Autumn's Blood: The Spirit Shifters, Book One (5 page)

The two men weren’t the
only people waiting for her. Farther back, she saw the broad
expanse of Blake Wolfcollar. His eyes rested on her face, his gaze
clear and direct.
His brown eyes were so
dark and deep she felt like she was diving into twin cups of molten
hot chocolate.

Her stomach did a little
flip.

Behind them stretched a huge glass and
chrome laboratory. Several rooms were cornered off. Near the back,
she caught sight of a couple of people in white coats flitting from
room to room like moths trapped in a lampshade.

Dumas smiled his cool smile and
stepped back. “Welcome to your new lab.”

She stepped out, her eyes wide. She’d
expected a busy, hectic laboratory, but this place was close to
deserted. “Shouldn’t I have a team working with me?”

“No, Doctor, it’s just
you.”

Strange, but what could she
say?

He turned to the men flanking him.
“You’ve met Blake Wolfcollar, of course.” His attention moved to
the other man. “This is Peter Haverly. He’s the head of our
research department.”

She smiled and stepped forward,
offering her hand. Peter Haverly took it, his grip dry and firm.
“Good to meet you,” she said.

He smiled back, his expression warm,
unlike Dumas’. “You too.”

Dumas began to stride across the lab.
“Please, come with me. I have something I need to show
you.”

He took her over to a
bench lined with several stools. Large silver filing cabinets
containing slide samples propped up one wall. Across another wall
were a chemical extraction chamber, several centrifuges, and
bottles of chemicals. On the bench stood high-tech electron
microscopes, the most powerful she’d ever seen, together
with
electron, scanning tunneling, and
atomic force microscopes used to view individual DNA
molecules.

The head of research handed her a
white lab coat.

Autumn waved it away. “Oh, that’s
fine. I brought my own, but thank you.”

Haverly shook his head. “You need to
wear this one. I’m afraid I insist. We wouldn’t want any outside
material tainting what work has already been done.”

She took the coat, and he handed her a
pair of micro-thin gloves and a pair of Perspex goggles. She
glanced over to check the location of Blake.

The big security man hung in the
background, his expression unreadable, his arms folded across his
chest, making his big biceps appear even larger. She didn’t want to
feel like a total nerd in her work clothes, but she couldn’t do
anything about that, so she slipped on the coat, gloves, and
goggles.

Dumas nodded at one of the stools.
“Please, sit. I want to show you what you’re going to be working
with.”

She took a seat and Dumas
sat next to her. Haverly stood behind them, flanking their
shoulders. Dumas pulled one of the big microscopes toward him. From
one of the filing cabinets, he took out a tray of glass slides,
each slide about two inches in length by an inch in width. He
selected one and slid the sample beneath the lens of the
microscope.
In front of them, a large
monitor displayed the image of the genetic fragment.

Autumn peered at the screen, a frown
furrowing her forehead. “Is this what I’m supposed to be working
on?”

Dumas studied her face. “That’s
right.”

“These genes are clearly human. You
must realize I would recognize that immediately.”

He lifted a finger to stop her. “Just
wait. First you must learn about what we need them to
become.”

Dumas removed the first slide and
replaced it with another. “As you can see, the mutation starts
small, an amino acid base pair substitution at position five of the
polypeptide chain. The adenine-thymine pair for
guanine-cytosine.”

Autumn nodded her understanding. She
hadn’t come across this particular mutation before, but she’d
guessed that considering her involvement and the total secrecy
surrounding the project, this would be something new.

“Of course,” the General continued,
“your predecessors have already figured out how to create this
mutation, simply by using an expression vector to substitute one
base pair for another.”

Again, Autumn nodded. What he was
explaining was simple genetic engineering.

Haverly interrupted. “However, it’s
the recombinant protein that is causing us problems.”

She was almost surprised to hear his
voice. She couldn’t help but wonder, considering he was the head of
R&D, why Dumas was the one talking her through all of this. She
got the impression this project was very much the older man’s
baby.

“
That’s right,” Dumas
said, regaining her attention.

Autumn frowned. “The recombinant DNA
isn’t producing the correct protein?”

“Yes, it is, but the protein isn’t
going on to have the same effect that we’ve seen in the genes of
our live subjects.”

“Which is?”

Dumas pushed the microscope out of the
way and reached across to the computer’s keyboard. “This is what
happens to the human chromosomes once the mutant protein is
released into the living subject’s body.”

On screen, she recognized the familiar
shapes of human chromosomes. Before her eyes, they began to divide,
the normal number of forty-six pairs splitting and dividing. Autumn
blinked and, almost comically, rubbed her eyes beneath her goggles.
Surely she wasn’t seeing what she thought? On the computer monitor,
strands of DNA replicated, creating whole new
chromosomes.

She counted them. “Seventy-eight,” she
said. “So the same number as ...,” she racked her brains, “a
dog.”

Dumas nodded. “Or in this case, the
same number as a wolf.”

Was it her imagination or had Blake
stiffened at the mention of his namesake?

She suddenly felt as though she’d been
plunged into a science fiction movie. “This isn’t anything I’ve
seen before.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you
to.”

“But this is impossible. How have you
done this?”

“We haven’t done anything, Doctor.
These samples were taken from a specimen. The specimen has the
ability to change from one thing to another, and we were able to
take samples of its DNA as it did so. Those slides you’ve just seen
are the chromosomes multiplying by themselves. As I said, we’ve
already managed to create the protein we believe responsible for
the multiplication, but it’s not having the effect we need. That’s
where you step in.”

She knew her mouth gaped,
but seemed unable to pull herself into a more professional stance.
“A specimen? A
live
specimen?”

Dumas nodded.

“Can I see it?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s
classified.”

Autumn took a breath and sat back as
much as the stool would allow her to. They were asking her to
manipulate the human genome to effectively become a new species.
“You understand this goes against ethical law?”

Dumas’ cool blue gaze hardened. “We’re
outside of the law, Doctor. Did you really think the government
wouldn’t be working on this sort of thing behind the
scenes?”

She turned to take in the rest of the
lab and the amount of work that had already been done here. Whoever
worked on this previously had known what they were doing. They’d
already managed to isolate and manipulate the coding gene, which
had greatly reduced the amount of work she’d need to do going
forward, though she had no idea how long it would take her to
figure this particular puzzle out. If she’d be able to figure it
out at all.

She hesitated before speaking. “So who
worked on this project before?”

He turned to her. “I’m
sorry?”

“Who worked on this before me? They’ve
done an awful lot of work. I’m amazed someone would get this far
into a project only to abandon it.”

He scowled. “Some people don’t respect
our need for confidentiality.”

“I assume I’d know them. Anyone who
could get this far must be someone respected in our
field.”

“I believe I just
mentioned the word
confidentiality
. I think the same
thing applies here.”

Heat crept into her cheeks. She felt
like a school kid who’d been reprimanded by her head teacher. She
didn’t appreciate being made to feel like that.

Autumn pulled herself up to her full
height and pushed back her shoulders, lifting her chin. “And I
appreciate your need for secrecy, but if something happened to
cause my predecessor to walk out during the middle of their work, I
think I’m well within my rights to ask a few questions.”

She sensed the other men’s eyes upon
her and forced herself not to waver. She’d learned long ago that if
she let people think of her as some young, blonde, push-around,
then that was exactly how they’d treat her. She needed to have more
balls than the average guy and not be afraid to show them off. She
held Dumas’ gaze, wondering if he’d give in and tell
her.

Instead, he broke his stare from hers
and got to his feet. “Just do your job, Doctor. If I decide to tell
you more at a later date, that will be my decision, not
yours.”

The other two men took after him,
Peter Haverly shooting her a small smile of sympathy. Blake also
glanced back, but not with sympathy. Instead, he seemed to be
studying her, as though he’d not quite made up his mind about her.
They followed Dumas as he made his way to the elevator, leaving her
alone once more.

The elevator doors closed and her
whole body sagged in relief. That had been way more tension than
she needed on a first day. She’d not even had any time to get her
head around the job they expected her to do. Yes, she’d done plenty
of biomolecular engineering, using viruses as vectors in order to
implant new DNA into host cells and forcing the cells to accept the
DNA as their own, but what was happening here was completely
different. If the slide Dumas had shown her were accurate, the
chromosomes were replicating in such a way as to create a different
species from the one they originally started with. She’d never
heard of anything doing something like that before.

Movement in the corner of the room
caught her eye and her gaze shifted toward it. A camera swiveled to
take her in. She sighed. Of course she would be watched. She didn’t
know why she’d thought they’d leave her alone with highly
classified material. They’d film her every movement.

Before anything else, she needed to
figure out exactly what she was working with.

Autumn settled into her seat at the
microscope and got to work.

Chapter
Five

BLAKE STOOD IN the elevator, remaining
silent in the background. He hoped this new scientist wouldn’t be
able to achieve what Dumas wanted. Her doing so could mean the end
of his kind living in any sort of secrecy. She seemed smart, a
sharp light behind her aqua blue eyes that made him wonder if
perhaps she might succeed where so many others had failed. And he’d
enjoyed watching her try to take on Dumas, though he’d known she’d
never win.

Dumas pressed his finger against the
sensor pad to take them down to the bottom level. A red beam
scanned his print. Something beeped and they began to
move.

Only a couple of Dumas’ team were
entrusted with the ability to make the elevators descend to this
level. Blake was one of them.

The three shifters were still kept
captive, the woman now back to human form, her arms and legs
already almost healed. Blake had managed to convince Dumas to allow
one of the medical team in to strap the limbs, allowing them to
heal correctly.

Still, he hated that he’d not yet come
up with any kind of plan to set them free without blowing his
cover. Now that his cousin and some of the others from the
reservation had suspicions that the shifters vanishing had to do
with the government, he didn’t know how much longer he would be
able to stay undercover.

Perhaps I should involve
Chogan? Maybe he’s the one who can help free the other
shifters?

But if he did, he would still risk
blowing his cover, and his cousin and the rest of the reservation
would learn how deeply involved he was in this whole thing. Would
his people understand his reasons for being here or would they call
him a traitor?

Blake wondered where his cousin was
now. Despite Chogan following him through the forest, Blake had
managed to lose him as soon as they’d hit the city. Chicago was his
territory, a place unfamiliar to his cousin. Would Chogan still be
hanging around, or would he have made his way back to the
reservation?

Blake’s concern for the opinions of
the people he’d left behind almost ten years prior wasn’t his only
worry. If Dumas and his team caught Chogan trying to free the
shifters, they would quickly make the connection to back him. His
cousin would never be able to get inside the building without his
help. How would he even get Chogan into the facility? Security was
tight. To get Chogan into the building and rescue the shifters,
Blake knew there was a chance people would die.