Ryan's POV
The corridor stretched ahead of us, impossibly white under fluorescent lights that hummed with a frequency just at the edge of hearing. My wolf hated that sound, wanted to destroy the lights, wanted to return us to natural darkness where predators belonged. I forced it down again, kept my breathing steady, focused on the practical reality of our situation.
We were inside. That was the easy part. Everything from here forward would be harder.
Blake moved to the front of our group, her pack falling into formation behind her with the kind of unconscious coordination that spoke of years working together. I stayed in the middle, protected but accessible if they needed me to handle security systems. The other team, Marcus and his two wolves, split off at the first intersection, heading toward a stairwell that would take them to the upper floors. They vanished into the shadows without a sound.
Our group moved deeper into the facility, following the main corridor. Doors lined both walls, each one labeled with cryptic alphanumeric codes that meant nothing to me. B-07. B-11. B-15. No helpful labels like "Evil Laboratory" or "Prisoner Storage." Just numbers and letters that could mean anything.
Blake stopped at the first door, tested the handle. Locked. She looked at me, raised an eyebrow in question.
I pulled out my lock picking kit, knelt beside the door, and went to work. The lock was commercial grade, decent but not extraordinary. Thirty seconds and it clicked open. Blake eased the door inward, revealing a small office space. Desk, computer, filing cabinets. Everything neat and organized, as if someone had just stepped out for coffee and would return any moment.
Claire, the scarred woman, slipped inside and went straight for the computer. She pulled out a USB drive, plugged it in, and began copying files with practiced efficiency. While she worked, I checked the filing cabinets. Locked, but easier than the door. Inside were medical records, patient files, except the patients were not identified by name. Just numbers. Subject 47. Subject 53. Subject 61.
I pulled out one file at random, flipped it open. My stomach turned to ice.
The file contained photographs. A young woman, maybe early twenties, was strapped to an examination table. In the first photo, she looked human, terrified but human. In the second, her body was caught mid transformation, bones breaking through skin, muscles tearing and reforming, her face twisted into something between human and wolf. In the third photo, she was fully transformed, but wrong somehow, her proportions off, her eyes vacant and animal.
The notes beneath the photos were clinical, detached. Subject 53 responds poorly to serum variant 7. Transformation incomplete. The subject shows signs of severe neurological damage. Cognitive function reduced to baseline animal intelligence. Recommendation: Terminate and harvest tissue for analysis.
A red stamp at the bottom of the page: TERMINATED.
"Blake." My voice came out rougher than intended. "You need to see this."
She moved to my side, looked at the file I held. Her expression did not change, but I saw her jaw muscles tighten, saw her fingers curl into fists. Behind us, one of the other wolves, a young man with shaggy hair, made a sound low in his throat that was more animal than human.
"They are experimenting on us," Blake said quietly. "Trying to weaponize the transformation. Turn us into something that can be controlled, or something so broken that humans will have justification to exterminate us all."
Claire finished copying files from the computer and unplugged her USB drive. "Got everything on this machine. Financial records, personnel files, research logs. Enough to trace back to whoever is funding this operation."
"Good," Blake said. "Keep moving. We need to find the active laboratories, find out if they have prisoners here now."
We continued down the corridor, checking doors as we passed. More offices. A break room with a coffee maker and microwave, evidence of normal human activity in this place of horror. A supply closet filled with medical equipment, syringes and IV bags and machines whose purposes I did not want to imagine.
Then we reached a door different from the others. Heavy steel instead of wood, with a biometric lock that required both a card key and a fingerprint scan. Beyond it, I could hear sounds. Movement. Breathing. The soft whimper of something in pain.
"Can you open this?" Blake asked.
I studied the lock, my stomach sinking. "Not quickly. This is military grade security, and requires physical credentials I do not have. I could hack it eventually, but it would take time and might trigger alarms."
Blake looked at the other two wolves in our group. "Connor, you are up."
The young shaggy haired man stepped forward, and I watched in fascination as his transformation began. Not the full change, not human to wolf entirely, but something in between. His arms thickened, muscles bulging beneath skin. His hands elongated, fingers becoming claws that looked sharp enough to cut steel. Partial transformation, controlled and precise, using just enough wolf strength to accomplish a specific task.
Connor grabbed the door handle, braced his feet, and pulled. Metal groaned. The lock mechanism screamed in protest. And then, with a sound like breaking bones, the entire locking assembly tore free from the door frame, leaving a hole where sophisticated electronics had been.
The door swung open.
The smell hit me first. Blood and excrement and fear, primal terror so thick I could taste it on my tongue. My wolf surged forward, responding to the distress of its own kind, wanting to help, wanting to destroy whatever was causing this suffering.
The room beyond was a laboratory, but not the clean sterile kind you see in pharmaceutical commercials. This was a butcher shop dressed up in medical equipment. Examination tables with restraint straps stained dark with old blood. Cages lining one wall, some empty, some occupied. IV stands and monitors and machines that beeped and hummed and tracked vital signs of the things locked inside the cages.
Because they were things now, not people. Not anymore.
Three cages held werewolves trapped in partial transformation, their bodies locked in the painful middle state between human and wolf. They moved restlessly, pacing the small confines of their prisons, their eyes empty of recognition or intelligence. Whatever had been done to them had broken something fundamental, had stripped away the human consciousness and left only the beast.
But the beast was damaged too. One of them kept trying to shift fully, its body spasming with the effort, bones breaking and reforming wrong, healing incorrectly, creating a feedback loop of agony that never ended. Another slammed itself against the cage bars repeatedly, oblivious to the damage it was causing, driven by some instinct it could no longer understand or control.
The third just stared at nothing, its breathing shallow and labored, slowly dying from injuries or experiments or simple despair.
"Jesus Christ," Connor whispered, his partial transformation reversing as horror overcame his control.
Blake moved closer to the cages, her face expressionless but her scent giving away her rage. Pheromones flooded the air, the smell of an Alpha preparing for violence, preparing to defend her pack against threats. Even though these broken creatures were not her pack, they were still her kind. Still deserved protection.
"Can we help them?" Claire asked, her voice tight with suppressed emotion. "Can we reverse whatever was done to them?"
I moved to a computer terminal on the far wall, began accessing files, looking for research notes, for treatment protocols, for anything that might explain what had been done to these people and whether it could be undone. The files loaded slowly, security protocols checking my unauthorized access, deciding whether to lock me out or trigger alarms.
Finally, the data appeared. Research logs from someone named Dr. Helena Reeves, lead researcher on something called Project Purity. I scanned through entries, my horror growing with each paragraph.
"They are trying to isolate what makes us supernatural," I said, reading as I spoke. "Trying to find the genetic markers that allow transformation, that give us enhanced strength and healing and all the things that make us different from baseline humans. The goal is to create a serum that can either cure the condition, removing our abilities permanently, or weaponize it, creating soldiers who can transform at will without the traditional lunar cycle limitations."
"What about these three?" Blake asked, gesturing at the caged werewolves. "What happened to them?"
I pulled up their individual files. Subjects 71, 72, and 73. All captured in the last two months. All injected with experimental serums, their transformations artificially triggered and then chemically locked in place. The researchers were studying the physiological changes, taking tissue samples, monitoring brain activity, trying to understand the mechanics of metamorphosis.
The notes described them as failures. The serum variants had caused permanent damage, destroyed higher brain function, left them trapped in bodies that no longer responded to conscious control. Termination was scheduled for the end of the week, once all useful data had been extracted.
"We cannot save them," I said, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "The damage is neurological, permanent. Even if we broke them out of here, they would not know us, would not understand that we were trying to help. They would attack anything that moved, including innocent people. They are trapped in constant pain with no way to communicate it or understand it."
Blake was silent for a long moment, staring at the three broken werewolves. Finally, she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. "Then we give them mercy. We end their suffering. And we make sure the people who did this pay for every second of pain they caused."
Connor and the fourth wolf, whose name I still did not know, moved to the cages. The transformations happened quickly this time, fully and completely, their human bodies flowing into wolf form. Large and powerful, apex predators designed by evolution to hunt and kill.
The mercy was quick. The broken werewolves did not fight, did not resist, as if some deep instinct recognized that death was the only escape left to them. Within seconds, it was over. Three bodies lay still in their cages, finally at peace after months of torture.
I looked away, my throat tight, my eyes burning. This was what my surveillance system had enabled. These experiments, these atrocities. My code had helped them find victims, and had made it easier to kidnap supernatural beings off the streets without anyone noticing the pattern.
"Download everything," Blake said, her voice back to its normal controlled tone. "Every file, every research note, every piece of data on these computers. We need evidence that cannot be denied, cannot be explained away."
I plugged in multiple USB drives and set them copying simultaneously, pulling down gigabytes of information. Patient files, financial records, emails between researchers, video documentation of experiments. Everything that could prove what was happening here, that could trace the operation back to whoever was funding it.
While the files were copied, Claire moved to another door at the far end of the laboratory. This one was not locked, just closed. She opened it carefully, revealing a storage room filled with shelving units. But these shelves did not hold equipment or supplies.
They held bodies. Preserved in clear tanks of chemical solution, dozens of them, werewolves in various stages of transformation. Some looked almost human except for subtle changes in bone structure or muscle density. Others were fully transformed into wolves, their bodies suspended in death, fur floating in the preservative fluid like seaweed in water.
Each tank was labeled with a subject number and a date. The oldest was from seven years ago. For seven years this facility had been operating, capturing and experimenting on supernatural beings. Seven years of victims like these, their bodies kept as specimens, as trophies, as research material.
"My God," Claire said. "There are so many."
I counted quickly. Thirty seven tanks. Thirty seven people who had been kidnapped, tortured, killed, and preserved like insects in a collection. Thirty seven families who probably still wondered what had happened to their missing loved ones, who filed police reports that went nowhere, who held out hope for reunions that would never happen.
One of the tanks caught my attention. The label said Subject 12, dated five years ago. Five years. Around the time my father had discovered this facility, around the time he had started asking questions and warning people.
I moved closer to the tank, and looked at the body inside. Male werewolf, mid transformation, his features distorted but still recognizable if you knew what to look for. I pulled out my phone, opened the photo gallery, and found the picture of my father's construction crew from six years ago.
There. Third from the left. Thomas Wright, the missing pack member my father had been searching for when he found this facility.
"Blake," I said, my voice shaking. "I found him. Thomas Wright. The werewolf my father was tracking when he discovered this place. He has been here the whole time, dead and preserved like a laboratory specimen."
Blake came to stand beside me, looking at the body floating in chemical solution. "Your father was right. About all of it. The facility, the experiments, the danger. And they killed him to keep him quiet."
My hands curled into fists. Rage was building in my chest, hot and dangerous, my wolf responding to the injustice of it all. My father had tried to save people, and had tried to warn the community about this threat. And for that, they had murdered him, had made it look like an accident, and had gotten away with it for five years while they continued their work.
The USB drives finished copying. I unplugged them, distributed them among our group. "We have everything. Every file in their system. Enough evidence to expose this operation, to identify everyone involved, to shut this down permanently."
"Good," Blake said. "Now we burn it. All of it. The laboratories, the equipment, the research. We destroy everything they have built here."
"What about the bodies?" Connor asked, gesturing at the preservation tanks. "Do we just leave them?"
Blake hesitated, conflict clear on her face. As a pack leader, she wanted to honor the dead, to give them proper burial, to show respect for what they had suffered. But as a tactician, she knew that removing thirty seven bodies from a facility we were about to set on fire would be impossible and would destroy the evidence we needed.
"We photograph them," she finally said. "Document every tank, every label, every victim. Then we leave them. The fire will cremate them, which is better than being stored in jars like specimens. And the evidence we are taking will make sure people know they existed, will make sure their deaths meant something."
Claire pulled out her phone and started taking photos, methodically documenting each preservation tank. While she worked, I heard something through the walls. Footsteps. Multiple sets, moving quickly, coming from somewhere above us.
My phone buzzed with a text from Victor's people outside. "Guards mobilizing. They know you are inside. Get out now."
"We have company," I said. "Security is responding. We need to move."
Blake's phone buzzed as well. A text from Marcus upstairs. "Found the administrative offices. Have the boss. The situation is complicated. Need extraction."
Blake swore quietly. "Marcus has someone important but needs help getting out. We split up. Connor, you take the evidence drives and Ryan, get outside, get to safety. Claire and I will go help Marcus." She looked at me. "If something happens to us, if we do not make it out, you make sure those files reach people who can use them. You make sure this place gets exposed. Understood?"
"I am not leaving you," I said. "If Marcus needs help, we all go help."
"You are not a pack, Ryan. You do not have to die with us."
"Maybe not," I said. "But I am the reason you are here. I built the system that made this possible. I owe you, I owe all of them, and I am not running away from that debt."
Blake studied my face for a moment, then nodded. "Fine. But stay behind us, let us handle the fighting. Your job is to survive and tell the story. Can you do that?"
"I can try."
"Good enough." Blake turned to Connor. "Change of plans. We all go up together. Find Marc
us, extract whoever he captured, and fight our way out if necessary. Move fast, hit hard, show no mercy to anyone who gets in our way."
We ran.