The Phantom Protocol Initiated
320 Words
"Scalpel."
The chief physician held out his gloved hand. The nurse immediately placed the razor-sharp silver blade into his palm.
Reyne stood behind the observation glass, his eyes locked on Alice’s unmoving body. For some reason, his heart was racing. A deep, instinctual sense of dread was clawing at his throat, making it difficult to breathe. He brushed it off as stress. She is a traitor, he reminded himself. She tried to kill Cynthia.
The doctor lowered the scalpel, the sharp tip pressing against Alice’s bare abdomen.
BZZZT!
Suddenly, every light in the medical facility died.
The backup generators didn't kick in. The high-tech monitors flatlined, and absolute, pitch-black darkness swallowed the room. It wasn't a normal power outage; the darkness felt heavy, thick, and almost alive, suffocating the senses of every werewolf in the room.
"What is happening?! Check the breakers!" the doctor shouted in a panic.
In that exact three seconds of total darkness, a silent tear in reality opened right above the operating table. Universal shadows descended like liquid silk.
Alice’s unconscious body was lifted into the air by tendrils of pure dark-silver energy. In her place, a flawless, bio-mimetic dummy—constructed from synthetic tissue and encoded with her exact Omega DNA—was dropped onto the table.
Clack!
The lights flashed back on. The monitors beeped normally again.
The doctors gasped, shaking their heads to clear the strange vertigo. Reyne slammed his fist against the observation glass. "What was that?!"
"Just a temporary grid failure, Alpha!" the doctor called out, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He looked down at the patient. To his eyes and his nose, everything was exactly the same. The scent of an Omega female still filled the room.
The doctor lowered the scalpel again, slicing smoothly into the flesh of the dummy. He had no idea that the real Alice Vance was already gone, disappearing into the shadows of Manhattan.
- Writer
