Chapter 28: Will

Chapter 28: Will

It was under cover of fog and darkness that Alexis and I descended from the building across the Beckett Pharma tower. As we crossed the road, our steps splashed in the puddles of water that had pooled on the road and sidewalks. Above, the dark clouds forebode another torrential bout of rain. The air was still, and the night was quiet except for our faint sounds as we crept up to the tower.

Even though we had robbed it of its electricity and stripped it of its lighting, the tower loomed like a malignant presence, its jet-black length rising in the air, piercing through the thick canopy of clouds. A sliver of lightning tore through the sky, followed by the low roar of thunder.

I put my arm up, barring Alexis from moving any further. She put her arm on my shoulder and turned me around to face her.

“There’s no going back now,” she whispered. “We are doing this.”

It wasn’t that I was hesitant or afraid—quite the opposite. The three men in there stood no chance against Alexis and me. She had evolved into a strong and fierce werewolf, one that I could count on in battle. As for me, the antidote that Vincent had procured for me was still working its magic, providing me with strength, detoxing my body of all the negative effects of the poison that had been running through my veins, and granting me a level of mental clarity that I had never known before. I was able to calculate the probabilities of potential actions and perceive their outcome within milliseconds. My body and mind were as optimal as they could be. If there ever was a time to do something like this, it was now.

“We are,” I said, holding her hands. “I’m just checking in to see if you’re okay.”

“I feel alive like I’ve never felt before. It’s like I’ve been preparing for this moment all my life. A chance to do something good. This is going to be my redemption. And yours. We’re ridding this town of evil,” she said, her voice louder than a whisper this time. She stroked my hair, her other hand resting on my chest, feeling my steadily beating heart.

I wrapped my arms around her, lifted her body, and kissed her on her soft, moist, and warm lips. Alexis kissed me in return, then gave me a light peck on each cheek, making them flush with warmth and color.

“Let’s do this,” I said. “Let us rid Fiddler’s Green of evil.”

Wisps of mist wove like tendrils around us as we walked up to the building. I ducked behind a large fountain and peeked from between the plants in the flowerbed, scanning my surroundings. From the corner of my eye, I could see Alexis looking out from behind the fountain wall.

“Guards at the door,” she said, pointing at the main entrance. The main entrance was already a no-brainer. We were not going to use it unless we wanted to draw the attention of every single guard in the building and give up our entire position right at the beginning.

There was a metal barrier lowered over the garage. The few times I had seen the underground garage, it had been open. It made sense that they closed it with a lowered mesh fence. There were two guards patrolling the garage entrance as well.

Unlike the last time when I had broken into the building to save Alexis, the guards this time around were sturdier, had firearms in their holsters, and were much more agile than the previous guards stationed at the entrances. The previous ones never stood a chance in catching up to me. I wasn’t so sure about these new ones. They resembled soldiers in their gait and their actions. As the power was out, the guards walked with flashlights, casting their beams everywhere they walked. This made it especially easy for us to track where they were going.

“Two at the garage entrance,” I confirmed with Alexis.

“They’re not your average mall walker guards,” Alexis said. “It makes sense that Blair upgraded. But we expected that, didn’t we?”

“We did,” I said. “Follow me.”

As we had discussed, we flanked from each side, making use of the environment around us to conceal ourselves. I went for the guard on the right while Alexis crept up behind the guard on the left. In a perfectly synchronized moment, we both struck the guards on the back of their heads at the same time, knocking them out. Before they could fall, Alexis and I caught them and lowered them noiselessly onto the floor. Once I had confirmed that both of them were indeed passed out from our blows, we dragged them into the garage via the side panel in the fence and dumped their bodies in the entrance booth.

“So far, so good,” Alexis said, panting lightly as she tucked away the legs of the guard she had knocked out and fitted in the booth.

“Onwards and upwards,” I said, crouching against the booth as we carefully examined the layout of the garage in front of us. Ahead was a descending curve leading into the main underground garage. The curve gave way to wide parking with evenly spaced columns holding the entire weight of the building upon them. It always fascinated me how civil engineers and architects managed to raise monolithic structures out of brick and stone, structures capable of holding thousands of tons of weight. Despite that huge achievement in one arena of life, people lacked so disreputably in other arenas.

“Will!” Alexis grabbed me by my arm and yanked me back. In the midst of my musing, I had forgotten that this parking space was festering with guards wandering about with flashlights beaming in every direction. I tucked behind one of those new electric cars, the Tesla, and scoped my surroundings from there.

“There it is,” I pointed at the elevator shaft.

Nodding to acknowledge that she had heard me and had seen what I was showing her, Alexis quickly pointed in turn to something that she had just seen.

“Subbasement staircase.”

This was what we had been searching for. The diagrams, schematics, and blueprints were one thing, but it was another thing entirely to be present in the basement packed with guards, hiding from flashlights, and then sight the sub-basement staircase entrance. Theory vs. practical, as they were.

We crawled from car to car, sometimes ducking down to the point of lying down on our stomachs, as we made our way from the entrance of the basement parking lot to the sub-basement staircase. Midway, the thought occurred to me that it would be far easier to just shift and kill all the guards than to keep up the stealth charade. But I patiently persevered, and as with all things that are the rewards of patience and perseverance, our reward this time around was a clean entrance into the sub-basement staircase without any of the guards getting alerted of our presence.

At that same moment, though, one thing happened that neither of us had expected. The lights came back on.

“Must be the backup generator,” Alexis sighed. She stood at the stairwell, her gaze darting up and down to see if anyone was approaching. After a long while of both of us standing there and just biding our time in silence, feeling that our nocturnal advantage had been taken from us, we descended down to the sub-basement.

The first thing I noticed immediately once I stepped inside the sub-basement was how murky it smelled. Like something had died in there. As opposed to the rest of the building and the parking space, this place was completely unkempt and resembled an underground shelter bunker. It was dimly lit, dusty, and decrepit. At the center of this unseemly space was a cage that housed the elevator’s base.

Alexis was two steps ahead of me, already at the cage, pulling it open. It struggled just a bit, but when Alexis and I pulled it together, it swung cleanly open. I peeked inside the shaft and became immediately woozy. It was unending, dark, and cold. As the gears, ropes, and wires moved, the elevators swung up and down on their tracks. There would be plenty of space for us to traverse upwards.

I shifted first. Immediately upon shifting, the coldness that had crept into my body gave way to a comfortable warmth that was always accompanied by the presence of fur. The elevator passage that had moments ago seemed quite dark now looked lit enough for me to make my way to the top.

Alexis shifted behind me silently. Our gradually honed telepathic communication in wolf form had matured gracefully, allowing us to talk without using words.

I’ll go in there first, I said.

Remember, the laboratory location has been shifted. It’s on floor twenty-three, Alexis said.

An elevator was descending. As it reached the ground floor, I leaped into the shaft and held on to it. Alexis followed soon after, also latching onto the same elevator. As we ascended, we began counting the floors. The elevator seemed to be going to the top. Both of us jumped off at the twenty-third floor, digging our claws into the framework lattice of the shaft for support. I was on the left of the elevator doors. Alexis was perched on the right. We both pierced each side of the door with our claws and pulled the doors open.

Alexis climbed into the floor. Once she had scouted the entrance, she beckoned me to follow. I climbed through the entrance just in time to avoid the elevator coming down into the shaft.

She was right. This was the floor for the new laboratory. Everything looked like it was recently renovated. The equipment even had a plastic covering on top of it. It made sense that the place was shifted from one floor to the other, given how much I had wrecked it when I was here last.

Shifting back, I saw that the place was a little too impeccable. Functional premises were not this spotless. Perhaps this was how modern labs were, and maybe I was being a little too paranoid. Alexis was speculating at everything on the other side of the floor, squinting, analyzing, and rifling through the files and folders on the shelves.

I made my way through the maze of glass walls and entered the main chamber where I suspected the Wolf’s Bane was being kept. I could see something blue and luminescent in a glass tube at the center of the maze in the hermetically sealed room. Alexis followed behind, peeking over my shoulder at the ethereal blue liquid. In the otherwise dark laboratory, this shining vial looked otherworldly and haunting.

I breached the hermetically sealed room, letting the door open, and the air hissed as it escaped the locked room. The plastic curtains rustled as we slid them apart to make our way into the room.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Alexis said.

“Now that you mention it, there’s something odd about the whole thing being a little too easy. Where are all the goons, the henchmen, the guards? There was practically no resistance,” I said, unlocking the glass box containing Wolf’s Bane and taking out the bottle of blue liquid.

“And the three culprits…they’re nowhere near the potion,” Alexis said warily. She retreated towards the door. “You don’t think this was a ruse, do you?”

My heart sank, and the earth seemed to sweep from under my feet. I could not fathom what had just happened.

In my hand, the vial containing the blue potion, instead of saying Wolf’s Bane, had a smiley face with a text written next to it: Thanks for making it easy for us and walking right into our trap.

“Get out,” I said. “Alexis. Get out. Right now!”

But it was too late.

The door slid shut, and the air hissed out, sealing us inside the tempered glass.

“What the fuck?”

“This isn’t the potion! They knew we were coming. We walked right into their trap!”

Alexis banged against the door but to no avail. It did not even budge, let alone shatter. What was a dark lab mere moments ago was now lit up with red flashing lights, often the prelude to an emergency or a security breach. Right on cue, alarms started blaring alongside the flashing lights.

I slammed my body against the glass walls, hoping that they would give in and break, but nothing of the sort happened. Instead, from the ceiling, green gas began billowing out and filling the small glass container we were trapped in.

“Well, well, well, would you look at that, kids?” This was the grimy voice of Blair issuing from the overhead speakers. Just then, the elevator doors opened, and Ralph, Blair, and Maurice walked in. “It would appear I gave you more credit than you deserved. You really thought that I wouldn’t be alerted of someone hacking into my system? What do you think I’m running, some sort of a clown company?”

“Fuck you!” Alexis yelled and slammed her fist against the glass door.

“Mind your breath,” Maurice said. “Or don’t. I don’t care either way. In about three minutes, poisonous fumes are going to choke both your lungs and kill you where you stand.”

“Look at these two pups caught in a cage of their own making. You know, Wilhelm, I always thought that your imprisonment the first time around was a matter of luck. But as I see you here, so helpless, so weak, trapped a second time, I can’t help but think that you’re the dumbest werewolf that I’ve ever come across. To be trapped a second time so shortly after getting your freedom,” Ralph cackled.

The bottle of the fake potion slipped from my hands and crashed on the floor, spilling warm liquid everywhere. I held my breath and Alexis’s hand as I stared at the three despicable figures standing there. If this was not Wolf’s Bane, where was it? Why make such a fuss about that potion if their plan was to kill me with fumes instead? Did some part of them perhaps know that fumes alone were not enough to kill werewolves?

“You have been a pain in our collective asses ever since you set foot in Fiddler’s Green. What was otherwise a veritable paradise for us, you came and turned into a hellscape with your fucking idealism and your old values!” Maurice said. “It was all working perfectly, Will. You should have died in that prison. Well, it’s not too late. Death comes for all of us. Remember this.”

“And why should we rob ourselves of the gratuitous sight of you two squirming in pain as your souls leave your bodies? Writhe for us, if you will,” Ralph said. “I always like it when my victims squeal.”

I cast a look at Alexis, hating myself for bringing her here, getting her caught in this trap, feeling remorseful that I had risked her life, all for nothing.

“I am sorry,” I said. “I have made your life more challenging ever since I stepped foot in it.”

“This is not on you, Will,” Alexis said, holding my hands in her hands. She brought them up to her chest, allowing me to feel her rapidly beating heart.

“Oy! Hey! Lovebirds! Now’s not the time to get fucking sappy with each other. Don’t ignore the larger threat present in the room!” Ralph said, kicking the glass walls.

“What does it matter if we’re dying anyways?” Alexis said. “Wouldn’t I rather spend my last moments with him than be all resentful for something that’s not within my control? You’ve got us. You won. What more do you want?”

“Well, I wanted to gloat and rub it in your faces,” Blair said. “But seeing as how you two would rather talk it out amongst yourselves, I can be benevolent enough to grant you that wish. Go ahead. Take your time. Both of you only have a minute anyway. If you don’t pass out from the gas, we’ve got the real Wolf’s Bane with us to do the job.”

Blair took out a syringe with blue fluid in it and swung it in the air.

“Will,” Alexis whispered. “If we make it out of here alive by some longshot…. get that syringe from him!”

“I have waded in darkness for the longest time, Alexis,” I said, unable to hold my breath any longer. The fumes were beginning to make their way down my throat and were suffocating me. “If I am going towards the light, I am glad that it is with you.”

Unable to breathe any longer, I staggered and crashed down.

“There he goes!” Ralph yelled. I wasn’t sure. At this point, all the sounds—the blaring alarms, the panicked noises coming from Alexis, and the mockery issuing from the three men—were jumbled up into nonsense.

“Hey! You do not get the mercy of dying while you’re passed out!” Blair kicked on the glass again, bringing me back to painful consciousness for a second. “Look me in the eyes as you die. Know that I’ve done what my father set out to do. This is revenge, motherfucker, served as cold as it gets.”

“Enough!” Alexis yelled, slamming hard against the glass. “You wouldn’t be so brave if those walls weren’t between you and me.”

By now, it was impossible to see outside of the room. The gas had completely filled the tiny container-sized room, turning its walls opaque and murky green. It stung me as it permeated my lungs and burned me as the fumes became part of my bloodstream.

The next thing I knew, amidst the pain and anguish, Alexis had collapsed beside me.

The laboratory rang with the jeers of Ralph the vampire, Maurice the betrayer, and Blair, heir to a madman.