The Shatters

*Puts on cowboy hat.* Y'all may not know me over in this here neck of da woods, so I'll be brief about it. *Spits into spitoon.*

Story>smut. My primary focus is always story. I decided to give the werewolf platform a break, as it seems Literotica is drowned in it, and spin up something a bit more . . . animalistic, abstract? This chapter takes place in a lab, and as previous readers of my work know, I prefer to pin down the character and their environments rather than gleam over that stuff. The Shatters is a story that can go as deep as you the reader lead it to. It is not intended to get you off (yet), even if half the characters in the later chapters are whores. That said, moving on. :)

As elaborated in my bio, I write 'choice and consequence' stories with smut lying around somewhere. At the end of all chapters will be a list of two or more actions the character(s) can make. Vote in the comment section for whichever choice you would like, but be advised, all choices will yield heavy consequences. I, the god of these cursed swamps, will tally the votes in four days and apply them to the next installment. So hurry and vote or sit back and watch as others potentially fuck shit up. Nothing can be undone, so choose wisely.

———————————————————————————————

~See the animal in his cage that you built?

Are you sure what side you're on?~

Navajo County, AZ

2:39 AM - HB Labs

"Of all the things you've done while on shift, this has to be the absolute worst," Lisa said.

Callahan nodded in stern agreement. "Captain's gonna strip your badge the moment he walks through those doors tomorrow."

The lab was a spacious expanse of sterile white. Pristine. Bloodless. From the metallic workstations to the reflective white tiles. The power savers struggled to be subpar, leaving the room dim and grim. Their overhead lights provided a sufficing throw of luminance over the steel counter the three medics hovered. The rest of the lab—the shelves with their narcotics and hazardous chemicals, the showcases and their neglected texts, the EKGS, IVS, blood freezer and OPA and its counterparts, the state-of-the-art monster enclosures—all presided in the shadows, barely brushed by unsparing light.

2:39 a.m. They were the only staff remaining on the lower levels.

Reports didn't write themselves. The counter was littered with filing folders of no deliberate order, evidence of a busted pen staining the surface to the left, a recycled bunsen burner five seconds away from becoming a safety hazard and of course there was the holy shrine of yesterday's reports, waiting to be analyzed and signed off. What better way to spend a Friday night in the dead of the desert winter than huddled in a lab, reviewing data from the latest immortal creature to find itself in their lair?

Jai looked up at her partners, setting aside the current file into a folder that may or may not have been labeled correctly. "Sorry, did you two say something?"

Lisa, pretty and tall and often the most dulcet of people, stabbed a finger the direction of the enclosures. She looked the opposite of docile in her white lab coat. "That. You brought that thing in here. Why?"

Jai followed the direction her accuser indicated. Pushing birdlike glasses to the base of her nose to get a better glimpse into the dark, she spied the long chain of enforced glass and titanium enclosures. They were used most commonly to hold the captured vampires and werewolves. The enclosures wallowed in the dark space of the lab, easily mistaken as nothing but stucco walling if one were not deliberately searching for it. Except, tonight the enclosures held something else. From the shadows, she barely made out two silver gleaming eyes, watching them. "Oh, that."

She resumed her analysis of the current vampire report, stopping only when Lisa went ahead and flicked on the primary lights, momentarily blinding her. "I don't think you're seeing this correctly, Jai. You brought a nightwalker into our lab."

Now that the woman had gone and banished the darkness, she felt forced to look to the creature again, only this time, the glance was all but brief. Nightwalkers, it was a term coined by the old western US militia decades ago upon first encounter. They were rare creatures. The lab's database was pathetically barren when it came down to factualities on the specie. In fact, their data collection was so anorexic, any "facts" were automatically written off as theories, and eventually myths.

They were shapeshifters, the whispers claimed. Werewolves, the bystanders supported. Undead mistakes of God, acolytes naturally assumed. Her favorite: they were body snatchers. Now, she didn't know what exactly that last one entailed in this day and age, but nothing with so demonic a name could be good.

Nevertheless, each and every time she beheld the creature behind the glass, breathing was a forgotten necessity. Its stark gaze bore a detrimental path toward them. Unyielding. Unnerving. By all accounts, nightwalkers resembled humans, their exterior anatomy mimicking that of Callahan's. The difference arose when one studied the man beside her and the one in the cage. Callahan carried a devil-may-care charm about him, always one to offer up easy smiles and make the most introverted of people suddenly spill their life stories. The nightwalker? Even through what was considered an indestructible confinement cell, she couldn't refute the syphon of power to creep through the glass and seep over them all. A power that held promises of imminent death if ever it got loose.

The creature prowled in the ten by twelve space, never once taking its eyes from the trio.

She shrugged, but sensed the rising anger from Lisa. It only served to spike her own. Summoning a glare for the other female, she turned on her. "We've been defending the human race from immortals for decades. They've taken more lives than we can count, showed us we will always be the inferior specie if we repeatedly choose submission. Have you both forgotten what this organization is for?"

By the reluctant frown on both their faces, she gathered not.

HB, or Hunters Bureaucracy, was founded nearly a century ago by a southern Mississippi church. Once, the world had been certain immortals were hellish spawns slithered from the most ominous of swamps. Weaponry had been a composite of crossbows, alchemy and genuflection in the house of God. Now, religion took a backseat. Common sense and innumerable deadly encounters said the creatures had to be handled with an upgrade, the human race protected, as this was their world. Always would be.

"We train our men and women with weaponry hardly sufficient against vampires, let alone the elves and their prodigy," she continued.

Lisa, lips puckered in a moue of defeat, asked, "And what, nightwalkers are the answer?"

Jai smiled, agitation dismissed. "Their genetic makeup is similar to our own. No human has ever been close enough to collect a proficient sample of their DNA to propose synthetic replication or the option of AI hybrids. Until now."

Lisa shook her head, brown eyes widened like an owl's. "You're crazy. Artificial insemination?! Who the hell would sign up for that?"

"Hm . . ." She would, in a heartbeat. She tapped her pen absently, narrowing her eyes at the beast, who mirrored the action almost robotically. Cute. In a way. "Well, there is always the option of natural means for impregnation. Either way, a pregnancy would not yield anything defective. I don't think. I need to run a few samples first."

"Super immortal soldiers is your end game here? Ra-raising hybrid children for fighting purposes? You wonder if we've forgotten what this organization is for, but I think you have, Jai. You're trying to create the very thing we strive to eliminate." Lisa looked about ready to faint.

Callahan, on the other hand, appeared amused as he stared at the creature.

Jai perked a brow. Callahan was a slender, lean sliver of male. Narrow, aquiline features in the face. An interesting face she often had the distinct impulse to probe and prattle over. She'd once suggested dating so she could do just that, but the male had said something or other about valuing his stable life. "What is it?" she asked.

He tilted his head at the nightwalker. "I used to study these before I transferred over to the data analysis department." He looked between both the women as though this were supposed to mean something to them. That look soon turned pitying. "You truly don't see it?"

She looked back to the creature. It had a thick mane of hair that rivaled the blackest stone, dripping like a spilled cannister of ink over its shoulders, tailing down its spine. It stood at least 6'4'', wired on nothing but raw sinewy muscle. She had a brief flashback of the hard flesh against hers as she hauled the unconscious form into the back of her Pathfinder. Even in its unconscious state, her skin had tingled with a sense of inevitable damnation. Its clothing took a step back in time. It wore tattered woolen pants, a black shirt that did little to hide that sinnister power emitting from its pores. Its skin was a light goldish. Touched by the sun, though unmistakably . . . insipid. It was fluxed with sweat. Pacing and pacing and pacing in its own anxiety and outrage. Always watching.

She looked back to Callahan. "Okay, so it's pissed. What of it? We have gas vents if it gets too rowdy."

Her partner only shook his head and said with amusement that was now bordering belittlement, "15th century, there was a series of reported cases of missing women. Always in the winter time, always in the night. They would vanish from their homes, their beds, and the husbands wouldn't know a thing until morning. Hunting parties, bloodhounds, all of that was in order. Naturally, they blamed the heretics and their blood sacrifices. But when the bodies would turn up and the doctors examined their corpses, there was never any laceration wounds. But then . . . well."

Jai waved him on, smiling, eyes wide with fascinations because she did love a story. Lisa was shrunken back, color gone from her cheeks.

Callahan was milking it, getting comfortable as he leaned on the counter, elbows on the files, hands gesturing with dramatic effect. "Well, then, they would examine the insides. The intestines, the lungs, the eyes, the brain, the female's sexual region—and there, ladies, is where they would find the anomaly. Signs of forced intrusion. Some were virgins around the time of the abduction, but none returned with their maidenhood. As well, not all of them were found dead. Some drifted back into their village homes, dazed and mad. Sputtering obscenities of demons in the dark, demons that would violate them without mercy."

"So they were rapists," she noted. "Which means I can operate on this one without a conscious?"

He gave her a look. "This was medieval times. Centuries ago. And you're missing the point."

"Enlighten me, Sherlock," she said, returning to the reports at hand.

"It's in heat."

The pen slipped from her fingers. "Eh?"

"It's not uncommon for the specie and the timetable does align." After a second, he added, "And the thing's pretty pissed, yeah."

Her brows went up. "I thought heat cycles was werewolf exclusive—not to mention gender exclusive."

He shrugged. "Largely debated, but nightwalkers are said to be in the shifter family. It would make sense, even if the gender specifics aren't parallel, but it's nothing definite."

"Nothing definite. And that is why I want to study it." They were humans, it was kind of their jobs to uncover the unknown.

This time, Lisa actually stumbled forward, gripping the counter to hold her footing. "Jai, dear." The woman was before her now, smelling of potassium solvent and ocean spray. "Sweet honey, I know you're not entirely with us up here," She tapped her skull. "but hear me when I say you must take it back. The Captain will have all our heads—if that thing doesn't get to them first. Please."

Take it back? Spoken like she'd brought a wild skunk home. Lisa clearly didn't understand the length she had gone to capture it. But to just release it after all of her pain and suffering? The Captain, while true he was no understanding man and was rumored to get off on laying off numerous members of HB, she knew her badge would be safe. Not just because she was the best supernatural medic on the entire faculty, but she was also the Captain's daughter.

That was not to say her friends' concerned faces didn't give her some pause. The creature was dangerous, she knew this. And now that Callahan had brought to light its . . . condition, she looked to the nightwalker with a new perspective. That side of the lab was still swallowed by shadows, but the manner in which the creature stalked, deadly, restless stealth, was only just beginning to spark a pint of fear in her blood.

She sighed. She didn't want to undermine her friends, but they couldn't see what she saw. Nightwalkers were the future. The Hunters' lab didn't quite have the technology for DNA replication or transient cloning (yet), and while she wasn't above straddling the creature and promoting herself Test Subject 1 for a hybrid infant, all things required the chance for trial and error. She would need multiple samples for multiple experiments.

"Semen extraction then," she decided. "In the morning, I'll have the nightwalker prepped for semen extraction and we'll freeze it in the the cryotubes. Then, and only then, will I release it."

"Or kill it," Lisa suggested, but Jai was quick to put the idea to rest.

"I'm no sympathizer, but I'm not killing something that may well have contributed to the salvation of our future task forces." Not that this nightwalker was the only one in existence, but their rarity was painstaking.

Her partners shared incredulous glances, but in the end, they knew fighting with a wall would yield better results than with her.

Callahan, his eyes fixed to the durable glass pane, said breathlessly, "How'd you even catch it? Those things have blinding speed and immeasurable strength, and you, well." He spared her a look that she assumed was supposed to tell the rest.

She was an earnest 5'6'' when in her combat boots, necking 5'5'' without them. Average height, really. No need in pointing that out though, because she did see his point. It was the rest of her that gave everyone pause. She was small built, a frame that was meek on the outside, meek on the inside. Heck, she'd go as far as to bet her bone t-score was below -1. And of course, when comparing her to the massive creature within the enclosure . . . Again, she saw his point.

Rather than tell him about the battle between her, the phenothiazine-silver pumped darts and the foodless nights staked out in the wilderness, she answered, "Science."

Neither pressed, perhaps recognizing the ultimate futile nature of the dispute. Callahan stuffed his hands in the pockets of his white coat. Lisa's shoulders sagged.

"Cheer up!" she commanded them. "This is progress. The—"

She was cut off as the creature released a sound so absolutely loud and terrifying, the indestructible glass vibrated. But the showcase glass nearest to the enclosure shattered as the pitch grew unbearable, vials and tubes toppling onto the polished tiles, the metal hinges of the casing rocking back and forth. The sound saturating the space was no wail, scream or roar, but a bay. That of an enraged animal. It bypassed her thoughts and settled directly into her bones.

They all stared at the enclosure, frozen, expecting it to shatter into a million tiny pieces and their lives to become a newspaper headline. When the creature—and the three of them—realized it wouldn't, the thing charged the glass. Again and again, ramming its head against the material despite the telling channel of blood beginning to drip down its temple. The thudding noise it made was quieter than the unholy rupture of sound from its lungs.

"Well," she said when a moment of silence arrived. "I'm going on a whim and guessing their larynx don't take after humans'." She knew not to look at the other two. They would only wear warning looks that all but demanded she take the thing back this instance. To transition them back to her side, she took the little remote laying atop the mayhem of papers. "Why don't you two go home early? I think I'll put Wolfman Jack to nightnight now."

Silence answered her, save for the creature who insisted on bashing into the glass.

She looked back to find her two partners in fact not wearing warning 'take it back' expressions, but sheer terror, their gazes refusing to leave the creature. It only reminded her her partners, no matter how fierce and intelligent in the medical field, they were still inexperienced. The subjects they brought in were almost always subdued or lethargic. Inviolate. To see this. . . .Their expressions were justified.

Her voice softened. "Go home."

Callahan, who had taken pride in knowing all about nightwalkers, didn't need to be told twice. He packed up the fastest she'd ever seen him do so. He, who was always the last to leave the building, was suddenly the first of them gone.

Lisa, however, stayed back. "Jai, what are you going to do?"

She lifted a brow, feigning an easy smile. "I'm going to finish up these reports. Lock up. Flirt with the security upstairs. Then head home."

She pointed to the enclosure. The creature had stopped moving, which was unexpectedly eerie seeing as she'd only seen it in motion. It stared at the carded door Callahan had left from with a worrying calculation swarming in its eyes. "With that."

Now Jai rocked back on her heels in all innocence. "I already told you. I'll put it out and resume the task in the morning."

Half truth. Smoke and mirrors. Lisa wasn't prepared to challenge it, for she too vanished, leaving her all alone with the nightwalker.

And Jai made good on her word, putting the nightwalker out as soon as the others left. But she didn't head home after.

*****

Click. Click. Woosh. The metallic sounds to impose upon the stark white of the forlorn incarceration. Chains, hauled up from a compartment below the enclosure's tiles, tightened over the wrists and ankles, waistline and skull. The creature lay supine on a mechanically risen study table partitioned exactly at the cage's midpoint, arms splayed out much like ritualistic sacrifice.

The god? Jai herself.

She sat on a rolling stool, wheeled tableside to the nightwalker. The enclosure door sat open, the monitors and sleeping lab blinking red dots lazily from afar. Like this, the world quiet and strangely infantile, she could almost pretend she was guarding over a sick patient. A sick patient named Steve who refused to imbibe his morning Ensure, so she was forced to feed him his supplements through a tube. And this Steve, when he would wake with gaunt cheeks and lifeless eyes, he would look up at her and say 'Thank you, doc. Thank you for everything.' And she would head home to a warm bed with a warm heart. And she would rest knowing she had done good.

Instead, what lay in front of her was no patient. Just another monster. Another bump in the night. Another thing she would take apart and protect the world from. Too many reports of homicides and emancipated innocents. Too many bodies found half devoured in alleys. Too many naives. Too many Steves. This was her job, lowering the amount of Steves out there, milling about without a clue. This nightwalker, she knew, was the answer.

The male stirred, his lungs still filled with the sedative gas. Up close, he was striking. Ovaries exploding, hand-her-a-fan striking. His hair was as black as her own, but longer. Much longer. And ruthless, some of its waves slithered down over the large sculpted chest, blending with its midnight tattered shirt. A shallow grown beard gave him a lethal edge, lips parted just barely to reveal a perfect white scape of dentures. But no matter how captivating he was with his long lashes and squarish jaws, she knew what lay before her. Just as the noxious gas lingered in the air, the culling, invisible palls of sizzling strength dripped from the nightwalker's skin.