23 MMA Bears Three - Part 1

Marlow was in trouble. He was around 15 miles out from his home town of Swiftclaw, and for the first time he doubted whether he'd ever make it back alive. For the last few hours it seemed that he was being followed. In the beginning it was merely a hunch. He'd been driving all night across the state. As the sun dimmed, he first noticed the two pinpoints of light on the highway behind. At first they just hung on the horizon. Over time though, they remained transfixed on his position, and given Marlow's circumstances it was understandable that he felt anxious about them.

Time was of the essence. The Elder had sent him on an important mission, and while he hadn't completed it yet, information had fallen into his lap. A revelation which put the Elder himself and his entire clan in jeopardy.

Marlow's old Corvette was not exactly a slouch. For a few hours he was able to put some distance between himself and the chasing headlights. If they were chasing him, he felt comfortable that he could outrun them. That confidence quickly evaporated. It appeared that they had just been biding their time. As Marlow reached a particularly deserted straight of highway cutting across the empty countryside, which lay flat stretching out into the distance; the pinpoints of light grew nearer, brighter, stronger.

Suddenly, he was under attack. It was then that he realized there was more than one vehicle pursuing him out there in the wilderness. Two sets of headlights now penetrated the darkness of Marlow's car, while another car veered out from behind and drove alongside Marlow's corvette. The engines revved, and the smell of rubber burning up on the tarmac filled the air. Marlow looked across to the driver in the car next to him. It was difficult to see, but there was one thing Marlow was sure of by the size of the man. He was a shifter too. His eyes, however, gleamed differently in the night. They were not golden like his, but instead a pale white. They were almost ghostly.

The driver veered across the lane clearly threatening to drive Marlow off of the road.

"This is crazy," Marlow said to himself. He knew the information he had was important, but he was unsure how the Cabal had discovered his betrayal, and so quickly.

As Marlow did his best to keep control of the wheel, gripping onto it tightly, he began to suspect that this wasn't the Cabal at all. Shadowy organizations like themselves tended to move less directly, unless needed. This felt more abrupt. Marlow's pursuers were far more aggressive and out in the open than he would have otherwise expected. Regardless of who they were, there was only one thing they could want - the copy of the file he had in his possession. If only Marlow could have sent it directly to the Elder, but there was no doubt that the Cabal's cyber division would then intercept it, and it would all have been for nothing. No, the information had to be delivered by hand.

With the crunch, and the scraping sound of metal on metal, the driver to his left smashed against Marlow's car. Fragments of paint littered the highway. Marlow clung onto the steering wheel with all his might. He would have to calm his nerves, find a way out of this mess. While his attacker used brute force, as many shifters were inclined to do, Marlow was always one to use his intellect before brawn.

Looking up ahead he could see a turnoff, where it led he didn't know, but it could buy him some time, perhaps even lead him back into civilization where his pursuers would be less inclined to act in the open.

Just one chance to get this right.

He slammed on the brakes.

The car lurched on the road as the other driver was taken by surprise and continued on down the highway trying to screech to a halt. The car from behind smashed into the back of his car and nearly ran Marlow off of the road into a ditch. Luckily, he was able to make the turn and swerved over to the exit at speed.

That, however, was where his luck ended. The road he turned onto was obviously abandoned, worse than that the building he saw ahead of him was not a place which would offer sanctuary, it was an old deserted gas station; a remnant of a few decades past. What Marlow had achieved was to buy himself some time. That was all he needed. He quickly and astutely observed the situation. At the end of the road behind him one of the cars had stopped and was now blocking any escape. Up ahead of the gas station, where the road rejoined the highway, another car sat. Marlow's options were limited.

He was trapped.

The sound of car doors opening and slamming shut were all he could hear in the night, besides the gentle hum of his car engine and the crickets which hid in the undergrowth.

Leaping out, Marlow's eyes glistened golden in the night. He ran into the abandoned gas station. Large pieces of stone and masonry had crumbled from the walls, but the roof and the rest of the structure were remarkably intact for a building which had been left to rot for so long.

He could hear his pursuers coming.

More than that, he could hear that there were several of them, at least six. It was difficult for him to tell the number, for they had clearly changed into whatever animal their shifting ability allowed; walking as they did on all fours.

Crickets chirped in the dark, joined now by the crunching paws of those animals outside. Marlow looked around for an escape route, panicked, fear now taking hold. It looked like a dead end, and now he didn't have time to run out of the gas station as his pursuers were almost at the door. Looking at the ground, Marlow finally saw his chance, his last shot. There, on the floor, was a trapdoor going down to the basement. It was large, made of metal, and as Marlow heaved at it, it finally opened, shirking off the rust which had held it in its place.

Only one of the pursuers walked into the gas station. The others remained on either side of the road to stop any attempt by Marlow to escape back onto the highway. What entered the gas station, on all fours, was a large boar. It looked like a razorback, the tusks on its face carved and sharp. It was larger than any usual boar, and even when on all fours was the height of an average man.

It snarled and grunted, as it made its way further inside. Looking to the ground quickly, it saw Marlow's hiding place; the trapdoor lying open on the ground. With the crack of bone and ligament and hair, the boar shifted back into its human form. The man walked towards the trapdoor, peering inside. He then began to climb through the hole. When he reached the bottom of the ladder he saw that the basement was covered in rubble, but more than that, he saw that it was empty.

From above, Marlow jumped out of his hiding place, and shut the trap door with force. The man in the basement had no time to react, and as he tried to climb back up the ladder Marlow had already moved large pieces of masonry and rubble on top of the trapdoor, essentially trapping the attacker inside. The man began to shout on his colleagues, but his voice was muffled by the trapdoor and the stone floor above him.

Quickly, Marlow fled to the back of the building, finding a small window through which he could escape. Then, he himself changed. Hair passed through his skin, his face became a snout, and in almost an instant what had once been Marlow the man, was now Marlow the bear. He quickly ran up the side of a small hill at the back of the gas station and then disappeared into the countryside.

The boar shifters made chase when they finally figured out what had happened, but Marlow was faster than any of them and would not be caught. As he ran through the night, and the sun finally threatened to show its face once more from beneath the horizon, he thought about the Elder, he thought about the Swiftclaw clan; he thought about how things would never be the same.

* * *

It was around 9 AM when the Elder saw the bear. He was just enjoying his morning coffee, sitting on the main street outside a small cafe, when a large bear came hurtling down the road. In any other place this would have been worrying, but in Swiftclaw, with a population comprised almost entirely of shifters who could turn into bears, it was a common sight.

This time, however, things were a little bit different. It was clear that the bear was distressed. The Elder put his coffee down and stepped onto the main street. "Marlow! What are you doing here, young one?"

The bear stopped in front of the Elder. It looked at him and winced slightly looking down at his paw. Blood was dripping from it. Quickly, Marlow changed back into his human form. His naked body crumpled to the ground, covered in dirt and dust.

"Elizabeth!" The Elder shouted from across the street. "I need your help!"

A blond headed woman in her late 20s came running out of the doctor's office a few blocks down the street. It was Elizabeth, a human who was researching bear shifters, and who had also recently fallen in love with clan Swiftclaw's champion fighter, Bran. Indeed, they were now engaged.

She looked concerned. "Who is he?" Elizabeth asked as she examined his breathing yet unconscious body, pulling back his eyelids to see his condition.

"His name is Marlow. He's Gage's younger brother. And he shouldn't be here. Let's get him inside as quickly as possible."

It was three hours before Marlow regained consciousness. His body had just shut down. Unlike Gage and other members of the clan such as Bran, Marlow was not a fighter. To the uninitiated, he was a rather tall man, and when he was in his bear form anyone would have been intimidated, but compared to the other shifters he was slightly smaller. Indeed, it was Gage who often joked that their parents had picked up the wrong baby when at the hospital. Marlow simply did not have the physical stamina of many of his peers, but what he lacked in genetics, he more than made up for in heart, and brain power. If anything could be said of him it was that he was courageous, loyal, and one of the smartest of all Swiftclaws.

When he awoke, he found himself lying on a bed above the doctor's office, in Elizabeth's apartment. The Elder watched him, stroking his white beard. There was a look of puzzlement on his face. "My dear Marlow, I hope you're okay, but how did you end up back in Swiftclaw?"

"I ran through the night from the highway…" said Marlow.

The Elder smiled. "That's quite a distance. What happened?"

Marlow hesitated at first. He didn't quite know what it all meant. "As you asked, I've been working with the Cabal as an administrator for the last few months. I know I wasn't supposed to come back as quickly, but I believe I have evidence that someone within the clan is plotting against you, and working alongside the Cabal."

"LoHawk," Elizabeth said, coming into the room and putting a glass of water down next to Marlow.

"How did you know?" Marlow asked

"It's a long story. I'm Elizabeth by the way, I guess I'm the new doctor around here, I'm also doing some research into shifter biology."

"It's nice to meet you, Elizabeth." Marlow turned to the Elder. "There is much I need to discuss with you, can we do so in private?"

"I trust this woman with my life. She is on our side, you do not have to fear speaking in front of her," said the Elder. "Please, go on."