Chapter 34 Felix
Felix
My fingers flew across the laptop keyboard, camera feeds cascading across the screen. Kit and Rory moved through the corridors like shadows—Kit clutching his neck, Rory leading the way.
They were alive. Both of them.
The relief hit so hard I had to grip the desk to stay upright.
Time to go. I yanked the USB cable from the laptop, preparing to shut down the system, when the door burst open behind me.
A girl stumbled in, my age or younger, wild orange hair catching the light from my screen. She froze, eyes widening with shock.
“Who are you?” I said stupidly.
“Who are you?” she shot back, chin lifting in defiance.
Recognition clicked. The hair, the eyes, that stubborn tilt of jaw. “You’re Isla, right? Kit and Rory’s cousin? Are you here working with Moira?”
My hand crept towards my pocket, fingers searching for the taser. Sorry, Isla.
“Kit promised to help me!” she blurted out. “And so did Rory, in Scotland.”
My hand stopped moving.
Movement on the floor caught my eye. The young soldier stirred, a low moan escaping his lip.
Shit.
I lunged forward, jamming the taser against his ribs. The soldier’s body jerked violently, a strangled cry tearing from his throat as electricity coursed through him. His limbs spasmed against the concrete floor.
How long was too long? My finger hovered over the trigger, panic clawing at my chest. The soldier’s eyes rolled back, showing white, and I stepped back on shaking legs. He went limp, breathing shallow but steady.
Nausea roiled in my gut.
“You’ll kill him if you do that again,” Isla said quietly. “He’s one of the nice ones.”
“Nice ones?!” I snapped at her. “I don’t give a shit about any of these people.” It was a lie. I couldn’t bear the thought of actually killing him.
Isla flashed her lanyard, keys jangling. “There’s a room just down the corridor we can lock him in. Quick.”
Between us, we dragged the unconscious soldier down the hallway. Isla’s key card granted access to a room barely larger than a cupboard. We dumped him inside, Isla securing the lock with her pass.
Back in the control room, I asked, “So what exactly did Rory and Kit offer you? You said they said they’d ‘help’ you?”
“Help get me out of here. Out of this. Out of Greywatch.” Her voice thickened with desperation. “I… never wanted any of this.”
I studied her face, searching for deception. All I knew about her was what she’d done in Scotland. Horrible, horrible things. But my only other current option was to taser her, which I wasn’t particularly keen to do.
“You’ll struggle to get out of here without me,” she added quietly.
She might have had a point, but I wasn’t about to admit it. “We’ve done pretty well so far.”
Isla nodded, a ghost of a smile crossing her lips. “You have, but I know this place inside out.”
I considered this, watching the cameras flicker on my screen. Kit and Rory had made it to a stairwell, but red lights were flashing throughout the facility now.
Very slowly, I nodded. “Okay. Let’s break out of here.” I paused. “Plus Rory wants to burn the place down, but I can take or leave that part, to be honest.”
Something shifted in her large green eyes. A spark—the look of someone who’d been pushed too far for too long. “I’d love nothing more.”
We shared a quick smile, conspirators in the half-light.
“Where’s Moira going?” I asked, pulling the laptop towards me. “She shouted lockdown orders.”
“Following protocol. She’ll be heading to the safe room. Lots of them will be.” Isla moved to the control station, fingers dancing over keys. “But that’s not our biggest problem.”
“What is?”
She pressed her lips together. “She’s let the wolves out.” Isla’s hands trembled as she pulled up a new feed—the holding cell corridor. Row after row of open doors. Every single cell empty.
I gasped. “Where are they?”
She brought up multiple camera angles across the facility. Dozens of feeds filled the screen, each showing the same nightmare—the captives travelling through corridors with mechanical movements. Not hunting. Not searching. Patrolling. Their movements were too organised, too coordinated.
“How many?” My voice came out as a whisper.
“Almost a hundred,” she breathed.
I switched to the feed showing Kit and Rory, still running through the facility, oblivious to what was converging on their location. The wolves were fanning out systematically, cutting off escape routes.
“Sounds like a fair fight,” I managed, my throat dry as dust. “Is she going to make them shift?”
“I don’t think so,” Isla said, shaking her head. “The control chips work best in human form. That’s the final kink to work out in her technology—making it equally effective when they’re wolves.”
I frowned, switching between camera feeds. The controlled wolves moved with horribly precise steps through the corridors. “Why doesn’t it work when they shift?”
“The neural pathways change during transformation. The chip can’t maintain the same level of control over a wolf brain—too much interference from primal instincts.
” Isla’s fingers flew over the controls, highlighting different sections of the facility.
“In human form, she can override their free will completely, in most cases at least. But as wolves, they retain fragments of themselves. Often large fragments.”
“Okay, well I’ll shut them down,” I said, already reaching for my laptop.
Isla shook her head. “Air-gapped. I don’t speak tech, but I know it’s a completely separate system to all this.”
I hummed at her, biting down on my lip. I was almost certain that I would be able to find a way.
Maybe if I had hours, maybe if I could trace a single data packet, but Kit and Rory were fighting for their lives right now.
I stared at the feeds as the controlled shifters took over the facility, coordinated like ants following invisible trails.
“The neural pathways change during transformation,” I repeated slowly, my mind racing. “So if we could force them to shift…”
My fingers hovered over the keyboard, pieces of a plan starting to form. The facility’s systems, the environmental controls, the very infrastructure Moira had built to contain these people…
“Well?” Isla prompted, watching my face. “What are you thinking?”
I looked at the feeds showing Kit and Rory, still unaware of what was closing in on them. Then back at the dozens of controlled wolves moving through the corridors.
“I’m thinking,” I said slowly, “that Moira’s about to discover why you should never give a hacker access to your entire facility.”