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“Dr. Livingston recommended you.”
I narrowed my eyes at her with suspicion.
Dr. Robert Livingston was my advisor from graduate school. I hadn’t ta
lked to him in a number of years, but I kept up with his publications here and there when I had a free afternoon. His work in stem cell research was world renowned and was one of the reasons I’d chosen him for my mentor in the first place. His findings laid the foundation of what I worked on today.
“Will I be working with Dr. Livingston?” I asked carefully.
“Yes. Your work with transformative mutations though will be especially useful to the research we are conducting and the answers we’re looking for,” she replied tersely.
“What exactly am I going to be working on?” I pressed. It was time to get down to business. It was clear that I didn’t really have a choice from this point forward. Whatever it was, the work was important enough to be entirely classified and protected from public knowledge. In any case, it piqued my curiosity and I wanted to know more.
Amy took a deep breath and sighed.
“What I’m going to tell you next is a level of classified information that only a handful of people are aware of including the president and his closest advisors. Everyone else is kept almost entirely in the dark and only fed as much intel as they need to perform their jobs. Should you repeat this information, it will be considered treason under United States law and your immediate termination will follow,” she warned.
She didn’t elaborate on the definition of what termination might be, but there was little doubt in my mind that it meant that I would be assassinated if I opened my mouth.
My mouth went dry and I started to grow nervous.
“You’ve heard of the Department of Defense or the Department of Justice and the other various sectors of the United States government, but you haven’t heard of the one I lead because on paper, it doesn’t technically exist. The funding for my work has been stricken from all public record. There are very few people in the world that know of its existence at all,” she continued.
I sat back and folded my hands into my lap.
“What is the name of your department?” I asked.
“I lead the Department of Paranormal Activity,” she answered. Everything about her body language said that she was completely serious.
“Paranormal,” I echoed. She had to be joking. Those things weren’t real.
“Yes,” she replied.
“As in ghosts and monsters and vampires and that sort of thing,” I said, my disbelief more than obvious at this point.
“Our work very rarely deals with ghosts. Vampires hardly ever make waves as they are mainly solitary creatures unless they come together as a bonded pair. The list of monsters runs long though and would require much more of an explanation than you need,” she explained.
“You’re telling me these things actually exist, that they aren’t just stories,” I replied, my voice almost a whisper.
“I am,” Amy nodded.
I tried to swallow my disbelief. I wouldn’t have believed her if not for the technologically advanced plane we were currently traveling inside or the fully armed individuals sitting in the cabin with us and the fact that their organization had shut down the UConn campus, which was certainly a feat all by itself. As much as I wanted to disregard her explanation, I couldn’t.
I should have been afraid at finding out this knowledge, but I wasn’t. Instead, I was curious. All this time I’d thought these creatures were tales of folklore and myth, but as it turns out, parts of those stories may well be very true.
“It’s your job to keep the public ignorant of the existence of these creatures and to handle them whenever they fall out of line,” I said.
“It is,” she replied.
“So, what do you need me for?”
“I assume you’ve heard of werewolves, yes?”
“I have.”
“There are a group of creatures out there that are related to werewolves, we refer to them as Lycans, only they aren’t constrained to changing under the moon. They’re very strong and quite fierce, although not wholly invincible, and they’ve managed to kill a number of our soldiers. They shift into oversized wolves, probably at least double the size of a wild wolf. For several hundred years they’ve been a very docile group, but only very recently they’ve begun to act out. Once compliant and tame, they’ve become more aggressive and increasingly protective of their territories. They’ve begun to organize themselves into packs and that’s only the ones we’re aware of right now. My department has managed to capture a fair number of them, but several of them have managed to escape confinement. They’re becoming a problem for us and we want to stop it before it gets out of hand. Your job is to find out why their behavior has suddenly changed,” she explained.
“You want me to examine if there is a molecular reason for their changed behavior, if they’re evolving,” I replied carefully.
