The Animal Under The Fur

by E. J. Mellow

  A hiss escapes me, teeth flashing, some deep-rooted instinct flaring at his words. Words that cut deeper than I knew could. How dare Ramie take the father who was mine and claim him as his own. How dare he throw a loss that I had no control over in my face.

  He’s my father! The monster in me growls. Mine!

  With a snarl, I find myself flying toward the dark spot in front of me, and Ramie meets me head on, his A+ abilities a brick wall as I slam into him. But I’ve fought bigger mutants than him and know my strength lies in quickness and flexibility. As his vice grips tears me from him, throwing me into a nearby table like a rag doll, I collide into lab equipment, the glass shattering against the ground. But in the last second I spin with the move and am up on my feet, grabbing a nearby metal chair. Pushing the legs in, I crumble it into a ball before launching it at Ramie’s head. He dodges it a hairsbreadth before it slices through his cheek, crashing into a computer behind him.

  “Children, please!” Mendoza’s deep voice booms through the air, and it’s a testament to my haze of rage that I didn’t notice him approach.

  Blinking back to the half-destroyed underground lab, I glance to Mendoza, who stands surprisingly calm regarding us. The scent of our bond makes my head spin further, my hackles rise more as I return my attention to Ramie, who’s locked in a similar position as me. Feet apart, hands balled into fists, and nostrils flaring. His eyes flash once, running the length of me before he stands, readjusting himself.

  And then he says something that freezes my blood. “Welcome home, Sister.”

  What the—

  “Are you two feeling better now?” Mendoza asks, his blue eyes twinkling with hidden amusement. “We’ll need to find a more secure space for you two to work through your differences in the future.”

  Future.

  I feel dizzy. What just happened? Did I really just lose my temper over this man? Get jealous over him being more of a father to Ramie than me?

  And Ramie, was he looking for that?

  Taking in a shallow breath, I force myself into a calm, scrambling to remember my true purpose here.

  “I have to use the bathroom,” I say. “I need a…second.”

  “Of course.” Mendoza’s eyes soften as he looks upon what must appear like a woman flustered.

  Good, I think. Drink it in.

  “Gabriel.” He turns to one of the armed guards. “Please show my daughter to the restroom.”

  Daughter. Father. Sister.

  “I’ll take her,” Ramie says, stepping forward. “Follow me.”

  I hesitate for a second, glancing back to Mendoza, looking for his approval, which seems to please him further, for a warm energy radiates forward with his head nod.

  Ramie shows me down a short gray passageway, the walls covered with pipes and metal plates. He stops in front of a door marked WC. “I’ll wait out here.”

  “Of course you will,” I grumble as I push inside before slamming the door shut. As the bolt clicks into place, I turn to regard myself in the mirror that’s over a small sink. My hair, which is braided to one side, has wisps of red coming loose from our fight, my cheeks a rosy pink as my blue eyes blink wide.

  Staring at my reflection, I allow my shoulders to droop once, my muscles to grow weary for only a second before I tip my head back and steel my spine.

  I am 3.

  I am 3.

  I am 3.

  With each repeat, my emotions drain, a plug lifted, and I watch as my gaze regains its sharpness. My mouth flattens, and my features harden into planes of stone.

  It’s time.

  The bathroom is small, simple, and empty of any flourishment. A single light fixture is hooked into the wall, and seeing it, I get to business. Untucking my shirt, I lift up the underwire of my bra and snap off two wiretaps. They are gray squares, no bigger than my pinky nail, and silently standing on the toilet, I unhook the back of the light fixture, exposing wires running into the cement wall. Using my teeth, I fray the rubber around one before clipping in the small devices. It’ll be a weak signal, but Akoni and Jules should be able to hack into the electrical from here.

  Returning everything to the way it was, I sit down to pee (Ramie’s listening after all) while taking out the last thing from the underwire of my bra.

  It’s a thin flexible syringe, and testing the retractable needle, I gaze at the clear liquid inside.

  Innocuous as water, more deadly than a bite from a blue krait snake.

  Taking off the extra hair tie wrapped around my braid, I slip it onto my wrist and, flipping out two sections on the syringe, snap it into place. The poison now sits like a dart, tucked into the sleeve of my shirt, ready to be launched.

  Flushing the toilet, I pull back up my pants and take one last glance at my reflection in the sink as I wash my hands, the hard-blue eyes that stare out, before exiting the bathroom.

  Ramie’s just where he said he’d be, leaning against the opposite wall, waiting, and the syringe sits cool against my skin as he leads me to Mendoza’s office on the other side of the lab.

  As I stand in the doorframe, I find my father sitting behind his old wooden desk, bookcase to one side, grandfather clock to the other, looking at a laptop. He’s wearing similar military fatigues as Ramie, the black material hugging his broad shoulders, a man used to combat, as his hair winks with more gray than the last time I saw him under the low lighting. The twisted scar on his neck that leads into his beard stretches as he glances up, eyes the same shade as mine pinning me in place.

  “Come in, mi rosa,” he says. “We have much to plan and not a lot of time to do it.”

  And so, with my chin tipped up, I force myself to step in and return to the space where I found my father, only to have to kill him.

  57

  Carter

  THE OCULTO COMPOUND

  MEXICO: 1120 HOURS

  The air is freezing even though sweat has begun to soak into my black protective gear. I hate small spaces, so crawling through an air vent no wider or taller than myself is my very definition of a horrible time. The breathing mask around my face and eyes only heightens my claustrophobia, and I let out a thankful sigh seeing the slits of light coming through a grate at the end of my path. My exit.

  “Reaching my stop on level two,” I say.

  “We see you.” Jules speaks into my ear, obviously watching the small dot that I come up as on their screens.

  After much deliberation between a sewage tunnel and HVAC system, my team finally, thankfully, agreed with me that I should enter through the main air duct that brings in fresh oxygen. It sits tucked away in the jungle, covered by a forgotten Viento del Este storage facility.

  Nashville ended up being right about the owner, Rodrigo. He was hiding something, just not officially on his land. After mirror-scrambling the security cams that watched the dilapidated shack, I slid into one of the large ducts that sat a good distance away from Mendoza’s compound, only to twist, turn, and mutter curses through smaller and smaller shafts to end up here.

  “One of their control rooms should be directly below you.” Akoni’s deep voice swaps in for Jules’s. Our two tech Ops sit five miles away in the jungle in an unmarked van, acting as my GPS guides to get me to this point. Our remaining unit waits in military helicopters to be called in to retrieve whatever they can grab from the compound. Once I reached this point, it’s only supposed to take Nashville and I thirty minutes to complete our tasks and meet them outside.

  Besides the bare essentials to carry out the K-order, Nashville had to go in wireless and weaponless, and my heart beats a faster rhythm hoping everything is going according to plan.

  Peering through the small gaps in the vent, I count two men and one woman manning the closed control room below, their conversation jumbled by the whoosh of air pumping through the space I lie. Gazing around the rest of the room, I take in the screens and computers set up on tables and inlaid into a far wall, seeing no other guards. My neck aches from holding it at an odd angle for so
long, and I’m more than ready to get out of this metal container.

  “Setting sleepers,” I whisper to my team as I remove two small canisters that are strapped to my wrists. Angling them to the edge of the vent, I twist them open.

  A barely audible hiss escapes, releasing an invisible cloud of gas that flows into the room.

  Ten seconds.

  Twenty.

  The sound of one body dropping before—

  Thunk. Thunk.

  The other two go down.

  Punching out the grate, I slide and flip out, landing with a crouch on the cement floor before standing.

  Stretching my neck, back, and arms, I let out a groan before walking the small distance to the monitors. “Jules, make a note that the agency will be paying for my next massage.”

  “I’m your tech Op, not your assistant, jackass.”

  “Po-tatoes, pa-tatoes,” I say, studying the cameras that watch every inch of this place. There are a handful of guards eating in the mess hall, in their barracks, walking in twos around the compound, and loading crates into vehicles on the upper level. The scientists are similarly packing things away, and I cock my head to the side.

  Where are you going, little ants?

  “We just got control of the electrical,” Jules says.

  Good girl, Nashville, I think with a small grin. “OK, start shutting down sections of level two. I’ll call a crew to come and take a look at the malfunction.”

  Snapping up one of the unconscious guard’s radios, I quickly repeat myself in Spanish, hoping it reaches the ear of one man in particular before sliding to the door of the control room. Peering into the hall through the small glass window, I watch two nearby soldiers turn to walk my way, hearing my request on their transmitters.

  Popping against the wall, I wait for them to make their way in, and before they can register their comrades on the ground, I slither up behind them and slam their heads together. They go down just as the lights in the room begin to flicker.

  “Good, Jules. It’s working,” I say as I step into the now empty hallway.

  My blood pumps an excited rhythm as the electricity continues to flash before going dark, everything drowning in black before red emergency lights turn on, lighting the length of the hall. My actions are illuminated in shadowed crimson as I detach two more canisters from my ankles, opening them before rolling them down the long passageway to smack up against the elevator that rests at the end.

  I wait five minutes, leaning against the wall while rubbing a spot of dirt from Minnie’s handle. “Sorry about that, old girl. That vent hadn’t been cleaned in ages.”

  “Carter.” Jules’s dry voice comes through my ear. “Are you talking to your gun again?”

  I’m cut off from responding with a duh by the sound of the elevator bay moving, the car traveling up.

  “Got company,” I say, rechecking that my breathing mask’s in place, my silencer attached, as the elevator stops and then opens at my level.

  The first two guards barely get a foot out before they collapse to the ground.

  Knockout gas is a bitch like that.

  The remaining three get two rounds off, causing me to scoot back into the control room’s doorframe, before they go down as well. Stepping out, I regard the one large, very pissed-off man remaining.

  Ramie glares at me, murder in his dark eyes as a small breathing mask is placed over his nose and mouth. He must have smelled the beginnings of the gas on the way up and thought fast. A+ are smart like that. He’s bigger than I remember, dark hair, tan skin, black military fatigues. Basically a looming shadow of death under the red lights, and while his presence is more than intimidating, he’s the one man I needed to see, needed to draw up. If he’s here that means Nashville’s alone.

  Alone with Mendoza.

  Like an angry god, an earthquake of a growl comes from his end of the hall as he barrels toward me, and I raise Minnie, getting out three shots. Like snapping lightning, he dodges them all, and I internally curse his superhuman speed just as he throws a fist that would shatter my skull in two.

  I dodge it just in time, dropping into a roll and popping up a few feet down the corridor. Ramie turns, charging again, and before I can do much of anything, his hand is around my throat and he’s lifting me off my feet and slamming me against the wall.

  I can feel my larynx, esophagus, and every other body part that’s between his grasp being squeezed to their limit, my eyes bulging as my hand flails at my side. My dimming brain barely registers what I’m looking for before my fingers curl around it, and on my last mortal gasp, I hook my legs around Ramie’s torso, bringing him closer before shoving the canister up and into his mask, and spray.

  I spray even when he releases his grip, and I’m gasping and gagging while remaining locked to the mountain of a man.

  With a grizzly bear shove, he finally gets me loose, and I slide across the cement floor, watching him flailing to remove his face cover as I hold my bruised throat.

  Finally ripping it off, he takes in a lungful of air, wiping against his mouth, nose, as his eyes suddenly blink to a blankness, his gaze swinging around in confusion before it locks back to mine. And then, because of the other gas still circling the air, he collapses to the ground, unconscious.

  I glance to the canister still curled in my hand, to the TML stamped across the side.

  Temporary memory loss.

  Standing up, I straighten my clothes and take one last look at the sleeping Ramie, to the pile of knocked-out guards, telling myself to never get sprayed with any of this stuff.

  And then I turn, making my way to plant some bombs.

  58

  3

  THE OCULTO COMPOUND

  MEXICO: 1122 HOURS

  My father just finished explaining that we’re to leave in an hour, this compound having run its course of use, before Ramie was called away to check on an issue with the electrical on level two.

  He was less than pleased to leave Mendoza and I alone, but after stationing two guards by the open door, saying that if I moved even an inch the wrong way, to shoot me with a tranquilizer, he left.

  “He’s a bit protective,” Mendoza says with a smile.

  “Why wouldn’t a son be for his father?”

  A steady blue gaze regards me as he leans back in his chair. “Yes,” Mendoza says. “Ramie has become a son to me, but I don’t want you to think there isn’t space for you by my side as well. Even when I thought you were dead, that spot was never to be filled.”

  I swallow against the tightness in my throat, sensing the truth in his words. “Why do you trust me with your secrets? When you found me, I was the enemy.”

  “Was,” he says. “That’s a very significant difference. And we all have reasons for doing things. You and I definitely have a long path to travel, time to make up for, and while we both might be many things in this world, can we not first be a father and a daughter merely hoping to regain what we lost?”

  I take in his searching eyes, dark beard covering a face that’s seen so much blood, has been the cause of so much suffering for so many people, while still taking on the mask of the man I remembered from so many years ago. His gentle touch.

  “I guess we’ll see.” I rest my hands on the arms of my chair where I sit in front of him, hesitating to turn one of them over. His words always seem to bring forth a barrel of confusion, shining a light on my hidden desires, wishes that could be. And this is why I find myself prolonging what I must do. Maybe there’s another way? A voice inside me whispers. A different end.

  “When will you undergo the change?” I find myself asking.

  “When we reach our next location,” he says, sitting up and clicking something on his computer that faces away from me. “It takes about a month to complete the transfer, and there are a few things I need to make sure are in order before I step aside for that amount of time.”

  “Like me,” I say.

  “Yes.” Sharp blue eyes return to me. “Like you. No
w tell me, mi rosa.” Mendoza interlocks his fingers on his desk. “Why did you decide to abandon your people to come here today?”

  “They were never my people,” I say, my voice flat.

  “No?” He cocks a brow. “And why’s that? Did they not raise you, make you into what you are today?”

  “Which is exactly why they hold none of my loyalty. Do you think I’ve enjoyed being their little errand girl for all these years? Forced to end lives with the ring of my phone?”

  “But you told me yourself that those lives were deserving of their end, that they were never children or innocents.” He quotes my earlier words. “You and I have seen what happens to your kind without a stroke of luck stepping in. You might have been sculpted into an assassin, but you could have run wild as a murderer without your agency. Do you feel no affinity to them, no gratitude?”

  Gratitude.

  The syringe grows hot against my wrist, a boiling kettle ready to sing. I’ve been waiting for this. The part where I’m meant to convince this man of my intentions, why a woman like me might step over to stand beside a man like him despite our differences or common blood.

  Ignoring the guards at my back and the task that’s ticking down, I pull forward the words that sit on the edge of truth and lies. “Ever since I was brought to Bell Buckle Orphanage, I was forced by the caretakers to believe that me being parentless wasn’t my fault. That my life was wanted, despite present circumstances, and it would be again. When the agency found me, brought me in, I first thought it was because they saw me as a little girl worth having, a little normal girl. I quickly learned that wasn’t true. It was my genes they wanted, saw value in. It wasn’t because my favorite color was green or that I had a knack for making paper airplanes or enjoyed eating outside. There was no me in their minds, just an A plus they could own, mold. I saw this and realized that everyone has their prerogatives, things that, if they owned it, would put them above others. Everyone is just looking for their one-up in this world, and so I accepted this, decided if that’s where my value lay, then I’d be the best operative they had. If someone couldn’t appreciate me for me, I’d just become what they could appreciate.” I lower my hands into my lap, stalling more. “But then you came back.” I glance to my father. “And it was the first time I had ever experienced someone looking at me, not for what I could do but for who I was. I could see that for you, I wasn’t just an A plus, but a girl that was capable of being a daughter too.”