Page 2 of Unable Omega
He wasn’t sharing that information.
It felt like weeks since I’d left the lab. The researchers kept a schedule, and the woman who came in to give me my breakfast and my morning injection of some concoction that made me sleepy had become lazy in her protocols. I pretended for over a month not to notice the way she forgot to close the door fully behind her after she dropped off the tray of food and went to get the injection.
My bear evolved his metabolism to burn off the injection faster and faster until the poison did little to nothing.
I lay down and closed my eyes, of course, pretending it put me to sleep, but it never did.
That also meant I felt everything they did to me. Every blood draw. Every X-ray. The forced shifting. Back and forth, back and forth. From bear to human and back again.
My bear took a swipe at one of them once.
We paid for that mistake.
The things they’d done to me were mild compared to the others. I’d heard whispers and murmurs about mating experiments. Giving shifters more than one animal. Even breeding experiments.
All of it was nothing less than disgusting, evil behavior.
And they calledusanimals.
My muscles were tight as I slowed to a march. I hadn’t slept very much. I woke up in terror, either from an errant noise in the area or by my own dreams.
I was so alone. In the lab, some of the researchers would call me by name. Greet me. Say good morning but here, there was nothing but the trickle of a stream over rocks, and the leaves flipping and spinning with the power of the wind.
My bear stopped next to a huge oak tree and raised his snout into the air. He leaned against the trunk, trying to get some kind of a break but, in the process, scraped the gash at our side on the bark. He roared but quickly quieted his cry. This wasn’t the time to bring attention to ourselves.
A wave of guilt washed over me as I thought about the researcher called Mary. I’d shoved her out of the way in a rush to escape my cell. I heard her yell in my head. Had she hit her head? Suffered long-term damage?
They’d done evil and horrible things to my kind, but that didn’t mean I would stoop to their level.
I’d acted in self-defense. At the very least self-preservation.
Still, taking a life wasn’t ever on my life goals list, and I lamented in my human mind for what I’d done to get out of there.
Worse, my bear had killed at least two people. I thought he had, anyway. After I got out of the cell on two legs, my bear forced the shift and made sure we got out of there. I’d lit thematch. He set the whole thing on fire. Not the actual building, just an expression.
What are you looking for?I asked him. Not that he would answer. He had shut down the thread of communication between us somewhere in the chaos of escape.
Let me out. Let me find us somewhere to hide,I begged.
No dice. My bear huffed his disagreement through his nose, sending a puff of warm air into the cool evening. The nights were the worst. Summer phased into autumn. The days were blistering, followed by a steep temperature drop after sunset. My fur offered protection against it.
Starving and thirsty, on the verge of collapse both physically and mentally, I’d lost a lot of blood and had zero downtime to process everything.
I couldn’t run forever.
We have to stop sometime.I pushed the words at my beast with more force. He had the upper hand in our physical form, but I wasn’t going to huddle in the dark and sulk. I’d done that for years.
At this point, I didn’t even know what year it was—how old I was.
My bear scratched at the ground. He lowered his muzzle to the dirt and sniffed again. Maybe he’d found something. Someone? Since he was sending me zero signals about his intentions, I had no clue what he’d discovered. Enemy? Friend?
Did I have any friends in this world anymore? Probably not. My parents were shitty caregivers. I basically raised myself.
They’d never have looked for me, and the people I called friends probably thought I’d ghosted them.
I had to find somewhere safe. Get myself together. Recreate a life.
My bear kept walking. I could see an open expanse through the tree line. In the distance was a huge house. A big storagebuilding with tin roofs. Several of them. The scents of bear and some wolves wafted toward me, filling my senses. There were shifters in this place.
