Between a Bear and a Hard Place(10)

“What kind of experiments? What sort of subjects?”

She hadn’t questioned anyone this intensely since she taught introductory biology at Princeton three years before as a graduate student. It felt good. Really, really good.

“Drug trials, genetic testing,” he said. He was starting to panic. She could smell his fear, which was, on the one hand, incredibly strange, and on the other hand, incredibly coppery. She always figured fear was more of a urine smell.

“Go on,” she urged. “I know you want out of here. I can feel you trying to pull away, but I’m not letting go until I’m satisfied.”

Damn this feels good. I really could get used to feeling like this all the time.

He tried to cover the fear by sighing and acting impatient. But she could smell the sweat, the coppery tinge of panic. Eckert wasn’t fooling her. “And where’s Sam?”

“That I don’t know,” he said. “I really wish I did, and I really wish you’d let the hell go of my arm!”

“Experiments on what?”

He was shaking his head, imperceptible to human senses, his teeth were beginning to chatter, and the wormy wetness of his wrist was growing damper by the moment. She tightened her grip. “On what, Eckert?”

“What are you, a corporate spy? Who the fuck cares what we’re experimenting on. Furthermore, how do you figure it’s any of your—”

“It’s my business because I’m asking, and you’re trying to get away.” She twisted his arm just a little, just to show she could. “Talk.”

“I... fine, fine I don’t see the harm. Bears.”

Claire quirked her eyebrow. “That’s... not normal. What are you doing with them?”

“Me? As in me personally? Nothing. I’m a corporate scientist you imbecilic child, I do what I’m told!”

He squirmed again, twisting his arm, but she answered with a harder wrench. Eckert squealed a little, which reached her ears like the sweetest music she’d ever heard. All this time answering to this slimy shit heel, and he’s still treating me like this?

“Three years, I’ve run your errands, got your coffee, changed my schedule every single time you decided you wanted to change yours. Every step I take, every time I eat, sleep, drink or breathe has been because that’s when you wanted me to do it. And you still treat me like this?”

Something growled. Something very close, and very furry, growled.

Claire turned her head to the left. Then the right.

She was standing between them.

“Then take it up with HR, you moron! You’re hurting me! I’ll have you arrested! I’ll have you fired!”

“What kind of experiments, Eckert? Be specific.”

Eyes caressed either side of Claire’s face. She felt them before she turned to see that they were, in fact, both looking at her. She had to incline her head slightly – if these were bears, they were the tallest damn bears she’d ever encountered.

And the calmest ones, Claire thought. Of course, I’m standing here between them when any reasonable person would be running.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” he said, although she interrupted him with another wrench of his arm.

“Answer,” she said. The bears growled.

She felt their voices rumble in her chest, felt – as strange as it was – the beating of their hearts. That weird birthmark on her chest began to tingle again, in time with their beating hearts.

“Answer,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Answer me.”

“If I don’t get out of here, and you don’t get out of here, we’ll both be dead as soon as they bother to move,” Eckert said.

He really has no idea. Not a clue in the world. She felt another tingle, this one in her belly, and then lower down, between her legs, she felt a slightly embarrassing stir.

“Talk.”

“They’re...” he unleashed a sigh. “No one will believe you anyway, you’re just a worthless intern. They’re special bears. With... they change.”

He was pausing every time she twisted his wrist. “Change?”

She thought she heard one of her companions laugh.

“What do you mean, change? And there are only two of them?”

“Two?” he stammered. “How did you know? How...?”

“Answer.”

“I, er, no, there are more. Only two in this lab. They change, they,” he was starting to panic more and more as he spoke. That coppery stink began to irritate Claire’s nose. She found that she resented him, not for what he’d done, or for what he’d said, but for his weakness, for his fear. “They change from bears to humans. They have supernatural healing abilities, and their strength is almost immeasurable.”