There was some growling and then her littlest brother Josh ventured into the light followed by Bayard and Rhemy. The owner tilted the box toward them. “Can you get in? Easier to carry the bed than all five of you.”
Josh barked, high-pitched and desperate. He was the first to hear the third footsteps. Their Mama’s steps.
“Rick! Rick, the door’s unlocked. Where are you?” The false concern in her voice changed to real panic when she reached the bottom of the steps and saw him holding Laylea and the boys out of the bed. “Rick, I’m sorry. I had nowhere else to keep them. Please. Please, don’t turn them in.”
Mama sounded scared of the Milkbone man. To reassure her Mama that the owner was good, Laylea turned and bit his muzzle.
He giggled as he chastened her, “No teeth, baby girl.”
Laylea licked the man’s muzzle.
“It’s okay, Rhea.” The man started to explain but Bayard had tottered away from his brothers and the bed and he half-barked at the still body of the sweet man.
Their mama saw and screamed. But just a little.
“He was hurting her. So I kinda hit him.”
Mama took Laylea from his arms and nuzzled her.
Rick assured her, “They’re welcome to stay here. It’s okay.”
Mama sighed. “It’s not safe anymore if he’s found us.” She put Laylea in the bed and started gathering up her brothers. “Thank you. But we have to go.”
“Here’s some money. Take it. I’m betting you can’t access your bank accounts without being traced. Consider it a loan if you like.” He bent and scooped up Bayard, pulling him away from the unconscious sweet man’s pant leg. While he was bent he slipped something from the man’s pocket. “And here, take his money. Seems he owes the baby girl something for scaring the piss out of her.”
Mama took the wallet and Bayard from Rick and added both to the box. “Police processing will take longer if he has no ID. Thank you, Rick. You’ve been a better friend than I knew.”
“I’ll be here if you need anything, Rhea.” He gave her the turn away but Laylea knew that with humans it didn’t mean he was mad at her.
The Milkbone man bound the monster’s arms together with zip ties. Mama stopped at the foot of the stairs.
“You’d better call the police,” she said. “They’ll wonder why you waited so long.”
He turned with a gentle smile that looked just like he smelled. “I’ll give you a few minutes to get out of the neighborhood. We’ll be fine here.”
Laylea would never forget the warmth in her Mama’s voice and the rich, busy scent of gratitude on her breath. “Thank you.”
Mama carried them up the stairs and out of the shop that had been their home since she’d stolen them out of the laboratory. A crash of lightning split the sky and Mama tripped on the threshold sending Laylea flying through a beam of sunlight. She landed with a thump in the dad’s lap.
He scooped her up with one hand between her legs and under her belly. She woke up a little more as he swung her over to her plush blue bed.
“We are experiencing some light turbulence. Please remain in your seat with your seatbelt fastened until the captain has turned off the seatbelt sign.”
Laylea stood. She took a step forward to jump back to his lap when the plane lurched again. The puppy dropped to her belly. She watched as teddy lizard flew through the shaft of sunlight breaking through the rain into the cockpit. Both of Clark’s white knuckled hands gripped the yoke. He didn’t notice the little stuffed animal bounce off the console and tumble into the puddle of sick on the floor of the plane.
Laylea swallowed back the fresh sick in her throat as she was tossed against the thick bolsters of her bed. The thick pillow kept her cushioned and safe from tumbling out like Lizard. Laylea’s only concern was that she not get sick on both of Sher’s gifts until the rank wave of fear rolled off of Clark and filled the cabin. Then she closed her eyes and imagined with all her heart she was being tossed about in Bailey’s sticky arms.
Chapter Eight
Rain pattered nearly soundlessly against the double panes of faux leaded security glass in the office. The glass had been replaced when one poorly conditioned Force soldier had found his mind and tried to bring down his creator, or rather shoot her down. Now the branches of the protected species of sycamore around which this wing of the Biotech Research building had been built scraped against the classiest bulletproof glass money could buy.
Walter traced a dry erase line from leaf to leaf, hopping over the leading. He had discovered by error the marker only washed off of the glass. Seven leaves touched the windows. As the storm moved the leaves, Walter erased his diagram with his tie and began over. Occasionally he glanced down at the park below.
Seven figures in the slate gray pants and deep green snap-shut shirts of the CF uniform performed their individual assignments unconcerned with the weather or each other for the most part. Walter’s newest pet had been assigned to stalk the Conditioned Force soldiers and to take down the weakest without being caught. Walter had assigned the komodo-altered subject no time limit but they were nearing the final minutes of the exercise period. He clearly expected some action soon as his eyes flicked more often away from the sycamore leaves.
The glow of Trask’s computer screen filled the storm darkened room. For hours the only sounds in the office had been the tap of Trask’s French manicured nails on the keyboard, the scrape of the sycamore branch against the window, and the very occasional squeak of Walter’s tie wiping the window. Neither had spoken since their new combined budget arrived with an Edible Arrangements basket at eleven that morning.
Walter had rifled through his copy and tossed it onto his doodle-covered blotter. Trask pored over the document line by line and immediately began working up rebuttal arguments for the cuts and the combining of resources. She was, of course, as aware as Walter that the Director would not change a penny of the allocation but her sense of outrage would only be assuaged with a formal recording of her arguments.
Had she hackles, they would be up.
The wind picked up, spattering rain against the glass like knuckles. The seven-fingered branch of the sycamore demanded attention in a crash of scraping fingers.
“Why don’t they cut that down?”
Walter answered without turning from his seat on the cushioned window bench. “The Western Sycamore is an indigenous protected tree in this state.”
“Yes. Yes. I mean the branch,” she drawled. “We can cut the branch off, can’t we?”
“Cut off one branch, two will grow back.”
“That’s the hydra.”
Walter looked away from his hunter. “I am so very proud of you right now.”
Trask refrained from responding.
The Brit smirked. He wiped his latest doodles from the window and strode over to pop a fresh stick of black jack between his teeth. “The branch reaches our window in order to encourage the violent subjects to climb the tree instead of shooting out the window again.”
“Your experiments may prefer the tree. Mine will go for a gun every time.”
The screen reflection in Trask’s glasses flared as Walter switched on his reticulated desk lamp. He swept the budget report to one side. Several pages of the stapled report dangled off the desk.
He folded his hands on the cleared blotter in front of him and tapped his thumbs together before addressing his office mate, “Do you really believe that a gun is always the most efficient choice of weapon?”
Trask kept her eyes glued on her detailed listing of Walter’s failures to follow protocol. “It’s the most expedient and gets the quickest response.”
“But didn’t your genius doctor imbue her subjects with more interesting abilities than exceptional point and shoot skills?” Clearly aware the reminder would irk Trask, Walter averted his eyes after asking the question.
He pulled a green suede folder from his side drawer and laid it on the desk. The concentric circles of the desk lamp caught the
pixie face of a laughing blond woman in its bull’s-eye as Walter violently flipped the trifold portfolio open. Rhea. He shunted the failed attempt at a security badge photo to one side, instead flipping rapidly through a series of black and white stills printed from the security cameras in his old lab. The small woman wore a hoodie pulled up over her blond hair. She carried a duffle bag casually over one shoulder. Walter flipped the photos along the desk with his middle finger with much the same care as a teenager would flip through smart phone snaps. His fingers betrayed his thoughts when he slowed his shuffling at three pictures with a technician in frame. The first revealed the duffle on the ground. A small fawn dog with blotchy black patches on her haunches and over one eye lay curled up beside it. The technician bent in the second photo to scritch the tiny black ears on a puppy climbing out of the duffle. The third photo from that camera showed no dogs, no duffle, and an unconscious tech. Walter punished himself for the failure of his hunting komodo with a review of his own failure. Rhea and the subjects still eluded him.
“My genius doctor imbued our subjects with abilities the rest of my scientists can’t even explain.” Trask caressed the one worn file folder that never left her desktop. “Dr. Katherine Coogan worked alone. Even when she permitted observation, others were unable to follow her techniques. They accused her, to her face, of being descended from the witches of her hometown.”
“She was from Massachusetts? Rhea was recently spotted outside of Boston.” Walter continued shuffling the pictures as he half-listened. “How sad for her parents that Katherine died in the fire so soon after her brother’s suicide.”
Trask removed her glasses to rub at her eyes. One lens of the spectacles reflected the dark raindrops outside and one the bright charts on her computer screen. “I wish we hadn’t killed him. He understood her private journals.”
Silence returned to the office. Distant thunder and the muted rain kept the buzz of white noise from overwhelming the sensitive microphones. Photos danced across Walter’s desk in an entrancing rhythm.
He spun the still with the unconscious technician for several seconds before he commented, “Your witch kept private journals?”
“Dr. Coogan lived for her research. I never needed to give her any reason for my requests. She didn’t care about the why. She was a woman focused on her world, her brain, and what she could do with her brain. She never cared much who she did it to. The success she had with every task given her was only surpassed by the experiments she herself initiated.” Trask set a fist on the file where another, less controlled individual might have punched it. “And we can’t recreate any of her work.”
“But haven’t her journals helped you? Rhea’s diary exponentially increased my understanding of therianthropes.”
“The doctor’s surviving notes leave much to be desired.” In a rare admission of weakness, Trask pulled a file folder from her drawers and tossed it to Walter’s side of the desk. It scattered his security photos. “We knew about the journals because we saw her brother take them out of a safe our cameras had never seen before in Coogan’s apartment. It took weeks to find a safecracker who could open it and the journals turned out to be written in code. We’ve managed to translate most of it into English but the results are hardly more useful than the original. Mistress Coogan of Salem stumps us again.”
Walter opened the dun colored file to find photocopies of barely legible scribblings stapled to one side and a print out of the translation on the other.
While the ten percent myth is a laughable fallacy, it is true that most humans do not make full use of brain capacity. Most current research is attempting to increase intelligence. But the brain is much more useful. If we can more directly connect a subject’s impulses to the appropriate unconscious centers of the brain we can create the superman. Human weaknesses and emotions limit our capacity to believe we are capable of great power. Belief and faith have been supplanted by the religious communities which has caused scientists to shun the reality of such esoteric constructs. But observation shows faith can change the outcome of something so simple as a game of checkers. Task A) increase subject’s self-faith/ faith in physics—requires a subject highly educated in physics or natural law / faith in odds—requires wide knowledge of odds, perhaps a high level poker player can be acquired for study. Task B) a more likely scenario, disconnect subject’s actions from awareness - possible? Explore throat monks. Reality vs. Perceived Reality likely to cause apparent cognitive disassociation. Have faith, Katherine.
Walter lifted the bottom of the translated stack up and allowed the pages to descend in a waterfall of words and phrases. He asked, “Did she map the action areas of the brain versus the intuitive areas?”
Trask watched as he rifled the stack of photocopies. “We can identify areas related to creativity and deep thinking. We know that unconsciousness is related to a lack of communication between the thalamus and any other part of the brain. We believe that Delta and Theta level brainwaves emitted in the unconscious mind regulate instinct and emotion and that will occurs at the Gamma level. But we don’t exhibit multiple wavelengths at any one moment. There is no way to match Gamma levels to Delta levels. That’s a difference of forty hertz.”
“I understand you less than I understand Katherine’s notes here.”
A piercing whistle droned through the thick glass. Exercise time was over. Trask glanced at the storm but Walter didn’t even consider looking out the window for his hunter.
He popped a green pen from the hand-thrown clay mug beside his blotter and tapped it on the translation. “Let me ask you, Trask, have you ever studied music?”
The tippity tapping of the keyboard fell silent. Walter grinned as he peered up at Trask, her burn scars standing out white in her cold expression.
“The physics of sound tell us that we can identify a tone resonating at 440 hertz simply by recognizing it as an A.” He sat up straight, sucked a breath deep into his gut, and sang. One clear high note rang in the sterile air of the office. “That’s very nearly the top of my range. You hear one note but the vibrations within the cavities of my head create a standing wave pattern of multiple frequencies of A. Certain Tibetan monks can sing overtones, two notes at once. AKA multiple wavelengths. It’s called throat singing.” He circled the words throat monk. Closing the folder he tossed it back to Trask and got up to crack his neck.
Outside the leaves of the holy sycamore brushed wetly against the glass. Flashes of light glinted off the droplets. They caught Trask’s eye. As Walter bent forward into a downward dog stretch, a disco party flashed on the ceiling of the office. Trask strode to the window. Technicians and security had gathered flashlights to help them clean the storm darkened courtyard.
An impulse crossed her face in the light of the wild torches and she returned to the desk in two strides. She selected a security still at random from the collage on Walter’s side and sat, contemplating the image.
“My division utilizes your old lab building as an observation zone now.”
“That makes sense,” Walter said, walking out his hips in the stretch. “Some of my employees hiked in those mountains you use as your testing grounds.”
“How far away was the bike shop where you were beaten up?”
Walter walked his feet to his hands. “The shop to which I tracked my assistant was fifteen miles from the lab.”
“And how old were Rhea’s puppies?”
“When I found them they were six weeks old.”
“How far can puppies that age really travel?”
Walter had no reply. He stopped stretching and let his eyes fall on the photos.
“You’ve gotten several facial recognition hits on Rhea. Los Angeles, Tucson, Chicago, Philadelphia.”
“Boston,” he added.
“Boston,” Trask repeated. “And that’s where you’ve been searching.”
“Yes.”
Trask handed him the picture. “Did she have four [LS2]scruffy mutts following her?”
Wal
ter took the still but his mind wandered far away. “She ditched them.” He crossed to the cabinet behind her desk and unfolded the wide panels that hid the display board holding Trask’s training ground map. One hundred miles square with a row of barely civilized towns along the eastern border. One finger tapped a particularly isolated spot tucked away between cliff faces and a manmade lake while his eyes roamed to the nearby towns. “She hid them in plain sight.”
“You can task my drop and recovery teams to check in on local veterinarian offices if you’d like.”
“Thank you, Trask. I should have spotted that.”
Trask reached out and rubbed a hand on the taller man’s shoulder. She waited until she had his attention. “You were silent for an hour, Walter.” Her voice dropped to about a hundred eighty hertz with harmonics fluctuating around G-flat. “You will always be rewarded for silence.”
Walter nodded and patted the hand on his shoulder without saying a word. He closed the cabinet and traced his fingers along the window before he settled into his seat. He bundled the photos together and quietly tapped them on his lap to align their bottom edges. The photos went back into the green suede file. He pulled a spiral notebook from another pocket in the folder and a pen from his clay cup. He tapped the end of the pen on the felt head of his drinking bird, setting the bird into silent motion. He then flipped the pen around and used the business end to flip to a blank page. The pen hovered over the ruled paper.
Trask smiled. She affixed the cabinet latch, glancing out at the angry clouds. The lights that danced around the window earlier had gone. She settled into her ergonomic chair and returned to her complaints about the totally inadequate budget versus the enormous cost of designer security windows.
“The missing CF who burned your,” Walter changed his word at the last moment, “lab. What was his designation?”
Trask sighed. She looked across the desk to see Walter playing with the bullet embedded in his buffalo’s hide. “Gamma Subject.”
WereHuman - The Witch's Daughter: Consortium Battle book 1 (Wyrdos) Page 6
