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  He waved his hand at her. “No, I like doing laundry. It’s peaceful,” he said, putting the boy down in front a stack of books. Lucien eyed his mum before taking a seat and then began flipping through the pages of a board book. Pop’s accent often reminded Adelaide of her father’s, a beautiful Estuary one. It didn’t sound choppy and uneducated like her own cockney accent.

  Ren Lewis hadn’t just abandoned Adelaide, but also his own father and his grandchild. Pops, though, was used to losing people, having lost his wife and daughter. He had grieved for a long month after his son’s death, but then he had come to Adelaide and hugged her tightly. The man of almost ninety told her that he was going to keep living for her and for Lucien. He was going to keep his chin up so she didn’t have to worry. And that had been a relief to Adelaide because Pops was Lucien’s full-time caregiver. Now she regarded the man with a fond, tender look. He was the only thing that was right about her life.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “The mission of the science department is to make discoveries that broaden our understanding of this world, and to create technology that helps us to save it.”

  - Lucidite Employee Manual

  Adelaide saw Rox enter the strategic department but kept her head down low, pretending to read the werewolf files. Her best bet was that they should stakeout in front of Zephyr’s parents’ home. That’s who he was closest to, according to testimonials. Not until Rox was standing a few feet away did Adelaide look up, her face screwed up with disgust.

  “What is that awful smell?” she said, a mock look of embarrassment on her face. “Oh, sorry, it’s you.”

  “How cute,” Rox said, crossing her arms in front of her pink tank top. “You’ve been planning that line, haven’t you? You really should spend more of your time working and less time trying to figure out how to overcompensate, Red.”

  Adelaide had escaped the residence she shared with her granddad and Lucien so she could focus. Apparently even at this late hour she couldn’t have the strategic department to herself.

  “Actually I am working. While you’re off at the brothels, I’m planning a strategy for tomorrow,” she said, and then just noticed someone standing in the hallway, partially obscured by the reflection of the blue overhead lights on the glass walls.

  “Well, it appears you can spend tomorrow studying for your GED,” Rox said, and then snapped at the hallway. “Here, boy.”

  A face Adelaide didn’t know, but had studied enough to recognize, materialized. Zephyr held his head up high as he entered the main conference room, his discerning eyes studying Adelaide and then the space. The strategic department was state of the art, as were all of the rooms in the Lucidite Institute, and Zephyr’s face registered his curiosity.

  “So I decided to go ahead and bring in our alpha,” Rox said, her tone oozing with pride.

  The chair nearly toppled over as Adelaide stood. “Wait! What? You went after him? Without me?” she said, aware that Zephyr was watching her outburst. The muscles of his neck tensed at her sudden movements, she noticed.

  “I think what you meant to say was ‘thank you, Rox,’” the other girl said.

  “That’s not how we work here. You don’t go off working my case behind my back,” Adelaide said, aware that she was close to yelling.

  “It’s not just your case, and really, you’ve got your ego in a wad just because I got the job done,” Rox said, wagging a finger at Adelaide. “And how rude. You haven’t even welcomed our visitor.”

  Adelaide let out a long breath. Then she turned her green eyes on Zephyr who, stood a foot over her. “Hey, I’m Adelaide. Welcome to the Lucidite Institute, where I actually work and Rox over here is just a fucking intern who is trying to show off,” she said to him.

  He extended a hand. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Rox said you could help me.”

  Adelaide eyed his hand but didn’t accept it. Instead she took a seat, indicating to the one next to her. “Yes, if anyone can help you it will be the Lucidites and me.”

  Zephyr again regarded the space around him like he’d been dropped on Mars. The strategic department space had been designed by Ren Lewis. It was dark and yet light, lit with blue lights that reflected off the glass partitions. “And where exactly am I?”

  “In a five-story facility at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, but you should know that since you took a submarine to get here,” Adelaide said.

  Zephyr nodded slowly. “Right,” he said, seeming to try and digest all this. “So who are the Lucidites?”

  “We’re an elite society of Dream Travelers, real do-gooders, unlike the bloody FBI,” Adelaide said, not gracing Rox with a look.

  “Did you just say Dream Travelers? What’s that?” Zephyr said.

  Adelaide cast an annoyed glare at Rox, who had taken the seat next to Zephyr. “Really, you couldn’t have filled him in while traveling? Sped up the process a bit?”

  “Oh, I get in trouble now for not helping enough, is that right? I’m just the muscle. You’re the brains, Freckles,” Rox said.

  Adelaide shook her head, her long red hair swinging with the movement. She turned her attention back on Zephyr. “Dream Travelers are a race of people who can travel to any place and time when they dream. We have full control of our consciousness while dreaming. And each of us usually has a psychic or super power or two,” she said, her voice mostly bored.

  “Like x-ray vision or super strength?” Zephyr asked, seeming to digest most of this easily.

  Those were random powers for him to ask about, but Adelaide agreed at once. “Yes, but I understand how strange this must seem. You’re a part of the non-gifted race of Middlings. And really none of this is important because—”

  “Not anymore I’m not,” Zephyr said, grabbing the back of his neck and massaging.

  “Wait. What?” Adelaide said, leaning forward.

  “The dreams started after the treatments,” Zephyr said, his eyes distant, a strange hollowness in them. “I thought they were real from the beginning. At night wherever I thought about last was where my dreams took me. And I can control my dreams. Change the location. Is that dream traveling? It feels so real.”

  “Yes, that’s dream traveling and it’s absolutely real. We go to real places and times and we can interact with others dream traveling. However, I’m sure what you’ve experienced is a fluke,” Adelaide said, her voice skeptical. It was unlikely that this guy was a Dream Traveler. Her research had found that all twelve men were most likely Middlings. He was obviously just confused from the trauma.

  “The man who broke us out of the lab, out of nowhere, he suddenly had super strength. I watched him punch through a concrete wall. Now, I’m pretty strong since they changed me into this were…whatever I am…” Zephyr trailed away for a moment, obviously unnerved by what he’d become and unwilling to say it fully. “Anyway, I’ve tried since and I don’t have nearly the strength that this man did. It was like a strange superpower. He pulled metal doors off the cages with little effort.”

  Adelaide regarded the man in front of her for a long moment, trying to calculate. Her father always thought before he spoke. Made connections. “And you now have x-ray vision, is that right? Is that why you brought up those two examples?”

  He nodded, pulling his hands down to his lap, his eyes heavy with all the new details.

  At first Adelaide wanted to dismiss this as being a misunderstanding; however, Ren would have told her there were few misunderstanding in this world. Things made sense and connected if one took a holistic approach. Consider everything, she implored herself, aware that both Rox and Zephyr were watching her contemplate, her eyes on the conference room table. Then a single piece of information, something vaulted away in a separate file, flew to the forefront of her mind. “The research!” Adelaide said, rocketing to a standing position.

  “What research?” Rox said, not sounding interested in the current conversation.

  Adelaide pointed at a far wall. “Recently, research from our scie
nce department was stolen by a man named Alexander Drake. Part of that research was on how to convert Middlings into Dream Travelers,” she said. Ren had thought that Drake was connected to the werewolf case when he handed it over to Adelaide, but nothing in the file could prove it. For months it had seemed like frayed ends of yarn that couldn’t be tied together, but now…

  “Why would the science department want to do that, turn a Middling into a Dream Traveler?” Rox said.

  Adelaide dismissed Rox by shaking her head. She wasn’t going to tell her it was a special project her father sanctioned. It had been a part of his “death” plan. After Ren had been successful at converting Middlings to Dream Travelers, Drake had stolen the research. And now before her sat someone claiming to have been converted. None of it made sense still. Why would someone abduct men, make them into werewolves, and then also Dream Travelers? What was the point? She needed more answers and there was only one way to find them.

  “This lab where they made you,” Adelaide said to Zephyr. “Where was it? You said you escaped from it?”

  “Los Angeles,” he answered at once.

  “Do you know where any of the men are who you escaped with?” Adelaide asked him.

  “No, we spread out,” he said.

  “Can you take me to the lab?” Adelaide said.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Zephyr said, scratching his head. “But I’m still confused on so many different things. Like, before when you introduced me,” he said to Rox. “Why did you call me the alpha?”

  Rox smiled wide, winked at Zephyr. “Because there is only one in a pack and we think that’s you,” she said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “All Olento products, experiments, and technology are proprietary of the company and anyone who shares information with outsiders is in breach of contract, no matter how small.”

  - Olento Research Employee Manual

  Convulsions rocked the metal operating surface. Wires snaking from the table to the various machines vibrated. And shaking, hairy fingers of an animal clenched into a fist. Three doctors with various specialties worked furiously, trying to stabilize the chimp. One pumped the animal’s chest, delivering CPR.

  “Move!” another of the masked doctors said, holding the defibrillator in his hands. But the sharp beeping sound made him pause. Over his mask he eyed the screen beside the operating table. A long green flat line raced across the screen.

  “Well, that’s another one we’ve lost,” Drake said from the other side of the mirrored glass, where he stood with Mika Lenna.

  “Don’t say things I already know,” Mika said, pinning an angry look at the scientist. This was the second chimpanzee Olento had lost in the Muisti project. “There’s a fundamental error in the procedure you’ve developed.”

  “Yes, I’m certain you’re right, but in my defense, changing the memory either by its capacity or how it catalogues is uncharted territory. And working on a being that has limited communication abilities makes the dilemma even greater,” Drake said. “The memory just isn’t something—”

  “Stop with the excuses,” Mika said, cutting him off.

  Drake regarded Mika with a challenging stare, one that seemed to speak of his growing animosity with being mistreated. Mika only noted that he’d hit a malfunctioning button in the older man. He knew that Drake had despised his father for treating him with superiority. It had been one of the many pieces of personal data he’d dug up on the scientist. And he knew that when he found this frayed nerve, the scientist would strive harder to please the subconscious father figure. This was how Mika made employees turn their backs to morals and do that which science begged for. He manipulated and exploited their weaknesses.

  “If testing on chimpanzees isn’t working for the Muisti project then go and find a homeless man and conduct the experiment on him. Their memory isn’t serving them anyway, and I’ve always thought they should volunteer their worthless lives up to science. But we’ve been working on this project too long to give up,” Mika said, staring through the glass wall as the doctors removed the dead chimp from the room.

  “Sir, I know that Olento is where your passion resides, but maybe turning more of your attention on Parantaa Research will help. Maybe you’ll get a fresh perspective on these experiments,” Drake said.

  Mika lowered his chin and stroked his thin goatee. Drake knew Mika could read his thoughts using the telepathy he’d wired into his brain chemistry using Olento Research technology and yet the idiotic scientist continued to try and lie to him. Maybe he dared such a thing because he knew that the gifts Mika had built into himself using his technology weren’t as reliable as his natural Dream Traveler power of telekinesis. Drake didn’t think his boss needed a break. He wanted Mika out of his way, working on the projects at Parantaa Research. That had been Mika’s first venture and he had created drugs that revolutionized the medical industry. Mika’s long-term plan was to invest everything into Olento Research, but that kind of technology needed serious funding and creating pharmaceuticals was the best way to make easy billions. It was the work he’d done at Parantaa Research that made him the philanthropist that the public adored. Olento was his secret research company, which mostly served his aspirations of becoming powerful and also satisfy his curious mind. Also Mika had investors who were willing to pour millions into his ventures if they also gained something, which was the point of Project Canis Lupus.

  “You will rework the protocol for the Muisti project and have a detailed report on my desk tomorrow morning by six o’clock,” Mika said, knowing that Drake would have to work throughout the night to accomplish such a task. Maybe that would keep him from offering up his opinions in the future.

  Mika withdrew the cell phone from the inside pocket of his suit jacket just before it rang. His heightened senses had told him that it was about to ring because it always vibrated minutely before it did. It was a sound that only people with his hearing could pick up.

  The caller ID on the phone read Director of Security.

  “What?” he said into the phone.

  “Sir, I know how you like updates even if there isn’t anything to report,” Grant said on the other side of the phone.

  “So you haven’t located Kaleb Magner yet,” he said.

  “No, sir. We’ve had surveillance on his home, friends, old schools and workplaces, but he hasn’t turned up yet,” Grant reported, flatly.

  “We know from the sighting that he’s in Salt Lake City,” Mika said, his chest tightening with anger. He failed to understand how after a month he hadn’t caught a single one of the werewolves. These were beasts who changed every week. They should be drawing more attention. Maybe the problem was that he had handpicked incredibly intelligent subjects. He’d meant to also break their will, but only after the other phases were successful. Apparently he should have done that first, because they were proving to be rebellious and calculating.

  “Have your men check every hospital, church, jail, and homeless shelter in that city,” Mika said. “Kaleb Magner needs help. He will have sought out assistance.” Without a closing he simply shut off the mobile. Kaleb was the runt, which he created for a specific reason, knowing that unassuming men can be the most powerful. However, Kaleb’s background made it so he needed people. Kaleb usually relied on people rather than being self-sufficient like his alpha wolf, Zephyr. And the alpha wolf would be the hardest for Mika to catch, but it would be done.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “A good future is dependent on what we do today.”

  - Lucidite Employee Manual

  Most people came to the soup kitchen because they had lost their jobs or drugs had stolen everything in their life. Kaleb was fairly certain no one was like him, that no one else there depended on the soup kitchen because they’d escaped after being abducted and genetically engineered to be a werewolf.

  After thinking about it nonstop he still failed to understand the motives of the strange scientists at the lab where he’d been imprisoned. Even though h
is memories were fuzzy due to the drugs they’d given him, he could still see in his mind the hollow men and women who ignored the prisoners’ screams. Each was like a robot, following the orders of the man with a white and gray beard.

  But Kaleb, who prided himself on his people-watching skills, knew the older scientist wasn’t the one in charge. It was whoever watched the experiments behind the mirrored wall at the back of the lab. And the guards answered to the man with the black flattop. Kaleb could always pick out the ranking in any organization thanks to his observation skills. That’s the reason he quit school and took a backpacking trip as a transient. He wanted to observe the world and find answers that were concrete and not written in religious text.

  Now Kaleb had no idea what he’d do with his life. Each day he felt like he was only existing between what he now called the “attacks.” When the werewolf took over he was powerless and everyone around him was in danger. Kaleb couldn’t go out and get a job like most. And he definitely couldn’t do it without his identity surfacing again. Then his parents would know he was alive. They’d come after him. His father would spend any amount of money to find his son. But Kaleb had been gone for several months now. Hopefully they thought he was dead. That would be for the best because he couldn’t fathom the idea of them knowing what he’d become. They’d never look at him the same way. They’d think the devil had possessed him. However, sometimes when he awoke in the alley, shivering and hungry, he deluded himself into thinking that his parents would find a way to fix him. That they’d hire the best doctors in the world and discover a way to reverse whatever had been done to him.

  Over his paper bowl of mystery soup Kaleb scanned the crowd in the dining area. He had started to name the regulars. There was Snake King, because the rough-looking Hispanic had tattoos of snakes covering both arms. Then there was Bag Lady, because the old white-haired woman carried four or five beat-up shopping bags everywhere she went, like she was afraid someone would steal the trash she’d taken from a dumpster. And then there was Droopy Eyes, because the old veteran, who told his stories too loudly, had more bags under his eyes than any person Kaleb had ever seen.