Dibs on the Discrepancy | A werewolf story

Oswald Hughes, President & CEO of Pax Mercator, a private military corporation, turned off the TV news report about a recent spate of gory werewolf attacks as he faced his investors and claimed full responsibility for those bloodbaths.

Since private military contractors which used human personnel were becoming less effective, Oswald saw an opportunity to use werewolves in an effort to aid the US military in missions involving the capture of high-value targets. Prior to his involvement, those missions usually ended in failure with a high number of civilian casualties which took a toll on the military’s public image. Thus, by making those attacks look like they were carried out by wild animals, the media didn’t care as much. The attendees offered to invest immediately if Oswald could prove that the werewolves retained their human control whilst in wolf-mode and if they could transform in both directions at will; however, since he couldn’t prove this, he offered them a tour of his facility instead - a deflection but also a demonstration of the control he wielded over his wolves.

The company accumulated multiple billion-dollar government contracts over the years and now others were interested in this model. Their timing was perfect for Oswald too since he was desperate to cash-in on new overseas opportunities.

Like most werewolves, the ones Oswald employed remained in human form at all times except full moon nights. They lived in an abandoned college campus which Pax Mercator acquired and converted into a barracks with two concentric fences that resembled a prison compound. This facility also served as the company’s secret base of operations.

The star performer on the team was Chad Stoppe, loyal to a fault, his personality revolved around keeping himself and his team in peak physical form and at the top of their intellectual game. He implemented a daily training regimen and an investigative course aimed at identifying and rooting out would-be impostors, spies, and moles. The course also trained the werewolves in detecting theobromine, the toxin found in chocolate, cocoa, and coffee that was poisonous to all canids. Chad’s tendency to act as de-facto leader made him highly unpopular with his teammates but no one challenged him since he was the strongest, fastest, and smartest of them all. Consequently, he was Oswald’s favorite. This teacher’s pet dynamic was the only outlier in Pax Mercator's philosophy of treating all werewolves as equals. In other words, Chad was kind of a discrepancy. 

Since their last mission, Chad was plagued by visions of his former handler, Reggie King-Ruiz. Handlers were US military personnel assigned to supervise the werewolf team and manage their safety in the field. They were responsible for accompanying the team to the mission site in stealth gear, collecting their clothing pre-transformation, extracting suspected terrorist leaders from hideouts, clothing the wolves and getting them to their transport vehicles once they returned to human form.

On one occasion, Jeanine, a female werewolf, struggled to perform during one of Chad’s grueling training exercises and the others ganged up on her, despite knowing that she was on her period. Noticing this, Chad ordered her to tag him so he could take her place. Based on his status, no one challenged him so he taunted them and promised to step aside as leader if anyone could best him in combat. No one dared accept this offer until Rawls, another large male, the newest recruit stepped forward. Rawls was bigger than Chad and often let his hubris get the best of him. He almost beat Chad into submission but only because Chad allowed this in order to exploit Rawls’ arrogance and give him a false sense of early victory. Before Rawls could deliver the finishing blow, Chad who was thus far feigning exhaustion, comfortably parried his attack and countered with a takedown that put Rawls in a chokehold until he tapped out. Rawls never challenged Chad again.

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Later that afternoon, the werewolf team and their handlers prepared for their mission to the south-western outskirts of Juarez, Mexico. This mission was emotionally taxing for Chad since Reggie was recently captured in Mexico.

After suiting up in the locker rooms at the high-tech underground part of the facility, the werewolves and their handlers boarded a stealth jet and departed for their mission. The aircraft landed just 1 click outside the target site. With precision timing, each werewolf and handler pair traveled to their designated coordinates on foot, putting their stealth training into practice. Once the wolves were in position, their handlers proceeded to a safe distance to remotely monitor the situation.

As planned, the full moon rose and the transformation began. The initial stage of the process wasn’t particularly loud but as bones began to crack and organs grew and shifted, the wolves began to growl, grunt, and finally, as their transformation was complete, howl at the moon. This was enough to draw the locals from their homes, a sight which the sadistic handlers relished. They hastily assumed their sniper positions and began firing at anyone who fit the profile of the person they were here to find.

Something was different, however, because the amount of resistance put up by the locals was almost non-existent. It was as if they wanted to get bitten, clawed, and gored to death by the terrifying beasts. Still, the wolves went to town on them, jumping in through windows, clawing bodies in half, biting off heads, severing limbs, swallowing small children whole, and sniffing out any potential escapees.

As their onslaught continued, blood filled the streets and locals who were slashed by powerful werewolf talons dragged themselves across the floor with half their organs leaking out. Their screams of unadulterated agony were quickly silenced by the twisted mercy of a sniper’s bullet.

Then, the unexpected happened - the werewolves started dropping like flies. Something had infected them. Their handlers, watching from a distance, began to panic as they radioed for back-up. A follow-up wave of local Mexican combatants appeared and quickly hacked the wolves to pieces with their machetes. Chad witnessed this as he was losing consciousness but just before they could get to him, his execution was interrupted by a familiar face - his former handler, Reggie. The handler-snipers retreated shortly thereafter as their mission had become unsalvageable.

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The next day, Chad awoke in a daze. He was in a cell, in human form with his wrists and ankles firmly secured to a wall by metal chains. Reggie was in the cell next to him.

As soon as he came to, Chad started writhing and thrashing, trying to liberate himself. Reggie told him not to fight it and added that he didn’t expect Chad’s gratitude for saving him due to his werewolf training to assume that all captured team-members were to be considered traitors, brainwashed by enemy captors.

Once Chad calmed down, Reggie said he didn’t think Chad was in a talkative mood to reminisce about old times, but he just wanted him to listen. He asked Chad if he ever saw proof of anything bad ever happening to a werewolf that was exposed to theobromine and if he hadn’t, how he could believe this. Chad didn’t respond so Reggie asked if he knew that during the battle, he was exposed to it.

Upon listening to that question, Chad finally made eye contact with Reggie.

Reggie added that the enemy combatants, whose hideout they were currently imprisoned in, ingested mass quantities of chocolate before the attack and as the wolves ate pieces of them, the theobromine entered their bodies. Chad was visibly struck by this. Reggie then revealed that this is what caused the wolves to faint but had they survived, they would have been different. He then dropped a bombshell - theobromine knocks out a werewolf temporarily but as long as it was in their system, they’ll have the ability to transform at will and control their wolf forms with their human brains.

Chad, scoffed in disbelief, and looked away. Reggie asked him to try it but was ignored. He pleaded again, warning Chad that if he didn’t try, they’d be stuck there forever.

Seeing the exchange going nowhere, two of the captors emerged from the shadows and said they’ve heard enough. Reggie clearly lied to them so now they were both going to be executed. The captors' triggers were slowly squeezed but as Chad heard movement in each gun’s barrel; instinct and adrenaline induced his transformation. To everyone’s surprise, his werewolf form started to emerge and just as the bullets reached him, his transformation was complete and they simply bounced off his canid coat. Now, in full control of his werewolf body, Chad broke his chains and smashed his and Reggie’s prison bars. The captors instantly fled the room and locked the blast doors behind them leaving Reggie and the werewolf together.

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Back at the Pax Mercator facility, Rawls and Jeanine were inducting a group of new recruits when they were called into a top secret meeting. Their superiors reminded them that since Chad’s body was the only one missing following their botched mission, they were to treat him as an enemy if he was ever seen again. This excited his former teammates, and they began calling dibs on being the first to apprehend him.

Meanwhile, in the captors’ lair, Chad began to slowly grasp the magnitude of lies he was force fed in what he thought was a noble cause. He quickly moved through the five stages of grief and accepted his status as nothing more than a pawn in the hands of Oswald, a power-hungry despot. Finally, he spoke and told his captors that there were no words to express his regret and he offered to do anything to atone for his actions. They told him there was indeed a way they could both get justice but it wouldn’t be easy.

A few days later, Chad showed up at the public entrance of Pax Mercator’s facility. As expected, he was treated as a threat, sedated and strapped to a gurney.

He awoke a while later in the infirmary with his wrists handcuffed to a hospital bed. He called for help but no one came since the entire facility was assembled in the indoor gymnasium, contemplating a lockdown given the unprecedented circumstances. Senior management debated killing him, questioning him, experimenting on him, or all of the above. Their decision was soon made for them, however, when Chad transformed his wrists into that of the wolf, broke his cuffs and fled his confinement. 

He then proceeded to the archive room in order to carry out the plan he hatched with Reggie and their captors. Once inside, he quickly rifled through files confirming Reggie’s suspicions that the Pax Mercator board was aware of the effects of theobromine on the werewolves but lied to them about it. The whole imprisonment for protection narrative was also just a trope used by Pax Mercator to control the werewolves and secure their loyalty. Had Chad and the werewolves known about their ability to manage their transformations, they wouldn’t have relied on Pax Mercator to supposedly protect them from the public and vice-versa. Instead, the werewolves could have led ordinary lives just like everyone else.

Chad also learned that the werewolves were developed under a cold war program for use against the Russians. The more he read the more depraved the history of the program became, orphaned children and wolves were experimented upon until a stable hybrid was created. The blood from that hybrid, once injected into a human, turned them into a werewolf. This explained his own childhood as an orphan who grew up in the streets only to be offered a chance to join a noble cause. Once he was of age, he suffered his first transformation.

Before he could read anymore or copy the files onto a flash-drive, the facility’s guards, comprising his former teammates, arrived and ordered him to surrender. He didn’t comply, and continued downloading the files, so they opened fire but he transformed his back into that of a bulletproof werewolf’s. Noticing the ineffectiveness of standard issue bullets, the guards began to prepare the anti-tank gun as Chad’s download reached 90%. The gun was now ready and just as they fired, the download was complete, Chad ejected it and fled just in time for the projectiles to utterly destroy the archive room.

The guards now stood face-to-face before a monstrous, hulking werewolf which was visibly pissed. The time required to reload the gun would have guaranteed their deaths so they made the logical choice and fled. Chad chased and tore them limb from limb as he raced towards Oswald’s office. He cleared wave after wave of guards in an uncontrollable bestial rage, never pausing once to contemplate how many of his friends he was killing.

As he approached Oswald’s office, he reverted to his human form since the doors were eerily unguarded. Clearly this was a trap, so he feigned weakness by reverting to his human form. Since he was currently naked, he quickly clothed himself in the pants and jacket of a fallen guard after pocketing his smartphone. The guard, now in his underwear, regained consciousness and resisted but Chad let him go and surprisingly told him to call for backup.

**************

Oswald, completely unperturbed despite witnessing everything that transpired via the facility’s CCTV system, simply smiled and welcomed Chad. He praised his efforts but didn’t apologize for anything; instead, he said he could use a smart and powerful right-hand man. Chad scoffed at the idea and asked if those were his last words before he was eaten. Oswald, disappointed with the response, rebuked Chad for his lack of vision. He then went on a tirade explaining how, with their combined smarts and physical attributes, they could take over the world, becoming indispensable to one warring nation after another. He compared himself to Napoleon and the Rotschilds saying they could mass produce armies of werewolves and supply them to all sides of various conflicts in exchange for a nigh-infinite profit.

Chad failed to react and maintained his signature stone-faced look.

This led Oswald into another rant about how stupid Chad was for refusing the opportunity. He began detailing how hard he worked as a junior lobbyist to coax various politicians into becoming more hawkish once he inherited his humiliated, mad scientist father’s werewolf research in order to create the Pax Mercator business model which essentially gave the US military plausible deniability for war crimes even though it meant a few service members and a lot of “ragheads” died grotesquely once a month. He asked Chad why he would refuse equity in a fortune five hundred company without having to do any of the groundwork that took Oswald decades to endure. He suggested that Chad check the company’s share price history before making his decision.

Chad then held up the smartphone, saying he would as soon as he stopped live streaming Oswald’s speech. Shocked and enraged at the humiliating public exposure, Oswald roared like an animal and began transforming into a gigantic werewolf himself. Chad didn’t see that coming and quickly assumed his werewolf form as Oswald lunged at him. The two wolves lashed out mercilessly at each other, holding nothing back. Tooth and claw tore skin while bones cracked, and streams of blood ruined the fancy carpet.

During the battle, however, Chad soon realized that Oswald was significantly more powerful, so he needed to beat him with something other than brute force. As Oswald squeezed him in a bear hug, Chad reverted to his slimmer human form and sled out of his grip. He quickly ran around Oswald’s enormous frame, climbed up his back and thrust his fingers deep into the monster’s eyes. Oswald roared in pain and swung out aimlessly in all directions, hoping to rip Chad in half. Chad made a beeline for the door during Oswald’s temporary blindness but Oswald’s heightened sense of smell promptly ended Chad’s attempted escape. He pounced on Chad, ready to end him but before he could land the killing blow, he was blasted by the anti-tank gun, quickly assembled by a new contingent of facility guards. The impact flung Oswald back with enough force to leave a gaping hole in his chest, killing him instantly.

Standing at the threshold of Oswald’s office, the guards saw nothing but a crazed werewolf about to maul someone in a guard’s uniform to death, so they assumed the werewolf was Chad and that Chad was just an unlucky guard. They would only later learn the identities of the combatants whose fight they so serendipitously interrupted.

Once the dust settled, the guard who called for backup under Chad’s orders was shocked to discover that the smartphone was damaged and not in fact capable of live streaming anything let alone being turned on. This meant that Chad was bluffing when he threatened to expose Oswald and that he carefully calculated the steps that would lead to the guards sparing him and killing Oswald.

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Chad and his teammates soon made amends once he explained the effects of theobromine on the werewolf body and how Oswald withheld that information in order to bring the werewolves to heel. The team were furious, having been betrayed and learning that everything they knew and believed in was a lie. They also figured that Oswald’s clients would soon look into the events that led to his death so their next move was uncertain. They could tell the truth and expose Pax Mercator to the world but this would also implicate the most powerful military in the history of the world which was a major risk, so their story would probably be covered up immediately after their executions.

By force of habit they asked Chad what his orders were but upon reflection, he said they were no longer a team and he definitely wasn’t their leader. He was simply too tired and frustrated with his entire life up to this point. The lies and expectations, not to mention the nightmares of Reggie, took a significant toll, and all he wanted right now was some rest.