by Red, Lynn
The only other company in the room was a frumpy man in an untucked flannel shirt who seemed so absorbed in the newspaper he was glaring at that neither of them even considered his presence. Whatever was on page 2-B must have been really amazing.
Claire chewed hard on her bottom lip, which was tucked neatly behind her small, square, straight teeth. From the look on her face, she wasn’t paying a lick of attention to anything Jill was telling her. “Do you have a dollar?”
“Huh? Oh you’re probably starving, aren’t you? Here.”
The dollar slid into the machine with a slow whirring sound.
“Need another one. If they don’t screw you with the doctor bill, they’ll gouge you to death paying for a Snickers bar.”
Jill clunked a pair of quarters into the machine. “Is it at least king size? Well either way, we’re splitting this thing.”
The two of them sat in silence, their absurd meal of Diet Coke and half of a regular sized Snickers bar laying on napkins that fluttered in the stale air circulating through the room courtesy of an overhead fan with ball bearings that desperately needed to be replaced.
Claire mashed down the first half inch of her share of the candy bar with the first two fingers on her left hand. She scooped the wounded food along the napkin and then scraped it off with her bottom teeth. “I never thought I’d say this, but this is the first time a Snickers hasn’t done a damn thing for me.”
She stared very intently at the mooshed-up nougat and caramel on her fingertips, and snipped another peanut off with her teeth. “How did you deal with it?”
Jill had already finished her candy bar, and had sucked down about half her Coke. “Which part?”
Claire pursed her lips and arched an eyebrow, tilting her head slightly toward the stranger behind them who had actually moved for the first time, but was then just as absorbed in page 3-A as he was 2-B a few minutes before.
“Oh, calm down,” Jill said. “Jacques was right. No one’s going to bother looking for you. Just don’t worry about it.”
The phone, which had miraculously been in low-power mode for almost a week at that point, buzzed from the table where they’d left it to charge before beginning their feast. Sighing, Claire got to her feet and poked at the phone.
“Oh holy shit, how did I forget?”
It was Jill’s turn to quirk an eyebrow.
“This guy, Nick, a waiter from this bar I go to, I was supposed to go out with him on Monday. Christ, I feel awful. I gotta call him back.”
Thinking quick, Jill hopped up, snatched the phone out of Claire’s hand and threw it violently to the floor. The tiny electronic guts spilled all over the floor with a glorious crashing sound at exactly the same second that Claire’s eyes took on a fury that looked vaguely like a bear about to pounce. “The fuck was that?” she hissed. “What are you doing?”
Red fury pulsed in her temples. I don’t know this woman. I don’t know any of them. Why am I here? Why am I listening to all this shit? They’re gonna get me. They’re all out to hunt me down.
Her head pounded. The palms of her hands went all clammy and cold when she clenched her fists.
“Claire?” Jill asked, reaching out to put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, but recoiled when Claire actually hissed at her.
As she looked at her, Jill saw Claire’s eyes began to vibrate.
Vibrate.
“This isn’t right,” she said, reaching out again. This time, Claire kept hissing, but Jill didn’t pull away, instead grabbing her shoulder and squeezing to try and ground her. “Are you in there?”
The man with the newspaper folded it down, but looked on dispassionately, as though he was completely uninterested in the woman holding the shoulder of the other woman, who was frothing at the mouth. Something in his look was calculating, but he was just frozen.
“Who are you?” Claire shrieked, trying to pull herself from Jill’s grip. “Why are you doing this to me? Who are you?”
“I’m Jill Appleton, and we met last night. You’re okay, we’re both fine, we’re here with our friend who got hurt.”
Her voice was so calm, so patient, that even in her blind rage, it quelled a little of the fury in Claire’s eyes. The younger, shorter woman blinked a few times, shook her head, and immediately sat down, hard.
“What... what happened?”
“You’ve been mind-controlled. Hold still.”
The man with the untucked flannel shirt tossed his paper aside, strode forward and forced Claire’s head backward so that he could stare... up her nose?
“Were you alone?” he asked. When she didn’t respond, he repeated the question slowly, calmly, but firmly. “At any point since you got here, have you been alone?”
Claire shook her head. Jill’s eyes widened. “Draven?”
“Shaving a mustache is a hell of a thing, especially when you had a split palate as a kid. Makes you feel all self-conscious.”
With that, Claire’s eyes rolled back in her head. Jill rushed forward to catch her, and did, just in time. Like a fly falling down a drip of molasses, Claire slumped to the side, and slid, ass-first, off the chair and to the floor.
“How did you,” Jill started and then shook her head. “Never mind. I’ve stopped bothering with applying normal physics to you.”
“Clever girl,” Draven said, his mustache-free lip, curling in a scarred smile. “You ever seen Jurassic Park? Great movie. Just caught it last weekend.”
“Yeah, I have, about twenty years ago when the rest of the world did.” Jill’s shock at seeing her old friend was slightly tempered by the fact that he’d fooled her, and also that she’d been ready to babble on about the bears and everything in front of a stranger. “But dinosaur movies aside, what the hell happened to her. Are you serious about mind control?”
“Hold her head,” Draven said. “This is going to look a lot more painful than it actually is. Although it’s good she’s as conscious as Elvis.”
As she tried to calculate exactly what that joke meant, Jill watched the old man insert what seemed to be a pair of six inch long tweezers into Claire’s nose. He rooted around, moving the tongs underneath her skin, and grunted with irritation.
“It’s gotta be here somewhere. I’d know that behavior anywhere.” He kept fiddling. “Seen it a thousand times. Anyway, she’s the one who escaped from GlasCorp. There’s no telling when they put it in her head.”
He stuck his tongue out, gnawing on it as a concentration aid. “Hold her tighter. Even knocked out, this might give her a start. So was she ever out of your eyeshot?”
Jill shook her head. “I went to the bathroom a couple times, but no, we pretty much landed, took Jacques to the desk, and they whisked him off for surgery. Any time she was alone, she was just in a waiting room.”
Draven grunted and bit down harder. “There,” he said. “I think I got it. I’m betting this thing’s been in here awhile for how tight it is.”
“How long what has been—holy shit.”
With a look of pride, the old bear extracted a small, cylindrical object, from Claire’s nose. It was shaped a bit like a spark plug, but instead of a firing coil inside the glass cylinder, there was a slim, intricate microchip.
Draven looked at Jill and gave her a wink. “Well, you know. Old men know things too. How you been?”
The casual nature of his voice took her a little by surprise. “Uh, good? Rogue and King being captured or lost or whatever happened to them notwithstanding, I guess. How did you get here? How did you find us?”
The little cylinder clicked, beeped in a pitch so high that Jill thought maybe she’d imagined it, and then it popped. She jumped slightly as the cylinder vanished into absolute nothingness.
“Kidnapped, huh?” Draven asked. “I’m guessing GlasCorp took them back?”
Jill shook her head. “No clue. Jacques and I dropped them off to grab those three,” she tilted her head toward the unconscious woman. “And there was some kind of fight. Lupines, of which I kille
d three, and then... yeah, they were just gone. She said she woke up alone in the woods, but had seen Rogue and King before that. So something happened to them in the chunk of time they were out in the woods and I was in a helicopter. And you never answered me – how did you get in here?”
Draven narrowed his gaze. “Let me tell you something. I escaped from these jokers over twenty years ago, yeah?”
Jill nodded.
“They don’t change their game that much. All it takes is a coat, a fake ID badge and a convincing limp. But that doesn’t matter right now. We have to get out of here. Where’s Jacques?”
“Hurt,” Jill said. “He had some kind of wound that kept getting bigger, I—”
“How did he get it?” Draven was already collecting Claire’s things, already pushing Jill toward the door.
She shook her head. “There was a noise, a buffet of wind hit the chopper while we were looking for Rogue and King, and then he just kinda screeched and keeled over with a hole in his shoulder.
The look on Draven’s face was hard set. The lines on either side of his mouth firm with purpose. He nodded gravely. “We really, really need to get out of here.”
*
The next five minutes passed in a flurry. As soon as Claire was conscious and awake enough to move, Draven filled her in, briefly, on the wild story that he was almost sure she wasn’t going to believe. At first, she didn’t, but the second time the same orderlies walked past, and turned their heads at exactly the same moment, she started getting a little more than curious.
And then, when Draven punched a window, broke it, and revealed they were in the middle of a compound instead of overlooking a nice terrace? That was all the convincing she needed.
“How did they know, though?” Claire was pretty close to ‘in a tizzy’. “How did they find out we were here? Or... there, or whatever? How could they possibly have talked us into landing here?”
“Did you ever use your phone?” Draven asked.
When Claire closed her eyes tight and squeezed the bridge of her nose, he grabbed her shoulder. “You couldn’t have known. They likely fixed your location and intercepted the radio signal when Jill sent the distress call for a hospital taking landers. Don’t blame yourself – the only important thing now is getting the fuck out of here. And use burners from now on. Use ‘em and toss ‘em.”
Two more orderlies walked past, steps so smooth they seemed to be gliding. Each of them turned their heads at exactly the same point the others did. They nodded exactly the same way, they turned back at the exact same time.
“It’s like I’m living in a broken record, except even stranger, because I’m in the broken record!”
“You’re wheezing,” Jill said.
“Shit,” Claire cursed. “Of course I am. Of course I start getting all asthmatic when we need me most to not be a helpless nerd. Why can’t I just—”
“No, this is good,” Draven said, in a way that reminded Claire of Hannibal from The A-Team. He had that same glint of mischief in his eye that the old commander did every time he was about to hatch an insane plane that always worked perfectly. “You’re gonna get ahold of one of them. Tell them you need an emergency inhaler.”
“But if they’re—”
“We’ll follow you. I’m guessing that unless we have some way to sneak in, there’s no way we’re getting through those doors that close off the ward from the rest of the place. Have you noticed how there’s no one else here?”
“Now that you mention it,” Jill said, still a little confused. “This is really, really intricate.”
“If you have unlimited money, unlimited political power, and unlimited ambition? You’ll go to any extent to protect your secrets. That wound Jacques suffered? Sound waves.”
The two women looked at each other, perplexed. “But how?” Jill asked.
“Not sure. Before I escaped, they were testing it on me. It spreads somehow, like an infection in the muscle tissue. The only way to stop it is to cut out the affected tissue and cauterize it.” He rolled up one of his flannel sleeves, showing off a puckered wound. “I’d know that description anywhere. So here’s the plan. Claire, you really put on a show – start wheezing up a storm, and the next time the orderlies come through. Grab one of them, start croaking and carrying on. They’ll be confused, they’ll take you through the doors, and then suddenly, we’ll, uh...”
Claire was listening intently. “And then?”
Draven shrugged. “I find it best not to get bogged down in complicated plans. Leave a little room for, you know, extemporaneous thinking, improvisation. All that stuff’s important.”
“Let me translate,” Jill said. “I don’t have any other plan. That’s it.”
“So... the plan is for me to get taken back behind the ward doors, to God knows where, and then you’re going to follow me, and then you’re going to, what, think of something?”
Jill, Draven, and Claire looked at one another for a few moments. “Yeah,” he finally said, “that’s about the extent of it.”
“Why do you care?” Claire asked, as she was waiting to put on her best Oscar winning asthma attack. “I mean, what does it matter what happens to us? What happens to the pilot or those bears?”
“They’re coming,” Draven said, ever mysterious. “I’m one of them. Go.”
Like clockwork – maybe that’s actually what they were? The thought did occur – the orderlies appeared, and without even trying very hard, Claire felt her chest tighten up. “Oh no!” she cried out. “I... I can’t breathe!”
The two orderlies froze in place, both turning toward her with that haunting, impossible slow smoothness. They exchanged a quick glance and both moved toward her at once, gliding over the ground more than walking.
Claire clutched at her chest, croaking, gasping, pulling at her chest and groaning and twitching.
“Help this woman!” Draven cried out. “Can’t you see she’s having an asthma attack? We’re in a hospital!”
That’s when Claire realized that they didn’t just move and act alike. They weren’t just similar, they were exactly the same. Every feature, every fold of their faces, and crease on their lips were exactly the same.
“Jill!” she heard Draven shout. “Get her! We’re gonna have to be more direct!”
He lunged forward, crashing his fist into one of their heads with a sickening thunk. No reaction at all, not even a grunt or a hiss of pain. He... she? It, whatever, just cocked its head, grabbed Draven’s fist, and squeezed.
“Report,” the other orderly hissed. The static-laden voice was hauntingly familiar. “Report to Eckert.”
Its voice was cold, detached, dead and...
“Did you just say Eckert? But he’s...”
The lights in the hall went dead. Completely, suddenly, darkness enveloped all three of them. Claire heard the noise of a fight, felt the clamp of metal on her, and then felt herself wrenched free. Pulled to the right, then to the left, she felt herself tossed around before she planted her feet.
A second later, she felt that surge of strength, of power, from before when she was with her bears. Was it possible they were somewhere near? She didn’t know. But the one thing Claire did know?
There was fur growing out of her arms, her back, and her neck. She felt her muscles harden... which was novel, because Claire Redmon was not exactly a gym rat.
Before she had time to wonder “what the hell is happening?” she heard a roar like a peal of thunder, and felt herself give in to... whatever it was, surging through her.
-15-
“I’m not much for violence, but... okay fine, that felt really, really good.”
-Claire
The breath burned deep in Claire’s chest, but the fury felt so, so good.
Surges of crackling, electrical charges crept from her spine to her fingertips, thrilling every shred of her being with the sense of strength, power, and rage that boiled the blood in her veins. In the utter blackness, she threw back her head, unleashed a r
oar, and slammed a paw into whatever was in front of her.
She had no control, no say, she just did what felt good. Giving up to the fury was something she never imagined – but then again, neither was a three-way with a couple of muscle bound guys. Sometimes, trying new things? Works out for the best.
Whatever she hit – one of the orderlies, but she didn’t know which – crunched under her strength and flew backwards. With a snap of her jaws, she crushed what she thought was an arm, and seconds later, the taste of iron, sulfur and some kind of foul grit filled her mouth. She spat, sputtered, and threw herself in again.
Something cold and hard wrapped around her neck, and something else jabbed her in the side. Another jolt blasted her, and the smell of singed fur met her nostrils before she whirled around and ripped another one of her attackers limb from limb.
“Claire!” a pained, unused voice broke the blood rage that gripped her. “Break away! We have to find... the pilot.”
It was Draven’s voice, though how she knew that was lost on her. With another shake of her head, she separated another arm from another body, and her mouth filled with that same wretched taste.
She opened her mouth, and tried to speak, but the muscles of Claire’s throat were so tight, her vocal cords so taut, that she could only make squawking noises instead of words. Apparently that was good enough, though.
“Straight ahead! I’ve got a bead on him!” That time it was Jill shouting. Claire looked back to find the woman wearing a pair of goggles – one that she remembered from the creatures in the forest before. Were these the same ones?
No time to think about that, no time to think about anything else. With her head lowered, she charged straight ahead, bowling through two more of the strange orderlies. Her massive shoulder slammed straight into the heavy door, which resisted far more abuse than any other hospital door she’d ever encountered.
“How?” she managed to croak.
“At the same time!” Draven’s voice came, raspy and tight. “On three!”
A fist closed on Claire’s neck, but it wasn’t trying to wrench her around. “It’s me,” Jill said. Her face was so close to Claire’s ear that Claire smelled the soda and chocolate on her breath. “Draven can see, you can’t, I’ll help lead you. For now, just get through that damn door!”
