Excerpt: Moxie & the Maverick

 

The last time Moxie had been a hopeless pawn in the clutches of sadistic scientists, she had been a vulnerable child. But to their credit, and it was probably the only thing she could give them credit for, at least they had never tried to abuse her sexually. However, now that she was an adult, she felt vulnerable in a new way. Guards like this guy were probably not even supposed to be in this room. Most likely this meat-head was not supposed to be playing the computers and watching the security videos. Maybe he had come in here hoping to cop a feel... or more. If he knew how to manipulate the video feed, he might figure he could just erase the evidence of his playtime and get away with it.

What if it was even worse? She had heard rumors of programs where Shifters who were the subject of human experiments were forced to breed. Humans were never satisfied with what nature provided, even with creatures as magical as Shifters. Humans always thought they could do one better. They always had to try to manipulate things. What if they tried to force her to mate? Some Shifters supposedly knew their lifelong mates from chemical signals alone, but honestly, because of the manipulation that had already been done to her, Moxie had no idea if that was true of her.

She vowed never to show her fear.

“Are you enjoying your peep show?” she asked sarcastically.

The man in the flannel shirt turned around. He displayed no guilt or alarm. “You speak English.” He didn’t exactly sound surprised, only curious.

“I’m not an animal.”

He frowned. “Technically, you are.”

“I am a human being!”

“Human beings are animals.”

That wasn’t what she expected him to say. Her brow furrowed. Was he trying to bond with her? Maybe he was one of those all too rare “good ones,”who had somehow found themselves doing work they hated—too chicken to quit but not quite as sadistic as the usual run of the mill brute-guard or psycho-scientist.  However, his next words shattered any delusion she had that he might be kind or see her is anything other than a lab animal.

“You, however, are, at most, partially human,” he continued. “Humans do not warp their bodies into the shape of animals. You turn into a cat. That is abnormal.”

“Just because I don’t meet your narrow-minded definition of human doesn’t make me less human than you. It doesn’t make me abnormal!”

“My definition of human is the standard scientific definition,” he said, maddeningly calm. “What deviates from the norm is abnormal. What interests me is whether you are sentient and whether you are predacious. I did not expect you to have sophisticated linguistic capacity.”

“Screw you too!”

“It’s good to see that the restraints I designed are working as intended,” he said. “They seem to self-regulate in conjunction with your changes in morphology.”

To her shame, he replayed the video a second time and then a third time. Finally, she couldn’t bear to watch anymore and turned her face away.

“The wire doesn’t seem to adjust quite as fast as you can change shape.” He remarked, completely matter-of-fact. “I don’t even understand how it’s physiologically possible for your body to change shape that swiftly. Never mind the alterations to the bone and muscular structure, how does that even work on a cellular level…?”

He now started to type furiously on the other screen, the one with the medical information.

Moxie hated his guts already. She wanted to pick up the computer screen and bash him in the head with it. Better yet, she wanted to shift into a lion, the way she used to be able to do as a cub, and the way her brother was able to do, and scratch open his belly until his guts fell out. Then for good measure, she would bite off his head.

But she had to try to escape, and right now he was her only contact. She didn’t think it would work but, maybe a direct appeal… She couldn’t rule it out until she tried it.

“Please let me go,” she said. “I am a human being.”

“Your DNA does not confirm that,” he said. “Although I have yet to determine if you can breed with a Homo sapiens sapiens. Technically I suppose if you could produce offspring, then, by, the definition of species…”

“You damn pervert!” She growled so that she would not give into hysterical need to scream or the terror that made her want to cry.

He did turn to face her, and he looked puzzled rather than mocking or leering. 

“I was merely clarifying the definition of species.”

Belatedly, he observed that the mylar blanket had fallen down and exposed her breasts during her struggles to free herself. A faint blush stained his pallid cheeks. He adjusted the blanket and then studiously turned back to his screens.

That was a very interesting reaction. She began to reevaluate her pegging him as a rowdy, randy guard. He might have the brawn of a warrior, but he seemed to have the brain of a scientist. And she wasn’t talking about whether he was smart or not, although his techno-babble and the remark that he had designed the fiendish but clever wire cuffs seemed to indicate he was one of those annoying tinkers who made gadgets for breakfast the way normal people made pancakes. No, what she meant was that he had betrayed a shyness around women that she associated more with nerds than with soldiers.

“What’s your job here?” she asked.

“Right now? I am researching you.”

Her heart flipped. As much as she hated the guards, she always regarded the scientists in the laboratory as her primary enemy.

“So you’re one of them,” she said, filled with disgust. “You’re one of those who dissect Shifters.”

“Shifters. Like… Shape shifters? Are there more than one of you?”

“How new are you?” she sneered. “Why don’t you ask your colleagues to fill you in if you’re not clear.”

“I work alone,” he said simply.

Was this young strapping guy who looked more like a lifeguard than a professor really already respected enough by his colleagues to run his own lab? She knew how big the egos of scientists were, so she didn’t contradict him directly. But she did say, “But your lab is just one of many in the complex? Is this CADABRA or some other lab?”

He tilted his head as if that puzzled him. He didn’t answer her question. 

“I think I need to do more tests,” he said. “So far my results are not making any sense, only raising more issues.”

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