The scratch of Eric Paulson's pencil on the page of his Sudoku book was loud enough to be heard over the droning of the air circulators.  Even sitting quietly, Eric was annoying.  The man's personality was a mosquito buzzing in an ear.  A pencil on paper should not sound like a shovel in gravel.  And no one needed to make grunts, coughs, and murmurs with each number contemplated.  If the break room had been empty, R.J. might have stuck around to drink his coffee.

"Catch you later," he said out of a sense of obligatory politeness.  As he shouldered the heavy door open, his hand involuntarily contracted, threatening to crush the styrofoam cup.

Eric made a droning nnnng sound and didn't look up.

Out in the hallway, R.J. had the odd but increasingly familiar feeling that he had stepped into a submarine.  The dim lights reflected off the narrow metal walls at regular intervals and cast shadows into the doorways.  The doors were the same gray metal as the walls and were recessed in their frames.  Their corners were rounded and they sat on sills three inches off the ground.  It reminded him of a movie he had once seen about a WWII U-boat.

He sipped his bitter, sugary coffee while trudging through the warren of hallways, heading to the OC.  R.J. couldn't help wishing that the cup contained some sort of brown liquor instead of the stale dark roast.  The full-faced optimism that he had arrived with on Tuesday had faded to a waning crescent of hope.

R.J. had first entered the Music Box with a feeling that the lab would be a bright light of science, illuminating the future ahead of him.  Instead, he found a subterranean world shrouded in a mist of secrecy.  He was supposed to lead the research, but Wiley blocked him at every turn to get information on both the staff members and the Subject.  And when Wiley did let a bit of information slip out, R.J. couldn't help feeling he was being lied to.

LARS, itself, seemed like an elaborate practical joke.  The briefing he'd been given didn't prepare him for the sight of the little girl being brought into the facility, sedated and strapped down to a gurney.

How could she become a ferocious animal?  The only proof he had was the snippet of video Wiley had shown him back in Alaska.  Proof so flimsy it made the sonar readings of Lake Champlain he and Mila had compiled look like hard evidence.

A wasted summer, some had called it.  They only had those sonar printouts and had to declare their findings inconclusive.  But R.J. knew they had tracked the lake creature for three hours one morning, as it trolled the murky depths in search of food.

Would the full moon, finally give him some true, concrete substantiation if LARS was the real deal?  If nothing else, it should allay his doubts one way or the other.  Either she'd change, or she wouldn't.

R.J. checked his watch and waited for the door to the Observation Center to unlock.  Where had the day gone?  It was almost five o'clock.  He wondered if he'd get out of there before midnight.

According to the government meteorologists, the moon would reach ninety-seven percent visibility tomorrow night.  Based on the three days of transformation that had reportedly occurred last month, She would change to her altered state on the full moon and the two nights surrounding it.  There was a mountain of work to do to get ready. 

And to top everything else, their doctor was a psycho killer.

The elevator had felt so confined after Barbara Gracie's confession.  The warmth had been sucked out of the air, swallowed by the vortex emanating from the spot where she stood.  The door had opened just in time to give him a reprieve from having to say something about it or having to deal with her any longer.  Relief hit him like a palpable wave when he left her to cool her heels outside Wiley's office.

R.J. hadn't liked her before her little bombshell, now she was clearly a detriment to the project.  The worst part was that Wiley must have known about it and brought her on to the project anyway.  At the first opportunity, he was going to have to lay it on the line with Maxwell and get her tossed back into jail as she belonged.

What a piece of work.  He couldn't help but feel sorry for her cellmate. 

R.J. stepped into the OC and a conversation abruptly ended.  From the way they were seated, it looked like Benning was holding court with Emily and Tray figuratively at his feet.  But it had been Tray's shrill voice that had been talking.  The boy looked at R.J. nervously, like the boss had just walked in and caught them slacking.

R.J. spoke directly to Benning, "You should head home."  Then he added to the others, "Dr. Paulson will be here in a few minutes to continue your training."

They were the two youngest members of the team and needed to be fully trained on all the equipment and protocols before the big night.

"Who's Paulson?" Tray asked.  "Is that the guy that looks like an egg?"

"Dr. Paulson is a hematologist and your coworker.  Show some respect."  R.J. gave the boy his back and walked over to the wastepaper bin in the corner.  Paulson did look like an egg.  Two eggs, in fact – a small bald one on top of a big lumpy one.

He chucked his empty coffee cup out and automatically popped a piece of nicotine gum in his mouth.  The gum and the coffee were his two best friends down in The Music Box, although Horus Benning was a close third.

Horus had started at the facility two days ago with R.J.  He was an easy-going man with a soft voice and a good sense of humor.  And at the moment, he felt like the only ally R.J. had.

Benning stretched back in his chair and rubbed his hands through the tight curls of his salt and pepper beard, as though he was scratching out the fatigue.  "Well kids, I'm off.  See you tomorrow."

"I thought you said this wasn't a nine to five job?"  Tray spoke in a way that suggested he was teasing, but he came off as brattish. 

"I've been here since seven.  So don't give me any grief.  G'night all."

There was a chorus of goodnights, and he heaved his bulk across the floor and out the door.  When he was gone, R.J. leaned over the control console and peered through the window.  It was a dense layering of one-way glass, wire-reinforced glass, and ballistic glass.  It looked through the mirror of a dressing table in the part of the enclosure that was made up to look like a little girl's bedroom.  There was a larger one next to it, looking into the animal enclosure.  Although, the one in the cage was a smoky black plane instead of a mirror, out of fear that a reflective surface might antagonize the beast.

She sat curled up on the bed reading.  The book and her golden hair hid her face.  Her knees were pressed up to her chin, and her toes were curled up in her bright, white athletic socks.  She looked like she was trying to make herself small enough to disappear.

R.J. couldn't see the book's cover, but he knew from the report that morning she had finally stopped sulking and started to read Anne of Green Gables.

The contents of the fully stocked bookcase had been selected for their reading level and their suitability to the Subject by some nameless bureaucrat in some government agency, who never heard of the LARS Project, and who had no idea what his selection would be used for.  Two of the key factors to suitability had been: nothing with supernatural beings or occurrences, and nothing likely to excite or upset the reader.  The Subject had not been impressed with the collection and had complained loudly about the lack of TV and music in the room.

The girl had thrown a tantrum either knowing or hoping she was being watched and listened to.  She had moped the rest of the day.  That was yesterday, her first day in her new environment.  The two counseling sessions she had with Horus seemed to have helped.  At least, she was eating and occupying herself with reading now.

"Mr. Blass, I was wondering...?"  Emily Kendrick adjusted her lithe, wire-rim glasses.

She was here as a research assistant.  From the bit of history she gave when R.J. met her, she had worked for a professor at NYU running a double-blind study for a new anti-depressant.  She was a little too cute for an underground lab with mostly male scientists working long hours.  He was going to have to keep an eye out for her.  And an eye on the men sniffing around her like dogs.  Tray was the first on that list.  He talked too much and too loudly whenever they were together.

Emily would stir things up like Mila used to back when he had met her.  At least once they were married, it had damped down some of the interest from the perpetually single researchers on the team.

"Yes?" R.J. said.

"It's just that this is supposed to be a cosmetics company."  She twisted a strand of her deep red hair around a finger.  "Shouldn't we get free samples?"

"You do know it's not a real company, right?"  This time he didn't look at her as he spoke.  LARS was moving.   

"Of course.  But it would be more realistic if we, the women on the team that is, used Aira cosmetics, wouldn't it?  If anyone came to our homes, it would help convince them we worked at a real place.  You know, for the long con."

Did she just say, the long con?

LARS stretched one leg out and folded the other to sit on.  The book slipped.

"Um, talk to Wiley about it.  That's not really my area."

The girl had blue eyes, but they were normal.  They were nothing like the one from the video.

"While we're at it, this cover story sucks."  From his accent and appearance, R.J. guessed Tray was some spoiled kid from an upper-middle-class neighborhood in the Midwest.  The collar of his green polo shirt was turned up.  His khakis were held up with a belt of woven leather.  And his blond hair looked like it hadn't been combed in a month. 

It was a mystery why he had gone in to be a nurse.  He seemed more the type to still be living at home wasting his time on video games during the day and clubbing at night.

He would be reporting to Gracie.  Maybe it would be worth keeping her around a few days just to see how that goes.

"I mean, seriously— a makeup company's animal testing lab."  Tray scoffed.  "There would be less of a stigma if we just told people we were performing unholy experiments on a twelve-year-old girl."

"I'm sorry if this project interferes with your social life."  R.J. turned away from LARS, all humor drained from his face.  "And we are not performing unholy experiments here."

A buzzer sounded.  He looked across the monitors to see a person in a white safety suit enter the Gateway for the enclosure.  The fisheye camera on the roof of the vestibule showed the person entering their ID.

R.J. held his breath remembering his conversation with Wiley.

"All the Gateways vent gas in case of a breach," Maxwell had told him.  "But the two that access her enclosures are more secure."

"How?"

"If they pick up the signal for LARS's RFID chip, they'll incinerate the occupants."

"That's crazy."  R.J. hastily withdrew his finger from the tube he had been inspecting and desperately wished he wasn't sealed inside the death trap.  "What happens if there's a malfunction?" 

"Some of the best minds in the government devised this.  There will be no malfunctions."  There was no trace of sarcasm in Wiley's syrupy voice, but it hadn't eased R.J.'s concern.

"The staff should know the risks if they're using it."  He had told Maxwell after they were back out in the staging room, among the equipment and hazmat suits.

"Do you feel safer knowing about it?" Wiley had said, before walking away leaving him there with his mouth hanging open.

In the OC, a computer screen replaced the words, "Acquiring identification..." with, "Access Granted: Dr. Barbara Gracie."

"Is it safe for her to go in there?" Emily asked.

Of the two, the girl seemed to be in more danger than the doctor.  If she had been in lycanthrope form, she would at least have a fighting chance.