Nature and Science

Dinner hadn’t been that terrible. Bland meat with char for seasoning but food was food, and Otto was loath to let it go to waste when he hadn’t eaten in days. She had been right, his mysterious rescuer; squirrel really did taste like chicken, with a sweet flavour. Perhaps it was his imagination, associating squirrels with acorns and all, but the meat had an almost nutty flavour to it. It was an experience, anyway, one that he ravenously devoured and followed with another thermos of tea, then a hard nap.

He dreamed of Rosie. Of her beauty, of her absence, of the last time he saw her, screaming in terror as his life’s work ripped her to literal shreds. He tried to dive in front of her, to protect and save her, but the glass always beat him, or avoided him, or he couldn’t move at all. Her one terrible scream haunted him again and again until he snapped awake, panting and wiping his palms across his eyes.

Otto paused, letting his hand fall back into his lap as he listened to the noises of night in the woods. Above the crackling of the fire, he swore he heard a squeal of some sort. Had his dreams followed him into consciousness or did he actually hear something screaming?

He sat bolt upright, limbs going stiff at the realization that, yes, something was making an awful noise in the forest. His eyes found the woman, crouched by the fire she had been tending while he slept. Even with her back to him, he could tell she, too, was listening intently.

“What was-“

“Hush,” she said, voice gravely from the smoke.

Minutes dragged by and every breath Otto took was ragged with nerves. When the woman stood, her movement startled him. He desperately wished his actuators would awaken, would work; he had never felt so blind before.

“Worst thing I’ve ever encountered out here is menfolk,” the woman muttered quietly, giving him a side-eyed look from over her shoulder. Her attempt to settle him was dashed as she picked up her shotgun from where it lay beside her sunglasses on the makeshift counter. She loaded one, two, three shells from her breast pocket. She pumped the action, closing the chamber, and disabled the safety with her thumb.

“Be silent,” she said, “Just keep listening in case it gets closer.”

The woman then walked around the fire and sat beside Otto’s stretched out legs. She leaned back, gingerly resting her weight against the lean-to’s wall, and placed the gun in her lap with the muzzle pointing away from them both.

They waited in silence, Otto finally getting his rapid breathing under control and realizing his socks, now dry, were back on his feet. His turtleneck was also draped over his lap, something he hadn’t noticed before. He unraveled it, pulling it over his neck and slinging his arms through but stopping short of threading the actuators through their respective holes. They usually did that for him, and he didn’t feel like fighting with his shirt.

Without the use of his actuators, he felt weak, blind, and vulnerable; he couldn’t even dress himself and such indignation stung. He tried to take solace in the woman’s gun; if she was a good enough shot to take out tiny squirrels, they would surely be safe from whatever was roaming the woods at night. Otto forced himself to think on the timeless adage that everything in the forest was just as scared of him as he was of it. That’s what they had taught him in Scouts, those three awful years his father had forced him to go.

The noise sounded out again. It was high pitched with a disconcerting rumble, like a lion’s roar but if it were howling in rage and full of thunder.

It was undeniably closer.

The woman swiftly got up and began kicking mud and lose dirt onto the fire. She reached for the pot of tea that had been perched on the coals and deftly dumped it over the remaining flames, stomping on the embers to ensure the fire was out.

“What did you do that for?” Otto snapped, already feeling the night’s chill, and silently willed her to throw him his trench coat still perched on a branch by the now destroyed campfire.

“Makes us easy to find,” the woman growled lowly at him. “The smell will make it easy enough without us holding up a neon sign.”

Otto stuffed his hands under his armpits to fool himself into staying warm. The woman tossed the empty teapot to him, snorting when he couldn’t immediately catch it. Its heat was nice, but he didn’t appreciate her methods of help, and he shot her a half-hearted glare that he knew she couldn’t see in the dark.

She grabbed her gun up from where she had left it over his legs and, with an unimpressed sigh, began to stroll away from the camp.

“Wait!” Otto hissed, sitting rigidly. “Where are you going?”

“To see what’s up,” she replied.

“See? You can’t see anything out here! There’s no moon, there’s no fire!”

Damn it, wake up! Otto pleaded with his dead actuators. Without their help and with the prospect of being left behind had him sweating.

The woman, as was her way, ignored him and continued on into the darkness. From the sound of her boots crunching on the hard, wet ground, she was heading towards the dreadful noise.

“That’s not wise,” Otto warned, though he sensed his words were spoken to no one.

A few minutes passed and he knew for certain he was alone. The empty kettle was no longer warm, his body having taken possession of every morsel of heat it could from the tin, and he set it down on the ground, discovering his still-damp boots. His pants were folded up and stuffed into his sleeping bag; Otto began to wonder how deeply he had been sleeping that the woman was able to sneak his clothes in piece by piece without waking him. Then again, he reminded himself, she had somehow managed to transport him to her little hunt camp without any obvious detriment.

What the Hell is her deal?

Not having all the answers was a constant in his life, but he had always overcome his ignorance with logic and study and learning. It had been a long time since he hadn’t enough information to confidently assess a situation, to draw conclusions from what he knew.

And Rosie was always there when all else failed…

Otto swallowed the lump in his throat, forcing his mind to deal with the cold air rather than the chill of loss. His eyes stung, and he had no light to blame his tears on this time. He rubbed at his face, trying to push the thoughts aside because there were bigger things going on, but the dampness froze to his skin and he found he couldn’t think of anything else but the emptiness in his chest.

Somewhere in the forest, a gunshot went off. It echoed over the trees and across the ridges, and Otto’s untrained ears couldn’t pick up which direction it had come from. Grief instantly turned into dread and Otto barely heard the second gunshot over the sound of his heart trying to mine its way out from behind his ribcage. His pants were on the moment he heard the third gunshot, his feet stuffed into his freezing cold boots. He went to take a step but the weight of his tentacles, combined with his already weakened state, held him in place. He curled up in the sleeping bag, holding his breath as he was forced to simply wait and listen.

Wake up, please wake up, he begged, but the AIs were silent. No other voice resided in his head but his own.

Otto remained that way for what felt like hours, his body stock-still save for his shivering as his feet grew cold in his damp boots. There was nothing to fill the silence, no rush of breeze, no creaking of the trees, just the dragging darkness.

Finally, Otto grew sick of waiting and began to kick his boots off, intent on peeling his socks back down his feet and warming them in his sleeping bag. The woman had not returned yet, but that wasn’t a problem he could deal with in the dark; she seemed to be capable of taking care of herself, if his own survival was any indication of her abilities. Besides, Otto thought bitterly, she had left him. Her problems were her own.

The cold had made him irritable, and he knew it even as he tossed one of his boots back onto the ground with a squelch. The snow from earlier had melted and, even if the flurries that had started to drift down after the woman had left him lingered, the soil and leaves had turned into unpleasant muck. He pondered the plausibility of untangling himself from his mechanical arms enough that he could get to the small woodpile by the destroyed campfire and somehow reignite it. He had no matches nor lighter, but there may have been something lying around. He could possibly look now that his eyes were well adjusted to the darkness after so much time.

Snarling, screeching, and the sound of heavy footfalls pounding into the cold ground tore the idea out of Otto’s head. In his mind, he pleaded with the noises to stop but they grew louder and louder until Otto could no longer deny they were approaching, and quickly.

Something hit the shelter and it hit hard, collapsing the branches that supported the foliage walls down on top of Otto, who flinched and raised his arms to protect himself. For a moment, he wanted to chuckle; the sticks, the nettles, none of them actually hurt when they came down, but any humor was forgotten when another heavy thing came after the first, sliding in the mud and scattering the ashes of the campfire as it tried to stop its momentum.

Two of them! There were two of those heinous creatures, and Otto found the conscious sense to stay quiet as he watched them in horror and fascination.

They were enormous, though one was clearly much bigger than the first. It was tall, reaching well over eight feet, and had long, shaggy black fur. Its arms ended in enormous paws with shockingly long fingers and curved claws entire inches long. Otto would have assumed it a bear if not for the second beast, which bore a pelt of mottled brown, auburn, and beige. Its ears were pricked upward and it had a long tail that was raised upright behind it. It, too, had enormous, hooked claws, and its jaws were open wide to expose its wickedly sharp fangs to its foe. The smaller of the two beasts turned its impossibly blue eyes to look at Otto for a split second before the larger creature launched itself forward and the battle began anew.

They looked like wolves. Ridiculously large wolves, true, and both were on their hind legs, but they were clearly some kind of canine rather than matching with his original assumption of ursine. Otto’s mind raced with the possibilities, trying to explain away how the beasts were so impossibly large and unlike any wild creature he’d ever seen at a zoo or in a nature documentary.

Fur flew in the air, and Otto could hear flesh and pelt ripping under the scythes of tooth and claw. Each animal shrieked and roared, tearing at the other, kicking, slashing, snapping their jaws as they scrambled for purchase in the other’s flesh.

The smaller one tore away from the black one, growling as it began to back away. Then, with another glimpse towards the collapsed shelter were Otto stayed concealed, it retreated into the woods. The larger beast let loose a howl and all the hair on Otto’s body rose at the unnaturally loud sound. He watched, with unblinking eyes, as the creature hurled itself onto its four limbs and galloped after the other.

Otto’s heart raced long after both creatures had vanished from sight, and longer still after the noises of their battle faded into the darkness between the trees. His eyes stayed stuck to where he had last clearly seen them, forever expecting them to come tearing back into the campsite to finish their battle or discover him. He made no movement, nor noise, and simply watched the treeline for any sign of movement that never came.

By the time the sun began to crest over the tree-dotted horizon, Otto had long forgotten the cold. Light reminded him of time, and he began to think again. He had to get out of there, regardless of how ridiculously lost he’d be. His actuators, still wound up and locked into their sockets, were heavy and made him sluggish, but he managed to drag himself out of the wreckage and find his lost boot. He stood, using one of the sticks as a cane to hoist himself up, and he slowly took a step forward, eyeing the woman’s knife on the counter. If she had been in the woods with those two monsters about, she was surely dead and wouldn’t need her blade any more. He, on the other hand, chose to live.

“WHOO!”

Otto’s entire body lifted off the ground a good foot, completely disregarding the weight of the actuators. He swore from the jolt of pain that shot across his spine, losing his balance and careening back down to the cold carpet of soil.

The woman came from the other side of the lean-to, silent and rude, just as she had the first time Otto saw her. The braid that had trailed down her back to her shoulder-blades was wrecked and her auburn hair stuck out in frizzled stocks of unkempt mess. Her shirt was shredded, barely clinging to her shoulders, and her pants had fared in a similar form. Her face was bruised, bloody, and the flesh of her arms was but a bloody mess of ribbons. In her hand, she still clutched at her shotgun.

“What a night!” she hollered into the air, and Otto wondered if she was speaking to him or to whatever forest gods had seen fit to spare her.

“Are…are you alright?” he asked, knowing full well she wasn’t but at a loss for words.

“No,” she said, and spat a gob of bloody phlegm from the side of her mouth. “I’m Elle.”

She limped past him, to the wreckage of the shelter, and began digging about beneath the slats. From between the gallon jugs of water, she pulled a plastic box out and opened it up, drawing several shotgun shells and making to put them in her pockets. They dropped, and she tutted to herself, picking them back up and loading her gun with as many shells as it held. She unraveled her coat and, ineffectually brushing debris off it, threw it over her shoulders and slung her arms gingerly through, grimacing the entire time. Then, she stuffed the remaining ammunition into her pockets.

“Who are you, then?”

Otto blinked at her, his mouth open and not a single thought in his head.

“Alright then,” she said, and began to sink to the ground until she was sitting. She drew her legs to herself and crossed her ankles over each other, leaning back and closing her eyes. Otto noticed only then that she no longer wore boots. “We…we’ll set out in a few. I just…need a moment. Just a moment.”

“What the Hell happened to you?” Otto demanded. As usual, the woman ignored him, and anger at being abandoned in the night combined with horror at her state heated his words. “Where the Hell did you go? What were those…those things?!”

She, or rather ‘Elle’ as she had finally introduced herself, raised a hand lazily in the air and gestured downward several times.

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Otto snapped. “What the Hell is going on?!”

“It’ll be back soon,” Elle mumbled, her hand now patting around blindly until it rested on a water jug. “We don’t want to be here when it comes.” She twisted the cap and began to unsteadily raise the jug to her mouth, sloshing water on her bloodied pants as she bore the weight with one mangled limb. “My cabin will be safe. Nothing’s ever gotten in before…”

Elle began to drink, swallowing loudly with each gulp of near water.

Sick of her ignoring him, sick of having no control, and furious that he had no answers, anger made it easy to rise to his feet. Otto all but stormed over to her.

“You WILL answer me,” he snarled. “What is going on?!” He pointed an accusatory finger right in her face. “Why’d you bring me here, hm? To feed me to the wildlife? How did you even get me here in the first place? I’m easily three times your size! You’ve no car, no truck; how could someone as small as you possibly have brought me here?”

Elle squinted up at him, sizing Otto up. She sighed, unimpressed, and screwed the cap back onto the jug. Setting it down, she used the jug to help prop herself up until she found her feet. Then, she turned impossibly blue eyes onto the larger man.

Otto felt like a mouse being spotted by a cat. He involuntarily took a step back.

She seemed bigger than his previous assessment, and it wasn’t just the addition of her coat which she was now shrugging off as though she hadn’t just fought to get it on. She hadn’t grown, nor was his estimate of her height off, but there was a presence about her that made her seem larger. Her eyes drew Otto’s attention more than anything; they were familiar, like a recurring nightmare.

Then her bones began to creak and what was left of her skin stretched over a growing frame. The hair on her arms, on her face, everywhere, began to grow long and thick over her body. Her face broke, the skin splitting into segments as her skull elongated, her teeth lengthening until they curved and new skin patched itself over the old.

It was not the most horrible thing Otto had ever seen in his life; Rosie’s corpse sprawled out on the lab floor would always win that contest. Still, it was well up there on the list. He stepped back again, looking up at the enormous wolf beast that stood before him, willing his jaw to shut instead of hanging slack upon its hinge.

Her arms were still lined with deep gouges but the fur that had grown covered most of her wounds. Her ears, now sitting on top of her head, were triangular and notched from the battle. Corded muscle was easily discernable under her pelt, made up of shades of ruddy browns, buffs, and varying reds. She towered over him by at least a foot, but her face was, as always, somewhat bored. A long pink tongue slithered from the side of her muzzle, sloshing about her crinkled whiskers and moistening her scratched, leathery nose.

Otto stared at her, pondering what to say, what kind of reaction was wise. Should he run from the clear display of power, or was she just showing off? She seemed to like being ignored so he merely raised a brow and mimicked her constant expression of disillusionment.

“Not exactly Best in Show.”

“You’re not screaming,” the beast said, sounding curious. “That’s…not normal.”

Otto swallowed back a bark of laughter when Elle’s tail began gently wagging.

“Of course!” he spat, doubling over as he had several realizations at once. She had called him sci-fi while claiming to prefer horror. His composure failed and he let lose a series of undignified guffaws.

“That…is also not normal,” Elle reluctantly observed.

“You’re a werewolf!” Otto laughed. “And you stink of wet dog because the river!”

Elle’s muzzle crinkled in disapproval while Otto carried on.

“That’s how you were able to…carry me? HA!”

“I was going to eat you,” the beast said, giving one of Otto’s tentacles a gentle tug that almost sent him sprawling. Otto’s laughter abruptly stopped as a streak of pain plummeted down his spine around the metal brace. “But…you showed me you wanted to live, so I didn’t.”

She stepped away, and padded off into the bush, head swinging from side to side. She inhaled the air, sniffing heavily in search of something.

“What do you mean? Showed you I- of course I want to live,” Otto protested.

Elle continued rummaging about until she made a pleasant coo and returned with her hat, significantly smaller in her now enormous hands.

“I hate when prey does that at the last second. ‘Oh no, please don’t eat me!’” She threw her paws up in mock protest. “Bah!” Her deepened voice became an irate snarl, teeth flashing. “You coughed up the water in your lungs rather than let yourself drown. And you weren’t…nearly as cold as I thought you’d be. So, I left you to die on your own terms. Figured I’d come back later, help myself.”

“I am not dinner,” Otto said, raising a finger to point at her accusingly. “Why’d you save me, then?”

Elle stared at his hand before lowering it with a long claw of her own, clearly unimpressed. Then she shrugged and set about grabbing up her jacket and shotgun. “Moral crisis. You were clearly not going to survive without outside help. And that one, the…upper left, I suppose…” Elle pointed a hooked claw in the direction of his actuator. “It…kind of did this screaming thing. Made my ears hurt, anyway. I think it was calling for help.”

She paused thoughtfully, looking down for a moment as she considered something.

“Maybe that’s why you weren’t cold as death. I guess a computer that’s needed to run those things puts out a lot of heat.”

She was right, of course, but Otto couldn’t hide his scowl.

“I must say, you’re taking this very well. For a human, I mean.”

“I’ve…seen some things, before.”

“No kidding,” Elle said, pointedly eyeing his tentacles. “I suppose there’s a story there, but whatever. Once you’re well enough to get going on your own, I expect you to do just that. Then we can both carry on with our lives and never have to think about the other again.”

“Deal,” Otto growled, watching the beast gather her knife and sunglasses off the counter. She picked up his leather coat from where it had been thrown during the night’s fight, neatly folding it up. She tucked both her lenses and blade into her pocket before she threw both coats to him. He barely caught the jumbled package, wondering how he’d get his jacket on without the actuators’ assistance.

“We’ve got a day worth of walking ahead of us. Sooner we can leave, the sooner we can get it over with,” Elle said, her moment of pleasantness over.

Otto suspected she was less than enthused about his relaxed reaction to her hairier form. He slung his coat about his shoulders and, holding her jacket in his arms, waited for her to point the way. When she only stared at him, he attempted to make an angry gesture of impatience. Then, without warning, he felt exhausted.

Hunger, fatigue, the stress from the entire night piled on top of him and he held a hand up to plead for her to wait.

“Just… a moment,” he echoed her words from earlier. “I…need a moment.”

“...Do they hurt? They weigh a lot; can’t be comfortable lugging them around…”

It was the kindest thing she had said yet, and Otto nodded silently as he sunk to his knees. He leaned back on his legs and tried to breath deep, letting the cold air into his lungs to jolt him to awareness.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, lying to himself. “I’ll be fine. I just need to take it a little slow…”

“Oh, oh no.” Elle shook her massive head. “We don’t have any time to spare.” She fell onto her forepaws, approaching him on all fours before crouching. “Hop on, then.” She gestured with her nose to her scabbed-over forearms. “I ain’t carrying you this time, not when you can sit up on your own.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Otto said.

“You’re a New Yorker, judging by that awful accent of yours. Surely, you’re used to public transit?”

“Nothing as…” he began to brace his hands against her shoulder, only to sink into her pelt up to his elbows. "…uncomfortable as…uhm.”

So soft. Oh no.

He fought for an excuse to not lift himself up. He found none. “How do I…sit on you?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” She whirled about and grabbed him by the top two tentacles, her maw clenched around them hard enough to swing him onto her back. Otto had no time to protest to his being manhandled before he was seated on her back. Her pelt did something to ease his furiously aching back but nothing for his mood.

“Now hold on and don’t pull on my fur,” Elle warned, glaring back at him. She swung her shotgun back to him, waiting for him to take it so she didn’t have to walk with her gun clenched in her hand.

“And don’t shoot me. I’ll bite your head off if you do.”

Otto grabbed the comb of the gun and held it over her coat on his lap.

“I’ve never been on a horse before,” he mumbled. “Or…any four-legged creature.”

“And I normally don’t invite strange men to ride me, so shut it, city-slicker,” Elle growled.

She set off, lurching forward in a manner that made Otto think she wanted him to fall just so she could chide him. Hungry, exhausted, cold, he refused to give her the satisfaction. He determinedly clenched his legs around her ribs, knowing it was the last of his strength and that if he gave her any slack, he’d be done for. To ensure his upright position remain as so, he grabbed a fistful of her fur. If he fell, he thought with a twisted sense of satisfaction, she’d feel it too.

“What did you say your name was?”

“I hadn’t,” Otto answered, fishing her sunglasses out of her pocket and trying them on. They didn’t sit right on his face, were far too small, but they stopped the wind and brightening sun from stinging his eyes. “Doctor Otto Octavius.”

It was safe to assume, he thought with no small amount of detest, the barking noise that came from Elle’s throat was laughter.