RUST: (suddenly silent) Are you threatening me?
ALYSSA: I’m being solicitous of their wellbeing. Your mother, in particular, is fragile. Her bones are a little more brittle. I don’t want any of my colleagues to . . . manhandle her in an attempt to make her transform. Your father, according to his medical records, has a heart condition.
If you collaborate with us, then we mightn’t have to put them through a rigorous process of experimentation. As much as the FBI doesn’t wish them to, accidents do happen.
RUST: (stares at her) You are threatening me. And them.
ALYSSA: (taking in his piercing green-eyed stare) I want to be your friend. The rest is up to you.
2
Rust was in a deepened enclosure. Around him were several guards, all with tranquilizer darts, ready to put him down at a moment’s notice.
Alyssa watched him from behind a fortified two-way mirror. He could not see her, but he faced her anyway. Resolutely. His eyes meeting hers – which had to be a fluke, she convinced herself, because he really had no clue where she was standing.
“Please go ahead,” she said. “We’re ready when you are.”
He began to take his clothes off.
They had given him some normal street clothes, so he wouldn’t feel like a prisoner. He looked damned fine in them. Her breath caught as she watched him unbutton his shirt. He did it nonchalantly, as though it were of no consequence to him. When he finished, he shrugged it off, with the overhead panel lights gleaming on his magnificent body.
Next, he took off his shoes and socks. And then he unbuckled his belt. What a sight he must be to his girlfriend, she thought. He did have a girlfriend, didn’t he? A human one. Some college student he was involved in a scandal with.
Kate Penney.
She would have to pay a visit to Kate Penney soon.
Rust stripped off his boxers. His cock and balls sprang out. He wasn’t tumescent, of course, especially when he was watched over by four men with tranquilizer guns.
Was he sexy?
She found him sexy as hell, against her own conscience.
Alyssa’s dalliances with men were mostly with coworkers. The nights could get lonely in Pakistani bases. She didn’t love the men, and they sure didn’t love her. It was purely sex, the way she liked it.
She wondered how Kate Penney and Rust O’Brien felt about each other. Was it pure sex or were there emotions involved? Could a godlike being such as Rust O’Brien actually have feelings for a mere human being?
Her heart skipped several beats as he began his metamorphosis. She had seen the video that went viral all over the world, courtesy of the reporter, of course. But it was nothing like watching it live.
All his bones remodeled within his flesh, which shifted and compacted as though it were gelatinous. Then he crouched on all fours. Fur sprouted, as did a tail. Orange and black and white fur. His ears became round and his nose lengthened to become a muzzle.
Alyssa breathed. Such things did exist.
She remembered what she asked him.
“So you shift into a tiger?”
“It says so on CNN. So it must be true.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Excruciatingly.” When her eyes went round, he added, deadpan. “I have a high pain threshold.”
“Do you shift into anything else?”
“Do you have two uteruses?”
“Do you shift into any other animal besides a tiger?”
“No. I’m a specialist.”
So he was antsy and snarky and passively aggressive in his ‘collaboration’ with them. She could live with that. Besides, his snark was sexy.
The tiger growled menacingly at the tranquilizer snipers but did not move towards any of them. He just stood there – a large, magnificent beast – and turned his vivid green gaze on her. She was certain he could sense her behind the mirror. So far, she had not indicated her presence.
The tiger waited. He seemed to say:
“You’ve come, you’ve seen, now what more do you want?”
She could not take her eyes off him.
She reached for the microphone.
“I suppose you can hear me.”
Silence. Of course. Did she expect a talking tiger?
“If you understand me, please raise a paw.”
She hoped she didn’t sound condescending.
The tiger did nothing. He just went on staring at her. In a manner that seemed almost mocking.
“Do you understand me?”
Nothing.
She wondered if he had truly shifted into something bestial, unable to understand human language.
Then he shifted back. Effortlessly. Naturally. Back into his impressive and very naked human physique.
He glowered at her.
“Did you understand what I was saying when you were in your animal state?” she asked.
“No. I was mutely disassociated, like the dumb animal I was.”