White Steel Serenity

Chapter Two: Sly Fox

NOW - COOPER

He prowls around the outside of the building, moving between shadows as though he is one himself. His ears swivel constantly, on the alert for humans near him. Beneath his paws he can feel his alpha wolf, Tory. From her comes a sense of overwhelming life. She is no longer the bound, tamed animal she has been these last cycles of the moon. Cooper wants to howl to her, but he knows the benefit of silence.

Since his escape, Cooper has learned a lot.

These days anyone walking around outside is in danger. Cooper is like a ghost as he stalks, and he kills quickly, silently, slinking away afterward. It feels wrong to leave prey just laying out, without eating any, but he can't risk being caught.

He doesn't have a den, because they search for him almost every night. They're not smart though, not hunters like he is. They can't hear his heartbeat, they can't smell his trail, and the dogs they bring in to track him whimper and shy away in fear when they catch his scent.

He smells like a mad dog. A wolf driven out of the pack for sickness. He knows - he's gathered this around himself as just another shadow to lurk in.

And now the pack leader is free, and furious, and alive. She is escaping. His patient wait is over.

She will rise to meet him, and he will descend into the enemy den to help her.

FIVE MONTHS AGO - THE PACK

They are let out into the common area again, through opened doors and closed halls. They embrace in the center again, this time shivering with the sudden relief. Then Tory bows her head and says, "I gave in."

She looks up at them then, her eyes such a bright gold that they seem to make their own light. In their minds, she says, the wolves dig holes around the watering hole and lay in wait. The prey forgets they are there and comes to drink. The wolves leap out, and bring down the strong bull. The wolves are ever-patient. Wait. Wait. Wait. Sleep.

They nod their understanding.

"How sweet," Agent Smith says, clapping his hands together. He has emerged from seemingly nowhere - there must be a hidden door, Shelton thinks. "Let's get down to business."

"What do you want?" Tory growls at him. She steps back into her pack and they draw close around her, still reveling in contact.

"First we will run some tests, to determine each of your abilities. We will of course need more blood samples from each of you. Then, when we have a handle on your skills, we'll begin teaching you to use them in a manner beneficial to all of us. I hope that by that point you will no longer have to be coerced into doing the right thing."

"If this is the right thing," Hi mutters to them, "I want to be very, very wrong."

Even Ben cracks a small smile at that, but Smith doesn't look amused. "We have already figured out that you are stronger together, both in the physical and mental sense. Your head physician will be Doctor Smith, here," he motions to a blank stretch of wall; a door opens from it, and out steps a woman with a clipboard. Tory recognizes her as the woman who was trapped in her stare.

"You will treat her with utmost respect." Agent Smith says, warningly, looking at Tory.

Tory only smiles blandly at him, and her grin turns sharp and malicious when she turns to the doctor. "So, doc, how's it been?" she sniffs loudly, says, "I can still smell that fear."

Smith doesn't meet her eyes, but scowls at the floor.

"Tory," Smith calls her attention. "You're up first."

Tory looks back at her pack as she goes to follow him. "I'll be fine," she says. Her eyes flash golden as she adds, the wolves wait.

TEST

"Okay," the man says. His name tag, as always, says Smith. He seems like more of an assistant than a doctor. "For this, we'll need you to run as fast as you can for as long as you can. Ready?"

Tory looks doubtfully at the long treadmill. It looks more high-tech and bulky than a commercial one. "Are you sure it can keep up?"

Smith gives her a patronizing look. "You could drive a car on this thing."

Tory shrugs, steps up onto the treadmill. She looks at the complicated interface and turns to Smith, who has a stopwatch. "Set it to thirty."

"Miles per hour?" he says, just to make sure. He seems surprised, and doubtful that she can keep up.

"No, kilometers," Tory snarks. "Yes, miles."

Then he sets it to thirty, says, "Ready?" and presses Start.

There's a lull where the machine works up to thirty, and then it starts whirring. Tory's eyes flare golden as she opens her breathing and her stride. "Faster," she says, like she's just taking a walk in the park. She wants to see her limits, too, now.

She stops him at forty-two, her breathing deep and even, and holds the pace. Half an hour later she feels like she's starving for air and dying of thirst. Her heart beats fast and loud in her ears.

Smith hits the button on the stopwatch at the same time she hits Stop on the board. The machine winds down and Tory stretches as Smith records things on his clipboard.

"After three weeks on short rations, with little to no physical activity, Subject 1 shows little deterioration." he says into a tape recorder.

And then, because it seems like a good idea at the time and also like it's expected, she claps her palms to his ears with all the force she can muster and sweeps his legs out from under him with her foot. He crumples silently, bleeding out of both ears, eyes blank with shock.

Then Tory goes to make her escape.

That soft hiss she has come to hate, like the warning of a snake about to strike, is the last thing she hears.

TEST

"That was a bad idea," Agent Smith says, handing her a bottle filled with green liquid. Tory sniffs it, and is surprised to find Gatorade. "After you'd just tired yourself out, too."

Tory hadn't. She had stopped just short of her limits, faltered just a little bit sooner than she could have. They can't know her true strength.

"Eat, drink. You're going to be on a diet of almost pure protein and other essentials. We want you in top form."

Tory looks at the food he's brought. It's a burger, and next to it a daunting amount of pills. "Supplements." Smith says simply. "And that tech you boxed over the ears is going to be fine. Hard of hearing for the rest of his life, but fine."

"What's next?" Tory asks after she's chugged half the Gatorade and torn a chunk out of the burger.

Agent Smith smiles. "I think you'll like this one."

Tory does.

She faces off against a trained master of martial arts. He's bigger than her, his muscles ripple with every movement and he obviously knows what he's doing.

Tory thinks it'll take more than one of him to beat her.

The match is not long. The man, Instructor Smith, tries first to use his weight against her. Tory, flaring, is easily strong enough to break his grip and lift him off her. In fact the only thing she can't do is land a hit on him; after he realizes that she's stronger than him he goes on the defensive, only sometimes lashing out with fast punches that land half the time and barely hurt. Tory can't land a solid hit on him - he seems to know that if she does his bones will break. He deflects her force with his arms and refuses to stay still.

Finally Tory gives up on all finesse and simply rushes him, hoping to at the very least hit him hard. Instead he brings up a full block with both arms crossed in front of him, and as she jumps impossibly high, striking out with both feet, one of his arms snap. The other one unfolds, lashes out, and hits her forehead dead-center.

Tory suddenly becomes aware that every spot he had hit before is burning in agony and a dark purple already. She is aware of this only for the next second or so, because then she falls into unconsciousness.

TEST

Every time Ben brings the weights down, slowly, controlled, he can feel them adding more. Each time it gets harder to lift them, but he still does it. Until - until he feels it, that limit. He won't be able to, soon. It's getting too hard.

This time Ben strains, presses the bar one inch, two, and lets it fall back. "I can't," he says, panting. He looks over at the technician, who is writing something.

The tech squints at the number of weights on the bar, then uses a finger to count them out. "Okay," he says, smiling blandly. "That was very good. We'll get you something to eat and then there'll be an aptitude test."

Ben frowns. "What?"

The tech almost goes to pat him on the shoulder - Ben thinks he's operating under the delusion that Ben is all brawn and no brain. He evidently thinks better of touching Ben, though, when Ben growls and says he'll break the man's hand and most of his arm. It's mostly talk, but the man just saw him bench-pressing a couple hundred pounds.

"Um - it's to test IQ."

Ben shrugs. "Okay."

TEST

"Blood first," Doctor Smith says, turning around with a needle hooked up to a pump. She smiles at him. "Then we'll take your resting heart rate and other things."

"What are you going to do with all that stuff?" Shelton asks, trying to sound honestly curious. It's easy, because he is, but it's also a lie - he's gathering information.

Doctor Smith smiles blankly at him. "We need to make sure you're as healthy as can be."

Shelton doesn't have to have Tory's nose to smell the lies pouring out of her mouth.

TWO MONTHS AGO

"The lack of progress on the test group is worrying to our superiors and me." Agent Smith says to Doctor Smith, cornering her in her lab.
She looks annoyed. "How much progress do they want? It's been four months. We haven't been able to get this far with genetic engineering in four years. We're already moving at light speed - we can't give them FTL just yet."

Agent Smith glares at her. "What's wrong? Do you need more techs? Better equipment?"

"I need more time, that's what I need. I've just figured out how their DNA was changed to begin with."

"How?"

"There are signs of an old virus in their bloodstream. We cataloged and marked it, but it was put on a backburner until the tech working through everything finally checked it against other known viruses and came up with the canine parvovirus, specifically the exact same strand found in their wolfdog."

Agent Smith frowns at the thought of the dog. It had somehow escaped; they suspected it had help from some sympathetic technician. It was now terrorizing their surface operations and generally making life difficult, and seemed unusually intelligent.

"But their strain has subtle differences, which seem to make it capable of infecting humans. The very purpose of a virus is to hijack the body's natural cells and use it for its own purposes."

"So that's what's happening here?" Agent Smith guesses. "It's an infection they'll eventually fight off, or can be cured?"

Smith shakes her head. "No, not quite. The virus is dead - the only trace left are the antibodies still floating around from it. But while it was alive it changed their DNA, and the infected cells didn't die off like usual. They reproduced, and eventually outnumbered and took over the fully human cells. Within a few days they were changed on a cellular level, and it's still happening as more cells are being replaced. For the next nine years or so, they'll only get stronger."

"So what's the problem? Just infect more people with the virus."

"Okay, A, I have to create it first, because just having antibodies doesn't mean anything. And B, I have done that you nitwit, and this is what happens to the infected." Doctor Smith reaches over and flicks on a computer monitor. The screen is split into four, and on each is a person in a bed. Three of them are writhing, moaning, in obvious pain. Vomit has splattered the bare mattress beneath them and the floors around them. Assistants in hazmat gear dart in and out of the frame with buckets of ice water to keep their fevers down, and more are mopping up the mess. The man on the fourth bed is still, and no one is in his room.

"That one's dead," Doctor Smith says quietly, pointing at the man. "And that one," she moves her finger to the frame above, a young woman, "Was his nurse. He coughed blood on her. She was quarantined within seconds, which is the only reason we haven't accidentally started an epidemic. This is what comes of hasty work.

"From what I've been able to learn, I know that subjects one through four did not have an airborne version of the disease, or one communicated through touch. Possibly not even direct blood contact would have transmitted it; it seems the dog is the only viable carrier. Our virus... my virus, can infect with a touch. This is not an exact science. I can't just get it right once. It's a virus - a living thing. It can't be controlled like you want it.

"It's going to evolve."