Harley
"Here's the guy you asked for," Blackthorne's voice broke through Harley's fog. "Though his tranq is about to wear off. Sure you don't want me to stay?"
"Leave, Blackthorne."
Her eyes fluttered.
Blackthorne had wheeled in a skinny metal table with a slack form resting on it and then exited through the flap of the tent.
She made herself focus, though her head was heavy. Balancing it on her shoulders was like balancing a ball on a stick. It wouldn't stop wobbling.
Selene moved to the table and lifted the sheet, a syringe in her hand. She took a sample from the poor soul and then went back to her workstation.
"Getting closer..." She mumbled. Did she know how often she talked herself through things?
The person under the thin white sheet groaned and shifted. Harley tilted her head further down, trying to get a look at whoever it was. This poor wolf didn't deserve to be tested on--whether it be willingly or not.
No matter what angle though, she couldn't see much except for the dark hair.
A muffled hiss from the other test subject. He--it had to be a male, with the size of his shoulders and feet--flinched and jerked at the restraints on his wrists and ankles.
Selene acted like he wasn't there. She continued at her microscope, made a few notes, and eventually got up to leave.
"Blackthorne, I need another control sample. Where are they?"
Though she'd left the tent, they were still separated by nothing more than some glorified tarp. It made listening easy. Even with Harvey's normal non-wolf ears.
"I've got three in Dominic's trailer. And your son is heavily sedated in the medic tent, waiting for you."
A sour taste filled her mouth. Oh, Luna. Somehow these crazy holier-than-thou people had gotten more wolves.
Her gut tightened. As long as they don't have Will.
As soon as she thought it, she felt terrible. It was a horrible situation no matter who was captured. But for some reason, the thought of them having Will seemed unbearable.
"And the rest?"
Blackthorne cleared his throat. "We're still looking."
"Be sure that continues."
A pause. Then there was the crunch of shoes on dry dirt. "Selene...Be careful."
"I'm not an idiot."
"Never thought you were," he responded matter-of-factly, "Just... Pierce doesn't look too good in there. Don't waste your only success."
More silence, during which Selene was most likely gritting her teeth. "Shut it, Blackthorne, and watch them."
She didn't have to be a genius to know who them was.
"It's like watching a train wreck," Blackthorne said, presumably to someone else outside.
The person on the table in front of her shifted then jerked hard on the wrist restraints.
"Not gonna happen," She said through her cracked lips. Her throat and mouth were dry, and because of it, her voice wasn't much past a rasp.
"Harley?"
She'd recognize the voice anywhere. "Ben?" Her voice broke painfully on his name. She tried to conjure up more saliva. "Thank Luna you're okay."
Ben scrapped at one of his restraints with a nail. He lifted his head and got a good look at her. Whatever he saw made his face pale. "Oh, Harley..."
She definitely wasn't going to be winning any beauty pageants any time soon, she knew that.
"It's no use," she told him, "we'll have to wait for Will to come get us."
Ben grew another claw and attacked his restraints with vigor. "We're getting out of here."
"Ben, you're going to break your--"
He cursed as his claw chipped. Though he didn't stop.
Harley dropped her head against the back of the chair. "If we can just wait for Will--"
"We're on our own for this one."
She frowned--or at least tried to. Her whole body wasn't quite working with her right now. "What do you mean?"
"I got out of here once, I can do it again." He muttered to himself.
"Again?"
Ben never stopped sawing away. "Will got caught, Harley." He said, "We came to rescue you but...it didn't work out."
So that was it then.
Her heart dropped. It was bad enough that she was here with these people being tested on like livestock, but Will and Ben?
With a horrible sinking feeling, she realized that Ben and Will must be part of that "control" group Selene mentioned.
As if summoned, Selene came back in, a bundle in her hands. Blackthorne followed close at her heels. "I've got Harley, you get him."
Ben saw the needle in her hands and struggled hard, especially as she lined it up with one of Harley's veins. "Leave her alone."
"Oh hush," Selene said and pushed the needle down.
Ben growled low, fighting his restraints. He hissed something to Selene, but Harley didn't hear. She was already drifting off...
~
"Look at you," her dad smiled and lightly cuffed her chin. "my little genius."
Harley beamed back at her dad. She loved it when he was home. He wasn't too often because Momma said his job made him travel a lot. But when he was he liked to play with her and ask her about how school was going and how her friends were.
Mathias never asked her anything.
Momma loved it when he came home too, and often Harley heard her giggling upstairs with her dad. When he was home, Momma always smiled.
"Dad, are you gonna stay this time?" Harley asked and took another bite of the pancakes her mother had fixed up for her.
Her dad ran a hand over her head. "For a little bit. Then I have to get back to work."
"You're always at work." Even when he wasn't at work, he was in his office at the house until past her bedtime.
"I know, sweetpea, but this time I'm really making progress. In fact..." He pushed away from the kitchen table and disappeared down the hallway.
When he came back, he had a silver necklace dangling from his pointer finger. "I got you something."
Little Harley's breath caught at the butterfly necklace. "It's a butterfly!"
"It is," he undid the clasp and put it gently around her neck. "It's very important. I need you to watch over it for me."
"I can keep it?"
"It's all yours," he cupped her jaw, his thumb tracing her ear. "My beautiful little genius."
~
The next time Harley woke, she was in a small makeshift cage in a different tent. The skinny black metal bars dug into her back and her muscles ached from the curled up position she was in. However, the cage wasn't long or tall enough for her to spread out.
It was essentially a dog crate.
"Harley?"
Across the way, Ben peered out from a similar cage, only his was bigger. Despite this, his wide shoulders and tall frame barely fit the space. He had to duck his head at an angle. "Are you okay?"
They'd given her a weird hospital-type smock that gaped at the back. Ben had gotten a set of pale blue scrub pants and no shirt.
She rubbed at her aching temple. "Just peachy. How about you?"
"It's nothing I can't deal with."
She took a deep breath and reminded herself to stay calm. The anxiety bubbled just below the surface of her skin, but she fought it back. Panic would not help this situation. She needed to be clear headed. And right now it seemed like the clearest it's been in Luna knows how long.
"What's the plan to get out of here?" She asked him as she twisted to sit on her knees. The cage didn't have any type of flat bottom surface, so the skinny bottom bars pushed at her legs. No doubt she'd have some nice looking crisscrossed indentations soon.
This new tent held a few more empty cages and nothing else. By the looks of it though, they might not be alone for much longer. Selene had really set this camp up to be some type of on-the-go testing facility.
Ben blew out a breath. "We wait for reinforcements. Or try to break ourselves out." He curled his fingers tight around the bars and jerked hard. "These are thinner than the others. I might be able to get out again."
She tipped her head to the side. "Again?"
He'd said that before. Again. He'd gotten out and reached Will. Or Will reached him. If he did it once, could he do it the second time?
"It's a long story."
She bit her lip and fiddled with the warm necklace resting between her collar bones. When she glanced up again, Ben was staring at her. "What?"
His brow was wrinkled. "Are you sure you're okay? You're so pale, and I swear you're skinnier."
She'd have rolled her eyes if the concern on his face wasn't so...real. "I'm okay. It's been a rough time, but..." Then she took in the gash at his temple and the bruises dotting his arms and torso. "If you can get through it, I'll get through it." Just like everything else.
They sat there for who knows how long, waiting for...something to happen. Since neither of them had a watch, they had to guess the time from the angle of the sun against the walls of the tent and the heat that steadily increased.
All the while she nervously fiddled with her butterfly necklace. The only tangible reminder of her father.
If he were still alive, would he continue to call her his little genius? His living miracle? She wasn't sure. Though if he were still alive, she might not be in this whole mess to begin with.
And once she'd found out that he was using her, his own child, as a test subject? She'd be out quicker than--
A memory shot directly to the forefront of her mind. I'm missing something, Selene had said. Your father figured it out...
Holy Moon Goddess.
She yanked the butterfly necklace straight from her neck, the thin silver chain snapping easily.
"What are you doing?"
The butterfly part of the necklace was about the size of a quarter. It was a bit thicker, but that was because the top layer of the piece held tiny fake purple and pink gems that, despite the age of the necklace and what it had been through over the years, had never fallen off.
She picked at the crease on the side.
"Harley, you're going to break it."
Frowning, she pressed her lips together. "Exactly."
"But that necklace--"
"He told me to keep it safe," she said, picking at the edge. "That it was important to him."
"Of course it was. It was a gift."
She humorlessly laughed. At this point, she hadn't known her father at all. "A gift that he told me to protect. Who gives a gift and tells someone to keep it safe?"
"I mean, if it's a car, I'd tell them to keep it safe."
Her nail wedged slightly into the crease. "If you've just done a huge science project, where do you keep your data?"
"Um...in a drawer somewhere."
"Somewhere safe."
"Well, yeah."
"And this data," she asked, still chipping away, "do you put it separate from the results?"
"What?"
"You don't," she answered for him. "You keep everything together. Your work, your process, your data. All of it stays in one safe location."
Her nail wedged in further and finally, she pulled--
The necklace broke apart, the silver and gems flying. Something small, barely the size of her pinky nail dropped out.
Harley picked up the data chip and held it up for Ben to see. "Where better to hide things than right in plain sight?"