Sub-Level Zero
1107 Words
The air in the ventilation shafts was freezing, a sharp contrast to the climate-controlled luxury of the suite above. My fingers, reinforced by the primal strength of the White Wolf, dug into the cold steel of the ducts as I moved with the silent grace of a shadow. Corvus believed his dampening fields made me powerless, but he made the mistake of thinking my power was magical. It wasn't just magic; it was biological. My senses were heightened, my muscles optimized, and my mind was a supercomputer mapping the facility through the vibrations of the humming wires.
I reached the vertical shaft that plummeted into the belly of the mountain. Below me, the Aerie descended into the darkness of Sub-Level 4 a place that didn't exist on the official blueprints I had glimpsed earlier.
Marcello-01. The name echoed in my mind like a rhythmic drum. If my mother was alive, if she had been held in this icy tomb for sixteen years while I was bullied and broken in the Marcello estate, then the Commission wouldn't just face a war. They would face an extinction.
I dropped twenty feet, catching a ledge with a soft thud that was swallowed by the roar of the massive cooling fans. I slipped through a maintenance hatch and landed in a corridor that smelled of ozone and ancient dust.
Unlike the floors above, Sub-Level 4 was industrial and grim. Large vats of glowing blue liquid lined the walls, each containing specimens of biological "anomalies" shards of bone, vials of glowing marrow, and preserved organs. This was the Commission’s kitchen, where they cooked the serums that kept the Mafia Dons immortal and the Enforcers unstoppable.
I moved past a series of heavy, reinforced doors until I reached a solitary cell at the very end of the hall. It didn't have a glass window. It had a heavy, lead-lined vault door with a single nameplate: MARCELLO-01.
My hand trembled as I reached for the keypad. I didn't have the code, but I didn't need it. I placed my palm against the scanner, letting the silver light in my blood surge. I didn't just push the power; I whispered to the machine, mimicking the biometric frequency of the Marcello bloodline.
Click.
The vault door hissed open, releasing a cloud of cryo-mist.
Inside, the room was small and filled with medical monitors. In the center sat a woman, suspended in a liquid-filled glass cylinder. Her hair was as dark as mine, her skin pale as marble. She looked exactly like the woman in the faded photograph I had kept hidden under my mattress for a decade. She didn't look like she had aged a day.
"Mother?" the word felt foreign on my tongue, a jagged piece of glass I had finally swallowed.
The woman’s eyes snapped open. They weren't brown like mine used to be. They were a brilliant, terrifying silver a mirror image of the power I had just awakened. She didn't speak, but her voice exploded in my head, a psychic roar that nearly brought me to my knees.
“Run, little wolf. You’ve walked into the center of the web.”
Before I could respond, the lights in the corridor turned a blinding, aggressive red. A heavy metal grate slammed down behind me, locking me inside the room with the cylinder.
"I expected you’d find your way down here eventually, Rena," Corvus’s voice crackled through the intercom. He sounded amused, like a scientist watching a rat find the wrong turn in a maze. "The Marcello blood is predictably sentimental. Did you really think we’d let the most powerful White Wolf in history simply 'die' in a car accident? Her DNA has fueled the Commission for nearly two decades. And now, she’s depleted. We needed a fresh source. We needed... an heir."
"You used her as a battery," I growled, my nails clawing at the lead-lined walls. The silver light in my eyes flared so brightly it began to crack the glass of the medical monitors. "You let me grow up thinking I was an orphan while you drained her dry?"
"We didn't just drain her, Rena. We refined her," Corvus said. "And now, we will do the same to you. The 'Trial' tomorrow wasn't an interrogation. It’s an extraction. By sunrise, your tactical mind will be uploaded to our tactical servers, and your blood will be in our vats."
The floor began to vibrate as a hidden elevator mechanism started to lift the cylinder and me back toward the upper levels.
"Viktor is coming for me," I said, my voice dropping to a low, lethal whisper. "And when he gets here, he’s going to peel the skin from your bones."
"Viktor Volkov is currently being intercepted by six of our elite strike teams," Corvus replied smoothly. "He’s a brave man, but he is just a man. He cannot fight a god. And soon, thanks to you, the Commission will have an army of them."
The elevator stopped at the "Sanctuary" level the center of the testing arena. The glass walls were filled with the Elders of the Commission, watching like spectators at a Roman colosseum.
I looked at my mother in the cylinder. She was watching me, her hand pressed against the glass.
“The tactical mind isn't just for war, Rena,” her voice whispered in my mind, calmer now. “It’s for the escape. Look at the dampening field. It’s not a wall. It’s a loop. Close the circuit.”
I looked up at the massive hum of the machinery overhead. Corvus thought he had trapped the White Wolf. He forgot that a wolf doesn't just bite it rips the throat out.
I didn't reach for my blade. I reached for the energy in the room. If the dampening field was a loop, I just had to become the surge.
"Corvus!" I yelled, looking directly at the old man behind the reinforced glass. "You wanted to see the power of the White Wolf? Here is your first lesson."
I slammed my fists into the floor, releasing every ounce of the silver fire in my soul. The dampening field didn't just break; it exploded. The glass walls of the arena shattered, and the Aerie plunged into total, absolute darkness.
In the silence that followed, I heard the distant, beautiful sound of a helicopter's rotors and the boom of a Russian thermal charge.
Viktor had arrived. And I had just opened the door.
- Writer
