Crouching low, McKinley found Packard’s pulse, compared it to Rogers’s, and shook his head. Sometimes, he really hated his job. He stood and hefted Rogers over his shoulder, then grabbed Packard by the back of his trousers. Damned Circ weighed a ton.
An hour later, he called his contact. “Done,” he said. “Now we sit back and wait for the fallout.”
Sabrina used the strength Pearl had given her and combined it with the savvy that had saved her ass time and time again. In her human form once more, she made it to the industrial park surrounding the lab in six hours. She would have been there sooner if she’d been able to find clothes that fit better than the loose sweatpants and tight tank top she’d stolen from an irate jackass and his by-the-hour lady friend at the Gas ’N Go. Then again, a naked woman couldn’t be too choosy.
At least the ancient Camaro had made it without breaking down. She parked the thing where she normally met Harry. Seeing no one around, she remembered the map she’d committed to memory. The rarely used underground entrance would work.
To her astonishment, she’d remained in control of her faculties while on the run, even when changed. The need to kill and maim hadn’t returned. She felt better than she had in days, so maybe there was more to Doc’s secret syringe than a mere controlling agent.
Praying he could work the miracles his team bragged about, she hurried toward the underground entrance. But when she stepped into the small alcove hiding the door, she froze. She smelled Derrick. Granted, in her human form her senses were muted, but she’d know that man anywhere. Derrick had been here. Right here.
Her instincts told her to ignore Derrick and enter the passage. Which didn’t make sense. Wasn’t the Circ instinct there to preserve her? It had never steered her away from Derrick before. But if Derrick was here, he must have been here under his own free will, because she didn’t sense danger to him or from him.
Totally weird. Her skin crawled, and she had an insane notion she was being watched.
Hurrying her decision, she pushed through the door and raced down the dark corridor in silence. She thanked her night vision, as well as the flickering floor lights every fifteen feet that provided enough light to see by. Several twists and turns later, she found herself in the subbasement.
One of the major flaws in this asinine plan.
The rogues would smell her, a female Circ. And they’d want. They’d be loud, and though their cages were soundproof, cameras tracked their progress twenty-four hours a day.
With no other recourse but to brave it out, she walked past a storage closet and found a lab coat. Shoving her arms into the overlarge jacket, she thanked its length for hiding her ill-fitting clothes, only exposing her from the knee down. Her bare feet were another issue, but one she’d deal with when she had to. Thank God for thick Circ skin.
“Hey, where’ve you been, Sabrina?” Ed Hashton asked in surprise. He held a clipboard in one hand, a steaming mug of coffee in another. “Simon didn’t mention you’d be in tonight.
I thought you were training down in Alexandria?” So Pearl had appointed Simon Dunn her role. She couldn’t imagine Dunn taking blood samples, but he liked working around rogue Circs. Made sense for Pearl to assign him to the monsters down here.
“He stuck me on the midnight detail.” She grimaced, and Ed laughed. She couldn’t stand the asshole. He was one of the guys who’d asked her out. He leered at the Circ females when they were brought down here, but he didn’t have the balls to do more than torture them from behind a thick glass wall. He’d delay their food and force extra drugs into them, and he never failed to watch a performance when Simon made the rounds. She even suspected he got off on watching the male rogues sexually perform. According to rumor, Ed only pretended to like girls.
“What happened to your feet?”
Trust Ed to notice her lack of shoes. She opened her mouth to lie, then noticed his badge. He’d been promoted to green-one-eight. He had access.
“Fuck it.” She decked him right in the face. He cried out and clutched his bleeding nose. She hit him twice more, and he shut up. She dragged him to the closet, bound him with duct tape, and shoved a dirty rag in his mouth. Then she stole his clipboard, his shoes, and his ID badge.
Sabrina grinned. The shoes fit.
She walked back outside and continued down the hallway. The rogues stopped as she moved, scenting her as only they could. She didn’t understand how most of them did anything with such twisted brains. But Pearl had perfected his monster-making serum. The new EP12 for a fucked-up generation. These rogues were the worst of the worst. None of them even remotely resembled a human, a complete wash for infiltrating enemy camps. All of them had pitch-black skin, red eyes, and twisted hands or feet. A few had what looked like cloven hooves, which were in fact twisted talons that had merged and split and looked painful.
Several of the males flashed fangs as she passed, a few others stroked themselves. By the time she’d reached the end of the hallway, one had ejaculated against the glass viewing wall.
While disgusted, she also pitied the creatures. They knew nothing but need and hunger. Killing them would be the merciful thing to do. But that wasn’t her goal tonight.
She’d leave that for Doc and his men. For Derrick.
She hurried past the elevators and entered a corner stairwell. Not wanting to be caught in the elevators, which had cameras that showed every corner of the space, she knew exactly where the cameras were mounted in here. She kept her head down and fiddled with her clipboard while she moved, hoping to appear like a preoccupied scientist. This particular stairwell led to the ground and secondary levels but wouldn’t grant her access to Pearl’s private office on the third floor.
Moving quickly, she didn’t run into anyone, not that she expected to. Except for the basements, most of the lab worked on regular time: nine-to-five hours, with a few late-night employees -- processors -- who ran testing equipment. So long as she avoided the processing wing and security, she just might make it without incident.
She reached the second floor and quickly walked toward the executive stairwell at the rear. She’d need a password to enter, and thanks to Ed, she had one. She swiped his code along the security box and entered the stairwell. Unable to avoid the camera in here, she smiled into it and walked confidently up the stairs. Anyone seeing it would think she belonged, unless they’d been ordered to kill or capture her on sight. Then she was screwed.
Nice plan, her beast snarled, not liking the smell or the feel of this place. Once more Derrick’s scent lingered, and she had the oddest notion he was near.
She hurried up the stairs and tried to use the password on the door to the executive suite. But Ed’s card wouldn’t allow her entry. She thought a moment, then said to hell with it. She used her enhanced strength and pulled the steel door off its hinges. As expected, an alarm sounded.
She ran down the hallway, right into a security guard’s waiting arms.
“Ms. Torrence?” the tall man asked, perplexed. “What happened?” Not “what are you doing here?” or “you’re coming with me.” Apparently, Pearl had kept her deception a closely kept secret. She recognized the guard as Foreshine, one of Pearl’s reliable men. “A-a rogue Circ ripped the door off the stairwell, and then pushed Ed Hashton down the stairs. He’s still in there! I know we aren’t supposed to be here, but I’ve just returned with vital information for Dr. Pearl, and Ed wanted to talk to him about one of the subjects not doing well, and --”
“Wait here,” Foreshine said, his no-nonsense tone brisk. He pulled out his walkie-talkie to radio for help and reached for his gun.
The minute he turned away from her, she knocked him out with a swift blow to the back of the head. Her arm felt as solid as lead, and by the way he went down, she imagined it felt like lead to Foreshine too.
She dragged him into the nearest closet and left him there.
Realizing her plan was not only stupid, but growing more hazardous by the minute, she pretended the earsplitting alarm didn’t exist and ran to Pearl’s office. To her surprise, the door was unlocked. She darted inside and closed the door behind her. What she found when she got there upset her so much she couldn’t take another step.
Derrick and Hale lay on the ground, as still as death. Elliot Pearl sat slumped in his chair, his throat cut from ear to ear. His eyes were missing. Blood pooled underneath his rolling chair, creeping closer to Derrick, which meant he’d only recently been killed.
“Had to be a rogue Circ,” she mumbled, trying to shake the terror from her limbs.
Derrick wasn’t dead. She’d feel it if he were. She forced herself to kneel next to him and put her hand on his chest.
The alarm ceased. A bad sign.
But she felt Derrick’s heart beating sluggishly beneath her hand and smiled in relief.
“Thank you, God.”
“How about, thank you, McKinley?” a deep voice rasped from the corner of the room.
She jumped in fright but remained by Derrick, gratified to hear Hale moan softly.
“Yeah, he’s okay too. You’re welcome.”
“What the hell is going on?” She saw Pearl out of the corner of her eye and cringed.
Her beast hated the scent of his blood. It smelled wrong, somehow.
“How you feeling, Sabrina?” McKinley drawled and stepped closer. Even in the shadows, his eyes glowed. A hint of a fang showed when he smiled. The fear she’d been holding at bay assailed her, a potent perfume, thanks to the man/beast staring at her like his next meal. She didn’t like this. Derrick and Hale so vulnerable. McKinley so near.
“I’m f-fine.” He took a step closer, and she called on her inner beast for strength. “Not another step closer, or you’ll regret it,” she snarled, pleased when he stopped.
“Well, how about that? The she-cat has claws after all.” He seemed as if he approved, which confused the hell out of her.
She glanced at her hands and saw them both larger and sharper -- her fingernails had turned into claws. Yet she hadn’t summoned her change. It simply happened.
McKinley shifted, and she smelled something raw. Something wrong.
“Did you kill him?” She nodded to Pearl.
“No.” McKinley’s eyes flashed with rage. “I think this did.” He leaned down and threw a black carcass at the wall. The rogue crashed into it and slid to the floor, a bundle of broken bones and bloody flesh. It didn’t resemble anything human at all.
“But how did it get out?” Why are you here? What did you do to my mate and my friend? Even as she thought it, she knew it to be true. She considered the members of Circe’s Recruits to be her friends. Coming back here showed her what life could have been like if she’d stayed, or worse yet, if Doc and Circe’s Recruits had been anything other than the good guys.
“That’s a very good question. One I mean to find out.” One minute, McKinley stood by the wall, the next, he had her in his arms, his face just inches from hers. He held her off the ground, his hands on her shoulders. He acted as if she weighed nothing. “So why are you here, Sabrina?” He breathed her name, and goose bumps danced over her flesh. The urge to change was strong, but instinct told her not to.
She didn’t see the point in lying. He’d either kill her, or he wouldn’t. With McKinley, nothing was a sure bet. “I’m here to get the password folder to Pearl’s files. Some of the files I stole won’t work without it.”
McKinley leaned close and sniffed her. She automatically jerked back but stopped when he growled. He gently set her on her feet, surprising her. Then he shoved her lab jacket out of the way and put his mouth to her shoulder, but he didn’t bite. The sensation of having sex while not having sex struck her hard, and she wavered on her feet while he kept his mouth over her. She shuddered in climax, which made no sense, and then McKinley withdrew his mouth and tugged the coat back in place.
“Sorry,” he murmured, pointing to a spot of blood that darkened the white jacket. “It’ll fade.”
“Wh-what?”
“Mmm. Smart man, that Doc.” McKinley drew back a few paces. “You’re swimming in Packard’s blood. You want my advice? Full-body transfusion. But it’s your call.” He handed her a memory stick and kicked Pearl’s chair to the side. The chair bumped into the dead rogue, and Pearl sat there, nearly on top of his creation. McKinley sneered at the bodies, then swore.
“Hurry the fuck up, Sabrina. Unless you’d like to continue where I left off?” He gazed knowingly at her chest, as if he could see her hardened nipples through the oversize lab coat.
Then again, with McKinley, maybe he could. “Just copy everything from the K drive onto that stick. That’s what you need.”
Sabrina shook herself and hurried over to Pearl’s computer, surprised to find it up and running without the normal firewalls intact. She quickly downloaded the information she needed. She didn’t have the time to hunt down Pearl’s password folder, since he renamed it every few days, though he kept the contents the same. She’d have to trust McKinley as to what to download. Not as if I have any choice.
“He’s been hacked,” McKinley said. “Probably by whoever let the mutant free.” He narrowed his stare, now fixed on Pearl’s body.
While he did whatever it was he was doing, Sabrina finished copying files, removed the memory stick, and stuffed it into Hale’s front pocket. She didn’t have one, and Derrick wore ripped trousers. Knowing time was fast running out, she tried to revive Derrick.
He groaned but didn’t come to.
“Fuck.” McKinley shoved something in his own pocket and turned to face her. “Hold on.” He picked up the phone and dialed someone. “This is McKinley. We have a breach.” The alarm immediately sounded again. He glared at her but flashed a smile. What the hell did that mean? “The cameras are down. I’ve got two casualties and one priority escapee on the loose. A processor and a security guard, both dead. Put me through. Now.” There was a pause before he continued. “I have proof members of Circe’s Recruits broke through our security -- shit.” He raised a gun -- where did he get a gun? -- and fired two rounds into Pearl’s face, right through his eye sockets. “I’ve got the rogue on the run, but he’s heading upstairs.” Upstairs? Sabrina thought this was the top floor. “I can take him out if I hurry. But I can’t contain him and find Doc’s boys at the same time. What do you want me to do?”