Wolf, in League [Wolf 3]

Chapter 1: Mostly He Missed ItSeptember 2016 The sun was rising. He could smell it in the air—crossed wires, blown fuses, burning ozone—and it left a bitter taste in his throat. At that point there wasn’t a single beam of light in the sky, not even a brightening of the horizon, but it was most definitely coming; he could feel it worming into his pores, lifting hair, rolling alongside every thump of his sluggish blood. Above him the bats entertained as they always did, circling like performers on soundless wings with their ‘fingers’ extended to ply the wind into workable currents. Below him sat a fat rat, gorging appreciatively on the leftovers of the dinner he had left for it. Bones crunched and splintered beneath its furiously working teeth, but although it ate with fervor it never took its beady black eyes off its provider. It knew that in a moment the tall, slim man could decide he was still hungry and there would be no reprieve for the rat if that was his choice. While quick, the rat could never be quick enough to outrun the man. Not this one. The man had no interest in the rat, though. His hunger, for food anyway, had been satiated. Now he stood and watched the dark skies for the shine of what he could smell approaching, musing on another hunger entirely: the one for justice. For vengeance. For it too was coming, as sure as the sunlight. That he could control; would control. And maybe, someday, he’d find a way to control the sun as well. Because by all rights and dues he hated the sun the second-most of all the things in life. He hated the way it burned his eyes, the way it bubbled his skin, the way it forced him to see everything in blacks and grays—he hated the way it had stolen the very color from his life. The greedy b***h. The choosy, picky, human-loving b***h. The brilliant, burning, vampire-hating b***h. He hated it. Except…as much as the hate…he missed it. He missed feeling it, seeing it, closing his eyes, and warming his skin with it… But that was a truth he would not speak of, even to himself. The wind rose in swirls, up the side of the building and into the night sky, carrying the scent of pine needles and gathering leaves. He ignored the odor of blood that moved off the roof and into the air and gave his attention to the curve of blue that seemed to grow with the rising wind. It was time to seek the kind of darkness that sunlight could not find. He could spend more time watching tomorrow. It was hard to believe after so many years of cursing the way time moved so slowly that it suddenly seemed there would never be enough time. So many plans to make. So many things to do. But the days were getting shorter and the nights were getting longer. Things were moving in his favor. The rat startled as fabric twirled above it, not sensing the movement before it had already come and gone. Then it turned back to the litter of the departed man’s meal and continued to eat. * * * * A bright glow spotlighted the place where Matthew Dietrich worked. Other than that solitary bulb (and even its glare had been tightened down to a six-inch radius), the only lighting in the room was the strip of blue fluorescents that ran above the counter and under the row of glass and metal cupboards. It was enough for Matthew. Though his optometrist wouldn’t condone the activity in the least, especially since his most recent eyeglass prescription had been increased in severity yet again, Matthew believed it helped him focus. In the daylight hours it would be impossible to do as every single light in the facility would be on, the sunlight would be streaming in through the windows, and although his crew was small in comparison to some of the other teams at the Genetics Development and Biological Connectivity Group (aka the GDBCG), none of his team members had his preference for ruining his vision for the sake of his concentration. Some, he knew, wouldn’t be caught dead in any of the labs while it was dark and quiet. He’d never quite figured out why, but he was only a resident. Maybe in a few months—less, really, if he kept putting in the hours he was putting in these days—when he finally got offered the staff position he coveted so terribly much, maybe then he’d know what made the doctors and the administration staff cast nervous glances over their shoulders when they walked down certain hallways or passed some of the doorways. Staff and administrators aside, he’d learned very quickly that the executive staff didn’t give a single hoot about when one came to work or whether one worked alone. As long as the work got done, as long as the results were definitive and stunning, he could have told them that he wanted to work in the basement underneath a tarp with Beethoven’s Fifth playing on loop for all they’d care; and stunning work was not something Matthew ever had to struggle to achieve. He had to work hard, yes, but he didn’t have to struggle. He’d been born with the need to dig into things and he didn’t stop until he’d wrung everything he could out of a topic. So while he hadn’t had the highest MCAT score in the state, he had been in the top five. Nor had he been top of his class when he’d graduated UCLA. He had, however, been second. During his internship at the DGSOM, while he’d still been debating between joining a family practice or specializing (not that he’d really debated too hard, to his father’s great disdain) he’d been told that he was one of the most vibrantly talented young men that his professor had ever had the pleasure to teach. Of course, his professor had also been three scotches into the evening at that point and sitting across from Matthew in a lowly lit, very private booth in the far corner of a bar that had been thirty miles out of the city. Matthew hadn’t put much faith in the man’s gushing promises of “limitless experiences and opportunities.” Besides, by that point, he hadn’t had a single reason to put the sleep-with-the-guy-in-charge-and-excel theory into practice. When he’d decided he really was going to pursue Board Accredited status in genetics, the GDBCG had practically kicked in his door to find him. Always a pleasure to be wanted, it was. And considering they left him alone and let him do his thing at will, he’d decided within a couple of weeks of his residency that he just might like to stay there. There were dark and interesting corners in the GDBCG’s facility and Matthew wanted to know them all. Even if there wasn’t something about the place that tickled his subconscious, the GDBCG was iconic in the field of genetic research. A hundredfold more doctors were laughed off the list of applicants than were allowed to pass through. The fact that they had given him, the mere son of a simple pediatrician and a quiet housewife, a residency was astounding. Good was good and smart was smart, but the people in the know at the GDBCG had seen something special in him that they’d chosen to pursue. For that he was ever-grateful. He’d often thought that he’d give up his eye teeth, without sedation, if they would grant him a permanent position. Preferably tenured. It wasn’t just pride working its ugly self through his blood, either. It was purpose. The GDBCG granted him purpose. It was here, right here in the hallowed embrace of the Center, where Matthew would make a difference in this world where mothers and fathers could die of cancer, babies could be born without fully-formed skulls, and some kids had to grow up knowing that they were boys trapped in female bodies and not be able to fix that in a viable, utilizable way. He, however, was going to find a way to fix all of it; through the grace of God, he would, darn it. And there was no place better than here to do it in the entire world. If he could do it in solitude, tunelessly humming the relevant bars of Monster Mash while he worked, that just made it all the better. It was late—early, really—and his eyes burned and his shoulders ached. Posture, he reminded himself as he straightened and stretched, was something he definitely needed to work on. He’d told himself he was going to pack it in earlier than usual. Though his findings on his newest project were fascinating they were also as slow as molasses in January. Still, his mind always seemed to find something to pick at. Once again, most of the night was gone. “And I need a breather,” Matthew whispered to nobody. What he really needed to do was go home and sleep, but that didn’t stop him from tugging off his glasses and dropping them onto his desk. His eyes would appreciate the break and he didn’t need them for things that weren’t up close, anyway. His vision was plenty sufficient to navigate the hallways toward the balcony that many of the staff members used for breaks. As always, the moment he stepped outside he was awed by how bright the September sky was. California skies had been positively gloomy in comparison, Los Angeles’s more than the rest. While there were places where the stars weren’t drowned out by light pollution or hidden behind the smog of ten million vehicular emissions, even the best of the best of places weren’t Wyoming. He’d been in Wyoming just over three months and his system still hadn’t gotten used to how clean and fresh the air seemed. He knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. There were far too many oil and gas operations in Wyoming to convince Matthew that was all clear in the star-studded or baby blue beyond, but it was a heck of a lot better than it had been back home. It wasn’t the stars that drew him here in the wee hours of the morning, though. It was the bats. There was something about the construction of the Center that drew a bucket load of bats, not that Matthew could have said what it was. The thing he found most interesting about the phenomena was that one could find them swooping and swaying around the building’s concrete block walls and its flat, thermoplastic roof at times other than the hour or so between dusk and darkness. Common sense told Matthew it had to do with insect population, reflective lighting, and a lack of predators, but the owls and hawks that were common to the area made that last reason somewhat unlikely. Who really knew, though? Maybe the same things that kept the doctors peeking covertly at dark shadows kept the smarter birds of prey away as well. Regardless, Matthew found himself staring at the tiny, black, soundless beasts for stretches of time that surprised him when he finally thought to check his watch. For creatures of the night with all kinds of Hollywood superstitions behind them, they were surprisingly peaceful to watch. He’d just told himself that he’d better be heading back in when a sound seemed to brush past his ear. He c****d his head, paused, and listened. He almost thought it could have been one of the bats, drawn by the light or maybe the scent of his cologne, but if it had been a bat, then it was one of the most talented bats in history. Because there’d been something awfully weird in the way it had sounded. If he’d been asked to say what that oddness was, he would have had no choice but to admit—foolishly, really—that he’d heard someone speak. His name, even. Which was more ridiculous than imagining someone had spoken in the first place. He was six stories off the ground. He could see every inch of the otherwise empty balcony. Besides, there was no one else on the level Matthew occupied but for a security guard who had been half-asleep, if not completely asleep, when Matthew had walked past him twenty minutes ago; Matthew had checked the sign-in roster just to make sure because he’d wanted to have a chat with one of his colleagues regarding a certain finding Matthew had stumbled across the night before. And there were no after-hours visitors allowed, without exception. Even during the day, not even an expected guest would get past the security gate without a badge—a badge which automatically added their name, picture, and personal details to the roster so that anyone who was anyone would know where they were allowed to be and where they were not. If there was someone out in the darkness whispering his name at barely audible levels, it had to be one of the bats. Or a very talented deer with the ability to fly.