EXODUS

— by Jeff Karamales

Chapter 24
Just One Year Ago
 

The temporary office of the President of the Anthro Human Colonization Project was housed in a series of high quality trailers while the main building that would serve as the symbolic headquarters of the newly formed AHCP was being built. Enormous beams formed the four corners of the immense pyramid, Ásmundr Gustavsson having worked with and brow-beat one of the more notable architects in the world into getting a structure that would combine living quarters, laboratories, workshops and offices into a state of the art structure that would be instantly recognizable. Once completed it would even be visible from the heart of Stockholm itself.

Halley waited patiently as the receptionist, Fröken Svea Halgsöttir, a no-nonsense lady that, while not much older than she was, always treated the young woman with an affectionate warmth. Her deep blue eyes seemed to take on a light of their own as Halley entered the temporary office setup.

“Halley! So good to see you this afternoon! Would you be liking of the coffee or tea?” Svea asked pleasantly, the woman obviously having spent time working on her English as there was a marked improvement from the previous week.

Halley smiled, the expression automatic, though it failed just short of her eyes. “No, thank you, Svea. I was told that Ásmundr was going to leave some time for me to speak with him today.”

“Ja. He is of expecting to you,” the other agreed readily, touching the transparent panel that served as her computer screen, putting the material she’d been working on in stand-by mode. “A moment, please, as I am letting Herren Gustavsson knowing you are here.”

As the receptionist, who covered more than just helping to maintain a schedule for Ásmundr let the man know she was in his office, Halley looked around the temporary office. The walls were decorated with different sketches of what the main complex of the newly formed AHCP would look like, the concepts that Ásmundr himself had come up with. Interspersed with the landscapes and building art were pictures of the various Furs that resided in the old Olympic Village that was undergoing a serious revamping as well. A virtual army of architects and building teams were almost done turning the former venue into something that resembled a resort villa with Bavarian and Tudor style buildings. Whole sections had been torn down with a large building for each of the furman types having their own building where future volunteers would undergo the transformation process while those that were certified full Furs would reside in tastefully rendered apartments that would have all the amenities of exercise rooms, tracks, swimming pools and parks.

The sound of the door to Ásmundr’s office opening pulled the young woman from her contemplation of the various photos and drawings and Halley turned to find the enigmatic Swede standing in the doorway with a wide, warm smile. “It’s good to see you, Halley. We’ve all been so busy over the past few months that I haven’t spent as much time with you as I’d like. Have you had lunch yet?”

Halley shook her head. “Not yet, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I ask for a rain check.”

“Not at all. I know your work with Dimitri is taking up quite a bit of your time.”

The man gestured to his office and a plush chair next to the desk, closing the door as the woman entered and sat down. As she took a seat she noticed one of the many drawing tablets that Ásmundr always had close at hand, a rough sketch with neatly penciled notes in the margins and around the main portion of the drawing open for her to see. Halley jerked noticeably as she eyed the character studies of the four Furs on the paper and realized that the Felis, the name given to feline and great cat Furs, was none other than Wyatt Renner. His unique features were unmistakable.

“What’s this?” she asked softly, her voice still catching with the kernel of grief and pain that had never fully abated.

“Oh,” Ásmundr said quietly. “That.” He stepped to the desk and handed the pad to the woman and let her thumb through his drawings. “I thought an appropriate center piece for the main lobby was needed, and I’ve always enjoyed fountains, so I was working on ideas that had all four Fur types involved.”

“This…this is Wyatt…” Halley breathed, feeling her eyes start to sting a little before blinking them clear.

“It is. He was my friend, too, and this is one of the better ways I could think of honoring him and what he meant to me.” Ásmundr flipped the page over to show the final idea for the fountain, the quartet of Furs facing each other with their arms raised to support a globe while they all looked up to where they pointed. “The Furs have the ability to act as the explorers that we need before colonies are sent out. You know that two more worlds have been located? They’re calling them Monarch and Diamante.” He glanced at the young woman and noted the subdued expression of approval before she closed the tablet. “I believe, more than ever, that our Furs will be the deciding factor in humanity’s seeding of far off worlds.”

Halley nodded as she placed the drawing pad back on the desk. “Maybe, though they won’t be able to unless we can begin altering more people to refine the process,” she said. “There isn’t much that we can do that Lesko didn’t think of already, but there are some minor modifications to some of the gene resequencing processes that we need to test, and we can’t do that without actually using them.

“The equipment’s ready, Ásmundr. We just need, and I hate to say this because I sound just like that cold-hearted bitch Lesko, subjects. The injection units are ready, the full body imagers are tested and check out. I figure there’s an eighty seven percent chance of catching malformations before they progress too far. You can open up shop at anytime, but we need to verify that all of this is ready to go and the only way to do that is to use it.”

Ásmundr looked at the woman for a moment, taken aback by her almost clinical detachment. She hadn’t been so aloof and frigid when he’d first met Halley and knew that part of it was from losing Wyatt, though after almost a year he’d thought she’d have gotten over it or begun the healing process. “I won’t let what happened in Alaska happen again, Halley. You know that I am completely against anyone going through it that isn’t doing so of their own free will.”

“I know this!” Halley snapped, her eyes flaring with anger for a moment before assuming a pleading expression. “I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to do what’s right. But we can’t go any further without those volunteers.”

The Swede tilted his head slightly as he folded his arms across his chest. “So, what is it that you’re proposing?”

“I’ll be the first volunteer,” the young woman said firmly.

Ásmundr shook his head. “Out of the question. We need you and your expertise. You are one of the few that has full experience with the process and we need your input. You’re too valuable an asset, Halley.”

“I still will be!” the woman pressed. “I won’t watch what was done to the Furs be done to another unless I can share that experience. What I saw Wyatt and Ramad and Julie and Tom and all the others go through is too much to let someone else endure if I haven’t done it myself! I know what the process looks like from this side. Going through it myself will enable me to add to what we know from their side. We already know that I’ll keep my memories and still be me so you’ll still have access to everything I know. But going through it could provide even more information than what we were able to glean from lab studies alone. Please, Ásmundr. Let me do this.”

The Swede regarded the woman for several long moments before eventually shaking his head slowly in a denial of her request. “I’m sorry, Halley. I just can’t risk you or the things you know.”

Anger smoldered in her breast and Halley regarded the man coldly. “That’s your final answer?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Fine.” Halley stood and smoothed down the thighs of her slacks and adjusted her blouse and the lab coat she wore over it. “I know enough not to beat a dead horse. Thanks for hearing me out, though.”

“Look,” Ásmundr began quickly, interposing himself between the woman and the door to his office before she could leave. “I know how strong your feelings are on this. Try to understand that I’m trying to see the overall view, and all of us are treading completely unknown territory with this.”

Halley nodded and managed a partial smile before she touched the man’s upper arm with her finger tips. “I know. It…it just seems that I’ve still got things that I need to answer for.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Yes,” she said with another nod. “If you need me I’ll be over in development helping the technicians with the floatation tanks. I think they’re nearly ready to test the stimulation nets to prevent muscle atrophy when volunteers go under and in for the second phase of the process. I’ll make sure you get an update.”

“Thank you, Halley. And I want you to remember that you truly are invaluable to all of this,” Ásmundr told her fervently as he opened the office door for her. “If you won’t do lunch, perhaps I can convince you to join Dimitri and I tonight for supper?”

The smile that she gave was genuine as she paused before departing. “I’ll see if I can shuffle off enough of my schedule and let you know.”

It was enough for the Swede and he turned back to his desk and the work that was needed that had been interrupted by his inspiration for the fountain and a little bit of sketch time while Halley left the temporary offices and headed for the buildings that housed much of the work on the equipment that would eventually be used to turn other people into furmankind.

Just before she reached the small series of offices that held the research material that had been taken from Fort Freedom in Alaska, Halley turned at the last moment and entered the secured structure that held the actual equipment that she’d helped develop with Dimitri Kavalos and several others. The main room with the equipment was protected by an airlock, the double doors helping to prevent contamination through particulate matter. Inside Halley found body imagers for precise scans of a volunteer that would be used in conjunction with the computer guided armatures that would deliver the actual injections that would introduce the modified DNA and goetazine for the actual transformation process. The computerization of the machinery was sophisticated enough that once all of the data was processed for a subject, the only thing a person would be needed for was to watch the procedure.

Halley paused long enough to engage an actual physical lock on the inner door before slipping her hand into the pocket of her lab coat, her fingers closing on the vial she’d secreted away from the lab that was doing the actual genetic research that was an expansion of what she’d been a part of with the illegal experiments done to the collection of inmates. The vial snapped perfectly into the armature that rested above a table that looked like the kind used by a masseuse, the lights on the console indicating that not only was there power to the device, but that it simply needed the input from the body scanner before it would follow the automated injection protocol.

Once that was done the woman began shucking her clothing, pausing only long enough to fold her lab coat, blouse and slacks before she set them on an empty table. Clad only in bra and panties Halley began the process of booting up the imager, making sure that there was a communication link from it to the injection armature. As the complex programs began to format, the laser that was a visual representation of the sensors that would measure her entire body precisely began to hum as it warmed up and Halley finished disrobing. Once nude she turned to the console, her fingers flying over the touch screen, setting a thirty second delay that enabled her to get into position before the black non-reflective material that would enable the scanner to ‘see’ only her. Once the first scan was done she would have twenty seconds to turn for the next portion and took her place in front of the sensitive device, a calming breath slowing her heart rate and dropping her level of apprehension.

She hated going against Ásmundr’s wishes, but the thought of another person going through what she was about to without Halley knowing exactly what their experience would be felt so completely wrong that it caused her stomach to knot and churn. It had tore at her heart when she watched Wyatt going through his own transformation, but endured he had, and had been one of the reasons that Halley had lost her heart to him. Now as she neared the one year anniversary of his death she felt, foolishly perhaps, that the only way to keep the spark that was left of him alive in her was to go through what he had and to become the same thing he’d been.

The scanner ran through its processes and with her lover’s memory still clear in her mind, Halley made one last check of the armature to ensure that all was ready. Her eyes fell on the vial she’d placed, the label, clearly printed by a machine, read Felis catus +Leptailurus serval F-2, or for those that could read the designation, the genetic material for a savannah cat. Her own blood was a part of the serum, the ration of goetazine at its optimum level for saturation of her cerebral spinal fluid to enact the change of her very DNA in every single cell.

The computer that was integral to the injection equipment beeped to inform Halley that it had received the information from the body scanner and she performed a quick check to ensure that the control servos were properly calibrated so that the injection would be delivered in the right part of her neck. It wouldn’t do if the delivery of enhanced genetic soup was injected into another site. That would be disastrous and guarantee that Halley would malform once the changes began to take place. Certain that all was in order, Halley then did something that was ill-advised and shut off the small electrical probes that would use a small amount of current to disrupt the pain receptors around the injection point. She wanted…needed to experience this as close to the conditions that Wyatt and the others had as she possibly could.

Halley was incapable of putting into words why such measures were important to her, but the idea of becoming precisely what her deceased lover had become had been eating at her for months. It had been this thought that had spurred many of her efforts on, sustaining her through many a sleepless night. Now what had started as a thought had metamorphosed into a full obsession. With a sigh, realizing that this would be the closest that she would ever get to being with Wyatt ever again, the young woman got onto the table, her face resting in the padded ring and fighting not to shiver as her slightly sweat slicked skin cooled rapidly on the plastic pad covering. It seemed that no sooner had she settled on the table than the armature came to life, whirring and humming as it swung into position.

There was a moment when Halley thought she could actually feel the aiming laser of the device on her exposed neck. Then the deactivated probes stirred her hair, the almost white-blond strands a little longer than she’d worn them the previous year and almost made her flinch had she not steeled herself for such. When the needle pierced her skin and drove into the juncture of cervical vertebrae and the pad of cartilage it was like someone had placed a red-hot poker against her neck and Halley bit back a yelp as she held herself completely immobile, tears of pain leaking past her tightly shut eyelids. The pain didn’t lessen as the injection was delivered with mechanical efficiency and the armature returned to the stand-by position.

Whimpering a little at the hot point of pain just below the base of her skull, Halley rolled off the table, her fingers reaching up to injection site and rubbing lightly. When she looked at her finger tips she found them a little damp with a clear fluid and a slight amount of blood. Once she felt as if she could bear the discomfort, the woman redressed, making sure that her garments were properly situated before unlatching the mechanical lock after pocketing the expended vial of altered genetic material that now resided in her body. The vial would go into one of the facility incinerators to keep the secret for a little while, though once the changes began there would be no hiding what she’d done.

As she made sure that all signs of her illicit activity were quickly taken care of, Halley smiled as an old saw about it being easier to ask for forgiveness than permission surfaced in her thoughts. Phase one of her personal quest was done. As time passed she’d implement the second portion, but for now there was still work to be done. Memories of Wyatt came to Halley as she shut off the lights and slipped back through the airlock, knowing that soon she would understand the world as he had, the chance to do so causing an unexpected warmth to fill her and a smile to pull her mouth into the first true expression of happiness that she’d experienced since her lover had been taken from her. 

*** 

Dimitri Kavalos was young enough that only four hours of sleep per day wasn’t that daunting a prospect, particularly when he was driven by passionate enthusiasm. Almost a year of sifting through the thousands of hours of data that had come from the project that had created the Furs hadn’t dampened the urge to learn all that he could of the process or the end results of the experiments that had been carried out. When he wasn’t pouring over the records of the illegal procedures that had been carried out, he was consulting with other medical professionals and had even taken to traveling to zoos or seeking out the knowledge that various doctors of veterinary medicine had compiled in order to understand his charges better and how to best maintain their health.

Learning how the process was achieved, the altering of both human and animal DNA to precisely mutate the subjects from Emily Lesko’s experiments was more than intriguing, though it caused some consternation on the Greek’s behalf that a method that had been developed for cancer treatment could be bastardized so blatantly. Dimitri felt it his personal crusade to ensure that what had been done was utilized for the betterment of all in the same vein that his longtime friend, Ásmundr, hoped for. Once he came to terms with the moral implications, the former surgeon found the core material and findings absolutely fascinating. Much of what he learned was passed on to the bevy of geneticists that Gustavsson had gathered for further refinement and led to the designing of machinery and equipment that would streamline the process. After careful study Dimitri was able to determine that with a single doctor and attending nurse per group, up to four volunteer individuals could be run through the process at a time with more than adequate monitoring to prevent accidents and possible malformations.

The portion of the recorded material that covered malformation horrified the Greek, but there was no denying that the studies done on the test subjects had yielded mountains of vital data. While the loss of life was appalling, Dimitri promised the ghosts of the prisoners that had died that he would use what he learned to the best of his abilities to prevent such tragedies in the future.

It was while going over some of Emily Lesko’s notes that he’d called for Halley Kane’s assistance in clarifying some of the material. “This entry here,” the man began, his finger pointing at the computer journal entry in question, “I must be reading this wrong. She didn’t really use prey animal DNA on some of the prisoners. Did she?” Dimitri asked with a sickened look.

The young woman nodded. “She did. Lesko wanted to try all manner of Fur types out. She discovered that they took on many of the traits that their base animals exhibited. Timidity, flight rather fight…” Halley shook her head. “Lesko decided that they were a failure.”

“What did she do with them? She…she didn’t have them executed, did she?”

“No. She used them for what she called behavioral studies.”

The Greek frowned. “What do you mean?”

Halley scowled, remembering the episode all too clearly. “She selected some of the more intractable subjects, the ones that were excessively violent or antisocial, put them in solitary confinement and almost starved them before releasing them into chambers with the Furs that were based on prey animals.”

Dimitri swallowed hard and turned pale, an impressive reaction with the shade of his olive skin. “What…what happened?”

“What happens when you get a dog that’s starved that finds a rabbit?” Halley countered with a tightening to her mouth and the lines of her jaw. “That’s what happened. After the rape and general violence committed by dangerous and maladjusted people, that is.”

The former surgeon looked as if he wanted to be sick and stared at the young woman with a horrified expression. Then his face changed as he watched the girl lift her hand to brush back her hair and hanks of her silken tresses came away in her fingers. His first thought was the woman possibly had radiation poisoning before he recalled the material he’d been reviewing for the past several months and he gasped in stunned astonishment.

“Halley!” Dimitri husked as he pushed slightly away from the young woman, his eyes opening to their absolute widest. “What have you done?”

The woman looked at her hand and the strands of almost white hair between her fingers. “Oh, hell.” Halley turned to the man next to her and shrugged while a resigned smile tugged at the corners of her pink lips. “Guess the time for secrets is over, huh?”

“How?” Dimitri asked, still whispering. “When?!?”

Halley shrugged again. “Eight days ago. I used some of the serum base that was in cold storage mixed with my own prepared blood. By the way, the scanner and injection equipment function perfectly.”

The Greek’s mouth worked up and down several times without any sound as he shook his head slowly from side to side. “Halley…I have to tell Ásmundr about this. I have to. You understand, don’t you?”

“Of course I understand,” she replied as an affectionate hand came down on the man’s shoulder. “But you need to understand why I did this, Dimitri.”

The man tried to nod then stopped. “I don’t understand,” he admitted. “Is it…well, is it because of Wyatt?”

It was Halley’s turn to shrug. “Partly. I still love him…I still miss him. But there’s more to it than that. I…I can’t let another go through this without knowing, really knowing what it is that they’re going to experience. I…I should have done more when all of us were on that damned island and I didn’t. I was a coward, Dimitri. I chickened when I should have done something and a lot of people suffered because I was weak and afraid. Now I don’t have a lot left to me, but I’m not afraid anymore and I’m not going to let someone else go through this without understanding everything about it firsthand.”

The Greek slowly stood and took one of her hands in his, a sad, mournful cast to his eyes and mouth. “Admirable. That and I suppose I do understand, but at the same time I feel that you’ve made a grave mistake.”

The chuckle that came from the woman was full of mirth and as another lock of hair fell out, much to his dismay, Halley squeezed the hand that held hers. “I’m only human…well, for a little while longer at least, Dimitri. Mistakes are part of the human condition.” 

*** 

Ásmundr Gustavsson was as angry as Halley had ever seen him and as he ranted and swore in Swedish for several moments, the words incomprehensible to the woman while the meaning behind them was quite clear, she waited for his tirade to come to a conclusion. The man eventually fell silent and simply stared at the young woman, his nostrils flaring with the deep breaths he took to calm himself though the true weight of his anger was evident in the cold hardness of his blue eyes. “You realize that you have acted extremely selfishly,” Ásmundr began, the muscles in his jaw bulging as he fought to maintain his fragile composure. “I denied your request to undergo the transformation for valid reasons. Not only have you betrayed my trust, what you did was beyond dangerous. What if something had gone wrong with the targeting parameters programmed into the delivery unit? Did you stop to think about that? You could have wound up paralyzed or worse!”

Halley sat in the chair with her hands folded in her lap and let the Swede vent his spleen. Her face was placid and calm, though expressions were harder to read as not only was her hair gone, but also her eyebrows, eyelashes and the rest of the hair, no matter how fine, that had covered her body. Ásmundr’s anger eventually spent itself and he stared at her with disbelief and more than a little hurt that she could have done something so monumentally foolish. As far as Halley was concerned she felt that she’d made one of the few truly right decisions of her entire life. Nor was there any going back or changing her mind. The goetazine laced serum that she’d injected herself with was beginning the first visible indicators of her impending change into a Fur. Already new follicles were developing that would eventually provide her the fur coat that would cover her body.

“Ásmundr, I appreciate your concern, but apart from wanting this, you need to understand that Dimitri, Olya, Rochelle and Harlan and the others have learned as much as they can from the records you were able to obtain from the island. They need to see and deal with an actual transformation now. You also need someone to test the new equipment. I can’t stand the thought of anyone else doing any of this until I do. I need to experience the change myself. If I have to see another going through the process without knowing for myself what it’s like I’d never be able to live with myself.”

“There’s more to it than that,” the Swede spat bitterly. “It’s almost been a year, Halley. It’s time to let him go!” He dropped into a chair for a moment before standing again and stepping to the small wet bar in the corner of the temporary office and poured a large brandy. “How much of this is because you can’t let go of Wyatt?”

Despite her lack of brows there was no mistaking the anger that pinched Halley’s naked face. “Don’t go there, Ásmundr,” she warned quietly. “You don’t want to go that direction.”

“But it’s true,” the man accused with a scowl that only lasted a moment. “You aren’t the only one that still misses him, you know. He was my friend, too.”

For the first time in almost a year since Wyatt’s death, Halley saw just how much losing the Fur had affected the man. Before she was even aware of moving the woman was at Ásmundr’s side, her small hand on his shoulder. Halley felt the tremble as the Swede sighed and squeezed slightly as he put his hand over hers in gratitude.

“I’ve always been surrounded by people that were associates,” Ásmundr whispered. “Men and women that thought that being near me because of my money or notoriety would somehow elevate them in the world. I’ve known too many sycophants and hangers-on. The number of actual friends I’ve had in my life can be numbered on both my hands and not even include all my fingers. That’s why losing Wyatt hurt so much, Halley. He was a true friend.”

“Wyatt loved you as well,” the woman said softly, her earlier ire vanishing. “He admired you greatly and was very grateful for what you did. I don’t think he had a lot of friends either…especially not ones that would help him after what was done to him and the others.”

The two sat in silence for several moments, bound together in deep emotions that stemmed from the same source. When the Swede looked up at Halley and smiled it was with his usual good-natured warmth. “Do I need to ask what you’ll become?”

The woman chuckled quietly. “You know, for some reason I thought I’d make a good savannah cat.” She smiled down at the man before sobering. “You knew that this was something that I’d decided to do while Wyatt was still alive. Now it seems even more important than ever to go through it. For him and for the other Furs. I was part of the project that experimented on them. I have to answer for that, and the only way that makes sense is to share their lives. I’m sorry if it pains you.”

Ásmundr nodded and slumped in the chair, his hand still covering the woman’s. “Just promise me that you won’t do anything else before talking it over with either me or Dimitri. If you do that, I’ll promise to try and remain open-minded and not arbitrarily dismiss what you tell me like I have.”

Halley smiled before leaning over to give the man an affectionate hug. “Deal.” 

*** 

Julie Valance closed the book she’d been reading as commotion on the other side of the small plaza shaded by a tree caught her attention. The cat woman recognized two of the staff members for the newly christened Furmankind Institute but the third was someone that she didn’t recall seeing before. All three were unloading a flat cart stacked with plastic packing crates. As one of the staffers entered the former apartment building Perry Layton stepped up, the large anthrotiger having a sort of presence that was hard to ignore. “What’s goin’ on, Julie? Is someone new movin’ into our buildin’?”

The smaller savannah cat female shrugged as she set her book on the grass, not really paying attention to the way Perry acted embarrassed by the risqué cover art of the tawdry romance novel. “Don’t know,” she replied. “Whoever that is, I’ve never seen her before.”

“Is she sick or somethin’? She ain’t got no hair at all.”

“Let’s go find out,” Julie suggested as she fluidly rolled to her feet, pausing for a moment to scoop up the vest-like top she’d picked out that morning to wear. Like the rest of the Furs she liked to wear as little as possible in the summer heat, not at all ashamed at running about in her own fur as it hid her girl parts well enough. Though she found that simply lying in the sun tended to make her want to nap if there was nothing else to do. Tossing the vest over a shoulder Julie strode to where the stranger was lifting packing crates with the others, her steps mincing and unaware of the way the anthrotiger stared at her backside.

The motion caused the hairless woman to look up, a smile pulling at her full lips as she recognized the two Furs that had been part of Group 1 from the island laboratory. “Hi, Julie,” Halley said brightly. “Hey, Perry.”

“Miss Halley?” the tiger replied, blinking in surprise. “What happened to yer hair? It all fell out!”

“Wow, you aren’t sick, are you?” the savanna cat female asked in concern.

Halley Kane had been enough of a fixture around the Village that everyone knew her, both before and after Wyatt’s death. The woman was one of the few that had shown genuine friendship to the Furs, though Julie felt more than a little intimidated by the woman, particularly after her attempted seduction of Wyatt Renner, her strong attraction to the other savannah cat having overridden her better judgment.

“No, I’m not sick,” the woman said as she lifted a box of books, grunting with the effort before Perry took the box without trouble. “I’m just going through some changes.”

The tiger looked askew at the petite geneticist. “What kinda changes?”

Halley smiled warmly. “The same ones that you did,” she began and paused, remembering that none of the Furs recalled their time on the island after their memory wipes. “You were asleep for the changes you went through. But this is what happens as soon as the process begins.”

Julie took half a step back. “You’re going to become like us?” she asked with surprise. “But…why?”

Halley paused to wipe some of the perspiration from her smooth scalp. “It’s a long story, but I was one of the ones that, um, helped with your transformations, you know. I felt it was time that I went through it as well.” She saw that Perry simply accepted what she said before looking at the box he held. “Oh, if you can take that up to room twenty one I’d appreciate it.”

Smiling with the chance to be helpful, the large anthrotiger entered the breezeway before bounding up the stairs leaving the two females alone. When Halley turned to grab another box she saw Julie looking at her with a hard, accusatory stare. “You did this because of Wyatt, didn’t you?”

There was no point in denying it, Halley knowing that if she lied that the Fur would be able to tell and simply nodded. “I did.”

“You really loved him, didn’t you?” the catgirl pressed.

Halley nodded. “I did,” she replied before snorting with a small shake of her head. “I still do. Stupid, huh?”

The savannah cat’s expression softened noticeably. “Not really. I…I wanted him, too. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“I did. And I can’t blame you at all, can I?” Halley said with a sad smile. “Wyatt was special and we don’t always get a choice of who we fall in love with, do we?” She watched as the Fur silently agreed. “You know, today marks a year ago that he died. I plan on tying one on and crying a lot,” Halley said as she felt her eyes fill as the familiar lump formed deep in her chest where her heart was. “Want to join me and we can miss him together?”

Julie couldn’t help but perk her ears up at the invitation. “I think I’d like that.” The savannah cat started to move to the cart to grab a box and stopped to look at the woman with an earnest expression. “Does…does this mean we’re friends? Even though I tried to steal Wyatt from you?”

“Julie, we haven’t stopped being friends,” Halley said while taking the other female’s paw-like hands in hers. “And tonight I really want to be with a friend.”

The smile that the savannah cat gave was almost girlish in its honesty and surprise.

— NEXT CHAPTER —

Unless otherwise noted, all material © Ted R. Blasingame. All rights reserved.