If Bishop did his job right, no one was leaving this place the way they’d come in.
That left four of us together, and the deeper we went, the more I felt the weight of what we were about to do.
Not fear exactly.
Responsibility.
We passed one of the lab doors and behind it I heard voices. A man’s laugh, too relaxed. A woman explaining something in a clipped tone. The sound of paper being shuffled. Someone’s shoes scuffing against the floor.
People working.
People who went home at some point.
People who knew the truth and still chose to do what they did here.
Nox stopped at the next junction and held up two fingers, signaling that there were a pair of guards ahead. He didn’t speak, just angled his head slightly.
Elias met my eyes.
We slipped through an alternate corridor, ducking behind a pipe housing as the guards passed by the other end.
“Ashcroft wants the figures by morning.”
“…he’s here tonight, right?”
“Yeah. Dr. Voss is presenting her work this evening.”
The sound of voices faded after that.
Nox’s gaze flicked to me, a silent question in his eyes.
I nodded once.
We reached a steel door tucked behind a bank of gauges. The lock looked newer than the surrounding metal, which meant someone had upgraded it recently.
Nox crouched, worked the lock by feel, and it gave with asoft click. The door swung inward, releasing a wave of warmer air that smelled of animal musk and dried blood.
Griff’s shoulders tensed behind me. Elias’s posture went rigid.
I stepped inside first.
The room was long and low-ceilinged, lit by lanterns mounted at regular intervals. Steel cages lined both walls. Too many to count at first glance. Wolves pressed against them, pacing, snarling, and slamming their bodies into the metal with a violence that made the whole space shudder.
They were all feral.
Not the chaotic kind you ran into in the wild, scavenging and starving. These were fed. Maintained. Kept here for science and whatever other plans they had for them.
I swallowed hard.
I’d seen ferals before. I’d killed them. But seeing them here like this made my stomach turn. One of the wolves lunged at the bars as I passed, jaws snapping, froth on its lips. I didn’t flinch, but my hands tightened into fists at my sides.
Griff moved ahead, scanning. “There,” he indicated.
At the far end of the room was a glass panel and another door. A crank mechanism sat beside it, bolted into the wall, with a metal plate above it that read Containment Release—Manual Override.
My pulse kicked into overdrive.
Elias tested the door. It was unlocked. Apparently, they didn’t expect anyone who wasn’t authorized to make it this far.
