Between a Bear and a Hard Place (Alpha Werebear Romance) (24 page)

“All those soldiers, and you’re the only one who thinks?”

He shrugged. “Not think,” he reminded her. “I’m the only one who wonders.”

She stared at him, mouth wide open.

“What?” he asked. “Are you finished?”

Claire cinched the last chain into place. “A contraction,” she said. “You used one.” A smile crossed her lips, and a hum – a happy sounding one – slipped between the respirator slats on Eighty-Three’s gasmask.

*

“I
’m still trying to wrap my head around an escaped robot with a gasmask strapped to its face turning out to be on our side.”

“Not... a robot,” Eighty-Three said. “I have feelings too, you know.”

Claire was just staring at the two bears on either side of the tied-up... thing. “Then what are you?” Fury asked, with his trademarked eyebrow arch. “And why is that thing strapped on your face?”

Rogue grabbed the side of the mask and pulled. When he did, the hiss of a can of freshly opened tennis balls came out from around the rubber, and a strange, musty odor followed.

Eighty-Three made a panicked shrieking noise. “No!” he hissed. “You don’t... can’t breathe.” The bear released the mask, which somehow sealed itself back onto the blue-gray flesh that lay underneath. After a short coughing fit, the creature sighed in relief.

“Why are you things always so curious?” it asked, the question followed by the now-familiar static-laden hum.

“Why do you sound like a broken radio?” Rogue asked. Claire had to stifle her laugh, but that was what she’d been wondering too, since they first encountered the legion of faceless soldiers months back.

The black, goggle covered eyes flicked. Insects and Eighty-Three had a lot in common, apparently, because those thick, glass-covered eyes had at least two lids that closed in either direction. “And what about the deal with your eyes?” she added, unable to keep from feeding her curiosity.

Eighty-Three took a deep breath, which hummed. “When I broke radio, they stopped being able to trace me. I effectively left the network. But it also, apparently, caused me to not be able to turn off the noise, which I certainly do not like very much.”

“And the eyes?”

“They are for keeping the cameras clean. My actual eyes are not very strong anymore. I would rather not go into the intricacies of my anatomy because,” the non-contracting voice hummed to a halt for a moment. “I am not, myself, sure. My memories come back only infrequently. I only remember faceless men, or masked ones. I remember screams, and then nothing else. You are aware that I could break this?”

Rogue, Fury, and Claire all exchanged a confused glance as their captive simply pulled on the chain binding his wrists and broke it with no effort at all.

“Why did you—?”

“Because if we are going to break into the building together to rescue your friends and get my answers, I needed you to trust me.”

“That makes a surprising amount of sense,” Claire said.

“You call me a robot, but you are continuing to be surprised when I think logically?”

He had them there.

Claire looked at him, equal parts Data, Darth Vader, and someone who had, in fact, rescued all three of their lives in the wake of a clone attack.
Clone attack. Clones? This can’t be real, can it? I never asked that about magical werebears, but for some reason, the idea of actual clones replacing my friends is... well if anything is a step too far, that would be it.

“I am smiling,” he said in a tone so flat that it must have been a joke. “And that was a joke. I do not have lips. At least, not like the ones you are used to seeing.”

There was a hole – a palpable, gnawing hole. They spent so long separated from the
other
Broken Pine alphas that when she finally saw Jill again, she felt like she’d come back to an old friend. The worst of it though was the horrible feeling of betrayal.

“How did I not know it?” she asked herself more than anyone else. “How could I be so close to him, feel him against my skin like that, feel him,” she swallowed and blushed lightly. “Just... how?”

Rogue put a massive, callused hand on her shoulder. Fury slipped his arm around her waist. “He fooled us both,” the softer-spoken, slightly-smaller bear whispered. “And if you think you feel bad, imagine being cooped up in a cell with him your whole life and
still
being fooled.

Still, a shudder crept through Claire’s body, chilling her soul. She’d looked into those
things’
eyes. She had seen the awful, wretched reality of what GlasCorp was capable of, and worst of all? She was a
part
of the whole tragedy.

“Holy
shit
,” she breathed, sitting down hard on a stump that was luckily nearby, else she would have ass-planted in a patch of squishy moss. Eighty-Three, Rogue, and Fury all looked her way at the same time. She just started shaking her head. Back and forth, back and forth, her brain felt like the pendulum in a really awful clock that had done really awful things without even knowing it.

“I trapped all of you.
I
did all this. If it weren’t for me, you’d still have your clan,” she looked at the bears, and then to Eighty-Three, “would still have your family and your identity and your memories and whatever else you’ve lost.”

“Now wait just a minute,” Fury said, though when he stood, Rogue joined him. “I don’t know you how figure you had anything to do with things that went twenty years ago.”

“Or ten. Or... however many it’s been.”

“Hey!” Fury piped up. “You used a contraction! That’s very good!”

“Thank you,” Eighty-Three hummed.

Claire indulged in a brief smile before her gloom took her again. “It’s just... I was right there, the
whole
time this was going on. God
damn
it, I went to the lab where they were keeping you,” her eyes pleaded with Fury, moist with tears that needed to escape. “My mate, my love, I walked by your cage every night for years and never knew anything about it, except that every time I went downstairs my birthmark itched. I thought I had a fungus or something.”

Eighty-Three’s voice box clicked, he let out a humming sound and fell silent for a short moment. “Actually,” he said, “did you just say you worked in the lab where they held the fleabags?”

“First he uses contractions, now he’s trying out humor. You’re the closest thing to a teenager I’ve ever come across that didn’t have acne,” Fury said.

“I might,” Eighty-Three replied. “I don’t remember.”

Everyone sat uncomfortably until he started up with that weird, whirring laugh. “And now I’m trying self-deprecation. Do you see? You insulted me by calling me a teenager, but then said I did not have acne. I, not particularly knowing what I look like under all of this, said that I might actually
have
acne. Do you see?”

“Holy shit, and now he’s pulling get-its with bad jokes. I wish King was here, he’d be right at home,” Rogue said, a sad smile crossing his face. “What’re the chances we’re going to find them?”

“In one piece? Alive? These are two different things.” He coughed. “Not high,” Eighty-Three said as Claire looked on, her eyes moving from face to face, studying them. She’d even started recognizing particular tics of Eighty-Three, like the way he cocked his head, or tugged at one of the sides of his faceplate from time to time. “Then again, you were both supposed to be dead. You were attacked by Clods and survived. You,” he pointed at Rogue, “somehow survived a broken back. You were bent like a crooked arrow, you—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m still feeling it,” the gruff, brash bear said, cocking a half smile. “Let’s think instead about what we can do. After all, we both survived attacks that were supposed to kill us, right?”

Eighty-Three nodded.

“Broken Pines are made of sterner stuff than GlasCorp thinks,” Fury said. “We’ll get them back. There aren’t any chances or guesses. We’re getting them – and everyone else – back.”

“All right,” Rogue said. “I knew I liked this guy.”

For a second, Claire swore she saw an iris through the glass goggles on Eighty-Three’s. And then a moment later, she could almost see the corner of a thin-lipped mouth twitching in a smile.

“Wait,” she said. “I think I’ve got an idea.”

“Uh-oh,” Fury said, feigning a wince. “This could be dangerous.”

The punch she threw wasn’t very strong, but the kiss he caught her in afterwards? The strongest she’d ever felt.

*

“T
his,” Fury said, “is crazy.”

“Shut up.” Claire wasn’t paying much attention to him as she dug down into the fake sod and then the scrunchy, foam core ground that reminded her of so many middle school projects. “Time to get serious.”

“Right,” he said with a grin. “Serious about digging through fake dirt.”

Just about then, Claire struck again with her makeshift pick, and a beam of light shot skyward through the hole she’d punched. “I figured they’d at least have a ceiling.”

Fury took a deep breath and let it out slowly with a slight whistle on the end. “Would you look at that?”

As Claire bent to take a peak, Fury was already on the hacked phone, which was still dead but worked to contact Eighty-Three. “You would not believe what we just found,” he whispered. “It’s like a hive... an anthill, something.”

“Would you say it is like a well-oiled machine?” Claire heard the staticky voice ask.

“Yeah,” Fury said. “Something along those lines.”

“A well-organized colony?”

In the background, she could make out Rogue groaning heavily and then complaining about something to do with Eighty-Three’s attempts at humor.

“You could say that.”

“A smoothly-running—”

“Yes! Shit, at first he didn’t talk at all, and now he won’t stop. I can’t wait until he catches some
Sanford and Son
reruns and won’t shut up with the quotes.”

Claire sat back on her heels, shaking her head. “Wait, when did you see
Sanford and Son
?”

“They piped it into our cell most of the time on an old black and white television set that was stuck in the top corner. It went back and forth between that,
Hill Street Blues
and some infomercials.”

Watching the bear’s ruggedly beautiful face, she fetched the phone from his hand. “Eighty-Three?” she asked. “Uh, I think—”

“Would you say it resembles a perfectly-running factory?”

“More than you know,” she said. That seemed to stop him. “I think that we just found...” She looked up at Fury who was shaking his head. She took the message. “I think you better come here. Just trust me, okay?”

“Roger dodger,” he said, before clicking off the receiver.

“What’s that? I can’t really make it out, but it looks like,” Claire handed the binoculars to Fury. “Looks like someone in a wheel chair rolling around down there.”

A single word, two syllables, dripped from Fury’s lips with such hatred that Claire could feel the heat. “Eckert,” he hissed. “I’d know that sweaty egg-head anywhere. I can’t wait to take another bite out of him. This time though, I won’t leave anything to attach.”

What would have only months ago made Claire’s stomach wretch now did not. “I won’t be eating him,” she said, “but I want to get at least one good shot in. Deal?”

Fury nodded. “So, you still haven’t told me what the plan is. And here we are, hovering above the place we’ve been hunting.”

“Right,” Claire said, peering through the binoculars and getting a good read of the place.

It was, hauntingly close to what Eighty-Three had said. A well-running factory. At one end of a massive conveyor, suits that looked just like his were rolling through her field of vision. Every four seconds – she counted – the belts would stop with a pneumatic hiss. Mechanical arms extended and pressed something into the front of the chest piece, and then on they went, down the line to the next station just out of eyeshot.

There weren’t any people in them – not yet anyway – and for that, Claire was infinitely thankful. Eckert wheeled up to one of the stations and with the help of two Eighty-Three lookalikes, stood up and took hold of the lapel of one of the suits. He inspected it for a moment, nodded and relaxed back into his chair with a creak that was audible even up as far as they were.

He wheeled off, rolled by one of his stewards. “I’m just glad there weren’t any Clods sitting around. I don’t think I could take the shock of seeing what those things are before they turn into... other things.”

“How do you know there weren’t?” Fury asked, cocking an eyebrow. He sounded flippant, but he wasn’t. There was just no way to know, no way to tell. “So... plan?”

“Oh, yeah,” Claire said. “Well, the first part of the plan was to poke through this stuff since I had a feeling there would be something under it. We got that taken care of.”

“Yeah, and then the next part would be...?”

“Well, we have two options. First would be that we just jump down there and go ape-shit.”

“Bear shit.”

“Right. Bear shit,” she smiled in such a way that the freckle on her left cheek disappeared into a dimple. Fury caught a glimpse of it, and for a moment just watched her face with the moonlight dancing a quicksilver pool over her eyes, her cheeks, her nose. “Option two,” she interrupted his fantasy, “would be to come up with a better plan.”

Suddenly, the phone started buzzing. Claire plucked it out of her back pocket and held it to her head, used to the strange method of operating it by now. She frowned a little, and then shook the receiver.

“Does that ever work?” Fury asked. “Shaking it, I mean. Doesn’t seem like that would—”

“H-hello? Hello? Is this thing on? I’m so tired of guard duty. I want to get out and blow up some labs or something.”

It was really hard for Claire not to at least have a snicker at Rogue’s expense. For all his world weariness and street smarts, sometimes he boned up incredibly funny things to bone up. But, he was also loaded on God knows what that Eighty-Three put in his veins to keep him from realizing just how bad his back still was, so that was a reason to let it slide.

“Hey Rogue,” she said with a smile. “I’m glad you finally got that thing away from Eighty-Three. You know you aren’t in any shape to be playing action hero just yet. You might be a fast-healing bear, but you were
really
messed up. Any word from Jill?”