Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Colt
The facility smells like antiseptic and bad decisions. I notice it the moment the elevator doors open onto Sublevel Three. Sterile chemical bite in the air.
Bleach.
Ozone.
The faint metallic edge of something biological that shouldn't exist in a place built out of polished white walls and corporate funding. I've worked security contracts in a lot of places.
Military installations.
Black sites.
Government labs that were buried so deep in the desert that even the coyotes didn't know they existed. Places where the paperwork had more redactions than words, and the men who hired you made a point of never learning your last name. None of them felt like this.
Those places felt dangerous in ways I understood. Weapons.
Unstable personnel.
Clean dangers. Dangers with edges I could locate and plan around.
This place feels wrong in a way I don't have a word for yet. Like the danger here doesn't have edges. Like it has something else entirely. I’m good at keeping my expression neutral, but there’s an unease churning low in my gut.
The guard beside me shifts his rifle strap across his chest as we walk down the corridor.
His name is Pearce. I know this because it's stenciled on his badge, not because he introduced himself.
He has the look of someone who's been here long enough to stop noticing what's strange about it.
That particular blankness behind the eyes.
The careful forward focus of a man who's learned not to look too hard at the doors he passes.
That's its own kind of information.
"First time on containment rotation?" he asks.
"Yeah."
He nods toward the steel doors lining the hall.
"Don't talk to them."
I glance sideways at him.
"Wasn't planning to."
"Good." He exhales through his nose, "because they'll talk to you."
Something cold slides through my veins at his words, but I don’t have much time to ponder them.
We pass the first containment cell. Thick reinforced glass.
Observation shutters open. The cell beyond is identical to what the briefing materials described…
bare concrete, a drain in the floor, the suggestion of a mattress in the corner.
Inside, an omega presses both palms flat against the window, eyes wide and bloodshot. The posture of someone who's been waiting for exactly this. He smiles when he sees us.
Not a friendly smile. The kind you see on someone who's been locked in a room too long with nothing but their own thoughts and has since made peace with whatever they found in there.
"Hey," the omega calls through the glass. His voice is muffled but clear enough.
"New guy."
My partner doesn't slow down. I don't either. Behind us, the omega laughs, high and loose, bouncing off the walls in a way that doesn't quite match the size of the corridor. It follows us. The echo carries longer than it should, or maybe I just keep listening for when it stops.
It stops.
The silence after it is worse.
"Yeah," Pearce mutters. "Like I said."
We continue down the corridor. Each door has the same design. Reinforced steel with a recessed handle and no external hardware that a person could grab. Observation glass set at chest height, wide enough to see the whole room. Barcode designation stenciled beside the lock in crisp black characters.
O-12.
O-09.
O-15.
Omegas.
Every one of them.
I've worked enough contracts to know what that means, and I've read enough between the lines of enough briefing documents to know what "genetic development subjects" is a polished way of saying.
The company literature calls this place a research facility.
The company literature also calls its security personnel "asset protection specialists," so I've learned to translate.
Lab rats.
That's the word nobody uses in any room with recording equipment.
We turn a corner. The corridor opens into a larger containment wing.
The ceiling lifts here, ten feet at least, maybe more.
More doors. More cameras are mounted at intervals along the ceiling, their red indicator lights steady and patient.
The fluorescent fixtures overhead buzz at a frequency just below conscious annoyance.
You don't notice it until you stop moving. Then it's all you can hear. Silence, otherwise. Until a voice suddenly drifts through the ventilation system overhead.
"Morning, screaming rabbit."
I stop.
The guard next to me groans, not alarmed, just resigned. The groan of a man who has heard this before and had been hoping, without real expectation, that today would be different.
"What?"
He jerks his chin toward one of the cells halfway down the hall.
"Zero's awake."
I follow his gaze.
The door reads:
O-00
The observation glass is already fogged with breath from the inside, a faint haze spreading outward from a central point where something (someone) has been leaning close to the surface.
A dark-haired omega stands inside, forehead pressed against the window, arms hanging loose at his sides.
The posture of someone entirely unconcerned with how he looks.
Even from across the hallway, I can see the grin on his face. It's crooked and wide. The kind of expression that belongs on someone who just thought of something they probably shouldn't do and has decided to do it anyway.
He's talking to the ceiling.
"Morning, creeps!" he calls out suddenly, pivoting to address the camera above his door with the easy familiarity of someone greeting a neighbor. Pearce sighs through his teeth.
"That one never shuts up."
Zero waves at the camera. A real wave, fingers spread, arm moving, completely committed to the bit.
"Hope you slept well!" he continues cheerfully, "I had a dream where one of you idiots left the door unlocked."
A pause.
"Technically, it was more of a nightmare. Because I woke up."
I cross my arms and study him. He doesn't look like what I expected. I've seen omegas in containment before. In different facilities, different programs, and different bureaucratic justifications for the same basic situation.
They tend to look a particular way after long enough. Quiet. Watchful in the manner of animals that have learned to anticipate the next bad thing. Eyes that have stopped expecting much.
This one looks entertained.
Like the ceiling, the camera, and the whole apparatus of the facility is a source of ongoing personal amusement that hasn't worn thin yet. Or has worn through into something else entirely. Possibly past the point where despair lives, out the other side into something harder to name.
"Problem subject," Pearce says.
"How so?"
"He bites people."
I look back at the glass. He’s so small… I wouldn’t think he’d be a problem, but looks can be deceiving.
Zero has moved away from the window now, pacing in a loose circuit around the cell.
Still talking to himself. His hands move when he speaks.
Not erratic, just expressive, like the words need help getting out.
He's describing something to the ceiling, or to himself, or to an imaginary audience assembled for the occasion.
"If the rabbit starts talking back," he's saying thoughtfully, studying a point on the ceiling above his light fixture, "we're upgrading from coping to insane. Current status: coping. Barely. But technically."
"He talks to himself," I observe.
"Constantly." Pearce pauses, "and to the cameras. And to the vents. And to his food when they bring it, which-" He stops, "just don't ask." Zero abruptly leans close to the glass again. His eyes flick toward the corridor.
Sharp.
Aware.
The grin doesn't change, but something behind it does.
A quality of attention shifting, the way a person's focus adjusts when they've registered something without being able to see it directly.
He can't see through the observation barrier, I’m positive of that.
That's the point of the one-way glass. He should be looking at his own reflection. That's all he should be able to see.
Somehow it feels like he knows we're here anyway. Not guessing. Knowing.
"Aw," he says, addressing a point in the glass that corresponds exactly with where we're standing.
"Morning, security detail. You smell new."
His head tips slightly.
"One of you does, anyway."
My partner stiffens.
He shouldn't know we're here. He shouldn't be able to orient toward us with that kind of accuracy.
The seals on these cells are airtight during observation hours.
Alpha instinct prickles at the back of my neck.
Not a sharp warning. A low one. The kind that doesn't shout. The kind that's been right before.
Inside the cell, Zero tilts his head like he's listening to something transmitted on a frequency only he receives. His expression goes briefly thoughtful. Then the grin comes back, slower this time, like it means something different than it did a moment ago.
"Today feels like a bite day," he says. Pearce swears under his breath.
"See?"
A moment later, the hallway door behind us opens. Two lab technicians enter, tablets in hand, already pulling up files without looking at the cell. Like looking at it directly is something you learn to avoid. Dr. Havel walks in behind them. Tall. Severe.
The kind of man who has probably never been surprised by anything in his life because he arranged the world so nothing unexpected could reach him.
Salt-and-pepper hair kept short. Eyes that evaluate rather than observe.
He walks down the center of the corridor like the hallway was built to accommodate him specifically.
He doesn't look at Zero's cell when he passes it. That's interesting.
"Security," he says. Pearce straightens.
"Yes, Doctor."
Havel's gaze passes over me briefly. Assessing. Filing. Moving on.
"Prepare Subject O-00 for extraction. Full protocol."
The technicians exchange a look that they think is subtle. Inside the cell, Zero's chin lifts. He heard that. Through the door, through the seal, with whatever it is in him that picks up information it shouldn't be able to reach. He heard it, and the grin that follows is the widest one yet.
"Field trip," he says.
Not a question. Not hopeful speculation. Just a fact he's decided to be pleased about. The locking mechanism on the steel door begins to disengage. The sequence runs in order. Bolts are withdrawing one at a time with heavy mechanical precision, each one a sound you feel as much as hear.
Whoever engineered this door understood that the sound itself was part of the design. It's meant to be final. Absolute.
I shift my stance automatically, weight redistributing, rifle position adjusting to a ready angle. Muscle memory. The body knows what the brain hasn't consciously decided yet.
Pearce moves into position beside me and leans in slightly.
"Rule number one," he murmurs.
"What's that?"
"Don't get close enough for him to bite you."
The last bolt slides back. The door swings open. The omega standing inside looks nothing like a problem. Nothing like a subject. Nothing like any of the clinical language on the briefing forms I read in the elevator this morning.
He looks like someone who has been waiting in a very small room for a very long time and has made a series of decisions about what that means for everyone else. Zero spreads his arms wide, the gesture theatrical and unhurried, like we're audience members who bought tickets for this.
"Gentlemen," he says.
His eyes sweep the group and land on me. Stay there for exactly one second longer than everyone else. Then the corner of his mouth hooks up.
"Try not to get eaten."
The alpha instinct at the back of my neck goes very quiet in the way it does right before something happens.
Not the absence of warning, but the held breath before it.
One of the technicians shifts closer to Havel.
The other one has stopped typing. Pearce has his hand on his rifle without having decided to put it there.
And Zero just stands in the open doorway of his cell, hands still spread, wearing that crooked grin like armor.
He's not afraid. He's been in this room for what the file said was three years, and he is not afraid.
I've been doing this long enough to know that the absence of fear in a contained subject isn't bravado.
It's intelligence.
It's a person who has looked at their situation from every angle long enough to understand something about it that we don't. I meet his eyes. He holds the look without blinking. Then he tilts his head, just slightly, like he's found something worth considering.
"Huh," Zero says quietly. Just to me. Havel steps forward.
"Move the subject."
The moment breaks. Zero drops his arms and rolls his neck once, something in it cracking audibly, and turns to face the corridor ahead with the ease of someone who’s decided somewhere along the way that cooperation and compliance are not the same thing. He walks out of the cell.
He doesn't look back at it. I watch him go and try to locate the thing that's wrong. the specific shape of what my instincts are telling me, and come up empty. Not dangerous like a weapon. Dangerous like a variable.
The kind you don't account for until it's already changed the equation. I fall in at the rear of the group and follow Subject Zero down the corridor. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, and somewhere behind us, an omega laughs in a cell we've already passed. The echo takes a long time to die.