by Tommi Hayes
Then he pushes his face against mine. It's not a kiss, just the pair of us mashed up against each other, and I can feel the trembles, feel how angry he still is. And it's amazing that he can break through all conditioning, can be mad at me. And it's also amazing that anger isn't by any means all he's feeling. "I had to look after you," he says in a hard harsh exhale. "I had to take care of you. Like you've taken care of me."
And what a laugh that is, though I'm more inclined to cry. His hand goes to my hair, because he always loves my hair, more than me even sometimes. I can't understand that, and I can't understand at all how he is what he is, and how he loves me in a way that seems more real than it should, more real than the others. Especially now, with my pretty face red with anxiety and tears, my nose dripping, my hair bedraggled. Pretty, I must always be pretty, always in control, always keeping the subject charmed and hypnotized, with all my charms both mental and physical. Induction for me was halfway to charm school.
I don't understand anything, not the first thing. "How did you even do it," I ask right into his cheek, where the stubble is a little rougher than anyone else's three o'clock shadow. It's a touch of the wolf in him. He's still disturbed, emotions ramshackle and rattling inside his chest, warping human form a little.
And Raj is silent a moment, and has no pat answer for me. He rubs his cheek against mine. "I can feel you," he says in a moment. "Even when you're not touching me with your mind, I can feel you anyway. Your power, but also just you. And I can feel your power like it's a solid thing, a doorknob or a tube of fries. I can hold on and go where you go with it. I can take hold and go somewhere myself with it, if I'm curled up in your mind already. Although I only found that out today."
And I shake my head, dizzy and wild, because these are the wrong answers. “That's not how it works," I tell him, eyes squeezing shut and trying to shake my head, shake the confusion out of me. “That's not how it's supposed to work."
I feel his shrug, too. “Maybe not. You'd be the expert. Doesn't really matter how it's supposed to be, if it's different to how it actually is. I can piggy-back on what you can do. We have solid evidence of that."
That this is slightly less alarming than the idea that Raj might have his own native, possibly latent telepathic powers, really doesn't say much. It's still pretty alarming. It's unprecedented. We're in uncharted territory. Here be dragons, basically. Still I need to check. I pull his head back, look into those eyes that are full of love and uncomfortable amounts of intelligence. "It's not something you could do before?" I ask, carefully, eye contact intent, letting him know how important it is to know exactly what's going on here. "Not even as a kid? You've never had any odd experiences, fugue states, found yourself wandering around someone's head and then persuaded yourself later that you hallucinated or just imagined it?" God, if he has... A telepathic wolf with leadership qualities. Something beyond the enhanced awareness of the usual five to seven senses they already have. I can't imagine how valuable that would be to the Section. They would never, never let him go.
He shakes his head, and rests his face against my shoulder, his nice Grecian nose brushing against the thin linen of my shirt. And I search around for explanations, even though what the fuck we're going to do is really the point at issue, here. It's certainly a whole hell of a lot more important than how we can possibly be in this position in the first place. I just can't get past it, as a step on the way to actually dealing with our immediate problems.
I push in, to let my eyes close against Raj's beautiful thick dark hair. Covering his beautiful thick head, I am tempted to say, because although he is unarguably a smart guy, he is also someone who cannot be trusted to discern the relative importance of a number of issues at hand, to prioritise correctly.
As in, this morning. Given a life-threatening situation, up against someone in peril–probably more accurately, me in peril, an Izak in peril–then he will adjudge that the former is easily and overwhelmingly the more important crisis. And, as I have seen, make hellishly bad decisions, and throw himself into harm's way, in order to prevent me coming to harm. That isn't actually how the induction, the synching, is supposed to work. The adoration, yes. But also a submission to the absolute authority of the operative. Or at least until the Honeymoon is over. When I told him to stay put in that damn hotel suite, then that was precisely what he should have done.
It was what any other subject I have ever worked with would have done. So what is it exactly, that is so very different about my Raj? Maybe it's more of a priority to understand this than I had thought. It could get us into more trouble than we already are. How is Raj what he is? What is he?
I go to the source, then. “Do you know why you can do that?" I say. Any insight might be helpful after all. "Because... my love... that shouldn't be." And I touch his hair, and I wonder why I'm going to him for advice. Oh Daddy, what should I do?
I didn't ask to get pulled onto his lap, the steering wheel digging into my ribs. I'm not asking for a lot of things that Raj is delivering anyhow. How is he my, my boyfriend? How unprofessional this is. He's a subject, a subject, a subject... He's my boyfriend. The trouble is, I think he's starting to become quite aware of that. He's taking liberties. The more he takes, the worse it gets.
And what he says, he doesn't say so much as growl. “Maybe you're my mate," he suggests, and I close my eyes when he says it, because what the hell, how does that even occur to him?
"I am not your mate," I say, heavy with emphasis, and everything in my voice tells him just how ridiculous that idea is, how inane I think it. I don't know why, really, since the induction and synching process, the maintenance Honeymoon that follows swiftly on afterwards, really have one purpose and one purpose only. And that purpose is, of course, to replicate the mate bond. To get in there beforehand, especially with made wolves, and establish connection and control, before any such tie with an outside influence can take a hold.
The bond is a real thing, indeed. Not that we–or the Section, at any rate, and their ethnographers and researchers and doctors and yes, handlers–tell wolf subjects that, not made ones who don't know it already from culture and family and community. They might start to think that possibly they were missing out on something, after all. They might begin to question their devotion, to look outside the Section for their cues for loyalties and belonging. Can't be having that.
In any case, I've never heard of transfer of telepathic powers being a side-effect, of a telepath being mated to a werewolf. And if that was a thing, at all, then surely I would have heard of it by this point? Considering where I work, and who with, and all.
Except, I think. The werewolf population is small, as compared to the general population, is what I also think. And the telepath population is still tinier, vanishingly so. How many incidences of a true werewolf/telepath bonding are really likely to have occurred already, as subjects for study and examination? How many peer-reviewed articles can I expect to find in the literature?
Pretty much none, I would say, making an educated guess.
And this, this thing that has taken a hold and rooted itself so rapidly with Raj, is not typical. It is not like anything I have experienced or seen, myself or between any other wolf and handler.
Is that what this is? Are we... mated? Bonded? Raj can't tell me for sure, not any more than I have the information to tell him.
What an irony, if so. All the effort I've expended with him, and with the others before him, to recreate a simulacrum of the bond. And here it is, overtaking all my synthetic, carefully calculated efforts, and taking on a life of its own. A completely uncontrollable life, it appears, with characteristics and potentialities that are unpredictable and shocking. Possibly dangerous. In a way it makes sense, if that's indeed what it is. After all, a werewolf is what we'd describe as a supernatural creature, a being of powers far beyond the normal. For one such to absorb, to take on other supernatural, or extra-sensory, or non-standard powers from a mate, would be... Well, to be honest I know of no pr
ecedent, really. But somehow intuitively, it makes a kind of sense that is at least more sensical than if... than if we weren't mates, than if Raj wasn't a wolf, than if I wasn't a telepath. Than if there was any other conceivable explanation, barring Raj having suddenly sprouted some interesting new powers in a completely serendipitous, synchronous kind of a way. And that's an explanation that stretches both my credulity, and Occam's Razor, absolutely a step too far.
Maybe it explains more than that, if we are mates. Explains the sensitized buzz over my skin, more and more intense, stronger, the closer I get to Raj. The wakeful nights these weeks, where I've lain awake and searched, scrabbled around in my brain for a way out of this, for both of us. A way that gives Raj his life back to him. That lets me keep him, instead of surrendering him up to the Wolf Unit in a matter of weeks, a matter of days merely. In any case it's the only explanation I have, the simplest. I roll with it.
It doesn't really solve anything, of course. It explains, but it doesn't show me where to go from here. Where, where do we go from here? I drag my hands up to my face, and I push through the pull of the bond. And now we're calling it that, I can feel it, something beyond a willed telepathic link. It isn't about something I've chosen or made or enforced. It's something beyond my powers. And it may be beyond my control. It's something to drag me around and make me do things, not the other way about. "What are we going to do?" I whisper.
It shouldn't be comforting when he wraps me up in his arms. Because God knows, this conscript wolf, this innocent idealist, is surely no match for the likes of the Section, of the State. He's not nearly crafty, ruthless, compromised enough. How could he be equipped?
But against reason and sense, I'm comforted, which probably says more about mystical connections and emotional neurochemistry, than about my rational processes. Even when he catches a hold of my hair, pulls my head back with it and looks into my eyes. "First," he says, and smiles, face splitting in a wide smile, eyes bright with love and amusement, "I'm going for a run, out here on the hills. Because you have been keeping me on a very tight leash, my love. But I think that ends here. My wolf wants out, for an hour or so. And then, we run together."
Amazingly, I don't understand him. I think I have some excuse, because I am immensely stressed, and have had a revelation that is enough to fracture my mind halfway, to set it askew. And I have, today, committed an act, in breaching Amisa's mind, that would have me keel-hauled and brought up before internal tribunals in the Section. And perhaps lost forever, in their internecine structures and disciplinary measures. That, if it didn't see me strapped down and sedated until compliance and obedience was no choice, but rather the only option open to me.
And I'm afraid for Raj, for my love, not only for myself. Because he was the one, the first one to dive into that mind, and if they knew that then... I don't know if they'd value him more highly, put him on a yet stricter leash, or put him down like a wild dog, too dangerous to be allowed to continue to exist further. What they surely wouldn't do is nothing. There would be action taken, and none of it good or wholesome for the likes of us.
And because he isn't what he's supposed to be, after induction, after weeding, after Honeymoon. He is by no means the standardized product-soldier that the process is designed to produce. And if they cotton on to that, then what use do they have, for a wolf-soldier who's not a carefully modified tool? Who thinks for himself a little too much, and not within the carefully delineated bounds set for him?
And because he's just out of control. Going for a run? As the wolf? Middle of the day, unscheduled, out here in non-Section country, not an approved compound? And I... am powerless to control him, to make him conform. I know even without attempting it. What the hell is he talking about, anyway? "A run?" I ask. I know just how bemused my face must be. I'm not a runner, any more. In college, yes. It led on to my gym habit, which led on to my nice, standardised hottie musculature, which in part led on to... Damn running. It's part of the problem that led me to this pretty mess. Damn it. I'm not running with anyone, least of all Raj. Least of all with a wolf who can outrun me to several powers, who would leave me gasping and leaning on my hands and wheezing at the starting gate.
What? But he smiles, rubs his face up against mine, and his eyes, as they burn into mine, are a little frighteningly intense. "Not the kind of running I mean, baby." Oh, and now he's explaining things to me. Explaining things, and when did I get to be the junior partner around here? I can feel that my face is signalling well enough that I'm still not comprehending well enough. And he laughs. "Running away, love. I can feel how you're worrying. You think we've got so much to cover up. That we're never going to be able to keep it up, to maintain cover and function as expected, and do the things they want. All at the same time as trying to sabotage from the inside, protect as many as we can, wait for the perfect moment. The time when we can stop doing active damage to our own cause, and take down the oppressor from the inside. Is that right, baby?"
He brushes kisses down my cheek, and that as much as anything feels like the most arrant patronage. "Forget it, honey," is what he whispers to me. "All of that is a numbers game. Adding up how much damage we're doing, trying to do enough good to make up for it. I'm not going that route, Iz." And I grip harder onto his shoulders, as he embraces me fondly, without the slightest alarm or deference. As the senior partner. Or maybe as an indulged, loved, gentled pet, a darling who must be reined in and tamed. How the hell did we get to this point?
"You're crazy," is as much as I manage. "Where would we go? We're property, do you understand that much?" And his lips are brushing mine as I'm trying to talk sense into him, and, all right, it's a little bit distracting. “Do you imagine they wouldn't come after us? Because if you do, then you're definitely crazy."
His hands on my face hold me still, as I flail and look about, out onto the bleak landscape around us. Looking for an out, for a route, for aid and succour, because I've got myself caught up with a crazy person, a god damned loon, it seems. But my eyes come back to his, because he holds me in place and I can't evade him, and because he looms in so close that our noses touch in an Eskimo kiss.
“There are other wolves out there," is what he says to me. “There are packs," he points out. "People who aren't going to care for the idea of their people being treated like the Section are treating innocents, newly turned wolves. People who don't like things that are happening with the Section, with the State. It isn't right. It isn't right what they've done to you."
And I stare at him with real misgivings. I've told him small things, here and there. Perhaps too much. But what does he know, really? What complaints have I made? I'm not employed in order to encourage him into sedition, after all. Pretty much the reverse of that.
"Raj," I say, and my gut is uneasy, I feel almost sick. "What do you know?"
"I know enough. I've been inside your head," he says, mulish, and only holds me tighter. “The way the Section operates, it isn't right, Iz. You know that. They're making you sick, just like me. Something has to be done. And we'll find allies, and somewhere to go. It's time to get the hell out, and you're coming with me." His eyes glint in grey moorland afternoon light. "You don't imagine I'd go without you, do you?"
God damn. “This isn't you, Raj," I whisper. I'm unutterably confused. As well as aroused, and disturbed. "You're not a revolutionary. You're not a rebel, you're good and decent and upstanding, you colour inside the lines and play by the rules and do the right thing."
He rubs his face up against the side of my head, and I can feel him smiling up against my ear. "I do what the State tells me is the right thing, do you mean, Iz? I suppose that was the truth. I was a good boy. I followed the prescribed path, and I didn't know a damned thing of how things are really run and what goes on. Most folks don't. That was before I got myself bitten on a morning run, before I woke up abducted by the State. Before I woke up to you dabbling in my mind, like you were dabbling your fingers in a running stream."
His voice is light
and sweet. But the words put a chill through me. If he's angry at me, we're out here alone in the hills, and he's the wolf, and now he has power of a kind akin to mine, too, even if it's only vicariously, through me... "Raj," I say, stiff with tension. "Are you angry with me?"
I get a rumble of amusement for that. And I'm not allowed at all to pull away.
"Never with you, love. I like you in there. I never want you to leave. And you had a job to do in any case. What choice did they give you? But now you have a choice, Iz. You don't have to be what they've made you. You weren't meant to be--" And he hesitates. "It's not what you are to me, Iz. But I have been inside, and seen some of what you think, and I know what you think of yourself. You think you're–an escort. And a government agent. But you're not defined by the job that they made you do."
