“Reese?” Colonel Harrington said.
“I’m fine, sir.”
“I disagree.” Jones glared at Reese.
“It won’t make any difference. Five of you, or five hundred. If there are any subjects down here and they want to kill us, then there’s nothing we can do. So yes, I’m fine where I’m at.”
“Thank you, Dr. Dante,” Harrington said. “You can continue, Jones.”
“Fucking lab rat.” The insult was barely a whisper even through the mic. Jones shot Reese one more angry look before waving his people on.
Reese unlocked the door. It hissed open. No one moved.
Blood and ichor swirled together in pools. Bits of broken floor tile lay in long piles beside deep ruts carved into solid concrete. Three nude bodies among a minefield of human remains were almost intact.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Jones said.
Reese pushed past Jones and his men before they could stop him.
Massive wounds sliced through necks and backs of the nude men, severing their spines and leaving their heads attached by tatters of skin. Gouges coated the walls, a crisscross visual of a fight between betas. Wires escaped holes punched into the ceiling. Sheets of glass in the windows remained whole except for large swaths sheared off by impossibly sharp claws.
Those same claws had to have cut down all three men.
“Colonel, I don’t recognize any of these betas.”
“Could they have been brought in after you left?”
It was possible. “Yes, but not likely.”
“Why not?”
“We experienced a lot of trial and error before we found Koda, and Echols didn’t think it would be safe to give him more than fifteen team members.”
“Could he have changed his mind?”
“Nothing’s impossible. But Koda would have never allowed his betas to turn on each other.”
“What about betas belonging to another Alpha?”
Which would require the creation of a second Alpha. “Like I said, nothing’s impossible.”
There was no tattoo on the right upturned arm of one of the unknowns. Reese knelt to pick up a different man’s right hand, but it wouldn’t move.
When the subjects reached the Utah Facility, they had been dead for days, sometimes weeks. And whenever they died for the final time, there had never been any rigor.
Reese twisted his torso so he could bend down far enough to examine the underside of the dead man’s wrist without having to turn it in his direction.
“You see something?” Jones said.
“There’s no tattoo.” Reese stood. Black and red coated the knees of his HAZMAT suit.
“I take it that’s not normal.”
“No. They were always marked with the company logo before being injected.” Like cattle. It was like one more declaration that the betas were objects belonging to a cooperation rather than people.
“They look like normal people.” Jones skipped his gaze over the carnage and along the walls following the echoes of the battle that happened there. “I thought they were, you know, not human.”
“The ichor purges on death. But even alive, they look like you or me unless agitated.”