Chapter 24 #2
Elsie took a glancing blow to the shoulder from a stray bullet, spun with it, and shot the attacker square in the face. She staggered, clutching her arm. Blood soaked through her sleeve. “I’m fine!” she yelled, voice hoarse. “Totally fine! Not dying yet!”
Her sarcasm was as ragged as the torn edge of her jacket. I wanted to go to her, but another wave of wolves came in through the far door to join the few left from the first wave.
Elsie swore under her breath. “Ah, hell. This just got even more interesting.”
She dove for a cabinet marked biohazard and pulled out a canister. She threw it toward the enforcers and fired at it. The explosion rattled the walls, spraying glass and fire. The wolves screamed, their fur igniting as they fell.
But there were still more.
Dozens of them.
We were boxed in now with nowhere left to run. Smoke filled the room, acrid and choking. My lungs burned. My claws slipped in blood. The alarms howled and emergency lights flashed.
Elsie dropped behind an overturned table next to me, slamming a new clip into her rifle with shaking hands. Her breathing was ragged, her face streaked with soot and blood.
“Alright, miss wolf,” she said between breaths. “Any bright ideas?”
I crouched low, ears flat, growling deep in my chest as more shadows filled the doorway.
She laughed and it was a wild, breathless sound that didn’t match the despair in her eyes. “Yeah. Me neither.”
The wolves advanced, their steps in perfect rhythm.
There were too many.
Elsie’s hand brushed my paw, a small, defiant gesture of camaraderie in the chaos. “Looks like this is it,” she said quietly. “Not the worst way to go. At least we made them bleed.”
I bared my teeth, growling low in my throat.
Her smile was tired, but she still found time to wink at me. “Go out fighting, little wolf.”
The next second, the wolves charged.
Bullets, claws, and fire filled the air. The room erupted into violence so intense it drowned out fear. Something exploded and the sound of flames licked through the air.
As I threw myself at the first of them, every thought vanished except one: if this was the end, I would make damn sure they remembered us.
The room was an inferno of sound and motion.
Gunfire tore through glass, shards raining down.
Smoke rolled across the ceiling, turning the lab into a blur of red lights and shadows.
The wolves came in waves. They shifted mid-charge, their bodies snapping and stretching into monstrous forms. I met the first one head-on, claws locking with claws, the impact driving us both into a wall.
I felt the crunch of bone under my jaws, the heat of blood spilling down my fur. Another wolf came from the left, slamming me into a steel table. I twisted, raking my claws across his throat. The howl that followed shook the air.
Elsie was everywhere at once, ducking behind cover, firing until her rifle clicked empty, then switching to a pistol drawn from her hip. She fought like she was born for it, efficient and merciless.
“Come on!” she shouted over the chaos, smoke curling around her like the wings of an avenging angel. “That all you’ve got?”
But they weren’t stopping. She kept dropping them and more kept coming.
A blast rocked the lab as an oxygen tank ruptured, fire racing up the walls. Heat rolled off it in waves, licking at my face.
“We’re cornered!” she yelled.
I spun toward her, blood dripping from my muzzle, smoke stinging my eyes. Her face was streaked with soot and sweat, eyes wild and alive. She fired into the horde until her last clip clicked empty.
Then her eyes turned, and she spotted the glass room behind us, sealed off from the main lab. I glanced at what was behind it along with her.
Racks of vials glowed with faint blue light. A stenciled word glared from the signs on the racks: RAGE-II.
Elsie’s eyes widened. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered.
I growled low in my throat.
There was no time to think or do anything about it though. At least not yet.
Another wave of wolves crashed against us. One clawed my flank; I turned and tore out its throat, but another was right behind it. Blood sprayed across the white tile.
Elsie ducked under a swinging arm, grabbed a broken table leg, and jammed it through a wolf’s eye. “There’s too many of them!” she shouted.
She looked at me then, and for a heartbeat, everything slowed. The chaos faded to a hum. The firelight danced in her eyes, and I saw the moment she decided, hard and fast as a bullet.
“No,” I thought, shaking my head back and forth. “Don’t you dare.”
She gave me that crooked grin of hers. “Sweetheart,” she said, “you know I don’t do quiet exits.”
Before I could stop her, she sprinted toward the glass room, slammed her shoulder into the emergency latch, and the door hissed open. The blue light washed over her face, turning her pale.
She grabbed a vial from the rack.
“Elsie!” I tried to say her name, but it came out as a tortured bark through my smoke-ravaged throat.
Her smile was wild, desperate even. “Don’t look at me like that. You know it’s the only shot we’ve got.”
Before I could do anything to stop her, she jammed the syringe into her own neck.
The change was instant.
She arched, her scream echoing through the lab as the serum hit her bloodstream. Her eyes flared silver, then black. Her veins darkened, crawling up her neck like spreading ink. She dropped to her knees, gasping, her fingers digging into the floor.
The wolves froze, uncertain. The lights flickered, and every hair on my body stood on end.
Elsie lifted her head, and for a moment, she was still her. Her mouth twisted into a terrifying smile that was more teeth than warmth.
“Guess it works,” she rasped.
Then she moved.
She was faster than any wolf I’d ever seen. She flew back into the room with me and hit the first guard like lightning, her fingers sinking into his chest. Bone snapped, blood sprayed, and she threw his body into the others. The sound of it—a wet crack—made my stomach twist.
The wolves tried to fight back, but she tore through them like they were made of wet paper. Her movements weren’t human anymore. She was all muscle and rage and terrible grace, every motion efficient and horrible.
She grabbed one by the jaw and ripped it clean off. Another she slammed into the wall hard enough to crater the steel. Blood pooled under her boots, splattering across her face, but she didn’t even pause.
The room was a blur of motion and death. Wolves screamed, the smell of blood thick enough to choke on. The floor shook from the violence of it.
For a moment, I thought—we might actually win this.
Then I looked at her eyes again.
There was nothing human left in them.
She stood amid the carnage, drenched in blood, her chest rising and falling in ragged, uneven breaths.
The veins under her skin pulsed black. Her mouth opened, and a sound came out, a scream so full of rage it barely sounded like it could have come from a living thing.
It was hunger and grief and fury all at once.
Elsie pivoted toward the doorway just as a group of soldiers poured through it.
The light from the flames turned her hair into a moving halo of fire, almost like a crown for some wild and ruined queen.
She threw herself into the fray with a roar that didn’t sound like it belonged on this planet.
Wolves met her charge, weapons up. They opened fire, but she was too fast. Bullets tore through air where she had been just a heartbeat before.
She hit a soldier square in the chest, caving it in, and the impact slammed him into the wall so hard that the plaster spider-webbed and crumbled.
She grabbed the fallen rifle and spun, the butt of her weapon cracking across another wolf’s jaw.
The gun broke, but she didn’t even hesitate.
Instead, she drove the jagged edge into his throat and let him fall.
Blood sprayed, splattering everywhere, but her eyes were fixed on the next target. The glow inside them flickered between silver and black, pulsing like a heartbeat.
The corridor became a storm of muzzle flashes and smoke. Still in my wolf form, I leapt into it beside her, claws catching a wolf’s shoulder, dragging him down. A bullet tore a hot line across my flank, the pain barely registering under the sound of Elsie’s fury.
She was a blur of motion, every strike precise and brutally effective. Wolves shouted orders, but their voices were drowned in the noise. A grenade rolled across the floor, the explosion throwing me back into a wall. For a heartbeat I couldn’t hear anything but ringing.
When my vision cleared, I saw her standing in the middle of it all.
She was bleeding now, deep gashes along her arms and sides, but she didn’t seem to notice.
She caught another wolf’s wrist, twisted, and snapped bone.
Her other hand punched straight through his armor, claws digging into his chest. She tore free holding his still-beating heart, breath ragged, chest heaving.
Her roars filled the corridor again, raw and endless.
I wanted to reach her—to tell her to stop before the serum devoured what little of her humanity was left—but there was no space between her and the violence anymore.
It had swallowed her whole.
The next wave came from the far end of the hall—dozens of them. Wolves in heavy armor, rifles raised, moving as one. The sound of their boots was like rolling thunder. Elsie turned to face them, shoulders square, blood dripping from her chin. She grinned, all teeth and defiance.
“Come on then,” she hissed, sounding inhuman. “Let’s dance.”
They opened fire.
The hallway erupted in smoke and light. She charged into it anyway, bullets tearing through her, jerking her body with every impact.
She kept moving. One by one, she pulled wolves down, clawed through armor, ripped weapons from their hands.
Every step left a smear of red behind her. I could smell her blood, tangy and hot.
She stumbled once, knees buckling. For a heartbeat I thought she’d fall.
Then she screamed again, forcing herself up, staggering toward the nearest wolf.
She tore the rifle from his grip and swung it like a club, the stock shattering across his helmet.
Another shot caught her in the ribs; she turned with the hit and drove the broken weapon through his face and out the back of his skull.
Her movements slowed, but her eyes still burned.
The serum still pushed her forward. She lunged at another, fingers curling around his collar.
A burst of gunfire hit her square in the back.
She gasped, blood blooming bright on her chest, but even as she dropped to one knee she dragged the soldier down with her, clawing him until he stopped moving.
I roared, the sound shaking the walls.
She looked back at me, her eyes unfocused, glowing faintly through the smoke. For a moment, I thought I saw her—the real her—behind the black veins webbed across her skin.
“Sweetheart,” she breathed, a small, broken laugh slipping out, “guess this is… my quiet exit after all.”
The last wave of fire hit her then. Bullets tore through her side, her shoulder, her neck. She staggered, tried to rise again, but her body gave out. Still, even on her knees, she swung her fist, catching one more wolf in the jaw before she finally fell.
The corridor fell into an uneasy quiet. The wolves shifted restlessly among the wreckage, their rifles slack in their hands, as they stared down at what was left of Elsie in a sort of shellshock.
Then, from somewhere deep in the compound, a siren wailed. A new voice cracked through the static of a radio on one soldier’s belt: “Sector Nine breach. Repeat, breach in the power corridor—possible attack. All units redeploy immediately.”
The wolves exchanged quick, silent looks.
The leader barked an order, and they began to fall back, jogging down the hall in pairs, boots pounding through blood and glass.
One lingered, glancing down at me where I crouched beside the wall, covered in soot and blood.
My paws trembled against the tile. For a moment, our eyes met through the haze.
Maybe he saw my exhaustion there. Maybe he thought I was finished, that I’d bleed out in minutes. Maybe, in some small mercy, he just didn’t want to waste another bullet.
He turned and left without a word.
When the last echo of their boots died, the only sound left was the slow, stuttering rattle of lab equipment settling after the blast. The light flickered, painting everything in a dull, rhythmic pulse.
I shifted back to a human and crawled through the wreckage toward where Elsie had fallen. Her body was sprawled against the far wall, blood streaking the metal behind her like brushstrokes.
Her eyelids fluttered as I knelt beside her. “Hey,” I whispered, my throat tight. “Hey, don’t you dare leave me yet.”
Her lips moved, the barest ghost of a smile curving them. “Told you… quiet exit,” she murmured, her voice rough and small.
“Don’t talk,” I said quickly. “Save your strength.”
She gave a faint laugh that turned into a cough. “Strength’s overrated.” Her eyes opened halfway, glinting faintly in the flickering light. “Did we… get them?”
I glanced around at the carnage—the broken walls, the bodies, the sheer devastation. “Yeah,” I said softly. “You got them all.”
Her gaze drifted to the ceiling. “Good,” she whispered. “Someone had to.”
The air was thick with the smell of blood and smoke, and my heart felt too big for my chest. I pressed a hand over hers, sticky and warm. “You saved me,” I said.
She blinked slowly, her breathing shallow. “You keep going, sweetheart. You finish it.”
“I will,” I promised, my voice beginning to tremble as tears formed in my eyes.
Her eyes found mine one last time, a spark of mischief still hiding behind the pain. “Knew you’d say that.”
I brushed a hand over her hair, smoothing it away from her face.
Sirens blared in the distance, the floor under us trembling with the echo of an explosion somewhere deep in the base.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For everything.”
And then, with a final breath that sounded almost like a laugh, she closed her eyes and went still.