A Tigers Stripes Never Change

Chapter 2

Her

I ran harder and harder. I had no idea I could run this fast, as least I didn’t think I did. Maybe I do? I don’t know.

Up ahead I saw a clearing. I don’t know how far I had run. It seemed like miles but I ran straight for the clearing. I wasn’t sure where to go when I got there but I hoped it was a way out. I listened for the thumps behind me but I couldn’t hear them. Was my heart beating too loud? I was gasping for air at this point and my lungs were screaming. I raced into the clearing which was full of high grass up to my waist. I tried to run through it but I was getting caught up and fell face first.

I laid there and listened. The grass seemed to cover me some at least. All I could hear was my breath heaving in and out. Damn am I this out of shape? I put a hand over my mouth to quiet the noise. If my hunter couldn’t see me he would definitely hear me. I closed my eyes and focused on my other senses; drawing slow deep breaths. I strained my ears to hear anything but just like the first time I opened my eyes to this nightmare, it was silent.

After several agonizing minutes I decided to sit up. I kept my body low and moved into a crouch. I barely lifted my head so my eyes could peek out from the grass. Nothing had come crashing through the clearing with me. I sat and waited and watched. Nothing. I let go of the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and stood up. My whole body ached now that the chase was over. I looked around the clearing. More trees. No way out.

I felt like I could sleep for a week. But I really didn’t want to stay here. I didn’t want to go back into the trees where I will be hunted.  It was going to be dark soon enough and I needed to find shelter.

I walked toward the opposite edge of the forest from where I had entered. I peeked into the trees, looking for signs of my hunter. For some reason I sniffed the air, tasting it on my tongue. Nothing concerned me so I took a step into the forest. Well that’s one way to sense danger….tasting it. I chuckled to myself a little as I moved my heavy feet forward. I wanted so badly to take my boots off and go barefoot but the forest floor was covered in twigs and rocks. Hell I could feel them pierce the thick soles as I ran for my life.

My pace was slower than slow at this point. My body was barely standing. I looked up at the trees around me. I noticed they were a different kind than the giants I woke up too. They were still tall but their branches were much lower to the ground.

I walked up to the closest one to me and sized it up. I could totally pull myself up to there. But the others branches were just out of reach. I moved on to the next one. I could get up to the next couple branches but they didn’t look very strong and I didn’t want to worry about falling out.

I felt myself slip into a survival mode as I searched for a tree. I didn’t know how I knew I’d be able to manage to sleep up in a tree. I didn’t know how I even felt this brave. Woke up without a clue of who or where I am. Something chased me. Something was hunting me. It didn’t sound like a human, maybe at first but I got a distinct feeling it was an animal. A very smart, fast and big animal. I hoped it didn’t like to climb trees.

I wandered around the forest for what seemed like ever. The first berries I saw I almost shoved a handful into my mouth, but something caught my nose and stopped me before I could. I held them in front of my nose and sniffed it again, my nose crinkled at the off scent. My tongue flicked out defiantly and licked a berry. It burned instantly and I gagged and wretched.  

“Poison,” the voice said.

I looked down at the berries I had almost put in my mouth. What the hell is going on? Who are you? Who am I? My eyes stared at the berries until they blurred from my tears. I blinked and felt them race down my cheeks. This is the first time I’ve cried. Not even when I was running for my life did I shed a tear and that s**t was terrifying! Or even when I realized I didn’t know who I was. But now I don’t know how much more I can take.

My stomach growled at me. How I’m still standing I’m not sure but I won’t be for long if I keep this up. As I searched the forest floor I saw a few mushrooms sprouting up. I leaned down and picked one up and brought it to my nose. I sniffed it. It smelled earthy and like a mushroom. I waited for the voice to speak up. But it was silent. I opened my mouth and paused….still no voice. I licked it. No burning or gagging. I popped it in my mouth and chewed. It wasn’t delicious but it wasn’t poison. I picked up the rest of the mushrooms and munched while I searched for a tree. The sun was beginning to set.

Between mystery mushrooms and a few berries that didn’t set off the voice, I had myself a pretty decent meal and was feeling stuffed when I found my tree. I found my way to a river in my wanderings. I wasn’t sure if it was the same one I had been following. To be completely honest I had forgotten to mark my trail as I went. I could’ve circled around a hundred times.

My tree stood a hundred yards from the river. Its lowest branch was hard to reach at first but with a belly full and freshly watered I had a little more oomph. I landed on the branch after my third attempt and scrambled up before I could fall. It took two tries to get to the next one and a hail Mary save to get up to the little nook of the third. It was perfect for my small body as I nestled myself down on a little bed of leaves. I tried to be as careful as possible not to break any twigs. Otherwise the leaves would have fallen and my spot would be a dead giveaway. I wasn’t entirely sure of how I’d get down but I figured I could cross that bridge when it was time.

I laid the now even dirtier and tattered hoodie over me to keep me warm in the chilly night air. My body ached something fierce. My mind swam with questions but it wasn’t long until I was out.

Him

I slept much longer than I expected. I was hoping to get back to my little friend early this morning. I didn’t realize how weak I was. That’s not good. I have 3 days before my next treatment and will only get weaker.

I slid out of bed and covered myself with a housecoat. My treatments have been making it hard to regulate my body temperature. One minute I’ll be burning up and the next it’s like I was in an ice bath. The good news is I’m only cold in the morning now. After a treatment, I have that shifter heat for a couple weeks and quick healing ability. But when it starts to wear off, I get colder and it takes longer for me to heal and shift.

I open my bedroom door and shuffle out into the hall. Nobody’s here. It’s just me in this little cabin. I come here when I’m running experiments and doing research. My father owns it but he basically doesn’t care what I do as long as I keep myself scarce. It’s already been over 2 months since I’ve been home. I think he’s called maybe once to check up on me and it was more because he realized he hadn’t seen/heard from me in a while and wasn’t sure if I had moved out and didn’t tell him. He sounded a little disappointed when I told him I would be returning home in a couple weeks.

He’ll see one day soon. I’ll be the most powerful shifter. I tried so hard to become one when they showed their existence to humans. I tried to get mated with a female shifter but they never seemed to care for human men. At least not me anyway. Then I learned you can’t be turned into a shifter, they were born. So I found a way around that by cloning their genes. I created a serum and I inject myself every month.

It’s taken me years to perfect it to what it is now. It almost killed me at least three times. But I was determined. I didn’t see those at failures because it brought me closer to what it is now and I have more work to do. More shifter genes to clone. I’ve taken the biggest and the best and put them all into one. Bears strength. Lion’s cunningness. Wolfs ferocity. I need to get access to more animals: Tigers, cheetahs, rhinos, I’ve even heard there’s dragons. I wasn’t sure what kind of shifter my little friend in the woods is though, it doesn’t really matter. She was more of a surprise gift. I had been toying with a theory in mating. Since I couldn’t attract a shifter mate, I’d create my own. For that I’d need a female shifter to clone her genes; preferably unmated.

No matter how many genes I have taken from shifters, I’m still not strong enough. I had wondered for a long time if I would ever get there. But there so much more I don’t know about shifters. I wanted to know more about their mates. In my research I learned that shifters have a specific mate they’re attracted too. They can tell by their scent and there’s something inside them that makes them want that shifter and no other. A bond making both even stronger than before. I wanted to clone that and create a mate for my animal. Maybe if we had a mate we would be able to unlock our full potential.

I opened the fridge and stared inside. Not much was in there in the way of food. I had stacks of raw meat. My animal preferred to eat that way and to be honest I don’t really mind it as much as I had at first. I grabbed a package of hamburger meat and ripped it open. My animal smelled the blood and our mouth watered instantly. I shoved a clump into my mouth and chewed slowly. Taking my meat with me I walked up to the big glass windows looking into a forest. It was hidden deep in the woods and was pretty well camouflaged so you really wouldn’t know it was there unless you knew it was. You couldn’t even access it by vehicle. I park my car in a commuter lot and either walk the four miles or shift and run depending on my treatment schedule.

My “lab” was technically a shed behind the cabin. It had been much smaller but with time I was able to build it up. I disguised it as much as possible on the outside so it just looks like an old building that’s falling down. Much easier to hide than a big metal box that shone like a beacon in the sunlight.  I watched the windows waiting for a sign of movement. Maybe my other experiment wasn’t awake yet. I turned away from the windows with my now empty package of meat. My animal was full and content but getting eager to go find our friend.

She was pretty. That’s what first attracted me to her. I had watched her from afar while I was in other missions to gather shifters. When I decided to test out the mate hypothesis she was the first one I thought of as a potential. She didn’t seem to have an attachment to any particular shifter which led me to believe she’s unmated. But then I had found her in the woods. She was dressed in black and sneaking around the trees. I wasn’t sure why she was there and I didn’t really get a chance to ask her.

I had been out for a run after taking my test subject. A new animal I hadn’t gotten before. A tiger. The adrenaline rush after I had him captured and contained was too much to hold in my human form so I shifted and went for a celebratory run through the forest. I caught her scent immediately after I shifted and chased it. There were several hiding spots I knew of that I could take advantage of and found one as close to her as possible. She was in her human form, dressed all in black. She sat next to a tree with her eyes closed. I wondered what she was doing. But before she could sense me, I shifted and dropped down on her. The syringe, I had in my clothes from earlier, injected into her neck and was she was out. I couldn’t bring her back with me because I didn’t have a spare room for her. I had divided the one chamber in the lab into two. I planned on keeping them both sedated and I would harvest his genes first.

I stared out into the trees as if trying to find her. I didn’t know her name. I wasn’t even sure what her animal was. She seemed to float between the shifter communities like an ambassador or a princess visiting her subjects; always smiling and chatting with random people and shifters. She always had different scents on her and my nose isn’t too good at discerning them all from hers. She is strong, powerful and an absolute stunning girl. Her hair is always tied up which exposed her neck. The beast within hummed excitedly when I thought about nuzzling it. My c**k twitched too. I thought about all the things I’d like to do to her.

A movement in the lab windows snapped me out of my thoughts. Our other friend seems to be awake. I watched the shadow pace back and forth. My eyes flicked to the locks on the door. They were secure. The windows were shatter proof. Everything had been reinforced with the strongest steel. Alone it wasn’t strong enough to keep a fully enraged shifter inside. But I keep my test subjects heavily sedated to block their shifts and keep them weak.

 I watched the window as I saw him smash at the glass weakly. Trying desperately to break out and escape. He gave up shortly after. Maybe deciding to save his strength. I smirked at the thought. He’d be too weak to do anything and the more he expels his energy the more tired he’ll be. The cocktail I gave him stops his energy from replenishing. He won’t die from it but he’ll become more and more drained until he can’t move. It makes it easier for me extract genes that way.

 Ultimately, there’s no saving them after the procedure is over. I have to get as many genes as I can before they die which is difficult and time consuming as is. I lost some before I could even extract a single genetic sample. That was in the very early stages though. It’s been a trial and error type deal since this kind of work isn’t exactly…..legal nor ethical. So I don’t have many templates to go by because genetic cloning is difficult in itself. Never mind cloning shifter genes.

I hurry back into my room to get dressed. I needed to feed my test subject and then find the girl. I wasn’t sure how long her drug cocktail will last and I needed to get her back here and restrained before that could happen.  I pulled on some dirty and scruffy jeans I had forgotten to wash. I wanted to seem as dirty as possible. I picked through the hamper of dirty clothes and found the dirtiest smelliest shirt I could find. Looks like it’s the one I had on when I captured the shifter in my lab. I put the shirt on hoping his scent would mask my own so that if she did remember her shifter side she wouldn’t smell me and run.

After I was dressed and ready, I loaded up a Tupperware with ground meat. I unstopped the vial on the counter and dripped a few drops into the meat and let it sit and soak in. Pulling on my heavy boots, I went out to the lab and slid open the small slat in the door. I dropped the tupperware in and slammed it shut quickly. I paused and listened. He wasn’t moving but he was breathing. I could hear his small huffs as he laid on the floor. I didn’t care if he ate it honestly. He was weak enough. I just wanted some extra assurance that he wouldn’t be making noise when I brought home my next experiment.