It was a biologist’s dream. Instead of waiting weeks to perform an experiment, I could do it myself in a matter of days. All in one centralized location.
I could get used to this.
Off in the distance, I saw a man working under a large clear plastic hood and I grinned, recognizing his thick white hair. It was Dr. Livingston. Amy led me over to him and he turned his head, smiled back, and put down his pipette. He had such a friendly face that always left me feeling comfortable, no matter if we were talking about life or arguing over differences in our hypotheses and that hadn’t changed one bit in the time since I’d last seen him.
“Dr. Dawn Lowe, it’s been a few years,” he started, his eyes glowing with joy.
“It has been, hasn’t it,” I replied. I smiled in return and his grew even wider.
“I’d love to sit down for a coffee to catch up some time, but Amy here is a workhorse and she wants answers, so why don’t you come with me,” he said. “I’ll take it from here,” he told Amy and she nodded in agreement.
“Anything you two need, you just let me know,” she replied. “It was nice to meet you, Dr. Lowe. I’ll look forward to working with you.” With that, she handed me a keycard. It had both my name and face on it. Apparently, they’d been prepared for my arrival long before today. I clipped it onto my lab coat and thanked her politely, even if nothing about this had been my choice.
She didn’t say anything more, turning on her heels and returning to the freight elevator. Once it closed, I sighed.
“Well, it’s been a day,” I started, swinging my gaze to meet Livingston’s soft brown ones.
“I bet it has. Why don’t you and I go into the specimen hold and I can introduce you to the creatures we’re studying. I imagine you have your doubts about the truth of what Amy has told you so far, so let’s get that out of the way first,” he suggested.
Of course, he was right. Even though I’d seen all this circumstantial evidence to suggest that paranormal life existed and was worth protecting in secret, it still didn’t feel quite real or tangible in any way. It felt like a story and the fastest way to make it a reality would be to see it myself.
“How did they find you?” I asked as he led me down the bay of sequencers to the back, where there was a large metal door. He swiped his own keycard and it slid open. The two of us walked inside. We were greeted with another pair of doors. After walking through those, we were met with a third set before we walked down a long hallway. Finally, we passed through a fourth set of doors before the hallway opened up into a much larger room, only instead of scientific equipment, this was lined with large glass cells.
I froze. Inside each one of them was a person.
“These are the shifters you’re going to be studying, Dr. Lowe,” Livingston said.
“Call me Dawn,” I answered.
I looked around and they didn’t appear as dangerous as Amy had led me to believe. In fact, many of them looked far too human.
“Come, let me introduce you to Rebecca. She’s the most docile of the bunch and the only one that I’m comfortable with going into her cell. As long as she isn’t threatened, her ability to keep her instincts at bay is second to none amongst her kind,” he added.
I followed him down the row of individual enclosures. They were all standalone glass cages, situated next to each other with at least three feet in between each one. It was clear that the glass was reinforced, perhaps bulletproof or strong enough to contain a bomb, but I wasn’t certain. As we walked through the cells, I assessed the creatures kept inside and I began to notice a few things that definitely weren’t human. The males were quite a bit larger than normal human men would be. The females were slender and sized similarly to human women, but they appeared strong in their own right. All of their irises were flecked with yellow, perhaps an indication of their human-wolf hybrid status. Some of them met my eyes with open hostility, others with indifference, and only a few looked back at me with curiosity.
The whole thing was quite disconcerting.
The very last cell in the block held a petite woman. Her eyes were brown and unlike the others, only slightly flecked with yellow. Long chocolate brown hair hung in waves down to her waist. She looked at me suspiciously, studying my face as I did hers. Livingston scanned his card outside her cell and the glass door slid open. We walked inside and the door slid closed behind the two of us.
I couldn’t help feeling slightly uneasy at being trapped inside a cell with a beast.
“Rebecca, it’s good to see you again,” he offered, and she smiled, if a bit coldly. She turned her head toward me, and her eyes narrowed slightly as she evaluated my presence more closely. Then she sniffed the air and her eyes opened a bit wider. Her expression grew inquisitive after that. I couldn’t sense any hostility.
“Dr. Livingston,” she greeted, all while keeping her eyes locked on me.
“This is Dr. Dawn Lowe. She’s come to work with me. If you’re willing, I’d love for you to show her what you’re capable of,” he said gently. He didn’t demand anything or make a move in her direction. Instead, he just simply made a suggestion to her as if he was talking to a friend instead of a prisoner deep in a secret government prison.
“I would, but I want to do it with her here with me. Alone,” Rebecca replied, staring right into my eyes. She didn’t shift her gaze to Livingston, not even for a second. Instead, she remained focused entirely on me. I had to repress the shiver of nervous fear that threatened to race down my spine.
“Why is that?” he pressed cautiously.
“Because I think Dawn and I are going to be great friends,” she answered evasively. To her credit, I sensed no aggression. If anything, she was curious or maybe even cautiously friendly. Nothing in her demeanor suggested that she wanted to attack me, but I did feel like she wanted to tell me something and that she didn’t want Livingston to hear what she had to say. I wanted to know what that was.
I just hoped that in this instance, curiosity didn’t kill the cat.
“Dawn?” he asked me, and I turned to look back at him.
“It’s fine. Why don’t you return to your experiments? I’ll talk with Rebecca for a little while and then I’ll come find you so that we can finish our little chat.”
There was an armed guard walking by at that moment with a massive gun that looked a lot like a flamethrower, so even if it did prove dangerous, I had faith that he’d rescue me before Rebecca ripped out my throat. At least, I hoped he would.
“Are you sure? The shift can be quite shocking when you see it for the first time,” he said carefully. His face tightened with concern.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” I smiled. He sighed, nodded, and scanned his card again before exiting the enclosure. Rebecca and I watched as he left the room, the surrounding silence oppressive in its intensity.
When he was out of sight, I sighed and sat down in a wooden chair that was by the card table in the corner. Rebecca sat across from me, the movements of her body graceful and still cautious.
“Now that he’s gone, he won’t be able to hear what we say,” she said softly, sitting back in her chair. She cocked her head to the side, sniffing the air once more.
“Why do you want to talk to me alone?” I asked as nonthreateningly as I could.