen burners that stood sentry along the desk. The bright blue flame leapt up, casting light that flickered through the dark lab.

  "Did you know, the man who sold this to me was struggling to find a buyer?" Dr. Gratusczak gestured with the book. "Everyone he showed it to thought it was some kind of joke." He thumbed through the pages, pausing every now and then to run the tip of his index finger over a note. "At one time, I believe he even tried to sell it to a movie producer."

  Was he talking about John Tell?

  "What he didn't realize, was that your friend had buried the true science behind an elaborate scheme of deception." Gratusczak smiled, his lips pulling back into yet another death's head grin. In the dark, the flame from the burner caught his eyes, giving them an intense, internal glow. His teeth glinted, showing just the tips. "Instead of telling what you are, this journal tells us who you are … if we just know how to read it."

  And with that pronouncement, he held the leather-bound journal over the burner. The flames licked the cover for a few minutes before the fire caught and flared.

  My mouth opened to protest. I shut it firmly. Just because I hated that Gratusczak had read the journal, didn't mean it wasn't a good thing someone was finally burning the thing.

  "They don't need you anymore."

  The words were plain as coffin nails. Thank you, Shin. My old buddy continued to survey the scene impassively, but his words hit me like an electric shock.

  MONIKER no longer needed me as an agent–they had bigger and better supernatural creatures to do their bidding. They no longer feared me as a free agent–the silver cage and cuffs and whatever solution Gratusczak pumped into me at the moment proved that. And now, they no longer needed me as a lab experiment. Their resident mad scientist had just proved it by burning the journal.

  Might as well put a silver bullet in my brain and be done with it.

  "That's the lesson you choose to learn?" Shin spat, disgust wrinkling his forehead.

  In my defense, I've always been a little slow when something disrupts my entire physiobiology. Shin shook his head slowly. It reminded me of Dmitri, showing his disappointment in me.

  No. MONIKER didn't need me. Gratusczak didn't need me.

  But somewhere in this facility, Karen and Calix were carrying out their part of the MONIKER takedown plan. Of that I had no doubt. And they might not need me, either, but I wasn't going to mope around on this lab table and wait to find out. They were my teammates, like Aleksy, and Shin, and Gunny Wieleski had all been, and I wasn't going to lie down and hope they'd be able to overcome this facility of monsters.

  I'd spent more than half my life contained in my human skin, with only the brief moments of the full moon to escape its constraints. My time with MONIKER had lulled me into complacency, and the discovery of the Überwechsel had likewise led me down the path of thinking my wolf skin to be the more powerful. And it was. Sometimes.

  But I'd been a soldier for more than a century with nothing more than my lovably sarcastic attitude and an occasional craving for raw meat, and I was still here. Motherfucker.

  Shin rolled his eyes.

  I tried reaching for the tray of sharp tools Gratusczak had left temptingly just out of reach. Shin snorted. If at first you don't succeed, aim lower. In this case, for the second tier of the cart with the trays. The top with the really sharp toys might not be reachable, but if I squirmed my body just right, the second tier came within biting distance.

  I flailed a little more, clanking the chains, just to keep Gratusczak from getting suspicious. He frowned, busy at his worktable, dusting the ashes of the notebook into a little garbage can and puttering around. Whether or not he planned to end me when he turned around, or when he tired of his little games, was not something I wanted to leave to chance.

  A towel laid across the top of the first tier of the cart hung down and obscured the second tier. But what lay there I found even more helpful. There were about five intravenous kits, complete with saline bags, tubing, and long, thin needles.

  I angled my upper body, reaching for the nearest IV kit. I almost had it in my teeth, when Gratusczak, staring at his computer screen, grunted loudly. I froze. Darting back would only tip off his peripheral vision. Luckily, he simply commenced to swearing under his breath at whatever he'd seen.

  Finagling the IV kit out of the cart, I dropped it into my waiting hand. The awkward angle made things more complicated, but then it became a matter of remembering only slightly rusty skills.

  Fishing for the needle, I flipped off the protective cap from the sharp end and aimed it at the handcuff where the rotating arm locked into the ratchet. Here, I found out that MONIKER had spent more money than I could imagine in the silver defenses lining this supernatural prison, but had cheapened out in the worst possible way. Perhaps they were relying on the silver content of the cuffs, and the shit Gratusczak pumped through my veins, but the model of handcuff that secured me to the bed had apparently been built by the lowest bidder.

  I found it a simple matter to slip the IV insertion needle into the ratchet area, slowly and gently, worried every moment I might break it off in there. Hardly breathing, I shimmed the teeth, giving myself just enough space to slip the rotating arm out and free my wrist. Ha!

  Now the race began. How many of my limbs could I get free before Gratusczak came back to do whatever he planned to do? Working quickly, and yet so very carefully, I managed to free my other wrist and work almost all of my right leg free.

  My luck chose that moment to reassert itself, and before the leg manacle came completely free, the sharp click of the needle breaking stalled my progress. Scheisse.

  It would be painful, but I could still squeeze my foot out from the manacle. I reached over to the tray for another needle.

  Too much movement. The motion caught Dr. Gratusczak's eye.

  He turned and found me sitting up, three limbs free, working frantically to shim the final cuff around my left ankle. I had to give it to him, the man showed no sign of emotion or alarm as he stepped toward me. Warning bells rang in my head. The doctor had shown me his strength–had shown himself to be far stronger than he should have been. Almost free…

  He took another step, bringing him just barely within reach. In a single motion, I turned, swiped a knife from the tray, and plunged it between his ribs.

  Expecting Gratusczak to stagger back, fall down, bleed a little bit, I went back to working the needle into the left cuff. I had just shimmed myself free, when movement caught my eye.

  Gratusczak stood, unbothered by the wound to his internal organs. The good doctor smiled, and this time, I could not mistake the light that glowed in his pupils.

  "Thank you for finding such a unique method of escape." The words slurred in his mouth, forced out around teeth that were changing, rearranging themselves in a narrowing jaw. "I have been looking forward to this challenge for such a long time."

  A year ago, he had synthesized the change, injecting himself with the experimental serum and transforming himself into a deformed, deadly thing. At the time, I thought it was a one-time thing. I also thought he'd died. Wrong on both counts.

  Rippin
g the IV catheter out of my arm, I jumped off the bed to the right, leaving the empty fixture between us. The blood ran free as I crouched, darting my eyes around, scanning in vain for an exit.

  In front of me, the doctor grew in stature, spindly arms and legs thinning and narrowing like some horrific perversion of the Change. His teeth shone, sharp at the points. The nails on his fingers grew, long and yellow. A stench wafted over me. Something was rotten in the state of the good doctor.

  I've never been ashamed of fear, but I've also never let it immobilize me. Until now. I couldn't move my feet. My thighs were wet where I couldn't contain my terror. Move, I screamed internally, trying to jar myself out of my frozen state.

  The thing that had been Dr. Gratusczak roared and leapt up from a standing position, vaulting across the lab table I'd recently vacated. His long fingers reached for my neck, aiming straight for the beating pulse of my carotid.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The only thing saving me from Gratusczak's onslaught was about a century and a half of reflexes, carefully honed by flinching whenever something sharp hurtled at me. His questing fingernails, sharp as knives, barely missed sinking into my neck. They sliced shallow grooves in passing, opening my skin just enough to slick blood down my shoulder.

  G's momentum carried him past me. He landed on his shoulder, rolling to his feet.

  The man–thing–came at me again, faster than my eye could track. I got my arms and hands up to protect my neck. He cut and slashed at them with his claws and teeth, bearing me to the ground.

  I curled up like a cockroach under him, trying to protect all my vulnerable parts. My breath came short. The pounding in my ears drowned everything out except for the soft grunts as he tried to get inside my guard, turn me out.

  With my legs and hips, I squirmed and kicked until I could grapple him around the midsection. I don't know if the man had ever been in an actual fight in his life, or ever fought a short person before. He kept trying to muscle me down and failed. The biting and the slashing, on the other hand, made ribbons of the flesh on my hands and arms. If I couldn't get the change to come around soon, I would be very seriously screwed.

  I tried scratching back, but his long lab coat and pants protected most of him. Arching up with my back, I tried to dislodge him from me, get some space, but he followed my movements.

  Every time I reached out, he attacked again.

  Something incomprehensible dribbled out from his mouth. Saliva? Blood? It burned where it landed, and I closed my eyes, twitching and wriggling, trying to get positioned to try to roll him over under me. He was too big, too strong.

  A hard object rapped my knuckles. I opened my eyes. And immediately screamed, as Gratusczak's acid drool dripped across my right eye.

  Just that moment's glance had done its job. The hard object turned out to be the handle of the knife I'd plunged into his chest. The weapon still protruded from his skin.

  In my distracting moment of realization, Gratusczak stabbed the claws of his right hand through the flesh of my left forearm, yanked my hand down, and buried his teeth in my neck. I screamed again. Hot pokers, needles, knives, and the fear of infection all crowded what brain cells I had left.

  With my right hand, I grabbed the knife in the doctor's chest. I wrenched at it, trying to dislodge it from between his ribs.

  He pierced my arm with the claws of his free hand, pulling back, trying to free my grip. I gritted my teeth and sobbed but held on until I twisted the knife out.

  I almost dropped it as I turned the blade to the side, slashing at Gratusczak's neck, trying to ignore the pain as his claws remained buried in my arms, his teeth in my neck.

  I slashed, again and again. On the third or fourth pass, he opened his jaw, releasing my neck, and reared back, snapping at the knife.

  It gave me just the slight change in his balance I needed. Sweeping my hips, I rolled him over flat on his back. Not giving him a chance to re-adjust, I stabbed the knife down, slipping under his sternum and in and out of the soft tissue of his abdomen.

  He hesitated, just for a moment, the smallest hint of pain in the grimace on his rictus face. I jumped up, scrambling to get away, conscious of the fact that I was moving nowhere near as fast as I used to.

  I had just made it to his work table when Gratusczak caught me from behind, his claws digging into my side. I reared back, screaming, and grabbed the still-lit Bunsen burner from the table. The smallest amount of play in the tubing allowed me to aim the thing over my shoulder without looking.

  I got lucky, or as close to lucky as I get. The burner got him in the eye. He screamed and pawed at it, releasing me.

  The door to the lab was too far to reach. I thought of the tray of knives, but so far he outnumbered me there; his claws would take me down before I even got close. He straightened and reached for me again, so I threw a coffee cup at him. He flinched, and I missed, but I didn't stick around to see. That few seconds gave me the time I needed to reach the cabinet and shelves he used to stock his lab.

  I have no idea what liquid resided in the large, plastic container I pulled out of there, but it had a big, dark gray diamond plastered on the side with a little white flame in the top corner. I grabbed it, popped the top and spun, splashing it indiscriminately, but mostly at Gratusczak.

  Flammable chemicals plus hanging Bunsen burner equaled a crispy Gratusczak-critter, en flambé. He screamed, and the flames whooshed up, sucking in the air as they turned him into a pillar of fire.

  He turned and staggered one step toward me. A burning spark landed on my pants, igniting them. I stumbled back, edging away, slapping at my leg as the rest of the liquid that had spilled around the room caught fire.

  This time, I didn't look behind me as the creature that had been Gratusczak screamed, then whimpered, and finally went silent.

  I frantically tried the door. Locked. Slow down, Rick, there's got to be a release here somewhere. Finally, I spotted a square panel to the side of the door and pressed it. A hand-shaped glow lit up in the center of the panel, flashing at me a few times. I tried again, and the same thing happened. Gratusczak had set the door to lock from the inside, keyed to his handprint.

  The fire continued to rage, finding ever new sources of fuel. The basement lab wasn't small, but in the next twenty seconds I would be in a lot of trouble if I didn't get out of there.

  I gave up and simply pounded on the door, shouting. Deep inside, the shackled wolf said a prayer to the Green Man, but on the outside, I cursed to find this would be how I would meet my end.

  A click. A turn. The door swung open.

  I stumbled through, hacking and coughing, trying to clear the door and push it shut behind me.

  A strong hand pushed me none-too-gently out of the way and closed the door against the inferno reaching out for us.

  "Damn, wolf." Calix raised an eyebrow. "You look like the car missed you and the train got you."

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  We made it to the stairs before the aftereffects hit me. No matter Calix's urging, I couldn't take another step. My body, pushed beyond its limits, chose that moment to spontaneously purge itself of everything Gratusczak and his science had polluted it with.

  I heaved until my body could empty no more. A cold sweat covered my body, the impurities leaking from my pores. At my neck, the acid from the doctor's bite burned ever more intensely as it consumed itself, taking part of my flesh with it.

  "Damn, wolf, they did a number on you." Concern flashed in Calix's eyes. Not sure if it was meant for me, or for the impact an incapacitated teammate would have on their escape plan.

  The nooks and crannies of my stomach finished emptying in one massive heave, along with what looked like part of my lungs and entrails. Lightheaded, I leaned against the staircase railing and waited. After three long seconds, I finally stood with my own legs steady under me.

  "Okay, I think I'm–"

  The Change barreled into me, just as the stairwell echoed with the screech of an alarm. The
strobing lights kept time with the strident sound, messing with my vision.

  Was I going blind? Were my eyes even open? Instead of the fast, yet methodical, sequence of the Change, the moon pulled it out of me almost at once. The pain of my bones and skin re-conforming stabbed and crunched through my nerve endings–even after the Change had completed.

  I howled and screamed, the colors of my change vision washing over me in red and white.

  "Feel better now?" Calix, unfazed, raised an eyebrow.

  I growled a low response in return. The pain faded, and I felt amazing. Strong. Ready to rip the heart out of anyone who stood in our way and suck the marrow from their bones.

  "Los!" The German came out sounding like "Ros," but Calix ignored the Scooby Doo sound effects and picked up on the context clues.

  "Follow me." She took the lead up the stairs, bounding two at a time.

  I didn't stop to ask how she got loose. I didn't stop to ask where we were going. If there were ever a moment to trust my teammate, it was now. As long as she led me toward the enemy, I would follow her.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Our progress through the facility came oddly easy, as if all the troops had been called away to another part of the building. The alarm continued to blare, but with all the urgency of a mechanical clock.

  Calix, stalking ahead of me, stilled. She motioned me against the wall, and I flattened as much as I could against the side of the corridor. Giant werewolves blend in more in the woods, not corporate décor, but we rarely get to choose our own battlefields.

  The moment passed, and whatever had moved ahead of us disappeared. Calix waved at me to continue.

  "Fire response team," she whispered, pitching her voice too low to be heard by anyone who wasn't a giant werewolf.

  I'm normally short. I like referring to myself as a giant werewolf.

  Calix stopped outside of a heavy, steel door and raised her fist to rap on the metal. Before she could knock, the door swung open, revealing another, barred door standing open behind the steel one. A harried man in a MONIKER polo shirt paused in the act of locking the door to give her an incredulous glance.