ONC 2022 shortlisted: The Emergence of a more virulent lycanthrope virus decimated civilisation. As a street scavenger, Gulliver Chase risks his life in his home city's derelict streets hunting for resources for his fellow survivors. But it isn't fo...
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Gull paced the corridor outside the med bay, his gut in knots. Reaching the room's barred door, he eyed the people inside. Hashi and Westie stood with weapons aimed at the unconscious lycan now chained to the exam bed. His mother, a full-figured festival of orange florals and frizzing black hair, fussed over blood pressure readings and pupillary responses. The tutting noises escaping her lips expressed concern for her patient, not for herself.
Gull didn't know what unnerved him more: the sight of Zera, once so formidable, now pale and unresponsive; or the sight of his mother leaning over the damn lycan to check the mutt's eyes. The deep brown skin of his mother's throat, exposed by her smock's florid neckline, hung over teeth restrained only by a wad of cloth and a leather strap.
Hashi had tried to pull the doctor back to a safe distance. He'd earned himself an elbow to the ribs and a burning, dark-eyed glare, a look of remonstration Gull recalled well from childhood. Zera's loss of consciousness had given Dr. Jina Chase her desired opportunity to examine her test subject. Nothing in heaven or on God's green earth was going to get her to back away.
That opportunity, however, lasted barely five minutes.
"She's waking." Hashi grabbed the doctor and hauled her away, ignoring a salvo of curses in French and Swahili. The deputy mayor's top concern had to be Colony security as he wrestled one of the settlement's precious health experts to the door, but long-suffering love was what had him taking a headbutt to the chin without complaint. Five years he'd waited for Jina Chase to stop stubbornly grieving her husband's—his best friend's—loss.
Gull finished hauling his mother out of harm's way, dragging her back to the Brick Room's reception area, out of sight.
"Gulliver!" Jina fought to get back to her patient. "Let go at once!"
Gull simply hooked her about her generous waist and dumped her on the reception's ratty sofa. Aiming an index finger straight at her flaring nostrils, he had her freezing before she could do more than plant her hands to get back up. "You know the deal," he bit out softly. "You and the project keep a low profile. You agreed to that for your own good and the Colony's, and you'll stick to that deal or I'll shoot your test subject right now."
His mother seethed a second, her ample chest heaving before her chin came up. An emotion far worse than anger turned her posture brittle: motherly concern. "Now, you know how I feel every time you go off jumping about broken-down, tetanus-riddled buildings."
"Tetanus? The city is overrun by lupine mutants, and your first concern is tetanus?"
"It's just one example of the risks you take, my boy."
Unable to help himself, Gull planted a kiss on his mother's wide, brown forehead. "I got nothing to complain about. I'd have been dead at twelve if you hadn't adopted my delinquent arse. I'm on bonus time."
"Idiot." His mother smoothed a hand over her untameable hair, her expression regal. "You and your siblings were your father's project, God rest his overly optimistic soul. You're nothing to me but worries and a pain in my rear."
