Ajax

“This doesn’t feel right,” Andre said aloud as they moved into the maze of hallways beyond the abandoned loading dock.

“I agree,” Ajax rumbled. “There is something odd here. Why are there no people, and no video cameras? The place should be crawling with both of them.”

They came to large doorway. Ajax peered inside.

“Hmm,” he said, motioning the others to follow him after scanning for any presence.

The cavernous room was filled with crates. There were several on the floor with the lids set aside. Ajax strolled up to the first one and began pawing aside the packing wrap to see the contents beyond.

“Well, this might explain things,” he said, stepping back for the others to take a look.

“These are high-end security cameras. Wireless and everything,” Milos remarked after a moment. “But I don’t get it,” he said.

“Don’t you see?” Ajax said. “Look around, look at all these brand-new crates.”

“No, I don’t get it,” Andre replied.

“We caught them with their pants down,” Ajax told them. “That has to be it. They must have just moved into this complex. I bet they didn’t even want to bring Ari and me here, but we didn’t leave them with a choice when we broke into the shipyard.”

The other two shifters looked at him.

“That’s why there are no security cameras. They haven’t had time to install them yet! They probably only have a few men here doing work to set it up. That’s why the place feels empty!” he said excitedly.

“Okay, makes sense,” Andre said cautiously. “So what now? If it’s a new place, are they going to have anyone here?”

Ajax stopped suddenly. “Damn, you’re right,” he said with a frown. “We need to look anyway,” he decided. “It’s possible that after Ari and I were caught at the shipyard that they condensed everyone from there to here, since that location was compromised.”

The others signaled their agreement and they snuck back into the hallway, moving further into the complex.

“Hey, stop!”

Ajax whirled in disbelief. From behind them, at the junction of hallways they had just passed, were three men in black uniforms.

“At them!” He had opened his mouth to say run, but when one of them pulled a tranquilizer gun, Ajax knew the best thing to do was close quickly. The men were clearly not shifters.

Like he had hoped, the squad was stunned as the three men charged down the hallway at them. Just before they got into range he heard the snap-hiss as one of the darts was discharged. There was no pain in his body, so it must have missed him. Ajax couldn’t take time to check on his companions. As long as one of them reached the trio of guards, they could be dealt with effectively.

His combat training and reflexes showed as Ajax was the first to them by several steps. The big shifter simply lowered his shoulder and drove it into the first guard, hitting him like he was on the gridiron. The pair barely slowed as Ajax slammed his opponent body-first into the third member of the squad. The two went down in a pile, and the angry shifter went about ensuring they never got up.

The grisly job finished, he whirled in place to deal with the third guard. But Andre had that in hand. The man was currently on the ground, curled up. Ajax frowned as he saw the man shaking.

“He’s still alive.” It was almost a question.

“Yes,” Andre said. “I figured after he’s able to breathe again, he can tell us where the prisoners are.”

“Good plan,” Ajax said, moving past him to the fourth limp body on the floor.

Rolling Milos over, he pulled the dart from the man’s chest.

“What do we do with him?” Andre asked.

“He’ll be awake by the time we’re done questioning this one,” Ajax said.

“And if he’s not?” Andre pressed.

“Then we slap him until he wakes up.”

“Wait, really?”

Ajax nodded. “Yeah, it shocks the system. Just be careful, he’ll be pissed when he wakes up. The brain still knows what’s going on, it just can’t control anything and he won’t really be aware of it, but he’ll come to and be ticked off right away.”

Andre just shook his head. “You’ve been through some shit man,” he said, crouching down beside the guard.

Ajax’s expression darkened. “Yeah, I suppose I have,” he agreed, joining the other shifter.

The guard was on his side, looking up at them.

“Okay, we’re going to make this easy,” Ajax said before Andre could start. He reached out and grabbed one of the guard’s hands. Prying it open, he secured the index finger within his own fingers. The guard struggled but he lacked the strength.

“Cover his mouth,” he told Andre.

The shifter looked at him strangely, but did as he was told.

Ajax snapped the man’s finger. The guard cried out in pain but it was muffled into nothing by Andre.

Ajax sat back and waited for the man to come to grips with his pain.

“Okay, so here’s the deal. Tell us where we can find the prisoners here, and all we’ll do is stab you full of tranqs. Lie to us, or refuse to tell us, and I’m going to break all the bones in your body, starting with the smaller ones and moving to the larger ones, until you tell us. It’s that simple. And if you make me do it the hard way,” he added calmly, “I’m going to kill you just for wasting my time. Got it?”

The guarded nodded, sweat beading from his forehead as he cradled the wreckage of his finger.

“Prisoners, now,” Ajax said, and motioned for Andre to remove his hand.

“Down there.” The guard’s voice was shaking, and he nodded to the side passage they had emerged from. “Elevator. Next floor down.”

“Then where?” Ajax asked threateningly.

The guard shook his head. “The whole level is a prison. It’s the only place, that and the medical area, that we’ve fully moved in to.”

Andre nodded at Ajax as their theory was confirmed.

“Who are you? What government agency do you work for?” Andre asked suddenly.

The guard looked at him. “Not government,” he said.

“Who’s your boss?” Ajax figured they may as well get as much information as possible.

The man shrugged.

Ajax snatched the hand with the broken finger and brought it closer to him.

“Wait! Wait!” the guard cried out. “I swear I don’t know. I only got the job three days ago. I don’t know any more than that. The only man I met is Mr. Levante, but I know he’s not the boss-boss. He just handles the guards at this location.”

Ajax nodded. He knew who the man was. He had to be the same one Arianna had dealt with when they were captured together.

“Where’s the control room?” Ajax asked, ignoring the curious look from the other shifter.

“One floor up. First right hallway, first door on your right.”

Ajax nodded and prepared to stand.

“You’ll need the keycard. Rick had it.” The guard motioned at his downed companions. “The one with the long hair,” he added at Ajax’s curious look.

Andre went searching for it.

“You’ve been very helpful,” Ajax said, standing up.

“So you’re going to let me—”

The man’s voice died as Ajax emptied the clip of tranquilizer darts into his body.

“Against my better judgment, yes, you’ll live,” he replied to the unfinished question.

Andre returned, handing a magnetic swipe keycard to Ajax.

“Go wake Milos up,” he said, a crazy idea forming in his brain.

He stood still, filtering out the scene in front of him as Andre slapped Milos twice, then yelped and went stumbling backward as the third shifter started awake and tried to fight his friend.

“Let’s go,” he told them a moment later, turning and heading down the passageway the guard had directed them toward.

“Don’t you think it might be a trap?” Andre asked as they jogged alongside him.

“It’s entirely possible it is. But if they knew we were coming, there won’t be much we can do to stop them. So, we just bull our way through the trap as best we can,” he said with a shrug.

“I’d really rather not get tranq’d again,” Milos complained. “I feel like shit.”

“You’ll be fine in another few minutes,” Ajax told him. “We burn through that shit so fast. You were out for less than five minutes. They only hit you with one dart. They clearly don’t know what they’re up against. They have the paperwork that tells them a dart will take down a shifter, but none of them realize how quickly we burn off stuff like that.”

Milos nodded, and Ajax could already see some of the gray queasiness fading from his face.

They rode the elevator down in silence.

“Stay behind me, single file,” Ajax ordered as the elevator dinged softly to signal its arrival.

The others listened to his command, the Alpha in him reemerging as he braced himself for whatever might be on the other side.

The doors below opened to reveal a much darker shade of concrete, and more of the same gray steel walls they had seen everywhere else. Whatever these guys were, he thought, they were consistent.

In front of them was a steel walkway that almost immediately split to the left and right. Ajax didn’t see anyone, so he crept forward. The room was a giant rectangle that went off to the left and the right. The steel walkway went around the perimeter, leaving the center completely open. Opposite of the elevator on the far side he could see a door and a room built into the concrete with windows overlooking the center pit.

“Look,” Andre hissed.

The shifter pointed into the middle of the room.

Clustered in the middle of the room were groups of steel-barred cages, inside of which were human forms. Multiple forms.

“There is more than one prisoner here,” he muttered, counting quickly. Almost a dozen.

“We’re going to have problems getting them all out of here,” Milos muttered unhappily.

“No we won’t,” Ajax said, thinking about the cargo truck that had been waiting at the loading dock. “You two, go deal with any guards in there,” he ordered.

“Where are you going?” they asked almost simultaneously.

“To free them,” he said, and leapt over the railing.

It was a fifteen-foot fall, and he landed gracefully on one knee, using his hands to help absorb the shock.

Rising up, he ignored the shocked comments of the shifters in the cages.

“Benjamin Martin,” he said loudly.

“Here.” The reply was tentative, but it came almost immediately.

“Hello,” he said to the tall dark-haired shifter.

“Do I know you?” the man asked cautiously.

“No, but our mutual flying friend asked me to poke around and look for you while I was in the area,” he said wryly.

“How nice of Valen,” Benjamin said with a wry smile. “The cells are all controlled by a terminal up there,” he said, pointing to the room Milos and Andre had disappeared into.

As if on cue, the doors clanged open.

Ajax flashed a thumbs up as he saw Milos’s questioning face appear in one of the windows, letting him know that whatever he did, it had worked.

“Okay folks, let’s go, time to get you out of here,” Ajax said loudly and calmly.

He wasn’t sure what he had expected from the imprisoned bunch, but he was caught by surprise when they immediately followed Benjamin’s lead as he exited his own cell. Interesting. He has taken control as Alpha over the others. Although the shifter was big, Ajax saw several others in the group who might have challenged him for the spot. None of them hesitated now, and the group as a whole seemed to have no issues putting Ajax in charge of the rescue attempts.

They took the stairs back up, instead of trying to mimic Ajax’s entrance in reverse. Most of the shifters seemed in good care, but as he watched them proceed, it became clear that several of them were in rough shape and were only coming along because they were being helped by others.

“What did they do to you?” he asked Benjamin softly as the pair of them brought up the rear, ensuring no one was left behind.

Andre and Milos were leading, along with several of the other harder-looking men in the group. As usual there were no female shifters. They were such a rare breed it would have shocked Ajax if they had managed to actually find one, let alone catch her.

“They took a lot of blood, plasma, and from some they took bone marrow, as best as I can tell.”

Ajax nodded. “Those would be the ones having the hardest time of it right now?”

Benjamin nodded.

“Hmm, not good. Why are they not healing as fast as they should?”

“Those ones were also injected with something. We don’t know what, but as you can see, our guess is that it’s some sort of agent to slow our healing.”

Ajax looked at him sharply. That wasn’t good. If this agency could weaponize such a formula, it would render many of the shifter advantages moot.

“We captured a guard at one point who maintained that this wasn’t a government agency,” he told Benjamin, eager to hear his thoughts.

“I would agree,” the other shifter said. “Too organized and efficient, not to mention ruthless, to be government-operated. I was the only one in this prison until earlier today. Or yesterday. I’m not really sure what time it is. But the way they hustled in additional cages, wired them up, and filled them with prisoners was scary. These guys are professionals. They might have government backing financially, but they will have some sort of plausible deniability I’m sure. We’ll never know the truth there.”

Ajax nodded. That explanation made sense, as did the information that whoever they were up against was using the current location as a newfound central staging point.

They waited for the others to take the elevator.

“We’re not going with them?” Benjamin asked.

“First we have to make a side trip to the control center. I intend to shut this place down.”

“Sounds like fun.” The other shifter rolled his shoulders to loosen them up. “It’s been a bit since I’ve been in a good old-fashioned fight.”