Rogue Wolf by Paige Tyler

Chapter 19

It was the sound of humming and soft footsteps on rough concrete that pulled Samantha out of her restless sleep. She forced herself to stay calm and not jump up like she had the first time. Instead, she opened her eyes slowly and tried to sneak a look around the basement without giving away the fact that she was awake.

The basement was lit up much brighter than it previously had been. Looking up, she saw lines of overhead fluorescents attached to the ceiling, painting the entire place in a harsh industrial glow. It made her feel like she was back in her autopsy lab at the institute.

Catching sight of a pair of leather dress shoes through the openings in the grating of her cage, she knew without lifting her gaze any higher that it was Louis. She’d recognize those waterproof wingtip oxfords of his anywhere. The man had been wearing them every day since she’d met him.

When Samantha realized Louis was standing in front of the rack Kyson was strapped to, she gave up all pretense of being asleep, pushing herself up on one hip so she could see better. A quick glance to the right showed Shaylee lying on her mattress in the corner of her cell, apparently still sleeping.

Louis pushed a large syringe of neon green goo—the same kind in the glass cylinder on the wall—into a heart catheter. The stuff must have been unusually thick because Louis’s knuckles were turning white from the force he was applying to the plunger. As unsettling as it was to see him put green goo into the big man, it was even more disconcerting to see Kyson’s open eyes stay flat and inexpressive, even though Shaylee had said he was aware of everything happening to him when he was like this.

“What are you doing to him?” Samantha demanded.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Shaylee jump a little, pushing herself up from her mattress. The woman looked around, terrified, and Samantha wondered if she’d just made their situation worse than it already was. As hard as it was to believe that could even be possible.

“I’m making him better,” Louis replied, the words spoken so casually that she’d think he’d simply said it might rain today.

“What is that stuff doing to him?” Samantha pressed.

Getting up, she walked across the cage and leaned against the door. She pushed on the lock, even though she knew it wouldn’t budge. She glanced Shaylee’s way and saw the woman moving closer as well, her agonized expression making Samantha think she’d seen this kind of thing before.

Louis didn’t answer at first, waiting until he had finished injecting the rest of the goo into the catheter and then moving over to scan a bank of monitors Samantha couldn’t quite see. Only then did he turn and approach her cage, his face taking on that patient mentoring expression she’d become so used to over the past few years.

“Around three o’clock Wednesday morning, my test subject had a run-in with your boyfriend in the Cedar Ridge Preserve,” Louis said, regarding her calmly. “You may not be aware of this, Samantha, but your boyfriend can be quite vicious when he wants to be. Even though my subject is an incredibly powerful man, I watched Officer Duncan literally tear him to shreds. From a scientific point of view, I must admit it was quite impressive.”

Louis was about to say something else, but Samantha interrupted him, unable to stop herself. “You were there that night in the forest? You were dumping remains?”

Her boss scowled, though whether his displeasure was because she’d interrupted him or because she’d reminded him that he’d been out in the woods disposing of human body parts was difficult to say.

“Admittedly, it’s a task Rogi normally handles,” he said, lip curling like he was admitting to cleaning his own toilets instead of letting the person he’d hired to do it do it. “But after he got lazy the last time I sent him out and decided to dump the remains a mere hundred feet from a heavily populated homeless camp, I decided to step in and deal with the task myself. I’m not a fan of walking in the woods in the middle of the night, but then again, if I hadn’t been there, I would never have seen the performance Officer Duncan put on. Again, it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Inhuman, one might say. Or supernatural at the very least.”

After hearing her boss describe the way Trey had torn Kyson to shreds, it was difficult not falling for the bait and asking what Louis had seen. But no matter how much Samantha might have wanted to learn more about Trey and what the hell was going on with him, she knew now wasn’t the right time. And Louis definitely wasn’t the right person to be getting answers from.

“You can stop trying to distract me. It won’t work,” Samantha said softly, determined to put the spotlight right where it needed to be. “Trey had nothing to do with the bodies Hugh has been stealing for you from the ME’s office. That’s completely on you. Just like the immoral experiments you’ve been conducting.”

She expected some kind of violent response, an impassioned defense of his actions. Instead, Louis simply turned his attention back to Kyson, humming as he examined the well-healed scars that crisscrossed the poor man’s chest and stomach.

“Just to be clear,” Louis said a little while later, apparently satisfied with whatever he found in his inspection of Kyson’s injuries and glancing over his shoulder at her. “Hugh had nothing to do with acquiring those dead bodies for me. He didn’t have anything to do with the living donors I’ve been forced to turn to lately, either.” Her boss shrugged. “That said, Hugh will ultimately take the fall for everything when the time comes. Once I’m done with my work, the task force will receive an anonymous call and the police will have their Butcher. All of the necessary evidence, some of which you found, has already been put into place.”

As stunned as she was to learn that Hugh was completely innocent in all of this, it was the part about living donors that caught and held Samantha’s attention. But before she could say anything, Louis kept going, as if talking to himself.

“And as far as my experiments go, I really don’t think you can call them immoral,” he continued. “Technically, my test subject was dead when I started. And in accordance with Dallas County policy, unclaimed bodies left at the institute will be turned over to the medical and scientific communities for the betterment of mankind. I think discovering a process to resurrect the dead would certainly be considered the betterment of mankind, don’t you?”

Samantha had already known where Louis was going with this. Everything Shaylee had told her earlier made his confession almost anticlimactic. Still, hearing Louis say the words and knowing that the man’s moral compass was obviously broken beyond all recognition was hard to wrap her head around.

“I’d call you insane, but you’re so far past that point that the word doesn’t even begin to cover it,” she said. “What gives you the right to play God like this?”

“God gave me the right!” Louis shouted as he spun around, his face twisted in a grimace that made him seem almost inhuman. Just like the things he’d been doing to Kyson. “When he stole my son from me, he gave me the right to do anything I deemed necessary.”

Samantha stared at him through the grating. Her boss was even further gone than she’d imagined. But before she could point that out, Louis moved over to the big rectangular shape to Kyson’s left, ripping off the fabric tarp that had been covering it with the flourish of a magician.

“Everything I’ve done is for my son,” he said in a low voice as he leaned over the glass tank he’d exposed, his hands resting on the top, eyes locking on the body inside.

Even through the thick reddish fluid that filled the tank, Samantha was able to recognize the young man floating there. She’d seen a painting of him only hours before posed with his father and mother. Of course, the eighteen-year-old in the tank looked far from the smiling boy now. The vicious unhealed scars covering almost every inch of his body implied impossible pain and suffering.

“Oh, Louis,” she whispered. “What have you done?”

Sagging against the grating of her cell, Samantha gazed at the hundreds of tubes and wires running into the boy’s body. She knew without having to ask that the tank and liquid in it were somehow meant to keep the body from decaying. It was like he was in some kind of bizarre, suspended animation.

“What have I done?” Louis repeated, momentarily lifting his eyes to gaze at her before turning his attention back to his son. “I have found a way to create life where there was only death. And now that I have the answer to the systemic rejection issue that has been holding me in check, there’s nothing to stop me from getting my son back.”

Samantha didn’t say anything. What the hell could she say? This was completely insane and yet it was happening all the same.

“I expected some problem with rejection of the donor parts, but I’ll admit, it’s been worse than I anticipated,” Louis said in a conversational tone as he moved back over to Kyson and began to check the scars around the man’s wrists. “I’ve had to replace the subject’s hands, hearts, and lungs multiple times since I started this experiment weeks ago. It shouldn’t be happening, considering the steps I took to completely remove and replace his existing immune system before I even resurrected him.”

Replaced his existing immune system?

Samantha guessed that explained how Kyson was able to survive having blood in his body that was literally a stew of every type and rhesus factor there was. She was wondering how something like that was possible when noise from Shaylee’s cell distracted her.

“I already told you why it’s happening,” Shaylee said, her voice soft. “The man I love doesn’t want to live like this. Ky is making his body reject the parts you keep forcing on him, and he’ll keep doing it until you stop and let him go.”

Shaylee’s words were so desolate that tears welled in Samantha’s eyes. Louis, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as moved by them.

“And as I’ve already told you many times, the man strapped to the table over there isn’t the Kyson you knew anymore. The voltage I dumped into him as part of the resurrection process wiped the majority of his mind. Even if he did know who he’d been before, he couldn’t will his body to reject the new parts. Science doesn’t work that way.”

“Then why is it happening?” Samantha questioned even though she was having a hard time thinking about anything other than what Louis had said about dumping voltage into Kyson and wiping the majority of his mind. It called to mind visions of Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein and the experiments he’d conducted on his monster. The similarities between that fiction story and this reality were impossible to ignore.

“Perhaps he is a poor choice of test subject,” Louis said as Shaylee made a sound of disgust and walked toward the back of her cage, dropping back down onto her ratty mattress. “I selected him based on his military background and the types of injuries he’d sustained,” he added, motioning at Kyson but refusing to address him by name—or as though he was anything remotely resembling a human being. “I had assumed that his trauma, which was so similar to my son’s, would make him a perfect test subject. That if I could resolve his extreme physical issues, then my son’s would be a cake walk. I even thought that having a subject who was already dealing with severe PTSD would help when it came time to deal with the same issues if they developed in my son. I never considered that he simply might be too broken to ever be a viable candidate.”

That earned Louis another snort of disgust and disdain from Shaylee, which he ignored.

“At one point, I even considered terminating the subject and simply starting fresh with another one,” Louis said, seeming to take great pleasure in the gasp that Shaylee let out at that. “The only thing that stopped me was my pride, I guess. I didn’t want to admit I’d made a mistake in the first place. But now that I’ve stumbled over the solution to the entire problem, none of that matters anymore.”

This was the second time Louis stated he’d found the answer to his problem. And by problem, she assumed he meant Kyson’s continued rejection of the various parts Louis had forced on him.

“What solution did you happen to stumble over?” she asked.

“Your boyfriend, of course.” Louis turned to give her a smile. “I’m sure you noticed how badly injured he was after fighting with my creation in the Cedar Ridge Preserve. I mean, practically every rib on his right side had been broken. Yet a mere few hours later, he walked into the institute with barely a bruise to show for it. You’re an intelligent, observant woman. I’m sure you’ve noticed Officer Duncan possesses abnormally fast healing abilities. As well as quite a few other talents that suggest he’s far more than he appears. I’m not sure exactly what he is, though I have no doubt I’ll figure it out before I’m done.”

Fear raced down her spine at Louis’s words and the maniacal, almost gleeful, expression on his face. “What do you mean, before you’re done?”

Before Louis could reply, the thumping of heavy footsteps interrupted him. She peered to the side to see Rogi coming into view. His eyes locked on Kyson for a moment before he turned to the doctor.

“Ah, Rogi. Perfect timing,” Louis said. “I was just about to wake up the test subject so you can take him with you when you go do that thing I asked you to do.”

Rogi didn’t look thrilled at the prospect of whatever this task might be, but he nodded nonetheless, moving over to assist Louis as he began to route a series of black cables from the rack of electrical equipment on the far side of the room to the inclined table Kyson was strapped to.

“What are you doing to him?” Samantha yelled, banging on the metal grating of her cell. Beside her, Shaylee was doing the same to the door of her cage. Both Louis and Rogi ignored them. “What does Trey have to do with any of this?”

After messing with more of the black cables, connecting a few them to the shackles at Kyson’s wrists and the one attached to his head, Louis finally turned and regarded her calmly. “As I was saying, your boyfriend seems to possess some kind of supernatural healing ability. I believe those abilities, properly harvested and refined, will stop the rejection issues I’ve been dealing with. Rogi and this large mountain of muscle will go get Officer Duncan and bring him back here.”

“Ky will never help you hurt his best friend,” Shaylee yelled, banging on the door of her cell again. “Trey is the only friend he’s ever had.”

Louis seemed shocked at the knowledge that Trey and Kyson knew each other but then passed it off with a shrug. “It’s not like I’m going to give him a choice.”

Before either Samantha or Shaylee could respond, Louis moved over to the rack of electrical gear and started flipping switches. The hum of electricity immediately filled the air, quickly followed by an odor that made her think of ionized air after a storm.

Kyson’s eyes were still glassy and distant, but Samantha swore she could see the panic in them anyway. Shaylee began to cry as Louis continued flipping more switches, actually laughing a little as he put his hand on a big black lever near the side of the rack.

“For all the aggravation this subject has caused me, I have to give him one thing,” Louis said, what could only be called an evil grin crossing his face as he looked over at Samantha. “He can handle a lot of pain.”

As he flipped the big lever downward, the hairs on Samantha’s arms were lifting and bolts of lightning filled the air around Kyson’s body even as his back arched and a shout of absolutely terrifying pain was ripped from him.

It went on and on, long after the point when Samantha had slapped her hands over her ears in an attempt to keep out the tortured sounds. But even with the noises deadened somewhat, she could see Kyson writhing in pain as the man she used to respect watched him flail with a sick glint in his eyes.

When Louis finally pulled the heavy lever back up, the air had taken on a burnt smell, and Samantha had to force herself not to throw up. To her right, Shaylee was on her knees, sobbing at the display of horrible cruelty on the man she loved.

Samantha was stunned when Kyson stepped away from the table. His legs seemed surprisingly steady, considering he’d just been electrocuted. She found herself staring into his eyes, which were achingly aware now. Samantha couldn’t look away, even as Louis informed Kyson that he would be going with Rogi to get his friend, Trey, and bring him back there.

“You do remember him, don’t you?” Louis asked, moving closer to Kyson and gazing up into his eyes curiously. “Yes, I can see it. Somewhere in that burnt-out mind of yours, you still have a little piece of Officer Trey Duncan wedged in there. I suppose that’s actually a good thing. It will help make sure you grab the right guy.”

Kyson stared down at Louis for a long time, his face twitching, his shoulders tense. “Don’t…want to,” he finally said, each word sounded out slowly and carefully.

Louis seemed surprised that Kyson had spoken. But then his expression twisted, darkening with anger. He threw a glance at Rogi, who moved over to Shaylee’s cage, one hand coming to rest on the latch. “Do you think I give a shit what you want? You’ll do what I say, or I’ll have Rogi go into that cage and hurt your pretty little girlfriend. Is that what you want?”

Samantha felt rage boil up inside her. If she could have somehow ripped the door of her cage off and killed Louis, she would have. But as it was, she wasn’t getting through that door, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to help Kyson…or Shaylee.

Kyson didn’t say anything more. Instead, he slowly shook his head, then moved to follow Rogi toward the door at the far end of the basement. Just before they walked out, Louis caught their attention.

“Rogi, take some extra help with you,” he said casually. “Something tells me that Officer Duncan is going to be rather difficult to bring down.”

As Kyson and Rogi walked out, Samantha wanted to scream at them to stop, to leave Trey out of this, but she knew her words would be wasted. She only prayed Kyson and Rogi failed in the task Louis had given them, even if she was terrified of what that would mean for her and Shaylee.