by Alisa Woods
“I could do this all day,” Agent Smith sneered. “Or you could just tell me how many of your pack are still roaming around free. And the location of your safehouse. We can always use a few more volunteers.”
“How many volunteers do you need?” Jace asked, but his voice was weary. “You must really suck at science. Otherwise, you wouldn’t need so many test subjects, would you?”
Agent Smith plowed his fist into Jace’s stomach, and Jace huffed over with the impact. The blow screeched the chair across the floor a few inches, and Jace’s hands sprouted claws briefly, then they retracted.
Piper lurched up from the cold concrete floor where she had been lying and grasped hold of the steel bars of the door of her cage. Her stomach was a writhing pit of snakes. She tried to summon her wolf, but the beast was nowhere to be found, somehow hidden in the depths of her mind. Either Agent Smith had injected them with some kind of suppression drug earlier, or the pink mist that had knocked them all out had some kind of anti-shifter medication. Either way, her wolf was silent inside her—which was just wrong. Unnatural feeling. It gave Piper a shudder that ran from the tips of her toes up to lift the hairs on the back of her neck.
Jace must not have gotten the same shot… or maybe his wolf was so powerful, it could resist whatever drug or genetic technology Agent Smith had cooked up.
Piper quickly cased the situation around her. She was locked in a cage by herself, but dozens of cages were stacked around the enormous hangar. She strained to look for Noah, but she couldn’t find him. On her left was an empty cage and on the right was a cage holding a man she didn’t know. He seemed about the same age as Jace, a few years older than her, and he was standing tensely at the door of his cage, gripping the bars and watching Jace get pummeled.
Jaxson and Jared and the rest of Jace’s pack had to be here somewhere, but the alignment of the cages made it difficult to see more than a few cages down the row. The man next to her glanced at her, but only briefly—he was drawn back by another smack to Jace’s face, this one whipping his head to the side so hard, Piper could hear bones crack. She gasped and almost cried out—but she knew that would do no good. It might even bring more harm to Jace. She knew shifters were tough, but they weren’t impossible to kill. And Agent Smith looked like a man who didn’t really care if Jace lived or died, experiments or no.
On the opposite side of the hangar, far enough away that she couldn’t see it clearly, were several medical suites. Each bed was filled with a shifter strapped to a gurney—some were writhing around, others were lying still. Piper couldn’t tell if they were conscious or not. But then her attention snapped to a tall, powerful figure strolling across the open center of the hangar.
Her father.
She knew he had to be involved somehow, but the shock of seeing him here still felt like ice running through her veins. Noah was in one of these cages, and now so was she. How could the man even begin to justify that to himself? Maybe he didn’t give a fuck about her, but Noah was his own flesh and blood.
The Colonel strolled up to Agent Smith and waved him off from delivering another pounding to Jace’s face.
The pause in the beating made Jace looked up. “It’s like an asshole parade around here.”
The lift in Jace’s voice made Piper’s heart soar. He must not be too badly injured if he was giving shit to the Colonel. Agent Smith put his hand on his holstered pistol like he wanted to pull his weapon and kill Jace and have it done with.
Piper gripped the bars of her cage so hard, her skin squeaked against the metal.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” the Colonel said to Agent Smith, who just growled in response and kept his hand on his weapon. “You’re not going to get any more information out of Mr. River, and I’d like to see how he performs under the drug trial. He’s a very interesting case.”
Agent Smith snarled again, but he pulled a knife from the back of his desert fatigues and advanced towards Jace. Piper was afraid he might just slit Jace’s throat, but Smith only cut the zip ties holding Jace’s feet to the chair legs, freeing him to stand. Two guards grabbed hold of Jace’s arms, one on either side, while Smith cut the ties at his wrists. Then the guards hauled Jace toward the cage next to Piper. Agent Smith turned on his heel, snorting in disgust, and strode toward the medical suites.
The Colonel followed the guards and Jace, watching him struggle to keep his legs underneath him while the paramilitary thugs tossed him in his cell. Piper vaguely noticed the man in the cell next to her—he shuffled away to the far edge, no doubt wanting to keep his distance from this freak show. Once Jace’s cell door was locked, the Colonel turned to face her.
“I tried to warn you, Piper, but you never did listen to me. You always had to find the deepest trouble you could get into, didn’t you?” His dark eyes stared hard at her.
She returned his glare. “I knew you were a monster, but even I didn’t think you were capable of this. How can you not care about your own son?”
“Noah is serving his country now in a way that only a shifter could. If I could’ve found a way to get you into the program sooner, I would have, but you insisted on being out of the country in obscure locations most of the time.”
“Sorry to inconvenience you.” But she still didn’t understand what he meant, and why he’d be willing to sacrifice Noah to his ambitions in such a glaringly obvious way. “What are the Feds doing here? And what are they doing to the shifters?”
“Nothing they didn’t volunteer for. Including your brother.”
“Somehow, I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s true. You can ask him yourself.” The Colonel had a twisted kind of pride on his face.
Piper snarled. “He would’ve told me if he was planning to enter some dark program for shifters in the military. You must’ve tricked him into it.”
“There was a small deception, I will admit. I needed to know if he was even qualified for the program first. I told him it would only be a day or two to travel the center in Afghanistan where we were processing soldiers. But when he tested so well—his blood an ideal match for many of our other test subjects—well…” The Colonel shrugged. “That’s when he had an opportunity to serve his country like he never had before.”
“You mean that’s when it became involuntary.” Piper could too easily see Noah not telling her that he was following the Colonel’s command for a special assignment. Especially if it was Top Secret. She would disapprove and try to talk him out of it—and probably go straight to the Colonel to complain, getting Noah busted even more. She wished like crazy he had trusted her… and given her a chance to warn him. Noah probably thought he was protecting her. Damn him.
“What have you done to all these people?” She gestured at the dozens of cages. “And what the hell makes you think you can get away with it?”
“I don’t have to get away with anything,” the Colonel said with a smirk. “This research is fully sanctioned at the highest levels of power.” He leaned closer to the bars. “And they’re not all shifters, Piper. At least, not yet.” He leaned away. “You might be able to help with that, once we have a chance to test your blood to see if you’re a good match.”
She frowned. “You taking shifter blood and… What? Injecting it into ordinary humans?” What the hell was her father doing? Creating new shifters?
“On the modern battlefield, there are no weapons that are off-limits,” the Colonel said, puffing out his ridiculously-decorated chest, a full battalion of medals that he kept on display at all times. “Genetic warfare is the latest stealth weapon of choice, and we’re not going to win unless we’re willing to go as far as the enemy goes. And a little bit further.”
“You mean you’re willing to do whatever’s necessary to rise up in the ranks and earn more chest candy?” All this talk of the battlefield and patriotism was bullshit. She knew her father. This was serving his ambition in some way.
“Disabling enemy shifters is just as important as creating our own shifter
fighting force,” the Colonel said with a sneer. “And that kind of technology doesn’t come without a price.”
“One you’re happy to have other people pay.” Her loathing for him couldn’t possibly run any deeper. She was tempted to reach through the bars and scratch his face, but then she remembered she couldn’t shift at all.
“Once Senator Krepky has his registration laws in place, it will be even easier to identify possible contributors to the cause.” Her father lifted one eyebrow. “Although I suspect, being in the Senator’s office frequently, you already knew that was in play. Now that you’re here, you’ll get to see, up close and personal, how the whole program is going to work. When all’s said and done, I’m really quite pleased to see you here, Piper. Maybe I’ll finally have some use for you, after all.”
She just shook her head—she’d run out of words for the horror that was her own father. “We will stop you,” she said finally, even if she had no idea how that would happen at the moment.
The Colonel laughed. “Given that you’re in a fairly small cage, Piper, you might want to learn how to cooperate for once.” Then he turned his back on her and strolled toward the medical suites, probably joining up with his minion Agent Smith for more diabolical planning.
Whatever he intended to use her for, she sure as hell wasn’t going to cooperate.
The sound of Jace’s feet dragging across the floor of his cell drew her attention. “I would have helped you out with telling him off,” he said with a small smile, “but you were doing such a magnificent job all on your own.”
She hurried to him and reached through the bars to touch his face. He was bruised and cut and battered, but she could already see it starting to heal. “You were doing a pretty fine job yourself with Agent Smith.” She dropped her gaze to his hands as they reached through the bars to hold her waist and pull her closer. She pressed her face between the bars and lightly kissed him. Then she whispered, “I saw what you did out there. Your claws came out.”
He pulled back, releasing her. “I could barely keep my wolf contained.”
Her eyes went wide. “Why did you even try? I wanted to give them both a slash to the face.”
He frowned. “One raging wolf isn’t going to get us free. Especially one I can’t control. We need a real plan to have any hope of escape, much less managing to get everyone out. A lot of these wolves are sick.”
A voice spoke from behind her. “A lot of them are dying.”
Piper turned to look—it was the man in the cage next to hers.
Jace peered around her. “Owen?” His voice had hiked up, astonished. “What… how… holy shit, man, you’re alive!”
His shock made Piper examine the man—Owen—more closely. He was definitely around Jace’s age, late twenties, but his cheeks were hollowed out and dark circles haunted his eyes.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Owen Harding, Private First Class,” he said wearily, leaning against the bars. “Last seen serving with Army Specialist Jace River in Afghanistan before our Jeep blew up and the world went to hell.”
Piper’s mouth dropped open.
“How is this even possible?” Jace’s mind was a whirlwind of confusion. His fellow grunt, Owen, was standing in the cage across from Piper’s when he was supposed to be dead.
Although he did look halfway to the grave. “The last thing I ever wanted was to see you show up here, Jace,” Owen said with a tight expression. “They told us you were dead, but I’d always hoped you’d made it out somehow. Only I sure wouldn’t wish this place on anyone.” His Texas drawl was there, just like it had been in Afghanistan when they served together.
“Have you been here all this time?” Jace asked, horrified. “It’s been, what, over a year?” He wracked his brain, trying to figure out how this had happened. Owen was supposed to have been blown up by the same IED that threw Jace out of their patrol Jeep—the singular event that hurtled him down this dark path where he couldn’t control his wolf and destroyed a village of innocent people.
Owen gripped the steel bars of his cage. “Yeah, I’ve been in the program for over a year. There aren’t many who’ve been here longer—at least, not many who are still alive.”
Jace leaned his head against the bars of his own cage, wishing he could bridge the gap and grip Owen in a manly hug—the members of his patrol were like brothers to him. Owen had been suffering all this time, and Jace had no idea. It reminded him far too much of Jaxson’s dark, closely-held secret, and Jace’s failure to even know about it, much less help him.
“What have they been doing to you?” Jace asked with a grimace.
Piper stood by, silent, watching them both with wide eyes.
“It’s one experiment after another.” Owen sighed. “They take my blood and do something to it—I’ve heard the staff talk about genetic stuff. Then they inject their serums into some hapless civilian. Sometimes it takes, and they turn into… well… some kind of creature. Nothing I’d call a wolf. Sometimes the injection kills them outright. Some of them probably wished they’d died. They get their wish soon enough. It’s like the fucking island of Doctor Moreau in here.”
Piper had her hand over her mouth, hiding the horror that Jace felt rippling through his entire body.
“What are they after?” Jace asked. “Why don’t they just recruit shifters into the Army? It’s not like there aren’t a bunch of us already willing to serve our country.”
“It’s much bigger than that,” Owen said, a grim look drawing down his already deathly pale face. “This isn’t just about the Army, although they definitely want to create some kind of super soldier. They’re working on a universal serum, I think—something that can take all the shifter abilities and amp them up, like dialing it up to eleven or some damn thing. I don’t really know. All I know is that I’ve been trapped here for over a year, praying to God that I die before I inadvertently give them whatever it is they want.”
Jace’s stomach was doing flips—not only because they needed to get out of here, and fast, but because no matter what he did, his friend had already suffered more than anyone should. “Owen, man, if I had any idea… I would’ve come for you sooner. They told me you were all dead.”
He nodded, but it was weak, almost a dazed motion. “I figured. At first, I thought for sure someone would come for us. But then time dragged on, and I knew… we were dead, as far as the world was concerned. And would be dead for real soon.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jace whispered, running his hand through his hair. His chest was tight with the guilt about all of this. “I still don’t understand—why did they take you, but not me?”
“It all started with him.” Owen lifted his chin to point to the medical bay. “Colonel Wilding. He wasn’t our CO, but he was behind the whole thing, setting it up. It was a ruse from the start—they wanted an excuse to bring us all into the program. You, me, Wyatt, Anthony—all shifters, all on one patrol. Funny it didn’t even occur to us that was strange, huh? The IED was already planted. They sent us to drive over the damn thing, knowing we were shifters, and it probably wouldn’t kill us. Colonel Wilding himself called in the artillery and blew up the village.”
“What?” Jace gasped. “But they told me… they said that I…” Jace swallowed, just now realizing what Owen was saying—that Jace didn’t actually kill all those people in the village. “They told me an animal killed everyone. Said it was the most powerful shifter they’d ever seen… that it was me. I didn’t remember anything, and I had no reason to think—”
“They lied to you,” Owen said. Of course, that was obvious now. “I don’t know why they’d make up a story like that, but these guys are covering up all kinds of shit. If I had to guess, Colonel Wilding must’ve come in for some trouble with targeting that village. Maybe they said it was friendly fire something. I don’t know. I’ve been locked up here ever since. But he’s just enough of a bastard to try to pin everything on you, the one shifter he couldn’t catch.”
�
��Catch?” Jace asked. “Owen, what happened back there? I really don’t remember any of it.”
Owen shook his head. “Not much of a surprise your memory’s shot, given how much they had to tranq you to even slow you down. When you didn’t show up with the rest of us in the program, I thought they just killed you outright. When the IED went off, I was thrown from the Jeep, but you shifted right away, and your wolf went nuts. He took off running toward the village. I chased after, but you were freaking fast, man! By the time I caught up, you were trying to save those villagers. The place had already been bombed, and everything was on fire, a regular inferno. Your wolf dove through those walls of fire, trying to save all those people, like there was nothing to it. Then the troopers swooped in. I thought they were there to help, but then they started shooting at us. I shifted human and tried to explain, but they just took me down with a tranq. Last thing I remember, they were going after you. That crazy wolf of yours just kept trying to save the villagers. If you would’ve run, I doubt they could’ve caught you. Wyatt and Anthony didn’t see none of it, but I saw you in action. I thought for sure you got away.”
Jace glanced at the other cages. “Are they here?”
Owen sighed. “Nope. Dead.”
“Shit.” It was like finding out he had lost them all over again.
“These people are straight-up murderers.” Owen’s growl finally came out, angry and bitter. “We figured you either escaped or got killed, too. No way had I figured they would just let you go and come back stateside.” He shook his head. “But now you’re here, just like me, in the end. It’s all fucked up, man.”
Jace was reeling from the story, but calm was settling deep inside his chest. His wolf was stirring with the memories, and for the first time in a year, that simple fact didn’t terrify him.
He glanced at Piper—she had a shine in her eyes that probably reflected the amazement in his.
She gave him a small smile. “You see? You really need to listen to me. I know what I’m talking about.” She meant what she said earlier, about him being a good man—words he never would have believed if Owen hadn’t seen it all with his own eyes. Jace still had a hard time wrapping his mind around it.