Silas took another step into the lab, the neural suppressor humming softly in his hand. The blue light from its emitter painted his face in cold, clinical tones.
"You shouldn't have pried, Lydia." His voice held a note of genuine regret that was more terrifying than any threat. "The files were not for you. They were for the successor who will take over my work when I'm gone."
I backed away until the edge of the steel table pressed into my spine. There was nowhere to run. The only exit was behind him.
"Damien called you off," I said, forcing my voice steady. "He said you don't touch me."
"Damien is clinging to a morality that will get him killed. I am not." He adjusted a dial on the device. "He sees you as a person. I see you as the only viable vector for Project Chimera. My life's work. Without you, it fails. And I cannot allow that."
"Why?" I stalled, my eyes darting around the lab for anything I could use as a weapon. A shattered beaker, a scalpel. "Why is this so important to you? He's just your employer."
A strange, pained smile touched his lips. "Just my employer? No, my dear. He is my son."
The world stopped.
The air left my lungs. Son.
The pieces crashed together with dizzying force. The fanatical devotion. The willingness to cross every ethical line. The proprietary fury when Damien pulled me from his grasp. Not professional pride. Paternal desperation.
"His… his father is—"
"August Blackwood, the late Alpha. A brute and a fool." Silas's gaze grew distant. "His mother, Elara, was my sister. She was the pack's head of science. August wanted an heir with her intellect. He got one. And when she tried to leave him, to take Damien away from the violence, he had her killed. Made it look like an accident."
He took another step closer. I was now within the suppressor's effective range.
"I swore I would protect her boy. I have, for twenty years. I engineered the corporate empire that made him untouchable. I developed the suppressants that have kept the curse at bay. And now, I will perfect the cure. Even if it requires a… sacrificial component." His eyes focused on me, sharp and resolved. "Your physiology is unique. You can host the refined parasite strain without immediate rejection. In three weeks, it would synthesize the antigen in your bloodstream. We'd harvest it. You might even survive."
"Might?"
"There is a 67% chance of systemic organ failure." He said it like reading a weather report. "But it is the only path with a greater than 5% success rate for him. The math is clear."
The cold logic of it was horrifying. To him, I was a disposable petri dish. My potential death was an acceptable variable in an equation to save his nephew.
"He would never allow it," I whispered.
"He won't have a choice. Once you are inoculated, the process is irreversible. He will have to let it run its course, or watch you die in agony from an aborted cycle." His finger hovered over the trigger. "This will just make you compliant for the procedure. You'll feel no pain."
I did the only thing I could think of. I lunged, not at him, but sideways, sweeping my arm across the table. Glassware and instruments clattered to the floor in a deafening crash.
Silas flinched, his aim wavering for a split second.
It was enough.
I didn't go for the door. He'd expect that. Instead, I dove behind a large, wheeled cryo-storage unit, putting its bulk between us.
"Foolish," he sighed. The hum of the suppressor grew louder as he advanced.
My hand closed around a fallen object on the floor not a scalpel, but a long, sturdy metal calibration rod. Useless against a neural weapon, but…
My eyes shot to the wall across the lab. The main power conduit for the containment grid, labeled with a lightning bolt symbol. An idea, desperate and insane, formed.
"He'll hate you for this!" I shouted from behind the unit, buying time. "You'll be the monster he thinks he is!"
"I have always been the monster in the shadows," Silas replied, his voice closer now. "It is a role I embraced long ago. For him."
I took a deep breath, gripped the metal rod, and sprang out from my cover, not toward Silas, but sprinting at a right angle toward the far wall.
"Stop!" he yelled.
I didn't. I reached the power conduit and, with all my strength, drove the metal rod into the access panel.
A spectacular explosion of sparks erupted. Blue-white electricity arced up the rod, jolting my arms, but I held on, shoving it deeper.
The overhead lights flickered, died, and then the emergency red batons flared to life, casting the lab in a hellish, pulsing glow.
More importantly, the high-pitched whine of the containment grid died. The magnetic locks on the specimen freezers disengaged with a series of heavy thunks.
Silas understood too late. "No! Don't!"
I yanked the rod free and smashed the glass front of the nearest freezer. Inside, nestled in cushioned slots, were rows of vials. Some glowed. Some swirled with dark mist. All were labeled with biohazard sigils.
I grabbed a handful, not knowing what they were, only knowing they were dangerous.
I turned to face Silas. He stood frozen, the suppressor aimed, but his eyes were wide with terror at the vials in my hand.
"You know what these are," I said, my voice shaking with adrenaline. "Let me walk out of here. Or I start breaking them. We'll see what a 67% chance of survival feels like for you."
A standoff in the bloody light.
He calculated, his eyes darting from my face to the fragile glass in my grip. One drop of some of these airborne pathogens could mean a death no science could reverse.
"You wouldn't," he breathed.
"You turned me into an incubator in your mind," I said. "Now watch me hatch."
I raised one vial, poised to throw it at the floor between us.
His shoulders slumped. The hum of the neural suppressor died as he lowered it. "Go."
I didn't trust him. I backed toward the door, keeping the vials held high, ready.
"He's dying, Lydia," Silas said softly as I reached the threshold. "And you just destroyed his best chance. When the change finally takes him, it won't be a man who loses control. It will be a beast with his intelligence, his memories, and his pain. And it will burn this world down. Remember that you chose this."
I fled into the dark hallway.
I didn't go to my room. I went straight to Damien's door and hammered on it.
It swung open instantly. He stood there, alert, as if he hadn't been sleeping. He took in my disheveled state, the emergency lighting, the vials still clutched in my hand. His gaze hardened.
"Silas," he said. It wasn't a question.
"He was going to use me as a host for the cure. He said you're his nephew. He said you have months." The words tumbled out in a frantic rush. "I crashed the power to the containment grid. I threatened him with the samples. He let me go."
Damien's expression didn't change, but a storm gathered in his grey eyes. He looked past me, down the hall toward the lab.
"Give me those." He carefully took the vials from my trembling hands and placed them on a side table. "Stay here. Lock the door behind me."
"Damien, wait—"
But he was already moving, a shadow streaking down the hallway with lethal silence.
I did as he said, locking the door, my heart pounding against my ribs. Minutes stretched, taut and silent. Then, a single, sharp cry echoed down the hall. It was cut off abruptly.
More silence.
Finally, footsteps returned. The lock disengaged with a beep, and Damien re-entered. Alone. There was a new, thin cut on his knuckles.
"Silas?" I whispered.
"Contained. He won't trouble you again." His voice was devoid of emotion. He walked to the window, looking out at the sleeping city. "He told you the truth. About my mother. About my time. About his plan for you."
"Yes."
"And you still came to warn me. You still ran to my door."
I had no answer. My actions were a contradiction even to me.
He turned from the window, his face etched with a profound exhaustion that went beyond the physical. "The code I gave you. 0913. It wasn't just the day of the attack."
He walked to a sleek panel on his wall, pressed his palm to it. A hidden compartment slid open. Inside wasn't a weapon or data drive. It was a simple, faded photograph.
He handed it to me.
It showed a younger, softer-looking Damien, maybe eighteen, with his arm around a smiling woman with warm eyes and my exact shade of hair. Next to them stood a man with Silas's nose and a kind smile. A family portrait.
"It was my mother's birthday," Damien said, his voice rough. "The last one we celebrated before she was killed. Before my father's curse. Before everything."
He pointed to the woman, his mother. Then his finger moved to the necklace she wore, a delicate crescent-moon pendant.
"My mother's name was Elara. She was an Omega." His gaze lifted, piercing me. "She designed that pendant. It's a suppressor, like the one Martin used on you. She made two."
My breath hitched. A terrible, beautiful suspicion blossomed.
He reached into the compartment again and pulled out a small velvet box. He opened it.
Nestled inside was an identical crescent-moon pendant.
"She made one for herself," he said, his eyes holding a universe of pain and hope. "And one for the daughter she was forced to give up to save her life. For you, Lydia."