Pawn Among Wolves Ch. 16

Rupert was seated at her screen, his eyes narrowed as he checked the concentrations on the read-out. Again. And again.

Gemma was quivering.

This set was B3? the chemist demanded, trying to hold onto his own calm.

B3, corroborated Gemma automatically. But -, she turned slightly too fast to evade attention, glaring as she watched her packmate fumble in a drawer for a new syringe, rip open the seal, then carefully draw up the small amount of liquid remaining in the labelled MS-tube, before gently lifting the needle and expelling the air.

Her other wolves, those dotted close enough around the lab, were watching out of the corners of their eyes, quivering, realising something important was going on without knowing precisely what.

Don't you dare, conveyed Gemma. We need to test it further first, make sure.

I volunteer to test it, responded Rupert fiercely, and slipped the needle under his lab-coat sleeve.

Remember what happened to Melanie? Gemma snarled in his head, stomach sick, but Rupert was smiling gently, she knew he didn't care.

Whatever happens, this is not your fault, our Little Gem, he replied lightly. You didn't drug us in the first place - you are just trying to give us back the choice. Much as I prefer the wisp of freedom since I have cloven to you, I will be ecstatic if this gives me full free choice, frees my mind from this fog. And I will be a much stronger fighter for you, with no involuntarily divided loyalty.

Gemma almost snarled, blood pounding in fury, but simultaneously her timer for the humans' drug went off, and a pair of the guards began to walk over, sensing the excitement in the air.

Get away from here! Gemma ordered her damned insubordinate koiru, rapidly scooping the pea injectors she had laid out into a drawer - she didn't want any questions. She was fuming. Tonight was not a night for this.

Rupe ducked his head, hissing faintly through his teeth at her anger she had projected into his head, and picked up the tray of wolf samples to carry them away.

Put those down!

I've emptied it. I may as well clean up for you, my Alfamme. Rupert replied as he walked hastily over to the sinks. Hastily enough to narrow the attention of the guards onto him. On purpose.

Gemma clamped down on her anger, and began to add the last ingredient to the humans' drug as the guards strode past, following Rupert. She couldn't hear the menacing conversation over by the wall, but her fingers were shaking as one-by-one she filled eight little plastic bulbs the size of a pea with the liquid. Her human allies could administer the contents just below their skin with a simple slap, and this amount was all they would need to give them hours to lose their pursuers. It was a pity that the only human scent-block she had managed to create lost its potency so quickly, hence having to cram a trip to the lab into tonight's madness.

A hasty movement made her look up, and she saw one of the guards smash his clenched fist heavily against the side of Rupert's face, knocking him into the sinks. Rupert snapped something which made both guards jerk in incredulous anger, then they grabbed him by the arms and began to haul him away backwards, towards the cells.

Gemma watched, white-faced, as her damn wolf bloody well winked at her over the shoulders of the two vicious bastards dragging him off for punishment.

You said you needed a diversion to be able to leave before the third shift-change, Rupe told her seriously, using all his strength to broadcast so the rest of the lab rats could hear. You know I am too valuable for them to seriously maim.

Damn him. She could feel the members of her pyramid drifting back towards the ovens, each with a plausible excuse, while the guards dragged Rupert towards the door, taking it in turns to smash heavy blows into alternate sides of his face.

No! She started forward after the trio, her blood seething, anger rising as she watched.

Do not spoil it: let him fight for you, Alan snapped furiously in her head, stopping her short. You have to learn to let us fight: we are warriors.

Gemma growled silently in reply, both at Rupert's self-sacrifice and the necessity of letting him get away with it. Then she took a resolute breath, heart wincing, and turned to follow her acrobats into the small space by the ovens, dropping the small bag of pea injectors she held clenched in her fist into her lab-coat pocket.

A minute later she was crawling swiftly through the vents.

She stopped and injected herself with the wolf scent-mask so that when she reached the human side, her scent would be human. However, the guard on the human side was already asleep, his snack drugged by her friends with the phial she had given them. Once she had lifted the keys to their cells it took less than ten minutes to collect all eight of her friends, hand out the injections, and sneak with the then scentless humans back through the side door into the kitchens.

Actually, they still held a slight hint of a dusty tint to Gemma, but her wolf colleagues had assured her that they hadn't been able to smell any of the test volunteers at all.

The humans assembled silently in the far corner of the room beside a large brick mound shaped like a beehive, its domed top higher than Gemma's head. In the centre of the structure was an old, cast iron door, at waist height. The bread oven hadn't been used for almost a century, apart from as a hidey-hole for Gemma after she had moved out of the garages.

The wereem swiftly locked her friends into the kitchen and ran off to replace the keys on the guard's belt, crawling back through the smelly air vent. By the time she returned, Sandy, lying head first in the old oven, had carefully lifted out the last bricks that they had worked loose over the preceding weeks, opening the back into the guards' locker room. To get around to the boiler room from the kitchen door would have led them past the auditorium side-entrance, and there were guards stationed there. They had had to find an alternative route.

After a breathless moment's pause, Alex relayed, "All clear," as Sandy's legs began to draw forward into the small tunnel. A moment later his feet disappeared from view.

Time to go. The humans each took a deep breath; nerving themselves for this journey.

The wolves in the cells they passed remained silent, unaware of their scentless presence. Gemma grimaced. It would be so much easier if they could all escape together, humans and wolves, but she had realised early on that that would be suicide, the two races just could not work together, the distrust, revulsion was too great.

It was hardly surprising.

The most cunning of Madam's imperatives down here was the confrontational segregation of wolf and human slaves. The only times when wolf and human were physically in one place was if a client had requested both types of toy. However, both races were marched along the same corridors, fed in the same hall, saw each other day in, day out, ignoring either other's presence with disgust, or glaring bitter hatred.

The division stemmed from the weaker members of both races - the reward for useful information was treats, and some wolf or human slaves would succumb to the urge for better food, better treatment, and betray their fellows for any infraction of the rules. The rewards for betraying members of the other race were significantly more substantial.

And besides, it wasn't really betrayal. Not of them.

It also didn't help that occasionally Madam had placed a wolf guard among the humans, as a spy, to measure any level of insurrection.

And so these humans who had rescued and hidden Gemma had constantly been testing her at first. The wereem hadn't known it at the time, but even the wiliest of the spies set among the human slaves faltered over reminiscences about Sesame Street, Starbuck summer specials, or third grade homework. The lack of shared childhood was telling.

But slowly her human friends had come to believe that she really wasn't one of them. The circle of humans helping her had gradually increased as they had also realised - she would get well. She could help them. Because Gemma could and did remain hidden - the guards hadn't found her, despite her initially being hidden in the trunk of a car which several of them had passed by daily. The inordinate level of silver in the wereem's body had meant that she had had no scent that would alert the wolf guards.

That much silver would have killed a wolf. Luckily, she wasn't one. The humans were right.

Even if she had dared to risk trying to make her wolves and human friends escape together, the wolves would not have been able to take the route she had planned tonight. For a start, the sensors sealing off the defunct boiler room were all keyed to wolf. As usual for places where the human slaves were meant to go for cleaning or household duties, the sensors were paired: a motion sensor detecting anyone, coupled with a scent sensor which only sounded if detected motion was not accompanied by a human scent.

The device was cunning. Her wolves from the lab had warned Gemma that even a scent-masked wolf would trip the coupled sensors: the motion detector noted that someone had moved, but the scent sensor alarmed that the interloper was without human scent. The Faulk left no loophole; her alchemist slaves made the wolf scent-mask drug, after all.

Or only one loophole: werewolves. The scent sensors had also been created by wolves, and could no more detect the metallic smell of the mask bi-product than their inventors. And when Gemma wolf scent-masked herself, she still exuded enough human scent that the sensors registered her as human: no threat. Hah.

Carefully the eight humans and one scent-masked werewolf worked their way inside, and Gemma breathed more freely once they had closed the door of the small, square room behind them. She pulled the makeshift rope her friends had manufactured out from where it was hidden hooked inside the old chimney, then looped one end around her waist while Mel began to coil the rest loosely over her arm.

Sandy was standing beside her in the small square space at the base of the chimney, looking up inside the narrow, smooth vertical shaft. Cursing lightly, he shivered, "We'll never get up there - it's too tight! Even you couldn't swing your elbows at the top, Gem, you'll get stuck."

Gemma made sure the rope was secure about her waist and stepped closer to the lanky, beautiful teenager. "Made sure the rope doesn't get caught," was all Gemma advised, reaching up to touch her fingertips to the blackened inside of the circular shaft before adding, "Give me a leg up!"

Even as he dropped onto one knee and lifted her dusty foot onto it, Sandy continued protesting on a mutter, "It gets narrower the higher you go - you might be able to squirm through if you didn't have to wriggle against gravity, but you've got no chance, no room to manoeuver, you'll fall!"

Gemma stepped from her foot on his knee to having both feet on his shoulders and replied laconically, "Can you get higher? I need as much boost as I can get - this is going to be exhausting."

The others stepped in around the young man, heaving under his shoulders to help him surge to his feet, until the crown of his head was in the opening to the shaft and Gemma was inserted into the base of the stack. Tilting her head so that her forehead was pressed against the grimy surface of the chimney, Gemma could just look down into the despairing eyes below her. Leaning to one side, her eyes holding his, she stretched one arm above her head and put the finger of her other hand to her lips, calling for silence.

She shifted her right hand, claws springing out and biting into the mortar between the bricks lining the chimney.

Sandy's eyes shot wide in disbelief.

"Make sure the rope doesn't snag," Gemma repeated, squirming on his shoulders to force her other arm above her head. His eyes were whirling in shock, anger, doubt, hope, and the young man swallowed, uncertain.

"It's our only chance," the wereem reminded him, and saw his eyes settle into a kind of horrified acceptance; there was nothing they could do. If the humans were caught as they were at the bottom of the shaft, they were just as guilty, just as liable for punishment, or termination. This was the only chance: trusting one of them.

His eyes were glittering angrily.

Gemma pulled herself up on her right claws, and bit the left into purchase in the other side of the shaft, slowly, steadily pulling herself up the first few inches. It was a relief when her feet were finally out of sight of the others, and she could shift them too, push off with her toes. But she had thought it best not to spook the whole bunch of them; Mel was pretty volatile at the best of times.

Her arms had begun to burn even before her feet were brought in to help. By half way up, she was sweating heavily, panting the sooty fumes, her limbs trembling.

You've done this before, she reminded herself fiercely. You can do this.

She had only done this once before, just. And had discovered, when she had cautiously peeped her head out of the top of the shaft, just how impossible it was for a wolf to get any further. A human?

Piece of cake.

It took over an hour to get herself to the top. Cautiously she lifted her eyes above the rim of the stack, and took a look around, her limbs trembling in fatigue.

The cool night air was a caress on her grimy, sweat-shining cheeks, and a tear trickled out to sweep a path through the soot as she absorbed the sense of space around her.

The stack emerged in the middle of a large pond, a small, four-foot diameter man-made island buffering the chimney top from the water, but leaving no place to hide. The shimmer of dim starlight reflecting on the water surrounding her soothed her eyes and fast-beating heart. She was outside.

Across on the other shore of the large pond, she could see rows upon rows of silent, expensive clients' cars parked around the back of a large white building. A single pair of guards were silhouetted against the faint glow through the plate-glass entrance, waiting for late arrivals.

They were not looking this way, and with the trees on the opposite shore shadowing her silhouette - it was possible that they might remain undetected. Faintly beyond the trees behind her she could make out the tall, solid bulk of the perimeter wall. She tasted the air. Only distant scents, both human and wolf: clean. Luck was with her, there was no tell-tale breeze to carry their whereabouts to the guards at the door or the guards on the wall.

Silently, Gemma heaved herself out to balance precariously on the man-made island. She took a long, steadying moment, but her heart was beating faster, wilder, and she couldn't afford to wait. They couldn't afford to wait. Slowly, exhaustingly, she began to heave Ramona up on the rope. The petite Mexican was very good at jamming her feet into the sides to give Gemma rests, and the werewolf kept reminding herself fiercely that her muscles were damn fit and healed damn fast.

They were both grimy, sweating and exhausted when the girl eventually heaved herself out, flopping over the rim onto the small circle of concrete bolstering the chimney-top. One foot splashed into the surrounding water, the sound carrying on the night air, and Gemma murmured, "Shh!"

They both froze as the guards looked over. A pair of sleepy ducks, startled by the sudden noise in the night began to glide swiftly further from the island into the patchy moonlight .The guards grunted and looked away again.

Ramona pulled her foot back, leaned over, and cautiously prodded her whole leg downwards, but couldn't feel the bottom. "What is this?" she whispered, hauling herself back into a crouch on the opposite end of the chimney top, and wiping a slightly oily-looking residue off her wet skin.

"Industrial residue lagoon - I've tested it," Gemma murmured back almost soundlessly. "Mainly silver - no need to worry, you'd have to swallow half the lake for it to have any effect on you."

A tug on the line indicated that back at the base, Helen had tied herself on.

"C'mon," Gemma added, a wary eye on the guards.

Ramona groaned softly, but got to her feet and placed her hands behind Gemma's on the rope. Steadily they began to haul in unison. They had practiced this a lot.

Ramona discovered, as she waited, shivering, while Helen and Gemma pulled Liz up, that she could stand in the lake, the tops of her shoulders just proud of the water as she held onto the edge of the chimney support. Slowly the circle of escapees widened, until, at last, Mel and Gemma hauled Sandy, the sole male, up the shaft. His shoulders were scraped and bleeding from the last part, he had to force them through with forceful heaves of his legs, but the young man was grinning broadly as he stuck his head out into the open air.

All of those standing in the lake were shivering with cold, the air had the nip of late autumn, and it was a chilly night.

"How come," panted Mel to Gemma between gasps a moment later, "you're not as exhausted -," another gasp for air, "- as the rest of us?" "How come you could do that eight times?"

Gemma's eyes met Sandy's, both opaque in the darkness.

The moment of truth.

"I -," began Gemma. Then she swallowed, a feeling of fear welling up. Her eyes sought Helen's, pleading for understanding. "I'm sorry. But I'm not one of you."

Helen's eyes didn't change, just the corner of her mouth crooked slightly. Gemma had had a feeling the nurse had known for a long time.

"You can't get off this island, can you?" Helen asked softly.

"What?" hissed Mel in counterpoint. "One of them?"

Gemma tore her gaze away from the warm, happy sparkle in Helen's eyes, and was revolted to discover Mel's outstretch hand pointing accusingly towards the pair of guards murmuring together at the entrance to the huge building on the opposite bank.

She only just held back a snarl. She was nothing like them.

"No," she hissed, having to keep the sentence short to stop herself swearing at the damn bigot. "Not them. Either trust me. Or shout. Now."

Sandy had already made this decision. He clamped a hand over Mel's mouth as she opened it to snap hysterically at the wereem, and hauled the girl's curvaceous frame back against his, holding her firmly.

"We have no choice," he hissed almost silently into her ear. "Either shut it or I'll knock you out and fucking drop you head-first back down this shaft."

There was a long, quivering silence reverberating between the still figures crouched on and around the small island, eyes glaring suspicion and hatred in the darkness. Then Mel hissed out a sigh, relaxed slightly, and shrugged against Sandy's hold. He let go.

"I never trusted you," she spat the whispered vitriol into Gemma's face, before turning to slide almost silently into the water. Without looking back she began to swim for the shadow of the trees on the opposite bank.

Helen touched Gemma's arm softly, but the wereem had turned urgently to Sandy. "Can you stop her from going off on her own once she reaches shore? We're lost if even one of us is found - need to stick together, stick to the plan," she whispered.

The youth had already slid into the water, and the ripples curved their tell-tale path out from his trajectory straight after the black shadow of Mel.