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“It’s okay to be scared. I am too.” Cass turned back to the door and tried the handle. It seemed to be unlocked from the outside. She turned to Phineas. “If we find your sister and dad, they may not be as you remember them.” It pained her to break it to the kid, but she wanted him prepared. Sugarcoating things wasn’t going to help.
A solemn expression washed over his face. “I understand.”
“Are you ready?” He nodded once more, taking a deep breath.
Cass swung open the metal door. The ostrich charged, nearly knocking her over. The yellow bird eyes inside the man’s face circled to the boy. He cocked his head to the side, taking Phineas in. “We’re here to rescue you,” Phineas croaked.
The man’s head bobbed as he inched closer to Phineas. He let out a light trill before ruffling up his feathers.
“It’s all right,” Cass cooed in a soothing voice. “Can you understand me?”
The man shifted his yellow eyes to her, blinking. He let out a small chirp. She took that to mean yes. Thankfully, he wasn’t left with a bird brain that couldn’t understand human speech, though he was clearly unable to speak himself.
“I’m an ASS agent,” she started to explain.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Agent Sparks,” Phineas piped up with a smile. “It’s not your fault they’re here.”
Cass tried her best not to roll her eyes again. “As in Avian Soaring Security, not that I suck as an agent,” she clarified. “Phineas here is going to lead you out once I free everyone.” The man chirped in agreement.
Cass took that as a good sign to open the next door. She didn’t want to put the kid in additional danger. She opened the next door slower than the first. A goose with white plumage flapped its wings at Cass. It ran out on human legs. She let Phineas explain they were there to help. The first bird seemed to trust him easier. She wanted to continue opening the doors slowly to avoid the risk of one of the experiments knocking the child over.
Things seemed to be going smoothly. It was almost too easy. With any luck, they’d come across Phineas’ family. He didn’t react to the shifters they let out so far, so she assumed he didn’t know either of them. She wondered how Grayson’s search for Sandy was going. Hopefully luck was on his side too.
13
It was hard leaving the captives in their cells. Grayson didn’t like passing their doors knowing they were inside suffering. He kept faith that Cass and Phineas would free them.
He rounded the next corner. This hallway wasn’t lined with doors like the others. This one ended at a single door. Maybe this opened to the forest Cass mentioned.
Grayson paused with his fingers wrapped around the handle. He wanted to be ready for anything. He prepared himself for the worst and flung open the shiny, metal door.
A long, skinny room waited for him. His eyes adjusted to the dark. No lights were on. The only brightness wafted through a picture window, opening to the forest.This must be Sandy’s observation room.
He traversed the chamber to the glass.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” a husky voice asked behind him.
Grayson turned to watch a slender woman in a button-down shirt and skirt take form out of the shadows in the corner. The artificial sunlight from the adjacent area lit up the delicate features of her face. If Grayson didn’t know better, this woman would have been a realtor, not an evil scientist. He expected an ugly person in a lab coat.
He decided to play along and stroke her ego. “I can’t imagine how you created all this down here.” An unfelt breeze fluttered the green leaves of the twelve-foot birch tree right outside the window.
“I wanted them to be comfortable.”
“Who?”
“My creations.”
So this woman fancies herself a god?
“Help me to understand.” He tried his best to keep his disgust hidden. He wanted to find out as much as he could. Were there other locations? Was she working with anyone? He didn’t want to risk there being more shifters in need if Sandy wasn’t feeling generous with her information later.
“Have you ever wanted to talk in your animal form? Some of my creatures can. What about seeing what would occur if one only shifted a portion of their body?” She walked to the window, inspecting the underground world she created. “What others consider demented, I made normal.” She smiled wide, proud of the work she’d accomplished.
The light from the window lit up more of her body, exposing long claw marks down her bare legs. From Ellie. His cadet had told him after she was snagged in the talons of the giant hawk that she’d shifted her hands to cat claws and raked them down the bird’s legs. This was indeed the red-tailed hawk they were after. He assumed it was also Sandy.
“Do you have more forests like this? More… creations than what is on-site here?” He barely got the words out through snarling teeth. He wanted to grab this bird by the neck and shake like a good dog. He wanted to scream at her for doing this without the permission of her subjects.
She shook her head. “Sadly, my other compounds have been… compromised.”
