by Meg Ripley
Brandy glanced around the room and then darted across it. She tore off a strip off her shirt and dunked it in the water pail they were all expected to share. The water was never as clean as what they’d been able to get from the waterfall before the soldiers had come along, but Brandy was careful not to spill the liquid, treating it as though it were the most precious material on Earth. “Maybe this will help. She feels too hot, even for one of us.”
Lane laid a hand on Edi’s forehead and instantly understood what Brandy was trying to say. Dragon shifters usually kept a higher internal temperature than normal humans, thanks to the furnace that naturally burned in their chests. She reached out for the rag. “It’s worth a try.”
The two of them took turns bathing the old woman, constantly checking the temperature of her skin to see if their efforts were helping. Lane wondered what would happen if this was something Edi couldn’t make it through. She highly doubted the soldiers would allow them to properly take care of their dead, and she wouldn’t even put it past them to take the body and use it for their own scientific exploration. She shuddered at the thought, feeling guilty for even thinking that way, but it was a very real possibility. “Hang in there, Edi. We’re here for you.”
A noise from the hall caught her attention, and she turned just in time to see a scientist standing on the other side of the bars. He was dressed in a long white lab coat like Dr. Blake wore, but this definitely wasn’t Dr. Blake. His hair had been cropped short, sporting a bit of gray at his temples which indicated his age. An array of armed soldiers flanked him as he studied the dragons in the chamber. “That one,” he said, pointing at Lane.
“You sure? She’s a frisky one.”
The man in the lab coat nodded. “I’m sure you’re more than capable of handling her.”
The soldier who’d tried to argue with him puffed up his chest and tightened his grip on his weapon. “Of course, sir.”
“I want her in the mobile lab outside.”
“But we’ve got a new one set up right down here—”
“Do you make a habit of arguing with your superiors?” the newcomer demanded, his deep voice threatening.
He’d instantly cowed the soldier. “No, sir. Sorry, sir.”
The man in the lab coat whisked away while the soldiers unlocked the bars, swinging out a small section so they could step inside and grab Lane. She knew better than to fight by now, unless she wanted a new array of bruises to join the ones already trying to heal on her arms and legs, and she stumbled along with them as they pulled her out of the chamber and locked it.
She gritted her teeth as she allowed them to guide her down the tunnel toward the front of the cavern. The soldiers had not only widened the passageway and installed blinding lights all over the place, they’d also taken a section of the main cavern near the waterfall and turned it into a large lab. They’d literally constructed a box within the cavern, a space that Lane imagined made them feel like they were still part of civilization.
Dr. Blake operated out of that lab now, but the soldiers did as they were told and marched her outside. She had only a minute to enjoy the sunshine and brisk wind on her face—improperly dressed as she was—before they shoved her inside the cargo container where she’d lost so much blood on that first day. Someone had cleaned it all up now, though she could still smell the fear of everyone else who’d gone in there and suffered at the hands of these horrid humans.
“Leave her here,” the new doctor commanded. “You can go.”
“But, sir!” The argumentative soldier gestured wildly at Lane. “That’s crazy!”
“They didn’t send me here because I’m a pussy, Nelson. Now get the fuck out of my lab!” The doctor pointed at the door.
The underlings scrambled out, the door making a thick thump behind them.
Lane was now close enough to the new man that she could see the ID badge clipped to his lab coat. “They’re right, Dr. Cunningham,” she said as he rummaged around for whatever instruments he needed. “It’s not smart of you to be in here with me alone.”
His back was to her, and he carried such a relaxed posture, it was clear he wasn’t threatened. “And why’s that?”
She couldn’t resist the opportunity to tell him just what she thought of him and the rest of the bastards who’d infiltrated her life. “Because any of us would gladly take the chance to rip into your skin and chunk your flesh out piece by piece.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” he replied as he turned around, his dark eyes meeting hers calmly.
Her breath caught in her throat as she stared into them, her tongue working against the backs of her teeth. She fought the urge to shift, but only because she thought it would satisfy him to think that he could scare her or manipulate her. But there was something about him that was so incredibly familiar… Those eyes...
She cleared her throat. “I haven’t seen you here before. What sort of trouble did you get in for someone to send you out here?”
Dr. Cunningham pressed a cold disc against her chest. She hadn’t even realized he was holding it until that moment. “You underestimate me. There’s a lot to learn here, and I’m here to do just that.”
She swallowed again, unable to rid herself of the tightness at her throat. Her dragon whipped around inside her, but not with the urge to attack him. “Then maybe you can tell me exactly what it is you’re here to learn.”
He lifted the stethoscope from her chest and picked up a blood pressure cuff. His hands were gentle but efficient as he wrapped it around her arm. “I think that’s obvious.”
Lane gave a snort of derisive laughter. “Really? It’s obvious to you why the United States government would want to imprison and torture a group of people who just want to be left alone?” She dared to look up into his eyes and then looked away again. The depths of them were too much, and they told her things that were far too uncomfortable to contemplate.
“People?” he questioned quietly as he tightened the cuff. “Is that what you call yourselves? Seems to me like there’s something completely different going on here.”
The wave of rage overtook her so quickly, Lane hardly even knew what she was doing. She shoved against the doctor with every bit of strength that hadn’t been drained from her body by bleeding and constant shifting and starvation. He toppled backwards into a rack of test tubes, several of which fell and shattered on the floor.
“Yes, people! And we have a right to live peacefully instead of being attacked by assholes like you!” She launched herself off the table and marched straight up to him, unafraid of what he might do. Let them kill her. If she could take a few of them out in the process and improve the odds for the rest of the dragons, then it’d be worth it. “If I wanted to, I could slit your throat and bleed you dry so fast, you wouldn’t even have a chance to blink.”
She might’ve thrown him off balance physically, but the doctor was unruffled by her efforts. He put his palms on the table that held the test tube rack and straightened, the effort pushing his body against hers as his gaze bored into her. “Yes, you could. If you wanted to.”
“Is that a dare?” Her wings pulsed against the underside of her skin. They couldn’t have done her much good in that tiny space, but her true, complete form longed to come out for the first time since the attack. She felt the pain of her claws threatening to emerge from her fingertips, ready to shred his skin into ribbons.
“No,” Dr. Cunningham replied quietly. “I think you know as well as I do that both you and the others are much better off if you keep your heads down and cooperate. That’s exactly why you’ve been doing it all along, too. Now I suggest you get back on that table and let me finish up before I have to call those buffoons back in here to sedate you.”
Lane could feel the heat of his skin against hers, but it was subtle. He had a completely different feel to him than either the humans or dragons, and it aroused her curiosity in a way she couldn’t explain. So did his calm and patient manner with her. Dr. Cunningham had bee
n quick to snap at the soldier he’d been bossing around, and it would’ve made sense for him to treat her at least as poorly, if not more so. Dr. Blake acted like the dragons were nothing more than animals, often ignoring the fact that they even knew English. Why should he even give her a second chance?
She could easily do just as she’d said and slit his throat, but she found herself backing up toward the exam table and sitting on the end of it once again. Lane told herself it was because she didn’t want to risk any revenge by the doctors or his henchmen on her people for her actions. She clenched her jaw as she kept her head turned away from him while he finished getting her vitals.
“Hold still,” he cautioned as he approached with the needle.
Lane felt her body instinctively tighten, but she forced it to relax. The injections always hurt worse when her muscles were taut, and it was purely self-preservation that made her let go. Or was it? She was already behaving differently around him than she did around the other humans.
Her stomach churned in anticipation. Lane expected the burning heat of the drug to sear through her veins, but it only caused a slight chill. Her skin didn’t erupt in scales, and she didn’t feel the creak of her bones as they were caught somewhere between species.
She swiveled her head to look at him. “What did you just give me?”
“Has anyone ever told you before?” he asked calmly, not rising to the bait of her ire.
“No,” she admitted, “but I can tell this is different.”
“It’s just a bit of saline solution. You’re dehydrated. It should make you feel better.” He capped the needle and tossed it into the sharps container.
Lane studied the injection site, disbelieving. “Why would you give a shit about that?”
“Doesn’t it make sense to keep our subjects alive?” He picked up a clipboard and scribbled something on it.
She wanted to keep arguing with him just for the sake of doing so, but her mind had shot back to what she’d left in her chamber. “In that case, my friend is very sick,” she said quietly. “She needs help.”
Dr. Cunningham set the clipboard down and folded his arms in front of his chest. “What kind of sick?”
“A fever maybe. She’s burning up and she doesn’t want to wake up.” Her heart ached as she thought of Edi. As she told the new doctor about her old friend, she wondered if she’d regret it. Dr. Cunningham had just said he wanted to keep them all alive, but what if he was just saying that to keep her from killing him? And what if a sick dragon who was hardly used for the experiments anyway wasn’t worth keeping alive in their eyes?
But the doctor nodded slowly, his brow creasing. He scratched his chin. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you.” The words felt wrong on her tongue. She couldn’t possibly be polite to these bastards, and yet here she was begging for help and groveling as soon as he gave her even the slightest reason to hope.
His hand closed on her elbow to help her down from the table. “Time for you to go back.” He escorted her only as far as the door where the lackeys with guns were waiting. “Take her back and bring the old woman here,” he commanded. They did as they were told without argument this time.
Lane was stunned as she went along with them, hardly even registering the walk back into the cavern and to her chamber. She was jolted out of her distant thoughts as the soldiers put their hands on Edi and Brandy tried to fight them off.
“Leave her alone or I’ll separate your skin from the rest of your body,” she snarled.
Lane put a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back. “It’s all right. She’s going to get help.” She kept Brandy at bay while Edi was lifted onto a gurney and trundled off down the passageway.
“Are you nuts?” Brandy exploded. “There’s no telling what they’re going to do to her! We’ll be lucky if we even see her again!” Her blue eyes were electric with rage and a shimmer of scales erupted on her arm without any prompting by strange drugs.
“I promise, it’s all right. Or at least, it’s better than it has been. There’s a different doctor here now.”
“Instead of Dr. Blake?” Brandy asked breathlessly.
Lane shook her head. “I’m not sure. I didn’t even think to ask him. I just know that he’s new, and he’s different.”
Brandy wasn’t buying it and she glared at Lane curiously. “What kind of different? Does this mean you decided to seduce someone instead?”
“Of course not,” Lane said firmly. “It’s nothing like that. But he gave me a shot of saline instead of anything else, and he was talking about how important it is to keep us alive.”
“I see,” Brandy said with a roll of her eyes. “This is—what do they call it?—Stockholm Syndrome. You’re not seeing them as the bad guys anymore. Just take a gander across the way there at Liam and maybe that’ll remind you what side you’re supposed to be on.”
“No, no. It’s not like that, either. I’m not saying he’s a good guy. He can’t be. But I don’t get the same feeling from him as I do the others. Don’t give me that look. I know how it sounds. I do. Just trust me on this. He said he’s going to help Edi.”
Brandy gathered her dark hair and twisted it into a knot at the nape of her neck as she paced the chamber. “All I can say is that I hope you’re right. We’re living in some pretty fucked up circumstances right now, and I don’t have any good solution to it.” She flopped down in the corner, pulled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them.
Lane moved to comfort her just as Brandy had done for her, but she couldn’t get Dr. Cunningham off her mind. There was a chance he was just buying time and buttering the dragons up so they’d be more cooperative, and then he could turn around and show his superiors just how talented he was at taming wild beasts. It could be that he simply hadn’t worked around shifters before, as most humans hadn’t, and he’d change once he understood.
Maybe, just maybe, he was genuinely a decent person. Maybe he would be the factor that would change the dragons’ chances of survival. She could easily feel his hand on her arm, a memory that had been tattooed into her brain. Whoever this man was, she hoped she was right about him.
6
Ash’s heart sat like a stone in his chest as he waited for the meeting to start. He was grateful to Jack for not only having the right connections to get him in there, but for having the right talent to alter his credentials in the system so Ash could pass himself off as a doctor. He’d been through a basic amount of training as a medic in order to offer help to fallen fellow soldiers, so he certainly knew more than simple first aid, but he definitely didn’t qualify for his new position.
And even though it benefited him to get on the inside and see what was going on, Ash was incredibly disturbed. His first visit there had been troubling enough when he’d seen all those dragons in pain. But he was finding that the more time he spent there, the more appalled he was.
“All right.” Dr. Blake sat down with a mug of coffee in his hand, smiling around the room as though this was a routine meeting at some small-town hospital back in the States. “I guess it’s time we got started. I think you’ve all met Dr. Cunningham.”
The rest of the team nodded their acknowledgement. Though Ash and Dr. Blake were the “official” doctors, the Army had assigned an entire scientific team to this location. Ash had seen them gathering and analyzing data from the dragons, staring through microscopes, and swapping petri dishes. He noted that none of the soldiers had been invited to the meeting. Clearly, Dr. Blake didn’t see them as anything more than grunts.
“I know some of you have already asked me why Dr. Cunningham has been brought in,” Dr. Blake continued. “There was plenty of work here for the rest of us, and so I have to wonder that myself. Dr. Cunningham, perhaps you can fill me in on exactly why I’m no longer good enough for my own job.” He was smiling, but there was ice in his voice colder than the weather outside.
Ash smiled back. He might not have been a doctor, but he knew how
this game worked. Dr. Blake felt threatened by his presence; he wouldn’t have been someone Ash could’ve counted on as an ally even if he didn’t know that Ash was truly a polar bear. Folding his hands on the table in front of him, he replied, “Oh, I assure you it’s nothing like that at all! There’s no plan to take you off this project. Rather, the government just wants to see it move along a little faster.”
“And why would your presence here help that?” Dr. Blake asked baldly. “As far as I saw, you don’t have any better medical credentials than I do.”
Ash shook his head. “No, I don’t. But what I do have is experience. I’m not at liberty to explain all the details, but I think I can safely say that I’ve worked with shifters before.”
This shook Dr. Blake enough to wipe that fake smile off his face. “You have? But I thought this was the first shifter experiment we’ve had!”
“Like I said, I’m not at liberty to explain all the details,” Ash repeated. Pretending to have classified information could be just as valuable as actually having it. “But the president believes I can move this process along a little faster and help us get some real results. I’ve had a chance to look through some of the records, although I admit that’s been slowed down a lot by the fact that we’re not doing anything digitally for security reasons. At this point, I think it would be helpful if we just talk about what’s been going on here, where we’re at, and what sort of timelines we think we can expect from here on out.”
Dr. Blake didn’t appreciate having the meeting taken over, but a young woman across the table who’d been staring at Ash with doe eyes was eager to speak up. “Personally, I think we’re making significant progress in that we’ve been able to get some of them to shift permanently into their reptilian state.”
“Permanently?” Ash questioned, his stomach turning as he imagined what it’d be like to be stuck in one form or another.
