by Natalie Grey
It appears that another set of cages was just opened two floors down from Hugo, and that they were not hooked into the main defensive systems. The order to open the cages came from his office.
Stephen and Jennifer stopped, looking at one another.
“It’s possible that Arisha turned them off,” Stephen suggested. His mind was racing. If she had gone directly upstairs from the Guard Captain’s office….
>>Possible, but not likely. Hugo arrived with several bodyguards, and the likelihood of Arisha subduing them all is slim.<<
“Son of a pus-sucking, ass-licking monkey wanker.” Stephen clenched his hands. “What the hell are we walking into?”
“We once fought all of China,” Jennifer reminded him. She gave him a last kiss and stepped back, transforming a moment later and shaking her fur reflexively.
She loved her wolf form. She nodded at the door knob and whined.
“You should have thought of that before you gave up your thumbs,” Stephen said loftily.
A growl was Jennifer’s only response and he laughed as he opened the door.
“All right, let’s—Arisha!”
“Oh, thank God.” Arisha, backing away from a veritable sea of growling Wechselbalg, turned and scrambled through the door as Stephen slammed it shut. He heard it latch and he put a heavy amount of energy into holding it closed as the wolves threw themselves against it.
The door shuddered.
Stephen looked at her, calmly, and pointed to the door. “What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know!” Arisha gave a little shriek when she saw Jennifer and backed away.
Jennifer chuffed and sat down, giving Arisha a look.
“Oh, that’s … Jennifer or is it Nathan?”
A growl.
Arisha put up a hand, “Jennifer. Hi, Jennifer.”
Jennifer nodded her snout.
“I decided to go to the top floor,” Arisha explained. “I thought … well, if I could kill Hugo, so much the better, right?”
“Sure,” Stephen wheezed, as the door shuddered again. “A quicker explanation would be better.”
“Right. I thought these wolves would be friendly, so I explained I was here to help. They seemed to be listening, and then it was like they got hit with some radio wave or something. I didn’t hear or see anything, but they all shook all over and then they started advancing on me, and they did not look friendly. Door opened, I jumped out, you saved my ass.”
>>She should go down to the ground floor and go to the other stairwell. Stoyan and Nathan are protecting that one. And it sounds like Hugo may be able to control the actions of these Wechselbalg. Speaking of which, if anyone sees any other computer terminals, see what you can find. I’m not able to get as much data from those servers as I thought.<<
“Thank you, ADAM, and we’ll do what we can. Arisha, you need to run. Go now. The stairwell on the other side of the building is where you’ll be safest. Run. If you hear me yell your name, get out of the stairwell and go through the building. The wolves can’t get through the doors. Go!”
“Right. Be—safe.” Arisha gave Jennifer a quick hug and started running.
“What a sweet little puppy dog you are,” Stephen commented to Jennifer.
Jennifer would like you to know that she has no compunctions about killing you painfully, TOM informed Stephen.
>>Wolves are really good at insults<< ADAM added.
“Wow, a little touchy here. What did she say?”
>>It doesn’t really translate.<<
“Uh-huh. Alright, you ready for a fight?”
Jennifer nodded and settled down into a crouch.
>>It appears some of the wolves are being drawn to the far stairwell, perhaps to fight Stoyan and Nathan.<<
“Good.” Stephen wrenched open the door and stood back as a much smaller group of wolves piled through, yipping and snarling. They growled when Stephen’s eyes went red. Jennifer launched herself into action. Her jaws snapped as she raked downward with her claws and dragged the first wolf down the stairs. Her opponent was strong and furious, but he was fighting by instinct alone, and the rest of the pack was standing back to let this fight take place. He must have a rank among them. His mistake. Jennifer snarled and pinned him, jaws closing over his face. She held him as he struggled. The rest of the pack whined, and crouched down as the pack leader finally submitted.
Stephen watched. Part of him doubted that this would work, but he understood why Jennifer had to try. These were prisoners, and she could easily be one of them. He saw the cloud of bloodlust lifting slightly from the pack as Jennifer stalked toward them with a growl. At her yip, the pack surged down the stairs.
>>She is not their alpha, but they are accepting her authority for now.<<
“Thank you, ADAM.” Stephen considered. “We’ll lock the door behind us so they can’t change their mind and follow us up.”
Jennifer gave a yip of agreement and jerked her snout at the door. As Stephen followed her through, he paused and raised his voice. “Arisha, get into the main part of the building.”
Her call of assent came filtering up the stairwell, and a door opened and closed a moment later.
Stephen was pulling the door closed behind him when he saw the shudder Arisha had described ripple through the pack again. There was a sudden growl and they leapt up the stairs. Stephen slammed the door with a muttered oath.
“Come on, we have to get to Hugo.”
>>There is an elevator if you take the second right off this corridor. I’ll work on getting it unlocked from the remaining security systems.<<
The sound of a distant fight erupted, yipping and snarling.
“Nathan?” Stephen called.
>>Nathan says they are holding. Go for the elevator.<<
“Come on,” Stephen told Jennifer, and he ran for the elevator with her loping at his side.
—
Nathan pounded up the stairs, shedding layers as he went, “ADAM says it’s coming from the sixth floor!”
“What the hell is it?” Stoyan called. He gave a pained look at Irina, “Do you know? I wouldn’t ask you to talk about this, but—”
“It’s okay.” Irina shook her head at him. “I don’t know, though. The experiments they did on me were to force me to turn and kill people. I don’t know what’s up here, I was always on the second floor.”
“They forced you to—”
“We can’t waste time on that right now,” she told her cousin bluntly. She stopped and looked him in the eyes. “Focus on the fight. Nothing else matters until we’re out of here.”
Stoyan nodded. “Right.”
The unmistakable sound of growling reached their ears.
“I don’t like this.” Nathan gave them a look as they climbed the last few steps to his place by the door. He eased it open as quietly as he could and peered down the hall. “Is that Arisha?”
“What?” Sudden fear coursed through Stoyan. He pushed Nathan out of the way to look, and froze in fear.
Arisha was cornered as a pack of wolves advanced on her, snarling. One hand was reaching slowly for the doorknob, but she was human. She would never have the speed to open the door and get out before the wolves jumped.
Just as Stoyan opened his mouth to call the wolves away, the door opened and Arisha was yanked backwards into the stairwell. The door slammed shut, and the wolves, deprived of their prey, threw themselves against it in fury.
“Who—”
“Stephen and Jennifer, probably.” Nathan looked at them. “Listen to me. These aren’t our allies. This is a pack fight. Are you with me?”
Both Irina and Stoyan nodded resolutely. They followed Nathan’s lead, shedding the last of their clothes and transforming.
Nathan went first along the passageway. He tried to allow instinct to take over as much as he could, but that had never been his strong suit—his reputation derived from his ability to resolve issues with an almost icy logic.
He maneuvered his opponen
ts into a place where they realized how idiotic it was to go against him. When he fought, which was rarely, he did so decisively and to prove a point. But he wasn’t proving anything here. There was no example he would set, and the people he killed were not choosing to go against him.
He shook the worries off a moment later. They would be given a chance to back down, and if they didn’t, he could not allow the rest of the prisoners to be hurt. That was how it was, and for every prisoner he took down in this hallway, he promised two lives’ worth of pain to Hugo Marcari.
His lips curled in a satisfied smile.
He stopped and howled, full-throated. It was the howl of a beta, full of respect for his Queen:
You are violating the laws of what you are, and you offend my alpha. As Ecaterina would have said: Knock it. The fuck. Off.
The wolves rounded on him with a snarl. There was no thought in them, not even the consideration of pack rules. They were like zombies. Whatever they had once been, whoever they had once been, they were not those people now. An idea hit him.
He crouched low, gave a baiting snarl and snap of his teeth, then turned and set off for the corridor leading away.
Stephen and Jennifer were no doubt heading for the 8th floor, to Hugo. If Nathan, Stoyan, and Irina could draw the wolves away, Stephen and Jennifer would have a clear shot.
The wolves pursued them without question. As soon as they were around the corner a few paces, Nathan turned and crouched, getting ready for the assault. He leapt as soon as he saw the first wolf turn the corner.
He changed and roared his .challenge at the tiny wolves beneath his towering form, yellow eyes flashing
No longer was there a large wolf, but rather the most advanced form a Wechselbalg could change into.
“Nathan?” Stephen’s call filtered down the hallway.
“GOOOoooo!” He called out as he waded into the wolves, tossing them aside to slam into walls. They wouldn’t appreciate the pain, but it would be infinitely better than just grabbing a head and ripping it off.
Stoyan and Irina had not stopped fighting. Irina was fighting with a desperate fury that Nathan guessed was actually directed toward Hugo. And Stoyan, though clearly reluctant, was not allowing any wolves through his guard.
Nathan roared at him to fight more aggressively, and launched himself into action again.
—
On the flickering video feed, Hugo watched as one of the experiments was pinned to the ground and forced into submission. The wolves watching seemed to lose the will to fight, following their leader’s example and slinking away from the man and wolf.
Hugo swore. “What the hell was that?”
“The other woman.” Gerard was frowning. “The one who left before they opened the door. I could swear—”
“Focus! Release the other set, and make sure the elevator is locked down!”
Gerard’s hands clenched. If that was Arisha…. he would deal with it later. He knew better than to keep Hugo waiting.
“I will, sir. I would advise going up to the roof. We will extract the data and meet you there, but you should be ready to leave if the elevator is compromised.”
Hugo seemed to calm down at that, as Gerard had guessed he would.
“Of course. Do not fail to get the data, Gerard.”
“I won’t, sir.” Gerard waited until Hugo had left with his two bodyguards, one of them dragging Sergio’s limp body after them, and then went to the controls to release the second set of primed experiments.
His lips twisted at the necessity. It had taken years for this facility to break a set of Wechselbalg entirely, and the process was chancy at best. Losing two packs of them was a high cost. How long would it take for the procedures used here to be applied at the other facilities?
Hugo would make sure TQB paid for this, Gerard told himself. They had always known that there would be resistance—and losses. That was why they had these Wechselbalg in the first place. He sighed and cast a look around the room as he typed in the commands. His fingers stilled, and his head whipped around.
He swore, inventively.
Filip was gone, and the door stood open.
“No.” A sense of fear settled into his stomach. If Filip opened the elevator to get to his friends….
Gerard ran out the door and pounded down the corridor toward the elevator, cursing himself.
—
Konul Abdulin hardly looked around when the cage door opened.
Days at this facility had turned into weeks, weeks into months … and months into years. He had fought the experiments for a very long time, enduring punishment after punishment in his desire to keep his free will.
He had dreamed of escape, of his home, of freedom to change or not at will. Day by day, however, his resistance waned.
He could not stop himself from transforming. He had no choice in whether or not he killed. They had learned everything about him, they implanted a chip near the base of his skull to broadcast the frequencies that enraged him and pushed him to violence.
He began to forget what the outside world looked like, and soon he realized that there was only one thing he could control: whether or not they hurt him. If he obeyed, they did not do so. But the cage was open, and no one was here to take him anywhere.
He crawled out on his hands and knees, looking around at the other prisoners. And then came the command to shift. He did not think, just transformed. He did not want them to hurt him.
There are enemies here. Kill them.
There was no point in trying to resist. If he did, they would simply torture him until his resistance broke.
Konul loped into the hallway and toward the sound of the fight.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hsu pounded up the stairs, breath coming harsh in her lungs. Not for the first time, she envied the stamina and strength of the Wechselbalg.
Even in human form, they far outstripped her.
Still, she’d be damned if she let Gerard and Hugo get away because she was out of shape.
Vowing to do more cardio if she somehow managed to survive this, she steeled herself and pushed her screaming muscles to go faster. She could hear voices upstairs, but she was too tired to realize what that meant until footsteps started descending. She was supposed to be here, Hsu reminded herself. She was a scientist. She had any of a dozen reasons to be going upstairs. She slowed to a walk and tried not to gasp for breath as she came around the corner to see a dark-haired woman. The woman stopped, narrowing her eyes. A sudden storm of yipping and snarling erupted upstairs and both women flinched.
“I—have a good day.” Hsu let the random pleasantries fall out of her mouth as she made to get into the hallways.
“Just a second.” The woman had a gun now. “Who are you, and where are you going?”
She couldn’t go out this way. She hadn’t gotten to Gerard. Hsu’s hands clenched and she tried to steady herself. She let her eyes flick over the dark hair, the civilian clothes, looking for a clue. Then it occurred to her: the cages had been opened, the guards were somehow gone, and this was an unfamiliar person.
There was a chance, of course, that the dark-haired woman was one of the ones loyal to Gerard, but Hsu knew what she had to do in that case.
“Where’s Gerard?” Hsu asked her.
“Why? And why should I know?” She spoke Bulgarian with the faintest trace of a Russian accent.
She was trying to be badass, but Hsu had seen the flash of fear in her eyes at Gerard’s name. Hsu felt the corner of her mouth quirk. “Because I’m going to kill him. And because the cages got opened and I figured you might know something about that.”
“Maybe.” The woman blinked at her. “But you … work here. Why would you want to kill Gerard?” She cast a worried glance up at the sound of the continuing fight.
Hsu felt anger course through her. “I’m a prisoner, too. Most of the scientists are.”
“Really?”
“D’you think a whole bunch of people just woke up on
e morning and thought, ‘you know what would be fun? Abducting families, keeping them in cages, and making them kill one another’? No. We were abducted just like the prisoners were and they made it very clear what would happen to us if we didn’t do the research for them.” Now that Hsu had started, she couldn’t seem to stop. “I planned my escape for years. I dreamed of being brave enough to stand up to Gerard, but I wasn’t, and so I hurt people, and I am never going to be able to make up for that.”
The other woman’s mouth was hanging open at this tirade, and Hsu pulled herself together with an effort. “Look, we don’t have time, and if you want me to die because I’m working here, you can be fairly sure I’ll die getting to Gerard. If I don’t, I’ll let you kill me after I kill him. Deal?”