For a moment, no one moved.
The creature in the cage didn't lunge, didn't snarl, didn't throw itself against the bars the way Ithilien expected. It simply watched them, its breathing slow and uneven, its body too still for something that was supposed to be unstable.
That was what made it worse.
Ithilien felt the unease settle deeper under her skin, spreading quietly, like something she couldn't shake off no matter how much she wanted to. Her gaze moved over it again, more carefully this time, trying to understand what exactly she was looking at.
It wasn't fully transformed.
Not like a wolf.
Not like the thing that had attacked the house.
Its limbs were elongated, the proportions slightly off, but not grotesque enough to make it completely unrecognizable. Its skin looked wrong—too tight in some places, too loose in others, as if it hadn't decided what shape it wanted to hold. The chest rose and fell unevenly, the rhythm off just enough to feel unnatural.
And the eyes—
The eyes were the worst part.
Empty, but not gone.
Something was still there.
"It's not feral," Ithilien said quietly, more to herself than to the others.
Kidd didn't look at her.
"I can see that."
His voice was low, controlled, but there was tension in it now, something sharpened, ready.
Levi shifted slightly to the side, scanning the rest of the room, his posture tightening.
"There's more than one," he said under his breath.
Ithilien followed his gaze.
He was right.
Once she knew what to look for, she started to see them—shapes in the shadows, behind partially collapsed enclosures, movement where there shouldn't have been any. Some of them were barely alive, their bodies curled in on themselves, breathing shallow and irregular.
Others—
watched.
The realization settled slowly, heavily.
This wasn't a single experiment gone wrong.
This was a process.
"Jesus…" Zane muttered again, quieter this time.
Ithilien took another step forward before she could stop herself, drawn by something she didn't fully understand. The creature in front of her shifted slightly, its head tilting as if trying to focus on her more clearly.
For a second—
she thought it might speak.
It didn't. Instead, it moved.
The metal groaned before she even fully registered what was happening, the bars bending outward under a sudden, violent force. The creature didn't hesitate once the opening was wide enough—it forced its way through, tearing skin against jagged edges without reacting to the pain, and hit the ground hard.
"Kidd—"
She didn't finish.
He was already moving.
The shift wasn't complete—not fully—but enough. His body changed just enough to give him the edge, strength and speed bleeding through his human form as he intercepted the creature before it could reach her.
They collided with a brutal force that echoed through the room.
The thing moved differently up close.
It wasn't just fast—it was adaptive.
Its movements corrected mid-strike, angles shifting unnaturally as it adjusted to Kidd's positioning, learning in real time, reacting not just to what he did but to what he was about to do.
It shouldn't have been able to do that.
Kidd drove it back anyway.
His hand caught it by the throat, slamming it into the nearest metal frame hard enough to dent it, but the creature twisted immediately, its limbs bending in ways that made Ithilien's stomach turn as it slipped free and came at him again.
"Don't let it close in!" Levi snapped.
Too late. It was already there.
Kidd took the hit, the impact forcing him a step back, claws raking across his side—not deep enough to slow him, but enough to draw blood. The scent hit the air instantly, sharp and grounding, snapping something in Ithilien into place.
She moved.
Tauriel surged forward in a blur of motion, her shift faster than thought, her body low and precise as she cut across the creature's path, forcing it to split its focus. She didn't aim to overpower it—that wasn't the point.
She aimed to disrupt it.
To break its rhythm.
The creature turned toward her immediately.
That was its mistake.
Kidd took the opening.
He hit it from the side, driving it down again, this time harder, his grip shifting to control instead of force, pinning it just long enough for Ithilien to circle back in.
Together, they forced it into a corner of the room, away from the others, away from the open cages.
It fought like something that refused to die.
Not wild.
Not desperate.
Just… persistent.
Relentless in a way that made it feel less like an animal and more like a task being carried out.
Tauriel lunged again, her teeth finding its shoulder, not deep enough to kill but enough to anchor it, to hold it in place for the fraction of a second Kidd needed.
That was all it took.
This time, when he went for its throat, he didn't hesitate.
The snap was clean.
Final.
The body went slack almost instantly, collapsing under its own weight as whatever had been driving it shut down all at once.
For a moment, the room was still again.
But it wasn't the same stillness as before.
Now it was heavier.
Because they all knew this hadn't been the only one.
And somewhere in the shadows behind them—
something else moved.
For a few seconds after the creature went still, no one moved.
The sound of rain against the building filtered faintly through the walls, mixing with the uneven breathing of the pack, the metallic scent of blood still heavy in the air. Ithilien shifted back first, her body returning to human form slower this time, the adrenaline leaving behind something colder, more focused.
She didn't look at the others.
Her attention was already moving past the body on the floor, past the broken cage, toward the deeper part of the room.
Because if there was one—
there had to be more.
"Spread out," Kidd said quietly, his voice steady again, though the edge hadn't disappeared. "Check everything. No one goes alone."
The pack moved immediately, splitting without question, each of them taking a different section of the room and the adjacent corridors. The efficiency of it was almost unsettling, the way they transitioned from chaos to control as if it had never been anything else.
Ithilien didn't wait for permission.
She moved deeper into the facility, her steps slower now, more deliberate, her senses stretched thin, trying to catch anything that didn't belong. The further she went, the more the air changed, the chemical scent thickening, sharper here, layered with something sterile that clashed violently with the blood.
She pushed open another door.
The room beyond was smaller.
Metal tables lined the center, some overturned, others covered in scattered equipment that looked hastily abandoned. Cabinets stood open along the walls, their contents partially emptied, as if someone had been searching for something—or making sure nothing useful was left behind.
This wasn't a holding area. This was where they worked.
Ithilien stepped inside slowly, her eyes scanning everything, trying to make sense of the fragments. A clipboard lay on the floor near one of the tables, its pages damp but still legible.
She crouched, picking it up.
The handwriting was sharp, clinical.
Detached.
Her eyes moved over the lines quickly at first, then slower, the meaning settling in piece by piece.
Subject: M-17Status: Stable under observationResponse: Unusual toleranceNotes: Cooperative
Her breath caught.
M.
She flipped the page.
More notes. More observations.
But the same pattern repeated—aggression, instability, failure… and then, suddenly—
Deviation.
Her fingers tightened slightly on the paper.
"Find something?"
Kidd's voice came from behind her, quieter now, but closer than she had expected.
She didn't turn immediately.
"Yeah," she said, her voice lower than usual. "I think I did."
He stepped into the room, his presence filling the space without needing to push, his gaze already moving over the surfaces, the equipment, the signs of use that hadn't been erased well enough.
"What is it?"
Ithilien stood slowly, turning just enough to face him, the paper still in her hand.
"They were tracking subjects," she said. "Different responses to the virus."
"That we figured out," he replied.
She shook her head once.
"No… not like this."
She held the clipboard out to him.
"Look at the designation."
Kidd took it, his eyes moving quickly over the page, his expression tightening just slightly as he reached the same line she had.
Subject: M-17
A beat.
"Marco," he said quietly. The name hung there.
Ithilien nodded.
"He's not just in their system," she continued, her voice steadier now, almost clinical in contrast to what she was actually feeling. "He's… different. They flagged him."
Kidd's gaze moved to the next line.
Cooperative.
His jaw tightened.
"He didn't fight," he said.
Ithilien's reaction was immediate.
"No."
"He wouldn't—"
She stopped herself.
Because the word was there.
Right in front of her.
Cooperative.
Her stomach twisted.
"There's more," she said quickly, stepping past him to the table, where a small monitor sat half-tilted, its screen cracked but not entirely dead. She pressed the power button out of instinct more than expectation.
For a second, nothing happened. Then a flicker.
And finally an image. The camera angle was fixed, slightly off-center, as if it had been set up in a hurry. The lighting was harsh, clinical, casting long shadows across the room it showed.
And then—
Marco stepped into frame.
Ithilien froze.
He looked tired. Paler than usual but unmistakably himself.
Her breath caught, her body going completely still as every other sound in the world seemed to drop away.
"I went with them willingly."
Ithilien's fingers curled at her sides.
"No…"
Kidd didn't say anything.
"If you're seeing this," Marco continued, glancing briefly off-camera before refocusing, "it means I didn't make it back in time."
Ithilien took a step closer to the screen without realizing it.
"They're not just experimenting on wolves," he said. "They're trying to stabilize it. Control it. Not just the transformation—the behavior."
A pause.
His expression shifted slightly.
Not fear.
Something more complicated.
"And I think I can help them do it."
The words landed harder than anything else.
The screen flickered. The image distorted.
Silence filled the room.
Ithilien stood there, staring at the dead screen as if it might come back to life if she just waited long enough. Behind her, Kidd exhaled slowly.
"That's not someone being held," he said quietly.
She turned sharply.
"No."
Her voice was low.
Cold.
But there was something breaking underneath it.
"He's buying time."
Kidd didn't argue. But he didn't agree either.
Because the evidence said something else.
And they both knew it.