Retrouvaille [2] Scott McCall

Chapter 17: Condition Terminal

As they did, the two of them leaned in and started to let their foreheads connect and their noses graze against each other's. The pressure of the day seemed to be catching up to them. By impulse, the two of them brought their lips together for a deep kiss, each seeking comfort in the other. Looking to feel something other than despair and tension. Scott felt his heart start to lighten a bit as he started to move his hand to cup Luna's cheek.

"Sorry to interrupt," they heard suddenly. They broke apart to find Deaton walking in. He set a bag on the table and then pulled out a jar that contained the talons from the werewolf that attacked them at the school. "A werewolf with the talons of an eagle. Possibly a shapeshifter known in eastern mythology as a Garuda." 

He then brought out another jar. "Tracy's claws, the unmistakable claws of a werewolf but..." He then pulled out a jar containing a piece of her tail. "A werewolf who also bears the venom and scales of a Kanmia."

"What do you even call that?" Luna asked.

"Personally, I call it terrifying. But, at the moment, I'm more interested in how Tracy was able to get across the mountain ash." "I thought nothing supernatural can do that." "As did I. So if Tracy was able to cross the mountain ash, and no one supernatural can do that."

"Tracy's not a supernatural," Scott finished.

"Exactly. If she wasn't born and she wasn't bitten, she had to have been made." "Made?" gasped Luna. "Someone is trying to make supernatural creatures with non-supernatural means. And whoever they are, they're somehow managing to blur the lines between science and the supernatural."

Scott blinked before he thought of something. "But there's more. Liam said that he found another hole out in the woods." "Burying them could be part of their process, a kind of incubation." 

Luna was staring to get scared. "What are we supposed to do?" "What you've always done. Protect your friends. Protect each other." Scott blinked. "What about someone like Tracy?"

Deaton sighed and shook his head. "I wish I could tell you. Hopefully, I'll have more answers soon. I'll be gone a few days." Scott widened his eyes. "You're leaving?" 

"Just a few days," he quickly told him.

Luna let her eyes fall on the bottles with the claws and scales from these new...things. "How scared should we be?"  

He cast a look upon them as well. It was plain to both Scott and Luna that he was scared himself, but was trying not to show it. "I've lived in the world of the supernatural for a long time, but I'm still a doctor. Still a man of science. Something like  this happens...it rattles the foundation of everything you believe. Something like this shakes you to the core." 

"Something like what?"

"The rules. The rules have changed." 

Luna had her answer. They should be very scared.

++++++

The next day, Scott was sitting with Luna in AP Biology, trying hard not to stare at Lydia's empty seat and dwell on the fact that she was still lying in the hospital. As everyone was copying down the notes that were being placed on the board, Scott was making a list of all the strange aspects found in each of these new shapeshifters, trying to find some way to make sense of them all.

A werewolf with harpy eagle talons and a werewolf with a kanima's venom and tail. Not only that, but it seemed that Tracy was immune to mountain ash, which means that others like her were too. But, what were they?" 

"If 99.9% of our DNA sequence is the same as other humans, what could account for the missing 0.1% difference?" Ms. Ramsey, asked out to the class after finishing the last of her notes. She looked out to the room before choosing her student when no one was raising their hand. "Theo?"