“Begin Phase 3,” he says to someone off-screen. “The child’s blood must be purged.”
“No—” I stagger back, grabbing the edge of the cot for balance.
Kallus punches the screen. It shatters with a hiss of sparks.
“She’s still here,” I say, gasping. “I can feel her. She’s in the compound somewhere.”
“Then we hunt,” he says, voice feral.
“We tear this place apart.”
CHAPTER 25
KALLUS
Fire and fury guide my hands.
We split into two squads, Reapers slicing through the sterile hallways like black blades in a white void. I move beside Ayla, her eyes twin eclipses of wrath. She’s no longer my precious mate who needed protecting—she’s a predator in her own right.
We breach the lab wing by wing.
"Clear right!" someone shouts.
“Forward!” Ayla roars.
The blast doors yield to our hacked protocols—stolen codes burned into my ship’s core. We flood into another corridor, cold and stinking of copper and old chemicals. The lights above flicker red—emergency power. Somewhere deep in this hellhole, they're trying to flush evidence. Burn it. Hide it.
Not today.
A young guard scrambles backward, too green to hold his weapon steady. He drops it with a clatter.
“Please—please, I have a sister?—”
Ayla doesn’t hesitate.
The bolt lights up the hallway. The guard slumps, face frozen in disbelief.
“Coward,” she mutters.
The Black Fangs stare, but none question it. One even chuckles low in his throat.
“You sure she ain’t Reaper?” he asks me, nudging my arm.
I bare my teeth. “She’s mine.”
We descend deeper.
The air thickens. Lights dim further, replaced by bio-luminescent gel panels glowing sickly blue along the walls. We pass shattered vials, folders of genetic code strewn across the floor. Names. Serial numbers. Experiments.
Then... we smell it.
Burned protein. Reaper musk, faded by time and death.
We find the chamber.
Ten bodies, suspended in vats of fluid, torn open along their spines. Tubes still feed into the bones. Red eyes stare lifelessly through the haze.
Reaper corpses.
