“What is it?” I whispered.
“Direworg,” Talon said, poking at its corpse.
“That thing looks mangled. How the hell did it get in here?” Ryker asked as he scanned the area, head on a swivel.
“Wounds look like a wraith killed it. Whatever it was, it ate most of the meat,” Talon murmured.
Cade stepped closer. “Let’s hope it's not still in here. I don’t know why this direworg is inside, but the base might not be secure. We need to check the northern exits to see if Zolkos andhis team busted through those too. If they are as unsecured as the front, this place could be crawling with creatures.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded schematic.
“Here,” Cade said, unfolding the map of the base and pointing to a location. “The science department is this way. The northern exit is here, inside the vehicle hangar. We'll check it on the way to see if it's secure.”
He tucked the map back into his pocket and nodded once.
“Let’s move.”
We trailed through the halls, passing a decaying cafeteria caked in dust and a fitness center that still had equipment, all of it outdated and rusting. The base felt eerie, like a snapshot in time preserved by a curse so dark it froze everything in place.
Nothing had been removed before Arca entombed the facility. No furniture, no files, no equipment. Everything sat exactly where it had been left the day the base shut down. That meant they must have decommissioned it in a rush, sealing the entire facility before anyone could clear it out. I supposed Command expected nothing inside these walls to see the light of day again.
We moved down another corridor, but this one stank of char and old smoke, thick and lingering even decades later. The walls along the hall looked blackened, blistered, and streaked with soot, as if a fire had burned so hot, paint melted straight off the concrete. At the far end of the charred hall hung a pair of warped metal doors, and above them, a sign so smoke-stained it was barely legible.
“Wait—look!” I said, pointing. “What wing is that?”
Cade stepped forward, brushing ash from the sign with his glove until faint letters appeared.
“Medical wing,” he called back. His voice echoed eerily through the scorched hall. “This is where the fire took place.”
“What fire?” I asked, following him despite the instinct screaming at me not to.
Cade’s jaw worked as he spoke. “Before the Whistleblower Files leaked, this wing went up in flames. News outlets reported multiple casualties. It was part of the reason Arca decommissioned this base. My father was supposed to be on base that day, but something came up and he ended up just missing the accident. Shame.”
A chill crawled down my spine.
“How did the fire start?” I whispered, staring at the doors warped from heat.
Cade put a hand on my shoulder and guided me away from them. “It was before my time, so no way of knowing for sure. News outlets said there was a gas leak.”
“But…?” I pressed.
He gave a humorless huff. “There’s what the news says, and then there’s the truth. They rarely match where Arca is involved.” His eyes flickered back toward the scorched doors. “And something tells me that whatever happened in that wing wasn’t an accident.”
As we neared the vehicle hangar that housed the northern exit, a thin beam of light spilled through an open doorway into the hall. The base had no windows, which meant only one thing.
The exit to the outside was open.
To the other side of the wall. To the chaos and depravity of the Northern Borderlands.
“Fuck,” Cade muttered as he stepped into the hangar.
The reinforced metal garage doors stood wide open. Beyond them stretched an overgrown access road, cracked and neglected, winding straight into dense evergreen forest. The base was completely unsecured.
“Well,” Ryker said dryly, “now we know why Zolkos needed five armed alphas to retrieve his precious files.”
“Yeah,” I said, unease creeping up my spine, “but why would they open this entrance? Anything could get in. Or already be in here.”
Talon moved closer to the doors, eyes scanning the hinges, while Ryker shifted position, gun trained on the treeline, ready for movement.
