WereHuman - The Witch's Daughter: Consortium Battle book 1 (Wyrdos)

by Gwendolyn Druyor

  The family ate dinner in the family room. Both Woodford and Laylea got shmancakes with their kibble. To celebrate her adoptionversary, Laylea got a giant peanut butter flavored rawhide from Bailey and a new harness with her very own flashwipe like the ones on Clark’s plane from Sher. Especially for trips outside of the neighborhood, she explained. But the best gift came from Clark.

  He sent Bailey off to his radio room to get the small package, wrapped in Sunday comics. Laylea ripped into the paper, trying to tuck her nose under a flap for leverage. She ended up with tape on her muzzle and a paw wrapped in Calvin and Hobbes. In front of her lay two braided leather collars dyed deep blue.

  “She’s outgrown baby blue and Woodford’s collar is tatters,” Clark explained to Sher. “So I had Maggie make these.”

  Sher slid off her end of the couch to the floor. While she picked up the collars, Woodford crawled out of his bed and wandered over to nuzzle her for some attention. “They found Maggie? You didn’t tell me.”

  “Well, Maggie found Jay. She’s still hiding from Trey.”

  “I wish we knew which one of them needs help.”

  “Sheriff, they both need help. We all need help. Everyone needs help.”

  “I need some help.” Bailey said.

  “We’re here to help you.” Clark replied.

  “How does this clasp work?”

  Clark helped Bailey work the clasp as Sher unbuckled Woodford’s old collar while acceding to his demands for ear scratches.

  Laylea watched them. Her body shook. Every muscle in her vibrated with joy while her tail drummed a paradiddle between the coffee table and couch leg. She whimpered just a little when Bailey replaced her store bought nylon necklace with Maggie’s handmade one. Woodford’s new collar laid smoothly in his thick neck fur. And like Davis Rucker, Laylea was now dressed just like her big brother. She couldn’t contain the thrill in her heart any longer. It burst from her in her pitiful singing howl. She danced around the room, bouncing off the couches and comfy chair.

  Sher laughed. Bailey rolled around with Laylea jumping his limbs. She tagged Woodford over and over with her nose and finally grabbed a mouthful of neck and worried it until her brother swatted at her with a paw. He chased her around the couch until she got a little scared and leaped into the mom’s lap.

  “I think she likes it.” Sher adjusted the collar so it laid smoothly on Laylea’s short fur. “I wonder if she could make a collar for our human son.”

  “I’ll ask,” Clark offered. “Come here, Bails, let me measure your neck.”

  Bailey screamed and ran to wrestle with Woodford and Laylea in Sher’s lap.

  Sher sent Bailey for a blanket from the second couch and the four of them cuddled on the floor, leaning on Clark’s couch. Woodford snored while the rest of the family watched an episode of Firefly. Laylea could have stayed like that forever.

  But the next day was a Monday and after the girls on the TV rescued the boys from Siska, Sher hustled Bailey upstairs to get ready for bed.

  Clark stayed on the couch to read for a little while. According to his self-imposed rules, Woodford was required to stay up with Clark. Laylea stayed because she’d just made herself comfortable with Sher’s pre-warmed blanket. They both fell into a doze.

  When he finally closed the book and got up, Clark winced a little. Laylea woke at the intake of breath. Woodford got up from his bed and followed Clark into the kitchen. Woodford sniffed up and down the leg, turning his head from side to side.

  “Whoa, sorry boy.” Clark almost stepped on Woodford as he took off the tattered remains of his pants and leaned into the garage to toss the bloody things in the trash bin.

  All the hair stood up on his legs as he completed the nighttime routine in nothing but a smelly, sweat-crusted high performance shirt and his boxers.

  Woodford followed at the dad’s heels as he checked all the doors and windows, ringing each bell in its turn. Laylea stayed with the pair as they went through the house. Ignoring the great gash in his leg, Woodford found a spot on Clark’s right foot, just below the ankle and tried to tag it with his nose. Whenever Clark stood still, Woodford put his nose on the spot.

  Clark dug a pair of pajama pants out of the laundry basket in the hall and put them on before checking the windows in Bailey’s room. Normally Laylea would have left the parade here and hopped up into bed, but Woodford smelled upset and she stayed with him.

  The older dog howled once when Clark got into bed. He patrolled back and forth brushing the dust ruffle on Clark’s side. Laylea tried to play with him, to distract him. But Woodford pushed her away with his haunches.

  So Laylea went into the hall bathroom where Bailey was getting ready for bed. She tagged his leg with her cold nose. He bent over to pick her up while he brushed his teeth. After he rinsed, he carried her into his room and set her on the bed. But she hopped down the chair, the stool, and the box to the floor. She stood at the door, looking back at him. When Bailey noticed, she took a step out into the hall. She led him to Sher and Clark’s room and put her nose against the closed door. She had to tag it a few times before he knocked.

  Clark called out. “Come on in.”

  The door opened and Laylea bounded in. She pranced to the far side of the bed where Woodford still paced. Laylea stretched up as far as she could reach on the mattress. Clark reached a hand down and she climbed on it to be craned up onto the bed.

  “Hello, little girl. You and Bailiff come to say goodnight?”

  Laylea got out of his hand and walked down to sit on his foot.

  “Ow.”

  She looked pointedly at Bailey.

  “What’s up?” Sher came out of their bathroom. She had toothpaste on the corner of her mouth.

  “Mom, Laylea wants you to look at Dad’s foot.”

  “Clark?” Sher turned immediately to her big baby.

  “It’s fine,” he protested. “I was a little stiff after sitting on the couch so long. But I’m fine.”

  Sher walked to the far side of the bed. She picked Woodford up and set him on the bed. Then she untucked the top sheet and lifted it off of Clark’s legs. Woodford tagged the spot on Clark’s foot. Clark winced at the touch.

  “Bailey, would you get me a bag of corn from the freezer?” She set Woodford down so that he could follow the boy. “You think I didn’t notice all of our ice packs hidden under the couch? You owe it to us to take care of yourself. I shouldn’t have to hear from a dog that you’re not healing.” She was silent for a moment as she examined the foot. She was not gentle. “It’s not just a bruise. You have a broken foot. You have broken your foot. How have you been walking around on this?”

  Before Clark could prevaricate, Laylea tagged his shin and looked to Sher. She repeated the motion until the dad pulled up the leg of his PJs.

  “I didn’t notice the foot because I was distracted by this.”

  “Clark Hillen!”

  Laylea curled up on Clark’s chest while Sher went on. She talked a lot when she was angry. Clark knew better than to interrupt or argue with her. Sher put pillows under the leg and pressed in places that caused Clark to sharply draw in his breath. It made funny noises. Laylea licked at his muzzle when he made the sound again and he giggled. She licked his nose and looked contritely at him, lowering her head.

  “It’s okay, Laylea,” he whispered to her. “You did the right thing. But I hope you’re up for a Python marathon because I think I’m being put on bed rest.”

  “Clark.” Sher stopped working and sat beside him. “What happens if they find us and you can’t walk?”

  “It’s been over ten years since you left. Nearly that long since you rescued me.” He put a hand on her face. “Jay saw the obituary. You’re as dead to them as to—” He broke off.

  “As to my family.” Her face drained of feeling. Her standard way of dealing. She avoided sad and instead went cold.

  Laylea sat up on Clark’s chest. She tried to lick the mom’s muzzle. Sher turned her face away.
Laylea shrank back to sitting and then slunk off Clark’s chest, her tail tucked, ears flattened to her head.

  “No, Doc.” Clark took Sher’s chin in his hand. He didn’t turn her head though. “You promised me you’d never go away.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “No you’re not. That’s a turn away you’re giving us. Look at Laylea.” He let Sher take her time to look at the little dog curled into a tight shivering ball. “That’s how I feel too.”

  Woodford tore into the room ahead of Bailey who slowed enough to be careful of his dad’s foot. “The ice packs are all gone. I got—” He saw his mother’s posture and pulled up short. “Uh oh.”

  Clark took Sher’s hand and kissed it, then put it on Laylea’s back. He turned to Bailey. “It’s an emergency, kid. Forget about the peas. Mom needs hugs. STAT.”

  Being careful not to crush Laylea, the boys tackled their woman and hugged the coldness out of her.

  Distracted by the healing and the hugging, Clark’s spotty long-term memory forgot about the strange renter who noticed his bloody pants and clean leg. He forgot she knew a dog that looked like Laylea. Had he remembered, he probably wouldn’t have reported to Sher that the woman had worked at the Therian Division because he had no idea it was an arm of the Consortium. And with limited access to his mental dictionary, he couldn’t know the Therian Division worked with shapeshifters.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Subject 397a just checked in at the perimeter gate. He’s on his way to containment now.” Walter stood from the desk as Trask came into the office. He jogged over to catch her before she turned around again and left for the containment outbuilding. “Wait.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t want to let him know how important he is.”

  “He’s not that important.”

  “First to return in two years. First with my teams’ enhancements.”

  Trask let the door shut and pulled the privacy curtain as she brushed past Walter into the room. She crossed to a new teak cabinet set in the middle of the wall of file drawers. The carpenter who designed the expanded cabinet would have been impressed with how thoroughly the two had utilized his designs if he hadn’t been recruited before being paid.

  Trask unfolded the doors hiding the display board. More than just a training ground map now, the panels held a white board to the right covered in subject numbers and statistics and to the left, corkboards covered with yellow legal pad pages, pictures, printouts, maps, and a physical schematic of the final testing field for Trask’s Conditioned Forces. The map had been expanded from its original size to include printed out maps of the surrounding villages and towns.

  Walter and Trask believed that by keeping these details in physical form, they were subverting the expected Consortium surveillance of their computers.

  Trask glanced at the map then moved to the waterfall of printouts and notes on subject 397a. She tapped her pen against the board as she flipped through the papers. “He should have returned months ago. Where has the child [LS4]been?”

  “What does his tracking implant tell you?” Walter stood right behind Trask, reading over her shoulder. She was used to this.

  “We didn’t implant a tracking device. We conditioned a strong desire for Snickers candy bars,” she paused while he snorted, “thinking we could follow a purchasing pattern since you’ve started the surveillance system on the surrounding towns. But we haven’t picked up any unusual patterns.”

  “It’s a good idea but perhaps you want to implant a fetish for something less popular, like those chalky wafers you Americans give kids at Halloween. Looks like he’s the youngest subject you’ve ever conditioned.” Walter reached over her shoulder and lifted a medical workup to see the notes underneath. “Trained him for longer too.”

  “Which is why we let you experiment on him. Perhaps his heightened animal instincts interfered with his basal ganglia on a scent level and negated his Snickers desires.”

  “I don’t think there is any feralization that would interfere with food hoarding. Maybe you try a type of jerky next time.” He left her to make a note on his blotter. “All those little towns in and around your mountains are going to be stocked on jerky but I’ll search for a less popular variety you can try.”

  The wall phone buzzed.

  Walter continued, thinking out loud as Trask stepped over to answer it. “I’ll have Sarah design a program for tracking all movement of that particular brand throughout the states. Even if you don’t use it, it would still be a practical application for creation of a micro-trace system. Yes, specific is better.”

  Trask had stopped listening. She twitched aside the privacy curtain and punched the button to put the call on speaker. “Start over, 397. Tell Walter why you’re three months late.”

  The sound from the speaker rang with echoes. The containment outbuilding was large, designed to hold all evacuees from the three laboratory buildings in an emergency. Now it likely held only CF subject 397a and a couple of extremely low-ranking doctors. The subject’s already thin voice was swallowed up by the empty space around him. “Good morning, Walter sir. Trask ma’am, I made it out of the mountains with such little trouble I was concerned that I was being tracked. I wasn’t sure though. I didn’t see anyone following me. I know how to lose a tail if I know I have one.”

  Walter stood suddenly from where he’d been sitting on the corner of the desk. “What’s that?”

  “I said I know how to lose a tail, sir.”

  “But not how to grow one back,” Walter muttered.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Autogenetic regeneration.” Walter was not listening to the speakerphone anymore. He appeared to be looking over the desk but his eyes were focused much further away.

  Trask rubbed her itching scars. “Go on, soldier.”

  “Yes ma’am.” The CF sounded thrown. Trask, it seemed, had finally become accustomed to Walter’s moments of abrupt introversion.

  “I wasn’t sure I was being followed but I didn’t wish to risk returning home until I knew I was clean. I initiated a standard randomization of my travel, but it occurred to me that I could appear random while still pursuing information for one of Walter’s goals. So I travelled to each of the veterinarians in the foothills of the training field, both those with offices and private practices. There are three who remember patients matching the descriptions of Walter’s missing subjects around the time that they were lost.”

  Walter came back to the present. He was on his feet and crossing to the map as he asked for details. Trask took a seat. She wouldn’t get her answers until after the post hypnotic debrief. The CF wasn’t aware of the information he had been gathering for her search. In the meantime she typed up a record of her thoughts on the retrieval.

  *Subject 397a return ETA+99*

  It is a concern that this kid is showing initiative in pursuing Walter’s goals. He was extensively trained to follow orders and not think for himself beyond immediate goal achievement. This is a serious breach of the conditioning. This sort of failure never happened when Dr. Coogan was in charge. Why did she never experience such reversals? How can we achieve her level of success when we are still chasing her shadow? Her work in this field was exemplary and ground breaking and we must seek to improve upon it rather than simply trying to imitate.

  A separate team must be created to focus purely on interpreting her diary and those few personal notes we were able to recover after the fire. We need to recruit new researchers from the top schools. Note: Perhaps we haven’t combed the depths of disenfranchised researchers. Coogan’s notes remain so far above the abilities of myself and my current team as to be useless. We must continue improving our other methods even as we devote resources to finding a scientist who can understand Coogan’s methodology.

  **Consider scrapping the three hundred series**

  The 300 line represents a radical shift from my original goals. I have conceded that it is not an ideal method of erasure. Yet anothe
r setback caused by Gamma Subject’s bombs. But 397a has returned. He is the first subject with no tracking device and one of the few successful live retrievals. The only conclusion is that Gamma Subject is in possession of the ability to track our implants.

  “Trask.”

  The researcher saved her notes and closed the screen. “Yes?”

  “The doctors want me to sleep for a while. Is there anything else you need from me first?”

  Trask crossed to the wall phone. She straightened her bangs in the mirror and wiped at the lines of stress around her eyes. Once the doctors recommended it, sleep should have been his only desire. This independent thinking was a problem.

  “No. Do as you are ordered, 397.” She disconnected the line. She would be contacted when debriefing was complete.

  Trask closed the privacy curtain and returned to her desk chair. She fingered the scars on her neck as she thought. Her history made clear how vehemently she despised micromanagement. But still she stood and gathered some items into her briefcase.

  “I’ll be in containment. I need to oversee 397a’s debrief myself.”

  “Why don’t you give them names?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Walter had left the map. He crouched at his side of the desk gathering items into his own knapsack. “Why call them by numbers? Names would be ever so much easier.”

  “Names would make it easier for them to start thinking they’re individuals.”

  Walter turned to the coat tree in the corner, hiding the journal they used to write notes to each other following the required monthly bug sweep by the Consortium. Until they completed their own private sweep, they would only allow small talk in the office which, with these two, meant no talk. The head of the Therian Division swung his coat off the tree and onto his arms in a dramatic swoop.