by Anya Nowlan
It didn’t exactly ignite feelings of hope or relief in a father.
“Lynx One, copy that,” Dice confirmed, his voice echoing in the ears of Ryker and Rio both as they moved along the corridor that they’d just cleared.
Finding a stairwell was easy enough and they could still hear the sounds of a gunfight coming from further in the compound. It was an easy choice to go downstairs instead of joining the battle. If the rest of the squad had needed them, Dice would have said so. While they didn’t exactly trust one another as individuals in Shifter Squad Nine, they had come to understand the ebb and flow of their cooperation. So far, no one had died and Ryker was pretty damn sure they all wanted to keep it that way.
They moved down the stairs slowly, stopping on every midlevel break to listen for footsteps or anything out of place. Nothing struck them as particularly unusual and that in itself was unnerving. The stairs went far deeper than one would have expected for going just one level down, with the flights adding up one after another.
“There has to be an elevator somewhere,” Rio grumbled finally, as both of them heard the steadily rising sound of a gurgling hum somewhere in the belly of the compound.
The lion twins shared a look and then Ryker moved up front, taking point as Rio covered him. They could finally see a door leading onto the floor and Ryker touched it carefully, testing if it was open. It wasn’t.
Rio went to work on the pad by the door, trying the security passes he’d collected from the guards they’d killed on the previous level. Ryker peeked in through the small window that looked onto the deck, seeing nothing but darkness and an eerie blue glow coming somewhere from the sidelines. The last access card did the trick and the door clicked open, both of the Tyren’s taking up position on either side of the entrance.
Still nothing. No guards, no gunfire heading toward them, though the echoes of a bloody fight could be heard upstairs, shrouded by the darkness of the stairwell.
Ryker nodded his head and took the first step, ducking in through the open door with his rifle held up high. He couldn’t smell a thing because of all of the chemicals in the air –the mild stench of peppermint and something oddly acidic.
The twins found themselves in a long, military-straight corridor, lined with doors with large numbers above them. It wasn’t a very large level and right next to the door through which they’d entered, Ryker spotted a wide, industrial elevator. The corridor itself forked into two and Rio went down the left one while Ryker took the right side.
He got about ten steps in before he heard Rio cursing and turned around, running back to his brother. Rio was looking in through the viewport of one of the doors, wearing a tense expression.
“What?” Ryker asked, frantic. “Is it him?”
“No. It’s all of them.”
Ryker frowned and elbowed Rio to get out of the way. Getting a clear view of the room, he understood what Rio had been cursing about.
The walls and the floor of the room were red with blood. He could count at least ten bodies on the ground, most in white lab coats, looking like your average, garden variety scientists. The lab, a giant room that expanded far into the depths with endless rows of work stations and computers and file folders, was trashed and something told Ryker that the only thing they were going to find in there was a lot of frustration and bodily fluid mop-up.
“They killed their scientists,” Ryker said blankly, bile rising in his gut.
It wasn’t because he cared – fuck no, anyone working with The Arctics deserved a bullet, unless they were doing a damn fine job at dismantling the place from the inside out – but it raised the possibility that these weren’t going to be the only dead bodies they’d find on the deck.
“Guess we’ve captured too much of their research,” Rio said grimly, hitting the nail on the head.
The Firm had scored some strong wins against The Arctics lately and that couldn’t have been going over well with the big wolves upstairs. They took a second to digest the sight before one of them had the common sense to alert the rest of the squad.
“Lynx Three. Be advised that they’re killing their own,” Ryker said, keeping his voice level.
Senseless murder had never bothered him or even fazed him, really. Yet there was something about the callous disregard of life that The Arctics portrayed that unnerved even him. He could understand the death of soldiers, of men and women who had chosen that life for themselves. But nerds who never made it out of a lab coat and got mowed down by a flurry of hellfire?
That shit wasn’t right.
“Lynx One, copy.”
Rio and Ryker looked at one another and the air between them seemed to vibrate with tension. They took off in a dead run at the same moment, pounding down the corridor now without any regard for what might have been lurking behind the corners. They made a beeline for the room marked with a large ‘7’ over it and Rio tried each of the access cards one by one, slamming them against the pad.
The same one that had opened the level door made this one budge as well and Ryker shoved it to the side, not bothering to wait until the mechanism retracted the metal door entirely into the wall. They burst in together, finding themselves in pitch darkness, with only a mild blue glow lighting the room that seemed to become stronger as they entered.
Rio fumbled for a light switch but Ryker stopped him before he could find it, grabbing his twin by the wrist and pulling him forward. When Rio turned to look at what Ryker was looking at, he became paralyzed in place, staring right in front of him at the source of the glow.
Those fucking monsters…
Eleven
Kayla
Kayla had been certain that she’d run all out of tears over the years of looking for her boys. She’d been wrong.
Her eyes pulsed with pain from the seemingly endless crying and her body shook with shivers even now, though she’d forced herself quiet about ten minutes ago. Or, to be more exact, she’d been stilled into a false sense of calm and rationality by the strength of Rio and Ryker around her, both taking turns in trying to talk her off the metaphorical ledge she’d put herself on.
This is all my fault! This would have never fucking happened if I just hadn’t… if I hadn’t let them out of my sight.
She couldn’t bring herself to speak the words again. Rio would just say that there was nothing she could have done and Ryker would have tried to implore to her rational side. They’d gone through that particular song and dance a few times now. But none of that meant anything and rationality was completely lost on her when her son was floating in a wad of liquid, looking like he was already dead.
“What’s going to happen to him?” she asked for what seemed like the millionth time, not getting an answer this turn exactly as she hadn’t the last times she’d asked.
No one knew the answer.
“The doctors will tell us what they can as soon as they know,” Rio said, hushing her or at least attempting to.
He kissed the top of her head and she clung to him, wrapped up in his embrace. She, Ryker, Rio and Dice were in a small viewing room that looked into the medical bay in The Firm’s Nevada field office. There was a one-way mirror looking into the room where Rylen was being kept and at least five doctors, nurses and technicians fumbling around him, looking like they were no closer to answers now than they had been when he was brought in.
“I’m going to fucking kill someone,” Ryker said, his voice a low growl.
“I think you’ll have plenty of opportunities for that,” Dice commented mildly, putting a hand on Ryker’s shoulder.
The engineer stood, one arm propped against the glass, staring into the room. Shifter Squad Nine had gotten back about two hours ago and Kayla’s existence had turned from one of expectant nervousness to utter confusion and despair when she’d laid eyes on Rylen. Both Rio and Ryker had tried to stop her from seeing him, but she’d fought them until they gave in and let her see the state he was in. She wouldn’t have had it any other way and they knew it.
/> But what she saw was too much for a mother to handle.
Her baby boy, now more than five years old – she couldn’t believe that it had already been four years since she’d last seen him or his brother – had grown into a tall, lanky child, with the same hair color as his fathers’ and with a strong body. Yet none of that strength was allowed to be harnessed or used, because he was hooked up to what looked like at least six different tubes and vines, snaking into his arms, legs and a mask covering his face, kept in a metallic tube of clear liquid that kept him in some sort of a stasis.
It had taken several hours for The Firm’s engineers to figure out how to move him to begin with – keeping him at The Arctics’ compound was out of the question as they were vulnerable to a counter-attack there – and nearly twenty-four hours had passed since Shifter Squad Nine returned from their mission.
Kayla had been entirely sure that they’d died and that was why she hadn’t seen anyone for so long. The reality was almost worse. She had one of her sons back but he was… She didn’t even know what he was anymore.
“But he’s still alive, right? So they should just be able to take him out of that thing and he could be back to being a normal, healthy boy?” she asked, knowing that no one around her could give her any answers.
“We don’t know, baby,” Rio said, kissing her forehead again. “But he’s a tough kid, he’ll be fine.”
He sounded so resolute, like he knew that was the truth. Kayla couldn’t be so sure. Her boys had been away from her too long and while she was sure they could be fighters, then a lot could happen when children so young were ripped away from their parents. She couldn’t even bear the thought of what could have been going on in the heads of her sons, being alone and surrounded by werewolves who wanted nothing but harm to them.
They didn’t even let them stay together, for god’s sake! What kind of maniacs would split up twin shifters?
“We’ve seen this before, you know,” Ryker said, his voice oddly contemplative. “With The Arctics. That compound in Haygrove. We went in for cleanup. They had endless rows of those tubs and vats, with soldiers being kept in them, being tested on and toyed with, genetically engineered so they’d become some sort of super soldiers. It was a bit different but the setup… it looked the same.”
Kayla perked up a little, wiping at her cheeks only to find that this time, there really hadn’t been any more tears.
“If this has happened before, then they know how to deal with it, right? Right?”
Silence rung across the room and it was a harder hit than any denial could have been.
“Maybe,” Ryker said finally. “But those were grown men and women, shifter soldiers who’d been captured and worked on… A lot of them didn’t make it, our doctors couldn’t wake them up or how they woke up… well, they weren’t the same.”
“She doesn’t need to hear that,” Rio said sternly, the twins looking at one another and their eyes flashing gold at the same time.
“Yeah, she does. We all do. We need to know the possibilities to be able to deal with them.”
“He’s right,” Kayla said, before Rio could interject. “I want to know.”
Gently, she spun herself out of Rio’s protective grasp and stood up from the chair which she’d sunken onto those hours ago when she was allowed into the viewing room. She hadn’t even realized that she had been frozen in it for so long.
“The more I know, the better,” she said, meeting uncertain looks from the three men around her. “Don’t give me those fucking looks. He’s my kid, I deserve to know what could happen to him. How was the other boy, Hank?”
“He was fine,” Dice said, shrugging his shoulders mildly. “Looked like he was just being kept for the ransom. He had his own room, he was well-fed and he said that no one had poked any needles in him. I think they took him to psych eval and he should be with his father in a couple of hours, if he isn’t already. Spade looked pleased as fuck when we brought him in.”
“Was there anyone else?” Kayla questioned, stepping closer to Ryker, who immediately put an arm around her shoulders.
It was a small piece of solace, but at least this mission and their shared heartache had brought down the walls Kayla had felt being built by all three of them after their uncomfortable conversations and admissions in the armed transport and in Poland in general. There was no time to cast blame on one another or question the truthfulness of one another’s intentions when their boys were in obvious, palpable danger.
“We found a bunch of kids like that,” Ryker said, his gravelly voice low and emotionless. “Fifteen altogether. Mostly boys, a few girls. All around the same age. They’d already managed to unplug one of them before we got to them. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes before we got down on the level since he was unplugged but he was already dead.”
Another bout of silence seemed to strangle the four people sharing the cramped, dark space. In the medical area, the doctors were carefully testing the liquid Rylen was being kept in and Kayla had to assume that there were several other labs in the compound engaged in much the same at the moment. All of those kids were someone’s children, all of them had parents somewhere…
Her heart broke for all of them. But first and foremost, she cared about her baby boy’s future.
“Those fucking monsters,” Kayla said, echoing the sentiments of each person in the room. “How could they do that? To kids…”
“It’s easy to bend morality when you think you make the rules,” Dice said, his tone solemn.
Kayla was thankful to have him there. Out of Squad Nine and other than Rio and Ryker, he was the only other person who seemed like he could try to understand the depth of her current emotion.
“They’ve never given a shit about who they hurt, The Arctics. Not as long as they still get what they want out of it,” Ryker said.
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Rio scoffed, just in time to see the door to the pristinely white and surgically clean medical room open and Spade walk in, dark as the night and twice as deadly.
They couldn’t hear a word that was being spoken, but the head doctor was clearly talking about Rylen and his current state of being. Spade nodded grimly, not a muscle on his face moving to indicate any emotion at what he was listening to. Kayla was beginning to despise him more by the second, another feeling that was equally shared among those around her.
Finally, Spade stepped closer to the tube that Rylen was being kept in, peering into it thoughtfully. He straightened up a moment later and left the room. A second later, he entered the viewing room, closing the door softly behind him.
The look of pure disinterest on his features was the scariest thing Kayla had ever seen. Not only did it reveal how little he truly cared for another’s life, but it also told her that the life of her sons was being held in the hands of men who looked at children as nothing more than pawns to move around on the chess table.
I won’t let my boys die because some asshole can’t be bothered to have a conscience, she thought, the notion almost feverish in its intensity. I’m going to fight!
Twelve
Kayla
“How is he?” Rio asked before Kayla could do the same.
All eyes were on Spade, standing near the doorway with the eerie white light of the medical room casting a shadow on one half of his face. He didn’t look any more approachable than he usually did, which was no surprise.
“He’s not good,” Spade replied simply.
Even hearing that was like being stabbed in the chest for Kayla.
“We can see that,” Ryker said irately. “Now tell me something I don’t know.”
“Temper, temper, Ryker,” Spade noted casually, flicking his gaze to the seemingly lifeless body of Rylen before returning his gaze to Kayla and the members of Shifter Squad Nine. “The doctors are not sure what it is he’s been pumped full. It’s some sort of a new drug by The Arctics and the use of it is unclear. He is not the only one with these doses, his blood wo
rk is identical with a few others we retrieved.”
“And how are they?” Rio queried.
“Two have already died.”
Kayla gasped for air. This couldn’t be. She hadn’t gotten so close to getting one of her sons back only to stand by while he died right in front of her eyes. She felt Rio’s hand on her shoulder, steadying her as she swayed forward a little. Centering herself, she took another deep breath, willing herself calm.
“But they’re doing everything they can,” Dice said. “Right?”
“Of course,” Spade agreed, sounding more like he was discussing the weather than the life and death situation of a little boy. “But some of these drugs and tests have taken us months, even years to reverse engineer. It’s unfortunate that we’re dealing with children this time around, but I don’t think that really changes anything.”
Kayla could feel something snapping in herself. Before she knew what she was doing, she was hurling her body through the air, ready to punch Spade in the face with all the strength she had. Her flight wasn’t all that long though, because Ryker’s massive arms scooped around her waist and pulled her back with a jerk, her fist a good foot short of her target.
Spade hadn’t moved an inch.
“You fucking cold-hearted psycho,” Kayla spat, her eyes wild with pain. “You knew they were there all along and you didn’t do a fucking thing!”
“It is not my place to change the world, Kayla. Only the bits that are necessary are given that distinction,” Spade commented drily.
“Shh, baby,” Ryker whispered in her ear, his voice almost indecipherably low. “He’ll get his when the time comes.”
Kayla made no illusions that the only reason Ryker had stopped her was because he was worried about her well-being, not that he was particularly keen on saving Spade some well-deserved pain. Rationally, she knew that. Irrationally, she still struggled against Ryker’s hold even now.