A twitch.
Uh huh! Brrr! It looks horrifying. I get chills myself when the alpha rises and sits up on the metal platform. He radiates cold, the refrigerator had to lower his temperature significantly to stop the decay.
I step back and control him from a distance, guiding him down from the tray until he stands beside Hanson’s omega.
Only then do I notice his head tilting slightly to the side. I circle around and find a thick, crude seam at the back of his neck.
Looks like something nearly ripped his head off. Maybe a motorcycle accident?
The mortician did a good job. From the front he looks fine, except for the crooked head, but I won’t complain.
I go to the heavy alpha.
He rises too, his head staying straight, so maybe my guess was right. Heart failure? A burst appendix?
Doesn’t matter. He’ll be useful too. I place the thicker alpha by the door, then the omega. Do I have enough strength to control the beta?
I do, apparently.
With a little effort I raise him to his feet.
He’s tall but frail, even under the heavy makeup he looks terrible. I won’t even try guessing what he died of, probably something long and wasting.
Still, he’ll be useful too.
Am I a bad person for doing this, using bodies of these poor people? Definitely. But I want to live, and they are already on the other side, so…
With all four of them beautifully lined up by the door, I stare at them in disbelief for a moment.
One question is rising. What the hell is happening, who am I?
Some kind of fucking necromancer?
The absurdity of this whole situation becomes so overwhelming that at some point I simply give in and accept it exactly as it is.
The omega opens the door on my command and steps into the hallway.
We stand in a long corridor lined with doors whose purpose I can’t even guess.
What’s funny is that somehow I know where Bay is. I never had that, or never thought about it, even though Bay seemed to use it.
I have no idea how that’s suddenly possible for me now, but something simply pulls me in his direction. Maybe our week of living together strengthened the Bond between us, making me start sensing it the way Bay clearly did all along. Perhaps my allergy dulled it before, but I don’t have it anymore, so… I feel him with no obstacles?
I go straight at first, then turn with my charming little brigade marching ahead of me like some kind of escort.
That’s when I hear voices, and my pulse jumps. For fuck’s sake, what now…
There’s no way I’m slipping by unnoticed. Obviously.
Two men appear around the corner, an alpha and a beta I’ve never seen before. Maybe they’re Hansons; they have the heavy features, the thick brow ridges, the broad nasal bridge between the eyes and the square jaws that most Hansons share in different variations. I remember kids in high school jokingly calling them Neanderthals.
They freeze at the sight of the strange gray company heading toward them.
In a burst of desperation I force the two dead alphas walking in front of me to jump the newcomers and hold them down.
The men scream and struggle, their shouts louder than I’d like, and I know I need to do this fast. I grab the first one by the arm he’s trying to use to fend them off.
A moment later he joins the rest of the pack.
