There was no time for strategy. No time for Drake to bark orders. The moment of shock shattered into a spray of adrenaline and instinct. The lead Grokk Hound covered the distance of the corridor in three powerful, ground-eating lunges, a guttural snarl ripping from its throat.
"Aegis formation! Now!" Drake roared, planting his feet. He slammed the base of his tremor-gauntlet into the floor, and a shimmering, hexagonal plate of pure force erupted in the air before him, just as the hound crashed into it. The impact sent a deep, resonant BOOM through the corridor. The barrier held, but spiderweb cracks spread from the point of impact, and Drake grunted from the strain.
"Kara, light 'em up!" he yelled, muscles straining.
Kara didn't need to be told. She was already in motion, a whirlwind of controlled fury. "Burn, you mutts!" she screamed, thrusting her hands forward. A torrent of brilliant orange flame, tight and focused as a lance, blasted over Drake's barrier and washed over the second hound. The beast shrieked, a high-pitched sound of agony that was horribly different from its predatory growl, as its grey hide blistered and blackened.
The third hound, seeing its packmates engaged, proved smarter. It veered, claws scrabbling for purchase on the metal floor, and bounded up the wall, moving with an unnatural agility. It clung to the ceiling for a split second, its three red eyes locking onto the weakest targets in the formation: Xander and Luna.
"Above us!" Xander shouted, yanking Luna behind him as he fumbled for the sidearm holstered at his hip. His primary role was diagnostics, not combat; his movements were clumsy, panicked.
The hound dropped.
It fell like a stone, a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and bone aimed directly at them. There was no time. Kara's fire was occupied. Drake's shield was committed. My mind went blank. Every lesson, every warning, every ounce of Everhart's conditioning screamed at me to use precision, to aim for a weak point, to be a surgeon.
But my power wasn't a scalpel. Not now. It was a tidal wave, roaring in my ears, begging to be released.
I didn't aim. I didn't think. I just reacted.
I threw my hands up, palms out, and let it go.
It wasn't a beam. It wasn't a bolt. It was a wave of pure, colorless force—a physical distortion in the air that erupted from me with the sound of a thunderclap. The blast hit the Grokk Hound mid-air. The beast's momentum vanished, its descent arrested as if it had hit a solid wall. For a horrifying instant, I saw its body contort, bones and muscle twisting under the immense, crushing pressure. Then it was flung backward, not just pushed, but hurled, tumbling end over end down the corridor.
It slammed into the far wall with a sickening crunch of breaking bone. The durasteel wall behind it dented, a permanent, concave scar marking the impact. A cluster of secondary power conduits beside the impact zone ruptured, showering the floor in a cascade of harmless but brilliant blue sparks.
Silence.
The two remaining hounds froze, their predatory intelligence overwhelmed by the sheer, raw violence of the display. The one at Drake's shield backed away, whimpering, its aggression broken. The one Kara had scorched was a blackened, twitching heap on the floor.
My ears were ringing. The air tasted of burnt ozone. I stared at the dented wall, at the sparking, ruined conduits, and a cold dread washed over me, even colder than the sub-level air. Collateral damage. I hadn't just stopped the hound. I had nearly vaporized it. The sledgehammer had swung.
"Holy…" Drake breathed, lowering his now-cracked shield. He looked from the dead hound back to me, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and something I couldn't name.
Kara's flames died down, her chest heaving. "James… what was that?"
I couldn't answer. I was looking at my hands, which were trembling uncontrollably. I could still feel the echo of the power, the exhilarating, terrifying feeling of it surging through me, completely untamed.
"Subject neutralized," Xander said, his voice shaky but falling back on protocol. He helped Luna to her feet. She was pale, her eyes fixed on the spot where the hound had been. She looked at me, not with fear, but with a deep, profound unease.
"Forget that," Drake said, his command voice returning. "What the hell was that about? Everhart's briefing was a lie." He strode over to the dead hound, nudging it with his boot. "Tier-2 specimens don't just 'wander off.' Xander, what does your pad say?"
Xander was already working, his fingers flying across the screen. "I'm accessing the sector's containment logs… It's right here. Specimen pens for three Grokk Hounds are located in corridor 4B. Their containment fields were deactivated thirty minutes ago. The access code used was… Professor Everhart's."
A stunned silence fell over the team.
"That's not possible," Kara whispered.
"It gets worse," Xander said, his face grim. "The life sign monitors for their handlers are flat. And the hounds' pen… the door was forced outward, from the inside. They broke out."
A chill that had nothing to do with my power surge traced its way down my spine. The pieces didn't fit. Everhart's code being used, the handlers dead, the hounds breaking out of their own pen…
Luna, who had been silent this whole time, finally spoke, her voice barely a whisper. She wasn't looking at us. She was staring deeper into the darkness of Vault Block C-7.
"They weren't hunting us," she said. "They were running."