Bears of Burden: THORN

by Candace Ayers

  Chapter Two

  “Don’t blow this,” Aubrey Moss whispered around the edge of the ID badge she held between her teeth. She started wrapping an elastic around her ponytail.

  “Don’t blow this,” she whispered again as she clamped the ID badge onto the chest pocket of her size-18 black pantsuit. She tried to get the badge to lie flat but gave up. The fullness of her cleavage did not lend itself to anything lying flat against it.

  “Don’t blow this,” she repeated one more time. These were not words of self-encouragement, though. As she spoke, she was hearing the voice of her father, Raymond Moss, the president of Gen-Ex. Aubrey was about to head out of the locker room and into her first briefing as an employee of her father’s company.

  As Aubrey tightened her ponytail, a stubborn, curly bump popped up on the top of her head.

  “You’re so going to blow this,” Aubrey whispered, looking down at her shaking hands. She felt like she was going to cry. Tears welled in her eyes. She tried to take deep breaths. She closed her eyes.

  You are an elite female biologist, she thought, trying to encourage herself. You graduated at the top of your class. You got the job because you deserve it. Prove that to yourself. You deserve this. Prove that to you father.

  “You deserve this,” she repeated out loud. Her heart rate slowed. Her breathing became regular and she started to feel better.

  “Aubrey!” her father yelled, pushing the locker door open a crack. “What the hell is taking you so long? You need brains to work here, not beauty, thank God.”

  Aubrey’s shoulders tensed again. She put her hands in the pockets of her black dress pants, trying to hide the fact that they were trembling again. Her father held the door open for her.

  “Don’t blow this, Aubrey,” he said under his breath as she squeezed between his bulbous belly and the door frame. She stiffened her entire body to try to hide her trembling that had increased in proportion to the proximity of her father, but she kept walking.

  “All right, gentleman,” her father’s voice boomed around the room as he shut the door of the briefing room behind him. He walked to his seat, leaving Aubrey standing by the door. One of the ten men sitting around the table stood, offering her his chair.

  “No, no, she’s fine,” her father said from the head of the conference table. He sat, clasping his hands atop his belly, leaning back in the chair.

  “She can sit there. We won’t be long.” Her father unclasped his hands long enough to point to a row of chairs against the wall.

  Aubrey sat, putting her shaking, sweaty hands under thighs. The middle-aged gentleman with the goatee who had offered her his chair shrugged before sitting back down.

  “I assume you’ve all already discussed the statuses of our, uh, samples?” her father asked, looking up from an open folder and meeting the gaze of every man in the room.

  “Yes, Mr. Moss.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The men around the room uttered similar sentiments before the room fell silent again. Raymond Moss shuffled through a few more folders.

  “And the new one?” he asked, looking up again.

  The goateed man sat straight before speaking. “Well, uh, we’ve had problems getting samples and, uh—”

  “And?” her Father asked gruffly.

  “We’ve had problems obtaining specimens from the newest sample,” the man said, clearly this time.

  “Robert, Robert, Robert,” Raymond sat back in his chair, clasping his hands over his belly again. “You are the top biologist in this damn country. I pay you the wages of the top biologist in this damn country.”

  “Yes, sir,” Robert said, looking down at the table that separated him from his boss. “But—”

  “I don’t want excuses, Robert,” Raymond slammed his fist on the table.

  “Yes, sir,” Robert said, still looking down.

  “Now, go get me a damn sample.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And take Aubrey with you,” Raymond nodded toward his daughter. “She’s the top female biologist in the country. Maybe all you need is a woman’s touch. You don’t look like you get much of that.”

  Robert stared open-mouthed at Raymond’s crudeness. Aubrey fought the urge to cover her face with her hands.

  “Go!” Raymond growled, pointing to the door.

  Robert nodded, stood, and led Aubrey out the door.

  “Sorry,” Robert said when the elevator door closed.

  “How far down does this thing go?” Aubrey asked, trying to change the subject. She gestured toward the many buttons by the door.

  “The elevator goes down twenty-one floors, but there are really twenty-two floors below the surface.”

  Robert didn’t say anything else. The elevator was uncomfortably silent, so Aubrey tried again.

  “What are these samples everyone keeps talking about? I mean, why just call them samples? Are they plants? Animals? What? Why all the secrecy?”

  “You’ll see for yourself,” Robert said. “There’s no better way to explain. You’ll see.”

  The elevator dinged.

  “That’s us,” Robert escorted Aubrey out the door.

  Aubrey watched her feet as she exited the elevator. She was only wearing small heels, but to her, any heels were gigantic. The last thing she wanted to do right now was fall on her face in front of her new co-workers.

  Don’t blow it, her father’s words echoed in her head again.

  As soon as she was sure her feet were on solid ground, Aubrey looked up. What she saw was no different than any other lab, though perhaps cleaner and more humane-looking. There were rows and rows of aquariums, not the cages most research companies used to house their mice and gerbils and cats and dogs and primates. It was quieter, too.

  The glass must be soundproof, Aubrey thought.

  Robert grasped her elbow, leading her through the lab.

  “This way,” Robert said, pointing to a metal door on the far side of the room. He scanned his ID badge in the slot beside the door and they entered an anteroom. The first door slid closed behind them. The panels on each side of the narrow anteroom began to emit a bright blue light. After a few seconds, a zapping sound filled the room. Then, the lights turned off and the door in front of them opened.

  Unable to keep her eyes from the sight that unfolded in front of her, Aubrey took a step into the room, catching her heel on the door’s bottom guides and stumbling forward. Fortunately, she didn’t fall.

  Aubrey and Robert stood on a metal floor. Ten feet from her was a railing that opened up into a round hole in the center of the floor. The walls held hundreds and hundreds of glass tanks similar to the ones she had seen in the first room. The sizes of these tanks were different, though. Some could have fit in the palm of her hand. Some were over four stories high.

  Aubrey turned to the tank closest to her. It was a small tank that held what appeared to be an octopus, but this octopus was barely the size of her thumb. Instead of suction cups, it had yellow flower-like protrusions running the length of its arms. As soon as the octopus thing saw Aubrey, its eyes grew larger and larger, almost covering its entire body. Its arms tensed. With a sudden movement, metal-like hooks shot out of the flower protrusions. The animal darted to the edge of the tank, its hooks making contact with the glass. Aubrey jumped back, gasping.

  Robert laughed a little, but Aubrey didn’t sense anything but good humor in that laugh. She walked on.

  “Is that Jello?” she asked, pointing to a ten-foot by ten-foot aquarium.

  “No, that is Bob,” Robert responded.

  Bob was a red, gelatinous, square blob.

  “Fitting name,” Aubrey said. “What does he do?”

  “Uh, nothing really.”

  Aubrey looked at Robert. “What do any of these things do? What are they?”

  “They’re, uh, well, that’s kind of what we are trying to figure out. That’s what we do.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  Robert shrug
ged. “Mostly, well, from space.”

  “Space…huh,” Aubrey thought for a minute. She supposed she should have been more shocked, but she had always been obsessed with alien movies. She had even done a paper defending the existence of aliens, so she was far more curious than shocked.

  Or maybe I’m in shock.

  Aubrey moved on to the next tank. It was the same size as Bob’s tank, but it held something much hairier. As Aubrey moved closer, the creature looked up, exposing its electric blue face. The massive gorilla-like creature stood. The hairless skin of its front was entirely blue. The thing flexed its arm muscles. Its hair stood on end, filling every inch of the container. Electric sparks started making their way from its body to the ends of its hair.

  “Cover your eyes,” Robert told her. Aubrey obeyed, but she could still see the brilliant blue light through her fingers as the electricity in the aquarium continued to build. Then, the light was gone. She lowered her hand and saw only hair again.

  “It builds up the electricity to defend itself,” Robert explained nonchalantly. Aubrey nodded as if she completely understood.

  “But enough of these for now,” Robert told her, picking up speed as he continued toward the door on the opposite side of the room. “We need to get down to the next floor.”

  “What’s there?” Aubrey asked.

  “Something…something…more…”

  “More than all this,” she asked, gesturing around the room.

  “Yes, something more than this.”

  “How could anything be more than this?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Aubrey followed Robert through the metal door, which was decorated with a giant “No Unauthorized Access” sign.

  “Geez,” Aubrey said as they entered another anteroom. “What kind of access do you need to get in here? I figure if you can get into the other room— ”

  “Trust me. This one’s different. There are only three people with access to this room—me, your father, and now you.”

  Aubrey was about to ask more questions, but Robert had already exited the anteroom. She followed him as he descended a spiral staircase. At the bottom of the stairs was another metal door. Robert scanned his badge. Aubrey, expecting to walk into yet another anteroom, inhaled sharply when she caught site of what was behind this door. She stood in the tiny control room as a scaly, green dragon, larger than an airplane rushed toward her, spewing fire in front of him. As the flames hit the glass separating the control room from the creature, Aubrey realized she had stopped breathing. Still, she couldn’t will her frozen self to take a breath.

  Don’t blow this, she heard her father’s voice.

  Too late, she responded as she fainted, crumbling to the floor.

  Chapter Three

  “Wake up,” Aubrey heard Robert’s voice above her. Her eyes fluttered open. Robert cradled her head under one of his hands, fanning her face with a piece of paper. She blinked a few more times before struggling to rise up onto her elbows.

  “You okay?” Robert asked. “You sure you don’t need a few more minutes?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, standing.

  The room was set up like a cockpit, a chair on each side of the glass doors that led into the enclosure beyond. Like the metal doors they had passed through, the passageway leading into the giant aquarium had two sets of doors separated by an anteroom. Aubrey looked through both doors, and what she saw made her exhale sharply.

  Breath, she told herself, forcing air in and out of her chest.

  There was no longer a dragon behind the far door. Instead, there was a man, a very well-built, very sweaty, very naked man. She saw his well-toned calves. She stared at his muscular thighs. She traced the v of his abdomen with her eyes. She licked her dry lips before abruptly turning toward Robert.

  “Is that—” she stuttered. “What—is—What is that?”

  “Right now,” Robert answered, “it appears to be a man.”

  “But—it—was—”

  “It was a dragon, yes. It shifts from dragon to man. It is also an alien.”

  “How did you…”

  “It came in a few nights ago. The military shot it down over New Mexico. There were others with him, but they got away.”

  Aubrey looked back at the dragon man. She watched as beads of sweat dripped down his chest, around the muscles of his abdomen, dipping into the v that lead to his—Aubrey looked back toward Robert.

  “So, exactly what kind of specimens are we supposed to collect from this ‘sample’?” she asked.

  “The usual, you know, hair, skin, saliva, sweat…”

  “Oh,” she whispered, looking back into the container. The man had placed his forearms on the glass just over his head. His biceps tightened. His shoulders muscles hardened. She licked her lips again.

  “Can he can speak our language? Can he understand, at least?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Robert said. “Both. Doesn’t talk much though.”

  Robert had walked to the corner of the control room to retrieve a clipboard and a large black duffel bag, both of which he carried toward the door. After scanning his card, he stepped into the anteroom gesturing for Aubrey to follow.

  “I haven’t had a problem collecting specimens from him while he’s in human form. He doesn’t shift into dragon form often, though, so I haven’t been able to get any dragon specimens.”

  Aubrey nodded, acknowledging that she had heard Robert, but she had a more pressing question to ask. “Uh, does he have a name? It’s a bit weird, you know. He looks like a man and all.”

  Robert shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t asked him.”

  Robert handed Aubrey the black bag as the blue lights dimmed. He motioned for the sample to move aside as the inner door slid open. The sample sneered at Robert, but moved aside, sitting in a cushioned chair a few hundred feet away. Robert and Aubrey followed him.

  “First, the blood,” Robert said marking something on the clipboard.

  Aubrey opened the bag, withdrawing a rubber band. She tied the band around the specimen’s bicep, watching the veins in his inner elbow bulge.

  “Just keep it there,” she told him.

  “He knows the process,” Robert said.

  Aubrey didn’t answer. Somehow it made her feel better to lead the man through the process as if preparing him for it might help in some way. She withdrew a syringe and collection tube from the bag on the floor beside her. She attached the components and took the cap off the needle.

  “This’ll only pinch a little,” she said, looking into the man’s eyes, expecting see a bored look. He had been through this. He was a tough guy. But what she saw in his amber and green eyes was not boredom. What she saw was fear. His jaw was clenched. His nostrils dilated. He stared straight back at her. He looked determined. He looked courageous. He looked strong. But the soul behind his eyes was terrified. She could sense it.

  She paused. She couldn’t do it. She held the needle in midair.

  “It’s okay,” the man said. “You have to. I understand.”

  She didn’t move. Her brain told her she had to do this. She needed this job. If she were fired, she would never be able to work as a biologist again. Her father would make sure of that. But her heart screamed too. It told her not to do this, to drop the needle, to tell the world about the torture taking place in this cell. She wanted to quell this man’s fears.

  “Do it,” he commanded softly between clenched teeth.

  She obeyed, moving the needle to his arm, placing its tip on his vein. She pushed, glancing up into his eyes as she did so. His jaw remained set, his muscles remained stone-still, but she saw the screams of his soul in his eyes. Her own eyes watered. She looked back to his arm, removing the rubber band. When the syringe was full, she extracted the needle and handed it to Robert who took the needle and sample and put it back into the bag before taking out a saliva swab kit.

  Chapter Four

  “You are attracted to me, yes?” the dragon man asked he
r the next day as she stroked the inside of his cheek with a swab. Aubrey’s hand jerked, the swab poking into his mouth.

  “Ow,” he said, putting his hand to the outside of cheek. His eyes sparkled with humor, though.

  Aubrey blushed as she looked down, clipping the end of the swab into a collection cup.

  “You are attracted to me,” he said. “Why does that embarrass you?”

  “What is your name?” she asked, changing the subject. She took another swab out of the black bag and began rubbing it up and down a one-inch section of his bicep.

  “Zarek, but my question—”

  “That’s a nice name. Zarek, I like that,” she cut him off. She was alone in a giant room with Zarek, and yes, she was attracted to him. Who wouldn’t be?

  “Yes, but you haven’t answered—” he started again, his bicep muscle clenching as he leaned forward. Aubrey stopped swabbing.

  “Sit still,” she said as she placed her hand on his chest, pushing him back, feeling his warm, soft skin, his firm, hard muscles, under her palm. She quickly withdrew her hand and picked up another collection jar.

  When she had taken all the samples except a blood sample, she reached for the rubber band. His jaw tightened.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she wrapped the band around his bicep.

  “I know,” he answered, looking into her eyes.

  Aubrey took the needle out and attached the collection tube. Zarek didn’t flinch, though Aubrey detected the change in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. Her own soul felt sick at having to perform this test. “Why does it hurt so much?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Well, you’re big, and obviously strong, and it’s just a small needle prick, but each time I can see the pain in your eyes, in the way you clench your jaw—”

  “It is very painful. It doesn’t hurt when your blood leaves your body?” he asked.