His wolf immediately roared to volunteer.
We are not climbing a tree,he told the beast firmly. Visions of shifting, shimmying naked up pine trees that had remarkably smooth trunks for at least ten to fifteen feet, and then dangling on a limb to jump over an electric fence into god knew what…
We are not climbing a tree.
The wolf shook its head sadly, and Cat sighed. “No, I don’t suppose that would work. But we need to hurry.”
He nodded once and led her to a hut in the snow attached to the fence.
“We could call the company. But who knows where they actually live? They don’t mine here.”
This is going to hurt,he told himself, and his wolf whined.
Not you. Me.
He flowed back into his human form, trying to keep his weight even on the discs. He levered up gracefully but staggered off one of them and ended up barefoot deep in snow in the searing cold air.
“Told you,” he said.
“Oh, my god!” she said and rushed forward, pulling clothes out of the backpack.
Who the hell invented skin? What a ridiculous choice to go through life with. How did humans ever take over the Earth with this wimpy barrier?
He pulled on layer after layer and knew it would help eventually, but right now it was just adding freezing cloth to freezing skin. And somewhere, kids had put up with this for two days.
He stepped toward the abandoned guard hut and looked for a panel. He found what he was looking for on the back outside wall of the hut. He staggered toward it as snow poured into his borrowed boots. Clothes were the best solution they had to the whole skin problem, but they were also stupid.
He levered open the electrical panel.
“What are you doing?”
He examined the system. He had hoped for a simple on and off switch like a normal overflow in an apartment building or something, but no, they had to have a computer.
He cracked his knuckles. “Turning off the electricity.”
“Electricity!”
His fingers danced over the touchscreen, and he had to keep blowing on them because the screen stopped registering them as they got too cold.
Who decided this was the system for a silver mine in the mountains of Colorado? Even the owner of the mine would have trouble controlling his own security panel.
“How are you…”
“Almost there,” he said, dipping into the operating system to find the override codes.
“So when you said you worked in computer security…”
“I do.”
“What you actually mean is that you hack computers, right?”
He grinned at her. “Every good computer security expert is a hacker. You have to be better than the ones trying to get in.”
“I guess I’m glad you use your powers for good?”
He paused for a second and turned toward her. “You know I do, right?”
All of my powers.
