Chapter 22 #2
The man ran up with the pole, which had been one of Aisling’s requirements.
They could fit a syringe in it and extend it up to eight feet.
Usually used for safely injecting livestock at a distance, they knew they’d need it in case of a Prime.
They didn’t have time to try to convince people they were being rescued; they needed to get them out fast, meaning drugging anyone who was too dangerous to try to reason with or put hands on to Prime them to sleep.
The cell’s door had an access slot for food trays, which was latched.
They prepped a large syringe with a full load of ketamine, and Peyton motioned for the other Prime to be quiet and jump back after opening the latch.
Peyton readied himself and nodded, and when the hatch swung open, the man inside that cell immediately thrust his arm out, wildly trying to grab anyone.
Holding his breath, Peyton jabbed him hard and fast, getting the entire shot into him before he could withdraw his arm.
Peyton motioned for the other Prime to get him another syringe, and he loaded it so they could prepare to open the door.
Inside, the man’s voice almost immediately started slurring, fading, and Peyton breathed a sigh of relief that the plan was working. Still, he waited another minute before leaning down, well out of touching range, to peek inside the room through the slot.
The man was still conscious but on the floor on his hands and knees, his back to the cell door. Peyton knew he wasn’t faking it because he struggled too hard to fight the effects of the drug.
Working together, Peyton readied himself while the other Prime opened the door. Before the prisoner inside could turn, Peyton got the full jab into the man’s ass before jumping back, waiting.
The Prime went down, going limp. Peyton motioned for a smaller syringe and gave him yet another dose, because he suspected even this much was a questionable amount to effectively keep the large man unconscious.
They immediately cuffed and manacled him, blindfolded him, and only then did Peyton finally realize who he was.
“Holy fuck!”
“You know him?” the guy asked.
He nodded. “I’m positive it’s Callum.”
Peyton stepped into the corridor so two others could move inside and securely strap Callum to a backboard to transport him. Peyton followed and realized they hadn’t yet taken the woman upstairs who’d been in the cell across from him.
“Hold up,” Peyton called, jogging over.
He looked at her and grimly nodded. “That’s why he went batshit. That’s Bryn, his mate. Make sure you keep her next to him at all times. If he awakens mid-flight, make sure she’s awakened immediately, and that they know they’re together.”
“Let’s make sure he stays asleep,” one of the med techs said. “I damned sure don’t want to deal with that mid-flight at twenty-thousand feet.”
They’d brought three box trucks as part of their fleet, and that’s where they started loading the rescued hostages.
One of the Primes, who was helping transfer the rescued, returned laughing and found Peyton. “They’re all dead up top.”
“Who?”
“The guards!” He grinned. “They fragged each other just like you planned. It’s brilliant!”
“Please tell me we have eyes up top keeping watch.”
“Oh, fuck yeah,” the Prime said. “We got several. We’re still clear, and ahead of schedule.”
“Excellent.” Despite their apparent success, Peyton’s stomach felt like a painfully twisted iron knot as their team swept through the lab with no further resistance from the personnel.
He kept an eye on the time and joined up with Aisling, who was grimly supervising another euthanasia.
The person looked even worse than the first one Peyton saw.
Aisling looked up at Peyton after administering another shot of ketamine.
“Said his name was Malachi Benson, a fox from Germany.” She tipped her head toward another Prime, Bob, who looked like he was about to puke.
“The man couldn’t speak, but when Bob touched the man, he begged for death.
We got his family’s name and took a DNA sample. ”
“Fuck,” Peyton muttered. “How many does this make that we’ve lost?”
“Twelve,” she said. “And every single damned one of ’em who are this bad, or worse, and who still had enough of a mind left to communicate with us, begged us for death even though we tried to reason with them.”
“Goddammit.”
“I know.” She looked down at the man, who was no longer breathing, and reached out to touch Peyton’s arm, tipping her head toward the other Prime. “Send him up top. Now. Have him help stand watch and carry people to the trucks. He’s about to lose his mind.”
“Bob,” Peyton said, stepping over to the guy. “Go upstairs and help with transfers and securing the rescued in the vehicles. Stand watch. Okay?”
He gulped a deep breath. “I was assigned down here to—”
“I know,” Peyton said, trying to shove away the image that flashed into his mind of all those years ago, of discovering their parents’ bodies in their living room. “We need you up there, though. Okay?”
The guy swallowed hard, nodded and turned, practically running from the area.
“Thanks,” Aisling said aloud, pushing past Peyton. “Let’s see what other fresh hells await us.”
Aisling
Fuuuck me.
Had she thought she’d seen some shite in her life?
Hooo boy.
Things she’d previously categorized as “horrors” paled in comparison to what she discovered in that lab. She’d unrealistically hoped they’d be able to save all, if not most of the people.
It was the next woman who nearly cracked her grim reserve. Unlike the worst of them, she could still speak, although her body had been horribly mutilated. When Aisling and the tech opened her cell, she was sobbing and begging for them to kill her.
“Shh, we got ye,” Aisling tried to comfort her. “We’re here to rescue ye.”
“No,” she sobbed, and Aisling realized that, unlike most of them, this woman was securely strapped down. “Please kill me. They killed my mate and my children. Tortured us. Just kill me, please.”
That’s when Aisling spotted the long, ugly scars along both her lower arms and on her throat, where she’d obviously tried to kill herself by clawing at her flesh with her own nails.
“We’re here to get ye out of here,” Aisling calmly said as she tried to free her. “We’ll help ye.”
One of the Primes stepped into the cell with Aisling and touched the woman’s shoulder, his face going blank for a moment before he jerked his hand free and threw himself back, against the wall, horror filling his gaze.
He met Aisling’s gaze and shook his head, hard, his eyes still wide. Do it, he silently mouthed.
Fuck me.
She pulled out another syringe of ketamine, a large one, likely lethal for someone of the woman’s size. “What’s yer name, love?” Aisling gently asked. “Where ye from?”
“Alexia Monaghan. We were living in South Africa. Wolves. Please, just do it! I beg you!”
Aisling nodded. “I’m so sorry.” Aisling injected her in the neck. A moment later, she went limp and stopped breathing.
Aisling dropped the syringe and looked at the man. “Did you write down her name?”
He started to answer, licked his lips, then turned and boked all over the cell wall.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he’d seen, but obviously, despite the woman looking physically like she would have survived, whatever trauma she’d endured had been unspeakable.
“I’ve got it,” a tech grimly said from the doorway, noting the information and taking out a DNA test kit.
Aisling grabbed the Prime and steered him out of the cell. At this rate, they’d run out of Primes able to function before they completed the operation.
But…
They kept moving, kept working—several of their people boking at least once before getting back to work.
The horrors blended together even as they rescued more people.
They were twenty minutes ahead of schedule when Aisling stopped at the base of the stairwell after locking the elevator down at the bottom of the shaft and setting a charge inside it.
Her final charge would go at the top of the stairs, which had been lined with them by the retreating demolitions team.
They hadn’t—yet—lost a single member of their team.
Not inside the lab, anyway.
After the horrors they’d just unearthed, she wondered if they’d lose any after the fact to demons they couldn’t scourge from their minds.
If nothing else, hopefully this would serve as an indelible reminder as to why any petty differences between their shifter races didn’t matter, and they needed to band together against common enemies threatening their very existence.
She’d personally made one last sweep of the lab and all the cells, checking every room, opening every door, and ensuring none of theirs were left behind.
“All right,” she said to the three people with her. “Trigger the gas cannisters.” They hit the buttons on their respective rigs, and she verified the canisters were deploying their payloads before turning and following them up the stairs.
She was the last one out—the last one who’d ever exit that unholy pit.
At the surface, she conducted a head count, just to be sure, and gave thanks for small fucking favors as she climbed into the SUV she’d ridden in and hit the master detonator switch to trigger the explosives before they hauled ass.
She felt the rumbles, even through the speeding SUV’s tires. Looking back, she saw smoke and dust billowing from the stairwell entrance next to the building that served as the elevator lobby on the surface.
Good riddance.
Peyton looked at his watch. “The drones will be coming in soon.”
“I hope there’s nothin’ left but a dusty crater when those finish doin’ their work,” she said. Glancing back, she spotted the blank look Lowri wore, but at least Aaron wasn’t trying to kill Peyton with his mind anymore. “Ye all right, then?” she asked Lowri.
Lowri slowly nodded. “I will probably need a lifetime of therapy to deal with that, but it’s nothing compared to the horrors those people endured.” She turned and kissed Aaron. “Thank you for coming with me.”
“We’re not home free yet,” Peyton said. “Because we rescued Callum and Bryn, I’ll go to Wales with the transport plane. He’s a strong Prime, even stronger than me. Jake, can you, Lowri, and Aaron stay behind here with the clean-up team and interrogate that fucker we brought out?”
“Can I kill him?” Jake growled.
“Not until we’re finished with him. He’ll need to be brought to Wales with the evacuated personnel for more interrogations. He cannot die until we get every scrap of intel out of him we can. And let’s not let him accidentally fall out of an airplane en route, okay?”
“That’s not a fast enough way for him to die,” Aaron said.
“Can we torture him?” Jake asked.
“As long as you don’t kill him or make him incapable of being interrogated,” Peyton said. “We may need him for passwords or interpreting data, so don’t blind him yet, either. Where is he, anyway?”
“He ended up in Bob’s SUV,” Jake said.
Their vehicle was the last one back over the border. In the distance, they heard two enormous explosions.
“Thassit then,” Aisling said as she looked back where, faintly, they could see the hint of a fiery glow on the clouds.
“Let’s hope that’s it,” Peyton said, meeting her gaze. “If we have to do this again, I’d almost rather get a nuke from some failed Eastern Bloc state and use that.”
She fist-bumped with him.
By the time they were in the air and on their way to Norway in the cargo plane, Aisling’s stomach finally loosened a little.
That was a lot of time for old horrors to try to push to the forefront in her brain as she lost herself in the drone of the plane’s engines.
The final total rescued count was forty-seven: fifteen children and thirty-two adults.
Some of the rescued had been tortured and injured, and their bodies mangled, but they enthusiastically wanted to be rescued.
And still, despite the horrors of some of their injuries, none of them had been a fraction as bad as the ones they’d left behind.
The total she’d heard of the euthanized was nineteen, and of all of them who’d been conscious, or otherwise able to communicate with the Primes, they’d all wanted to die, which broke her heart.
But she hadn’t been in their shoes, and she remembered her mates who’d died in action.
She’d never judge those who didn’t want to stay. And she’d give a hard punch in the snout to anyone who dared to even hint that they hadn’t tried hard enough to bring them home. Their lives had been stolen from them, their agency ripped away, as well as Goddess knew what else.
The least they could do was honor their last request and give them that dignity.
She sat toward the front of the cargo area while Peyton remained at the back of the plane with Bryn and Callum.
And when they finally touched down in Norway to refuel, Aisling immediately pulled out her phone, gave thanks for a signal, and texted Aisling that they were all safe and hadn’t lost a single teammate.
Tamsin almost immediately replied with a line full of hearts, making Aisling smile.
Then:
I love you!!
Aisling closed her eyes and breathed a contented sigh. Barring any unforeseen accidents, she would, hopefully, soon be back in her beloved’s arms.
Love you, too, pet. Will text from Wales. Phone off now.
Only then did Aisling close her eyes, tip her head back, and try to catch a little shut-eye.