Action will have to be taken.

Code words for the fact they’d drag her out to the edge of the camp and put a bullet through her brain. She might heal faster than a human, but no one could operate without most of their brain. Except a reanimate, of course.

With the trouble the Project went to in keeping the three areas of study separate, there was no way they’d use a blood-infected subject in one of the other trials. Besides, hard as they tried, neither Lycans nor Bloods could be turned re-animate. It was as though the infections already in their system overwhelmed the RA17 virus. Basically, once they were dead, they stayed dead.

“Yes, sir!”

She returned her gaze back to the same spot on the plaster and waited for the lecture to end, however long it took. The time made no difference to her. Without needing to sleep, eat or drink, she could keep this up for hours. Fitzgerald, however, would need to break at some point, if only to piss.

The colonel sighed, as though he’d guessed from her blank face he wasn’t getting anywhere. Hallelujah, he might actually possess some brains after all.

“Okay, moving on. We have a situation that needs resolving. Sergeant…if you would, please.”

One of the silent men in the room moved forward and spread a map over the table. As paranoid as a conspiracy theorist, the Project didn’t trust computer networks and Internet link-ups. No, given the sensitive nature of the project they’d gone old-fashioned. Paper files couldn’t be hacked into and spread over the Internet at the touch of a button.

Antonia snorted inwardly. Made sense—there was no way the government wanted the civilian population to know about experimentation on its own people.

“Okay, this is St. Mary’s…” Fitzgerald announced as he stabbed his finger at an area on the map.

She leaned over the table slightly to get a look at the area he pointed to. A small estate set near what looked like a town. One road in and out, with forest and mountains to the east. Automatically, her tactical training kicked in. As a target, it was a good one to attack. She could already see the terrain in terms of troop movements and battle areas.

“It’s the nuthouse we send the dogs to if they freak out. A furry funny farm.” He laughed at his own joke. Antonia wondered how far she could bury his pen in his brain if she shoved it through one of his baby-blues.

“After all, no one gives a shit in there. Half the patients are convinced they’re the President, and the other half Santa Claus. Compared to that, any stories of werewolves will just get them labeled nutjobs.”

She nodded but didn’t offer an opinion. As tactics went, it was sound. Use the system. It worked, until the lunatics ran the asylum.

“Something went wrong, though.”

It wasn’t a question, but a statement. She made sure to keep her tone level, neutral, so no inference about her personal feelings on the matter could be made. She didn’t look at Fitzgerald. Instead, she reached out and turned the map around to study it closer.

“Yeah…we think so,” the sergeant spoke up, placing a clipboard on the table next to her. She pulled it toward her. It was an activity record. All project facilities kept in constant contact with headquarters. Hourly calls were made and received so that if the shit hit the fan, HQ knew within sixty minutes.

“No contact for an hour and a half? What’s this here?” She pointed to a slip of paper clipped on the top.

“It’s a remote alarm. Belonging to Dr. Walker. As soon as it was triggered we tried to initiate contact, but we haven’t been able to raise anyone at the hospital.”

She nodded. All her personal feelings about Fitzgerald and anyone else in the room melted away as duty took over. Antonia Fielding was first and foremost a soldier.

“Just Lycans on site?”

“From us, yes.”

The silence after the sergeant’s sentence was telling. Antonia looked up, her expression sharp and her eyes like a hawk’s. The man shifted uncomfortably.

“Who else?”

“It’s a general mental health facility as well. There’s a civilian wing as well as an open wing.”

She blinked once, slowly, and tried to figure out whether she’d really heard what she’d just heard. Or whether the Project really was stupid enough to send unstable Lycans into a facility with an open doors policy.

“An open wing? As in the patients can come and go at any time? And there are LY16 infected personnel there?” she asked, giving the Lycans their proper name and trying to avoid any hint of What? Are you fucking crazy? in her tone.

The sergeant gave her a blank face, but, unlike everyone else in the room, Antonia wasn’t limited to the human senses. The sergeant’s discomfort with the situation seeped out through his pores. He’d had curry last night. The pungent sweet-spicy aroma filled the room.

“The LY’s are sectioned off into a secure wing. This is an old style asylum, right back from the Bedlam-type days of treatment.”

Despite herself, she shuddered. Just the word conjured up images of patients strapped to beds, screaming in pain as they were subjected to electric shock treatment. They’d tried that on camp, very early on, under the premise that the electrical current could subdue the intense desires the Bloods, in particular, suffered.

Antonia had ripped the pads loose and threatened to shove them, and the machine, where the sun didn’t shine. She hadn’t been asked to “participate” in any further electric shock trials. In fact, she hadn’t been asked to participate in trials at all since. Go figure.

“Okay, so we’re assuming that no civilians are at risk?” She swung her monochrome-gaze around to encompass both Fitzgerald and the sergeant with all the answers.

Fitzgerald shook his head, his finger busily click-clicking on the pen. “You know what they say about assume…”

Antonia’s expression deadened. If the next words out of his mouth were “it makes an ass out of you and me” she was not only going to ram that fucking pen up his ass but the entire map as well. Without lube.

Fitzgerald dropped his gaze and cleared his throat. “We can’t assume anything. Not at this stage. All we know is we can’t establish contact with an LY16 holding facility. I have authorization for a clean-up operation. We’re about to start activating the RAs. Major, you’ll be leading the operation.”

She nodded. Since they’d dragged her out of bed at WTF o’clock, she’d assumed she’d be leading the operation. It wasn’t her first clean-up, and she doubted it would be her last.

“The RAs aren’t active yet? I’m assuming we’re headed out by road?” She tapped the map idly. The hospital wasn’t too far from the camp. A couple of hours hard drive and they’d be there.

Fitzgerald nodded and slipped his pen into his pocket. “Yes, air suppression teams are already in the air. Orders to shoot anything on foot and maintain a cordon around the hospital. Follow me. We’ll head to the activation area. I think you’ll want to see this.”

“Of course, sir.”

She hid her surprise and followed him without argument. This was new. Even as team commander she’d never been invited through to the activation area before, and as a Blood it was normally off limits to her, as were the Lycan labs. A feeling of unease filled her as she filed after them like a good little soldier. Whatever this was, it couldn’t be good.

The sense of something wrong increased on the short walk through the maze that made the Operations building and had built into a fine crescendo as they entered the RA labs. By the time Fitzgerald opened the door to an observation room and gestured at her to precede him inside, not only had the hackles on the back of her neck risen, but the skin underneath was actively trying to crawl away as well.

What am I missing? What game is Fitzgerald playing now?

The room appeared empty, tables and chairs pushed against the wall behind the door. As always, she gave it a cursory glance before she stepped over the threshold. The look was a holdover from being human—these days, her enhanced senses told her the room was empty.

Like a moth drawn to the flame, she approached the window down the opposite side of the room. One-way glass, it didn’t show the normal view of acrid desert outside. Instead she saw a darkened room below. For the people crowding in behind her, all of them human, it would have been impenetrable darkness. Not for a nocturnal creature. Her eyes had adapted to take advantage of the small amount of available light. Pupils dilating, the room below came into view. It was painted in shades of gray and black thanks to the darkness, but she easily made out the containment couches and the figures lying upon them.

Details emerged from the monochromatic view. She could make out the darker gray of the body bags each figure lay upon. Her logical mind filled in the orange they used for the RA body bags. Orange for RA, white for Lycan, black for Blood. Even after death, the Project worked at keeping the three strains separate.

Terrified moans reached through the thick plate glass. The lights snapped on, making her wince and squint. She cast a glance over her shoulder. Fitzgerald smirked as his hand left a bank of light switches. Her eyes narrowed as she contemplated killing him, slowly. She’d rip his throat out if she weren’t convinced that stupidity, like the three viruses, was transmittable through blood.

“Oh my God, no. Please no. P-please…I beg of you. Don’t do this.”

The terrified whimper from the room stopped Antonia dead. Filled with utter terror, it was familiar. A man’s voice.

Garry’s voice.

It took her an eternity to turn, as she prayed that she’d heard incorrectly. It wasn’t Garry. It couldn’t be her med-tech, the guy who had looked after her since her accident, strapped to a bed with the rest and about to be turned into the living dead.

“Please…someone help me. There’s been a mistake. I’m Garry Stephens. I work here!”

Her hope cut off dead as he said his name. He was in the middle, in full view from the window, flanked on each side by other couches. They were all occupied. Each had an orange jump-suited figure lying on an orange body bag. Color coordination, she liked it.

The other subjects lay silently, barely moving, with their eyes wide and pupils dilated. Death-row prisoners. All drugged out of their skulls to mimic the humane death they should have undergone. Instead, the Project had appropriated their bodies for “scientific research”.

She snorted to herself. The government had always concealed weapons research under that banner. Garry was different, though. He wasn’t drugged, still in the clothes she’d seen him in the day before, and terrified.

Her gaze snapped to Fitzgerald as he came to stand next to her. “What’s he doing in there? He’s a member of staff.”

“I’m aware of that.” The colonel turned his head to look at her, and Antonia read the answer in his eyes. Garry wasn’t in there because he’d done anything wrong. He was there because of her.

He’d die for her mistake, whatever the hell it had been.

“Oh, for fucks sake. You can’t do this.”

Her words exploded out of her, escaping before she could censor them.

“If I’ve done something wrong, punish me. Not him.”

“I think you need to remember who you’re talking to, Major Fielding.”

Fitzgerald’s voice seemed to whip out in the sudden silence of the room. Even Garry, on the other side of the thick plate glass, fell silent as though he could sense the standoff taking place mere feet from him.

“Dr. Stephens violated one of our prime directives within the Project and allowed himself to get too close to his subjects.” Fitzgerald’s lip curled as he raked a scathing glance over her, leaving her in no doubt about his feelings.

She barely managed to catch her answering snarl in time.

“Subjects?” Voice light, she gave him a poker face to look at again. She only just managed it, the air around her virtually humming with her anger. “I thought the politically correct term was patients.”

Fitzgerald’s eye started to twitch at the corner, a reddish purple flush blooming over his skin like a sunrise over the desert. Antonia didn’t drop her gaze like a good little minion. Just watched as the red turned redder and a wave of purple washed down his neck.

His heart pounded out a furious and angry beat as his blood pressure rose, the heat of the red fluid within the thin casing between it and her fangs a siren’s call. Perhaps he’d do them all a favor and burst something critical. If that happened, all operations would be off. The cleanup would be shunted to another facility, the RAs wouldn’t be needed and Garry would be off the hook.

Just long enough for her to get him the hell out of here.

As she watched, Fitzgerald got it together. Rolling his neck, he closed his eyes for a second. A whiff of emotion-laden sweat assaulted her nostrils as he pulled at his uniform collar.

He opened his eyes to look directly at her, and Antonia read her own death in his eyes. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but sometime soon he’d find a way to have her killed.

This time for good.

“Remember your place, Major.”

This time his voice was calm as he turned back to the window. Lifting a hand, he flicked an intercom switch next to the glass.

“Start the procedure.”

She stood, frozen into place, as she watched the machinery in cradles on the ceiling swing into action. The virus delivery machinery. She’d seen it before, but in the Bloods area there was one machine per room rather than the whole-scale factory production line here.

At the first whir of machinery, Garry’s head whipped around. Craning back, he watched as the delivery units rolled forward on the tracks. He paled, a wordless moan of terror streaming from his lips. Eyes wide with panic, he bucked and fought in the restraints as the unit crawled ever nearer. All around him the blank-eyed prisoners stared unseeing at the ceiling above.

Antonia curled her hands into fists at her sides, nails biting into her toughened palms. She couldn’t let them do this…couldn’t let them infect him for no reason.

Half turning, she caught the eye of the guard at the back of the room. Instead of watching the room below, he held her gaze. One forefinger tapped his holstered pistol pointedly. The message was horribly obvious. Suck it up, or deal with a hollow point.

She turned back to the window, ignoring the colonel next to her, and forced herself to watch as the one person she counted as something approaching a friend was killed. Murdered.

His fighting didn’t achieve anything. The gurney didn’t move. Exhausted, he stopped, eyes wide and pupils dilated as the unit trundled into place above him. It stopped with a click. As the needle started to descend, a dark stain spread over his pants at the groin.

“Awwww, bless him,” Fitzgerald mocked. “So scared of the widdle needle he pissed his pants.”

She grit her teeth so hard she was surprised they didn’t break. Fitz was a dead man. She didn’t know how, when or where, but she would make sure of it. And, his death wouldn’t be an easy one.

The needle reached the end of its track. Garry closed his eyes. Antonia refused to. She refused to do him the dishonor of turning away.

Fluid built up on the tip of the needle, and grew until it was a greenish-black ball. It fell. Garry flinched as it hit his cheek, making a little splash-mark.

Go easy my friend, and rest assured you will be avenged.

He gasped as the fluid disappeared into his skin. She knew how virulent the RA-17 virus could be, but even Antonia was surprised at how swiftly it killed. With seconds the room filled with gasping as Garry and those around him fought for breath with lungs no longer able to process oxygen. They spasmed, backs arching and heels drumming. One after the other, they slumped lifeless to the gurneys.

Dead. For now.

* * *

If nothing else the Project was an efficient machine. Within minutes of Antonia leaving Operations, a transport convoy was being assembled. Already in combat uniform, she made a quick trip back to her room for her tactical-rig.

“Fuck!”

Once inside the relative privacy of her room, she released the tumult of emotions warring inside her. She slammed her fist into one of the rooms support columns. Her head and shoulders were showered with powdered concrete from the force of the blow.

They’d killed him. They’d killed Garry. All for talking to her. Fitzgerald was a dead man. She’d kill him slowly…tear his throat out and lap the blood up as he watched her with dying eyes. Or tear his intestines out through his ass, just to watch him whimper and scream like a little girl. She wrinkled her nose. No, scratch that last. She wanted nothing to do with that man’s ass.

A heavy sigh on her lips she pushed away from the column. Right now she couldn’t afford wet dreams of killing that sniveling little bastard. She had a job to do. Her last. Then she was coming back and going on a hunt—for a full-bird colonel.

She left the room completely in control. On the surface, anyway. Her tac-rig slung over her shoulder and rifle in her arms, she returned to the transport area to find the RA crate already loaded.

Coming to a stop next to the transport officer, she looked around the assembled vehicles.

“How we doing for time?”

He looked up with a start. “Huh? Oh, sorry, Major, I didn’t see you there. We’re good. The payload is already strapped down. We’re just waiting on a driver, and then you’re hot to trot.”

She nodded. “I’ll wait in the cab.”