She stared into his eyes and didn’t like what she saw. The eyes were somewhat vacant, as distant as they were full of worry. “What else aren’t you telling me?”
“You sure you’re up for this, right now? Trust me, you have more than enough data to process without me compounding things further with any more bitter reality.”
“Tell me everything. The more information they have on us, the easier it is to control outcomes in their favor. Information is everything. That’s a game two can play.”
“Fine, have it your way.”
***
A SHORT WHILE EARLIER…
The wolf just wanted to play. And he was loving his new chew toys. He chased after the first soldier, bit down on his head repeatedly, able to fit the whole thing snugly within his jaws, but the skull wouldn’t crack. Finally he got tired tasting his own saliva and flung the soldier at the nearest tree, expecting to hear his spine crack. Only, it didn’t. The soldier got up and smiled at him. The human hybrid pushed the cybernetic eye back in the socket. The human eye, gouged out by one of the wolf’s fangs would be no more use to him, but it didn’t seem to affect his attitude any.
The soldier opened up on him with automatic weapon fire. The bullets stung like bees. The wolf charged faster to put an end to the stinging. But the soldier leapt out of the way, high up into the branches above. How did he do that? The wolf threw his body against the tree. Again and again, until he uprooted it, pinning the soldier beneath. Then he bit off a branch and drove it into the soldier’s chest, right through the heart. The soldier kept smiling, but he stopped moving after a while; the light went out of his eyes.
“Enough, Wolf Boy. You took out one of us. You can’t take us all out.”
His wolf assessed the situation. Seeing even the hidden soldiers with his thermal vision. Taunter had a point. If they were all like this guy, he wasn’t getting out of this alive. Then it occurred to him; they might not all have the same modifications. They could all be repurposed soldiers, back from the war, missing this or that part, in desperate need of a cyber-enhancement, if only they’d sign on the dotted line and promise their soul to their benefactor. There was a time when he’d have accepted such a gambit himself. Lucky for him, he’d held out for a better offer.
The Wolf decided to use the sensory input reaching his brain more wisely, to figure out his adversaries’ weak points, to help him stay away from the cyber-upgrades. He kept his head down in abeyance, stalling for time, pretending to be calming down, but really just learning their vulnerabilities before striking again. His thermal imaging told him just which parts of their bodies were cold; he could see their enhancements by what he couldn’t see. Being forced to restrain himself like this was actually benefitting his higher brain functions, keeping the impulsive attack first, ask questions later, wolf in abeyance, at least for now.
He needed more time! He settled down on all fours, collapsing his chest to the ground, as if surrendering entirely. He saw the one doing the talking, easing up on his weapon. “You can stow the net, boys, doesn’t look like we’re going to need it. He can see reason even from this state. Another plus for us. He’s going to make one hell of an addition to the team, don’t you think?” There was jeering laughter and a few nods from the others on the team, but they didn’t exactly ease up on their weapons.
The male team leader came in closer, kneeled down beside him, grabbed his neck skin, pulled at it, then petted him. “All right, soldier. Maybe it’s time you thought of changing back. Not sure there’s room for all this in the truck. Besides, we need to ask you about Jane of the Jungle.”
The wolf adjusted his breathing further to intimate reaching another level down of relaxation.
“Looks like he’s calming himself down, boys,” the leader said. “Why don’t we give him some more room in case the wolf in him could use some more reassuring?”
The soldiers shouldered their weapons and footed it back to their trucks. He heard engines firing up, and saw the convoy getting back on to the dirt road. They weren’t exactly leaving, just positioning themselves for rapid extraction. The final truck sliding into place was an ambulance of sorts. Clearly it was intended for him, to either patch up the wounds in a hurry if they had to hurt him, or, barring his non-compliance, start the field testing of his blood and tissue sample collection before they were even back on the road, wasting no time.
Wolf Boy made his move. He gouged out the throat of the leader that had been petting him, so he couldn’t scream and warn the others. Then he bit off his dominant hand so he couldn’t fire his weapon in his final moments in the event he was determined to take vengeful thoughts with him to the grave.
His wolf used its night vision to step on moss as opposed to twigs, to dampen the sound he was making, keeping his breathing in check for the same reason. The only time he made a sound was when he was right behind the one he wanted to turn around. As soon as he did, the wolf slashed his throat with his forepaw, severing the vocal chords as he had with the first victim, leaving only a quiet gurgling sound that was easily swallowed up by the babbling brook nearby.
All the commotion of loading up the transports and stowing the equipment and men making small talk leant him additional cover for what noise he was making. But his black fur against the darkness was perhaps his best ally.
Finally, he was at the last of the trucks forming the convoy, the ambulance. That was when he felt not one, not two, but three tranq darts fired into his hide from rifles. He turned to see the soldiers that had fired them, still hiding behind the trees, their thermal signatures only partly obscured. So it had all been a set up. They wanted him to get close enough to the ambulance to make it that much easier to throw him inside and lock the doors. No doubt it was reinforced in the same manner as some of these men. Well, that would explain trained soldiers dropping their guards so easily. You should have smelled the trap if nothing else, Wolf Boy! Need to balance this animal’s cunning with your own better before it’s the end of you.
Fighting somnolence brought on by the drugs in his system, he allowed his anger to soar, hoping the spiking adrenaline would be enough to throw off the drug. It was helping, just not enough.
He concentrated on signaling the nano on what to do. If the ploy was good enough for Jane, it was good enough for him. It was working. Only, they still had him in a very compromising position. So what next?
The wolf adjusted his laser vision, seeking out a frequency the soldiers’ night vision goggles couldn’t detect, and while pretending to be losing the battle at throwing off the sleepiness of the drug, he fired at the concealed soldiers hanging back in the woods. When they started exploding from his targeting the arsenals on their bodies, it drew all kinds of attention. The remaining soldiers started pouring back out of the trucks again to see what was going on.
“I thought we secured his traps and pitfalls,” one of them said.
“We did,” the one standing next to him replied.
“What then?”
“Must be the chick.”
“She’s a scientist. She’s no soldier. No matter, time we rounded her up anyway, just in case she is of a mind to play GI Jane.” He signaled his men to fan out in search of her. When it was just he and his partner by the truck waiting for the wolf to pass out, and standing by to make sure he remained secure, he made his move on them.
He reared up on his hind legs then pinned them both to the ground, one beneath each paw. When he withdrew his talons, it was as if they’d been skewered by five knives each. The Kevlar sheeting protecting their vital organs from knives and gunfire weren’t quite enough to keep out his talons.
Scampering after the others, he was positively feverish at the thought of them reaching Jane before he caught up with them. Using the same technique he had earlier, he avoided the cold spots of the bodies he needed to bring down, as those were the cyberenhanced parts, and he focused on the hottest parts of their bodies. And that’s where he applied his jaws, looking always for the one bite that
would be the lethal one. He dispatched three more this way before he realized they weren’t without their own backup plans.
A net dropped down on him from above. Several of the soldiers had remained deployed high up in the trees. Their heat signatures had been disguised with nexgen camou body paint and other heat-neutralizers that didn’t exist in his day, when he was last on the battlefield, only some years ago. Or maybe it had, but the tech was just too proprietary and top-secret to allow in the hands of anyone but these black ops teams.
The net proving effective thus far at thwarting any other bright ideas on his part, the remaining soldiers descended from the trees. The ones that had fanned out for Jane also closed in on him. Apparently that was just another decoy move to get him to act rashly, and it worked. They weren’t interested in Jane. Just in him. Figured they could get what they needed from studying his carcass, living or dead. She was no longer necessary. That meant they didn’t know about her injecting herself long before she injected him. That at least was something for now. But he was not about to stand for this trial separation they were planning for him, taking him away from her to some undisclosed lab. Once again they had him surrounded, and once again he needed to pull off the impossible.
***
PRESENT TIME…
Now that Mike had caught Jane up on what had happened in her absence, he searched her face for clues, any sign of judgment or thinking less of him for what he had to do. He figured she might well have room to judge. He couldn’t imagine that the Wolf Boy part of him had made the most humane decisions under pressure. There might have been a way to save at least some of those men. Might have been, if his human brain were more in charge. It was a painful lesson in balancing this new dual nature that might well be the new normal.
“Why are you looking at me like that? I was expecting more harsh judgment.”
“Whatever missteps you took out there are as much my responsibility as yours. Besides, no time for guilt and recriminations. We have to get to hell out of here and fast.”
“Maybe you should leave me behind. There’s no evidence I’m anything but a failed experiment so far. And if Femmy, I mean the Ice Queen, I mean…”
“I know who you mean.”
“If she can get inside my head, make me do things I don’t want to do, it’s no surprise you’re not going to be long for this world.”
“Leave them the ultimate weapon? I’m sure that’s just what they want. No, they’re not done testing you and seeing what you can do, and neither am I.”
“You think I might learn how to shapeshift into something besides the wolf?”
“I think you might well be able to shapeshift into anything you want.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Under my scanner I could see the nanites clustering around the junk-DNA in your body. At the time I thought they were just being overly fastidious about cleaning house. Now I see they had far more nefarious things in mind. They were fishing for anything they could use from our long evolutionary climb up from the oceans. That’s quite the repository. ”
“That’s good, right? That’s a good thing?”
“Could be. The question is can you control your mind well enough to keep the many beasts in check? And even if you can beat Zen masters at their own game, how long will the nano hive mind allow itself to be controlled?”
FOURTEEN
“This is quite the home away from home,” Michael said, pulling back the drapes and staring over the city. And turning his back on a suite whose scale and ornate furnishings were the likes of which he hadn’t seen since last he’d been given a tour of the King Louis XIV palace in Versailles.
“Yeah, well, I’m thinking far and away may not have been the best idea. Let’s see them try their war games in the middle of New York City,” Jane said, plopping the suitcase on the table and unfolding it. It held most of her most sacred research items. She’d be checking it first to make sure everything made it safely before she got around to checking the less important, and more replaceable items. “No way they’re going to rain hell and damnation down on our heads with this many witnesses.”
“So you say. You forget these people control all the major media outlets. They can spin it however they want, like putting down some terrorist threat.”
“This isn’t just the middle of the city. It’s Park Avenue. These rich bitches have enough clout and influence to investigate what’s going on for themselves. Much harder to shut up and shut down.”
“That part’s a nice touch. I wonder how Wolf Boy will make out in the Jacuzzi bath tub with the gold handles.” He set down the art nouveau ceramic which was probably worth a couple years of his pay, assuming he was still collecting a salary and he could spin all this as deep undercover work.
“Come over here. Let me take a sample of your blood.”
“She says in a commanding tone filled with lots of worry.” He padded over to her, squeezed her arms and peppered her forehead with kisses. “I’m sure there’s a, ‘because I’m really afraid to lose you’ in there somewhere.”
She took a deep breath and huffed. “Yeah, there is. Now, do you mind?”
He twisted her about and hugged her from behind, using the pleasing view out the window to placate her. “You can’t protect me with fear and anxiety. We’ve got to believe nothing can stop us and nothing can separate us. The nanites respond to our thoughts, remember?”
She stroked his arms and for a time seemed to be going along with the hypnotherapy of the view of the city combined with his voice. Then she peeled him away. “Nice try, by the way. But I’d like to explore my true feelings for you, which I can’t do if they’re part of some self-brainwashing imperative to keep us both safe.”
Not bothering to stifle his feeling of resignation from telegraphing itself across his face, he took up the chair by the desk and stuck out his arm. “We hole up for a while where they’re sure not to find us. They find us. All hell breaks loose. We’re becoming as predictable as any married couple.”
She gave him a half-hearted smile, probably meant to rope in the repartee so she could concentrate on her handiwork. “What makes you so sure they’re going to find us this time?”
“This is Big Brother land. Finding people is what they do. Second only to putting them down.”
Jane stuck the needle in his arm. “We gonna get our lovemaking on a predictable schedule anytime soon?” he said. “You know, fight, make love, fight, make love. Might help numb the pain of all the regularity.”
“How about we do the city tonight? We don’t have to stay cooped up in here. I can understand you getting cabin fever. The nice digs alone aren’t going to forestall that.”
“Awesome! We’re overdue for a little romance. At least this isn’t going to be one of those thrillers where the lovers only get to kiss at the end.”
“Perish the thought,” she said with a heavy smile. It lifted her face but not her spirits. Something was worrying her. Perhaps she needed the outing as much as he did in lieu of all that had happened to them so far.
Or maybe the fretting had to do with what she’d glimpsed under the microscope. Yes, that was it; he would have realized right away if he was less focused on letting off steam and being more present in the moment. What were the little nanite buggers up to now that was throwing her for a loop?
***
“Serena? Really? Now you tell me, is there anything remotely serene about that woman?” Mitch’s eyes never left the sight of Serena questioning the severed head on her desk as he talked.
Spalding couldn’t blame him for feeling entranced. She was just one desk over in the pool of desks which didn’t even warrant separating with cubicles. That was FBI budgeting for you; “call girls” in a call center got treated with more respect. Not that Spalding was complaining. The shared workspace was just big enough for the other FBI agents to offer to trade them a kidney for a chance to be seated this close to her. For all their infatuation with her, Serena was too engrossed in her
work to take note of Mitch and Spalding gossiping about her, far less the other eyes on her.
“I don’t know. Looking at her certainly makes me serene.” Spalding, who’d rolled his swivel chair over to Mitch from his own desk, one row back, couldn’t get his eyes off her either. Not that either of them had a chance in hell of scoring with that one. Not Mitch with his bald head and his paunch. And certainly not Spalding with his anorexic figure and wrinkled skin, like Boris Karloff up from the grave in The Mummy.
So Serena had a thing for severed heads? Spalding liked his girls a little kinky. She looked like she’d spilled off the cover of a comic book, moreover. Nothing but shards of skimpy, form-fitting leather, including the boots that went clear up to her knees. With so much skin exposed, not an inch of it didn’t look airbrushed. She shouldn’t exist in the real world; not with that much Photoshop enhancement. What more could Spalding ask of his fantasy woman? “You’re a fool for not putting money down on the betting pool. It’s five to one against her being the slightest bit human. Fine by me. Robo sex has long been one of my turn ons, even if I’ve needed a few sci-fi writers to fill in the blanks for me. Just means she never tires out. Tell me that doesn’t fire your imagination.” That wasn’t exactly sanctioned FBI dress code she was modeling. Something allowed her to get away with it. And Spalding had his money on First Robot Online Generation 1, or FROG 1, for short.
“And what’s with, Bring your Zombie to Work day?” Mitch eyed the former special-ops soldier crawling around the office in slow motion, currently trying to pull himself up to standing with the help of Mitch’s desk, his insides hanging out, a gash cleaving his face nearly in two vertically, and a big piece of the back of his head missing.
Spalding shifted his attention from Serena, though he hated to do it. “I don’t know. They’re growing on me. I mean, dogs you have to feed, pet, walk so they can do their business. On balance, as pets go, these are pretty low maintenance.”
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