1. Awareness
ONE
AWARENESS
Jack
H ow many days had I been locked up? Was it weeks yet? I’d stopped bothering to count.
Night and day were completely messed up in my mind. How could they not be? My entire world consisted of four white walls, gray linoleum floor, a toilet and sink, and a small cot. My feet and most of my calves hung off it when I lay down.
Which was what I did pretty much all day. Every day.
No window, no sunlight to know what time it was. Only buzzing, artificial light. And the red light when it was time to sleep.
To begin with, I’d tried to count the days by the injections. But even that strategy had been fucked up.
My dosage had started out as once a day. It was now multiple times a day. Injections so frequent that my veins bulged.
Apparently the freakish monster living inside me was a lot stronger than the average freakish monster. And it wanted out. The injections kept it sleeping.
I let them inject me without complaint because I wanted that fucker in his cage as much as they did. I still woke up in the middle of the night, sweating, remembering the way my body had swelled, how I’d grown a layer of golden hair over my skin. How my voice had changed, how my teeth lengthened in my mouth, making speaking difficult.
How they’d all looked at me like I was a danger to them. Until the injection had made it go away.
I wanted out of this place. I wanted to find Blaire. But I didn’t want to be that thing. In here, I didn’t have to be.
Not that I had any choice either way.
“Good morning, Jack!” Agent Dean’s cheery voice wafted through the intercom near the door. Okay, so it was morning. Good to know. Not that it meant shit to me in here. “How are you feeling today? Stable?”
I grunted. “Yep.” I’d learned pretty quick that there was no point in being a dick. Or asking when I could speak to someone about my parents. Or Blaire. None of my questions were ever answered.
“I have a visitor for you today,” she said with a lilt to her voice like I should be excited about this. I wasn’t even sure excitement was something I could feel anymore. But I sat up on the edge of my cot, anyway, looking towards the door. I hadn’t seen anyone except Agent Dean since they shoved me in here. She brought my food. She administered my drugs. She swapped out my clothes and bedding. She cleaned my toilet and sink.
I had no fucking idea how she stayed as sunny as she acted with a shitty job like hers.
The door buzzed, sliding open. My eyes widened, then narrowed when I saw who was standing on the other side of it.
“Harvey.”
Blaire’s dad looked like he’d aged about a decade since the last time I’d seen him—seconds before I stepped in front of a bullet to save his wife.
“How are you, Jack?” he asked, his voice strained as he stepped into the room.
“How’s Daphne?” I snarled. He flinched. I felt a sick sort of satisfaction at that.
“I—” He cut himself off, his eyes darting. My pulse instantly kicked up a notch.
“What happened to her? Where are my parents? Where’s Blaire?” I asked, lowering my voice.
Harvey’s eyes searched mine, his mouth a grim slash. But then he cleared his throat, and it was like a mask slipped down over his face.
“Blaire is safe. Daphne is … recovering from the ordeal. We can all be reunited, but first, we need you to just … toe the line here for a little while.”
I shot to my feet, snarling down at him. The beast inside me didn’t feel quite so caged, with my anger simmering. Harvey’s eyes widened, but he held his ground. I wondered what I looked like to him.
“‘We’ need you to toe the line? Who the fuck is ‘we’?” I asked darkly, turning to pace my cell. Harvey slowly backed away until he was pressed against the wall, his eyes not leaving me as I took the ten steps to the opposite wall, the ten steps back.
“It’s time, Agent Rodgers,” a familiar, deep voice crackled through the intercom. I raised an eyebrow at Harvey.
“Agent Rodgers, huh? You’re fully invested in whatever bullshit this is, aren’t you? Sucked right in with the asshole who let his men shoot at your wife.”
Harvey’s eyes turned hard, and he shook his head so minutely that it would have gone unnoticed by most. But even with the drugs, my vision, my hearing … my fucking libido, for fuck’s sake … had all remained enhanced.
He was warning me about something. But I had no fucking clue what it was.
The door buzzed, and Harvey relaxed off the wall just slightly, turning to the door as it opened.
“Good morning, Jack.”
Harvey and I turned to the man in the doorway. Gray buzzcut, average height, average weight, nothing about him made you look twice.
Except his eyes. There was something about his eyes that gave me the creeps. They were the same shade of gray as his hair, but something about them seemed … not right. I couldn’t look at them for too long without feeling nauseous. So I looked away.
“He seems reasonably stable, now. Looks like we’ve finally gotten the dosage right,” the man remarked like I was a fucking science experiment. I watched Harvey’s face, the way he nodded in agreement, giving nothing away.
Who was I kidding? I was a fucking science experiment.
“I think it’s time we show him around the facility, don’t you, Agent Rodgers? Let him see for himself what we’re doing here?”
“Yes, sir, Agent Baxter,” Harvey replied, his posture straightening. There had been the tiniest hint of hesitation in his tone. But that was enough for me to be utterly certain. He was fucking terrified of this guy.
Where was Daphne? And where was Blaire? Were they, like me, being held somewhere else in this sci-fi-film prison? Did Harvey even know if they were okay?
I wanted answers. And this Agent Baxter was the guy who had them. But when I glanced over at him, and I saw the possessive gleam in his eyes as they roved over me, I barely contained a shiver.
I might have been a freak, but this guy was on a level all his own.
Play their game, Jack . The only way you’re getting any answers is to play whatever fucked up game this is.
T he corridor outside my room was much brighter. My eyes were fucking sensitive, and I blinked as they watered. Was the medication supposed to dull this stuff, too? Or just the more horrifying aspects of what I was. The parts where my body changed.
I kind of wished the meds would just make it all go away, to be honest. I hadn’t asked for this bullshit. I hadn’t had a choice when my parents decided to inseminate my mother with monster jizz, to make whatever the fuck I was.
The corridor was long and straight and had many doors, with control panels beside them. One-way windows that looked into rooms just like mine. All of them were empty.
Where were all the other freaks they were keeping down here?
“Sorry we’ve had to … contain your abilities, Jack,” Baxter said, striding along just in front of me as Harvey and Dean trailed behind. It didn’t escape me that Dean was holding a fucking cattle prod.
“Don’t be. They fucking disgust me,” I muttered.
Baxter’s eyes flicked to mine, and for a second, there was something in them that iced my blood.
“You and I are on the same wavelength, son,” he continued as we turned a corner and headed towards a set of double doors. “We’ll talk more about that later.”
“We’re … what?” I asked, but Baxter was pushing the doors open, ushering me inside ahead of him. My ears exploded with noise. Noise that rapidly silenced as dozens of pairs of eyes turned in my direction.
A mess hall. Breakfast. Long metal tables lined up across the room, with a walkway down the center. Females on one side. Males on the other. A storm of scents burned my nostrils. Sweat. Sex. The coppery scent that I’d come to associate with Roman, and Ellis, and Farida. And the earthy stench that sent me back to a clearing, my arms pinned. My body battered and bruised. An orgy of violence as the crowd of freaks screamed for my slow and painful death.
My blood pulsed in my ears.
They were all … like me. Fucking freaks. And I hadn’t had too many good experiences with others like me.
“Fresh meat!” one woman said, climbing onto the bench and leering at me. She had white-blonde hair and black eyes that creeped me the fuck out. “Smells like a Shifter, too! Been hanging for a new Shifter dick—they’re always fucking hung!” She thrust her hips in my direction, licking her lips and making some terrible, grunting, violent, fake orgasm sounds.
A black-clad agent marched up behind her. The cattle prod buzzed.
The woman’s body jerked violently before crashing onto the ground, limbs twitching, eyes rolling back in her head.
And not one other person … monster … half-breed … whatever the fuck we all were … none of them so much as batted an eyelid. They just kept on eating. Fuck me … were they drinking cups of blood with their breakfast?
What the fuck was this place? Who the fuck were these freaks?
Dozens of opaque cups were lined up next to each plate. The cloying, metallic scent of their contents stuck to my nostrils, filtering through the dozens of other scents bombarding me. My mouth watered. My jaw ached. I remembered Ellis giving me a cup of her blood when things got really bad.
Fuck. I closed my eyes for a second, remembering the way it had felt when Blaire had tapped a vein in my wrist and sucked me.
I was sick. But fuck, I’d come so hard, and so fast, I’d had to toss that pair of boxer briefs and free-ball it in my jeans. Forever ruined.
It wasn’t the first time I’d come because of Blaire Rodgers, but it was the first time in her presence. And it would be the only time. Because she was Joined with Roman.
I hated what we’d both become. Their Joining had taken the very last, tiny scrap of hope I’d been holding onto that maybe Blaire could love me back and had torn it to shreds … and then doused it in gas and lit a match, just in case I ever tried to stick that hope back together.
I’d been such an ass to her, a jealous shithead. And then, when I’d finally manned-up and told her I’d support her no matter what, everything had gone to shit. The last thing I remembered was her screaming for me in the arms of some freak who wasn’t Roman, even if he looked exactly like him. And then the bullet took me down. The bullet that had been meant for her mother.
If that hadn’t been enough to show her how serious I was that I’d do anything to help her be happy, even if it wasn’t with me … then I was flat out of fucking ideas.
Baxter moved into the mess hall behind me, and the silence immediately changed. It was like the temperature instantly dropped a couple dozen degrees. The monsters in the room stopped eating. The coldness intensified. Baxter didn’t seem to notice it, but I shivered as Harvey and Dean stepped into the room as well.
Eyes followed Baxter as he strode down the center aisle. My chest tightened. The cups of blood that I’d been basically salivating over a moment ago made my gut churn.
“This is what we call R Block, Jack,” Baxter said conversationally. He had no fucking clue how much every single pair of eyes in the room tracked him. And not in a friendly way. “Taiga is a secure facility run by Operation Stranger. I’ll fill you in more on that when we get to my office. We have a number of divisions, or Blocks, here at Taiga. Each Block is populated with hybrids, just like yourself.”
A growl rumbled up from my chest, but I swallowed it back down. A couple of the males at the table we passed looked up at me. I barely managed to contain a flinch at the hatred in their eyes.
I was one of them … but I wasn’t. Because none of them would have gotten guided tours from Baxter. I’d basically crawled out from under a rock into this place, and already I could tell how hated the man was. It seemed by association, I was hated, too.
As if I needed another thing to alienate me. Even these dudes, who were just like me, thought there was something wrong with me.
I had to agree with them.
Baxter hadn’t stopped talking, but I had no fucking idea what he’d been saying. A creeping sensation trickled up my spine as we moved along that aisle, through the vast, over-lit room of glaring half-breeds.
And something else. Some other … awareness … was filtering into my bloodstream. Humming under my skin. Buzzing into my fingertips. A smell floating above all the others. It was subtle … but it overpowered me. Like that first warm breeze in Spring.
Shit. My nails were lengthening. Even on all the drugs, I was growing claws. I hid them in my fists, the bite of the sharp points was enough to clear my head for just a moment. My jaw clenched as my salivary glands went into overdrive. My mouth was suddenly fuller.
My teeth were growing. What the fuck was happening?
A rumble of low growls echoed behind me. They knew I was … was shifting. They could sense it.
Breaths hissed in my ear. And they weren’t mine. But where the fuck were they coming from?
Crash!
Metal plates clanged to the linoleum floor like a cymbal smash, breaking through the buzz, the hiss, the thrumming of a heartbeat.
Also not mine. Or maybe mine was in there, too. Maybe it was two heartbeats I could hear inside my brain.
I grabbed my skull with a groan, eyes darting to where someone was crouched, hurriedly stacking the plates. Food scraps had coated the floor. I couldn’t see her behind the tables. But I could hear her breath. Feel her heart.
My skin was on fire. Muscles twitched.
“Get him out of here,” Baxter muttered, although I barely registered the words. Because the female stood, a teetering stack of plates concealing most of her from me.
But a lock of reddish-brown hair peeked out from behind the stack, and something, so fucking deep inside me I couldn’t even say where it came from, started roaring.
“Out,” Baxter muttered, and Dean and Harvey took one elbow each, striding with me as I groaned low, refusing to let that roar that sat in my throat out. The doors at the opposite end of the mess hall swung outward, and I was shoved through. I didn’t even try to fight it. I needed out.
I needed space so that roar in my head would fuck off.
The cattle prod hit me. Lightning flashed through skin, and muscle, and bone. My body went rigid.
As I crashed to the ground, I realized, with horror, what that deep, dark part of me was roaring.
Mine .