Omega
The Thawing of the Earth
The tundra was warming, right down to the permafrost. It had been thus for four generations, and winter fur was thinner every year.
Food was scarce; although there was occasional live prey, it was rarely worth the meal, and the pack had fallen to scavenging to survive. It was the lifeless ones that had become the dominance here, and the wolves had fallen back with the rest of tundra's inhabitants.
Regardless, springtime still meant new life, albeit rushed, and it was time again to move the pack's cubs to a safer den. The lifeless ones had their say first, and little ones had to be out of the way for life to continue.
The wolf trotted swiftly, head down, ears back, and all to classical, tail-between-legs fashion. They were here; the smell of death was everywhere.
Coming across another, the first wolf stopped. Old, elaborate greetings were ignored for the clipped versions. The future was in danger. The future was danger.
The omega joined first wolf, but paused to howl the moon's lament. Echoing voices called from the surrounding fog, but that of first wolf was not among them. Her thoughts were for the cubs, and there was a threat older than the lifeless ones out tonight.
Something roared across the tundra with a brutal voice. The sound of scurrying legs was lost to the thunderous intrusion, and the omega recoiled from the sudden light out of nowhere. Shouting; human voices added to the mix. The lifeless ones were distracted by the old threat and the humans had come under the safety of the battle.
The wolf stared transfixed by the headlights, not moving until the danger was too close to avoid. There were reasons she was omega.
"Jesus; would the corporal cadre want this recruit to kiss her ass, as well?"
"Well, since y'a brought it up…"
"Sierra!"
"What? I didn't say it."
Suddenly, the already cramped air duct seemed far too small for the both of them. Ryan tried to back off, but there was really nowhere to go.
"Would you just hurry?"
"You wanna to do this?"
"My arm wouldn't fit through there!"
"And y'think mine do?"
Sierra might have protested at her fellow cadet's breathing down her neck, had she not been enjoying it. If it weren't for the frustration at not being able to open the lattice leading into the labs, though, this would have been a lot more fun. She huffed and pulled her arm back through the grating; her arms were going to be chaffed for some time afterwards. Switching to her left hand, she attempted to twist at an inhuman angle, only to falter from the impossibility of it.
"We should'a brought Skitters," the woman sighed, flexing her fingers and wrists.
"His mother would kill us," Ryan stated plainly, squashing any plans of, let's go get him! that were sure to follow. He had his own set of strict regulations when it came to dealing with out-of-commission marines or their sons.
"Nah, it'd be good for him," Sierra reached back through the grate as far as she could, reaching for the next little bolt that just so evaded her grasp. The last one. One flimsy little thing that they couldn't break because it'd be a noticeable change in the room and the detail-set alarms would go off. That the state-of-the-art alarms were fashioned in such a way that they only monitored normal activity was a convenience to more than only late-working lab hands and maintenance workers.
"Good for him or good for us?"
"Both," her eyes lit up, "Okay, then, what about Jane?"
"She wouldn't come; I think she's still in trauma over that anatomy thing."
"She'd have to; I'd make her," Sierra said with a strange mixture of scorn and matter-of-factness, "Remember, I own both your asses."
"Not on vacation, you don't."
"Speaking of a…. Hey, I got it!"
Not one moment… not one millisecond too soon,Ryan imagined as his companion struggled forward to push the rectangle of metal and mesh out of their way. It gave suddenly, and his heart skipped as she almost let it fall to the other side.
"Two problems," Sierra snapped, "This thing's heavy, and I'm slipping. And the floor's a bit farther away than we thought, so three problems. Four 'cause I don't think we can haul it back into the grate could you stop me from slipping thank you very much."
Amused, Ryan pinned her ankles to the metal sheet below them before they moved much farther, "Now what?" The reply was nothing more than a grunt, "I can let you down slow, or is the floor farther than that?"
"It… just let me down," nearly half of her was out of the vent already, anyway, "But slow!"
Chuckling, Ryan inched forward slowly until she dangled at his mercy. The screen clattered to the floor inside the labs, and he heard it slide roughly away.
"Okay, okay – let go."
"You sure?"
"Damnit, yes!"
He did as she said, and she slid from his view, landing heavily in a nightmarish somersault. Ryan followed a bit more cautiously as she recovered, keeping a distance from both her and the dirty look she aimed in his direction.
The brightly-lit room was half laboratory and half storeroom. The negligently left alone experiments might have raised health questions if this wasn't a routine expedition for adolescents around their neighborhood. Although safety was a relative thing – the soldiers that guarded the facility probably wouldn't have taken to kindly to finding denim-clad teenagers traipsing the grounds.
So, as to make the trip fast and painless, they spread apart the search. Aside the common sense ideal that the drug they were after wouldn't have been in with the trays of experiments, there was little clue to where it would be. Although they did have a marked advantage of having done this before.
Among the more obscure shelves, something scraped metal; a rapping to coincide with the ruffle of clothes and a soft screech of synthetic rubber on linoleum floors.
Packed away like any of the other boxes, crates, and aluminum cases was something different.
Sierra breezed over the labeled boxes with a fingertip, the exact serial number of the injection burned into her mind by repetitive thought over the months of its use.
On the floor, under the EX serials was a massive crate like she'd never seen before; a bottle slung through evenly set bars caught her attention, and something moved under the shadow of the sheets of metal that encased the other five facets of the cage.
"Whoa…" Cold blue eyes stared out from a bristled silvery whitish… thing. A bushy tail moved aside to reveal the hateful grimace of the large, if emaciated dog-like creature. The transfixed teenager barely noticed as one of the most unusual things she'd ever seen shuffled to its feet before her and pressed against the back of its prison. She leaned closer to the bars, keeping balance on her toes by hands pressed to the top of the crate.
"That is so cool."
A low growl grew audible, and soon broke into a barrage of yelping snarls as the animal threw itself forward against the threat. Sierra fell back into Ryan, who'd appeared behind her moments earlier, and cursed several syllables. While the man helped her to her feet, she kept trying to inch backward. Trying to steady her nerves, she wiped the drool off her corduroy vest and the grubby used-to-be-white T-shirt beneath in a show of disgust.
"You all right?" Sierra brushed that off, too, just for display.
"Just fine; it takes a little more than a dog to scare me."
"I think it's a wolf," Ryan's impending chuckle died as he noticed something that shouldn't have been.
"Yeah, whatever," Sierra grumbled, intent on wiping the non-existent dust from her pants until her friend urgently grabbed her arm, "Hey; what the hell, man?"
"I think we tripped the alarm," Ryan said simply, nodding to the blinking little, stay where you are, there's a search in progress, red light that scientists obeyed and thieves didn't.
They both stared vacantly for a moment before Sierra led the way in a dash back to the air vent. Ryan helped the woman hoist herself into the duct, before lifting the grate in a momentary, futile wonder if he could get it back on.
"Leave it, c'mon," Sierra snapped from above, prompting just that and attempting, under terrible leverage, to help the man pull himself up. Whether she was successful or not, Ryan managed to get back into the vent. Together they crawled an approximate ten feet before coming across a backpack they'd left earlier for an inconspicuous getaway once out of the building, where Sierra stopped.
"Wait, did you get it?"
"No."
"Well we gotta go get it, then," Sierra tried to turn around – a difficult maneuver considering the size of the vent and Ryan being immediately behind her.
"No!"
"We gotta!"
"Sierra!"
The wolf pressed against the limitation of her world in desperation before falling back to the shadows as more and more humans appeared outside.
So many of them… but… there had been a guardian among them! She had to find it; but would it listen to a lowly omega?
The apartment that greeted its wayward occupant home was not as quiet as one might have hoped. The living room seemed far livelier than it should have been at this time of night. Three adolescents, one of which was curled inward in a vain attempt at sleep, one of which didn't belong, and one of which should have been sleeping lounged about an overstuffed sofa.
A television, no longer used for news or a majority of the entertainment mediums, displayed the last and only lasting of its former uses – a movie of enough caliber to keep the attentions of children. Low-volume explosions weren't loud enough to wake the household, but the hum was starting to get on Ryan's nerves as he stood in shock at the sight.
So he decided to clean up the situation difficult bit first.
"You," two bodies jumped at the suppressed, yet angry tone. He caught the eye of his addressee, who flinched but couldn't look away; at least not when running like hell seemed a viable outcome.
"Hey," the boy chirped, trying to sound as pleasant as possible. His worry manifested itself as he gripped the upholstery under his hand, "How'd it go?"
"Does your mother know you're here?"
"She should," a clever evasion, "I told her I was coming here."
"It's four AM; does she know?" but not clever enough.
"…Dunno? She shou-"
"Go home; now."
The boy rose nervously from his seat and tried to keep a calm, nonchalant demeanor that didn't quite work as he sulkily crept away.
One problem down, which left one, which shouldn't have been so much trouble….
"Shouldn't you be asleep?"
The girl stared at him with a fervor to match his, "No. I'm watching the movie."
"Well, I think she is," one space had cleared up a little, the last, thus far silent occupant of the furniture extended her legs a little in the now freer seating arrangement, "So can't you watch it tomorrow?"
"Then why can't she sleep in your room? Not like you use it, and the couch is for everybody, y'know."
Not one to argue with bratty little sisters at the odd hours of the morning, Ryan circumvented the couch and lifted the unresponsive girl and navy-blue blanket around her into his arms. With a sigh and a annoyed scowl at the remaining girl, he made his way across the apartment to the little place that was his.
"You didn't have to do that; I was fine," an educated accent, but hoarse voice. He looked down to dark eyes staring at him from his bundle of runaway and blanket.
"Yeah," he set her down gently, and she roused enough to stare at him properly, "But it would have pissed me off, honestly."
"Full moon pisses everyone off," she coughing slightly, but it was an unsuccessful in clearing her throat.
Ryan turned his head to look at the calendar on the wall, marked casually with such events.
"Not full moon yet," he grinned, but the girl only shrugged.
"Then I don't know what it is."
"I think it's that some people are naturally as annoying as hell."
And that, much to Ryan's delight, provoked a small smile.