Rippled (4 page)

He bobbed his head. “Yes, but only after things started. I need to know what you can remember, anything at all, after you arrived.”

“I-I don’t know. There are these pictures, but a lot of them I don’t understand. You…I know you, or some part of you anyway.” I smiled nervously. “The snow outside. A bus and some man approaching me.” I set my hands in my lap. “I’m sorry, it sounds stupid.”

“No, no, it doesn’t. This man, do you know what he looks like?”

I closed my eyes and focused on the little I could remember. “Grey…no, white hair. A lab coat, maybe? It’s really just a bunch of blanks.”

Brian growled under his breath. “The man you mentioned is Malcom.”

“And I’m guessing he’s someone we aren’t supposed to like?”

“No.”

I pulled my legs back onto the bed when the fur along Brian’s back bristled. “He did this to you?”

Brian lowered his ears. “He did this to all of us.”

The pit of my stomach twisted, and I swallowed past the nausea in the back of my throat. “How?”

“It’s an injection—a virus.”

“And he just goes around pricking whoever he wants?” The throbbing in my head caused me to close my eyes.

“Only if they give him their consent.”

“You don’t honestly think I’d agree to something like—”

“I don’t think any of us did. I’m not sure what Malcom may have told you to get you here, but I plan to get us out. All of us.”

“How? If you’ve been here for over a year, why haven’t you done it yet?”

“I had no reason to fight back.”

I tried not to read between the lines. “But you do now?”

“Let’s just say I’m beginning to see the end of this tunnel and it doesn’t involve any kind of light.” Brian turned away from me and made his way over to the door.

“You’re leaving?” I stood from the bed and went to join him.

“Stay here,” he said, hitting a button beside the door with his paw. “Open the door. It’s Brian.” The door clicked and swung open. “I’ll be back just as soon as I’ve had a long talk with Malcom.”

And with that, Brian, the snow leopard I’d shared my air with, was gone.

Stay here until he gets back?
Not like I had a choice.
What mess did you get yourself into this time?

Chapter Four

Brian

After a quick stop at my personal quarters to get a change of clothes, I made my way over to the mess hall. Many of the other shifters were escorted there with a handful of guards, and I filed in behind them. I meant to talk to Malcom, and I would, but not before I had a chance to clear my head.

You’re letting her get the best of you.

It was hard not to. Perhaps she was just the wakeup call I’d needed. One year in this hellhole was long enough.

And from what I’d heard from Darien and the other guards, they were just as unhappy as the rest of us. Malcom had to be stopped.

Not just Malcom.
He might not have been at the head of all of this, but he was as good a place to start as any.
Take away the head and the rest of the body will shrivel up and die.

Aside from myself and Malcom, no one else knew what all went into the formula for the virus. It was the one thing we agreed upon. Call it job security if you will, but by not telling the higher-ups what all went into the base formula, we covered our asses and kept Ripples—our virus—from spreading more than it had to.
Not that it’s helped.
Damn Malcom and his need to solve all the world’s problems.

Hooking onto the back of the lunch line, I did my best to filter out all the drama that had anything to do with shifting. The peace didn’t last long. Licking my lips, I listened to voices as they erupted in front of me, and as they did, those between me and the disrupter backed away. And that was when I saw it. Ripples.

He’s shifting.

Fuck, I really hated it when that happened.

One more change of clothes…ruined, just because someone couldn’t keep their mouth shut
.

I was beginning to run out of options. Shifting out in the yard was fine, but this was definitely not something I needed. Not on top of Krista’s episode and certainly not with the way Malcom had reacted. Taking a deep breath, I crouched to the ground. Fur rippled over my biceps as I closed my eyes, and in a matter of seconds I was in front of the other leopard, baring my teeth as my tail lashed behind me.

The leopard lunged at one of the workers behind the hot plates. I caught his scruff in my mouth, throwing him to the ground.

“What’s your problem?” he snarled, fur bristling across his spine.

“Outside. Now!” I glared at him, but he didn’t move.

“Three days, Brian. Three fucking days of this shit! The others are getting restless.”

I glanced at the line behind us. “Looks to me like you’re the only one who seems to be having this problem.”

“Oh, so I guess you’re okay with eating burgers for the third day in a row?”

I lowered my ears. Even I was beginning to tire of the same meals. “I’ll talk to Malcom. Maybe there’s a shortage or something.” I went to turn away.

“Yeah, there’s definitely a shortage of something, and it isn’t the food.” He paused, and I did my best to ignore the bitterness in his voice. “Get us some
real
food, Brian. Not this throw-it-in-a-microwave-and-be-done-with-it crap.”

I stood my ground and watched as the other leopard padded away, out of the mess hall and likely to his personal quarters to get a new change of clothes. And while he might have been the first to complain about the hockey pucks we’d been having for lunch, I didn’t doubt he was the only one who felt that way. And as soon as one person complained, it was only a matter of time before one became two, four or twelve.

Well, so much for being hungry.

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about already. I sighed, and with a little less energy than before, I headed for the exit. I perked my ears, listening for others’ reactions to the sudden outburst over the quality of food. What I heard was much worse.

“And to think, Malcom wants to bring in more of us when there isn’t even enough food to go around,” a voice to my right said.

I turned my gaze just in time to see another nodding, adding his own thoughts to the mix.

“…he said to expect new bloods by the end of the week.”

Those words alone were enough to knock the air from my chest. I’d have loved to say Malcom wouldn’t bring in new subjects to test after Krista’s reaction, but in all honesty, even that wasn’t below him.

“What did you say?” I growled, looking at the table the voice had come from. “Who means to bring in new bloods?”

“Who else?” the first shifter asked.

“Who did you hear this from?”

“Overheard it from Malcom when he didn’t know I was listening, but you won’t find him at—”

I didn’t wait for him to finish. If I knew Malcom, he’d be in the lab counting down the hours to the next ‘shipment’ while obsessing over numbers and whatever notes he’d written down during Krista’s shift.

I sure hope he’s in a listening mood, because I’m not.

* * * *

After getting yet another change of clothes, I headed for Malcom’s lab. And just as I’d expected, he was going over figures while glancing at slides under the microscope. I didn’t have to ask who the slides had come from.

“Please tell me what I just heard is a rumour,” I breathed, closing the door behind me to keep our conversation between the two of us.

“Hello, Brian,” Malcom said in that famous sarcastic tone of his. He kept his eyes fixed on the slide while playing with the dial with his fingers. “Rumours?”

I pressed the palms of my hands against the counter that spanned one side of the room. “Don’t act like you don’t fucking know!”

“Language, Brian, language. There are children nearby.”

Children meaning the nurses and his
devoted
staff. Damn underlings. I had to remind myself this was a job to them and that they probably knew even less about the virus than we did.

“Are you bringing in new blood after what you did to Krista?” I asked, my voice a little lower than before.

“I didn’t do a damned thing!” Now he did look away from the microscope, his eyes darkening.

“You must’ve. Hit one of the dials too far. Used too much of the virus. Something!” I bit back a growl. This wasn’t like me. Any time we had a disagreement we talked it out. Calmly.
Not like a spoilt little brat.
“Sorry.”

“That’s just it. I’ve checked everything, and we did it all right. There’s no reason she should’ve reacted that way.” He rubbed his forehead. “Not from the drugs.”

“What are you implying?”

“Her reaction was caused by her genes, not the virus. I’ve gone over the numbers time and time again, and it’s the only thing that makes sense. Nothing else fits.”

“So, this could still happen to someone else?”

I took a breath and crossed my arms over my chest. It was my way of keeping myself calm. More importantly, it was to ensure I didn’t damage anything…including my hand or Malcom’s face.

“Not likely,” Malcom said, eyeing my posture. “This particular gene is recessive and extremely rare.”

“But why take the risk?”

“Because…I need to explain it.” He sat back in a chair, gesturing to the microscope. “I need to understand it!”

“You mean you need to solve it.”

“If you’ve got this all figured out, by all means, go ahead.”

I rolled my shoulders back and looked through the lens. And as I listened to Malcom shift his weight behind me, I adjusted the dial. I zoomed in. Zoomed out. The image was exactly the same. What happened to Krista wasn’t a fluke or some kind of accident.

It’s a mutation.
The virus was somehow evolving based on its host.

“We can’t let this get out,” I said in a thin whisper. “It isn’t just her genes, Malcom. The virus is changing.”

“What?” He stood and pushed me out of the way. “Where?”

“Look at the shape of the cells. There’s a small nick in the side of each one, almost as if they were given a small cut. It’s mutated. Changing.”

“Into what?” He glanced up at me, and the puzzled look on his face was victory enough. “Why her?” He hadn’t asked it, but I knew he was thinking the same thing I was—
why now
?

The virus had been stable—reliable for over a year.

“It has to be because of the host. Nothing else has changed, right?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“Temperature? Lighting? The way it’s stored? A different mixture?”

Malcom shook his head after every suggestion I made.

“You can’t bring in new blood, not until we—”

“We? There is no we, Brian. It’s just me in here. It’s always been just me. You had a chance to be a part of this, and you walked away. Or don’t you remember that?”

“You mean before or after you turned me into your fucking mascot? Why are you so dead set on making this work anyway, huh?” I fisted my hands as the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end. “What do you hope to get out of this?” We both knew he was financially set for life, but then again, I knew the answer well before I’d asked.

“Is that you, your obsession with this new blood or the leopard giving me the fierce gaze?”

“Does it matter? Why is this so fucking important?” I snapped my mouth shut when I realised I was yelling.

Malcom gave me an assertive look. “Because all the others are fine. One upset and that was it. But Krista…it’s almost as if, anytime she isn’t drugged, we can expect her reactions to flare up.”

“How do you know this? She’s only shifted once.”

“Like I said, I’ve looked over the numbers. As soon as her heart rate changed, the shift took on a mind of its own. It wasn’t controlled the way you or the others shift.”

I took a breath to clear my mind, but it only helped a little. “And what the hell is wrong with the food? Three days of burgers? You know the shifters can’t handle that—especially those of us who have been here for more than a month. Not only that, but you were the one who came up with the protein diet for us—steaks mostly—and now what? You felt like shaking it up? You can’t change someone’s diet like that. Having burgers all the time is crap compared to the meals you used to give. You know that!”

“They cut our funding.”

“Who did?”

“The DOD.”

“What the hell for? By how much?”

“We aren’t
meeting
their standards. So we have to cut back on a few things.”

“Like what? What’s worse than having twenty-some rabid leopards running around the grounds? Hell, you can’t even fit any more of us within the facilities unless you start doubling up. And while I have no problem bunking with Krista, I don’t think the others will feel the same way. We need our space, or we need a place to run—to exert all our energy. Not only that, but the food—Malcom, seriously. It isn’t even good for normal human consumption. Eating burgers every day is almost as bad as eating chicken nuggets three meals a day for a week. A month. Can’t you cut something else?”

“If your
kind
were the only ones here, then yes.”

“
My
kind? You’re the reason we’re even in this mess!”

“Have you forgotten there’s at least one guard to every resident, ten nurses, myself along with the rest of the staff living here? Feeding over seventy-five people
is
the highest expense we have, Brian.”

“But it isn’t the first thing you should cut. What about your tests? What about the tranquilisers you keep ordering but will never use? Or the electric locks on the doors and the natural lights? If you’d just let them outside for more than a few minutes a day, we wouldn’t need natural lighting inside every room.”

I held my breath, slowly counting down from ten. And in those ten seconds, Malcom didn’t speak. He didn’t flinch.

“For Christ’s sake, Malcom. What the hell’s gotten into you?”

“You can’t possibly understand the pressures of—”