by Lizzy Bequin
“Dog has been running recon missions into the Zone for several months now. He knows his way around the central city ruins better than anyone. Plus, he has been introduced to Lily O’Neal’s specific scent signature. As soon as he picks up her trail, he will lead you right to the target.”
“Yeah,” Donovitch scoffs, “If he doesn’t eat us for breakfast first.”
The Alpha is glaring at Donovitch as if he thinks that sounds like a good idea.
“I assure you,” Frostgrave says, “there is nothing to fear. This Alpha has undergone an extensive process of deep psychological reconditioning, which I have personally overseen. Just like his namesake, Dog is obedient and loyal. Perhaps a demonstration is in order to assuage any doubts. Would you care to volunteer, Corporal…Donovitch, was it?”
Donovitch shakes his head again.
“No thanks, Doc,” he says then jerks his thumb toward me. “But I think Sloane here has been itching to get up close and personal with an Alpha.”
Frostgrave turns his cold eyes toward me again, making me shiver.
“Yes, perhaps that’s an even better choice.”
After those videos Frostgrave just finished showing us, the last thing I want is to be a volunteer on a stage. But I have to show these other marines that I’m not afraid.
No signs of weakness.
“Fine.”
I rise and stride to the front of the room. The Alpha’s dark, predatory eyes connect with mine, and I pray nobody notices the chill that wriggles up my backbone.
“Good,” Frostgrave says before turning toward the Alpha.
The small woman, Hines, has a worried expression on her face.
“Doctor, perhaps it would be better to reserve any demonstration for a more controlled environment. I’m not sure—”
“Nonsense, Hines,” Frostgrave rudely cuts her off. Then turning toward the Alpha, he says, “Dog, protect Sloane from Donovitch.”
The speed with which the Alpha erupts into action is astonishing. His enormous bulk positions itself in front of my body so quickly, I don’t even see him move. It’s as if he simply teleported there.
One massive arm sweeps my body protectively behind the Alpha as he shields me with his body. He hunches into a fighting stance, and I notice the short hairs on the back of his neck bristle, just like an angry canine.
The Alpha snarls at Donovitch, popping his jaws viciously, and the marine squirms and pushes back his seat. The metal legs of his chair scrape on the floor with a hideous sound. The marine’s face is a mask of total fear.
The whole thing lasts barely a second, before Frostgrave intercedes. When he speaks again, his voice is sharp and harsh like the crack of a whip.
“Dog! Stand down!”
No sooner has Frostgrave spoken the command than the Alpha leaves off his aggressive display and stands at attention. His muscles and breathing relax as if nothing happened. His body, however, remains protectively positioned in front of mine. At this proximity, my nose fills with his intense scent, and my heart thumps beneath my breasts.
I catch a glimpse of the woman Hines. She looks away, straightening her glasses on her face. At first I thought she was nervous that the demonstration would go badly. Now, however, I get the impression that something else is bothering her.
She thinks it’s distasteful to manipulate Dog this way. He is, after all, a human being.
No, I remind myself. Not human. Alpha.
“Good, good,” Frostgrave says, pleased with the demonstration. “Sloane, you may return to your seat. Now, as you can all see, the Alpha has been thoroughly conditioned to obey commands. And the most important command for you to remember is that simple, two-word phrase: ‘Stand down.’ You may think of it as your safe word.”
There are nervous chuckles from the small audience.
As I return to my seat, I toss a smirk at Donovitch, but he doesn’t see it. He’s too busy struggling to regain his composure. His face is pale and his forehead is beaded with sweat.
“Yo, Donnie,” someone whispers from behind. “You need to change your shorts there buddy?”
***
Colonel Fulgore and Doctor Frostgrave go over a few additional details of the mission before dismissing us. The doctors and corporate suits file out first, followed by the black-clad marines. Only Frostgrave, Hines, and the Alpha stay behind.
As I head toward the door, I cast one last glance back at the aptly named Dog. My heart nearly jumps into my throat when I find those dark eyes focused on me.
“Sloane,” Colonel Fulgore barks as I step out into the corridor. “A word.”
I stop dead in my tracks and turn to face him. My body stiffens as I stand at attention.
“Sir?”
Fulgore steps close, and the stench of his cigar fills my nose and makes my eyes burn.
“What the fuck was that little outburst earlier?” he growls under his breath so only I can hear.
He’s referring to the beginning of the briefing, when I questioned why we are being sent on this mission. It’s interesting that I’m the one getting chewed out for speaking up when that idiot Donovitch interrupted the briefing at least three times or more. I don’t see him being disciplined.
But I keep my mouth shut. There’s no point in arguing with a superior officer.
“Are you having second thoughts about taking on this mission, Sloane?” Fulgore growls.
“No, sir.”
“What’s that?”
“No, sir!”
Fulgore nods and looks me up and down.
“If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be going on this mission,” Fulgore hisses. “You saw what those Alphas are capable of. The Zone is no place for a woman. Hell, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve got no business being a marine at all. But Dr. Frostgrave specifically requested your inclusion on the team.”
He takes the cigar from his lips and taps his temple right beside his squinting eye.
“Just remember, Sloane, Frostgrave and Central Command will be watching your every move. If you fuck this up, it’s going to reflect badly on me. And you know I don’t like to look bad. Understood?”
It’s a struggle to keep from trembling with rage. I’ve worked twice as hard as any man to get where I am, and I’m just as tough as any of the grunts in my squad.
But I hold my tongue and master my emotions like a good soldier.
“Yes, sir,” I answer sharply. “I won’t let you down, sir.”
Fulgore just snorts and blows a puff of noxious tobacco smoke directly into my face.
“You’d better not, Sloane. Now get your pretty little ass the fuck out of my sight.”
CHAPTER 4: DOG
“There she is!” the pilot shouts. “The Quarantine Wall…”
The interior of the dropship is a long, windowless cylinder. The cadre of armored marines are seated in rows along both walls of the transit hold, supported by padded deployment seats.
I lean forward in my own cramped seat and look down the long aisle to the open cockpit and through the arma-glass windshield to the night beyond.
Sure enough, there in the darkness is the Quarantine Wall, winding across the barren landscape like a black serpent. With my sensitive vision, I can even make out tiny dark specks moving about on the parapets—the guards who man the heavy artillery for keeping the mutants contained inside.
Mutants like me.
My heart thumps with excitement.
It always feels good to return to the Zone. The overcrowding and pollution of the city hive is no place for me. I need the sprawling wide open meadows and dark forests where I can run free.
I prefer going in alone, but this time I’ll have company.
I look around at the other occupants of the ship as they check their jump gear. Beneath their parachute straps, they are all clad in uncomfortable looking leathery environmental suits to protect them from the contamination of the Zone. Their helmets are stowed beneath their seats. They won’t need those until it’s time to jump
.
The only one not dressed in armor is me. I don’t need it since I’m already a mutant, an Alpha. All I’ve got on is a pair of black compression shorts and my chute harness and pack. And of course the rubber-edged military dog tags hanging from a thin ball chain around my neck.
When it comes to the Zone, I like to travel light.
As I scan my eyes around the hold, I catch some of the marines glancing at me, their eyes filled with a mixture of disgust and fear.
They don’t trust me.
I’m an Alpha, after all. I’m supposed to be the enemy.
Hell, I don’t blame them. I used to be a human like them in another life. At least that’s what I’m told. I don’t remember.
Most of the marines refuse to meet my eyes. They keep themselves busy, quietly checking and rechecking their gear in preparation for our jump. The only one making a racket is the one named Donovitch. Ever since we left the ground, he hasn’t shut his trap about how much shit he’s going to wreck in the Zone and how many Alphas he’s going to kill. He makes sure to glare at me pointedly after each of his overly loud boasts.
Whatever. If he needs to pump himself up, that’s fine.
Me, I have the opposite problem. I’m always pumped up. My struggle is keeping my feral Alpha urges in check. Thankfully, I have been thoroughly conditioned to keep my shit under control.
Settling back into my uncomfortably small seat, I feel the steady throb of the engines through the deck. My eyes turn to the marine seated directly across from me.
Sloane.
Now, she’s a different story.
I’ll confess, I was surprised as hell to see a female marine. However, despite being half the size of her comrades, she exudes a cool aura of self-confidence that I admire. It tells me she knows how to handle herself. Being a woman marine, I’m sure she’s had to work that much harder than everyone else.
But despite her cold, tough attitude, she’s still very much a woman. Her leathery black protective suit hugs her skin, showing off the curve of her hips and the ample swell of her round breasts. Even her slightly butch, blond buzzcut just serves to accentuate her feminine aspects even more.
I find my eyes tracing all around the sexy lines of her body.
As she silently goes about her equipment check, her head tilts, and my eye catches on something at her neck.
A dark barcode tattoo.
She’s been institutionalized at some point. Couldn’t be prison. SynerGen takes all kinds for their little private military, but they draw the line at ex-cons.
That means she must have been an orphan.
From what I understand, that’s not uncommon for females in the city hive. With the population levels skyrocketing, the government instituted a policy where each family is only allowed one child. Most families want a male who will earn more in the workplace when he grows up. If they have a little girl, many parents will abandon her to an orphanage.
Or worse.
It’s fucked up, but that’s the reality of life in the city hive.
It’s all so different from the way things work in the Zone. In the Zone, the females bear huge litters. The more the better.
And females—omegas—are prized above everything else.
I give the woman warrior, Sloane, one last look, and then close my eyes, turning my mind inward to recall what I know about the Zone.
Frostgrave has schooled me about it thoroughly.
When the Cataclysm happened over a century ago, it induced severe mutations in the human population within a fifty-mile radius. The mutations fell into three classes.
The most common were the betas, though all of them are dead now. Betas were basically zombies who would wander in a mindless daze. According to the stories, they didn’t last long. If they didn’t starve or fall down a manhole, they would end up getting torn to shreds by the second most common mutants—the Alphas.
The Alpha mutation, which is what I’ve got, only occurred in the male population. Those afflicted became hypermasculine monsters with superhuman strength and agility. In my case, my intense training and conditioning keeps my impulses in check. In the wild, however, Alphas have an insatiable hunger for violence.
Violence and one other thing.
Mating.
The rarest of the mutants are omegas. That mutation only occurred among the female population. The women who became omegas immediately fell into a state of intense reproductive receptivity known as estrus.
In short, they went into heat.
Upon mutation, the omega’s body would send out an extraordinary quantity of pheromones, signalling to any nearby Alphas that the omega was ready to be mated.
The omegas would lose themselves in a nearly trance-like state of raw lust, begging to be claimed and bred by as many males as they could take. The Alphas would descend upon a screaming omega in packs, using the female’s body roughly and mercilessly for their pleasure until her estrus finally abated.
We saw that first hand in Lily O’Neal’s neuro-transmitter recording.
And I’ve seen it once with my own eyes during a scouting mission deep into the center of the Zone.
With my eyes closed, I try to visualize the outside world that we are flying over. By now, the barren wastelands have given way to an entirely different landscape of lush, wild meadows and patches of dense forest.
The truth is that the natural beauty of the Zone is breathtaking. It’s nothing like the teeming, claustrophobic atmosphere of the city hive.
Donovitch’s obnoxious voice breaks me out of my reverie.
“Hey Sloane,” The loudmouth marine calls from his seat. “How you doin’ over there? You getting scared yet?”
There’s a faint tremble in Donovitch’s voice. It’s barely perceptible, but it’s there, nonetheless. If I hadn’t seen a dozen assholes like him, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. The truth is, he’s the one who’s scared shitless, and the only way he can cope is by projecting his insecurity onto Sloane.
I crack one eye open to watch how the woman reacts.
Sloane doesn’t let it shake her. She just ignores him and calmly goes about the business of double checking her parachute harness.
But Donovitch persists. He leans out into the aisle, grinning broadly.
“Look, Sloane,” he says. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll protect you from those big bad Alphas down there, but you’ll have to do me a favor in return.”
Sloane rolls her eyes.
“Oh yeah?” she responds in her cool, contralto voice. “What did you have in mind?”
Delighted that she took the bait, Donovitch leers at her and makes a lewd jerking motion with his fist.
“I’d settle for a nice tug job. What do you say, Sloane?”
A sudden wave of anger and protectiveness surges through me, and I’m about to threaten Donovitch to lay off before things get ugly, but I notice Sloane is unfazed.
“Sorry, Donovitch,” she says nonchalantly. “I didn’t bring my tweezers.”
I let out a bark of laughter. Donovitch casts a hateful glare in my direction before he turns back to Sloane.
“Shit,” he snorts. “You know what, Sloane, sometimes I think you don’t even go for men.”
Without missing a beat, she says, “I don’t see what that has to do with you, Donovitch.”
Grins start to spread across the other marines’ faces and a few of them chuckle. It takes Donovitch a couple of seconds to get the joke, as his expression transitions from confusion to dawning realization, and finally to anger.
“You want to know what I think?” He sputters, losing his cool.
“Not particularly,” Sloane drawls.
Donovitch grows even more agitated.
“I think you’re just looking to make it with one of those fucking Alphas. Huh, is that your thing? Bestiality? I saw how you were getting all hot and bothered watching that vid in the briefing.”
All the humor has gone out of his voice. His honor has been injured, and he knows he can’
t match wits with Sloane, so he’s just going for the lowest blow he can manage. I tense up and clench my fists, feeling a sudden surge of protectiveness.
“I think it’s time for you to give it a rest, Donovitch,” I growl.
Donovitch turns his eyes toward me, and I see them widen with fear as he takes in my tensed muscles and aggressive posture. His face blanches. He’s probably having a little flashback of what happened during the briefing.
“Stand down, Dog,” he commands in a quivering voice.
Instantly, and against my will, my muscles relax, and I settle back into my seat. The deep, warning growl that had been rumbling in my chest cuts off.
I’m used to this sort of thing, of course. It has been a part of my conditioning from the very beginning. If I’m told to stand down, I have no choice but to obey.
Still, obeying a prick like Donovitch is particularly distasteful to me.
As the color comes back into his face, Donovitch sneers at me triumphantly.
“Good Dog,” he says in a mocking tone. Then he turns back to Sloane, who is now watching me with a hurt and puzzled look. “Hell, Sloane, it looks like the feeling is mutual. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this dog here has the hots for you too.”
He glares at me hatefully, again.
“I guess his masters back at SynerGen don’t ever give him any pussy for being a good boy.”
Inside, my brain is itching with irritation and rage. It would be so easy to rip this prick limb from limb. But on the outside, my expression stays calm. I couldn’t attack him even if I wanted to. My conditioning stops me.
But I’m regretting that more and more with each passing moment.
Luckily, another marine jumps in. He reaches over and backhands Donovitch’s shoulder.
“Vitch!” he shouts angrily. “Fucking shut your face and chill, bro. And get ready. We’re getting close to the jump point. We need to all stay focused.”
Donovitch glares at Sloane for another moment, and she returns an ice-cold stare. Then he turns around and slumps into his padded seat like a pouting child.
Some warrior.
Sloane, however, handled herself well. She’s completely unflustered by the whole exchange.