by Lizzy Bequin
“I’ll explain on the way,” Dog says. “Meanwhile, Sloane and Kane can get Truk. Then we’ll all get the fuck out of this place.”
Hines shakes her head, looking worried.
“It’s a big risk,” she says. “Every second you stay here, you’re more likely of getting captured again. You should just flee while you can.”
“No way,” Kane says decisively. “We’re a pack. We leave here all together, or we don’t leave at all.”
“And we have a mission to complete,” Dog adds.
We nod in agreement.
“All right,” Dog growls. “Let’s do this.”
***
Kane stalks down the corridor, and I follow closely behind him.
It’s a weird sight to see this hulking, naked Alpha, with his tribal hair and piercings walking completely naked down this achingly bright fluorescent lit hallway.
If anybody saw us right now, the sheer shock of it would probably give us enough time to attack them.
But I hope that doesn’t happen.
Ahead of me, Kane’s nose snuffles the air.
“We’re getting close.”
As soon as we stepped out of our observation cell, he was able to pick up a trace of Truk’s scent. While Dog and Hines raced off toward the comm center, Kane and I followed Truk’s trail down the hallway.
Kane halts in front of a big metal door. It doesn’t look any different from the others we’ve passed. But the way his nostrils flare as he sniffs the air tells me this is the place.
In fact, I can even smell it too. Truk’s woodsy smell is in the air. It’s so strange and out of place in this hi-tech facility.
Kane nods and ushers me forward. There is a keypad by the door, and I punch in the code that Hines gave me.
The door slides open with a pneumatic hiss.
The room beyond is mostly dark. It appears to be some kind of hi-tech lab with work stations, swivel chairs, and computer terminals. From the looks of it, the room is empty. But then I hear a voice from somewhere deep inside.
“You will obey me, Alpha. Your resistance is only putting off the inevitable.”
It’s Dr. Frostgrave.
Kane and I step quietly inside, and I realize the room is much bigger than I first realized. A cold, bluish glow is coming from the far end of the room. As we prowl closer, I see that Frostgrave is there with his back to us, his attention focused on a glowing control panel.
And in front of him is Truk.
The Alpha’s naked body is hanging by his arms. His hands are encased in big steel cylinders, and dozens of tendril-like cables are running down his forearms and biceps, attached to his body with electrodes. His legs are similarly encased and wrapped in weird wires.
This must be the “pain glove” that Hines told us about.
Frostgrave speaks again, his voice cruel and sadistic.
“I am your master now, Alpha. I control you. Every muscle. Every nerve…”
He twists a dial on his control panel. There is no sound—in fact, it’s creepy how quiet the room is—but Truk’s imprisoned body twists in agony. His muscles pulse and flex, becoming striated with tension. His eyes roll back white and he grits his teeth.
But he doesn’t scream. He’s too tough for that.
I, on the other hand, am not.
I scream for him.
“Stop that!” I shout. “Stop hurting him you sick fuck!”
Frostgrave whirls around. Lit from below by the glow of his control station, his gaunt face looks absolutely monstrous. Behind his glasses, his eyes are filled with hatred.
Until he sees Kane’s massive form standing beside me in the dark, that is.
Then his expression shifts to abject fear.
“No,” he gasps. “It can’t be…”
His finger jabs at a button on the console.
“Security!” he screeches. “Come quickly! Laboratory 731! One of the Alphas is loose!”
There is no reply. His distress signal didn’t go through because Hines disabled the security systems.
“Looks like nobody’s coming to save you, Doctor,” I say.
“Too bad,” Kane growls, cracking his knuckles. “I would have enjoyed tearing them apart. I guess I’ll just have to settle for this one.”
I can’t help but savor the way that Frostgrave leans back in fear. His mouth is hanging open as if in a silent scream, and his body is shaking with terror.
“No,” he mutters. “No…”
His finger reaches down and depresses a different button on the console. With a sudden whirring noise, the electrodes on Truk’s body release, and the cables and wires withdraw back into the metal cylinders, freeing him.
Truk drops to the floor, his naked body weak from his torture.
“Listen to me, Alpha,” Dr. Frostgrave says in a shivering voice. “I am your master. You obey me. And I command you to protect me now. I command you to kill.”
Truk rises and looks at Frostgrave blankly.
“Kill!” Frostgrave gestures toward me and Kane. “Kill! Kill!”
Truk turns his face toward us. A low, aggressive growl starts rumbling deep inside his chest.
He takes a step toward us and Kane tenses up, shifting his feet into a fighting stance.
“Don’t do it, Truk,” he snarls. “I don’t want to hurt you, Truk, but I have to protect the omega.”
Truk’s growl gets louder. He takes another step toward us, and another. Now he is halfway across the room and almost even with the doctor.
Kane’s arm sweeps me protectively behind his body as Truk approaches.
“Truk!” I shout. “Don’t do it! It’s me. It’s Sloane. Your omega, remember?”
The blonde Alpha halts.
Even in the darkness, I can see the flicker of emotions in his eyes.
“Kill them!” Frostgrave demands. “You obey me, not some little—“
With a lightning quick motion, Truk turns on Dr. Frostgrave and catches the scientist’s face in his powerful grip, lifting him up until only the toes of his kicking feet are touching the floor.
“Did you really think you could break me that easily?” Truk growls.
Frostgrave’s hands claw at Truk’s wrists. His eyes are wide with terror behind his cracked and askew spectacles. His screams are muffled by the enormous palm covering his mouth.
“You know nothing about pain.” Truk snarls. “Just look at my scars, Outsider. I know more about pain than you could ever dream of. I learned from the very best.”
Truk’s fingers are digging into Frostgrave’s face, twisting the skin like a lump of clay. The doctor’s stifled cries rise in pitch.
“It’s too bad we don’t have more time, or I would teach you.”
I turn my face away just in time. Frostgrave’s muffled screams are cut off by a wet sound, like an egg being crushed in someone’s fist. This is followed a moment later by the sound of a lifeless body collapsing on the floor in a heap.
Good.
In the case of the marines and security guards, I wanted the Alphas to avoid killing them if possible. They were just pawns who didn’t know what they were doing.
But in the case of a sadistic sicko like Frostgrave, he’s just lucky that his death was a quick one.
“Sloane!” Truk calls. “Kane!”
All of the seething rage has gone out of his voice, replaced by that happy youthful energy that he usually has.
His arms wrap around me, and he lifts me off the ground in a powerful hug and plants a big wet kiss on my lips. His hand is warm and bloody on my back, but I don’t even care.
“I’m so happy you’re safe,” he whispers in my ear as he sets me down.
Kane steps forward and rests a big hand on Truk’s shoulder.
“Are you okay?” he asks with genuine concern.
“I’ll live.”
“For a second there I thought I would have to fight you,” Kane chuckles. “I’m glad it didn’t come to that. You must be the toughest Alpha I’ve ever seen.”
“Where is Dog?”
Right on cue, there is a sound of running feet from the outer corridor. A moment later, Dog appears in the doorway with Hines in tow. When he sees Truk, his eyes light up with happiness.
“Truk, you’re alive!”
“Never been better.”
Next Dog looks to me.
“We did it,” he says. “We removed the code that was blocking Lily’s transmissions from the Zone. Now the message is being spread all over the city, to journalists, news agencies, universities and businesses, you name it.”
My heart thumps a little faster. We did it. We completed our mission.
“Good work,” I say.
Dog hikes his thumb over his shoulder toward Hines.
“Really, Hines here did all the work. She deserves the credit.”
The woman steps forward from the shadows, and as she does so, her eyes fall on the dead body where it lies sprawled on the floor in an ever-widening pool of blood.
“Oh my,” she gasps. “Is that…”
I nod.
“It’s Frostgrave. What’s left of him, anyway.”
Hines turns her eyes away from the gruesome sight, and she looks a little green around the gills.
I place my hand on her shoulder.
“Thank you for this, Hines. We couldn’t have done this without you.”
She smiles weakly.
“It was…the right thing to do.”
I feel another hand on my own shoulder. It’s Dog. His face, as usual, is stern—all business.
“We’ve completed the objective,” he says. “Now we need to get the hell out of here.”
***
Hines directs us to an elevator at the side of the building that is away from the main areas, and we are able to make it down to the first level without running into any guards. Next we take a side exit out into a dark alley. It smells of rotting garbage and car exhaust, but the warm air feels good on my bare skin.
I feel free again after being enclosed in that cell.
We linger for a moment in the shadows where no one can see us.
“Hines,” I ask, turning to the woman. “What are you going to do? The backlash from this could be pretty bad. SynerGen may come after you pretty hard.”
“I know,” she says, but she doesn’t sound worried. If anything, her voice sounds relieved, like she’s finally gotten a heavy weight off of her shoulders. “I’ve got a place where I can lie low for a while. Hopefully, it will all turn out okay.”
“And if not?”
“If not, at least I’ll have a clear conscience.”
I give her a big hug, and it doesn’t occur to me until I’ve already done it that I’m completely naked. I blush and pull back.
“Be safe, Hines,” I whisper. “Maybe we’ll meet again some day.”
She nods, and then darts off down the alleyway, a small dark shape that merges and disappears into the dark.
“Come,” Kane says. “It’s time for us to go.”
“We need a vehicle,” Dog says.
The three Alphas and I edge toward the end of the alley, keeping to the shadows as best we can so nobody can see us.
That’s when I hear a familiar voice echoing down the street.
“My name is Lily. I am an omega.”
Daring to lean out of the shadows a bit, I peek cautiously around the corner.
Above the street is a massive display screen used for presenting news and advertisements, and there, fifty feet tall, is Lily’s face. Her voice is blasting out from loudspeakers, the sound carrying down the street. And I can hear other speakers in the distance playing her voice too. It’s all over the city.
Now I live in the Quarantine Zone, but it hasn’t always been this way. I used to live in the city hive like you. While I’ve been here in the Zone, I’ve learned things about the Cataclysm. Things that SynerGen has kept hidden for a long time. Things that you deserve to know.”
It really worked! Now everyone is going to find out about what SynerGen has done.
In the street, cars have stopped, and people are getting out, staring up at Lily’s image and listening.
“Here we go,” Dog says.
Straight ahead of us is a big SUV. The driver, a middle-aged businessman has gotten out, and he is standing by the idling vehicle, his face tilted up toward the screen. The driver’s side door is wide open.
Dog strides out onto the sidewalk, motioning for the rest of us to follow. The sidewalk is crowded, but everyone is so distracted by Lily’s message that they don’t notice the naked Alphas and omega creeping out into the open.
As Dog strolls up to the driver of the SUV, the man turns. When he sees us, his eyes widen and his jaw hangs open in surprise.
Right in front of him is Dog, a massive Alpha clad in nothing but black compression shorts. And behind Dog are two more stark naked Alphas, one with long, wild hair and the other with a dense steel-gray beard. Between them is a naked, buzz-cut woman—me. And the whole group is covered in metallic piercings.
The man is too shocked to even speak.
“I’m sorry about this,” Dog says in a voice that is commanding without being aggressive, “but we’re going to have to commandeer your vehicle, sir.”
The man doesn’t make a sound. His eyes just bounce from one Alpha to the next before he nods silently.
We pile into the vehicle and leave him standing there on the curb, still staring gape-mouthed after us as we drive away, weaving between the stopped cars as everyone listens to Lily speak.
CHAPTER 37: SLOANE
We drive back to the mineshaft under the cover of darkness, leaving the stolen vehicle where it will be found by one of the patrols. Hopefully, they return it to the guy we took it from. I don’t like stealing, but in this case it was necessary. We had to get out of the city and back to the Zone.
Truk leads us through the mineshaft by memory since we have no light this time. We make it to the end just before sunrise, and we are able to slip away before any of the guards on the distant wall can spot us.
We made it. We are back in the Zone.
It feels like a homecoming.
It’s strange, because the city hive is where I lived my whole life, but it never really felt like a home for me. I never felt like I fit in. But here, in the Zone, I have my pack, and our bond is so strong.
As we travel across the landscape of the Zone, I look at my Alphas.
We certainly are a motley pack. We’re all so different.
But it occurs to me that there is one thing we all have in common. One thing that binds us all together.
We’re a band of misfits.
As the only female soldier, I was a pariah in the corps. Likewise, as a “tame” Alpha, Dog was despised and feared by his own teammates. The half-breed Truk was treated as an outcast for being a Farlander even though he wanted nothing to do with those brutes. And Kane—stern, cruel, Kane—he lived in self-imposed exile as he wrestled with the loss of his sister.
Now, however, we are no longer alone.
Now, we have each other.
Fate brought us together.
We journey together across the Zone, heading toward our home in the city ruins. I can’t wait to get back and tell them the good news about our success. Most of all, I can’t wait to tell Lily. She has worked so hard and risked so much to get the truth out there, and now that has finally happened.
The morning is cool. The sky is cloudy, providing shade, and a thin veil of mist lies over the meadows and forest.
Around midday, however, the clouds dissipate, and the sun comes out, blazing hot, and before long we are all dripping sweat.
“You’re hot, little one,” Kane says.
I shake my head and press forward.
“I’m fine,” I say. “It’s nothing.”
It’s true too. I’ve been through so much in these past
days, a little hot weather isn’t going to stop me.
Kane smiles appreciatively.
“You may be fine, but I’m not,” he chuckles. “We should stop and rest. Let’s find someplace to get out of this sun for a while.”
I know damn well that Kane could travel for days without getting tired. Obviously, he has something else in mind. And the knowing glance he casts toward the other two Alphas just serves to make that clear.
“I know a good place just ahead,” he says. “Follow me.”
As we travel onward, the landscape around me looks more and more familiar. I’m certain that I’ve been to this part of the Zone once before. Then, as we come over a rise, I realize where we are.
“The collapsed overpass,” I gasp.
“That’s right,” Kane says, “The first place where we were all together.”
The shade beneath the ruined structure provides a welcome coolness. A light breeze ghosts over my naked skin. Even the Alphas sigh with pleasure at the sensation.
Last time we were here, this broken structure shielded us from the downpour of rain. Now it shields us from the scorching sun.
It feels good.
But I feel a bit guilty.
“Guys,” I say. “We need to get back to the city. Everyone must be worried about us. We need to let them know we made it, and we need to let them know the mission was a success.”
Kane smiles and smooths his hand over my head. He seems to enjoy petting the fuzz of my buzzcut.
“Patience, my little omega,” he purrs. “They have waited for us for several days now. Another hour or two will make little difference.”
I smile back at him.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
I gasp as something hard and warm brushes against my belly. When I glance down, I see what it is. It’s the hard steel piercing of Kane’s cock, warm with the sunlight and his own body heat, tracing a line up my belly as his member hardens until it is standing straight up. The slit of his urethra is pointed right at me.
A clear bead of precum, like a drop of nectar, wells from the pierced slit.
“Besides,” Kane says, “There is something else that cannot wait, my little mate. It has been too long since I enjoyed the pleasures of your body.”
At the sound of his rumbling voice, a cool shiver of lust runs through me, starting from my bare crack and traveling up my spine. Hot, needy wetness blooms at my center.