Ryan's POV
My apartment looked different when I returned, like I was seeing it through someone else's eyes. The shabby furniture, the walls that needed painting, the dishes in the sink that I kept meaning to wash. Evidence of a life half lived, a person going through motions without purpose. Before tonight, I had convinced myself this was enough. Safety over meaning. Survival over action.
My father would have been ashamed.
I pushed that thought away and focused on practical matters. From the closet, I pulled out a black tactical backpack that I had bought two years ago during a brief phase where I thought I might take up hiking. Never used it. The tags were still attached. I ripped them off and started loading equipment.
Laptop, small and powerful, loaded with custom software for penetrating security systems. Portable battery pack. Cable kit with every adapter I might need. Lock picking set that I had bought online and practiced with on my own doors until I could open them in under thirty seconds. Wire cutters. Multi tool. Small flashlight with a red filter to preserve night vision. USB drives formatted and ready to copy data.
I hesitated, then added one more item. A small leather journal that my father had given me on my eighteenth birthday, its pages still mostly empty. He had said, "Write down the important things, Ryan. Memory fades, but ink remembers." I had never found anything important enough to write down.
Maybe tonight would change that.
My phone showed ten fifteen. Forty five minutes until I needed to be at the meeting point. I changed into dark clothes, practical and non restrictive. The kind of outfit that would not show blood or dirt, that would let me move fast if things went wrong. Checked my pockets obsessively. Phone, wallet, keys, energy bar in case we were there longer than expected.
I was stalling. Preparing beyond what was necessary because part of me, the part that sounded like my father's voice, was screaming that this was insane. That walking into a secret facility with people who had every reason to hate me was the kind of decision that got you killed in stupid, preventable ways.
But the alternative was continuing to hide while people died. Continuing to pretend I was not responsible for the weapon hunting them. Continuing to waste my life in fear.
I grabbed the backpack and headed for the door, then stopped. Turned back. Went to my bedroom one more time and pulled up the loose floorboard. The metal box sat there in the darkness, my father's legacy of warnings and regrets.
I lifted out the folder marked with a red X, the pages covered in his frantic handwriting. Photographing them had been smart, backing up the evidence digitally. But digital files could be deleted, hacked, lost. Paper was harder to erase completely.
I folded the most important pages, the ones with specific details about the facility and his final warning about my blood being important, and tucked them into an inner pocket of my jacket. If something happened to me tonight, if I did not make it back, whoever found my body would find these notes. Would know what I had been trying to do. Would have evidence to continue the fight.
Insurance again. My father's paranoia living on in me.
I left the apartment and took the stairs down two at a time, my enhanced werewolf reflexes making the descent faster than was probably safe. Outside, the night air was cold against my face, carrying smells of exhaust and fried food and the distant ocean. The city hummed with life, millions of people going about their evenings, completely unaware that some of them were not human. That some of them were being hunted. That tonight might be the night everything changed.
The drive to the meeting point took twenty minutes through streets that grew progressively emptier and darker. The industrial district did not have streetlights, or if it did, they had broken years ago and nobody had bothered to fix them. Buildings loomed like sleeping giants, their windows dark and vacant. This was where the city kept its shame, the ugly infrastructure that made modern life possible but that nobody wanted to see.
The construction site Blake had designated sat two blocks from the pharmaceutical facility, a skeletal framework of steel beams that would someday be condominiums for people with more money than sense. Now it was just shadows and empty space, concrete foundations waiting for walls that might never come if the developer ran out of funding.
I parked in an alley that smelled like piss and rotting garbage, tucked my car behind a dumpster where it would not be visible from the street. Grabbed my backpack and walked toward the construction site, my footsteps echoing too loud in the silence.
Blake was already there, along with five other wolves that I recognized from the warehouse. Marcus, the angry one. Claire, the scarred woman. And three others whose names I did not know but whose body language spoke of violence held in check, predators waiting for permission to hunt.
They had changed clothes since the warehouse meeting, now wearing dark tactical gear that looked military surplus. No weapons that I could see, but werewolves did not need weapons. Our bodies were weapons, claws and teeth and strength that could tear through flesh like paper.
Blake saw me approaching and nodded once, acknowledgment without friendliness. "You bring what we need?"
I patted the backpack. "Everything necessary to bypass electronic security.
Cameras, motion sensors, electronic locks, I can handle it. But if they have physical guards, human security, that is your department."
"We can handle guards," Marcus said, his voice carrying too much enthusiasm. He wanted a fight. Needed it, maybe, the way some people needed alcohol or drugs to quiet the noise in their heads.
"Non lethal if possible," Blake said, her tone making it clear this was an order, not a suggestion. "Dead security guards mean police investigation, media attention, complications we do not need. Disable them, tie them up, leave them alive to answer questions later."
Marcus looked disappointed but nodded. Claire and the other wolves showed no reaction, their faces neutral and professional. They had done this before, I realized. Had broken into places, had handled security, had operated as a unit with discipline and coordination. Blake had trained them well.
"Victor's people are watching the perimeter," I said. "Two vampires, James and Sophia. They will not interfere unless we call for help, but they will create distractions if police show up or other threats appear."
Blake's expression tightened slightly at the mention of vampires, old prejudices and territorial instincts making her wolf uncomfortable. But she did not argue.
"Good. More eyes mean better chances of survival." She pulled out a tablet, showing a satellite image of the facility. "Three story building, square shape with interior courtyard. The main entrance faces the street, too visible. Service doors on east and west, loading dock in back. We go in through the loading dock, split into two teams once inside. My team takes the lower floors, Marcus and Claire take the upper. Ryan stays with my team, handles security as we encounter it."
One of the wolves I did not know, a thin man with nervous energy, spoke up. "What if we find prisoners? People who have been experimented on, damaged, unable to move quickly?"
"We extract them if possible," Blake said. "But the mission priority is information. We need to know who is running this operation, who is funding it, what their end goal is. Rescuing prisoners is secondary to getting that intelligence."
It was a cold calculation, prioritizing data over lives. But Blake was right. If we saved prisoners tonight but did not stop the operation, more prisoners would be taken tomorrow. The disease needed to be cut out at the root, not just treated symptomatically.
"One more thing," Blake said, looking at each of us in turn. "If this goes bad, if we get separated or trapped, you do not wait for rescue. You get out however you can and you run. No heroic last stands. No dying for pack honor. We survive to fight again. Understood?"
Everyone nodded. Even Marcus, who looked like the concept of retreat offended him on a personal level.
Blake checked her watch. "Eleven forty five. We moved in fifteen minutes. Use this time to prepare mentally, to connect with your wolf, to get ready for what comes next." She looked at me. "That includes you, Kane. I know you are not used to this kind of work. But tonight you are packed, even if it is temporary. Tonight we fight together or we die together. No other options."
The wolves spread out slightly, giving each other space, going through personal rituals of preparation. Some stretched, working tension from muscles. Others closed their eyes, breathing slowly, centering themselves. Marcus cracked his knuckles repeatedly, the sound loud in the silence.
I found a place to sit on a concrete block and went through my own preparation. Checked my equipment one more time.
Made sure the battery pack was fully charged. Verified that my phone was on silent, that nothing would give away our position at the wrong moment. Practical tasks, but they helped calm the panic rising in my chest.
My wolf stirred beneath my skin, sensing the danger ahead, wanting to transform, wanting to face threats with claws and teeth rather than lock picks and code. I pushed it down gently, not suppressing but negotiating. Not yet, I told her. We need human hands for this part. But soon. Soon you can run.
It settled, not happy but willing to wait.
At exactly midnight, Blake stood and made a simple hand gesture. Time to move. We formed up into two groups, Blake leading three wolves plus me, Marcus leading the other two. No words were spoken.
Communication happened through looks and subtle body language, a pack language that I understood instinctively even though I had never trained in it.
We moved through the dark streets like ghosts, our footsteps silent, our breathing controlled. The facility appeared ahead of us, a dark mass against the slightly less dark sky. Three stories of concrete and steel, windows blocked from inside, no external lights showing. From the outside, it looked exactly like an abandoned building should look.
But I could feel the electricity humming through power lines. Could smell the faint chemical odor of active laboratories. Could sense the life inside those walls, heartbeats and voices and the subtle vibration of machinery running.
We circled to the loading dock at the rear of the building. The large bay door was closed, sealed with a heavy padlock. Next to it, a smaller personnel door, also locked, with a security camera mounted above and a card reader beside the handle.
I pulled out my laptop and signal jammer, set to work. The camera went dark first, its feed looping to show an empty alley, nothing suspicious, just another boring night in the industrial district. The card reader took longer, its encryption more sophisticated than standard commercial security. But I had tools for this, programs I had written specifically for bypassing access control systems.
Five minutes. Ten. Blake and her pack stood motionless behind me, not pressuring, not complaining about the delay. They understood that rushing this part meant alarms, meant guards appearing, meant the mission ending before it began.
At twelve minutes, the lock clicked. The door handle turned smoothly in my hand.
"We are in," I whispered.
Blake nodded and made another hand gesture. The pack flowed through the door in single file, moving with practiced efficiency. I followed, pulling the door shut behind us, and found myself standing in a dimly lit corridor that smelled like disinfectant and something else underneath, something organic and wrong, like meat left too long in the heat.
We were inside the facility. Inside the place my father had discovered, the place that had gotten him killed. Inside the heart of the conspiracy that was hunting supernatural beings across Blackridge.
And somewhere in this building, hidden behind locked doors and se
curity systems, were the answers we needed.
We just had to find them before the facility found us.