Prologue
Seventeen years ago…
Legratia Pharmaceuticals, Eugenics Lab, Sublevel 2
The meaty fist brandishing a set of brass knuckles connected with his jaw, snapping his head sharply to the right. Blood sprayed from his mouth, adding to the dark red splatters already marking the concrete floor beside the chair he was strapped to. He ran his tongue over his teeth and his elongated canines to check and see if he was in danger of losing any. So far, so good. Normally, he could heal almost any injury, it was one of the gifts of his hybrid genetics, but it required energy – energy that could only be replenished with food and sleep – both of which he’d been denied during this training exercise. What he'd thought would be a handful of hours had turned into a marathon. He only knew that because of the unaccustomed weakness in his body. There were no windows here, no clocks on the bare cement walls to mark the passage of time. Just him and his torturer.
Resistance to interrogation. That was the goal.
Terrence Godwin. Big, and brutish, he was an orderly who’d been hired specifically for those qualities. The experiments had become too strong to manhandle by anyone other than the strongest personnel. He’d recently been promoted to trainer and it wasn’t hard to see he was enjoying his new position. The guy delighted in inflicting pain.
Through slits, thanks to the swelling in both of his eyes, he watched Godwin bounce on his toes, shadowboxing in front of him and smiling in preparation for the next strike.
“I will break you, P1C7.”
Godwin was the only one who did that – shortened his alpha-numeric designation – the others in the facility spat out the full eight-digit string: 9627P1C7. But then, Godwin hadn’t been hired for his intelligence. Maybe the last four were all his pea brain could handle. Though he preferred that to Godwin’s other name for him:Monkey Boy. He’d been genetically engineered with gorilla DNA and Godwin thought the little nicknames he’d come up with for the experiments were hilarious.Idiot.
His head felt too loose on his neck, but he managed to raise it as he smiled tauntingly. “I’m going to kill you someday.”
It was a vow. A promise. And it finally got Godwin to stop that stupid bouncing.
With a look of menace, his interrogator lunged for him. Grabbing his chin, Godwin squeezed the bruised and battered flesh between his fingers and leaned in until they were nose to nose. “You’re welcome to try.”
Releasing him, Godwin straightened and stepped back before he eyed him thoughtfully. “They warned me you’d be a tough nut to crack. The strongest, they said. But I think you just need a different incentive.” With a foreboding laugh – never a good sign with this one – the former orderly turned on his heel and left the room, the metal door clanging shut behind him.
He heard the whirring sound followed by a thunk that meant the locks had reengaged and he let out a little sigh of exhaustion as he let his muscles go loose and his head hang limp. Blood drooled from his mouth onto his badly stained clothes, but he barely noticed. He just wanted to sleep. A few minutes, that’s all he needed…
The feminine cry of alarm woke him and he snapped his head up to see that Godwin had returned and the bastard wasn’t alone. With one hand gripped in her hair, Godwin forced a struggling nurse into the room with them and slammed the door closed once more.
“You’ll talk P1C7 or I’m going to hurt her.”
Her name was Laura. A middle-aged nurse, she’d always been nice to him. She’d even made him homemade cookies a couple of times. Chocolate chip.
He felt his heart rate accelerate as his lungs constricted painfully in his chest. Fear. For the first time, he was afraid. He looked up at the camera mounted in the corner, hoping for an intervention. This wasn’t how this was supposed to work.Hewas supposed to endure a beating, not someone else. That’s the way this exercise had always been done. If the powers that be saw what was going on in here, surely someone would come and put a stop to it. But the light on the camera was off. Godwin must have cut the feed. That sick, sadistic bastard. A low, aggressive rumble came from deep in his chest.
“That’s it, Monkey Boy. Feel how powerless you are.” With a taunting smile aimed at him, Godwin struck the nurse, a brutal backhand that sent her tumbling roughly to the floor as she cried out in pain.
“I’ll kill you!” Struggling against his restraints, he bucked wildly in the chair. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
But he was useless. Weak. Restrained. Completely at Godwin’s mercy. All he could do was look on in horror as his favorite nurse cowered in the corner, covering her head with her arms. At that moment, he knew it was all over for him. The former orderly would keep hitting her until he got what he wanted. He was probably hoping to be given an excuse to strike her again. Godwin had no problem abusing women. He’d seen it before. When one of the genetically altered females had fought one of the doctors, Godwin had stepped in and punched her until she’d lost consciousness. Sedated and restrained to a gurney in the lab for his own procedure, he hadn’t been able to step in to help her. Then too all he’d been able to do was look on with impotent rageas he witnessed the glee on the man’s face the entire time he’d beaten that female. He couldn’t watch that happen to the nurse.
“You want to save her, hero?” With a smirk, Godwin put his hand up by his ear. “Just tell me what I want to know.”
And he would. To keep that twisted sonofabitch from hurting Laura further, he’d give up the code word he’d been given before this exercise had begun – the word he was supposed to keep safe – in a heartbeat.
Noises outside suddenly caught his attention and he pulled his eyes from the nurse as he wondered if someone might be coming after all. People were shouting, but when he heard the unmistakable sound of rapid gunfire, he knew it wasn’t salvation for Laura outside those doors. Was this some sort of new test or were they under attack?
With Godwin’s attention diverted, he focused all his energy on attempting to snap the restraints that held him, but he was too weak.
Just as Godwin reached the door to investigate, it exploded open, throwing the orderly back on his ass. Men poured in, soldiers in tactical gear with automatic rifles up and at the ready.
“Secure that man!” an older soldier barked as he marched into the room and pointed at Godwin.
Steely eyes swung in his direction and moved over his battered face, his blood-spattered clothes, and then down to therestraints. The older man’s face went red with rage, his lips a tight hyphen as a muscle pulsed in his jaw. “What the fuck is this?” he demanded. Turning, he marched over to Godwin and hauled him up by his collar to shake him roughly. “What the fuck were you doing to that boy?”
Boy?He wasn’t a boy. He was fifteen. Insulted, he tried to scowl but the movement sent pain shooting through his swollen jaw and he ended up wincing instead.
“Free him,” the older soldier barked, and his subordinates scrambled to follow the order. “Get him topside and have someone see to his injuries.”
