Page 75 of Wolf Bane
Hell, I needed to find out exactly where we were.
I checked his vitals one more time and looked over to find Justin bent over one of the legal pads, frowning deeply as he wrote in frantic doctor-scrawl.Eliza had gone quiet, at least no longer shouting and whining.She was still moving, though, pressing against the metal door, scuffling inside.Looking for a way out.Guilt nibbled at my edges, but I couldn’t let it consume me.Not yet anyway.We had to survive first, we had to stop the Wolf Bane project before it got worse.
“I’m gonna see if I can find a phone or something.There’s no way they’re just cut off up here.”
Justin glanced up, looking slightly less scared but still not quite right.“Tyler said they had some sort of homemade Farraday thing rigged up.In the room where they first brought us, it was lined with wires.”He gestured vaguely, implying a grid shape.“They took me away from him after a little bit, but they did pat me down.A lot.”He winced.“Eliza said she had to make sure I wasn’t tagged.”
“Ah…” I glanced at the nearest desktop.“And these aren’t connected to anything outside?”
“Not as far as I can tell.They said it was all internal when she brought me over.Said I was just here to be their… their lab monkey,” he gritted out.“Because I’museless and a waste of brilliance.”
“Wow.”I breathed out.“What a bitch.”
Justin startled, choking on a laugh before just collapsing forward to bury his face in his hands, laugh-sobbing.“Oh my God, but is she wrong?I was normal once, you know.Like just a regular person.But now I’m a fucking mess of fucked up biology that’s not even my own, and my brain is just fuckingsoup,and?—”
“Justin.”I moved to crouch down in front of him, forcing him to be aware of me.“When we get out and get home, which wewill, I want you to talk to Gina Perrin.She might be able to help, okay?”
He pressed his lips into a thin line, biting back a petulantnobefore finally melting a little and nodding, eyes closed against the overwhelm.“Fine.Just.Let’s not die first and we’ll see.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Justin pushed away, resuming his notetaking, and I hurried back to the cubicle-office, tearing into the rest of the file cabinets and storage cupboards, looking for anything helpful.“These people have a real hard-on for blood work,” I announced, finding yet another drawer full of phlebotomy supplies.“Christ.”
“That’s because they’re using blood products to make their serums,” Justin called back.“Everything so far indicates the original serums were made using Garrow and a few other donors’ blood, and then they started farming it off of y’all.There’s something though…”
He was quiet for long enough to make me stick my head out of the office again.
“I don’t know what some of these things are.It’s definitely nothing we covered in med school and nothing I’ve come across in research.But it’s definitely not a naturally occurring compound.Not in humans anyway,” he added with a small, wry huff.
Eliza kicked the metal door.“No,” I said.“You had your chance.”
“I can tell you how to call out,” she offered, sounding as if she had her face pressed close to the door.“We’re not some island here.We’re not cut off.”
Justin and I exchanged long, suspicious looks.“No,” I finally said.“No.You don’t get to make nice now.”
She laughed, broken and wild.“You think he’ll let you live?You think he was ever going to let you live?I would’ve, Doctor Babin.I would’ve made sure you didn’t end up like the others.I don’t have the stomach for this like Daniel or Garrow.I know it’s necessary but…” She trailed off on a hiccough.
“It’s not,” I said, moving closer to the door.A heavy table stacked with equipment stood between us—even if Eliza had a sudden burst of strength, she wasn’t getting out on her own.It made me feel marginally safer but still wary, knowing someone so cavalier about death, aboutcausingdeath, was just a few feet away.“Killing off the ones who don’t fit your paradigm doesn’t strengthen the rest of the group.”
“Remove the weak and the strong will prosper,” she whispered loudly, then banged her hand on the door so hard it made my ears ring.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, backing away.Eliza was quiet again, save for the rasp of her breath in the cupboard.“Are you okay, Justin?”I asked quietly.
Justin stared at the door for a long few moments then visibly shook himself.“Not even a little.”
* * *
Tyler returned a short while later,shouting out for us to open the door as he approached.“We’re definitely not alone,” he said, pointing to the bag.“There are two wings off this central one.This is the only part that looks like a clinic or hospital.The other two wings are a residence of some kind.Maybe an old dorm or something, some shitty SRO apartments but real old.”He held out a crumpled wad of paper.“Here.There’s this.”
It was a six-month-old newspaper, one of those thin small-town ones that’s mostly snippets about the local high school football team or classified ads selling hay and fill dirt.“Bitter Root Texas Metro Chronicle,” I read aloud.“More Chronicle than Metro, it looks like.”
“Suburb—using the term loosely—of Fort Worth,” Tyler said.“Dad brought us here a few times when we were real little.”He looked around the lab, searching with his gaze for something he didn’t find.“Not here.I don’t think… not here.Somewhere in the town, though.I was… God, four?Five?”He frowned.“I remember Bitter Root’s clan.It was real small; distant cousins on my mom’s side.”
He shook himself, too dog-like for my liking, and turned his attention outward again.“There’re weres in the east wing of the complex.Looks like a living set up.One room’s done up like a barracks for at least six people.The south wing is empty but looks like it was offices most recently.Maybe classrooms or something.Lots of trashed whiteboards and those overhead projector things.”
“Eyes on any others?”
Tyler shook his head.“I could smell them, though.Recent.They either left just ahead of me, or they’ve been there so long the stink is heavy.And good news is, the way to an exit is clear.Main doors are too out in the open, but I found an old emergency exit on the south wing.Leads out to a parking area with no cars.”
