28. Miles

TWENTY-EIGHT

MILES

I rolled out of bed as quietly as I could. Celina was still asleep, and I didn't want to wake her up. Though, after all she'd gone through the night before, I wouldn't have been surprised if she slept a full twenty-four hours. I eased myself out the door into the living room and pulled on my clothes. I needed to call the guys and fill them in on everything. Last night had been too chaotic. By the time we'd finally calmed down from the confrontation with Felicity, Celina and I had been too exhausted to do anything. Now, in the light of day, I wanted to kick myself for not letting my friends know immediately.

I grabbed my phone and stepped out the front door, dialing the office as I stood in the hallway. The night with Celina should have made me feel amazing, and it had, but it had been marred by that guy. Something about him didn't sit right.

Tate answered. "Morning. How's it going?"

"Is everyone there with you?" I asked.

"Yeah, we're in the conference room."

"Put the phone on speaker. I need to talk to all of you at once."

"Done," he said after a few seconds.

I took a breath. "Well, I've got a mate."

There was a second of hesitation before all three of them started hooting and hollering. I grinned despite myself. It was good to have one bit of stress off my plate.

"Congrats," Steff said, barely audible through the noise.

"Thanks, but that's only the first thing I need to tell you."

"Has Celina shifted yet?" Tate asked.

Harley had taken weeks before she could shift. Most of us thought it was probably because she'd been pregnant when Tate claimed her. April had shifted within an hour of being claimed, the same as Celina last night. "She did…it went well. We're all good."

"Then what else do you need to tell us?" Tate's voice had shifted from congratulatory to wary.

I proceeded to tell them about the incident with Felicity and the guy from the restaurant. I told them how the guy made me feel, and what I thought it meant.

"Wait," Steff blurted. "The douchebag that tried to help kidnap Celina? You think he's a shifter? A shifter working with hunters?" He sounded incredulous.

I knew how he felt. It didn't make any sense. "Yeah, that's what I think anyway. There's something off about the guy. I can't even get a sense about what type of shifter he is. It's weird."

"Well…" Blayne said, "…we looked at all the security cameras after they tried to snatch Celina. I broke into the feed for the restaurant. I put the guy's face through the same facial recognition program I put Felicity's picture through. I didn't find anything. I assumed that meant he was some low-level thug and not important."

"He was talking to Felicity like a dog, man. Dude either has balls of steel, or he's got way more pull in the organization than we thought."

"I'm still confused about the warning this guy gave Celina," Tate said. "Like is he really saying he'd let her go? That doesn't make any sense to me. They know she's a shifter now."

That had occurred to me. "Tate, I think he's serious, and I think it's all because of you."

"Fuck," Steff muttered.

"We all know Antonio has a hard-on for you in particular. The rest of us were just bonuses. Icing on the cake, you might say. I think if he could take you down, he'd call it a win. They'll eventually come for all the shifters, but right now, you've got a target on your chest," I explained.

"If we all stay? What then?" Tate asked. "Is he going to bring the fight to us?"

"This is bigger than Lilly Valley," Blayne said. "We've already seen them attacking other packs, but for the last year-and-a-half the focus has been here. Once we're gone, they'll work their way down the list of shifter packs until they're all gone. Our pack is small, but it consists of four alphas. This is the first stop on a whole fucking world tour of genocide."

"There are cracks in this organization," I said. "The way this guy talked to Felicity tells me she doesn't really have a true leadership role. This whole thing with me and Celina was probably supposed to be her first big mission, and she fucked it up. Also, the guy let slip that Ryland was never supposed to touch April. Ryland was one of their big guns. If Antonio's generals, or whatever, are this inept, it means they aren't unbeatable. We've got a chance against them. I'll be there in a minute, we can talk more then."

I ended the call with the guys and went back inside. Celina was still fully passed out. I wrote a note about going into work and to call me if she needed anything, then made sure to lock the door when I left. On the drive to the office, I glanced around the entire time. My paranoia was on overload after last night's events.

I didn't see anyone or anything strange the whole way to the office, but that didn't make me feel any better. I stepped into the office and nodded to Kennedy before heading to the conference room. The guys were still there, waiting for me. My phone buzzed, and I yanked it out.

I looked at the guys. "It's my guy Chris. The PI in Denver I hired."

"Answer, bro," Steff said.

"Hello?"

"Miles? It's Chris." Something was wrong. He sounded panicked and was out of breath. From what I could hear, it sounded like he was running.

"Chris? What's wrong?"

"Fuck…hang on." I heard a strange jangly sound that sounded like a chain link fence. Was he climbing one?

"I'm back," Chris said, still running.

"What's happened, Chris?"

"I'm sending you some files. You aren't going to fucking believe what's going on at this goddamned toy factory, my man. I don't...Jesus Christ, it's crazy." It sounded like he'd finally slowed to a walk. His voice sounded disgusted when he spoke next. "These people are sick as shit. If they get caught doing whatever the hell it is they're doing, someone's head's going to roll. Hold on, and let me send this email real fast. There, it's sent. You'll get it in a few seconds?—"

I could hear a rustling sound through the phone, and Chris screamed a curse and started running again. "I've gotta go, man…they're on me."

Without another word, the line dropped dead. My heart raced maniacally as I grabbed a laptop. The guys were all shouting questions, but I ignored them. I pulled my email up as fast as I could and saw the message from Chris. The subject line read: download to an external drive and then delete this email ASAP.

The email had dozens of attachments. Pictures, videos, and different files. I looked at Blayne. "Flash drive. Now!"

Blayne jerked away and started rummaging through his desk. "How fucking big?"

"Big. Lots of video and image files."

He slapped a drive into my palm, and I slid it into the USB dock. Blayne made sure we had the highest speed internet, so the files were downloaded in less than a minute. I pulled the drive free and then deleted the email. Blayne spun the computer toward him and typed away, doing some other type of wizardry to clean the trail that led to us. After a few seconds, Blayne sighed and turned the computer back to me.

"That's all I can do. Shouldn't be any way they can trace the email from Chris's phone back to us," Blayne said.

I jammed the flash drive back into the computer and pulled up the files. Steff, Blayne, and Tate sat beside me, and I glanced up to make sure the door was closed. I shared the computer feed up to the massive monitor on the wall. Most of the files I skimmed through looked like medical charts. The handwriting was too illegible to really make heads or tails out of. None of the names looked familiar. Other files had chemical equations that none of us could understand or even attempt to figure out. Frustrated, I switched over to the video files.

"Damn," Tate whispered. "Did your guy use a drone?"

It looked that way. The feed was black and white, and started from a pretty far distance, but the toy factory was easily visible. The drone swooped in until it hovered just above the building. There was a big sky light on the roof that let light in. The telephoto lens on the drone zoomed in. It felt like we were right there. Even though the glass was cloudy, we could make something out.

Blayne walked up to the screen and pointed. "What the hell is that? Beds?"

The video ended before we could get a better visual. The next video file was in color. From the look of it, Chris had somehow managed to infiltrate the building himself. The video was shaky, and I could hear his hushed breathing through the speakers. He was huddled behind what looked like a huge number of gas canisters and cardboard boxes. He focused the camera through a gap, and we finally got a good look at what the drone had shown.

"What the fuck?" Steff breathed.

Gurneys lined the back wall, and over a dozen people were strapped to the beds. Some were unconscious, others actively struggled against the leather straps that held them down, and the rest were motionless. Several people who looked like they were dressed as doctors moved between the patients.

A man in glasses stepped up to one of the beds and looked at a younger man who was holding an audio recorder.

"This is Doctor Carter Brenden. This is attempt four-thirty-six. Subject A is a twenty-four-year-old wolf shifter, taken from a compound in New Hampshire. Subject B is a thirty-nine-year-old female human, captured at a homeless camp outside Las Vegas. We will begin."

The man pulled a hypodermic needle from his coat and plunged the needle into the arm of the young wolf shifter. The shifter didn't move, instead he stared at the blood being pulled from his arm in horror and fear. After the needle was filled, the doctor walked over to the bed with the female patient. She was trying to sink back into her bed as though that could protect her.

"What the fuck are they doing?" I whispered. They'd captured shifters as well as humans? I thought they were trying to protect humans from shifters. This made no sense at all.

The doctor stood above the woman, the needle hovering over her arm. He glanced back at his assistant. "Time is three-seventeen a.m. Blood insertion begins now. Approximately ten milliliters."

Without another word, he shoved the needle into a vein in her arm and slammed the plunger home. All the blood vanished from the needle into the woman. The doctor stepped back and crossed his arms, watching. The woman groaned and tugged at her bonds for several seconds before her back suddenly arched. Her stomach and hips rose toward the ceiling so high it looked like her back was going to break. My eyes went wide as I watched the horror show before me.

Her hips slammed back down onto the bed, and her whole body seemed to convulse. The scream that erupted from her lips was one of agony and pain I couldn't even imagine. The scream cut off, and she started to have some kind of seizure, her entire body vibrating in pain. Whitish-yellow foam started to erupt from between her lips. After what felt like forever, she finally, blessedly, went still. The sound of a heart monitor flatlining could be heard. I felt sick watching what was happening.

"Son of a bitch," Doctor Brenden hissed. "Time of death…three-twenty a.m."

The assistant clicked off the recorder and approached Brenden. "Should we try spinal fluid or semen instead? Blood is obviously not going to work."

Brenden spun on the assistant. "You think when I tell you to think. Understand? But…we haven't tried sexual contact yet. It's known that humans and shifters have sexual intercourse, but maybe if there was a co-mingling of blood during the sex act?" Brenden shrugged. "Get that scheduled. We'll need a supply of Sildenafil for the men. I doubt many will be able to get erect given the current living conditions. We'll shoot for starting the trial next week."

We sat in horror, listening to the casual way the two men were discussing forced sexual relations as part of some kind of experiment. The video ended again, and another drone shot took its place. This time the drone zoomed past the factory into the forests beyond. It was incredibly high, probably so Chris could be sure they didn't hear the hum of the rotor blades.

A mile or so from the factory, an opening in the trees became visible. The camera zoomed in again, and we could see a ring of fencing around the clearing topped with razor wire. Five feet within that ring was a ten-foot-tall wooden privacy fence. No one who accidentally stumbled upon the location would be able to see what was going on within. Inside the ring, we could see at least two dozen hunters standing ready at one end of the circle. On the opposite side were several men and women, all being held back by ropes.

I could see where this was going before the action even started. As though the ropes were cut by some remote-controlled device, the shifters rushed the hunters. Strangely only a few of them shifted. After a skirmish of a few minutes, all the shifters were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets. One hunter had been killed, his head taken almost completely off by the swing of a bear shifter's paw.

I scrolled through multiple other videos and pictures––each one as horrifying as the last. This must have been how the soldiers felt when they first found the concentration camps in World War Two. The second to last video was again from inside the facility.

Chris was one brave son of a bitch.

A massive feral wolf shifter was chained to the wall. He was snarling and snapping. The same doctor from before approached, and with the help of two others, they held the shifter's muzzle down and extracted blood out of him. We watched as he tried the same experiment as before on a human who looked to be in his forties. The same thing happened––convulsions, seizure, foaming at the mouth, then death.

From the far side of the room, a new voice came on the video. "So…another failure?"

Brenden nodded sadly. "I'm afraid so, sir."

"So there's no way to give my team the strength and speed of a shifter. That's what we're saying?" We watched as Antonio walked into the frame.

Brenden gestured toward the shifter, who was still struggling against his bonds. "We don't know that for sure. As I told you, we still have some copulation experiments we need to go through. One of the other techs even mentioned trying to get the humans to eat parts of the shifters. Kill and butcher, then feed?—"

"Fine, fine, keep trying. If my best soldiers can't take down a four-man pack, there's no hope of going against the bigger clans later on."

"We are running low on human subjects, sir. What would you like to do on that front?"

Antonio waved a hand. "I told you the other day. Human chaff can always be found. Send more men out to the homeless camps, nursing homes, orphanages."

"Orphanages? Sir, I don't know that children will provide any different?—"

"Do your fucking job!" Antonio bellowed. "Or you'll find yourself without one." He stepped forward and shoved a finger into the doctor's chest. "And if you don't work for me anymore, you become a loose end. You know what I do with loose ends, don't you, doctor?"

Brenden nodded. "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. We'll keep working."

The video cut and the final clip was of Chris. He was sitting in front of his laptop, staring into the webcam. His hair was in disarray, and he looked like he was on the verge of a breakdown. I had a sudden, crushing flash of regret for having dragged him into this whole mess.

"Um…hey, Miles," Chris said. "I'm not entirely sure what you've sent me to investigate, but this is way more intense than I thought it would be. Listen." He ran a hand through his messy hair. "If you've seen all the videos, you know this is some next-level, Area Fifty-One type shit. It's fucking Antonio Lowry running this…whatever the hell it is. That dude has more than enough money to erase my ass. That's why I'm putting these together. I have to get the proof to someone else. I'll send it as soon as I can, but I'm heading out for one more look. If you don't hear from me again, it's because I was caught. Hope I talk to you again, old friend."

The video cut, and I stared at the screen in horror. I glanced around the room and saw my friends were equally as disturbed. Steff was leaning against the wall, his head hanging, Blayne was beside me, face in his hands. Tate was standing at the other side of the room, arms crossed.

Tate looked at me. "They're experimenting on shifters and humans? What the hell are they thinking?"

I leaned back in my chair. "They're trying to replicate the curse."

"What?" Blayne asked, head snapping up.

"The curse. They know we can change our mates into shifters. They're trying to replicate that effect on their soldiers. They want the strength and speed, but without losing their humanity. It's not fucking possible, but they're trying."

"Are we sure it's not possible?" Tate asked.

The question hung in the air, menacing and nightmarish. I remembered the strange bodyguard. Could they have done it? Was that what he was? Some bastardized hybrid of human and shifter?

Before any of us could contemplate that scenario, my phone rang. It was Chris again. I sighed with relief. He'd gotten away. At least he was safe. I answered on speaker so the others could hear.

"Chris? Are you okay? Where?—"

"Your friend is here with me, Mr. Kelly," Antonio Lowry said.

The earth dropped out from under me. Antonio had Chris. Jesus. Things had gone bad so fast, the entire world was spinning.

"I don't know how your little spy was able to infiltrate my facility, but he's going to pay with his life," Antonio said, spitting the words out. "And you'll turn over everything he sent you. Is that understood? Every file, every video, every email, everything. If you don't, I'll make one call. I have a man with eyes on your precious whore of a mate. I call him? He pulls his trigger, and she gets a nice fat silver bullet in her head."

Eyes on Celina? Someone was at the apartment? My heart was hammering in my chest as panic and rage fought for equal footing inside me.

"I take it your silence is acquiescence?"

I growled into the phone, deep and pissed. It was a sound that any sane man would fear. The problem was, the evidence Chris sent showed that Antonio was anything but sane.

"Is that how you filthy mutts speak? Was that agreement?" Antonio asked. "I'll have someone pick up the drive. Make sure you include any copies you might have made. You and your little pack should brace for what's to come. I assure you, come hell or high water, I will end the shifter race once and for all. If Mr. Mills is there, make sure he knows I'll be the one who chokes the life from him with my own hands. I'll cut his cock off first, of course. Have the drive ready for pick up. I'll text you the location."

Antonio ended the call before I could say anything. I grunted and clenched my phone in my fist so hard I wouldn't have been surprised if it had broken. The others were looking at me, their faces masks of the same rage that filled me. My own mind was now leaping and racing back to thoughts of Celina. She was in danger. That was to be expected, but if Antonio was to be believed, she was in even more danger than I'd ever imagined.