Chapter 2 - The Lab

Third Person POV

Alpha Radar came back from his thoughts when he pulled the last book from the shelf with nothing to show for it. Anger bubbled up inside of him, turning his eyes black letting his wolf reach the surface. He grabbed the side of the bookshelf and pulled but the wood did not budge from the wall. It just slid to the side showing a small slit of a doorway. Radar’s eyes widened in shock as he pushed hard on the side of the bookshelf the rest of the way exposing a passageway leading down into the depths under the packhouse.

 Radar and Leon took a moment to gather their thoughts, before Beta Leon spoke. “I will call some warriors to go down there, Alpha, just in case it’s a trap.”

“No… that won’t be necessary.” Said Alpha Radar, waving his Beta to follow him. “Let’s not involve anyone until we venture in ourselves.”

With a nod, Beta Leon followed Alpha Radar down the narrow passageway; their wolves close to the surface of their minds ready in case of an unexpected attack. Once at the bottom, they discovered a large metal door partly open; the smell of chemicals and blood lingered in the air.

Stepping through the metal door, they found themselves in a large room with a high-tech laboratory centered in the middle and individual workstations and microscopes lining the walls. The overhead light flickered in and out as they surveyed the scene. Several men and women in lab coats were laying on the white tile floor, their bodies in mangled positions in a pool of their own blood.

“How did this place get under the packhouse?” Beta Leon wheezed out.

“Your guess is as good as mine, but it looks like these people were recently killed. The blood has just started to become tacky to the touch.” Radar touched the corner of blood from the floor with his index finger and then wiped it on the dead man’s lab coat.

As the two men walked further into the room trying to take everything in, a small swirl of smoke was ribboning into the air from the far corner. A feeble fire was cooking on top of the large metal desk. Several large binders stacked on top of each other, making a poor attempt to light a fire.

“Looks like someone was in too much of a hurry and didn’t build the fire properly.” Beta Leon scoffed and snuffed out the flame with the palm of his hand. The single flame instantly dissipated.  Picking up one of the binders, he flipped through the papers with a frown on his face. “What is all this?”

Alpha Radar leaned over to look. Rune symbols, scientific calculations, pictures of animal anatomy and human anatomy with notes littering the pages, as well as dark witchcraft spells and maps of pack locations. On and on, it went for each notebook that had similar content.

“Looks like some sort of experiment?” Radar spoke after flipping through one of the notebooks. “But several pages have been torn and missing. None of these pages make any sense. Where are the rest of the pages?” They glanced around but couldn’t find anything.

At the bottom of the stack was a black leather-bound book with the numbers 3-9-9 scratched into the front cover. It looked like a daily journal. Flipping it open, a gold cuff was tucked between the pages. Alpha Radar eyed it carefully. It reminded him of a woman’s bangle bracelet. There were tiny dark purple and black shards of stones embedded into the gold cuff forming intricate patterns. The rough stone etchings felt warm to the touch; magic pulsed through the cuff like a heartbeat. It called too Alpha Radar. He pocketed the gold cuff and journal for the time being and continued the search into the next room.

 Beta Leon clutched the cold metal handle of the door in anticipation. From the current evidence, this place held nothing good. What horrors could be behind a door labeled “Pets.”? After preparing his demeanor, he turned the handle wide to reveal another room. Even with their wolf sensitive vision, they couldn’t see into the darkness of windowless room; the only light came from behind the silent pair of men.

Alpha Radar felt down the wall and found the shape of a light switch. With a quick flick, the room was bathed semi-light with one single hanging light. To the men’s horror, the room was filled with “cages?” he whispered.  

Several rows of cages filled the musky-scented room. Some of the cages had dead, half-shifted bodies… lying motionless on the concrete floor. Wait… maybe they were beasts? No… maybe humans? He wasn’t sure. As his eyes moved from cage to cage, his heart sank even deeper. The cages were either empty with blood stains on the walls or were the final resting place of a dead shifter. Shifter wolves, bears, cats, foxes, and many more scattered throughout. All dead. “How did any of them get down here without anyone’s knowledge?” Alpha Radar spoke into the silence. “Wait… Could this be where the missing shifters were held?”

One cage caught the men’s undivided attention. It was the second-to-last cage from the back of the room. Several numbers were scratched out along the side of the cage: 6, 99, 145, on and on, but the final number was 399.

Inside the cage was coated in grime from the unsanitary conditions. The smell of human waste and mold left a putrid sting in the men’s noses. But what kept their gazes was what was tucked in the very corner of the cold bleak cage. It was a very small… child. The child couldn’t be more than seven or eight years old; curled up in a ball facing away from the men... unmoving. A dirty tattered blanket covered the small motionless body leaving only a tussle of dirty, matted hair and head sticking out from the sheet.

Radar’s heart shattered as Leon let out a muffled curse word and turned his back to wipe his eyes.

After a few moments of silence to mourn the loss of so many lives, Leon finally spoke up, “What should we do with all the dead bodies?”

Radar couldn’t answer at first, he couldn’t speak; his words were caught in his throat as a tear fell along his bearded cheek. He closed his eyes, listening to his wolf howl out in sorrow for the fellow shifters.

‘So many dead...’ Delta whined in Radar’s mind, ‘so many… even a child… dead…’

‘I know Delta, I know.’ Radar responded to his wolf. ‘We have avenged their deaths by killing the Dark Alpha. They won’t be forgotten… They are with their creators. The Dark Alpha is no more.’

“Leon, let’s get our warriors and available pack members to come and help clean and close this place off. We can burn the bodies...” He paused for a moment before continuing. “I think we should take some of the evidence of this place, but we can discuss that at a later time. Let’s get out of…” He trailed off when he caught movement from the corner of his eye. He turned wide eyed to see a pair of smokey gray eyes blinking up at him. His lungs stopped working as the little body came into view. One of them was still alive.