Page 60 of Broken Wolf Heart
“I’m sorry,” I tell her and mean it.
She looks back at the screen. “Now, the shutdown command. You’ll need your thumbprint. It won’t take mine. Not for this.”
I step to the center console. My thumb unlocks some kind of access panel with several options. One of them is labeled Emergency Shutdown.
I take a deep breath and press the button.
Around us, the hum of machines begins to die. Then, the lights go too, along with the holographic image of the DNA flickering out like a bad dream.
But even in the dark stillness, the nightmare doesn’t end. It lingers. Burrows deep.
I thought shutting this place down would give me peace. Or clarity.
All I feel is the weight of what we didn’t find… and the creeping sense that we’re already too late.
12
GREY
The warehouse feels colder than usual, the air metallic and sharp with an edge that creeps beneath my skin. Maybe it’s just Lexi’s absence that has me so tense. I don’t want to be away from her, especially this soon after sealing our mate bond, but Andy needed her at the house for pack business, and none of us wants to wait on combing through these files. Not after the way Severin acted about them earlier. Or the way Lexi reacted to learning there’s no cure for her gene activation.
Besides, between Razor, Mia, and Andy, along with the two dozen armed guards roaming the place, Lexi’s safe where she is.
So, even though I believe Davina—Franco wouldn’t have wanted a cure for something that he saw as the ultimate transformation, so I’m not surprised he would have essentially prevented one from being possible. I’m determined to find something helpful, not just for her but for me too. The strange glowing in my veins is getting worse. Not to mention the crazy bastard’s voice in my head, urging me to kill everything in sight.
The warehouse is the only secure place we’ve got. And not just for these files either. For me. Just in case.
The lights overhead cast grim shadows across the table cluttered with the research we printed out from the thumb drive on the way over. Page after page of Dr. Severin’s clinical notes and lab reports—words likeforced evolutionandgene activationstaring back at me.
Next to me, Dutch sits hunched, head bowed, as he flips through pages. Crow, usually calm and detached, radiates a restless energy where he sits at his computer, scanning the patient files that we didn’t bother to print yet. His fingers tap impatient rhythms against the metal table, eyes narrowed in laser-sharp concentration.
“What the hell,” Dutch mutters, frowning as he flips through a file for the third time.
“What is it?” I ask, tensing.
“I found more gaps in the protocol data,” he says.
“Again?”
I set aside my own stack of files and peer over Dutch’s shoulder. This makes the fourth set of lab reports with missing protocol information.
“Look.” He holds up the pages to show me. “There are at least three sections missing from this batch alone. Someone deleted files.”
“And they aren’t on the thumb drive either,” Crow pipes up, fingers flying over the keyboard. “Whoever did this, they knew what they were doing to make sure I can’t recover them.”
“Protocol data on what, exactly?”
“Subject trials,” Dutch answers, mouth tightening.
“Lexi’s?” I ask, straightening.
Dutch shakes his head. “Not that I’ve seen yet. From the looks of it, these are his earlier experiments, though. A couple of pregnancies. From twenty years ago. Someone named Sofia and—hey!”
Crow grabs the binder out of Dutch’s hands.
“What the fuck,” Dutch says.
“Switch me.” Crow shoves the computer at him.
