The Baby Shift- Arizona Read online

  “Experiment?” Monica asked. What experiment was Eric talking about? She thought Will was supposed to be conducting the experiments, not becoming a test subject.

  “Did you both not read the fine print of the contract? It was all outlined there. I’ll have a car come to get Will for his shift in an hour and a half. Do not worry yourself, Miss Grey. Will is going to be absolutely fine.”

  Eric hung up, and Monica was left trying to remember where exactly Will had put his new employment contract when they were packing. She’d kept bugging him to file it away with the rest of their important, cannot-be-recycled papers, but she couldn’t remember him actually going to file it. Maybe it was still tucked away in one of the suitcases?

  Forty-five minutes and a thorough search of the house later, Monica had the contract in her hands. She was flipping through page after page, searching for any mention of Will being used as a test subject, when she came upon the forty-seventh page of the contract, the bottom of which was covered in very small print. Holding it close to her eyes, Monica read, “The undersigned agrees to be part of the University of Arizona’s new Mythical Creature Research Facility Testing Program, wherein subjects are injected with toxin to mitigate their shifting cycles and are monitored over a three-week period to see how they respond. The undersigned also agrees not to seek legal action related to any unwanted side effects of the experiment.”

  Monica had been standing by the kitchen counter as she read the paper, having found the contract in a folder she’d nonsensically placed on the top of the refrigerator, but after seeing those words, she had to take a seat at the kitchen table. What did they mean “shifting cycles”? And what unwanted side effects were they referring to, exactly?

  Monica stood up and ran to the master bedroom. Will was still sleeping soundly, making the soft snoring noises in his sleep that Monica had always found so adorable. He looked slightly less pale, less ill than he had a few hours ago. Did he know what he was getting into when he signed the contract? Will was one of the most meticulous people she knew; he wouldn’t have signed something without reading all of the fine print. Hell, he’d made her read every single page of their new housing contract twice before signing it, in case there was something untoward hidden in the finely typed print at the bottom of each page.

  Should she wake him up and ask him what was going on? He looked so peaceful, but Monica was worried that maybe something was wrong with his new job and the people who were supervising him. She’d never heard of employers experimenting on their employees before. Surely that violated some clause of something? Monica debated calling her younger sister, a journalist working in L.A. Amelia was smart and would know what to do. Yes, she definitely needed her help.

  Monica was just pulling out her phone, still standing in the doorway of the room, when she heard a car pull up in the driveway. A knock on the front door followed, and she walked back into the front room. A peek through the peephole told her that one of Will’s colleagues from the research center had come to pick him up and drive him to work. The man was tall, buff and intimidating, and Monica doubted she could hold him off and keep him from taking Will, so she resignedly opened the door.

  “Hello there, Miss Grey. I’m here to take Will to his shift this evening,” the man said, giving her a simpering smile that sent cold fear running up her spine.

  “Of course. He’s having a bit of trouble getting up. I’ll just go help him get ready and we’ll be done in a few minutes.”

  The man looked like he wanted to interject, perhaps to tell Monica that he’d be more than happy to help Will instead, but no way was she letting one of these assholes get near Will before they had to. She believed in the power of feminine intuition, and this guy definitely had a seriously bad aura.

  It took Monica a lot longer than a few minutes to help Will get dressed. He was like a boneless sack, impossible to move, but finally, after twenty minutes, she had him dressed with his face washed (with cold water, to wake him up), deodorant on and his shoes tied. It was impossible to ask him questions, however; he was like a walking zombie, though lacking in the bloodthirsty enthusiasm of the zombies they so loved to watch in The Walking Dead. Those ones definitely would’ve been more cooperative.

  Will was finally waking up as Monica led him to the front door, slowly, trying to delay the moment when she had to hand him over. The burly man at the door grabbed Will roughly around the collar and arm and began to wrangle him out the door as soon as they got close to the welcome mat.

  “Be careful!” Monica couldn’t help but shout. Will turned around and gave her a placid smile, and that, more than anything else that had happened that day, was what truly frightened her. Will was a Sagittarius. He never backed down from a challenge, and he’d rather die than let someone take control of him. That he was letting this burly asshole drag him to the car told Monica that she needed to find a way to get them out of Phoenix and away from the research center, fast. And to do that, she needed Amelia’s help.

  Will

  Will came to in a cold metal chair in a room with what sounded like a million beepers going off at once. In reality, it was only two machines monitoring his vitals, but his hearing had, in the last few hours, become much more sensitive, and now it felt like he could almost hear the blood as it ran through his veins.

  “His resting heart rate has increased since yesterday and I’m worried about the change in his body temperature. He also seems to be constantly sweating, indicating that his body’s cooling system isn’t working as effectively. None of the other test subjects have responded this quickly or this strongly…” a voice muttered from somewhere off to his left.

  Will opened his eyes and gazed upon his surroundings. He was in a laboratory, a large one filled with at least twenty people working at different stations scattered around the room. All of them were wearing white coats emblazoned with the logo “Arizona Mythical Creatures Research Center.” So, he was definitely in the right place. But why was did he feel so strange? And why was he tied down to this chair with what looked like medical-grade belts zigzagging across his midsection?

  “Excuse me,” he rasped, his voice scratchy from lack of use. How long had he been asleep? And, more importantly, why was he asleep at work? Will was fairly certain he’d slept the whole of the previous day, yet he still felt exhausted, like fatigue was seeping into his very bones, preventing him from coherent thought or rushed movement.

  When no one answered him, or even seemed to notice that he was awake and talking, Will tried again. “Excuse me!” he yelled, or tried to, but his voice did at least carry to the man to his left who had been muttering to himself.

  “Ah, Mr. Fibson. Glad to see you’re up. And how are you feeling?” the man asked. His nametag read “Harry Hollidae” and he was short with cropped brown hair and large, coke-bottle glasses covering a third of his face.

  “Well, Harry, not great. I’m exhausted and tied to a chair. Any chance you could explain to me why that is?” Will asked irritably.

  Harry smiled at him, a smile that made Will feel a little bit terrified, like Harry was a loose cannon that could go off at any moment. “You must remember? Us injecting you with the toxin? I have to say, I’m surprised it worked this fast, but it does make for a more interesting research study.”

  “Injection? Research study? What the hell are you talking about? Can you show me where Eric’s office is? And unhook me from this chair? I need to speak to him.”

  One of the heads that had been bent over a working station directly in front of Will popped up, and Eric’s face appeared. Will breathed a sigh of relief. Eric, his boss, would explain to him what was going on. Eric would know what to do.

  “Harry, stop scaring him. You do this with all the patients, and then we always get bad reviews at the end of the experiment. Did you learn nothing in that research seminar on proper bedside manner?” Eric said, giving Harry a stern look as he put down the petri dish he’d been looking at under a microscope, removed his rubber glove
s and walked toward Will.

  “William, how are you feeling?” he asked, placing a hand on Will’s shoulder, one of the few parts of him that wasn’t covered by a belt.

  “Not great, Eric. Pardon me for being rude, but what the hell is going on?”

  “You’re at our Mythical Creatures Research Center. We’ve just started the experiment on you. Well, to be quite honest, we started it yesterday, but today is the first day we’ve been able to get some real data from you.”

  “You… you’re experimenting on me? But, I didn’t agree to this! I didn’t agree to be the experimentee! I agreed to be the experimenter!” Will yelled, anxious and worried now that he was beginning to understand the situation. He’d been injected, though with what, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he was tired, exhausted, and frightened.

  Eric tilted his head at Will, like he pitied him. “You did read the fine print of the contract, didn’t you?” Eric asked.

  “What are you talking about? What fine print? I was a little busy leaving Boston, and one of your assistants told me I only needed to sign pages 22 and 43 of the contract, so I read those and sent it off.”

  “Oh dear. Well, William, I’m afraid I have some bad news then.”

  Will gulped. “You’re…you’re not going to kill me, are you?” he whispered. Though Eric had seemed nice when Will had first met him, the fact that he had tricked him into being a test subject made him realize that perhaps Eric wasn’t the fantastic researcher Will had made him out to be. After all, most of what he’d heard about Eric had been through word of mouth at his old job. He’d only viewed his LinkedIn and Twitter profiles before going to the interview, figuring that a first impression would tell him more than a Google search ever could about whether they would work well together. Will was never going to trust a first impression again.

  “No! Of course not!” Eric said, looking genuinely affronted. “You’re far too good a test subject. No, no, what I mean is that if you didn’t read the fine print, this might come as something of a surprise to you. You see, while you were technically hired as a researcher in the center here, for right now, you’re a test subject.”

  “I’m a test subject? That’s not possible. I didn’t agree to that,” Will said. He might not have read the entire contract like he normally would have—his last few shifts at the hospital had been doubles, and the contract was due on the day he’d had to attend to two cardiac arrests and a gunshot wound—but he’d skimmed enough of it to know that the job he was signing on for was the person doing the experiments, not the person being experimented on.

  “I’m afraid your signature indicated that you did,” Eric said.

  Will felt himself start to break out in a cold sweat despite the low temperature in the room. His body temperature had been all over the place in the last few hours, but this wasn’t a sweat from heat. It was a sweat from fear. What had he gotten himself into?

  “And exactly what kind of experiment am I now participating in?” Will asked.

  “Well, we’ve injected you with a toxin designed to lessen the ability for your body to shift. In our focus groups, we found that many of the werewolves we interviewed really didn’t enjoy shifting, especially in the dry heat of Phoenix. The fur can make it quite hard to get comfortable, you know. So, we’re working on a toxin, derived from a mushroom found in the deciduous forests of Vancouver, that would train the werewolf body to stop shifting completely.”

  “I don’t understand. How can you prevent shifting? It’s something our bodies are trained to do. It can’t be good to try and prevent a natural process,” Will said.

  “Think of it like the birth control pill, but for wolfishness. Just like women don’t need periods, werewolves don’t need to shift. We’re hoping that with research subjects like you, we can work toward a solution that would allow werewolves to live full lives absent the need to transform. They can fully integrate into society without the fear of scaring their friends, partners and colleagues when they suddenly come their beastly selves.”

  The way Eric explained it sounded so matter of fact, but to Will, his inner wolf couldn’t be explained away with reason. He was born a werewolf and would die a werewolf, and as inconvenient as it could be sometimes, he didn’t want to lose that part of himself. Sure, it made life awkward, but the world was just starting to come to terms with his kind. Was it really the right move to eradicate what made his kind themselves to make them more palatable to the rest of the world?

  Will took a deep breath and, looking confidently at Eric, said, “Look, Eric, this isn’t what I agreed to. I didn’t agree to be a test subject. I agreed to be a researcher, but I didn’t agree to be a researcher on these types of projects. When I visited for my interview two months ago, you told me you worked on projects that would benefit the wolf world. How does taking away our ability to shift, to exercise that part of ourselves, help us?”

  Eric, who throughout the conversation thus far had been giving Will a patient smile, stepped closer to him, his face descending into a glower as he leaned in. “Look, Will, I don’t care what your morals are. You signed a year-long contract to work for us, and as you well know, that contract states that if you want to quit, you need to give us two weeks’ notice. Now, this experiment will be done in two weeks, so if at that time you’re still feeling unsure, you’re more than welcome to leave. But until then, you’ll fulfill your duties, and those include sitting back and relaxing when I prepare your next injection.”

  Will was about to argue until he saw the menacing look in Eric’s eyes. He needed to tread carefully if he was going to make it out of the research center unharmed.

  Will

  Will woke up four hours later to a dark laboratory. Across the room was a woman, the only other person besides Will still left in the room. She was bent over a piece of paper, scribbling notes. Will recognized her from his interview a few months ago. Her name was Franny Phillips, and she’d seemed nice, friendly and warm. Of course, there was a chance that she was exactly like Eric and Harry, cruel and selfish and anti-wolf, but Will had to take the chance.

  “Excuse me, Franny?” he called from where he was still lying down in the steel chair, the belts tight across his middle. Franny looked up and peered at him through her glasses. She looked tired, like she hadn’t been sleeping well. She put down her pen and walked toward Will, worry in her eyes.

  “Yes, Will? What’s wrong?”

  “I need you to help me.”

  ---

  Will tried to make as little sound as possible as he closed the door behind him. He’d told Franny his reservations about the experiment, praying that he could trust her to help him escape, and to his delight, she’d been more than willing. It turned out that she’d been against the experiments from their very beginning, when Eric and Harry had first been elected to the research center board. “It was clear they had some sort of agenda,” she’d told Will as she helped unbuckle him from the chair he’d been stuck to. “This research center was created by a werewolf to help others like him avoid the injuries and diseases that are common to our kind, but Eric and Harry don’t seem to care about that at all.”

  “Wait, you’re a werewolf, too?” Will had asked, ignoring the other details. Franny had nodded. “I’ve managed to keep it from them so far. I have a daughter at home, so whenever I can feel myself starting to shift, I make up an emergency related to her and go home. To them, I’m just a lowly lab tech, so they don’t really care if I’m here or not, even if I do collate all the data and run the supply inventory.”

  Franny had told Will that she’d find a way to help him escape the center, but that she couldn’t do much beyond that. “I can make up some story that’ll keep them going in the wrong direction for a few days, but eventually they’re going to figure out what happened, and they’ll come after you. Are you prepared for that?”

  Will had nodded, because he would do anything to make sure that he and Monica were safe. Which was why he was now tiptoeing along the side of t
he research center building, wearing a spare lab coat and Eric’s badge in an attempt to fool any security guards who might pass by them. Fanny’s car was within sight, and she managed to get them both past the university gates and onto the highway without being seen. Within minutes, they were nearing Will and Monica’s house. The sun was just starting to rise when Franny pulled into Will’s driveway.

  “The injection Eric gave you won’t wear off for another twelve hours, so you’ll still feel really tired and warm, but drink some coffee and eat small, frequent meals and you should have enough energy to pack up and get out of town. I’ll try and keep Eric and Harry off the scent for as long as possible, but do what you can to hide, Will. They’re dangerous. You don’t want to know what they did to the last research study participant who tried to run away.”

  Will nodded and leaned over to hug Franny. “Thank you. I’ll figure out a way to repay you someday.”

  Franny smiled at him sadly and shook her head. “If all goes well, we’ll never see each other again. I’m just happy to help out a fellow wolf. Good luck.”

  Will watched her from the safety of his porch as Franny pulled out of the driveway and back onto the road. She waved at him once before turning away. When he couldn’t see her car anymore, Will turned toward the door and took out his keys. It was time to face facts, to tell Monica what he really was and figure out a plan to get them both away from Phoenix to somewhere safe, where Eric and Harry wouldn’t find them.

  Monica

  “And why exactly have you waited until just now to tell me this?” Monica yelled at Will. He’d just walked in the door, sat down next to where she was seated on the couch reading a copy of The Bhagavad Gita and said, very matter-of-factly, “Monica, I’m a werewolf, and my employers are using me for experimentation. We need to pack as much as we can, hire a car and drive east until we get far enough away that they won’t find us. They’re dangerous. They won’t let me leave the study willingly.”