Omega's Run (9 page)

“So you’ve got all the bits that make me tick, what the fuck are we doing here?” I snapped. The fact she knew so much about us to even know the term ‘blood born’ made me freak out even harder on the inside.

She grinned and turned to pick up something off a table, a little plastic thing, it kinda reminded me of a really thick condom with a tube attached to one end. “Have you ever heard of electro-ejaculation?” she asked and I was forced to shake my head, my heart sinking in the center of my chest. I hadn’t heard of it, but it sounded pretty fuckin’ shitty. I didn’t really want to find out exactly what she had planned anymore.

“Well, to quote Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary... it is a ‘method used for the collection of semen for artificial insemination or for examination’.” She reached down and grabbed ahold of my flaccid dick, slipping the condom thing she was holding over the end of it. The tube I saw ran to a machine standing next to her and I immediately felt some pressure, like the suction from a vacuum or something.

Dread surged through my veins and made me seriously rethink whether I should be trying to bolt right about now. Mind made up, I tried like a son of a bitch to get my body, paralyzed with fear as it was, to pitch, thrash, or otherwise do what I needed it to do to get me the fuck out of here – brain melting surge of electricity or not. I stared at the crazy cunt in her efficient little lab coat and realized I was seriously nothing more than a fucking lab rat to her crazy ass. She continued talking as if I wasn’t staring at her like she’d sprouted a second head.

“See what we do is provide electrical stimulation by way of electrodes applied to the lumbar sympathetic nerves. This promotes semen emission. Further electrodes applied to the pelvic splanchnic, and internal pudendal nerves, are used to promote erection of the penis and ejaculation. Most of these are contained inside a probe placed in the rectum.” She smiled sweetly at me and I stared into her eyes. The lights were on but nobody was fucking home in there. She didn’t feel one way or the other about what she was about to do to me… I’d seen the same look a thousand times and more out of my twin brother’s eyes. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! Resignation sank in, and with it something akin to courage but not.

“And people talk about Alien abductees being victims of anal probing,” I muttered. “You are out of your goddamn mind, you understand that right?”

She gave me a thoughtful look, tapping her lower lip with one bright red fingernail for a moment before she shrugged and smiled. “I don’t really care. Again, Mathias wants us to study all aspects of your physiology, and since he
is
the one who signs our paychecks, we will.” She clapped her hands together like a giddy little girl for a moment. “And you know what else? Human men need some time after they ejaculate for the body to build up seminal fluid again. Usually about half an hour or so, give or take. I wonder how fast you’ll recover, not being human and all. I’ve actually been dying to find out.”

She reached over my head and did something, pressed a button, flipped a switch, I have no idea. But a moment later I felt a mild current run through me. I bit my tongue again, determined not to scream. Strangely the pain I was expecting didn’t come. It didn’t exactly feel
good
, but it wasn’t the agony I’d been expecting.

“Another little fun note about this is that it
can
actually be a rather pleasant experience. If we were to gradually increase the current to the point where it would cause release, you could potentially really enjoy yourself.” She smiled at me and reached back over my head again. “But we don’t want you to enjoy yourself do we? Oh, no we don’t. So we’re just going to crank this sucker all the way up and enjoy all those pretty screams that you’re going to give us.”

I gritted my teeth and took several deep breaths. I was determined not to give her the satisfaction. I wasn’t going to scream. I wasn’t going to scream.

I was not. Going. To. Scream.

She twisted her wrist.

I didn’t scream.

My world vanished into a haze of white hot agony and I fucking
howled.

Chapter 10

Ava

Eyes sightlessly staring, I gazed into the absolute black of my bunk and lay perfectly still. It was the exact opposite of what my mind was doing. On the inside it seethed and twisted, the thoughts roiling in on themselves, looping back around, strangling my ability to sleep.

Mathias was up to something. The sudden bullshit mission to New Hampshire felt all wrong. My gut told me he wanted me and my team out of here in one seriously big damn hurry. Why? Everyone had a motive for everything they did. That was a given, so what motive did Mathias have to pitch us onto a wild goose chase halfway across the country?

The short answer? Remus Reese AKA Remy Dulcet… it had to be. Remus was the one point my mind circled around and there wasn’t any way I was going to sleep. There wasn’t any way I was going to find out the deal with Mathias’ peculiar obsession when it came to this particular werewolf bastard if I kept my ass in bed either.

I sat up abruptly and was met with the soft clicking and ticking of the motion sensor light coming on. The small, former cell, lit gradually as the energy efficient lights warmed up.

Nightmares happened a lot on this crusade and sometimes even in my regular line of work. Part of the remodel of this facility had been to equip each room with a set of motion sensing lights. Sit up beyond a certain point, the lights came on; like now. They were on a timer, if you lay down, went still, they’d switch off in a few minutes time. I’d never really appreciated the lights, until James…

I got up and splashed some cold water on my face from the sink above the John and mechanically went through my morning routine. Brush teeth, dress in my tactical chic. Lace boots, blouse pants, check weapons, clean anything that needed cleaning, strap them on and finally with nothing left to do, I swung into my modified Joe Rocket and with a peculiar feeling, zipped it up despite how warm it was in the facility.

James had bought the coat and had one of the tailors, loyal to the order, retrofit it with pockets on the inside to hold plates of body armor. James had gifted it to me right before he’d gone out on his last mission.

Trust me, Ava. Just in case…

I’d argued with him. Kevlar didn’t do shit against knives or claws, and he’d given me a pointed look, his green eyes so like my own, glassy with a poignant mixture of love, regret and pleading. He’d crushed me to his chest and kissed the top of my hair before letting me go for the last time. The moment had held a substantial amount of weight. Heavy, like gravity had suddenly increased, weighing us down from the inside out.

James had never been one to express affection or love physically like that. It’d been weird, and I’d found out why hours later when my team had been dispatched to pick up survivors. Except there hadn’t been any survivors. We’d really just been dispatched for body recovery.

A rectangle of folded leather sat on the small ledge above the sink. A wallet; old and well-worn, but in good shape. I flipped it open, looking at the driver’s license inside belonging to Remus’ alter ego Remy Dulcet. Six foot six inches tall and two hundred and thirty pounds according to the laminated cardboard rectangle. He had answers. He might not know it, but he had them. Without thinking I closed the wallet and stuffed it into an inside pocket of my jacket.

I snugged the zipper up the last few inches and drew and replaced my guns in their thigh holsters a few times to get the feel with the bulkier coat caging my body. Three guns, one on each leg and the third beneath my arm and I felt icy inside. As still as the night; quieter than death. I felt like the ground at the beach, when the wind blew and the sand shifted. I even looked up briefly to see if there was any movement above my head.

I resided in that quiet few inches between the solid earth and the shifting chaos and I felt calm;
ready
. My decision had been made and I was willing to find answers… at whatever cost. James was already dead, and I had nothing left to lose.

I slipped out into the silent hall and breathed out. Squaring my shoulders I put on my resting bitch face and went calmly in the direction of the nearest route that would take me lower. Down to where the containment cells were located.

It’d surprised me that Mathias hadn’t put the beast into one of the maximum security containment cells, but rather one he could easily escape, with a couple of guards he could probably just as easily overpower. Granted, no matter how smart he was, he wouldn’t get far in this rat maze of floors and tunnels and what-have-you, of the facility we were in.

Truthfully, that was what had surprised me the most. That the dog hadn’t even
tried
to get out of his kennel. None of the others that had been brought in had so much as a sliver of the self-control this one did, not when they were hungry and these beasts were ravenous
all the time
. This was especially true of any of the others that had been classified as ‘Blood Born.’ They all seemed a little half cracked to begin with. Think along the lines of little to no self-control, violent, and bloodthirsty. Like that sadistic bratty boy-king on that one premium channel TV show everybody raves about.

I’d caught a few episodes with my team in our down time and didn’t really understand how they could be so into it when we dealt in life and death and adrenaline all the time out in the raw and real world.

Anyways, that was the thing that had bothered James from the beginning. Why did Mathias even
want
to capture these things? What was the point in studying them? It wasn’t like there was a cure for what they were. They were animals. The end. Not even enough there to make a long story short. You couldn’t
get
much shorter than that.

My thoughts swirled around inside my head on the subject, chasing one another down rabbit holes and through warrens, one leading to the next, to the next, to the next; even as my feet did the same, one in front of the other, carrying me towards the monster’s inefficient cage.

I halted several paces outside the crude wooden door set with the iron barred window that looked like it came out of every badly done dungeon movie you’d ever seen. There were no guards posted.
Why weren’t there any guards posted?

I crept forward quietly and the nearer I came, the distinct sound of male voices in earnest conversation became clear. Ah. The guards weren’t on the outside because they were on the
inside
with Mathias and the beast. My heartbeat settled into its regular cadence. I thought they’d taken him. That he’d expired from injury or had already been executed. That I’d missed my chance.

“I could care less, Mathias. You’ve got some explaining to do. Why would you want to attack my pack now after protecting it for who knows how long?” Remus asked.

What in the absolute fuck?
I thought to myself
. Mathias was protecting some of these bastards!?
I listened hard for a denial.

“The arrangement I had with your father, Declan, was no longer adequate.”

I tasted bile at the back of my mouth.
Jesus-fucking-Christ, James. Is this what you found out?
I heard Mathias’ boot heels click against the stone floor hollowly and I could imagine him pacing slowly back and forth in front of the cage. Looking down his nose at Remus. It was what he did with all of us when he was silently judging.

I’d seen him do it a thousand times in front of James. My brother had always been the risk taker, the more daring of the two of us. More vivacious, more intelligent, more inspiring… just
more.
And now he was
no more
, he was gone, and as Mathias continued talking I was beginning to get a clearer and clearer indication as to why my brother had been sent to his death, but not the big ‘why,’ the ‘why’ of it all.

The sharp crackle of the Taser going off made me jump, heart in my throat, my chest squeezed tight. The sound the contacts made went on for what felt like forever before ceasing, leaving a deafening silence in their wake.

“Take him to Helen. I want samples, and I want them all. After that, put him into maximum containment. Run the usual gamut of tests. I want to know why he is different from the rest.”

I drifted down the corridor and, ghosted around the corner. The door opened, the two guards lugging the unconscious werewolf between them. I drifted down the corridor further and slipped into the alcove one of the other cell doors made.

Gritting my teeth I waited and my patience paid off. The elevator chimed, the guards grunted and cursed and a moment later the doors shushed shut and the elevator was underway. I waited for several uncomfortable heartbeats and dared look. All of them had gone, including Mathias.

I crept to the elevator bank and watched the indicator. Up, they went up. I worried my bottom lip between my teeth and contemplated my next move.

All roads lead to Remus…
my mind whispered and it sounded like my brother’s voice.

“James, you better not get me killed.” I murmured to myself and hit the stairs. They’d stopped on the medical level, which only made sense. Helen was Doctor Helen Bradley, who patched us up whenever we got banged up on a mission. It was going to take me a while to get up to medical by the stairs from way down here, but the stairs afforded me the ability of looking like I was moving throughout the facility naturally. I rarely, if ever, took the elevator unless I was traveling with someone or in a hurry.

Deviations in normal behavior. It was one of the first things we were trained to look for. Naturally, it would be one of the first things I would avoid doing.

When I slid through the door at the top of the stairs, what little breath I’d had left was stolen away by the most horrendous sound… I can’t even describe it. It tore through the air, reverberated along the walls and struck ice into my heart and through every vein. Pain didn’t begin to cover it. Agony barely reached. I un-holstered my guns and strode up the hall, stopping dead, struck mute, outside one of the medical suite’s glass doors.