Page 21

After successfully dosing each of the omegas with my blood, and then pretending to inject them, when in reality I was pushing the needle into the mattress. They were completely unaware, and before I left, I could see some of the glossy glass eyes return. My blood was the cure, but I still didn’t know why.

These doors were unlocked with a single swipe of my arm. They might’ve had some technological advances, but at the root of it, they were using for evil. I’d managed to destroy the entritiy of the tech room. A similarly sized room to the doctor’s lab. There was an entire wall of screen and a motherboard, all exposed for my claws fingers to scrape up until nothing was salvagable.

It wasn’t even a stop I’d intended on making, but I did because I remembered that woman from the canteen who’d threatened Vasilis. I knew if she didn’t have access to her cameras, she was practically useless.

My next stop was the second bay, that’s where I’d killed the soldier. The blood was still on the floor. It looked like they’d tried to take a mop with water to it, but water seemed precious here, especially with the situation above ground.

Three soldiers, same formation, same ability to only smell the Alpha on me. They welcomed me in the room, and questioned if I’d heard anything about the doctors.

“Are they running behind schedule?” I asked.

“Since we’ve been on duty, we haven’t seen either of them,” one of them said. “They’re usually here when we change so we know about the ones who have been acting up.”

Another grumbled. “I prefer the sleeping ones,” he said. “We get to feed on them.”

“I thought that rule was removed,” I said. “Since the Apex arrived, we’re no longer feeding on them. The canteen has enough food options for us not to need these omegas as a resource.”

“Except to mate with,” the third chuckled with a big smirk.

I wanted to claw the smile from his lips, like one of those wax candies, I wanted to yank it from his face and to see the large enflamed redness it would leave behind. “Well, except, that’s actually only for our commander, Vasilis.”

They all looked at one another before back at me, the sudden shame in their faces, like I was here to reprimand them. And I should’ve done.

“I’m going to check on the omegas. If I see any fresh bites, I will be informing the Apex,” I threatened them, not a real threat, but to them it was. “So, if you want to confess now, please do.”

For a moment they were all quiet, and then one of them raised their hand. “It was the wrist,” he said, gesturing to one of the beds against the right wall. “I didn’t take much, just a taste.”

Raising my brows, shaking my head, and clicking my tongue, I had my parents signature style of disappointment on my face. “Well, for this, I’m going to ask you stand against the wall over there. All three of you.”

They followed my orders. I could see why people loved Alphas so much, they could command and get what they wanted with no pushback. I was jealous of it. This time it was different. I told them to turn and face the wall, not wanting to tempt them, I reasoned as the excuse.

These were a little more difficult because they were semi-conscious and moving. They weren’t in any visible pain or suffering from the Rotmor, which had sent them into hallucinogenic trances. I wondered how many of them believed they were seeing visions of the future, but it was all about to stop.

With only a couple drop of my blood, spared from my wrist, dropped from a fingertip into their open mouth, I hoped it was enough to counteract the poison. As I went around, the idea I’d once heard about holy water from the Vatican was in my mind. Any amount of blessed holy water dropped into in any body of water would immediately become blessed. It’s how I was viewing my blood, and hope I was right.

Once I was done, I tugged my sleeve down to cover the mark on my wrist. Tingling in pain from being sliced open. “Ok. If anyone comes, let them know they’ve been seen,” I said. I knew Doctor Payne was dead, and I now had to deal with the other doctor, wherever she might be.

“Please don’t tell the Apex,” they begged.

If my looks could kill, I might’ve added more bodies to that tally, but they’d listened to me, so they would be spared. “As long as you promise not to touch them,” I said. “And that goes for restraining them. If I come back and see even a single new bruise on them, I’ll have each of you hauled in front of the Apex.” I pretended to take a note of the numbers on the lapels, but in reality, I was running too high on adrenaline to even care if I ever saw them again.

From the second bay of omegas, I was going to try and find the first bay, wherever that was. As I walked, I spotted more soldiers. I knew I couldn’t get the map out and consult it in front of everyone, they would know for certain then I wasn’t supposed to be here.

As I walked, I found one of the rest room units. Most of the doors were undiscernable from the others. The bathrooms were different. I could tell them because they were a different color, and they offered a space to be without someone prying on me, even if the cameras were down, I couldn’t trust the snakes around me not to spy over my shoulder.

I could take a breath in here without thinking someone was going to barge in and see that I was faking it. I took the time to scan the map, seeing where I was from all the turns I’d taken and comparing it to where I had to get to. I also used the time to look at myself and while I had small trace amounts of blood rouging my skin, it wasn’t too noticable. I kept it, in case it was helping to keep me concealed against the soldiers.

Once the finaly bay of omegas were dosed with my blood, they would be useless to the Syndicate. I didn’t know how long it would take for them to figure out, and if they were quick, it could mean a permanent end to the people I’d come here to save.

A mechanical crunching and static sounded through a speaker system above, coming in from the corner of the rest room.

“ Hello, Syndicate, it’s Vasilis Vepres, your commander, ” his voice, sending a trill of excitement through me. “ All soldiers are required in the large hall. We will be conducting a headcount. And our leader, the Apex, will also have an announcment. Make sure you’re all here. You have ten minutes. Any soldier not here within that time will be considered working against the Syndicate. ” He was trying to get everyone away, but part of me wondered what his plan was. There was only so much I could feel from him, and it wasn’t very decisive.

From the bathroom, I headed in the direction of the firsty bay of omegas. I knew these were all in comatose states. I didn’t want to see them, I didn’t know if I could really stomach inspecting their bodies again. They’d been fill of sores and now what I knew to be bite marks.

As I entered the room. There were no soldiers, but there was Doctor Rathe in her lab coat, bck turned, but there was only one person alive I knew who would be wearing one. “All the soldiers have gone to the meeting,” she said before turning to see me. “Oh.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m doing the work of two now,” she said. “And I’m guessing you’re here to finish the job. Right?”

“You know it was me?”

She rolled her eyes back. “Who else was it going to be? All these soldiers are loyal. It was obvious you were going to go back there. Just a shame my research partner wasn’t better prepared.”

“You’re not scared of what I might do to you?”

“Listen, I’ve been playing with fire for a very long time,” she said. “Sometimes, you’re going to get a little burned, sometimes it’s the fingertips, othertimes it scars. I know you’re going to do what you’ve got to do.”

“I won’t kill you if you help me cut there machines, take them off those support systems, and wake them,” I said.

Doctor Rathe seemed to mull it oven, her tongue flip-flopping inside her tonuge from left to right and back again. “You see, I think the plan we had was great here, and I don’t want to let them all go,” she said. “The genetic research we’re conducting has been so vast. It could help the rest of the world.”

I stuck a hand into thfront of my trousers and pulled the ledger out. “I know,” I said “You’ve been doing this for years. You’ve been experiementing on omegas who need the money, who need shelter. You’ve been preying on them for so long that I want to—”

“Don’t kill me,” she said, raising both hands above her head as if to surrender. “I just don’t want this to all be for nothing. The world doesn’t know you all the way we should. With just a little bit of prodding, we might even be able to use the gifts you have to help us.”

“You want to use us. Like everyone does. And I’m not going to let you for research. There are more ethical ways to go about this,” I told her. “So, help me, and I won’t kill you.” I didn’t want to add another death to my conscious. The only one I was preparing for was a man I’d only see through Vasilis’s chest hair.

Doctor Rathe nodded. “I’ll help you, but I need to keep my research.”

“The research in the lab?”

She nodded. “Please. There’s already so much we’ve learned.”

“Fine, but I want your help first.” I agreed to it, but I for my own selfish reasons. I wanted to know wha she knew. I wanted to help people, and if she’d found some secret advantage to helping, I had to see it.

As we went around, I kept a careful eye on her, knowing she could turn and attack me at any moment.

“What’s special about your blood?” she asked as I led a droplet of it into an omega’s mouth and smeared my wrist to their lip.

“I don’t know.”

“I can help you with that.”

“I don’t need your help with that,” I told her. “All I need is to have the rest of these omegas conscious.”

“How are you—”

“You’re asking too many questions,” I snapped, my claws coming out like a response to her voice now shrill.

She nodded, but she wasn’t going to stop. “Is this what you were testing on the machine?” she asked. “I looked at the results for you. One of them was full of poison. I couldn’t place it at first. It wasn’t snake venom, that’s for sure.”

“Poison?”

“Like a berry, I think.”

With a chuckle, she pressed a finger to her lips. “I forgot, I was asking too many questions.”

“What berry?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? I don’t. All I know is that there wasn’t any of the same poison in the other.”

It made sense. One of them was from the drink. That had to be filled with poison. The second was Vasilis’s blood, and that was clean. I had more question about the berries, but she could’ve been making it all up just so she stayed alive.

The thing with humans was they didn’t have the same hierarchical respect levels as we did as omegas and Alphas. It meant Doctor Rathe wasn’t scared for any threat of me telling Drakon or anyone else, and she would probably be dead if she tried to ingest venom or diseased blood. In some ways, I wanted to keep her to experiment on her like she had with the omegas, but humans were messier, and more respected out there in the world. I’d end up imprisoned for several lifetimes just on her word alone.

“What’s your end goal?” she asked as we finished unhooking the last one from the machine.

“My goal is to get all of them home.”

She smirked. “You know, that’s impossible. Right?”

I took the book out again and ran my fingers across the leather binding of it. “I know. Some of them are dead. Some of them are elsewhere. But these here, these are alive, and they’re all going home. And if you stand in the way of that, our agreement goes out of the window.”

“I’m going to tell people I was taken hostage,” she said. “So, can I go now?”

“Don’t mention me,” I told her.

She scoffed. “I don’t even know who you are. But I’m taking my research, and I’m going. And—if possible, that ledger as well.”

That’s precisely where I drew the line. She wasn’t getting her hands on it. It was the only solid data source I had that listed each of the omegas by name and location. It was the single-handed most precious piece of information anyone in this compound could possess right now. “No,” I said, firm with it.

She shrugged. “It was worth a shot.” She walked off, out of the doors.

I didn’t know if I’d just made the worst decision ever in letting her go, and letting her not explain the results she’d found, but before I could run after her in regret, one of the omegas woke, gasping for air and screaming.