The Kill Box: K.C.
1167 Words
The armored SUV felt like a tomb of silence as we rolled through the industrial district. The air out here was thick with the smell of sulfur, and the scent of over-roasted coffee from the factory on the other side of the river. I could feel the pack bond vibrating through my body. It was a low-level hum that should’ve been comforting, but felt more like a countdown instead.
As we got within two blocks of the smelting plant, the “static” started to hit. It felt like a physical pressure against my eardrums. An invisible vice grip secured around my head. My enforcers gripped their weapons tightly, their knuckles starting to turn white. I could hear their heartbeats accelerating dangerously. I had to project a layer of Alpha calm just to keep them from snapping at each other before we even reached the gates.
My tactical headset cracked, then a voice came through, thin and tinny in my ear. It wasn’t Leon though, it was Tess. Her voice was tight, professional, but there was a fear laced in it that made my wolf growl. “K.C., listen to me. The plant is a lure. The brain is at the substation three blocks north of the safe house. They’re waiting for you to breach the perimeter so they can trigger a pulse that will bypass your mental shields. It’s a trap.”
“Tess, stay put, don’t do anything,” I tell her, but even as the words come out of my mouth, I know she’s already moving. She’s not the type to just stand idly by. I reach for one of Leon’s tablets that plugged into the middle console, and sure enough, the GPS shows one of the pack’s cars moving towards the substation.
I can’t turn the cars around. If I don’t hit the plant, they’ll likely kill Darian and use the relay anyways. I have to be the distraction so that she can have the opportunity to cut off the head.
“I hear you, Tess,” I rasped into the mic. “Two minutes. Just make sure there’s a city left to walk away from.”
“K.C., no, you have to wait,” she argued, her voice rising an octave in my ear.
“It’s okay, Tess,” I cut her off. “Do what you have to do.”
The fleet of SUVs rolled to a stop in front of a secondary loading dock. We weren’t using the front gates. As the engines cut, I said into the mic, “Tess… I love you.”
I left the headset in the car so that I wouldn’t have to hear her protests as we entered the building. Our boots hit the concrete floor of the building, and the lights flickered blue.
Grid-Keepers in tactical gear dropped from the catwalks. They’d been waiting to ambush us. They didn’t have typical military weapons. Instead, they carried silver-tipped harpoons and handheld sonic emitters.
I didn’t hold back this time. They wanted the Alpha, I was going to give it to them. The shift was instant and violent, fueled by the reservoir of the territory. The enforcers followed suit, and we became a blur of dark fur and ivory teeth, tearing through the “regulators” who thought they could cage a god.
I left Marcus behind to lead the enforcers in the battle on the ground floor while I worked my way to the central floor. I could feel the heat already rising. Tess had started the green status loop, and I could hear the capacitors starting to groan.
In the center of the room, Darian was still strapped to the chair, surrounded by pillars of glowing blue energy.
Darian looked up. He was a mess of blood and silver burns. His head lifted, and when his eyes landed on me, his lips pulled back into a gore-stained smirk. He didn’t say “thank you.” He didn’t say anything. He looked up at the ceiling and blinked once, slow and deliberate.
A digital timer on the wall flashed to life, synced to Tess’s remote trigger. 02:00… 01:59…
A couple of enforcers stumbled in behind me. “Get him up!” I directed. I looked at the pillars of energy, the air around them seemed to shimmer. The pulse was coming. I had to make sure we were out of here before it hit, otherwise we’d likely all be stuck in the building when the timer reached zero.
I could feel the substation gathering power like a storm building. I grabbed Darian by the collar, hauling him out the door as the first capacitor burst behind us.
The concussive force of the small explosion threw us forward. The heat seared the fur on my back. Darian was a dead weight, his boots dragging against the concrete as we pushed ourselves back to the loading dock.
I didn’t stop until we hit the tree line on the other side of the service road. My lungs were burning with the toxic scent of melting copper.
01:10…
I dropped Darian unceremoniously on the grass. He coughed, a wet, rattling sound, and slumped against a pine tree. He looked at the smelting plant. The sound of machinery grinding against itself echoed in the quiet night.
“Where… is she?” Darian wheezed, his eyes tracking the glow that seemed to reflect off the low hanging clouds. Even at death’s door, the bastard was thinking about the Oracle.
“Fixing your mess,” I growled, my voice unrecognizable to my own ears. It was a gravely rumble that was barely human.
I looked toward the north. The sky above the substation was turning a bruised, electrical purple. The Grid-Keepers weren’t just gathering power anymore, they were peaking.
00:45…
What was left of my enforcers were huddled nearby. Some had already shifted back into their human form, and shivered in the humid night air. Marcus was bleeding from a harpoon wound in his shoulder. “Alpha? The pulse… its coming. I can feel it in my teeth.”
I could feel it too. It was a high-pitched scream in the back of my mind. The sound of a thousand wolves about to be silenced.
I grabbed the handheld radio off Marcus’s tactical vest. “Tess! Tess, come in!”
Static. Nothing but the jagged hiss of interference.
00:15…
I looked at the smelting plant. The walls were beginning to buckle. The two minutes were almost up.
“She’s going to overload the substation from the inside,” Darian muttered, his head fell back against the bark. He looked almost peaceful. “She’s closing the account, Kayvan.”
00:05…
I watched the horizon.
00:01…
The smelting plant didn’t just explode. It vanished in a pillar of white-hot light. A second later, the ground buckled as the underground capacitors went.
I shielded my eyes, waiting for the pulse to follow. Waiting for the scream in my head to turn into a lobotomy.
- Writer
