Paper Tigers

by Meg Collett

  Why couldn’t she see that? She looked at me and saw a petite nerd with glasses and frizzy hair. She’d never see me as someone who could fight alongside her; she’d never accept that.

  After everything I’d accepted about her, this stung.

  During the flight, she pored over Zero’s file for any details on the girl’s past that would give her a clue as to where she was hiding between attacks, but the file contained only research notes and graphic details on experiments. There was nothing about Zero’s past.

  It bothered Ollie because she’d turned Zero into a victim, and that was a problem. A big one. Ollie would hate herself when she would have to kill Zero. This could end no other way. We had to stop Zero.

  Quietly, so Luke and Hatter didn’t hear at the front of the plane, I asked, “You still think she’s not accountable for what she’s done?”

  Ollie’s expression darkened. “You didn’t see her, Sunny. You couldn’t. She needs help.”

  Her words jabbed me beneath my skin, but she turned back to the file without another word, and I held back the swell of hurt feelings in my chest. I hadn’t seen Zero because I’d been saving Ollie. I’d helped her. At least, I’d tried to. I just didn’t have a good handle on my actions when I was on saliva. But I could work on that. I could be better.

  I would be. Next time.

  * * *

  Two black sedans met us at the airport. Luke and Ollie rode in the lead car while Hatter and I followed in the second. Our driver kept quiet throughout the ride to downtown Anchorage. When he pulled into an inauspicious shopping plaza with a Subway, UPS, and shoe store, Hatter asked, “Hey, bud. You sure this is right?”

  The driver put the car in park and waited, his eyes shielded behind dark glasses.

  “This isn’t foreboding at all,” Hatter muttered, his hand on the door handle. He pulled it. Locked. “You want to put us in the trunk now or wait until you’ve bludgeoned us? Where’s the tire wrench? Or maybe smoke will come in through the vents? After, of course, you put on your gas mask.”

  I sighed. “Sir, can you unlock the doors?”

  The back doors unlocked with a loud clang. I rolled my eyes at Hatter and climbed out of the car. Even though the parking lot was empty, I checked both ways before jogging over to the sidewalk running along the store fronts where Luke and Ollie waited.

  The lab was an unmarked store at the corner of the plaza. The windows were tinted dark, and the door was heavy steel with multiple deadbolts. If anyone had been around, they might have thought the little “shop” ominous, but the plaza was too deserted to draw any attention.

  “Cozy,” Luke said, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. A light snow fell from the gray sky. It stuck to the cracked pavement in big, wet drops.

  “This doesn’t worry me at all!” Hatter chimed in too brightly.

  “In and out.” Ollie pressed the buzzer beside the door. Her shoulders bunched beneath her leather coat. Her jeans were shredded, and the laces of her steel-toed boots were loose against the pavement. Through the rips in her pants, goose bumps prickled her pink skin.

  She couldn’t feel the pain from the cold, but it worried me. She used to be more diligent about not getting sick. Lately, she didn’t seem to care.

  Above us, a mounted camera panned across our faces. The deadbolts unlocked one by one, and the door swung inward to reveal a smiling blonde in a pair of white scrubs. She motioned us inside. “Wow! It’s chilly out there! Come on in! I’m Melanie, the lab technician here. Lieutenant Milhousse is expecting you.”

  We all exchanged glances before following the chipper lab tech inside. Hatter held the door for me, and as I passed, I whispered, “Is that what I sound like?”

  He snorted.

  The door locked automatically behind us.

  It looked like any other doctor’s waiting area, but knowing exactly what this building held made the peace lilies, outdated magazines, and cheap chairs worrisome.

  From the front desk, Melanie handed Ollie a plastic clipboard and pen. “Fill this out, please. Pay special attention to the heart-related questions. We don’t want you croaking during the exam! Say,” the tech said, lowering her voice as she leaned toward Luke, “are you a real hunter?”

  Luke flinched, and his eyes stretched wide. A blush worked its way up the back of his neck and spread to his ears. “I, ah,” he fumbled. He cleared his throat and glanced at Ollie, then at Hatter. “I mean …”

  Luke Aultstriver was blushing and stuttering? Had we stepped into an alternate dimension?

  Without answering a single question, Ollie slapped the clipboard against the tech’s chest before she could sidle any closer to Luke. “Where the fuck is Milhousse?” Ollie growled. “This isn’t a fucking social call.”

  Melanie backpedaled fast, her eyes tracing the scars on Ollie’s face. The tech paled. “Sure. Sure. No problem. If you’ll follow me, Miss Volkova.”

  “She’s not going back there alone,” I said. I took Ollie’s arm in case I needed to pull her away from the overly perky tech.

  “You all can wait out here. It won’t take long,” Melanie said with a plastic smile.

  “I’m a nurse. She has a condition—”

  Beside the front desk, a door buzzed and opened. A tall man, his head almost brushing against the doorframe, stepped through. He wore a white lab coat and pale blue scrubs. On his front pocket, a plastic lanyard held his badge. I sensed Ollie’s focus snap to the badge and the stretchy coil it was attached to. Lieutenant Milhousse’s name was written in bold letters across the badge.

  “I’ve got them from here, Mel. Thank you. Why don’t you get the other hunters water?” he asked. He smiled at Ollie and me. “Ready?”

  “Ollie—” Luke began.

  She glanced back at him. “It’s fine. We’ll be back in a minute.”

  She passed through the door and entered the brightly lit hall beyond, careful not to brush against Lieutenant Milhousse. I followed a beat later, with Hatter’s gaze hot against my back. The door locked behind Lieutenant Milhousse, and I guessed we would need his handy badge to exit if, for some unforeseen reason, we had to leave without his assistance.

  “Follow me,” the lieutenant said briskly. His bare ankles flashed beneath his scrubs as he strode down the hall, his leather loafers clicking against the white tiles. The fluorescent lights clicked and hummed overhead as we followed, Ollie bringing up the rear.

  Thick doors dotted the hall. Ollie slowed beside each one, listening, I assumed. I glanced back at her. She shook her head. Nothing.

  “I must say,” Lieutenant Milhousse said, “I was surprised Dean agreed to this meeting. He’s not the sort of scientist to share data with colleagues.”

  I heard Ollie’s teeth grinding behind me. “Does everyone here know what’s happening on Kodiak?”

  Lieutenant Milhousse slowed and frowned at Ollie. “You mean the aswangs? Of course. Everyone with the highest security clearance has been briefed. We couldn’t do proper research here if that wasn’t the case.”

  “Of course,” Ollie returned.

  The doctor didn’t catch her sarcasm. He turned to me. “And are you Miss Volkova’s hunting partner?”

  “She’s not—”

  “I am,” I said, cutting Ollie off.

  Lieutenant Milhousse nodded. “Good.” His chin kept bobbing as his speed increased. “That’s good.”

  “What exactly is this exam going to be?” Ollie asked.

  The hall ended at a single door. Lieutenant Milhousse swiped his badge against the reader, which matched the new doors installed at Fear University. Ollie’s brows rose as she caught on to the similarity too. When she looked at me, I shrugged.

  Inside the room, Lieutenant Milhousse turned on the lights. The walls were padded in soft gray leather that they could easily disinfect and spray down. But even with the scent of bleach hanging in the air, I smelled it.

  Fear.

  Ollie picked up a headset from the assortment hanging on the wa
ll. “This is a fear sim?”

  Lieutenant Milhousse was already positioned beside a cart, gathering up plastic nodes and packets of alcohol swabs. He would monitor our brain function during the test and study our reactions to fear during a fight.

  Ollie came to the same conclusion a beat later. “No,” she said. “This isn’t happening. You were supposed to take a few brain scans, that’s it. Not a fight.”

  “Dean did not stipulate the parameters of our session, and the value of tracking a halfling’s fear response during a controlled variable test is too great to pass up. It will help our research here beyond measure. The data—”

  “If you use the word ‘data’ one more time, I’ll shove this headset down your fucking throat. Track those variables.”

  “What she means is,” I said, giving Ollie a knowing look, “we’ll do it. Together. Because we’re partners. But we want to see the entire lab. All the patients.”

  “All the lab,” Lieutenant Milhousse agreed. “But we don’t call them patients here. We refer to our subjects with numbers and non-gendered pronouns. It helps with our staff’s detachment. I’m sure you understand.”

  Ollie smiled. “We do.”

  “Wonderful!”

  He was too far to hear the low growl coming from Ollie’s throat.

  By the time Lieutenant Milhousse had attached various nodes to my temples and forehead and aligned the headset into place, Ollie had her rage leashed. From the corner of my eye, I watched her pack it away with frosty efficiency, and when Lieutenant Milhousse turned to her and started preparing her for the sim, she bore his touch with enough detachment to concern me.

  We would be back here, I realized. We would be back in this deserted plaza with its cracked pavement and empty stores, and Lieutenant Milhousse wouldn’t make it.

  “All set!” He pressed a button beside a darkened window. A pocket door slid open with a whoosh of cool air. “I’ll monitor your progress from inside this booth, as well as control the test. It won’t take long. Get into positions, please.”

  The door shut behind him. Through my headset’s visor, I saw Ollie turn to me. She tightened the strap around her head, her blonde hair in a tight braid down her back. “You ready?”

  I only nodded.

  The tight set of her mouth told me she didn’t like it. She didn’t want me here, even though I was her partner. That was a fact even she couldn’t deny. We were meant to fight together, but she fought it. She hated it. With her jaw clenched, she stepped into the center of the room. I followed, a step behind her right shoulder.

  I was more than ready. It was time to show Ollie what I was made of.

  My visor darkened. A hum built beside my ears. The nodes tightened against my skin. My breaths were tight and controlled. My heart pounded.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Faintly, in echo, came the first tick, then a whispering tock.

  The visor cleared and revealed a forest around me. Frozen snow spread out from my feet. Tree limbs rattled overhead, and a bright moon far above cast slender, jagged shadows across the ground. My breath condensed in the air in front of my mouth. Beside me, Ollie turned in a tight circle.

  She held her whip and knuckles, the blade already deployed. I felt the familiar weight of my knives strapped to my waist. Dean had prepared Lieutenant Milhousse.

  “Feel familiar?” Ollie asked me as the tick tocking grew louder.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the doctor’s booth, where Ollie faced. I saw only trees and dark forest shadows, but I knew what was back there. He was back there, watching and recording our data.

  “Another test,” I said, thinking of Fields and another sort of doctor watching Ollie and me fight from a safe place far away. That had been real. This was just a sim.

  Though as the first tendrils of pain slunk into my brain, it felt real.

  Tick tock.

  I pulled out my first knife. The slender blade was cool against the pads of my fingers, its weight precisely balanced.

  Ollie’s whip cracked as the pain knifed through my brain.

  I crouched and spun around, instantly spotting the ’swang advancing from the woods. The knife hissed through the air and landed solidly in the ’swang’s eye socket. It howled, and the pain lessened by a fraction in my mind. It stumbled closer. Ollie finished it with her blade before returning to her spot in the middle of our clearing. Our shoulders touched when I stood again and faced the opposite way.

  “You’ve been practicing,” Ollie said. She was panting, more from excitement than exertion.

  I didn’t answer as another ’swang stepped from the forest, its tick tocking whispering in the air. I welcomed the pain as it curled through my mind, and as I threw each blade, I pictured the knife cutting the ties the aswang had on my mind. It was Mr. Clint’s trick—a measurable way to take back control.

  Blade by blade, I took back my mind. Ollie and I fought as more and more ’swangs came. First, they came one at a time, then in twos and threes and eventually fours. We moved as one, spinning and circling each other, rotating sides of the clearing as I needed Ollie’s whip and she needed my blades. I threw until my arms ached and I lost count of the ties I’d lacerated.

  Nothing could touch me. The pain in my mind was pushed so deep it felt like a paper cut. Any fear that accompanied the pain only fueled my arm to throw faster and my legs to spin quicker.

  If I’d been home, with Mr. Clint, I would have set a personal record.

  Ollie hit the snow beside me a second before an aswang slammed into my back. I tucked and rolled and rose to my feet at the forest’s edge. I whirled around. Ollie was on her back with a ’swang on top of her. She held off its snapping teeth with both hands, her blade useless on the ground beside her.

  I got off two blades as I advanced, one to its snout and the other to its shoulder. It howled and shook its head. It swiped a paw at the knife lodged next to its nostril. Ollie released her grip with one hand and grabbed the blade in the ’swang’s shoulder, just inches away and at the perfect height for her to reach. She slashed it across the ’swang’s throat.

  It fell, twitching. Ollie climbed to her feet. I walked over to her blade and picked it up, the silver and diamond knuckles heavier than I’d expected. I slammed it through the top of the aswang’s mouth as it died at our feet.

  Ollie met my gaze. We were covered in blood, but neither of us had been bitten or cut. I expected a fist bump or a crooked smile. Instead, there was only sadness in her eyes. Even now, she didn’t think I could do it.

  I yanked off my headset and marched to the door.

  “Sunny—” Ollie called behind me as the padded room’s lights burned my eyes.

  The pocket door opened in front of me, and Lieutenant Milhousse stepped out, grinning like a fool. His cheeks were bright red with excitement, his hair disheveled.

  “Wow!” he breathed. “That was amazing. The fastest we’ve ever seen. Not even Nine can get through it that fast or down that many. Impressive. Very impressive.”

  Ollie tossed her headset on the ground at Lieutenant Milhousse’s feet. He jumped as the expensive equipment crunched. Ollie stopped beside me. “Show us,” she growled.

  F I F T E E N

  Ollie

  Luke and Hatter met us in the narrow hall outside the fear sim. Luke took in my sweaty face and heaving shoulders with gritted teeth. I didn’t meet his eyes.

  Sunny wouldn’t even look at me.

  Lieutenant Milhousse showed us the other rooms in the hall—all simple examination rooms. Some rooms had padded chairs in them, like at the dentist’s, except these had restraints on the arm and foot rests. As he opened the doors and stepped aside for us to check them, he tried to convince Hatter and Luke to take a spin through the sim. His cheeks were still ruddy from the thrill. He kept asking Sunny how she kept her glutamate levels so low.

  His questions were alarmingly pointed and precise. He knew everything about conditioning and the way hunters trained at the university. He ask
ed Luke and Hatter about their hunting methods, the way they tracked using fear, and how they disposed of the bodies. He asked if Dean performed the autopsies himself.

  And if Dean had extracted any live data.

  We stopped talking at all after that.

  “As you can see, these are just our examination rooms. If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you the holding cells and the training rooms. We keep a central lab back here for the numbers who aren’t as docile yet.”

  “Docile?” Sunny asked. It was the first thing she’d said since the sim.

  Lieutenant Milhousse unlocked a door that opened into a short hall. “The younger ones are easier to handle. The older they get, the more agitated they grow.”

  “What do you do with the old ones?” I asked.

  “We put them down.”

  The short hall opened into the central lab. Whether by design or unfortunate timing, they had a patient on the table. The tech looked up from administering a needle into the IV attached to a thin, pale arm. My eyes slid up the arm to the bony shoulders and protruding clavicle. The patient wore a thin paper gown, though the air in the lab was chilled.

  The patient was a child. Barely five, if I’d had to guess. Their head was shaved close to their skull, and their wide, unblinking eyes stared up at the ceiling.

  There was a roaring in my ears. Lieutenant Milhousse was saying something. “—isolated to keep them calm. We only have one out at a time during all testing. It’s best for their hormone levels if they’re kept in solitary confinement. Come, I’ll show you where we keep the rest.” Lieutenant Milhousse waved at the tech beside the child. “Good work, Nat. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  The tech nodded and bent back over the child.

  It took me a minute to realize I was walking and to feel Luke’s hand on my arm, steering me through a swinging door at the back of the lab. Lieutenant Milhousse unlocked another door that led into a small decontamination room.

  “I must ask,” he said, motioning to four sets of packs laid out on a plastic bench along the wall, “that you put on these suits. Their immune systems are vulnerable to outside germs, you see, and we strive to keep infection rates low.”