3013: PRIMAL

by Laurie Roma

  “Yeah. There are traps all over the city,” ZK informed them.

  Malik frowned. “What do the traps do?”

  “They release the aerosol version of the drug.”

  “Shit. I didn’t realize it was this bad. The Stargazer won’t be here for a few more days,” Matt said. “We have to call some more people in. The longer we wait, the more people are going to die.”

  ZK shook his head. “Can’t call out. Someone hacked the system, or maybe she just drugged them and asked them to shut everything down. The trees fuck us from the east and the south. Mountains on the north and the west. We’re pretty much cut off here until someone else gets sent in after they can’t reach us. By then, everyone in the city will probably be dead.”

  “Where is your shuttle? Can you fly out and get help?”

  One of the other elites said, “Three Helios pretty much ripped it apart to get to me. I’m the pilot.”

  “It is a good thing my reinforcements are here, then,” Amari announced, and everyone looked at her in astonishment.

  “What are you talking about?” Kahla asked.

  “I contacted my sister.”

  “And here I am.”

  Eden Nazira looked like her older sister, though her eyes had less black in the glowing gold. She was an inch or two shorter than Amari, but she had the same powerful aura that told everyone not to mess with her. When Eden stood next to Amari, they had an untamed presence that made the humans nervous.

  “Hello, people,” Eden said with a smile.

  Behind Eden came two male Dragon Warriors, and Reva smiled when she saw Xavier Tesera and Brydan Volis. “Xavier. Brydan. What are you guys doing here?”

  “We came to offer aid,” Brydan said.

  Xavier frowned. “Our mate, Alexis, threatened to come if we did not. We came so she would stay home with the twins.”

  Reva chuckled at that. “I guess that’s good for us.” She introduced everyone, then Amari filled the other Dragon Warriors in on the situation. Reva looked at Malik, feeling hope for the first time. “This is a turn in our favor.”

  “It seems so. Though, four of them seems like overkill.”

  Amari stated, “Eden and I will cure the water.”

  “Wait.” Malik hurried to say, “Can you drop us off at the mansion first?”

  Eden and Amari looked at one another, and the silence told everyone that they were talking telepathically. A few seconds later, Amari said, “I will go with you.”

  Eden looked at the other Tarin males. “And you will go with me.”

  “Great,” Lazio said, then he swallowed hard.

  Matt swore softly, then said, “I’ll go. You need someone who has knowledge about the water systems.”

  “And that wouldn’t be you,” Rob said. “I do, though. I’ll go.”

  Eden didn’t waste time. She disappeared with Lazio and Rob.

  “Okay, then.” ZK looked to Matt. “What do you want us to do?”

  “We need to find the traps and disable them before they go off. We can destroy what’s at Hart Pharmaceuticals after. You take one team. I’ll take the other.”

  ZK nodded to one of the elites in his group that had carried over a large black bag. “We have more stunners for everyone. We can’t kill all of the people in the city, just knock them out until this shit wears off.”

  Xavier sighed. “We will stay with the humans to find and disable the traps. And make sure they stay alive.”

  Amari looked at Reva, Malik, Kahla, and Darius. “Inside or outside the mansion?”

  They all put on the facemasks that covered half their faces that they had brought with them from the ship. The elites had their full helmets, while the Dagon Warriors needed nothing to protect them.

  Malik pulled his sword out, and Darius followed suit. Reva and Kahla had daggers in their belts and blasters and stunners strapped to their thighs, but they both fought better with their hands free.

  “Inside.”

  They were instantly transported to a large entrance hall that had a wide staircase leading up to the next level. Off to the side was a living room where three human males and two Tarin males sat on couches spilling food on the carpet as they ate.

  Amari said, “You can handle them.”

  Then she disappeared.

  “What the—”

  The Tarins jumped up and ran toward the entryway with their swords drawn while the humans reached for their blasters.

  “Fuck…you,” Reva muttered, not wasting time with the blades when she had a blaster herself. She pulled it out of the thigh holster she was wearing quicker than the humans, and shot each of them center mass.

  Darius crossed swords with one of the Tarin males while the other was torn to pieces by a red-eyed Kahla. Malik had raced up the stairs to the next level, but he stopped when Amari reappeared in the entryway.

  “She is not here.”

  “Hellfire!” Malik raged. “Where is she?”

  Ignoring him, Amari said, “There were two males upstairs, and a few more down below.”

  “I’m guessing the males are no longer a problem?”

  Glancing at Reva, Amari shook her head.

  They all looked over as a door to the lower level opened, and a human female stuck her head out. “Can we come out now?”

  “Aye, you may.” Amari gestured for Malik to come down the stairs, and when he was halfway down, two scared females in clothing too large for them turned the corner. They froze when they saw Malik, but Amari just said, “He is my nephew, come to save you.”

  Reva’s heart almost stopped, and even as the females on the stairs visibly relaxed, more females continued to come up from the lower level. They stood huddled together, and Reva counted twenty when the last one came up.

  “Stars,” Kahla whispered beside her. “How could any female keep others locked up like this?”

  “Quilla isn’t a female. She is a monster.”

  Reva noticed the lighter space on the wall near the stairs that stuck out around the other pictures that were hung in frames. One of the glass frames was cracked, as if smashed, and another was completely missing. It was what Isla had told them about when she had done the mind merge with Malik.

  Amari tilted her head to the side, staring out into space. She turned to look over at the female who had spoken. “We need to leave.” The bodies of the males disappeared. “Stay here until we return.”

  “Can you open this first?” As the human ran over to a locked truck, the lock fell to the floor. Inside were dozens of weapons, and the female instantly started to hand them out to the others. “Most of us are elites. Go. We’ve got this, and thank you for the save.”

  Amari nodded, then she took Malik, Reva, Kahla, and Darius with her when she transported to the middle of a street lit up by a building with a sign that said ‘Hart Pharmaceuticals.’

  Malik still hadn’t gotten over the number of female that his sister had locked up in the mansion, but nothing could have been worse than what was in front of him.

  He had fought battles, and he had seen war.

  What he saw now was something he knew he would never forget.

  The street was dark, but the light coming from the building across the street was enough to see the plaza in front of it. Gray stone created a flat, open space, with stationary metal chairs and tables scattered throughout the area. It would have been a place people could go to in order to escape all of the towering buildings that surrounded it. Where people could stop and watch the water dance as the streams shot out of tiny holes in the ground to some silent symphony.

  But he couldn’t ever imagine it being a happy place ever again.

  Bodies were stacked around the plaza, on the tables, chair, and raised barriers that guarded the small flowers planted there. Human men, women, children, Helios, Krytos, Reema, and even a few D’Aire had been thrown into the piles that made the plaza a macabre graveyard in the heart of the city.

  On the street between the graveyard and the build
ing were countless bodies of Helios and Krytos, still in shifted form.

  From where he was standing, Malik didn’t want to believe the scene in front of him was real. But his eyes didn’t deceive him, and, even through the masks, the smell was something that was unmistakable. Quilla had killed hundreds of people, and the proof was there for everyone to see. How could she, how could anyone, do something like this?

  “Is she in there?” Reva growled in a throaty tone so different than her normal voice.

  He turned to look at his love, and first saw Amari and Eden standing together. Next to them, Darius held onto Lazio’s shoulder. Rob stood frozen, while Kahla stared at the plaza with tears streaking down her face.

  Reva was standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by bodies of her race and Kahla’s. He could see that she had partially shifted, her eyes more cat that usual and her fingernails had turned into sharp claws.

  “Aye, she is. I was close enough to sense her here,” Eden explained softly. “They positioned the bodies here to attract the others to come guard this place. We went to the hub to fix the water. It will soon clean all, but it will take time. Then, I was pulled here.”

  “We go in,” Amari declared, resting her hand on her sister’s arm.

  “Quilla is mine,” Reva snarled, barely even able to speak at all now.

  Amari nodded. “Aye, I remember. You will make her pay for her crimes.”

  “Count on it.”

  As their group headed toward the building, they had to step over bodies of the fallen. Malik glanced at Amari and Eden. “Why are they still shifted when the others aren’t?”

  “They are not dead,” Eden said. “They are sleeping. It was the only way to stop them from killing Lazio and Rob.”

  Malik followed the others into the building. Inside the lobby, Eden held her hand out lowering it slowly so the three crazed Helios cats would go to sleep. They hit the floor with a thud, and the rest of them walked past the bodies.

  They took the stairs up, but on the third floor Reva stopped and looked at the floor plan of the building. “Most of these floors are just offices, but the restricted areas are on the top floors.”

  “That is a long way up,” Rob commented.

  “Perhaps we should start at the top, and work our way down. This building is strange. I cannot tell where she is, but I know she is here,” Amari said.

  “Aye,” Eden agreed. “She is somewhere with shielded walls.

  “It must be a lab, then,” Kahla said.

  Amari and Eden transported everyone up to the top floor. They decided to split up to search. The Dragon Warriors searched alone, while the rest of them searched in pairs.

  Two floors down, Reva and Malik found a lab where two scientists were hard at work. Opening the door, they slipped inside. Everything was a bright white that it hurt the eyes, and Reva noticed that the two men looked exhausted, sweat running down their faces despite the cool temperature.

  One of the men held something up using tongs, and in the light, Reva saw it was a small capsule. “I think it’s done.”

  “Let me see it.”

  The man put the capsule down on the counter in front of him, and the other man leaned forward to look at it closer.

  “The Empress wanted it smaller. I don’t think this is going to fit into the injector.”

  Reva shared a look with Malik. Stars, had Quilla named herself Empress of Earth? That female really needed to die hard. If that crazy bitch wanted them to make something that was injectable, it meant she wanted to control more, control all.

  Empress of Earth, my ass.

  She and Malik moved closer, and he tried to pull her back. The two men didn’t seem to notice them, even when they were close enough to touch them. She reached out and pushed a metal container off a shelf so it crashed to the ground, then she pulled Malik down with her behind a counter. Peaking around the corner, she saw that the man hadn’t stopped working. She stood up and turned to see Malik frowning at her.

  “What? I was testing if they were drugged,” she whispered.

  “I see.”

  Going for expediency, she pulled the stunner from its holster on her thigh and shot both men. As they collapsed on the ground, she walked over to the counter they were working on, and looked down at the tablets. They had notes that showed they were creating a new way to put the Genesis Project drug directly into the brain by using a needle to inject it.

  “Son of a demon, can they really do it?” Malik asked after she explained what it said.

  “It says they can.”

  They looked at one another, then dragged the humans out of the way before Malik methodically destroyed everything on the counter. She sat at one of their data units and began wiping whatever information was on it. The door to the room opened, and Reva looked over, expecting to see one of their group.

  Quilla stood in the doorway.

  Her eyes wide, Quilla stared at Reva for a long heartbeat. When her gaze shifted to where Malik stood, her face set and she bolted from the room.

  Reva was up on her feet before she could think as she chased after her enemy.

  “Reva!”

  “She’s here! It’s Quilla!” Reva shouted as she sprinted down the hallway. She could see Quilla, and it gave her new purpose. She heard Malik following after her, but there were few that could keep up with her speed when she was on a hunt.

  Quilla should have known not to run from a Helios.

  Reva closed the distance just as Quilla smashed her fist into a glass case and pulled the fire alarm activator. A siren blared, and the sound shocked Reva out of the chase as she had to stop and cover her ears. Malik caught up to her as water sprayed from the sprinklers on the ceiling.

  “Shit!”

  “Let’s go!” He grabbed her, pulling her toward the stairway entrance.

  Reva gained her feet again, and bolted up the stairs with him, following Quilla as they raced up. She tried to block out the noise, but it was difficult because of her enhanced hearing, and she had to squint so she could see through the spraying water. She passed Malik, pushing on the speed to reach out, almost touching the hem of the flowing tunic Quilla was wearing. She tried to grab it, grab her, but the door to the floor they were running past shot open, and Kahla plowed into Reva.

  “What are you—?”

  Reva could see Kahla’s red eyes, and felt her claws trying to slash her side. Twisting away, she put some distance between her and her friend, but Kahla attacked again, almost pushing them both over the railing as they slipped on the wet floor. Malik grabbed Kahla, pulling her off, but she attacked him, too. He had to twist before she tried to claw his neck open, and ripped his mask off instead.

  The face masks didn’t really matter anymore with the water pouring down.

  Taking her own mask off, Reva jumped back into the fray again as she pushed Kahla back, then kicked her through the doorway. She saw Darius running toward them, his lips curled in a snarl. The water rained down on him, but he didn’t stop, didn’t slow down. As Kahla stumbled back to her feet, Darius rammed into her, taking her back down to the ground. Her body shook as if he were shocking her with his energy, then his head lifted, and Darius looked up at Reva.

  He jumped to his feet, mouth wide in a silent scream as he came down the hallway. Before he could reach her, Malik jumped in front of her, shielding her body. He fell back as Darius hit him, and they slammed each other into the sides of the hallway, making dents and holes in the walls.

  Darius tried to shock him, but Malik just said, “Sorry, brother.”

  Malik sent streams of energy trough is fingertips, and the energy lightning hit Darius hard in chest, flipping him into a spin midair before he slammed into the floor. Kahla was trying to get up, red-eyes still locked on Reva, and Darius shook his head before looking back over at Malik. Kahla started running forward again, and Darius got distracted by the movement, pouncing on her instead.

  Kahla and Darius flew apart as Eden appeared in the hallway b
etween them, and the sprinklers stopped until there were only a few drops of water coming out.

  “Go to the roof!”

  Reva and Malik turned and ran, but as soon as they were back in the stairwell, he grabbed her into a tight, hard hug. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I think so.” When she breathed in, she looked at the drops of water on his face and his wet hair that matched her own. “Why aren’t we going crazy?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He took her hand and pulled her up the stairs again. They raced up to the roof, and burst out of the doorway together. They saw Quilla running the last few steps across the roof to a waiting shuttle. Reva and Malik chased after her.

  When Quilla got to the shuttle, the door was already open. Running inside, she screamed, “Take off!”

  As Malik and Reva got closer to the shuttle, Reva could see Quilla was frozen just inside the doorway. Looking around her, Reva smiled slowly.

  Amari sat inside the shuttle. Her arms were spread across the back of the seats facing the door, and she had one leg crossed over the other. She playfully swung her foot as she said, “Leaving so soon?”

  No, Quilla wasn’t going anywhere.

  The Tarin female backed out of the shuttle, then moved to the side so she could keep all of them in sight. Amari stood up and exited the shuttle, then leaned against the side as she nodded to Reva and Malik. “She is all yours. She does not leave this roof.”

  “Malik…I’m sorry, brother. Please, forgive me.”

  Reva snarled. It was difficult to breathe through her rage, to stop herself from shifting and exacting her vengeance. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Her chest hurt, and she could all but feel Malik’s pain. Gods, how could she kill his sister right in front of him? Even after all the evil Quilla had done, Reva couldn’t hurt him that way.

  Malik was more important.

  His shame had been eating him alive, and he needed to confront Quilla to let it go. Let her go. It was his pain that needed to heal, and Reva couldn’t take that from him. She loved him enough to let go of her rage…for him. Only for him.

  “Do not believe her,” she whispered through their bond.