Chapter 11 Luke
LUKE
It was early evening when they got back to the cabin, the sky graced with the first touches of sunset’s palette. Inga carried water from the spring, and Luke washed up and then kindled a fire to heat their supper.
He had spent most of the hike back feeling jittery and paranoid, especially when they had to cross large open stretches with nowhere to hide.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that those guys were still hunting him, and had narrowed it down this much.
Inga had chased them off for now, and he was beyond impressed with her resourcefulness, but he couldn’t count on having it happen a second time.
A man with a big black dog was too obvious.
Even if he got himself to the point where he could stand shifting again, it wasn’t like he was less conspicuous as a polar bear.
They quietly made dinner together. Halfway through a meal he barely tasted, Luke started talking.
“The man in the helicopter was named Brockton,” he said.
Inga’s head jerked up. Her eyes rested on him softly, encouraging him to continue with wordless support.
After a moment he went on. “He was the head of security in a private facility at a place called Black Rock Island. It was destroyed last year, the person who actually ran it was killed, and most of the research subjects escaped, including me.”
“I know about that,” Inga said. Now it was his turn to stare at her. “I didn’t know you were involved, but I—know someone who was. Go on.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “I guess I didn’t have to keep as much of this a secret as I thought.”
Inga’s smile was soft. She reached out a hand, after a brief hesitation, and placed it on his. “Well, it’s good you’re telling me now. Whenever you’re ready, go on.”
Luke drew a breath and kept talking.
“So I—I was a soldier. Well, before that I was a kind of a washout at life. I told you that I bounced around a lot. It was mostly being shuffled around between different relatives. I lost my mom when I was young, and Dad was an older guy when I was born, and had a lot of health problems. He did his best, but I was in and out of various relatives’ homes when I couldn’t stay with him.
Dad passed the year I graduated from high school.
” He paused briefly; the sweep of grief that went through him never quite wore off its sharp edges.
Inga squeezed his hand, and he continued.
“I didn’t really see college in the cards for a guy like me.
I bummed around, did some farm and warehouse work.
Eventually I joined the military because I figured I’d get an education and see some of the world, and maybe figure out what I wanted to do with my life. It ... didn’t work out like I’d hoped.
“It was pretty good at first. I don’t think I’m cut out to be career military, but it gave me discipline and structure and even some adventure, all of which I needed.
Then the word came that they were looking for some guys for a special international unit they were putting together.
Some guys in my unit volunteered, and so did I.
They gave us a whole battery of tests. Really hard stuff.
Guys washing out right and left. It didn’t seem like it was even possible to do some of what they wanted us to do.
I realized later—a lot later,” he said slowly, “that they were testing for shifters. The tests weren’t just difficult, they genuinely were impossible for humans to pass. ”
Inga’s warm fingers tightened on his. “But you were a shifter. Surely you couldn’t have had that much trouble?”
Luke looked up and met her eyes in the lamplight. “Inga ... I wasn’t a shifter then.”
Her eyes went wide. “But ... but that’s ...”
“Impossible?” he said, aware of his lips twitching in something like a smile. “Like people turning into animals?”
“Yes, but—but it doesn’t work that way,” Inga protested. “Shifters are born, not made. Even the ones who have their shifting come out later in life always had shifter potential.”
“Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?”
Her hand tightened on his. “Yes. I’m listening. Go ahead.”
Luke took a deep breath and continued. “So I knew my test scores weren’t good enough.
But they were pretty damn good. Finally I hit a point when I could tell I wasn’t going to make it.
And that was when the man you met, Brockton, came down to the testing area.
He picked a few people from the losing candidates, including me.
And we were in, just like that. It was great at first. There was a big signing bonus, which I later realized none of us would actually see.
We got our first look at Black Rock Island.
The extra group of us, the washouts, were taken to our own part of the facility.
And that was when things started to go wrong. ”
He was quiet for a minute, staring down at the table.
Inga gently rubbed the back of his hand, slow swipes of her thumb.
Abruptly he felt a cold, wet nose push into the palm of his other hand where it rested loose and open on his knee.
Rogue had come up beside him and was sitting with his big head lowered, resting gently against Luke’s leg.
Luke scratched the dog’s ears and continued.
“They confiscated our phones and put us in a special barracks.
We were told we were part of a test group to create soldiers who can run faster, leap higher, and endure longer marches.
There were daily injections and more tests.
At least the food was good. They gave us all we could eat and then some.
We were also working out for hours a day.
In spite of shoveling food into my face three times a day, I was in the best shape of my life, at least for a while.
“But my memories start to get hazy here. Everything just kind of runs together. Some of the guys didn’t make it through the new program, and—this time, when you washed out, you left on a stretcher.
Sometimes their heart would give out or they’d have a stroke.
But there were also ways to fail that were worse than that. Much worse.
“I didn’t understand at first what was being done to us. But slowly, over time, I started to realize when it started working on some of us. They were making artificial shifters.”
He fell silent again, lost in that terrible place, hearing the screams and the echoing clang of the doors being closed and locked up at night. The snap of a burning stick in the fire made him jump, pulling him back to reality.
Inga held his hand tightly. Rogue continued to press against him, and he realized the dog was shivering a little, as if catching Luke’s mood. Luke dug his fingers into Rogue’s big, soft ears.
“You might already have guessed this, but I met Rogue there, too. Some of the test subjects were animals. They had to test it on something before us, so they didn’t lose expensive, well-trained human subjects.
Like me, Rogue made it through all the early tests.
We were teamed up in some of our training and kind of, I guess, bonded with each other. ”
He stopped again. Inga was now holding his hand in both of hers. He couldn’t remember when that had happened.
“You can take a break if you need to,” Inga said. Luke realized he was breathing hard, as if he had run a race. “In fact, I need to stir the fire. Do you, uh—do you want a cup of coffee?”
Luke took his hand off Rogue’s head and swiped at his eyes, finding them damp. He hadn’t noticed that either. “Uh, yeah. That’d be good.”
Inga got up and made coffee. The warm, rich smell filled the small cabin, and when she came back with two cups and pressed one into his chilled hands, he had himself a little more under control. “Thanks,” he said, smiling shakily at her.
The smile she gave him back was warm and full of sympathy. “I grew up with a dad and two brothers. I know that sometimes you just need to take a break from the emotions. I’ll listen if you want to keep talking, but we can also stop for the night if you need to.”
Luke shook his head. “No. I want to get it out.”
“All right,” she said quietly. “Whenever you’re ready.”
He took a too-hot drink of the coffee. It scorched his tongue, but it washed away the taste of old blood, the smell of the cages.
“I honestly don’t know what happened to some of those guys.
A lot of us died during testing. But once we started to get people who made it, came through it intact, they started sending those guys out with the regular shifter mercenary squads who were trained in the other part of the facility.
It didn’t work out as they’d hoped, though.
Us made shifters are different from born shifters, it turns out.
We can’t control our shifts as well. I only went on one mission, spent most of it as a bear, got tranqed and woke up in a cage.
” He let out a long, shuddering breath. “And before I could find out what would’ve happened to me next, there was a huge commotion, someone opened all the cages, and the next thing I knew, everything was blowing up and people were setting fire to the facility and escaping on anything that was vaguely boat-shaped. ”
“Wow,” Inga breathed. “Okay, so ... that part I knew about. Sort of. One of my brother’s friends was there for it. Did you, uh, did you get away in all of that?”
Luke nodded. “Rogue and I escaped together.” Rogue was laying on the floor under the table now, still shivering a little, as if he too had gone back into whatever memory a dog had.
But he raised his head at his name. Luke reached down to pet him again.
“He was my buddy. I had to find him, make sure he was okay. We got away together, and ... not gonna sugar-coat it ... I basically spent the winter as a bear, living on the tundra and then on an ice floe. We hunted, I helped him, he helped me. I haven’t been human in almost a year, I think. ”
“My God,” Inga whispered reverently. Her eyes were huge and soft, but not pitying. “I can’t imagine it. No wonder you don’t want to be a bear.”
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “I—I think I’m done.”
They both fell silent. Luke swallowed the coffee, and slowly started to feel a little less peeled raw, especially when Inga reached out to touch his hand again with one of her square, capable ones, callused from her work on the boats.
He turned his hand over and immediately she laced her fingers through his, holding it.
“I’m glad you told me,” Inga said quietly. Her gaze was direct and honest. “Thank you for trusting me.”
Luke could only nod and take another slug of coffee to wash the bitter taste out of his mouth.
He wondered how she would react, whether her eyes would still be so open and soft, or slam shut against him for good, if she knew how much he was still holding back about the danger pursuing him.