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Beast’s Escape

By Bunny Hops

Kayla, 19 year old female

Luther, born 1843 London

Nebraska... Shit. He was still in Nebraska. He should have been safe in the dense woods of the Pacific Northwest.

Even before he cracked his eyelids open Luther knew where he was. He could smell it. And it stank of Nebraska.

But he wasn’t above ground. No. He was deep beneath the flat desolate surface of Nebraska. The only reason he knew he was in Nebraska was the stench that permeated out of his captor’s pores, and from the odor that clung to their clothes, especially the dirt on their shoes. They looked exquisitely cleaned, but Luther’s keen sense of smell told him everything.

A hundred and fifty years ago or so he was born into the soot and grim that was Victorian London. After earning his gift he fled across the pond to the Americas, back when they were still “the states” or “the America’s” and not “America” or “’Murica.”

How long has he been down here, down in this pit in a pit of a state? Luther couldn't remember. His memory was foggy at best, skipping scenes as he bounced in and out of consciousness. For how weak he felt he knew it had to have been awhile.

The pit he was in had smooth concrete walls -- or rather, wall, it was was completely rounded without any corners, maybe ten meters in diameter. Luther was strapped down to one wall opposite the one door, feet spread wide and shackled to the floor, arms chained out wide, completely naked. Probes and wires pierced his back, neck, and shoulders. Across the empty expanse of the room sat a dark skinned man in a fashionable charcoal suit, sitting on a metal folding chair reading a thick book.

The man noticed Luther's stirring, "Well, well, good morning, Sleepy Head. Do you remember me this time?"

The man's voice was deep and smooth -- baritone -- aptly complementary to his muscular physique hidden behind those expensive threads. Luther did remember the man, but only vaguely. What was his name?

"Yeah, as I've said many a time before, memory loss is a side effect of the sedatives we have to put you on," the man said, putting down his book and getting off the seat. "You don't remember, but you put up quit a fight, which is why we need such unfortunate means to keep you secure. The memory loss does hamper with the integration, but we're working through that, aren't we?

"Now, to answer the questions you always ask every time we meet again for the first time:

"We know you're a werewolf -- you don't like that term but no one cares. You're a werewolf. You're being held here so we can run some tests, and discern what gives you your abilities, and hopefully replicate them safely. Controllably. Deliberately.

"We don't know where your little jailbait girlfriend Kayla is, whether she's alive or dead, or the state of your abominable offspring. Nor do we care. It's just you and us, Luther, and the quicker you cooperate the sooner this will all be over."

"Over." Luther knew what that meant. No way were they going to allow him to leave. Once they were done with him they'd terminate him. He knew the man was lying about Kayla, too. Not her whereabouts -- that smelled true -- but not caring about her. Once these people were done with him they'd seek her out, if they didn't what have a search team out looking already. Her and their litter. His children. Be they wolves, or humans, or something in between, these people would rest at nothing to find them and study them. And terminate them out of existence.

Cole. The man's name was Cole. It came back to Luther in a rush. The sedative must be wearing off. For all the time he's been down here -- he still couldn't remember how long it's been, be it days or weeks or months -- Luther now knew he had given the man nothing. Didn't relinquish any information or allow any sort of camaraderie to develop between them. Throughout the interrogation and torture Luther has only ever seen Cole. When he was capture there were police, federal agents, who knows who else, but down here, in this concrete pit below the buffalo grass of Nebraska, he had only ever seen Cole.

Which demands the question: who is this "we" Cole keeps referring to?

Cole closed the distance between them, hands clasped behind his back and puffing out his firm pecs. His posture was practiced and exquisite.

"All we need to know, Luther, is how you do it? How does it work, how are you able to transform into a wolf or beast on command? I know it can be hard to express such feelings into words, but just try. Just try and this --"

Intense pain radiated through Luther, coursing from the probes in his back to the tips of his extremities. Every muscle tightened uncontrollably like a full body Charlie horse. Just as quickly as it came, it passed. The release from pain was better than any orgasm he'd ever had.

"-- will all be over with."

Luther needed his strength back to escape. He was in no condition to break out of his confines on his current state, but he knew they would be no match for him in his beast form. Transforming takes energy, though. Energy he did not have. And would changing in front of Cole, while hooked up to these machines, give them the information they wanted out of him? Luther was determined to give them nothing. Not just to punish them, but to save Kayla and their kids.

Despite the chasms in his memory, Luther knew he'd been in a Groundhog Day time loop of resisting Cole's interrogations. If anything was going to change, then Luther needed to make it happen. Maybe giving them an inch would allow him to take a mile.

On the curved concrete wall to his back were electronic and pneumatic machines, whirling, buzzing, softly beeping, all for god-knows-what specific purposes. Sedating, sampling, monitoring, but what else?

He needed to free himself from the machines, free himself from the sedative dripping into his spinal column. Only then would he have the energy to transform into a canine beast and the strength to wrench himself free from these shackles. They didn't allow him much room to maneuver, so he'd need to get creative.

"You're right," he began. The break in days -- weeks -- months? -- of silence clearly startled Cole, even though he quickly recovered and played it cool. "It's hard to put into words. How I transform."

Luther was deliberately slowing his speech down, slurring his words. His mouth was dry, and his throat was raw from underuse which helped his act.

Cole was intrigued by this turn of events, "do try." He extend an arm from behind his back and gestured for Luther to continue. Cole's suave demeanor belied his rapt eagerness. Eagerness that would be easy to exploit.

"You see," Luther began slowly, allowing the words to swirl around his mouth before letting them escape his lips, "you see, the thing with it." He closed his eyes, dipped his head down, and showed his breathing. Seemingly catching himself he perked up and tried again, "the thing with it...."

"Dammit all," Cole muttered under his breath. His cool broken. He went over the the machines to Luther's right, fiddling with dials and switches. "We're finally making progress and its all going down the drain thanks to these damn machines messing up the dosage again."

Practically instantly Luther felt himself awaken. This must be what a bump of cocaine was like, going from drowsy to fully awake in a snap. He couldn't tip his hand just yet though, he'd only have one opportunity for this ruse to work else this avenue would be closed to him forever. He didn't know what tricks he had tried to pay previously, if any, but this one felt new.

"You see the thing is," Luther mumbled under his breathe, barely audible but more coherent than he had been.

"Yes, what was that?" Cole leaned in to better hear Luther's confession. "Please continue." He was clearly struggling to maintain his practiced air of composure.

"The trick to transforming," Luther began again, speaking clearly. He raised his head, meeting Cole eye to eye. "Practice"

As quick as he could Luther transformed into his beast form: half man, half wolf. His human form was young, small, and frail, but the beast of him was large and strong, with tight ropes of muscles rippling beneath coarse fur. The sudden growth of his wrist bones and muscles alone was enough to snap the shackles as if they were made of paper. The constraints on his feet met a similar fate and they sloughed off with barely a notice.

Cole's eyes widened and his pupils dilated, but that was the extend of movement he managed before Luther wrapped a grizzled paw around his neck and slammed him towards the floor.

Before the man was halfway to the cracked concrete floor his suit disintegrated. In an instant the fifty-two hundred dollar bespoke attire evaporated into a cloud of loose fibers. Through the effervescent mist of destroyed Italian menswear Luther made out a mass of taught lean muscles covered in coarse obsidian fur. He could smell the musky funk of the fur, a stank that had permeated the room that he just couldn't place until then. The raw oily musk of werewolf fur.

Cole flung Luther halfway across the room but he managed to stay on his feet, sliding across the floor and digging deep groves in the concrete with his toe claws. The probes and wires attached to his back were torn from his flesh. Cole slowly stood upright with skilled menace. His yellow eyes seemingly glowed as he glowered disapprovingly at his freed captive.

"Try as I might, Luther," Cole's baritone voice managed through his canine maw, "I just can't seem to control it. But here I am now. Transformed. And I'm sure we're going to know all we need from the data you just allowed us. You tipped your hand and lost. This can finally end now. "

Anticipating Luther's shock -- not only the shock at his sudden transformation, but also at his ability to speak so eloquently human after his transformation -- Cole added condescendingly, "What, you couldn't have thought we had you down here just to torture you, right? Of course not. You're intelligent, you must've at least guessed we were experimenting with it. Tweaking it. Improving it. Modifying it to suit our needs. After seeing animalistic power who wouldn't be in line to volunteer?"

Good, keep talking, Luther thought as he slyly studied the room. This guy was clearly stronger than him and was on his home turf. If he was going to fight him he'd need every advantage he could get, and the longer Cole monologued the longer Luther had to plan.

Unfortunately -- or fortunately, Luther wasn't sure yet -- the room was pretty sparse and empty. Beside a folding chair, the only other furnishings were the equipment he'd been tied to moments before. The equipment looked oddly old, boxy electrical panels painted seafoam green, with electrical and pneumatic leads, tubing that wouldn't be out of place in a 1970s dental office. But also a couple of modern LED flat panel monitors. Was this hodgepodge setup the result of a skilled but unfunded group of amateurs cobbling together a laboratory the best they could, or a convert government operation on a shoestring budget hampered by bureaucracy? Did it even matter?

As Cole droned on -- self congratulating himself on his success at replicating and improving Luther's cursed gift, how Luther just unwittingly taught him the last piece of the puzzle: that emotion was the key to controlling the transformation -- Luther, in one fluid motion, shoulder-rolled to his left, grabbed the folding chair and flung it directly at Cole who bashed it away effortlessly. The crushed chair caromed off the laboratory equipment and clattered to the floor.

With Cole's arm still high from deflecting the chair, Luther went low, bounding on all fours, covering the distance in a flash and tackling him at the waist. Snarling, he sank his sharp teeth into his thigh as they both tumbled backwards.

Cole recovered quickly, grabbing Luther by the scruff of his nape like he was an insolent welp and flung him back towards the laboratory equipment. Luther felt weak. Had he been down here long enough for his muscles to atrophy? Had the torturous experiments subjected to him drained him so much? Or was Cole just that much stronger, that much more in control of his power?

"Don't make this harder than it needs to be, pup," Cole went on as he got to all fours, "You've already lost, no need to stretch this out longer than it needs to be."

He lunged at Luther, baring his teeth and snarling as he flew across the room. At the last instant Luther juked out of the way, briefly making contact with his opponent by using his paws to aid Cole on his forward trajectory, and finesse him into the medical laboratory equipment in the otherwise empty room. He crashed hard into it, smashing and collapsing the old apparatus. Broken pneumatics hissed and cut electronics sparked as Cole added to the cacophony with his own high pitched yelp.

Luther hoped he had got his mark.

Keeping his distance, he circled around Cole, but he remained collapsed amongst the destroyed appliances. The beast wasn't making effort to rise, but it could be a fake out, miming the twitching of an injured animal to bring Luther's guard down. But Luther wasn't some spring pup born yesterday, he was over one hundred and fifty years old and comfortably competent in all his forms, be it human, beast, or wolf.

He circled around until he could make out the side of Cole's neck. The fur was already matted with blood where a jagged piece of metal and plastic tubing about the width of a human thumb stabbed deep inside of him. With any luck the tube still had its connectors attached and was hooked up to the reservoir of sedatives. The equipment looked pretty banged up, but these old military grade hardware were over-designed to last through anything.

Luther made his way to the control panel, standing dangerously close to the injured beast if he wasn't in fact actually injured. He was on guard, but he could smell him now, his blood, his panic, his fear, his spinal fluid. Yes, the beast was injured and the probe was properly placed for maximum effect, just as it had been inserted into Luther before.

Fiddling with the controls he saw Cole mess with earlier, Luther managed to get the blasted machine to cough and sputter, whirling to live once again. Fluid gurgled through the tube and onto Cole's neck and hopefully directly into his spine. His breathing showed and his muscles twitches halted. Luther turned the dial up higher.

He waited as Cole's breathing slowed to a stop. Eventually his heart did the same. Luther turned off the sedative drip and waited a beat, making sure Cole didn't recover. Satisfied, Luther finally went to exit the pit.

The sole door opened out to a wide stairway leading up two levels with access doors at each floor. Luther would need to clear each floor before he could escape, not only to make sure no one snuck up behind him, but to uncover who is behind the operation that abducted him, experimented with his gift to create Beast Cole, and were hunting down Kayla and their offspring.

One floor up there was blood on the door. Not a lot, and well dried, but the scratch marks telegraphed the scene of violence beyond.

The door was unlocked and Luther nudged it open. He cautiously passed through the opening low, scanning all the corners before the rusty hinges stopped screeching.

The place was a mess. Desks, chairs, computers all smashed up, a florescent shop light hung askew from the concrete ceiling but still illuminated the room. Three men in military fatigues were strewn about the room. An arm here, a head there, a pair of legs seemingly growing out of the floor. Blood and guts covered the room -- walls, floor, ceiling, all of it.

This was Cole's doing. Luther just knew. And his name wasn't Cole, either. As the fog from the sedation slowly continued to lift Luther remembered he was a Colonel. He'd gone rogue. Became obsessed with becoming a werewolf and mutinied along with some of his more zealot men. The colonel, not in control of his emotions, must've snapped at some point and toe apart his little soldiers. How Luther knew all this, he didn't quite know. Maybe the colonel confided in him at some point in an attempt to curry reciprocity. Or it was in the air, a miasma of information Luther's beast senses could read that were invisible to the likes of men.

Luther continued to another room. Mostly empty save for some lockers. Open showers and toilets were in the adjacent room, but Luther didn't bother to investigate. He just knew he was the only living creature down in this hole. A tight spiral cast iron staircase brought him up another another floor. It was a small room, with two doors. The one on the left was locked, but Luther's beast strength was no matched for the rusted metal.

The door opened out to the top of an empty cylindrical room a 50 meters deep. Of course. He should've known all along. He had been kept at the very depths of an abandoned nuclear missile silo. What other reason would there be for being so far below the windy plains of Nebraska?

Taking the door to his right he went up a short set of stairs and through one last door.

A steady wind blew across the half meter tall grass. The mid afternoon sun instantly warmed his fur. The air was so fresh and clean it made him regret his previous ruminations on the state.

A scent from impossibly far off struck his nose. It was so faint but distinct and brought him back to the task at hand. He knew what he needed to do, where he needed to go. He transformed fully into a wolf and began the long journey to the northwest. He was going were wolves were protected, and where be knew he'd find Kayla and their offspring.

He was going to Yellowstone.