“Where the hell is Maverick?!” I yelled to Shaw and Natalie. “How do you expect me to finish my work when you move my specimens without my knowledge and without my permission?!”

Natalie eyed Shaw who shrugged his shoulders. Eric walked into the lab with a sinister grin across his face.

“What are you doing here? Where did you put him?” I questioned.

“Your specimen tried to escape again, and he had to be put down,” he said nonchalantly.

“Bullshit!” I shouted.

“Addison, calm down,” Natalie told me.

“No! I won’t calm down! My work, work that you guys insist on me doing, was hitched to that last specimen and-”

“Oh we know what was hitched to that last specimen,” Eric chuckled, “But no worries, Addy. Shaw and I disposed of your distraction and will have another live specimen for you shortly. Isn’t that right, Shaw?”

Shaw scowled at Eric, “I’ll get my men on it.”

“Good, and in the meantime,” Eric turned to me, “Why don’t you just sit down and read a book or something? Try to figure out why the intermingling of species is barbaric and a detriment to the ongoing battle Anthros have with restoring their rightful place in this world.”

I’d heard enough. Without any warning, or forethought, I thrust the butt of my palm into his nose and followed it by a right hook. Shaw jumped around the island to pull me away from hitting him again. “You sniveling little piece of shit! What did you do to him?! Where’s his body!? In the name of science, why would you dispose of a specimen’s body without a detailed and recorded autopsy? He’s lying, Natalie. I know he is. He swiped Maverick because his ego couldn’t handle that I’d be nicer to the Scaler than to him.”

“I oughta strap you down to that table and have you autopsied!” Eric shouted as he held a towel to his face. The blood began to trickle through. A smile unintentionally spread across my face as he growled, “I’ll kill you!”

The room fell silent once those words slipped from his mouth.

Shaw let me go and grabbed Eric by the shoulder to lead him out of the lab, “Let’s go get you cleaned up. We should remember that we’re all on the same team here and that no one is going to kill anyone. We’re all working towards the same goal.”

I shook my head because I knew that wasn’t true. They were obscuring my research and Shaw had just chosen his side. I had to find Maverick. Turning to Natalie, I wanted to appeal to her, “Where would they take him?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed.

“You know he wasn’t lying when he said he’d kill me? I know he’s got Maverick stashed in here somewhere. Come on, tell me so I can get him out of here. You know that whatever those two are planning will devastate all of us, not just the Scalers, all of us. How can you trust anyone like Eric? He’s programmed to engineer death. He doesn’t want to win the battle, he wants to exterminate a species! Please help me, Natalie.”

“I don’t get what you guys do in here. I do know that we’re in a battle to regain some sort of power against these things that outrank us in just about any way possible, but I can see and understand how you feel about the work you are doing. I understand that Eric is beginning to show the signs of someone who’s unstable and unpredictable. So what I will tell you is that if Shaw and Eric have taken your subject to another part of the Station, it would be more heavily guarded than other areas since he has a tendency to escape. That’s all I have to say about that.”

Okay, that was something I could use. I wasn’t sure of when to start searching but I knew it had to be soon.

It felt like she was reading my mind, as she walked out of the lab, she turned to me, “And if you notice, Shaw and his guys typically go on their nightly tour of Black Harbor from seven to two. There’s usually one or two left behind to keep us safe, but odds are…”

Her voice trailed off as she walked away. My pulse raced as I practically ran to my room. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. I’ve never rescued anyone before. Rope? Maybe I would need rope. Wait! A knife too, perhaps? How would I distract the guards on duty?

My reflection stared back at me as if to knock me upside the head. You know how to distract the guards on duty. I just had to find him.

When seven arrived, I waited a few minutes before I ventured out of my room and into the halls of the Station. It was quiet. There were others here on staff, but everyone was here for a reason. We all had a job that somehow contributed to the goal of winning the war. It wasn’t my goal, but I couldn’t deny the progress of my work since I came here. Maverick, well I didn’t know how he fit into everything, but I didn’t want to find out his place through Eric. No one deserved whatever it was my colleague had in mind.

I swore that my heart thumped so loudly through my chest I could hear it echo down the quiet halls. I never realized how quiet they were until I was sneaking around in them. Just like Natalie said, of all the doors I’d walked by, there was only one with a soldier guarding it. I thought it was some type of utility closet, but why would a closet need armed protection?

I let my hair fall, releasing it from its ponytail before I approached him. I had a bag strewn over my shoulder and my clipboard in hand. No one ever questioned me when I carried my clipboard.

“Hey!” I shouted to the soldier standing there.

“Dr. Marshal,” he sighed with his rifle resting in his palm and across his chest.

“Is Eric in there, by any chance? I have these results that just don’t make sense to me, and I sure could use his expertise. I mean take a look. When that hydrogen particle was manipulated by the fire producing mechanism at the back of the Scaler’s-”

He cleared his throat, cutting me off, “No he’s not here and don’t talk to me about them. It’s bad enough they’re out there trying to bring another one here.”

“It’s not here already?” I asked him with a raised eyebrow.

“No, they just went out tonight to go get him,” he replied.

“So the shifty looking fellow running the halls upstairs isn’t the new specimen?”

“No, but I’ll go check it out. Stay out of this room, Dr. Marshal. It isn’t safe.”

“You’re wasting time. Should I just call Shaw instead and have him come back here because the Scaler they dropped off is on the loose and you’re refusing to do anything about it?”

He wanted to say something but took off running instead. He turned around with a questioning expression on his face.

“Top floor, by the gardens and livestock,” I told him.

“Figures,” he shook his head, “Freaking animals.”

As soon as he turned the corner, I began fumbling around with the lock. There was a keypad positioned on the wall. I wondered how many different combinations I’d have to enter to gain access to whatever was behind that door. I took a deep breath and thought about it. When I let it out, fingerprints surfaced across the plasma screen. I took a deep breath and huffed on it again. I wrote down every button that was pushed and went through a list of combinations until I finally unlocked it. It was the date he arrived at The Rock; about a year after I was brought in. It was so easy, but then again, we weren’t set up for the strictest security protocols. No one could get to us, and Scalers didn’t care that we were out here.

The door opened, and I made sure to close it behind me. The room was dark with brown walls and black equipment. There was a camera set up near the corner of the room, but it was pointing down. I walked over to see a plastic covered pit with some sort of teal smoke moving around in it. Searching the space around it, I saw a remote on a table next to the camera setup. I pushed a few buttons and the smoke filtered out to the small window set against the floor. The plastic cover pulled back once the space cleared out. There he was, passed out on a pile of hay in the corner. His veins illuminated with the same hues as the gas. I had to get him out of there.

“Maverick?” I whispered. Tears threatened to fall as I stared down at him. He wasn’t moving. I hoped I wasn’t too late.

I was glad this rope came in handy as I reached into my bag to pull it out. I looped it around the bars of the window and tied it tight. I’d learned a good knot or two from my days with Trevor. The other pets would share helpful tips about tying them and getting out of them too.

Sliding down into the pit, I rushed over to him. He moaned for a bit before his eyes shot open. He slammed me against the wall with far more strength than I thought he’d have, knocking the wind out of me. As soon as he saw it was me, his face softened, and his grip loosened.

“Addison,” he whispered faintly. “Help me.”