“I wouldn’t be about to beat my kidneys into paste if it weren’t serious.” Rogue paused as though he was considering whether or not to say anything. Finally, he relented. “It’s the boys. Slate, who didn’t change his name to sound more normal, because apparently Slate is in the top hundred names for Millennial boys. And don’t ask me what Millennial means. But Arrow, he goes by...” Rogue looked off in the distance, obviously searching his memory.
“You forgot your own cub’s name?” Draven cracked a small grin.
“He’s not mine, remember,” Rogue corrected. “But no, it isn’t that. I just can’t remember... these human names, they’re all the damn same.”
“How many bears,” Draven began, “do you think are named ‘Arrow’? Or, say, ‘Rogue?’”
“Fair enough.” Rogue flipped ran a huge finger back and forth across the phone’s screen. “Grant,” he announced, shaking his head. “Anyway, they’ve gone off somewhere, and Jill’s worried.”
“They’re older, aren’t they?”
“Both in their twenties,” Rogue said. “Still young and stupid though. Young and very stupid, if you ask King.”
“Aren’t we all, though?”
“I’d love to drink a toast to that one, old man,” Rogue said with a smile and a clap of his hand on Draven’s shoulder. “But I gotta run. You hear anything else, you see anything, you—”
“One more thing,” Draven said, cutting him off. “There’s news.”
“News?” Rogue quirked an eyebrow. “About the other bears? The rest of the captured clan?”
Draven nodded, very slowly. He decided to have another smoke after all. “No details, but my sources tell me that someone – or rather, someones – escaped from the GlasCorp headquarters in Pennsylvania. Like I said, no details, but—”
“Who the hell else would escape? Was it just bears?”
Draven shook his head. “If I’m listening right, it sounds like there were two bears and one human. A woman who apparently helped them escape.”
“I thought you said there were no details,” Rogue said, smirking slightly. “Sounds like a pretty detailed bunch of vague information to me.”
“Yeah, well,” Draven took a long, patient drag on his smoke before blowing out a plume of smoke and extinguishing the half-smoked cigarette on his boot. He put the butt dutifully into the baggie in his pocket. Noticing Rogue looking at him funny, he felt compelled to expand.
“I... have a girlfriend. She doesn’t like the litter. And aside from that she keeps telling me that as careful as I am of not getting caught, leaving a bunch of DNA-covered cigarette butts everywhere isn’t the best idea.”
Rogue gave him a knowing grin and a nod. “What about the escape? Nothing else?”
Draven shook his head, grimly staring off into space. “Nothing. Don’t even really know if it’s true or a false report. Wouldn’t be the first. But this one’s different.”
“How?”
“Well, for one thing, GlasCorp shut down the HQ for the first time in... well, ever. Down to a skeleton crew. This part at least, I checked out. It’s absolutely true.”
“Checked how?”
“You ever heard of the internet?” Draven smiled as he pinched his Velcro pockets closed. “Turns out, you can find a whole lot of stuff there. But no, to not be an asshole for a second, it all checks out. Three people escaped, one corpse left behind, and one security guard knocked unconscious but not really hurt.”
“What killed the dead guy?”
“Well, he was a scientist. A guy named Jim Eckert. It’s a name you probably wouldn’t recognize, but it’s familiar to me. Very familiar. He led one of the experimentation teams that...”
“Elsa?” Rogue asked, the name of his former mate, who had died at the hands of these so-called scientists, these barbaric monsters.
Draven’s mouth hardened into a taut line. He nodded. “Tooth marks,” he said somberly. “Very big tooth marks. Tore out his throat and half of his shoulder.”
Rogue nodded along. “Good,” he said. “Sounds like he got what he deserved. You’ll let me know if anything else comes up?”
“You’ll be the first to know. Give my best to everyone.”
Without another word, Draven stepped up onto the overpass, and simply dropped straight off of it. When Rogue rushed to the rail and looked over, the old man was just gone.
“You old son of a bitch,” Rogue swore, with a smile. “Well. See you around, I guess.”