Bitch: Puncture (book 2)

I blinked. I could still cry. Unbidden a mournful keening broke out of my heart and lodged deep in my throat un-uttered. I waited out the waves of sadness.

How could I get in front of this new reality? I’d been trying to fight in survival mode, this whole time. I realized that I’d been thinking mostly about all the things that I’d lost: my hands, my voice, my human body. I’d been looking at all of it like a human and not a, what? I didn’t even have a word for what I was, a thing? A something? A between? For a moment I felt like the wind was blowing through me as if I’d become invisible or had ceased to be. Like a ghost attached to an image of their former self haunting what it once loved. My eyes closed and I saw myself in the bed of a truck on a car carrier as if I was a bird flying just above and I was looking down at this strange creature who was letting the wind whip away her tears as she sat motionless nose up into the wind. And then I saw the gray of the wolf curled around her legs in the trailer. I felt the flicker of his fur on hers as the twisting air currents shifted on the mountain road. The scent of pine and cold. The distant whisper of the needles shifting. The creaking of the cars and chains locking them in place. A symphony of shifting notes as the chains and shapes almost whistled. I realized I could smell the truck, but the whole world beyond was alive to me. I could smell an animal that we had passed a couple miles back, deer. I could smell the wet earth. A river nearby, no I realized, it was a couple miles away running freely over granite rocks.

My eyes snapped open. I was back in my body. My body...

I hadn’t really even begun to use what I’d been given in exchange. I was not a brain in a jar somewhere. I still had a body after all. The body I had now was different, but it still worked. For the first time I wondered, what can I do that people can’t? Are there advantages to this new body? And how can I use what makes me different to change things?

The reality that the genetic modifications would have a direct effect on the length of life was not lost on me. I was 21 now, I think, or I was 21 human years. But how many would that make of dog years? How much would the surgeries and DNA modification shorten my life? I had no idea the state of my internal organs. I remembered the vet and the professor at the college Alan had taken us to see. I remember that he said I still have my reproductive organs so perhaps my other organs are still where they are supposed to be although I couldn’t imagine how that would work. I’d never considered before that all of the changes to my physical structure may have damaged my internal organs or my skeletal system. What if running with my organs lying horizontal in my body cavity was somehow damaging to them?

I decided that I couldn’t worry about that, as there was nothing to be done. If I was to die of some organ failure or surgery related illness, then so be it, but I decided not to waste a moment more thinking about all the possible ways in which in may not work.

And what of this snoring wolf that lay next to me, I wondered?

What secrets did he have hidden under his fur? I remember the excitement in the lab. I tried to think back about what the vet Stella had said. He had things inside of him that shouldn’t be inside of him: metal... and wiring for something... and blood.

Blood.

“Blood that shouldn’t be in a wolf.” That’s what she’d said. I wondered what about his blood shouldn’t be there?

I tried to think back about my biology class. And my human physiology class, didn’t they say that blood was different. Like you can’t get an organ from someone else without taking a lot of drugs because your body would reject it. What about the blood? And how had Shen gotten around that keeping us from rejecting the organs and DNA that shouldn’t be able to co-exist?

I knew there were different types, but what type could he have that wasn’t supposed to be there? Was it something in his blood?

I lay back down and wiggled closer to Apoc. His warmth and scent enveloped me.

The type of blood?

I tried to remember what had happened in the lab. What else had the vet and the professor said?

I remembered the water, the weird tasting water. And the watchful eyes of the lab tech as she watched me drink. She knew something, something was wrong with the water. Something was in it that made me fall asleep I realized it now. That bitch had drugged me and Apoc.

And then nothing.

Nothing till Red saving Apoc and I. Taking us out of the war zone.

Alan.

I missed Alan.

I needed to figure this out. Back to the beginning again my mind circled back as I closed my eyes to rest them just for a moment.