Page 80 of The Bull's Head

The tech stepped forward, scalpel in hand, then sliced into Cooper’s brain. He arched his back, crying out as they removed bits of the muscle, then stabbed a needle in it, extracting fluid of some sort. Byk stood in mute horror as the scene progressed. Then the lights became even brighter and another table could be seen. The person on the table was… him? He didn’t remember any of this.

Without saying a word, the men and women around the table snipped chunks of Byk’s brain, tossing them into a pan, then replaced them with the bits they’d removed from Cooper. Byk watched, unable to move, as things progressed faster, like a movie on 3x speed. When they’d finished the surgery, they injected the fluid they’d removed from Cooper into Byk’s brain.

“Not my brother, please,” Cooper pleaded. “Not Callum! Take me instead. Leave him alone. If you hurt him, I’ll kill you!” He coughed, blood splattering the floor, and when he spoke again, his voice broke. “I’m sorry Callum, so sorry. I tried to keep them away from you. I didn’t want them to touch you. I shouldn’t have tried to make you stay. This is all my fault.”

“It’s done,” one of the doctors said.

“Then let’s finish this.”

They brought out prods and shocked Cooper, who screamed until his voice went out. He thrashed on the table, his muscles spasming and contorting as he assumed his other form. They continued the torture until his shift was completed. The transformation had done something to him. His head was misshapen, his eyes wide, and he was in obvious pain. Cooper lowered his head and gored one of the doctors, dark blood blossoming on their white coat. Another doctor screamed, and Cooper turned and went after her.

Then someone came in with a gun. They shot Cooper in the head, over and over. Still, Cooper fought. Finally one of the bullets hit the exposed brain, and it… splattered. Then, finally, Cooper Martin lay still, his eyes wide open, but unseeing, unmoving.

This was his brother’s final moments. This was the fear and anger that Byk had been enduring. They’d somehow put Cooper’s memories into his head, and they were tearing Byk apart.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Byk turned and found Cooper standing before him. Not as a bull, not as a test subject, but as he remembered him, all tawny skin stretched over a muscular frame. Handsome, gleaming hair, those amazing eyes. “Cooper?”

He smiled, such an alien reaction from him. “No, not Cooper. Well, not the one you remember. I never had the chance to tell you. No, that’s not true. I had plenty of chances, but never took any of them. I was a coward. So afraid of not being the golden boy, of disappointing everyone. Especially you.”

“Me?”

“You were my brother. For a while, you looked up to me, and I spat on that. I should have helped you become what it was you dreamed about. Instead, I only thought of you leaving me, of me being alone, and I panicked. I went after you, planned on begging you to take me with, to not leave me here. I… wanted to protect you. Or maybe for you to protect me.”

“From what?”

“Mom and Dad, they…. Everything was mortgaged. They were going to lose the farm. My winnings went out faster than they came in, and I was getting old for a bull. No one wanted to see me anymore, preferring younger ones. There were no new prizes. Dad came up with the idea of studding me. He… found these people could inject me with something that would keep me as a bull permanently. He planned to sell my spunk, to impregnate Highland cows. I tried to tell him it wouldn’t work. I was a shifter, so couldn’t get a cow pregnant. It didn’t matter. In the end, the lure of fast money made him go ahead with his plan. Those men were there to take both of us that night. I tried to fight them off, to keep them away from you, but… I failed you.”

Their parents did this? “How could they?”

Cooper shrugged. “Easy money. Dad liked it, feeling important in the herd. Then wanted to be part of a bigger group, but that would take more money. So he contacted a friend, who sent him a link to Hyde’s people. Had to wonder what Dad thought when he found out they were never intending on paying him. It made me think Hyde took him and Mom too. They might be dead.”

Fear and anger warred for supremacy. “This is bullshit! They were our fucking parents!”

“We stopped being useful to them,” Cooper confirmed. “It doesn’t help that there is a rot in the packs. A group who wants us outed to the world. I heard Hyde talking to someone on the phone, about getting irrefutable proof of the existence of shifters. That was his biggest reason for all the experiments. He wanted to present the findings to the world, to show them what lurks among them.” Cooper shimmered. “And they’re close.”

“No, the pack killed all the scientists.”

“Hyde was a small cog in a big machine. They’re not the only ones who have an interest here. There were men who came to witness some experiments. I think they were from the government, maybe the military. From what it sounded like, they want to weaponize shifters, use them in combat. To remove their empathy and turn them into mindless killing machines.”

It was horrifying in the extreme, and Byk believed it.

“I’ll tell Mal and Damon. They’ll know what to do.” He reached for Cooper, but his hand slid right through as though Cooper was nothing more than mist. “What happens to you?”

Cooper smiled. It was the dazzling smile that made people fall in love with him. “I’m not sure what you mean? I’m dead. I knew it when they shot me to keep me from getting to you.”

“You were… trying to save me?”

Cooper looked pained, his lips drawing into a harsh line “The day they tried to take us, I knew they were after you. I tried to yell for you to run. To get the hell out of there. I was going to cover you.” The image became fuzzy for a moment, before sharpening once again. “You’re my brother, and no matter how much of an asshole I was, I always loved you. I’m just sorry I had to die to be able to tell you.”

If he was dead, how could Byk be seeing him? “How are we talking?”

“We’re not. That day in the lab, they shot you up with my memories. All you’re hearing is what I remembered. What I wished I had time to say to you. That’s why I’m fading away too. They said the experiments were never expected to be permanent. It was supposed to be the first step toward perfecting failed research of years gone by. When they did them back then, the animals never retained them, but this? You and me? They thought the success was maybe because we were related. Whatever it was, we’ve moved them closer than they’d ever been before. You can’t let them take you again, because they won’t let you go. Callum, you have to know, the Chimera is coming, and he wants you.”

The what? “Cooper, I?—”

“Not Cooper, just his memory, but he knew you loved him too, so that made it okay for him to die if it could save you.”

---