Wolfen Domination (13 page)

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            Three times a week a guard came and took Erin to
an exercise room where she was allowed an hour to expend excess energy and work
to keep in shape.  Without a clock or a window in her cell to help her to
guesstimate the passage of time, it was hard to keep up with how many days
she’d been imprisoned or when to expect the events that made up her daily
routine.  And yet, Erin sensed that something was off the moment she heard the
mechanical click of the lock to her cell.

            She tensed, studying the guard suspiciously as he
stepped inside her cell, but she could see nothing outward that seemed to
indicate they had anything in mind for her.  It wasn’t until she’d obeyed his
demand to come with him and stepped outside the cell that she discovered she’d
been right to begin with--something was in the wind and it wasn’t going to be
something she would like.

            A lab tech stood just outside the door.  As she
stepped through the doorway, he grabbed her wrist and stabbed a syringe into
her arm.  By the time her brain had caught up with the surprise attack, the
drug was already circulating through her system and the world seemed to shift
around her.  Pocketing the syringe, he gripped her upper arm.

            “What’s that for?” Erin demanded, but the words
came out slurred.

            “Just a little something to keep you calm.”

            Alarm bells rang out.  If they were concerned
about her being calm, she was definitely in trouble.  She tried to struggle,
but she found she was already too uncoordinated and woozy to even give them
much of a challenge.

            Supporting her between them, the two men escorted
her to the elevator and took her up one level.  Despite the drug, Erin felt her
alarm escalate.  The holding cell where she was imprisoned was in the lowest
level of the facility.  She hadn’t been above that level since she’d arrived.

            Had they caught another Lycan?  Caught Jesse? 
Was she to be used to extract more specimens?

            She supposed she should have been at least a
little relieved when she saw this was not the case.  She wasn’t.  Although the
room they took her to didn’t appear the least bit extraordinary, she knew them
well enough by now to know better than to think it was a simple examination
room or that they had nothing more diabolical in mind than a physical to
determine her health.

            That suspicion was borne up by the fact that the
guards immediately dragged her to the examination table in the center of the
room.  Lifting her off her feet, they placed her on the cold hard surface and
held her down despite her attempts to pull free while a medical assistant
wearing a putrid green lab coat proceeded to strap first her arms and then her
ankles.

            “What’re you doing?  What’s happening?”

            Neither the guards nor the lab assistant answered
her.  The door opened at just that moment, however, and she turned to see who’d
come in.

            Dr. Wagner curled his lips in a smile she
supposed was to reassure her, though there was no warmth in it.  His eyes
looked as cold and reptilian as gator eyes.

            It was the first time she’d seen him since she’d
been recaptured and she felt ill with the hate that welled inside her, sick
with the power of her desire to tear him limb from limb.

            “Bastard!” she snarled at him, balling her hands
into fists and straining against the straps as he made his way to the foot of
the examination table and looked her and the situation over.

            Dismissing the guards with a jerk of his head, he
focused his attention on his lab assistant.  “No. No. No. We need her feet in
the stirrups for the procedure, Johnson,” he said, stepping back to watch the
technician critically as the man did as told and glancing at the guards by the
door disapprovingly several times.

            Obviously, he didn’t appreciate having the guards
inside his lab and just as evidently he knew it was useless to demand that they
leave the room.

            “Where’s my baby?  Where’s Joshua?” Erin
demanded, her voice a shrill scream now with fury that Wagner behaved as if she
was a piece of the furniture.

            He sent her a look of surprise and finally
frowned thoughtfully.  “Joshua.  Hmmm, that has a nice ring to it.  I’ll pass
it along.  They can put it in his records.  I can’t guarantee they’ll use it,
of course.  I’m fairly certain, considering what they have in mind for HL001,
that they’ll probably prefer just to use the clinical designation, but they may
not want to completely dehumanize him.”

            A mixture of horror and relief collided inside
Erin at his calm announcement--relief to at least discover that he was alive--horror
to realize what they had in mind for him, for despite the wild thoughts that
had plagued her since they’d taken him from her, she hadn’t truly accepted that
they could, and would, behave with such a complete disregard for human life.

            “Jesse will kill you,” she managed to say, though
she couldn’t deliver it with the fury she felt roiling inside of her.

            His brows rose and then came together in a
frown.  She saw he was trying to place the name and her heart sank.  “Jesse? 
The Lycan we had before?”

            He was astonished, she realized.  He must have
thought that Jesse was dead--and she’d just given away the fact that Jesse
wasn’t.  She wasn’t in any condition at the moment to consider the consequences
of her revelation, though, and in any case, Wagner stunned her by snickering
like a juvenile caught in the act of some malicious prank.  “This could be
awkward.”

            “What are you talking about?” Erin demanded,
struggling to lift her head to see what he was doing as he moved to the supply
cabinets at the end of the room at her feet and began searching for something.

            She saw when he turned at last that he was
holding a strange looking syringe.  He tapped it with one finger, smiling now
with a good deal of pride and excitement.  “I’ve a half dozen little Jesses
right here.”

            Erin stared at the syringe blankly as he set it
on a sterile tray and dropped the end of the table where she lay.  Fipping her
gown back to her waist, it took no more than a few seconds for the answer she
was seeking to present itself.  “Clones?” she demanded in disbelief as he
pulled a rolling stool up and settled on it, his face framed by her spread
thighs.

            “We hope to get three or four out of the batch,”
he responded absently.  “The hybrid might work better for us, but we need some
pure breeds before we’ll know that, don’t we?”

            “Clones!  You’re insane!” Erin exclaimed,
struggling against the restraints as he picked up antiseptic and began to swab
the skin around the mouth of her sex.  Frustrated when she couldn’t escape him,
she started screaming and cursing him.

            Wagner glared at her.  “This is a delicate operation. 
You must be still!”

            “I’m not just going to
let
you do this to
me, you fucking lunatic!” Erin screamed, trying to fight off the effects of the
sedative they’d given her.

            Furious, Wagner shot to his feet abruptly.  “I
can’t work like this!  Johnson, get another syringe and tranquilize her!”

            “Don’t you dare come near me with that thing, you
son of a bitch!” Erin cried out, twisting her head to watch as the technician
moved to the cabinets and began searching the drawer for a syringe and the medication
Wagner had ordered.

            “What’s that?” the guard demanded abruptly.

            It was several moments before Erin realized that
the men in the room with her had frozen like deer caught in the crosshairs of a
hunter’s rifle, their heads lifted to listen to some distant sound.

            Almost the moment Erin quieted to see if she
could hear whatever it was that had caught their attention, the alarm began to
blare.  Her heart jerked painfully at the high pitched sound and then began to
race with hopefulness and fear as she heard the sound of distant gunfire.

Chapter Seven

            The radios clipped to the guards’ belts set up a
squawk of static.  “All units, all units.  We’re under attack.  This is not a
drill.  Three men down.  I say again.  Three m--”

            The voice cut off abruptly, interrupted by
another burst of static.  One of the men grabbed the walkie-talkie off his belt
and jerked the door open, peering up and down the corridor outside.  “This is
twelve.  Say again.”

            Nothing but static greeted him.  He turned to
stare at Dr. Wagner, as if searching for an answer.  “Stay here.  Phillips,
come with me,” he added.  Barely glancing at the other guard to see if he was
complying with the order, he strode into the corridor.

            “Hold on a minute!” Wagner shouted even as the men
dashed out the door.  “You can’t leave us unarmed!”

            “What should we do?” Johnson demanded anxiously.

            Wagner stared at him a long moment.  “Nothing,”
he responded finally.  “I’m sure they’ll have everything under control in a few
minutes.  Did you get the syringe ready?”

            “You want to proceed?” Johnson demanded,
obviously outraged that Wagner could even consider going on as if the facility
weren’t under attack.

            “You’d prefer to cower in one corner?” Wagner
snapped.  “We’re perfectly safe.  We’re three levels below the entrance.  The
militia will contain the security problem.”

            “They won’t!” Erin put in.  “It’s Jesse.  I told
you he said he would come after you, you son of a bitch!”  She turned her head
toward the door then and began screaming Jesse’s name as loudly as she could,
crying for help.

            “Shut up!” Wagner glared at her.  “The Lycans are
fierce creatures, but he won’t make it past the lobby.  Get the syringe,
Johnson.  Sedate her and gag her.  We’ll continue with the implantation.”

            Johnson merely stared at Wagner for many moments,
as if trying to decide whether it was worth the risk of ignoring Wagner’s order
and fleeing.  Finally, he seemed to shake himself, his gaze zeroing in on Erin
as she continued to shout in the hope that Jesse would hear her and come to
her.

            Jerkily, he strode toward her and clamped a hand
over her mouth, then looked around distractedly for something he could use as a
gag.  Wagner strode to the supply cabinets and began jerking out one drawer
after another.  Finally, he turned with a roll of tape in one hand and a small
towel in the other and headed for her purposefully.

            Struggling, Erin managed to wrench free of
Johnson’s hand long enough to utter one last scream for help before Wagner
shoved the rolled towel in her mouth and held it tightly while Johnson wound
tape around it to hold it in place.

            “The sedative now, Johnson,” he said when Johnson
had finished securing the gag, “and we’ll just give that a minute to kick in--”
Wagner broke off before he’d finished what he’d been about to say as the sound
of pounding feet came to them from the corridor beyond the room.

            Something slammed into the door hard enough all
three of them jumped.  Johnson dropped the syringe from suddenly nerveless
fingers and whirled to stare at the door.  His eyes nearly bulged from his head
as he saw the steel door buckle.

            Someone screamed as the door suddenly gave way to
the pounding against it and nightmarish creatures filled the doorway.

            Letting out a bellow of rage, the Lycan in the
forefront surged toward Wagner.  Gripping him by the throat, he lifted the
scientist from the floor.  Wagner’s scream of terror was cut off abruptly. 
Blood surged into his face until his head looked in imminent danger of
exploding from the pressure.  He clawed at the arm holding him aloft.

            A second Lycan surged toward Johnson, swiping a blow
at him with bared claws.  His scream of terror became a gurgle as he was lifted
off his feet by the blow and flung across the room.  He hit the wall like a rag
doll, his arms and legs limp and dangling uselessly even before impact.  The
Lycan that had struck him surged toward the supply cabinets at one end of the
room.  The third Lycan that had entered the examination room had headed directly
for the equipment and was occupied with beating it into palm sized pieces.

            Erin dragged her gaze from the Lycans moving
around her to the one that stood near her feet, slowly squeezing the life out
of Wagner.  “Jesse?” she asked, her voice muffled by the gag.

            The Lycan whipped his head in her direction. 
After studying her broodingly for a moment, he dropped the limp form he was
holding and turned toward her.  Her heart managed a little gallop of fear in
spite of the sedative she’d been given earlier as one of his great paws settled
on her thigh.  Grasping the restraint, he snapped it as if it had been no more
than a thread and then moved to the next.