I watch her go.
The wards scream. I feel it in my bones, in my teeth, in the crescent mark on my chest. The building shudders around us. Whatever is hitting the wards is hitting them hard, and it isn't stopping.
The building groans around us. Something cracks in the ceiling above the stairwell.
Then it stops. The silence that follows is worse.
Maximus and I reach the medical wing door. I open it.
Carson is behind the reinforced entrance with Sullivan and Elena. The prototype is running, processing the first batch of contaminated blood. Carson's hands are steady on the machine. Elena has positioned herself between him and the door. Sullivan is standing at Carson's shoulder, silver hair disheveled.
"It's clear," I say. "Twelve came in. None of them are leaving."
Carson doesn't stop working. "Did they know what was in this room?"
"They were heading straight for you."
He absorbs that. His hands stay on the machine.
"Then we'd better make it worth protecting," he says.
Julian's voice through the earpiece. "All clear. Marcellus has the last two."
"Casualties?" I ask.
Julian pauses again. This one longer.
"Cole from the security rotation. Dead. Grant is down, Elena needs to see him. Two kitchen staff caught in the corridor. David didn't make it. Rita is in the safe room with a broken arm."
Cole. Night shift at the south entrance. Buzz cut. Never talked much. Nodded at me every time I walked past and I never learned his last name. He had a Braves cap he wore off shift. I saw it on the hook by the south entrance every night when I came through.
David. Made coffee for the human rotation. Left a mug on the counter every morning for whoever came in first. He used the blue one with the chipped handle. The one nobody else wanted.
You didn't learn his last name either.
"Elena," I say. "Grant needs you."
She looks at Carson. Looks at the prototype running its cycle.
"Go," Carson says without looking up. "I can run this."
She goes.
Maximus presses a hand to his earpiece. His expression shifts.
"Feral," he says. "Parking garage off North Decatur. Erik's wolves are responding."
One feral. Placed in a public space while every asset we had was inside these walls. Designed to be seen.
Ethan's voice through the earpiece, tight. "Footage is uploading. Someone in the garage got three seconds of video. I'm watching it spread."
Three seconds of footage. Shaky hands, bad light, and something that used to be human moving across a parking garage in a way that makes your brain refuse to process what your eyes are sending it.
"Wolves have the feral down," Ethan says. "But the video's already on three local stations."
"Kill it," I say.
"Working on it. Our media contact is running the hoax angle. Viral marketing. Film production. She says she can get two of the three stations to pull it by morning."
