Rogue filed the thought in the back of his head with a shake. “We’ve got to get going. We also have a lot to talk about, but I think that can wait.”
“He’s Rogue,” King said. “And I’m King. You’re the first of our kind we didn’t raise. We’re the alphas.”
“Leave it to him to be as formal as possible,” Rogue said to Fury, who laughed under his breath. I really did know I liked this guy. “Good to meet you, on and on with the small talk. Let’s get the hell out of here before any more of those things decide to say hello. Oh, that reminds me.”
With a slightly comical spring in his step, Rogue sort of pranced back to one of the fallen troops, and snapped off one of the hands, then collected a mask. As it happened, there wasn’t much under the mask. But, he couldn’t be sure of anything. In a world where werebears applied for mortgages in Santa Barbara, a disappearing soldier wouldn’t be anywhere near the strangest thing to happen.
“We’ll need this to study. Best to know what we’re up against.”
“How will we find our way?” Stone asked, of course very serious. “The forest is so thick, and you have no map.”
“GPS, my friend,” Rogue said, whipping out a smart phone that he had just about gone into bankruptcy over. “Even out here, we’ll pick up some kind of signal. Wait, what are you looking at?”
King sighed heavily. “You really bought that?”
“Contract was up on the old one. Traded up. What? What’s the big deal?”
King grumbled something under his breath about materialism and greed, but just rolled his eyes again.
As King decried his sworn brother’s undying consumerism, the phone beeped a few times, and the new bears both stared at it in utter amazement. “It’s a map... that moves?”
“Tracks us. Satellites. Don’t worry, you’ll catch up. It took us a while to get used to the world too.” Rogue smiled. “Or, really it took him a while. I’m a much quicker learner.”
But King was already gone, too far ahead to hear the snarky quip. Stone followed shortly after him, carrying Claire’s unconscious body. Rogue went to follow, to bring up the rear of the group, but Fury turned and stopped him with a huge hand on Rogue’s chest.
“I don’t know if you are who you say you are,” he said slowly, carefully. “But if you hurt him, or her, I’ll rip your fucking guts out.”
Rogue regarded him coolly, measuring this fire-spitting young bear. “I think you mean that,” he said after a pause. “Or at least, I think you think you mean that. I saw you fight. I like what I saw. But before you start talking a big game about ripping my guts out, why not—”
“Learn if I can trust you first?”
“Nah,” Rogue said with an easy grin and a laugh. “Just get to know me. After that, you might want to rip them out anyway, no matter what I’m lying or telling the truth about.”
Nodding, Fury turned back away from Rogue to follow the group, but this time it was Rogue who stopped him with a hand on the shoulder. “Listen,” he said. “We thought you were all dead. Or, well, I always thought you were dead. King kept believing that one day we’d somehow find all of the cubs and women that were taken. Do you know?”
“Know what? If there are others?” Fury swallowed, and then tightened his jaw. His gold eye, and his green one, flickered under the quicksilver moon. “Yeah. Yeah, they’re alive. But I’ve never seen them. They kept us in a box way underground. They didn’t do anything to us – any experiments I mean. The others though, I’m not sure.”
His cheek twitched—a sign of anger Rogue recognized easily enough, as he did the same thing. He patted the man on the shoulder. “Fury,” he said. “It’s nice to meet another Broken Pine bear. It’s really, really goddamn nice. And I promise that as long as I breathe, we’re not gonna stop looking. And I promise one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The revenge I can see you burn to have? I won’t rest until you have that, either.”
-10-
“Life is just... funny sometimes. Not funny ha-ha, but funny weird.”
-Jill
“Is that them?” Jill craned her neck to try and see through the densely canopied forest, to no avail. “Or a squirrel? I can’t even tell out here. And in midnight darkness?” In the intervening hours, the pair had swapped out the Cessna for a helicopter suitable for two pilots and five passengers. Jacques, turned out, had connections everywhere.
With her face pressed against the glass on her door, she could hardly make anything out down below. She stood next, to see if she could do any better to look out the huge swinging door in the passenger area.