Chapter 40

Chapter 40: Chapter Forty

During the walk to their destination, Cole couldn’t help but look through the glass panes that offered a view into the cells. Some of the rogues in the cells were dead, others were in a state of permanent shift, unable to shift back into human. Some had severed limbs and were strapped to a table that stood at a forty-five-degree angle to allow them to sleep and wake up with no need to move. “Do you not like what you see here?”

“It’s inhumane...” Cole said.

“This is the cost of being a hunter. Hunters trade their humanity for the right to keep the peace between the two races. We will go to any lengths if it means finally defeating the Rogue King. Once he is dead, we merely need to kill every other rogue that avoids a Prometheus evaluation,” the Director explained.

“When you speak of giving them a chance to go through a Prometheus evaluation, you sound human just for an instant,” Cole replied, drawing a smile from the middle-aged man.

“You might just make a fine King, Lycaon,” he said, “Protect the peace that your forefathers have worked so hard to create within this war. Maybe then the moon goddess can finally atone for wronging Prometheus the way she did.”

“I don’t like the way you speak of our goddess... but I can’t argue with what you’re saying,” the two seemed to be getting along in Katie’s point of view.

“Is he in ‘that’ room?” Katie asked, her voice once again cold in the way it normally was when she masked her emotions completely.

.....

“Yes, he is... You are the only one who will be allowed to see him. No one else is allowed to see the prisoner, is that understood,” Anthony spoke, turning to the rest for answers. They arrived at a dead-end; something Cole was now sure was a common illusion here. Anthony placed his hand upon the wall. The sound of locks and gears could be heard rocking the wall before them before one loud click that had the stone walls sliding open, splitting in two like double sliding doors and letting them into a room that trumped everything Cole had seen with ease.

Right before them were hunters in lab coats standing at monitors, watching someone through a glass pane. They turned to see the director and the people he’d come with, “Oh, Director Anthony, welcome back. You brought her...” one of them spoke up hurriedly, a hint of shivers running through him.

A large control panel attached to the wall right before the glass panel caught Cole’s attention. Words such as adrenaline, wolfsbane intake, anaesthetic, voltage and many more in relation to torture occupied the panel. Through the glass pane, a boy whose was strapped to a chair with needles poking and tubes poking into him at numerous vessels. Wires were attached to the chair and connected to a power supply.

The boy in the seat barely looked seventeen. His knees and elbows were purple with deep cuts that leaked all manner of disgusting fluids. If it wasn’t for the gas masks, Cole was sure he wouldn’t be able to stand the stench that might have been in the room. Furthermore, the boy sat with his head limp, cuts riddled his body even appearing on his bloodstained rugs of clothes. “He still hasn’t said anything, sir. He insists that no manner of torture can bring him to speak and that all he’ll say is what he wants to ‘smite’ Katie with.”

“What bothers me is how confident he is that whatever he has to say will hurt her and that we will just hand her over to her,” Anthony said, his voice low once again, “Katie...”

“I’ll be fine. I don’t think there is anything he can say that can...”

“Think about what you are saying first. Do you mean to tell me that you weren’t hurt by Ash’s death?” the question drew a sharp breath out of Katie. Anthony was right... despite all the training she’d had that hadn’t let her develop strong enough emotional vulnerabilities, there were still things that could hurt her. She was strong, very strong, but she could be hurt in different ways indirectly... and that was what Anthony was trying to warn her about.

“In that case, might I ask a question then?” she asked.

“What might that one be?”

“Am I allowed to torture him as well?” the question was met with silence. This was something that would have been perceived as a normal question, but something was amiss when Katie asked it. Something turned within Cole’s stomach when she asked for permission to torture the prisoner. The expression on the Director’s face suggested that he too was thinking, maybe trying to decipher what she meant by that. Or maybe he already knew something Cole didn’t, for he wouldn’t have hesitated this long over a question to continue the torture they’d already been doing.

“Very well, do as you see fit.” With that, Katie walked to the side of the panel and placed her palm there, another door sliding open once again. The design of most of the door was getting on Cole’s nerves. It would be impossible for someone to escape a prison-like this one without knowledge of where the doors were and without the access that everyone seemed to have in their palms.

This would probably explain why Cole could not go through the Agency without a pro hunter to escort him. They all looked into the room while Katie appeared on the other side of the glass pane. In front of the chair was a small pedestal with controls on it that Cole could not make out. Katie put her hand to the pedestal and began scrolling through the touchscreen designed piece of hardware.

She reached what she was looking for and tapped it. A green liquid began to move through one of the needles that were attached to the wolf. On the main panel, one of the many screens began to react showing what had been activated to be ‘adrenaline.’

The seemingly asleep captive’s head shot back as the contents of the syringe hit his system to rob him of any last ounce of sleep he was probably hunting for. The boy looked around until his eyes landed on Katie. A smirk occupied his face, an evil glint in his eyes that made Cole clench his fist immediately.

“I almost felt sympathy for him because he looked young,” Cole spoke up.

“Do not be deceived.... These rogue spies are rotten to the core. You should know that already from the way the rogues fail the Prometheus evaluation. It is meant to save werewolves that still have some humanity left within them. That thing you are seeing in that room doesn’t have any humanity left. He finds pleasure in watching the world burn at his feet and everyone die away,” Anthony spoke, his voice vile. The hatred that the hunters held for rogues didn’t come as a surprise and it was the one emotion that they were fine with expressing freely for all to see.

“Yeah, his current expression says it all,” Cole said. The eyes that stared at Katie weren’t those of an innocent seventeen-year-old. This was a cold-blooded killer who didn’t give a damn about anything. It made sense that they had not been able to draw information from him by simply staring at him.

“I like your game face, Katie,” the boy said, smiling while he watched her.

“Did you get our little present? That traitor never did have what it took to be a true rogue... To carry out the mission that our goddess bestowed upon us centuries ago... The extermination of all mankind to every last man, woman and child,” he said laughing hysterically.

Katie stared at him all the while he spoke, “It’s hard to think rogues are born like that, Chandler.”

The hysterical laughter died down at the mention of his name, “So you know my name, huh... Nothing truly escapes you, does it? It’s possible by now that you’ve realized that all the missing students are wolves that you killed yourself. You see this as the death of one wolf in the prestigious Brigade High School. No, there have been seven deaths in the school and they have all been registered as absent students. It’s only a matter of time before everyone finds out that the missing students are either students that were undercover rogues...” a smirk appeared on his face while he finished the statement, “or students the rogues killed and no one ever noticed until weeks later, their carcasses will be found in the forest damped to be eaten by vultures in...”

The rogue found himself unable to speak as Katie darted forward with a knife in hand placing it to his throat. One more word and his larynx would impale itself on the sharp blade. A red bead of blood leaked from the knife wound as the blade dug into the skin of the boy’s neck. “Katie, calm yourself,” Anthony yelled out.

“Oh, but Director Anthony... I am calm...” her voice came out with so much venom it tore sent chills down everyone’s spine. She retracted the blade and walked back to the panel... scrolling through the controls before tapping the same configuration she had earlier.

The same green fluid began to flow into him through the syringe in his right arm, “Katie, you already... It’s no use... That boy is going to die,” Anthony said, lowering his voice as he watched Katie pump more unnecessary adrenaline into the boy.