Matt flew past Jonathan.
The observation window stopped his momentum. Blood, ichor, and torn bits of flesh left streaks on the surface, and he fell into a pile of broken bones.
The defective turned in a circle as if lost.
And sometimes, suppressing the brain’s ability to function could be a good thing.
Like giving Jonathan a chance to get his brother and himself out alive.
“Leave the room.” Grey’s voice boomed over the speaker.
“Yeah, I plan to.” He went to collect Matt.
“Without him.”
Grey watched through the viewing window. His expression blank.
If Jonathan left, the defective would kill Matt.
But it wasn’t like his father didn’t know. He’d seen what those things were capable of at least as many times as Jonathan had.
And now Grey wanted Jonathan to leave Matt there to die.
There was no way Jonathan could do that. He hauled Matt to his shoulder, and his broken bones shifted in the bag of flesh that had once been a muscular body.
Jonathan stayed close to the wall while the defective took a few steps one way, then the next. Its body continued to gain mass, and it stumbled like a newborn foal.
Jonathan reached the door and fumbled for the door handle.
It wouldn’t turn.
“I said leave him.” Grey’s blistering stare ate right through Jonathan. “Leave him or die with him.”
And Jonathan couldn’t even yell and call the man a murderer. Because the more sound he made, the more he’d attract the defective.
It sniffed the ground, following its path back to Lee’s remains. It pawed the shell that had once been a man.
Jonathan tried the door again.
“Leave him, Jonathan.”
The defective lifted its head and swiveled its ears.
Jonathan gritted his teeth. How? How could that son of a bitch do this? He knew Grey was a bastard, but this was low even for him.
But if Jonathan didn’t leave Matt, he’d have to fight the defective, and he’d most likely die. The failed manifestations were always stronger. Scientists who’d tried to backward engineer Echols and Markus’s formula had discovered if the hybrid cells used in the VrK failed to merge its artificial molecular structure with the host’s DNA, those hybrid cells would take over.
There was just enough altered, or missing, or whatever it was those two men had done, to create a creature as close to the Anubis as possible, but without a cognitive mind or anyone to control them.
Jonathan doubted it was that simple, but it didn’t change the fact the defectives weren’t Sarvari.
Just like knowing, even as a First Beta, he didn’t stand a chance at fighting the defective alone.
Jonathan lowered Matt to the ground. He opened his eyes, but there was no recognition in them. Tapped out from repairing the damage to his body meant their father could still choose not to heal him.
If he’d been a part of Jonathan’s meta-pack, he could have done it, but as an Alpha, his father’s blood was the only universal elixir since things like Cana didn’t exist for the Sarvari and Urja were supposedly extinct.
“Don’t be stupid, son.” The tinge to Grey’s tone almost sounded like concern.