Tora watched Aspen as she slept, their hands still touching. Each time she tried to loosen her grip and pry her hand away, Aspen would tighten hers and inch closer. After the fifth attempt—with Aspen steadily invading her side of the bed, making an all-out snuggle imminent—Tora finally gave up. Sighing in defeat, she tightened her hand around Aspen’s. That one simple gesture seemed to do the trick. Aspen finally settled in place, and the persistent inching ceased.
Was holding hands really a big deal? Tora decided it wasn’t that bad in the big scheme of things, not if it provided Aspen with the comfort she so obviously needed right now. There were worse offenses. Like kissing. Kissing was most definitely off-limits. She assured herself their relationship would never get that far.
Above all else, Aspen needed Tora to be her mentor. She was committed to training Aspen to the very best of her ability. As a Myriad who knew little about the ways of their people, Aspen would have to devote herself entirely to learning and making up for lost time.
Tora had feared Aspen’s first attempt to shift would be catastrophic, but her shapeshifting was spot-on. The features of each animal were exquisite, not carbon copies of the animals she’d seen. Aspen had woven her own colors and details into each animal like a gifted artist. First-time shifting was usually sloppy, unimpressive, even comical at times. Fledgling Shrouds needed time, practice, and experience to perfect the details of their primary animal. Aspen, however, had nailed each one her first time out of the gate. Was this typical for Myriads, or was Aspen just particularly adept at shifting? Tora had no way of knowing. She wished she could find more information on Myriads to better prepare them both. But they’d have to make do with what little they had for now.
Her mind was finally starting to quiet when she remembered the scars on Aspen’s stomach. Aspen had chosen to tell her the truth about how they got there. That type of honesty took courage. Not privy to the details of Aspen’s life in foster care, Tora could only imagine how bad it must’ve been to decide that living on the streets would be better. Skye’s story bore an uncanny resemblance to Aspen’s, which, she now realized, accounted for their instant connection.
With everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, Skye’s suicide attempt had taken a back seat. Tora would make a point of checking in with the girl tomorrow. She was glad Skye had someone she could trust, someone who’d gone through what she did.
She studied Aspen’s thick dark eyebrows and silky black hair. She’d always wondered what it would be like to wake up and not have to battle with her curls every morning. Confident Aspen was sleeping deeply, she reached over with her free hand and swept Aspen’s hair aside. High cheekbones, full lips, and a refined nose rested on a broad moon-shaped face. Even in sleep, Aspen’s beauty was spellbinding.
She took a deep breath, bracing herself for whatever lay ahead. Despite her efforts to the contrary, her feelings for this Myriad were deepening.
* * *
Timothy Decker looked up from his early morning breakfast as Finkleman rapped lightly on the Oval Office door and stepped inside. “General Vickers is on the line, sir.”
Tim had personally appointed Vickers as head of the SEA. It was a well-known fact that Vickers was an extremist in his views on Shrouds and a ruthless sonofabitch when it came to managing their numbers. All in all, the perfect man for the job.
He set his fork down, took a swig of orange juice, and pressed a button to take the call. With the intel from Finkleman, he’d reached out to Vickers, asking him to oversee the annihilation of the sanctuary and everything in it.
“Morning, Mr. President.”
“What do you have for me, General?”
“We’re still getting a layout of the underground nest, sir.”
He didn’t care about operational logistics. He just wanted it gone. “Have you come up with a plan to destroy it?”
“That’s what I called to talk to you about, sir. The infestation appears to be extensive. Extreme pest control measures are needed.”
Tim leaned back in his chair. He liked where this was heading. “What do you have in mind?”
“So far as we can tell, the nest has its own air supply and ventilation system. This is the perfect opportunity to test Z-23 in the field, sir.”
“The nerve agent?”
“Affirmative.”
The things Tim valued most about himself were his decisive nature and his unflinching ability to take action when others around him hesitated. “Do it,” he said. He ended the call with a press of a button, anxious to get back to his meal.
* * *
Aspen sat up in bed and glanced at the time on the bedside clock: 5:41 a.m. Tora was there beside her. Even in sleep, she looked radiant. One hand was tucked under her cheek, the other wrapped snugly around the sleeping bag. Her golden locks spilled across the pillow and reached out enticingly. Aspen found herself wondering what it would be like to run her fingers through Tora’s hair.
Tora stirred, opened her eyes, and looked up. “How long have you been awake?”
Aspen watched the digital clock as it changed to 5:42 a.m. “Thirty seconds longer than you.”
Tora sat up and stretched. Her curls were pointing in every possible direction.
“Your curls…” she said, trying hard not to smile. “There are more of them. And they look very angry.”
With substantial effort, Tora wrestled her hair into a makeshift bun before returning her gaze. “There,” she said, patting her head and checking for stragglers. “Better?”
Aspen nodded.
“How are you feeling this morning?”
Aspen did a quick internal checkup. She felt well-rested. Strong. Famished. But what she was craving surprised her. She wanted oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and a toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese in the worst way. “Hungry,” she said finally. “But not for chocolate. I think I want…normal food?” She checked her own forehead for fever. “Something must be wrong.”
“Remember what I said yesterday?” Tora turned on the bed to face her. “I suspected your sugar cravings had something to do with the vaccine you were given to thwart your shapeshifting abilities. Your cravings are bound to change now that you’re letting your body do what comes naturally.”
Aspen frowned, unsure of how she felt about this change. She’d been eating that way for so long she couldn’t imagine anything different.
Tora pressed two fingers against the inside of Aspen’s wrist and checked her watch, counting heartbeats. After a minute, she looked up. “Sixty beats. Perfect resting heart rate.” She climbed out of bed and went to the duffel bag in the corner. Toothbrush and workout clothes in hand, she headed to the bathroom. “Up for a quick run?”
“As long as there’s an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet afterward.” Aspen stood from the bed and stretched, careful not to reopen the wounds on her shoulder and thigh. Surprisingly, she felt no pain and glanced down to realize her wounds were nearly healed.
She was already dressed by the time Tora emerged from the bathroom. They made their way to the indoor track and set out for a leisurely five-mile run. With an unspoken truce, they ran together this time instead of against one another.
“Why’d you decide to be a cop?” Tora asked.
“Oscar,” Aspen said honestly. “He used to come home and tell me all about his days on the streets as a beat cop. I figured out pretty quickly that’s what I wanted to do. He worked the day shift, so we ate dinner together every night. I’d just sit there listening to everything he saw—all the different people and situations he encountered and how he handled them. He’d reflect on the mistakes he made, how he could’ve handled things differently, and what he could do better the next time around. Pretty soon, he was running me through all sorts of scenarios, asking me how I’d handle them if I were a cop. Some families play board games. We played cop scenarios.” Aspen laughed, remembering how she couldn’t get enough of it. It was still their favorite game to play over Sunday brunch at IHOP. They awarded each other extra points for creativity and had been keeping a running tally for seventeen years. Oscar was currently up by three points. Since there was an endless supply of what-ifs in the policing world, they never ran out of subject matter. “My training started long before I entered the police academy,” she went on. “Back then, Oscar was my hero. Still is. I would’ve done anything to be like him.”
“He sounds like a good man,” Tora said with a smile.
“What about you?” she asked, wondering if what she’d just shared made Tora think about her dad. “What made you want to be a doctor?”
“The obvious answer would be my father because he was a doctor. But in reality, he had very little to do with it. He tutored me, encouraged me, and supported my choices along the way, but being a doctor—a world-renowned surgeon, as fate would have it—was never his passion.”
Aspen couldn’t imagine doing something she didn’t feel passionate about. She believed everyone had a calling. It was up to each person to figure out what that calling was. Like her, some figured it out early in life. She’d met more than a few who never figured it out at all, and she always found that incredibly sad.
“It was actually my mom who set me on the path to becoming a doctor.”
Aspen was confused. “I thought you said she died during childbirth.”
“She did. Identifying why Shroud mothers are dying during childbirth and how to prevent it is what inspired me to go into medicine.”
A lofty and admirable goal. “Have you figured out why they’re dying?”
“Shroud bodies release an anticoagulant enzyme during childbirth. In certain Shrouds, this enzyme is produced in excess, which leads to massive postpartum hemorrhaging.”
Aspen knew little to nothing about medicine. “Can’t you just give them some kind of—I don’t know—clotting medication?”
“A colleague of mine tried that already. Administering an antifibrinolytic before, during, or immediately after childbirth triggers the body to shapeshift and renders the patient permanently unable to shift back into human form.”
An anti-what? Aspen shook her head, deciding she didn’t need to know the details. “But isn’t that better than dying?”
“Not for a Shroud.”
Aspen thought about how challenging it would be to remain in animal form for the rest of her life. “What about your dad?” she asked, changing the subject so she wouldn’t be tempted to share the details of her vision. “If he wasn’t passionate about medicine, why’d he become a doctor?”
“His passion was building this sanctuary. He predicted this day would come—the day humans would decide they didn’t want us around anymore. He figured our people would need a safe haven sooner or later.” Tora laughed. “I’m pretty sure the only reason he became a doctor was to make lots of money. Almost every penny he made went into building this sanctuary. Getting this place up and running was his sole mission in life. He was in the process of recruiting an elite group of Shrouds to invest in building sanctuaries in other parts of the world when he was killed.”
As much as Aspen admired his dedication to helping Shrouds, there had to be a more efficient way to address the problem. Turning the tables on the SEA and wiping them off the face of the earth might be a good place to start.
“The investors bailed as soon as they learned of his death. They were convinced he was killed because the government caught wind of the sanctuary. It took me over a year to convince them my father was murdered simply because he was a Shroud. When they saw the sanctuary here was unharmed, they began to revisit the idea of investing in others.” Tora shook her head. “But it’s been a long road with them. They’re moving at a snail’s pace because they’re afraid for their lives.”
Those same Shrouds were probably wishing they’d listened and invested a lot sooner—if they were still alive. Aspen shuddered to imagine what was going on at the surface.
There was a long silence between them as they ran. She imagined they were both thinking about the Shrouds who were being massacred at this very moment.
Tora slowed to a walk and set her hands on her hips, breathing hard. “Being tucked away down here while our people are being slaughtered”—she shook her head—“it’s a lot harder than I thought.”
Aspen reached out to set a reassuring hand on Tora’s arm and was instantly rewarded with a vision. Something was trapped beneath Tora’s skin. A transmitter. When Tora was darted, a microscopic transmitter had been injected into her body, allowing the government to track her.
Aspen got a quick glimpse into SEA headquarters. Top officials had gathered and were now calculating the dimensions of this underground facility. The faces sitting around the table were cold and detached. It was clear to her they thought of Shrouds as nothing more than cockroaches that needed to be exterminated, immediately and without remorse. They were trying to determine the best and most efficient way to eradicate the nest. She shuddered at the term.
She took a deep breath and pulled her hand away. Time to alert the others. The SEA knew they were here.