Issue 2

The doctor, in full hero uniform, adjusts some five hundred dollar glasses as he sits down with a beer from his hosts (a very concerned German couple) at their dinner table.

“I read the brief from THUNDER,” Benjamin Maddox Beaux begins, avoiding adding, ‘as useless as it was’, “but please, in your own words, tell me what's going on.”

The doctor's phone spits out a translation into German, and the couple (a muscle-bound man in a surprisingly stereotypical white shirt and a woman with very respectable melons, both of the people dark haired, light skinned, and green-eyed), begin their story… the man first.

He speaks in a gruff voice, which the translation software converts to a feminine one, “It is about our daughter. Eight weeks ago she was out chopping wood, home on vacation from University… it was night, but there was plenty of light from the full moon… and we heard a blood-curdling scream.”

“We both ran outside, of course,” the woman adds, also getting translated to the same feminine voice, “I with my axe, my husband with his sewing kit,” she gestures at the wall, and the doctor looks… ah, leatherworking: Those ‘sewing needles’ are good for putting holes in cows.

The man continues, “We found her, bloodied axe in hand, her dress torn, deep scratches on her exposed chest, some bits of hair scattered about, breathing heavily. She gave us a story about a man with a wolf's head and claws trying to **** her.”

The wife picks up the story, “We figured she was simply traumatized, and took her into the house: I patched her up while Victor called the police.”

Victor continues, “The police sent a car out, the man talked to us, took a few pictures, took us all down to the station… treated it as a costumed idiot attempting a ****… which we figured it was, until Diana went to change Angela's bandages in the morning.”

“Her scratches were gone,” Diana confirms, “like they never were. At first we counted our lucky stars, but then… well….”

“Four weeks later… four weeks ago…” the father continues the story, “she was in her room doing her homework, and we heard growling and a loud crash. We rushed in, and…” he breaks down crying.

The woman picks up where he left off, “it looked like a bomb had gone off. Scraps of fabric everywhere, the wall knocked down and laying on the ground outside… and our little girl… gone….”

“That's not the worst if it,” the father sobs, “we saw her on the news the next night. She… she… she was a monster. She was ripping up a tank that had been called out to suppress a ‘riot’... all black fur and teeth and claws and pain and rage and blood… the camera never had her in two frames of video in a row, but….”

“But it was her. A mother knows her daughter.” The woman takes a ragged breath, “She's aware, now…” the doctor curses machine translation, “can you save her… or failing that, end her suffering?”

“The folks from THUNDER…” the father pauses, “Umm. You do know that they…” he trails off.

The doctor considers, ‘So that's why the report had four different investigative leads cited at different places… each one found her, and after a point, they called me… and sanitized the reports. Of course.’ “THUNDER chartered an express intercontinental flight to get me here. Dying is one thing I won't do, you can be assured of that.” Benjamin resists adding, ‘I've tried’, but does add “and I am here to help as best I can. Now, what information can you give me? I need to have a good idea of what drives your daughter….”

The three spend some time going over the cleaned and repaired room (they needed to seal the house against the elements, after all), the woman's college textbooks (she's studying to be a doctor herself), family photos, listening to stories from her childhood, and other things. Why? Because ultimately, the doctor really isn't a fighter….