He smiled wryly.
“So you are suggesting you’d volunteer to give me an orgasm?”
“Are you flirting with me, Professor O’Brien?”
“How would you interpret it?” His manner did not suggest he was flirting. In fact, he was very matter-of-fact about it.
“You tell me.” She refused to be drawn into his psychoanalysis.
“I think you will do it to me, one way or another. So why don’t you just set the date, bring out the bottle of champagne and get on with it?” His tone had turned belligerent.
She thought for a while before saying, “Thank you for agreeing to do this. We will get back to you on the date.”
“You are welcome.”
She got up to leave hurriedly before he could psychoanalyze her obvious attraction to him.
*
Rust was back in the glass chamber.
He was seated and he was naked. His penis was covered with six electrodes, all which were connected by wires to an Electrostim machine. The scenario was set as before. Tranquilizer guns trained on him. Scientists observing him from the safety of another fortified glass wall.
A lump clogged her throat.
He was so beautiful. And so tragic.
But she must push aside her empathy for him. She had a job to do.
She said, “Rust, we are going to stimulate you. We are going to gradually increase the intensity.”
He did not reply.
She told the enforcer, “Do it.”
“Okaayyyy,” Stan said, and pushed a dial.
Rust visibly jerked his body as a very mild and very pleasurable electrical current was channeled to his penis. His cock immediately became tumescent.
“Erection observed,” Stan said.
“I don’t think he will transform,” Alyssa remarked. “He can’t . . . surely . . . because he has a human girlfriend. I don’t think he will transform during the sex act.”
“You don’t know what they do in bed. Wanna bring the girl in for questioning?”
Alyssa pondered this. Kate Penney was another issue. There was many a time Alyssa wanted to haul her in for questioning already. The girl had probably seen other shifters – a fact Alyssa suspected without a doubt, and was now trying to tease it out of Rust – and interacted with them. In fact, Alyssa suspected the entire Mitchell family of being shifters.
Nevertheless, the powers that be did not want to stir up the investigation yet. ‘Yet’ was the definitive word. Kate Penney was not related by blood to Rust and the Director did not want to create further media and public speculation on what they were doing by hauling civilians up.
But it would happen. And happen soon.
Alyssa said, “We will. Soon. But meanwhile – ”
Rust exploded.
Not in the literal sense of the word, but in his metamorphosis.
He became the tiger again. But this time, he was immobile. At least, as immobile as a tiger in a glass cage could be. He did not hurl himself at the glass wall and he did not pace. He merely stood there and glowered at her.
“Holy shit,” Stan said. “Shall we chalk it down as another stimulus to his change?”
“No,” she said. “I think he’s playing us. I think he willfully shifted.”
Stan could only stare at the tiger helplessly.
Alyssa said, “This is his way of giving us the middle finger. I think it’s time we called in his girlfriend.”
8
Kate gazed at the attractive woman across the table in the interrogation room.
“Am I a prisoner?” Kate said calmly.
She knew she was protected by her Miranda rights.
“No. You are here as a witness.” Alyssa Foley was blonde. Ethereal-looking. Very pale, like a ghost. “We have some questions to ask you.”
“Can I see Rust?”
“Perhaps. If you cooperate with us.”
“I need to know if Rust is OK. Are you torturing him?”
“Why do you use the word ‘torture’?”
“It’s what you guys do to tear the truth out of people.”
“Not everything is as it appears on TV.”
“Some things are worse, I believe. Anyway, I would like my lawyer to be present.”
“It is your right, of course. However, we are not arresting you . . . nor are you a suspect in any crime.”
“You haven’t answered my question. Are you torturing Rust?”
“He is collaborating well with us.”
“That is not an answer.”
“He has consented to everything he has participated in.”
What about his parents?” Kate liked both Connor and Moira, even though she hadn’t known them that long. “Did you make them consent too?”
“His parents are given the same conditions.”
“Meaning that they are being tortured too?”