“Yes, you are,” Saxon says, baring his fangs at her. They all scream and cower in terror.
“How many prisoners are in the restricted wing?” Zeydan asks the three who are sobbing uncontrollably and mostly useless.
“We don’t have a restricted wing,” the guy answers, snot dripping down his face.
Zeydan scoffs at his answer, unable to hide the disgust in his eyes. “You are all pathetic,” he growls, and I smell that one of them wet their pants.
I mean, he isn’t wrong. We haven’t even done anything yet.
Bitchy McBitch face smirks. “Doesn’t matter, they’ll all be dead by now. The first thing I did when the power was cut was hit the kill switch.”
I lift my gun and fire, hitting her between the eyes. She blinks in shock, but it must be a reflex, because she’s dead before she even hits the ground, her brain splattered on the wall behind her.
“So, um, understandable,” Xavier says, nodding at her dead body, “but we could have used the information.”
“What does it matter if they are all dead?” I say flatly, turning my back on the others and walking out. I’m numb and furious at the same time, and the urge to paint the walls red with the remaining guards’ blood is riding me. My alternate forms were mostly silent during the raid, not wanting to distract me, but now they are baying for blood.
“What do we do with these three?” Ghosie asks, and I hear Brannock reply.
“Kill them or don’t, it doesn’t matter, but if my daughter is dead like that bitch just said, then I will come back and slaughter anyone who remains.” His fury burns in the air as hot as mine.
I hear the others mumbling as they decide what to do with the three in the room, but I’m not stopping. I walk down the corridor to the door. I feel Brannock at my heels, but we don’t talk, because there is nothing left to say.
“I thought you said the kill switch couldn’t be activated without power?” Tirrian asks, and the others catch up.
“It shouldn’t have been. In the event of a power failure, that area hermetically seals. They are trying to create bioweapons from some of the aliens as well, so it’s a fail-safe so nothing escapes into the base or worse, gets out into the atmosphere.”
“Bioweapons?” Saxon growls.
“Yes, the guards are a chatty group, and I overheard two of them talking about it during the raid on the Pleasure Inn. They were hoping to round up some new and interesting creatures to experiment on.”
“Fuck, they all need to die,” Xavier growls. “Can we agree all of them need to die, Lila?” I can hear how exasperated he is with my human sensibilities. Xavier is the one who has always been impatient with that part of me, but he has nothing to worryabout now. I’ve gone all psycho Cheryl on them, and shoot to kill is now my motto.
I raise both guns as the noise increases, and we find a dozen guards milling around the restricted door. They seemed to have calmed down somewhat and are arguing about how they are going to get through to make sure all the experiments are contained.
I don’t even wait for them to notice us before I start firing my weapons, one in each hand like a gunslinger from the O.K. Corral. Three are dead before the others even realize what’s happening. Xavier could freeze them, and it would be like shooting fish in a barrel, but that isn’t any fun. The five of them stream past me with Ghosie once again staying with me to protect my back from anyone we may have missed.
“Watch out for those bullets,” he reminds the others, but it’s unnecessary, since none of them can get their weapons up before they hit the ground in bloody, dead messes. Brannock is a ruthless killing machine, and the other four aren’t slouches in that department either. I think it takes less than ten minutes, and the guards are all dead. None of them surrendered, so we didn’t spare any of them.
I watch, detached, as they are dragged into a pile off to the side. We don’t want any children who are behind the door to see them and get frightened.
“We need to hurry. We cut off the power, and the HVAC system isn’t working out here, so it means air is not circulating, and with that area being sealed, they are all going to run out of oxygen very quickly.” Brannock stares at the sealed door like he can melt it with his mind.
“How about we go back and turn the generators on? We need to power up the transport room anyway,” Tirrian suggests.
“Let’s wait until we clear that area of personnel. There are probably scientists and guards in there too, right?” Saxon suggests.
“I’m not sure if they go home in the evenings or if they live in, so yes, we should probably wait and clear that area before we turn the power back on,” Brannock agrees and steps back so Ghosie can do his thing. This time, the three of us can’t squeeze through the cracks because it’s sealed—Xavier tried.
Instead, I strip off my armor and change into my carevasta bear form. I don’t want to destroy it, and my chunky bear body is not going to fit into it.
Ghosie grins at me as he looks me up and down, and I wink at him. We don’t have time for fun, but he has gotten to know the quirks of this form quite often over the last week. Stress relief with my PA for the win.
“We’ll take Xavier and Zeydan through first, and the two of them will use their magic to protect anyone else coming through,” I tell the others, who don’t like that I’m going to be in danger, but there isn’t much they can do about it, so they keep their objections to themselves, which I appreciate.
Stress relief wasn’t the only thing Ghosie and I spent time doing during the week. We also practiced phasing in case I needed to do it on the mission. It’s the freakiest fucking feeling in the world, and I killed a few inanimate objects before I got the hang of it and attempted it with a live creature. I started with a chicken, just in case, and when I proved I could take a chicken through walls, then Tirrian bravely volunteered to be my guinea pig. Well, I say bravely but he extracted a bargain from me before he agreed. After this is done, we have to spend a week shopping for things for my dragon vault. I know, right? How dare he expect me to spend money in exchange for his help!
I wrap my arms around Zeydan while Ghosie does the same to Xavier, and we step through the door. Zeydan squeezes hiseyes shut, and I hear him growling low in his chest, his tails pinned tightly against his body as we move through the door. I look around the other side for danger before releasing my phase. If they were to shoot at us while we were phasing, the bullets would pass harmlessly through us, but the minute we stop phasing, we are in the line of fire again.
