The Wolf Experiments - 2nd edition

FOREWARD

The empty, rugged countryside swept by in a whirl of motion that made her feel as lost as the small, wispy clouds. Alex was stoic and brave, and showed no emotion as her small window to the world disappeared. The darkness swallowed the moon, and the lonely road stretched on, rolling across a distance blurred by night. Alex looked back. There was nothing but blackness, not a reflection of light or even a soft repercussion of sound. She sank deeper into the seat mourning the life that was lost forever.

“Never look back,” the man said. “Life moves forward with great leaps and bounds. There is nothing behind you.”

She frowned and blinked back the tears. She wanted to break but could not show signs of either weakness or defeat. The man’s long gray hair hid his smirk and temporarily camouflaged the poisonous evil of his soul. The screams still echoed in her ears, the sound of her family struggling and dying as he killed them all. She stared at him with wild, angry eyes, and felt the demon of rage surge with a silent scream that filled her mouth with bitterness. But all she could do was drop back into the seat and close her eyes.

The vehicle accelerated, weaving through the treacherous turns. Aware they were being followed at a distance, the man’s vision shifted to the mirror, and then back to the road again. Nausea filled her stomach. The man was going too fast, the stripes of the road one solid blur. Suddenly he turned the wheel sharply to make an abrupt turn, but the wheels lost traction and the truck hit the metal guardrail with a horrible screech.
The momentum carried them through and for a breathless moment, they hovered among the stars in a cold, consuming silence. Alex looked back at the white wolf sedated in the seat behind them. She had only just found him again.

“Amandas,” she whispered.

She screamed as the vehicle plummeted downward. The world twisted and turned, and then there was only darkness.

CHAPTER 1

When she opened her eyes, she felt pain with an intimacy she had never known. It gripped and paralyzed her, coursing through every muscle. She knew she couldn’t move. The world was a blur of white: the walls, ceiling and floor. Slowly, however, as awareness filtered forward, she heard high-pitched beeps, low clicks, and hushed whispers in the room. She tried to lift her head, but a bolt of pain pulsed behind her eyes.

“Good morning,” a voice said. “You shouldn’t try to move.”

Looking carefully, she located a man in the corner. The room shifted uneasily, which caused the walls to spin like a carousel. The man stood quickly and came to the side of the bed.

“You are in a hospital,” he said.
Plastic tubes, wires, and lines spread across her arms. A small oxygen mask was clipped over her nose, but she felt suffocated in its grasp, her heart racing.

“It is all right now,” the man spoke again. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

Another man, a doctor, approached the bed to study the monitors and graphs. He motioned for a nurse. A voice screamed in her head, her voice, but not a sound emerged from her lips.

“Please do not worry,” the man said. “I’ll take you home as soon as you are well.”

She studied his face, but no recognition stirred in her mind. He was an absolute stranger. The man seemed kind with his gentle words, but his eyes were piercing as he looked at her, almost as if he were trying to read something beyond her gaze. She was breathing hard, as if she’d been running endless miles on a desolate trail, and one relentless question hammered her thoughts.

Who am I?

As the unnatural palpitation of her heart grew stronger, she put a hand to her chest. Her skin was as pale and cold as death. Tears filled her eyes. Something was wrong, very wrong. The monitors beeped faster, and one began to scream. The doctor inserted a needle into her catheter, and she faded away, a star snuffed out within a dark, treacherous storm.

“Alexandra.”
The voice echoed across empty space from a great distance, drawing her closer through coldness to warmth as awkward sensations tingled and pinched in her body. As her ears began to ring, she felt a damp, heavy cloth pressed against her forehead. She opened her eyes.

“Alex,” the man said.

Was that her name? How could he know it if she did not? But no sooner had these thoughts clashed in her mind when the darkness returned.

It became a patter. No matter when she awakened, he was always there, his voice constant and soothing. The days faded together, the shadows crept across the room, and cold moonlight slanted through the small window letting her distinguish day from night, but the man remained.
As her periods of wakefulness grew longer, she learned her name only because they continued to use it. But when she finally looked into a mirror, she didn’t recognize the person staring back at her.

Tell me who I am!

No one could hear or answer her question. The man was kind, and the nurses spoke to her sweetly, but her mind remained encumbered. She felt trapped in an unresponsive body and desired a way to communicate, but the obstacle was unresolved.
In time, her broken leg and arm healed, but the nerves caused her extreme pain. Everyone said she was lucky to have survived, but she didn’t know from what.

People were always whispering around her, but when they realized she was listening they spoke of other things. They were caretakers, doing their jobs because they were paid to do so without explaining anything to her. They seemed divided, as if they said one thing but meant another.

What happened to me?

She sought someone’s company, but was met with disappointment through endless passing hours. If she was searching for someone in particular, that person was lost to her, their identity almost within her grasp upon awakening, but then quickly lost to a vague sense of distant fear. And still, he consoled her.

Who is he?

How did she know she was fifteen years old, but did not know her name? Why did mathematics come easily, but she could recall nothing beyond the first waking moments in the cold, white room of the hospital? Why did she feel like screaming and yet, no sound would come? There was only silence, the haunting noise of insanity.

“It’s time to take you home,” the man, Marcus, said one day as he loaded her into a thin, black wheelchair. “It’s a better place.”

His words promised hope; his face didn’t. Still, the doctors apparently deemed him competent enough to take her, explaining that he was her physician and legal guardian. Her silence didn’t seem to concern them. Once removed from the relative familiarity of the hospital, however, the awareness that something sinister waited “out there” flooded her thoughts.

“There will be time,” Marcus said, as if he sensed her growing distress.

Is there time? He is coming.

Her eyes pleaded for answers. She had the distinct feeling that she was a hunted creature, like a small, frightened animal. Someone, some beast, hated her and would eventually kill her.
As the hospital fell behind them and tall buildings blocked the sky, the rush of people and the blare of horns and street noise assaulted her senses. It was such a disturbance that the quality of human life seemed disrupted.

Make it stop!

She covered her ears to block the sound, but it was impossible. Pollution fouled the air she gulped and noxious gases turned what little sky she could see to an unnatural amber.

“A local meteorologist reported a temperature inversion,” Marcus said. “It usually isn’t this smoggy.”

Outside the city, her claustrophobia eased as they entered quiet, residential neighborhoods. But even far from the city, the damage caused by acid rain had changed the color of the lakes and the soil seemed dead.

They came to an airport, and Marcus drove the car into the darkness of a private hanger filled with the acrid, but somehow familiar smell of fuel. The brilliant twilight haze faded. Someone had opened the bay door for them, and the small, oval structure was already waiting on the landing pad. There were no runways anymore, or airplanes for that matter. A thick concrete square provided an area for the vessel to lift into the sky. Marcus situated her into the wheelchair again, and pushed her up the ramp and into the waiting ship.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said.
He lifted her into a soft flight chair and secured the seatbelt. A moment later, she heard a yelp, and a large, white, fluffy head pushed her in the chest. With a rush of joy, she realized she knew the wolf, grabbing the animal around the neck and holding him tight. Hot tears rushed down her cheeks, dampening his fur, and he turned his yellow eyes to stare. He was the elusive thing, the creature sitting at the edge of her memory.
The wolf climbed stiffly into the seat beside her. Areas of his body were bare where the fur had been shaved away and bruises and sutures were visible across his torso. One front paw was painfully swollen. Whatever happened to her claimed them both, but they had suffered and survived together.

“I saw the wreckage of the truck a few days ago, and I still can’t believe you’re both here now. It’s truly a miracle,” Marcus said.

She looked at the wolf and knew his name was Amandas. It was the first thing she solidly remembered. She mouthed the silent word, his name, and the wolf looked at her with large, wise eyes. In an instant, he knew her torment and she knew his. Marcus clipped the seatbelt around the wolf and then disappeared toward the front of the ship.
The engine soon roared to life, trembling slightly against the gusting wind. A blast of air propelled them into the sky. She was going to a new place, a new home, and a flicker of excitement stirred her heart. She would be far enough away that nothing evil would find her again.