by Laura Taylor
Skip shrugged. “I feel like I owe him something,” she admitted awkwardly. “He helped me after the car crash, and then donated blood, and I’m kind of the reason he’s in this mess in the first place. I feel like I should help him out a bit.”
“And your protestations that he’s not going to betray us? Is that based on your genuine opinion, or are you just feeling sorry for him?”
Skip thought back to that night in the cave, the way she’d deliberately hurt Miller, and how he’d steadfastly refused to hurt her back. She was well versed in the actions of evil men, and Miller’s behaviour simply didn’t stack up. “I really think he’s one of the good guys,” she said honestly.
Baron sighed, still looking rather put out. “Fine. You can give him a couple of lessons. But only on how to shift and how to deal with his wolf. No snippets of shifter history or culture or weird manifestations of the magic. Everything else is on a need to know basis, and as far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t qualify.”
Skip nodded happily. “No problem,” she said cheerfully. “And can I give his wolf some meat? No one’s given him anything but human food.”
Baron glanced at the clock. “Fine. It’s nearly dinnertime, so how about you put a plate together for him as well, and take it down with you.”
Feeling much more positive about the whole situation, Skip bounced off towards the kitchen.
Melissa sat in front of the computer in the Noturatii’s main science lab, watching closely as Professor Banks adjusted the electrodes embedded in the experimentation table.
“Try it again,” he instructed, and Melissa turned her attention back to the screen, running a check on the electrodes’ readings and nodding in satisfaction as the results came up. “Discrete readings every 0.05 seconds,” she reported. “All electrodes in banks one and three are working normally… but electrode number seven in bank two isn’t recording anything.”
“The shifter had a seizure a few days ago,” Dr Evans reported, from the other side of the room. “It’s possible that it caused the connection to come loose.”
“No problem,” the Professor said, and quickly began removing the electrode. “You have some spares, I take it?”
“Of course,” Evans replied, and hurried to a cabinet on the far wall, searching through the draws for a replacement.
In the experiments to figure out how the shifters changed forms, Evans had insisted right from the start that each shift was caused by a single spark of electricity, the catalyst for the shift, and they’d run several hundred separate tests based on that premise. Melissa’s own theory was that each shift required not one, but multiple charges, discrete voltage thresholds achieved in quick succession over a short period of time. But since each shift only lasted a second or two, that meant they had to push the sensitivity of their equipment to the limit. The calibrations required the utmost finesse, and making all the necessary adjustments to the machine had taken days.
“One more time?” the Professor instructed, after fixing the replacement electrode in place, and Melissa ran the test once more.
“All electrodes operating normally,” she reported, then looked up with eager anticipation. “Are we ready to bring in the shifter?”
“Bring him in.”
Melissa called the guards on the intercom, and minutes later, they were dragging the limp and pale shifter captive through the door. He’d been drugged, but had no other restraints, and the guards hefted him onto the table, not bothering to strap him down. They’d tried that early on, and quickly learned that the moment he shifted, he would be free of the restraints anyway, so trying to keep him tied down was a waste of time. They arranged him on his back, and Melissa checked his vital signs. The trick was to keep him drugged enough to make him compliant, but not so much that he lost consciousness. They needed his cooperation to complete the shift on demand, but had to keep him sufficiently subdued that he couldn’t do them any harm, should he get any ideas about trying to escape.
With the captive arranged to their liking, the guards retreated to the side of the room, Tasers and tranquiliser darts at the ready.
“Now,” Banks said, approaching the shifter and staring down at him with a firm glare. “You understand the consequences of misbehaving, I take it? After all, you’ve been in this lab long enough to know how things work.”
The shifter nodded, then lay compliantly still. He hadn’t been nearly so cooperative to begin with, and his body now bore the scars of repeated torture sessions.
“When you’re ready then.”
The shifter took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then a crackle of electricity flowed smoothly over him. His body blurred, shimmered and vanished, the form of a wolf taking its place on the table.
The computer burst into life at the shift, a flood of data filling the screen from thirty different electrodes, spanning the length of the table, at split second intervals and lasting a total of five seconds.
“Excellent,” Evans said enthusiastically, peering at the screen over Melissa’s shoulder. “It’ll take a few hours to analyse, but it’s a promising start.” She beamed at Banks… but the Professor wasn’t nearly so quick to declare the experiment a success.
“We should run another few tests,” he said, scanning his eyes over the data. “Just in case anything went wrong that we can’t see right up front. It’ll save time in the long run, since we’ve got the shifter here and everything set up.”
Melissa quickly reset the program, then gave Banks a nod.
“That was very good,” Banks said to the shifter, smiling down at him. “Now… let’s try that again.”
It was mid-morning when the door to the cage room opened, and Miller looked up to see Baron and Caroline arriving. He’d asked to see them early this morning, and he was glad they’d agreed.
In the last few days, he’d had a lot on his mind. Since discovering that he was a shifter, the battle lines of this war had been well and truly redrawn for him, and he’d spent long hours contemplating Baron’s stark announcement that he needed to decide which side he was on.
Of course, it was never quite that simple, when there were men in the Noturatii whom he considered his friends, but after yesterday, he’d found himself in a position that demanded commitment, one way or the other.
After her outburst about his lack of training yesterday, Skip had come down with dinner and spent the evening with him. As well as bringing food for his wolf, which he’d eaten while feeling very self conscious about it, she’d spent hours with him, slowly going over the process of shifting. He’d practised it dozens of times, watching Skip carefully as she demonstrated, asking questions, even sharing a few laughs along the way, and in the end, he’d become a lot better at it, the transition becoming smoother, and he’d even managed to keep his balance as he changed from wolf legs to human ones.
But it wasn’t the training that had changed his mind. It was Skip herself. She was proving to be a uniquely compassionate woman, genuinely upset at the lack of training he’d received, and seeming to hold no grudge whatsoever about either his past employment with the Noturatii, or the way he’d accidentally kidnapped her, her bullet wound forgiven in an act of generosity that Miller wasn’t sure he could have matched, had their positions been reversed. Up until now, he’d withheld certain pieces of information about the Noturatii, not wanting to exacerbate the war, but the lingering idea that Skip had very nearly ended up on a dissection table in a Noturatii lab was horrifying. And he’d been forced to realise that sitting on the sidelines and hoping this all went away was no longer good enough.
“What’s the drama?” Baron asked, coming forward to stand in front of the cage.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said a few days ago, about choosing a side in this war,” Miller began, without wasting any time. “And I have some more information about the Noturatii that you should probably know.”
He could immediately see that he’d got Baron’s attention. “And what would that be?” he asked.
“Why’s that?” Caroline asked, disappointment in her tone.
“Various reasons, depending on which base we’re talking about. There are three main bases in England, each with a different purpose. There’s one near Liverpool, the weapons development facility. Now, when I say weapons, I don’t mean the science experiments and high tech gadgetry they were trying to develop in the lab. I mean things that go boom. Guns, grenades, explosives… good, old fashioned weapons of war. If you make any attempt to get inside that place, there are more than a handful of headstrong lunatics who would happily blow the place to smithereens, taking you and your crew along with them. Get me a map and I can show you the location, but planning an attack on the base is pure suicide.”
Baron nodded, expression grim. “Unfortunate, but I’ve no interest in getting my Den blown up. What about the others?”
“The second base is the headquarters in east London. It’s a large building, which might seem like an easy target, but several of the floors are leased out to other companies. Any attempts to storm the castle, as it were, would lead to serious civilian casualties. The Noturatii aren’t nearly as reticent about shooting civilians as you are, and if anyone got caught in the crossfire, they would neatly blame the attack on terrorists and walk away without a mark on them.”
Baron looked disappointed at the news, but ultimately just shrugged. “Knowing the location of the place would at least be a step forward. What about the third base?”
“Before we get to that bit, there’s something else you need to know about the second one.” He braced himself, knowing that they could well react badly to his next piece of news. “Unfortunately, despite the loss of the main lab, the Noturatii are still quite eager to keep experimenting on shifters. And as we speak, the new science team has a captive shifter in the building whom they’re running tests on. As far as I’m aware, he was a Russian.”
Caroline gasped at the news, a look of black fury crossing her face, while Baron got a far more calculating look on his.
“What’s security like there?” he asked.
“Very similar to how it was at the lab. Why? What are you thinking?”
“Given what you’ve said, a full scale attack is out of the question. But leaving one of our own in there to be tortured isn’t an option either. But if I send that information to the Council, they might be able to do something about it.”
“The Council?” Miller asked. It was the first time he’d heard the term.
“Headquarters,” Caroline explained shortly. “That’s all you need to know.”
Miller wondered for a moment what the elusive shifter control centre might be able to do in such circumstances… and then realised he had a fairly good idea. “You’d ask them to send an assassin,” he surmised. “The Noturatii is aware of the existence of your particular brand of ‘special operatives’,” he explained quickly, at the two alphas’ astonished looks. “Which is why they’ve created their own. The Satva Khuli. You think that an assassin could infiltrate the base and extract your man?”
“What would be your honest opinion on the chances of success for that sort of operation?” Caroline asked.
Miller considered the question carefully. “With the right intel, and a decent amount of preparation, it has a reasonable chance of success. At the very least, an assassin should be able to get inside the complex and put the poor bastard out of his misery. Extracting him alive would be a fair bit harder, but then again, your assassins seem to be a rather talented lot, so I wouldn’t presume to say what one could or couldn’t do.”
“It’s an option worth pursuing,” Baron declared firmly. “Raniesha, go grab a notebook and pen,” he called over his shoulder, and the woman guarding him swiftly left the room. “I’ll get you to write down everything you remember about the base, and I’ll send it to the Council to assess. Now, what about the last one?”
“There’s a base on the south coast, down in Cornwall. It’s used as a training facility for new recruits and security staff. Theoretically, a hit against that base would be fairly simple, but there’s a moral issue you might like to consider before you go in all gung-ho.”
“Oh?”
“How much do you know about the internal workings of the Noturatii?” he asked.
“Not a whole lot,” Baron admitted. “They’re just as secretive about their organisation as we are about ours.”
Miller nodded. He’d suspected as much. “There are multiple levels of operation within the Noturatii,” he explained. “And the difficult thing is that a lot of the people at the bottom really have no idea what they’re involved with. They’re recruited from various other organisations – security firms, the police, the military – but they know nothing about the true purpose of the Noturatii. They genuinely believe they’re working for the government to fight terrorism. They build guns, recruit new staff, raise funds, deal with administrative tasks, but if you confronted a lot of them with the truth about the shape shifters, they’d laugh you out of the building. It’s not until you get into the higher levels that people are introduced to the secrets of what it’s all really about. Which raises an interesting moral dilemma. Those people are working against you, are aiding your enemies, are supporting a dangerous institution… but they’re all doing it with the most honest and honourable of intentions. They’re good people, who want nothing more than to help protect their country from terror threats. Killing them all would blow a decent sized hole in the Noturatii’s operations, that much is true. But it would also kill a lot of people who could, by all reasonable standards, be considered innocent bystanders to the war.”
Miller waited while the truth of that sunk in… and then Baron let out a heartfelt “Fuck…”
“I’m not telling you what you should or shouldn’t do,” Miller said, after a moment’s consideration. “But I’ve seen enough of your morals to know that you don’t take the death of civilians lightly. So I thought you’d want to have all the information, however inconvenient some of it might be.”
Baron nodded, a contemplative look on his face. “Mind if I ask why the sudden change of heart?”
“Not so sudden,” Miller replied. “I’ve been having doubts about the Noturatii for months, so this is just the net result of weeks of hard thinking. I know I said I wouldn’t give you this information before, but the more I see of who you are and how you work, the harder it gets to sit on the fence. I don’t want more blood on my hands,” he said earnestly. “I’ve told you that before. But if people here end up dead because I kept my mouth shut, it’s just as hard to claim that I’m blameless as it would be if I’d kept working for the Noturatii. As a wise man once said, all that’s required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
An hour later, Baron stepped out into the hall, Caroline at his heels. “Well, that was interesting,” he said drily. He glanced at the bundle of notes in his hand – a dozen pages detailing the location of each base, their security measures, staffing levels, diagrams of access points to each building; a plethora of details that the Council would go over with a fine tooth comb. “This makes it rather more difficult to make a decision to put him down, don’t you think?”
“Just when we thought we had a handle on the guy,” Caroline muttered, looking put out. “Well, I suppose this means we’re going to have to take Eleanor’s advice. Put it to the Den to consider his role in Il Trosa, and take a vote.”
“Damn it,” Baron said, shaking his head. “I really didn’t want to have to put them through that.”
“Explain it to everyone at dinner tonight,” Caroline said, with her usual pragmatism. “And make the point that we’re only following due process.
Eleanor was right – it’s almost guaranteed that the Den will vote him out. And then the Council will take him off our hands, and it’s not our problem any more.”
Baron gave her a doubtful look. “Can you honestly say you believe he’s on our side?”
Caroline scowled, running a hand over her face. “I think half the problem here is that we’re letting our emotions get in the way. We both have plenty of reason to hate him. And neither of us wants him hanging around this Den.” Baron nodded in agreement. “But whenever I’ve spoken to him face to face, I get no indication that he’s lying. He came here with no weapons, no bugs, no backup. He saved Skip’s life – I trust Skip enough to believe her side of the story, at least – and there is that niggling fact that he’s merged with his wolf. So on the weight of available evidence, I’d have to say that yes, I believe he’s trying to do the right thing.”
Baron sighed, the truth inconvenient, but unavoidable, given the latest batch of information Miller had just handed over. “All right. I’ll speak to the Den tonight. And we’ll put it to the vote tomorrow.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The following evening, Skip stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel to dry off. In just under half an hour it would be time for dinner, and then after that, the much anticipated vote on Miller’s future.
When Baron had made the announcement last night, it had caused a complete uproar, shouts, curses, vehement objections to the very idea, and it had taken a good ten minutes before everyone had settled down again. As Skip understood it, the vote was a mere formality, the result an almost guaranteed no, and if she was honest about it, she was actually feeling quite sad about the prospect of Miller leaving. She’d spent a fair amount of time with him over the past few days, teaching him the basics of shifting, and he’d shown himself to be an excellent student, listening attentively, following her instructions to the letter, deeply curious about his wolf and the way the shifters normally interacted with their canine side. And there had been not even a hint of any disgust or disdain over his wolf half – quite the feat, for a former Noturatii operative.
