Holden's Mate

by Meg Ripley

  Even stranger was that she didn’t seem to care about his money. Alyssa didn’t seem entirely certain about having him back their lab, and she had been more turned off by his car than turned on. She hadn’t even said anything about his apartment. She was definitely different, and in a way that was irresistible.

  To make matters even more bizarre, Dirk found himself opening up to Alyssa in a way he hadn’t even done with his friends back at the Club. Dr. Brinkmann had been there and had heard him talk, but that was purely coincidental. It was Alyssa he wanted to talk to, and Alyssa he wanted to know more about. Oddly enough, the more they talked the more he realized it wasn’t going to be enough. He needed more of her, more than just talking until midnight in a bar could ever get him. Alyssa wasn’t just an ordinary human. He had proven it to himself when he had stopped to ask her explicit permission to make love to her.

  As much as he wanted to know about her, he was still curious about what she did. Dr. Brinkmann had given him “the tour,” but it was obvious to Dirk from the very start that the scientist hadn’t been completely honest with him. He was only showing Bennett the bare bones of the company, the sorts of things that could just as easily be discovered by snooping around online. There was more to the story behind Bios Labs, and there was more to Bios Labs itself. There were doors he hadn’t been allowed to go through, doors with a security guard posted nearby and an extra retinal scanner. Whatever Bios had up its sleeve, it was big.

  He could hire someone to get a job at Bios and find out for him. He had plenty of money, and he didn’t doubt that he could find a candidate with a good degree and a clean record.

  Then again, he could keep Alyssa at his side and hope that she would one day confide in him. It would certainly give him the fringe benefit of having an attractive, intelligent woman in his bed, but he didn’t want to use her like that. He’d certainly used plenty of other women, but it wouldn’t happen with her.

  No, he knew exactly what he had to do. Dirk slowly extracted himself from the bed, moving carefully so as not to wake Alyssa. He slipped into the next room and called Ethan, one of his friends from the Darkblood Society.

  His friend’s voice was raspy with sleep. “Dude, it’s the middle of the night. I mean, the morning. What’s up?”

  Dirk didn’t give any specific details, but he gave the computer mogul just enough information to get him what he needed. “And I need it tonight. Like, right now.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Okay. If you’re sure about this. And I do owe you one. Just come to my office. I have something that will work with just a little bit of reprogramming.”

  After a quick stop at Cobalt Computers, Dirk was on his way back to Bios Labs with a small device sitting in his passenger seat. Ethan had promised that it could trick almost any retinal scanner in the world. “But I’m sure as hell not putting my logo on it,” the tech guy had said with a grin.

  Dirk parked a block away and trotted up to the building. The squat cube was dark and shadowy, with only one street light on the east side of it to cast any light on the lot. All of the office windows were dark. “Working the night shift, huh?” he muttered to himself as he ducked into the entryway and held the device up to the retinal scanner. His stomach swirled as he waited for an alarm to sound, but the door gave a soft click instead. He was inside.

  Dirk went slowly through the lobby, pausing after every footstep to listen for a guard to come running. But none did. He made his way through the offices Dr. Brinkmann had shown him. If he failed at his primary mission, he could always come back through here and snatch a laptop on the way out. Ethan would be able to tell him everything that was on it, but that was just a backup plan. He wanted to see the work with his own eyes.

  He rounded a corner into a short hallway with a door at the end. A security guard sat on a chair nearby, his head drooping almost to his chest. Dirk skirted around him and was just pulling the device out of his pocket to fool the lock when he heard the man stir behind him.

  “Hey!”

  Turning so fast he made his own head spin, Dirk dispatched the guard with a few quick thrusts of his hands. His father had made him take martial arts classes as a child, the sort of thing he’d never really wanted to do, but Mr. Bennett had insisted. “It’ll help you in ways you can’t imagine right now,” his father had assured him. “Both as a human and as a dragon.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Dirk whispered as he watched the guard fall to the floor and turned back to the door. He was through in a moment and found himself in a stairwell. A plain concrete wall lined dull gray steps that descended into the bowels of the building. “That’s not very exciting.”

  But the stairs led down to a lab area Brinkmann hadn’t allowed him to see before. As he descended into the basement of the building, he discovered a massive room, brightly lit, with what looked like different medical stations spread around it. Strong young men in paper gowns sat at each of these stations, moving to the next one when they were done, as various scientists poked them with needles and took their vitals. In an observation window overhead sat Dr. Brinkmann.

  Dirk crouched behind a large piece of machinery and listened.

  “He’s just not taking to the biomechanical arm,” said a young woman. “I think we’re going to have to remove it.”

  “We can’t do that. Brinkmann worked on this subject himself,” argued another voice. “He’ll be furious.”

  “If he’s so confident in it, then he can come down here and see that 348A’s skin is interacting with the material.”

  “But the subject can control it, so just put some ointment on it.”

  “You know just as well as I do that it’ll interfere with the neural connection,” the first scientist snapped. “Just call him down here.”

  Dirk held his breath. Biomechanical arm? Neural connection? He didn’t like the sound of it.

  Heavy footsteps sounded from the other side of the lab, and Dr. Brinkmann’s voice soon followed it. “Tell me what’s the matter,” he sighed.

  The female scientist explained something that amounted to a rash. “It’s fine if he’s only wearing it for a few hours, but that’ll never work in the field, especially in harsh conditions. We need to find a different material that will not only pick up the connection but agree with his skin.”

  “We haven’t had this problem with the other soldiers,” Brinkmann commented. “Does he have an integumentary disease? I don’t see anything noted on the chart.”

  “Nothing that I can find.”

  “Well, I’ll have to figure it out later. I’ve been calibrating the heat sensor vision on 879F, and it really can’t wait. Look, here he comes now.”

  “Sir, unreported heat signature detected.” This voice was deep and barking, definitely not a scientist.

  “See, it’s already glitching on me.”

  “Unreported heat signature detected,” the soldier repeated. “Investigating.”

  The heavy thud of boots drew nearer to Dirk’s hiding place, and he knew it was all over. He should have brought a gun with him or asked his friends to help. But he was just a spoiled rich boy who thought he was entitled to know everyone’s secrets, and the Darkblood Society didn’t have the time to waste on that. The machinery that had served to hide Dirk went crashing to the side, revealing a real-life toy soldier, complete with a tight t-shirt, camouflage pants, muscled arms, and buzzed hair. Dirk shot to his feet and landed a punch square on the soldier’s jaw. The soldier took it without blinking and grabbed Dirk by the arm.

  Brinkmann exclaimed, ready to reprimand the soldier for damaging expensive equipment, but his voice changed as soon as he realized what was actually happening. “You! What are you doing here?”

  Dirk didn’t have time to answer. He was stuck in the warrior’s grip, and his human body wasn’t strong enough to break it. Without thinking, he felt an instinctive flush of heat run through his arm. His skin rippled, tearing apart into sections that hardened into scales.

&nbs
p; Surprised, the soldier immediately let go, but it was too late. Several other men, some of them still in their paper gowns and others in olive drab, had closed in on him. He sized them up and took a quick view of the lab. There wasn’t enough room to spread his wings and fly out of here, but he had to do something…

  “348A, fire!”

  At Brinkmann’s command, the soldier with the biomechanical arm twitched. Something exploded into Dirk’s chest, and he sank into blackness.

  Dirk gasped for air as he awoke. He felt confined, confused, and definitely not himself. As he blinked the blurriness out of his eyes, he realized he was completely in dragon form. The tranquilizer dart still hung from his chest. Human drugs didn’t agree with dragons. He wouldn’t be able to morph back for at least a few hours. Shit. Shit shit shit.

  “Wakey, wakey,” came a familiar voice over a speaker.

  Looking around, Dirk realized that he was not still on the lab floor where he had fallen. The lights were just as bright, but he was in a room made with walls of a clear material. Dr. Brinkmann stood on the other side of one of the walls in his lab coat, waving.

  “I don’t know why you decided to come back here last night. I thought you were rather…entertained by Alyssa, and I didn’t think you were much of a threat. You were at least good enough to get down here, though, so I realize I misjudged you. Perhaps you’d like to tell me who you’re working for and what you want.” Brinkmann watched him with those dark eyes.

  “I’m not working for anyone,” Dirk gasped. Something in the tranquilizer was keeping him from regulating his body. Even in dragon form, he felt as though he would suffocate at any moment. “I knew you were keeping secrets, and I had to know what they were.”

  “I see I’m not the only one who keeps secrets.” The doctor gestured at Dirk’s body. “Who modified you?”

  “What?”

  “Clearly, there’s some sort of genetic mutation. You might as well tell me about it now. I already have dozens of samples of your blood and of your scales, so I’ll find out eventually.” He shrugged as though it didn’t really matter. “Either way, I’ll figure out how this will help my work along.”

  “Your work?” Dirk snapped. “You mean mutilating humans to see if you can make them better?”

  Brinkmann shook his head, his lips turning up in that creepy smile of his once again. “For a smart boy, you can be pretty stupid. I’m not mutilating them at all. I’m giving them a chance to be whole again. If anybody in here is mutilated, it’s you, Mr. Bennett. Tell me, do you share any characteristics with natural reptiles? Laying eggs or shedding your tail, perhaps?”

  Pissed and in pain, Dirk launched himself at the wall only to bounce off it and back down onto the cold concrete. Several soldiers stepped up behind Dr. Brinkmann, just in case, but there was no breaking through this material.

  “Settle down,” the doctor advised. “You aren’t going anywhere. Not for a long time.”

  5

  The alarm on her phone went off, but Alyssa could only hear it faintly. Jolting awake, she realized she was still in Dirk Bennett’s apartment. She sat up and realized she was alone in the bed. She stepped out into the living room and retrieved her phone from her purse, swiping the alarm to silence it. “Dirk?”

  There was a note on the coffee table:

  Couldn’t sleep so I went for a walk. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. I’ll call you.

  It was odd, but it wasn’t as though he had escaped in the middle of the night never to return. She let herself delight in the fact that he had at least left a note, and he trusted her enough to leave her alone in his apartment. Refusing to break that trust, she refrained from opening any drawers or cabinets beyond what she needed to make herself breakfast.

  She took a cab to work, wondering if anyone would notice that her car had been in the lot the entire night. Brinkmann would have plenty to say about it, but she would just have to deal with that when she got there. Heading through the front door and toward the stairs, she had to stop when Krista chased her down.

  “Alyssa?”

  “Yes, what is it?” She didn’t have time to fix anyone’s computer or help them figure out what was wrong with their gene sequencing.

  “Dr. Brinkmann is in the basement. He said to tell you to go see him right away.” Krista twisted her hands in front of her stomach.

  Alyssa sighed. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. I have some other things to do.”

  “He said it was urgent,” Krista insisted. “Um, I think something happened last night.”

  “You mean, with the Talos Project?” They hadn’t scheduled anything major for the night shift, keeping the larger tests and crucial programming sessions for when Alyssa and Dr. Brinkmann could work together.

  “I’m not sure. I mean, he’s down there, and I’ve seen lots of other people go down there, but nobody’s really saying anything.”

  “Fine.” Alyssa sighed, heading for the lower level, and soon enough, she found Dr. Brinkmann, waiting for her excitedly at the bottom of the stairs.

  “You know how you’re always so worried about someone finding out about Talos?” he asked. His teeth were actually showing as he smiled, a sure sign that something was up.

  “Yes,” she replied slowly.

  “It turns out you were right. Somehow, word got out there.” He rocked back on his heels, blocking her from going through the doorway or seeing what was happening.

  “Did the reporter come by or something?”

  “Or something.” Brinkmann stood aside now to let her in. “A cunning young man decided to break into the facility last night.”

  A wave of horror swept over Alyssa. How much of her work had the burglar ruined? Had he taken anything? Did he know her name? “Oh, God.”

  “Now, now. Don’t worry. Our soldiers proved themselves worthy. They not only detected the threat, but they managed to take him down as well.” Dr. Brinkman stepped swiftly across the lab floor. They were heading toward the containment units, but Alyssa couldn’t see inside them; all the soldiers were standing around them in a solid circle. “They did their duty, and they did it in a manner I wouldn’t have thought they would be ready for. It not only proved something about our work, but led us to an entirely new discovery.”

  “Such as?” Alyssa wished he would just spit it out. She felt dizzy as she walked across the shiny floor. It was odd, when she stopped to think about it, what a difference there was between the lobby and the offices of the building and the official lab. There were dummy labs upstairs where minor work was done, but everything was shabby and outdated compared to the Talos floor.

  Brinkmann waved the soldiers aside. The containment unit was usually reserved for wayward soldiers who reacted poorly to their gene therapy. Some of them had become completely uncontrollable and had to be sedated and quarantined until they could be fixed. But the creature in the containment unit was definitely not a soldier. It was completely covered in silver scales that ran from its snarling lips to the tip of its thick tail. Spreading its wings in a gesture of aggression, it snapped at the bullet-proof glass just to get a reaction out of the soldiers. They were bionic men who had been injured in war and repaired with Dr. Brinkmann’s wildly progressive tactics, but they were still men. They jumped back, laughing at each other and teasing the creature.

  “What, exactly, is that?” she asked slowly, unable to take her eyes off the scaly beast. “I know I had a lot to drink last night, but doesn’t that mean I should be seeing pink elephants instead of dragons?”

  Brinkmann laughed. “It’s not just a dragon, my dear. It’s a shapeshifter. This thing is human when it wants to be. As far as I can tell, he’s either just that pissed off or he can’t change back. I don’t really know, and I don’t even care. We’ve made the discovery of the century!”

  Somehow, Alyssa couldn’t get her own enthusiasm to match his. “But what do we do with him?”

  “Anything we want!” The doctor gestured wildly in the air with his ha
nds. “Just think of the possibilities! If we can harness whatever it is that makes this man shift to a dragon and back again, we could create super soldiers in a way that we never even imagined. Think about the implications when it comes to strength, stealth, and camouflage!” He was pounding his fist into his hand now, so enthused about the monster in the cage that his passion couldn’t be contained. “If none of that pans out, then we can make a shit ton of money off him.”

  “But you said he’s human, right?” Alyssa peered through the glass, marveling at the sleek silver spectacle. It was absolutely beautiful, whatever it was.

  “Don’t start with your ethics and morals now. We’ve been experimenting on humans for years, and the government pays us damn good money to do so. This thing could be our ticket to fame, and I need that brilliant brain of yours. Now, I’ve got to go home and get some sleep. I think I’ll have to take some pills to do it, but I need a fresh mind. In the meantime, I’ve got a whole slew of samples for you to go through. Start preliminary tests and be sure to run his blood through the sequencer. I want to know everything there is to know about him.” He clapped her on the arm and practically skipped across the lab floor to the stairs.

  Alyssa didn’t turn to watch him go, instead keeping her eyes on the spectacle inside the containment unit. She had worked on mice, guinea pigs, and even cats before she had finally agreed to experiment directly on humans, and even then it was only because the government had asked her to do so. But this dragon—or whatever it was—was completely different.