Omega's Run by A. J. Downey, Ryan Kells

creased as she squinted through the glare of the late morning sun through the windshield. “If anyone sees the half-naked guy constantly looking back it’ll look suspicious. Just stare front and center and try to act casual?” she ground out between gritted teeth. “God, you really are a fucking civilian, no tactical sense whatsoever.”
    I was a bit offended at that but chose not to respond in kind, simply turning back around in my seat.
    “Look, wolf-kind can track by smell. If we want a chance at throwing them off, we need to get across water. They’ll be right on our tails.”
    She snorted, and indelicate, mocking sound. “Pun intended, Wolf-boy? Seriously though, you think I don’t know that? What the fuck does your kind have to do with it anyways?”
    “You heard it, Ava,” I said, purposely using her real name instead of one of my little derogatory pet nicknames for her. I needed her to focus on what I was saying instead of her irritation at my propensity for using condescension on her. “You heard them back in that garage. The last ones coming at us, those were wolf-kind. I don’t know why or how but Mathias has my people working for him, or with him, I don’t know.”
    She said nothing, just continued to stare straight ahead at the road so I pressed my point. “With wolf-kind on our tails we need to cross water to lose the scent. They’ll have to spread out and cover more ground up and down the far side of the lake to try to pick up our trail again, and by the time they get there the trail could be cold and we’ll have a good chance that we’ve lost them.”
    “Could?”
    I shrugged. “It’s hard to say how fast they’ll move. They might get lucky and find the spot where we go ashore before the trail has a chance to really get cold.
    “It’s not really possible to track us when we’re in a car doing seventy-five on the highway is it? Through the walls and with all the other smells in the air, I mean, that’s impossible. Right?”
    I shrugged. “Police dogs are capable of it. They can track a kidnap victim even if the victim is put in a car for a short time but the trail does go cold rather quickly. A wolf-kind’s nose is even better than a police dog’s, if we know what we’re looking for, which we do. Match a human intelligence with the senses of an animal, it’s what we are, Babycakes. The best of both worlds.” She looked sideways at me for a moment, I guessed trying to decide if I was exaggerating or not. I honestly couldn’t give two rancid monkey shits if she fully believed me, as long as she listened to me. It was the only way we were going to escape with our lives. And speaking of which...
    “Why did you bust me out of there?” I asked. “Not that I’m complaining, but what happened to change your mind on the whole torturing and experimentation thing?”
    She made a disgusted sound in her throat and for a second I thought she was gonna hack one up and spit to the side. Instead her hands tightened even further on the wheel and she glared at the road ahead, as if daring it to do something to piss her off.
    “I never signed on for medical experiments like that,” she said, finally, after several minutes passed in an ever increasingly weighted silence. “I’ve been crusading for years, wolf-kind are dangerous and they hurt people, but they’re still living creatures. You’re supposed to put ‘em down quick… painless whenever possible. Torture for information sometimes has to happen but that?” she shifted in her seat uncomfortably, “The order has been changing things up recently and I don’t like what I’ve been seeing,” she finished, and if ever there was putting it mildly…
    I nodded but didn’t say anything. We were in a fragile state of a truce at the moment and I didn’t want to get her trigger finger itching. No matter how much the shit coming out of her mouth pissed me off. Instead, I turned and looked out the window, considering our situation and our