18. Daxton

Chapter 18

Daxton

We spent the next hour listening to Gene as he explained so much of my life before my earliest memories—how my dad sacrificed everything for me, how the nurse he found accomplished a miracle by getting me the legal records that kept me safe, and how he had thought of me often. That was important, but it wasn't the only reason we were there.

Gene had memories of what happened to me, what happened to my father in that lab. And maybe I could glean some of that information from him.

I held on to my mate's hand, gripping it like a lifeline. "Did they know what they made with me?" My voice was barely above a whisper.

Gene sighed deeply. "I don't know. I know what they tried. You weren't the first, and you weren't the last. There were quite a few of you that escaped that day. There was a puffin who left, who was not nearly as far along as your dad. Their baby was made completely in the lab, so maybe they didn't even survive." He trailed off, lost in thought.

I knew who he meant—he meant Willy, but I wasn't willing to share someone else's story. I stayed silent, letting Gene continue. I'd let Willy know, and he could decide what he wanted to do about it.

"There were some others. I can't remember all their names. We weren't really allowed to talk to each other. Practically everything I know, I learned from eavesdropping."

He closed his eyes and gripped the table. Whatever he was about to say next wasn't easy for him, not like the rest of this was. "I was the first, but after they failed with me, they decided to start with cubs and pups instead of adults."

"What do you mean by them failing with you?" I didn't understand because he was standing here, perfectly healthy. Maybe I should have been more sensitive, but the question slipped out before I could stop myself.

Gene looked at me and seemed to steel his nerves. "I underwent…well, let's just say, a lot. But when I walked out of that lab, I didn't have the animals you have. I do have some—four. I have a bear, a house cat, a gnat, which I later discovered was an accident, and a raccoon."

I blinked, trying to process what he had just said. "That's an odd combination." I held in a smile, hoping it didn't come across as rude. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way."

Gene chuckled, a low, humorless sound. "No, it is an odd combination, for sure. The gnat somehow got mixed in with the others, and there were about a dozen other beasts than never came to be. They hated who I became. Especially the gnat because that was the one creature that had a chance of getting away."

I could see that. Those little suckers were tiny.

"They used the DNA of those they had already exhausted, the ones whose bodies could no longer keep going. They said it was easier than finding new subjects."

My stomach lurched at that thought. Easier than finding new subjects. These were people, not plants they pulled out from a garden. The casual cruelty of it made me sick. "How many got out that day?"

"I don't know who made it." Gene looked down, sadness emanating from his whole body. "Many didn't get out because the explosion took them, but there were at least a dozen there before everything went down. And a couple were gone before that night."

" Gone, like gone from this earth…?" I asked, confused.

"No. There was an escape. A baby and his father. Rigg was the baby's name. His father, I'd only ever heard him called by his ID number. His father was clever and had mastered shapeshifting differently than the rest of us, but he kept it from the guards. How, I'll never know, but he was able to clone people. No one—not the guards, not any of us, not the doctors—knew that was even possible. He promised to come back and get us, but he needed to get his baby out first. And he did. But we never saw him again. That was about a week before the explosion."

Oscar gasped beside me. It was just one more thing we had to uncover, one more thread to pull on in this tangled mess of a story.

"Our goal is to take them down." I looked him in the eye as I gave him my vow.

Gene nodded. "Mine as well. But I'm getting older, and my beasts… They don't like being around others too often. That's why I'm in the middle of the woods. As I get older, they want more time out in the wild. Even my gnat's been getting pushy."

We chatted for a bit longer, but the conversation was emotionally draining for all of us. As we made our way back through the woods to the car, I replayed all we had learned. The thought of those who hadn't made it out of that lab, the ones whose DNA had been used to create others, haunted me. And the fact that there were more like me out there—more people who had been subjected to these horrifying experiments—made me more determined than ever to see this through to the end.

When we got to the car, Oscar reached up and cupped my cheek. "We're going to find them. We're going to find them all, and we're going to bring down everyone responsible."

That was our only option. I refused to think otherwise. "We will."

We drove back to River's Edge and shared all we knew with Alden and a few of the pack members. There was so much to weed through, so much to dig deeper on. But the task that felt most important, most urgent, was finding Rigg.

If he was on the top of the list, they hadn't forgotten about him. And being remembered by the lab was the most dangerous position I could think of.