“Didn't want anyone talking, employees as well,” Blade said.
So far, they had counted five dead people—men and women, older and younger, a range of ethnicities—inside the glass cages. The scientists had obviously been rounded up into a single room, likely believing they would be escorted out because there were no signs of a struggle. Instead, the guards must have killed all twelve of them because their bodies lay in a pile.
The guards were likewise dead. Six of them were killed with bullets to the back of the head, like one person had been tasked with making sure nobody walked out of this building alive should it be discovered.
“This one is the only one with a wound to his temple,” Steel noted as they all joined Lion and Thunder by what appeared to be an examination room.
“Probably killed his colleague then himself,” Thunder said. “Probably the one in charge. Had been given his orders in advance and followed them to the letter.”
There were no disagreements from any of them because that was likely exactly what had happened. The scientists didn't appear to have known their fate in advance, maybe the other guards hadn't either, but regardless, this entire op had turned out to be a waste.
Of course, they’d search for intel, maybe find something to bring home to Whitney, who might be able to figure something out based on the vials and formulas covering the walls and stacked in the fridge of one of the rooms they’d been in earlier. But in the end, that wasn't what they wanted.
Wasn't whatanyof them wanted.
They all wanted Dr. Gardner to suffer and die for everything he’d put them all through. The man’s little sister Rose, who they’d originally abducted in an attempt to lure Dr. Gardner into a trap, but who had shown them all she was stronger than they’d realized. They’d learned she had been abused her entire childhood by her brother, and she had quickly joined their side and was now dating Steel. Cassandra Charleston, sister of another Prey Security team had won over Dragon from the moment she came to stay with them while her family was in danger. She’d left when she realized they had plans to go after an innocent, but after being dragged unwittingly into the mess by Whitney Daley, she’d found her way back to Dragon, and the two of them were together. Whitney was now with Blade, and they knew that while she had been the one to initially create the original version of the drug, she’d only been ten when she’d been bought by the scientist and kept as his slave for the last twelve years.
Then there were him and his team. Lied to about the program they signed up for, never warned about the side effects, kept prisoner for three years, and experimented on over and over again. Then forced to live the last seven years of their lives in hiding from a man whose name they didn't even know at the time.
Yeah, they all had reason enough to want Dr. Gardner dead and finding one of his labs but not having anyone alive to tell them anything that could lead them to him sucked majorly.
“Maybe we should fly Whitney out here,” Steel suggested, and Blade immediately bristled.
“She’s been through enough. I don’t want her out here, seeing all of this. Bad enough we have to send her photos of people with bullet holes in their heads to see if she can ID them. I don’t want her here in person.”
“Would be easier than?—”
“Wait,” Dragon hissed, cutting Thunder off, his nostrils flaring like he’d just caught a scent.
The tension in the room ratcheted up several notches.
When Dragon’s gaze began to roam the room they were standing outside of, everyone aimed their weapons at it, catching on that what he’d scented was another person, and they were close.
There was only one place in the room where Voodoo thought anyone might be hiding, and that was the supply cabinet on the other side of the room.
Taking a step toward it, he knew his team would have his back, whoever was in there wasn't getting away. As he moved across the linoleum floor on feet that had long ago learned to step without making a sound, Voodoo noted a few smears of blood on the floor, and as he reached the cabinet, he saw there were smears of blood on it too.
Knowing the others would react instantaneously if the person Dragon had scented turned out to be a threat, he reached out and turned the handle of the cabinet door.
As soon as he did, the door swung open, and a small body tumbled out.
Immediately, he knew it was no threat. It was a woman, long dark hair hung in matted chunks down a pale back, dressed only in a pair of white cotton panties and a simple white cotton bra. Bloody gashes in various stages of healing crisscrossed her legs and lower abdomen, and her leg …
“Damn,” he muttered as he quickly dropped to his knees.
“Voodoo?” Steel asked.
“Not a threat, she’s … one of us,” he said, somewhat in awe, because every single other person who had gone through the experimental drug trial didn't survive it, according to Dr. Gardner himself, so there was no need to doubt that intel was correct.
Yet here she was.
A beautiful woman, her heart beating, her lungs inhaling and exhaling, alive, and yet the cuts on her body and the broken leg told him that she had already been given the drugs. Some of the wounds looked several weeks old, so she hadn't just been injected within the last couple of days.
“One of us?” Steel asked, and he felt the others step up behind him as he carefully laid the woman out so he could better examine her.
“Not a guard, not a scientist, so she has to be one of us,” he replied as he glared at the shock collar around her neck, then nudged it out of the way so he could press his fingertips to the unconscious woman’s throat to check her pulse. It was thready, and her skin was hot to the touch. Didn't take any training to figure out why when he noted three of her wounds were enflamed and oozing pus.
Maybe she hadn't succumbed to the drug’s side effects, but without medical treatment, this woman would likely die from infected wounds.
